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Who was the real Santa Claus?

It's that magical time of year when the lights go up, the trees get decorated and a familiar bearded man in a red suit pops up everywhere. He goes by a few names: Santa Claus, Father Christmas, and Saint Nick. But who was the real Santa Claus? Well, to answer that, we need to go way back in history to the fourth century to a Bishop called Nicholas of Myra (present-day Demre, Turkey). Memes abound about St Nicholas and Arius Some early lists place him as one of the Bishops who attended the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and there are some questionable legends which state that he was temporarily defrocked (removal from office) and imprisoned during...

Lent: Day 8 - Ignatius to the Romans

Day Eight: St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Romans (full text) Who: Ignatius converted at a young age and later became Bishop of Antioch. A friend of Polycarp and fellow disciple of John, there is a long standing tradition that Ignatius was the child that Jesus held in his arms and blessed in Mark 10:13-16 What: A challenging letter in which Ignatius pours himself out to the Roman church about his impending martyrdom. Why: Ignatius wrote a series of letters to the churches in Asia Minor whilst en route to Rome to face martyrdom by wild beasts in the Colosseum around 108 AD. When: Around 107-108 AD On reading the introduction to this letter my first th...

Before The Pumpkins: Reclaiming All Hallows’ Eve

It’s that time of year again when pumpkins appear in windows, skeletons hang from doorways, and debates resurface about whether Christians should have anything to do with Halloween. Some will say it’s entirely “pagan” in origin, others that it’s harmless fun — and many of us fall somewhere in the middle, just trying to work out what’s right (or try to ignore it!). But what if we’ve forgotten that Halloween began not with ghosts and ghouls, but with grace and glory? Hallowe’en — “All Hallows’ Eve” — was never about celebrating darkness; it was about remembering the light. It marked the night before All Saints’ Day, a day...

It’s Not Your Job To Convert Anyone

On Sunday it was St Andrew’s Day and I was in church listening to a sermon about Andrew (and the namesake of our church), that often overlooked disciple, meeting Jesus for the first time. In John’s Gospel, it says: John 1:40–42One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’… He brought Simon to Jesus. As I sat there listening to our vicar speak about evangelism and how we should be more like Andrew in bringing people to meet Jesus, something from many, many years ago flickered to life in the back of my mind. A realisation I had lo...

Lent 2018: The Temptations of Jesus

Lent is just around the corner, and so this year I've decided to write a short series over the next 40 days looking at the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness, and the temptations he faced. I'll post a new blog each Sunday of Lent looking at each temptation, and then finish the series just before Easter Sunday looking at “how was Jesus a sacrifice?”. Series outline: Temptation one: Pride (1st Sunday of Lent, February 18, 2018) Temptation two: Worship and Glory (2nd Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2018) Temptation three: Testing God (3rd Sunday of Lent, March 4, 2018) Temptation four: Complacency (4th Sunday of Lent, March 11, 2018) Topical: W...

Power Cuts and the Fear of God

The other week we had a series of power cuts in our town. It doesn’t happen very often here where I am, but there was particularly bad weather recently which damaged some cables; but sitting in the dark winter evening, my phone low on battery power, it made me realise just how much we rely on electricity for nearly everything these days. We don’t even have a gas supply so we were completely cut off from doing anything! Now it might sound obvious, but it’s easy to forget how dependent we are on modern conveniences until it’s suddenly taken away and you’re sat in the cold surrounded by tiny little tea-light candles. The following Sunday, the sermon at c...