judgement

What does the New Year mean?

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Like millions of others, I stayed up until midnight on December 31st last year (!) in order to see with friends the turning of the numbers from 2017 to 2018, and together we shared the familiar rituals: party poppers; shouts of ‘Happy New Year’ (with an unnatural emphasis on the ‘New’); singing a Scottish song … Continue Reading

Is God a ruthless exploiter of our talents?

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Last Sunday’s gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary was the Parable of the Talents from Matthew 25.14-30. The most popular interpretation of this is that God’s gives us abilities and gifts (‘talents’) and leaves us to get on with using them in fruitful and enterprising ways as responsible stewards until he returns and asks … Continue Reading

Who are the sheep and the goats in Matt 25?

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Jesus’ ‘parable’ of the sheep and the goats in Matt 25.31–46 is very well known and widely misinterpreted. (It is not actually a parable, since it is not introduced with the typical ‘The kingdom is like…’ and it is not making use of a story from another context, such as farming and economics, to draw out a … Continue Reading

Is it true that ‘God is love’?

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It seems to be increasingly common in a range of ethical debates in the public sphere for one protagonist or other to reach for the formula ‘God is love’ as a quick resolution to disagreement. But this is usually done in a particular way, in the form of a progressive from God to us and … Continue Reading

On devils, details and reading the Book of Revelation

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The text of Revelation is notoriously difficult to make sense of, and this is illustrated if you compare the conclusions of commentators, even ones that are taking a broadly similar approach. It is not uncommon to find them reaching quite different conclusions on relatively important matters—but in fact careful attention to the detail of the … Continue Reading

Interpreting the sheep and the goats in Matt 25

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Jesus’ ‘parable’ of the sheep and the goats in Matt 25.31–46 is very well known and widely misinterpreted. It forms one part of the extended teaching about ‘the end’ distinctive to Matthew (compared with Mark and Luke). It is most commonly interpreted as an injunction to help the poor; most Christians (in the West at least) read … Continue Reading

Preaching on Advent 1

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Here are some thoughts on making sense of the lectionary readings for Advent 1: Is 64.1–9; Mark 13.24–37 ‘Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!’ Isaiah’s cry of desperation resonates with the cry of many today. If only God would make everything clear! If only he would remove uncertainty, and bring clarity! … Continue Reading

How should Luke 16.19­–31 shape our view of heaven and hell?

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The story of the rich man and Lazarus appears on first reading to depict a detailed ‘map’ of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’, but is this the right way to read it?

First, it is worth noting that the words ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ themselves do not occur in the parable. The NT talks about post-mortem life in a range of ways, not all of them easy to reconcile with one another. Perhaps the most controlling one would be the idea of ‘sleep’ as used by Paul in, for example, 1 Cor 15. ‘Heaven’ in the NT mostly appears to refer to the realm of God’s presence, reign and reality, and the central NT hope is not that we will leave the earth to go to heaven, but that God’s realm will come down to the earth (see Rev 21). (See Tom Wright’s Grove booklet for the most accessible exposition of this.)

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