Sunday morning, and I just listened to last week's service on the podcast.  Again, it was great to tune in and be part of what was happening, even if separated by time (I think it's right that we don't live cast as some of what we share is sensitive or confidential).

The Nazareth Manifesto, which was the gospel passage set in the lectionary is one of those 'gift' passages that can also be a challenging to preach on - it's so familiar and so many 'angles' have already been explored that finding something new to say is tricky.

Actually, the sermon didn't say anything I hadn't heard or thought before, and that didn't matter.  If we always seek novelty in preaching then we are probalby missing something valuable as a result.

I loved how the sermon began with an exercise of the imagination, even if every time the preacher said "Temple" I automatically corrected it to "synagogue"... And I know they realised because the final time they said synagogue-temple.  Did it matter?  Not really.  In other contexts it might have done, but the skilful story centred on the fact that Jesus was among the people he'd grown up with, who had sat in that synagogue before he was born and so on.

It was a sermon gentle and affirming in style and content, and I felt 'stroked' as I listened.

Then came my nugget, a connection with what I had heard/discerned listening last week.

After some introduction, this song was played, and people invited to ponder it, to use it as a prayer...

The song speaks of God as the light in the darkness, the one that brings hope to, and transforms 'this city'.  Here I found, or made, a connection to last week's sermon on Sodom and Gomorra, and the role of the 'righteous' in saving - and transforming - these cities, this city.

The sermon on the Luke passage noted the "now and not yet" of the fulfilment of the prophecy, and the tension that holds for us as believers.  It seemed to me to go back to the salt and light idea, the truth that we are 'Christ' in this place, that God's spirit is the breath that energises us for service in our tiny ways, that God achieves good things through flawed and frail folk like us.

Greater things are yet to come, greater things are still to be done in this city...

And in your town, your village, your city... because scripture is fulfilled, history is made whenever God's people, however inadequate do their best to live out their faith where they are placed.

Another thoughtful and thought-provoking sermon, a sense of God's spirit leading me to make connections.  I am excited to discover where my thoughts go next week, as I listen to what has been preached today!!