19 August 2018 10.30 Sung Eucharist The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity Canon Simon Cowling Ephesians 5. 15-20; John 6. 51-58 We believe in life before death. Some years ago, Christian Aid introduced this statement into its annual campaign. It succeeds in being unobjectionable, challenging and subversive in equal measure. The statement is unobjectionable because it’s…
05 August 2018 10.30 Sung Eucharist The Tenth Sunday after Trinity Canon Simon Cowling Ephesians 4. 1-16; John 6. 24-35 First make flour from wild wheat and wild barley; then pound the tubers of wild plants that grow in water (like sedges or bull-rushes) to a dry pulp; mix together with water to make a…
The Rector Bolton Abbey Parish Magazine August 2018 Being and Becoming Writing In the September 2013 issue of the Bolton Abbey Parish Magazine, just before my arrival as Rector, the Revd James Turnbull, one of our beloved honorary priests, commented: we can depend on Simon. I am sure he will feel able to depend on…
29 July 2018 10.30 Sung Eucharist The Ninth Sunday after Trinity Canon Simon Cowling Ephesians 3. 14-end; John 6. 1-21 The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. Rather a surprising comment for a Presbyterian Minister to make, you might think. But that is the view of Frederick Buechner, a widely admired American…
08 July 2018 10.30 Sung Eucharist The Sixth Sunday after Trinity Canon Simon Cowling 2 Corinthians 12. 2-10; Mark 6. 1-13 The Golden Summer of 2012. The United Kingdom welcomed the world to the London Olympics and the home athletes rose to the occasion: the twenty-nine gold medals which the athletes won ensured that the…
The Rector Bolton Abbey Parish Magazine July 2018 The Beautiful Game Mo Sa-la-la-la-lah, Mo Sa-la-la-la-lah, if he’s good enough for you, he’s good enough for me, if he scores another few, then I’ll be Muslim too. Football fans have always been inventive in their chants from the terraces, but the song that Liverpool supporters have…
24 June 2018 10.30 Sung Eucharist The Birth of John the Baptist Canon Simon Cowling Isaiah 40. 1-11; Luke 1. 57-66 & 80 Compare and contrast. Three words with which school and university students taking exams this summer, especially in arts, humanities, and social sciences, will have become very familiar. Compare and contrast the characters…
Sixth Sunday of Easter 06 May 2018 10.30 Sung Eucharist Canon Simon Cowling Acts 10. 44 – end; John 15. 9-17 There’s a story I rather like about a fairly tough and very down to earth inner city parish in Birmingham. The vicar had just retired. He had been much loved as a parish priest,…
The Rector Bolton Abbey Parish Magazine May 2018 Practising what we Preach Thomas Jefferson was one of the United States’ founding fathers. He was steeped in the Enlightenment values of political and religious freedom, as is clear in the 1776 American Declaration of Independence in which Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal (and)…
Third Sunday of Easter 15 April 2018 10.30 Sung Eucharist Canon Simon Cowling Acts 3. 12-19; Luke 24. 36b – 48 A few years ago the journalist and author Christopher Booker wrote a book called The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. The book did what it said on the tin: it described seven different…