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getting the same news far away they may be on opposite sides of the conflict but their grief would be the same that family story is always in my mind on remembrance sunday it isn t a celebration nor is it a moment to be triumphalistic it was always intended to be a pause for sober recollection of the terrible human cost of conflict of thanksgiving for those who put their own lives on the line for our freedom and to commit to doing all we can to avoid it happening again when jesus said love your enemies and pray for your persecutors i don t believe he was saying we should condone evil or collude with injustice however i do think he was reminding us that even in the height of human division and conflict there are some commonalities in our human condition we are all created in the image of god even though that image is often terribly obscured and dimmed and we reduce our own humanity when we cease to remember the humanity of others even those with whom we are in bitter conflict they are to quote my grandma some mother s son or daughter posted by mike peatman at 8 00 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels peace remembrance remembrance sunday war friday september 13 2024 winter fuel payment like many people i am struggling to understand why the new government chose winter fuel payment as an issue to make a stand the difficult headlines are enduring opposition to the decision is coming in from the right more pensioners vote and more vote conservative other opposition parties many labour mps as well as those to the left however the contribution that cutting the fuel payment makes to the budget deficit is relatively small it will be even smaller if all of the pensioners who are still eligible for it via pension credit actually get the applications in why risk it one explanation of this i have heard is that the government wants to convey to the financial markets at home and abroad that it is serious about keeping the finances under control and filling in the 22 billion shortfall which many but not all analyses believe is there the problem for labour is that it looks like they are making vulnerable people pay rather than those with more capacity to do so the problem with universal benefits is obvious the point about mick jagger or insert the name of any millionaire over retirement age getting a winter fuel payment is a fair one there is a significant cohort of pensioners who have good workplace pensions have paid off their mortgage and have better disposable incomes than many younger people struggling to buy homes or pay their rent it is a legitimate question as to whether it is the best use of money to give more affluent retired people a fuel payment at all the difficulty in solving this is that means testing benefits is often complicated and costly not always saving as much as is hoped furthermore any system that requires an application to be made and these are always now online has a number of risks awareness a certain stigma attached to applying for help and not all older people are very confident with online applications here s a suggestion replace the one off universal payment with a 300 supplement to the state pension that is in addition to any inflation increases making it taxable it doesn t take away all of mick s 300 but it would at least claw back money from the better off who will be paying tax on it and for some that will be at the higher rate it also uses existing systems rather than requiring an fresh application to be made for those without additional means i think the pension is still below the threshold for income tax so those with the lowest incomes would continue to receive the full amount with no further paperwork to complete there may be other unforeseen problems with that but i can t help but feel that it would have been a better and much less unpopular method to transition away from the blanket payment posted by mike peatman at 12 16 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels economics politics friday july 26 2024 sermon for st james 25 july 2024 sermon for st james the apostle 25 july 2024 matthew 20 20 28 20 then the mother of the sons of zebedee came to him with her sons and kneeling before him she asked a favour of him 21 and he said to her what do you want she said to him declare that these two sons of mine will sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your kingdom 22 but jesus answered you do not know what you are asking are you able to drink the cup that i am about to drink they said to him we are able 23 he said to them you will indeed drink my cup but to sit at my right hand and at my left this is not mine to grant but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my father 24 when the ten heard it they were angry with the two brothers 25 but jesus called them to him and said you know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them and their great ones are tyrants over them 26 it will not be so among you but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant 27 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave 28 just as the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many nrsv my first parish as a vicar was at a st james church at whitley in coventry so i always know when his day is coming round and it is often when people have just gone on holiday however we are getting ahead of ourselves the first question to ask is which james are we talking about in the new testament there are several people called james james the son of alphaeus mentioned in the lists of the 12 disciples mark 2 14 james the father of the disciple judas not iscariot many people think this judas was also known as thaddaeus who appears in other lists of the twelve luke 6 16 john 14 22 james the lord s brother gal 1 19 and the james who wrote the letter might be another one altogether but today we remember james the son of zebedee brother of john who was called to follow jesus at the start of his ministry mark 1 19 he was martyred around 44 ad in jerusalem acts 12 2 some stories about him say he got to spain and that his remains are there many people walk a pilgrimage route to santiago de compostela santiago being derived from the latin for st james there is also a church marking the place where he is supposed to have been beheaded in jerusalem a lot of that is contested so today we will stick with what we know of him in the gospels and acts james was one of the 3 disciples who seemed to be a kind of inner circle along with peter and james brother john they are with jesus when he heals simon peter s mother in law mk 1 29 31 only they go in when jairus daughter is healed mk 5 37 only they are with him at what we call the transfiguration mk 9 2 when they get a glimpse of jesus true nature and glory they have a private word with jesus about signs of the end mk 13 3 4 and they are the ones who accompany jesus into the garden of gethsemane mk 14 33 as he wrestles in prayer while they fall asleep and jesus gives james and john a nickname boanerges which is aramaic the language jesus and his disciples spoke most of the time we are told it means sons of thunder mk 3 17 which might be a reference to their temperament for example we know they wanted to call down fire from heaven on an inhospitable samaritan village which prompts jesus to rebuke them for saying it luke 9 51 56 here in today s gospel we see them getting it wrong again they have mum with them to back them up according to matthew although mark doesn t mention her notice that she isn t named here in the patriarchal culture of the day she is identified as the mother of the sons of zebedee some suggest that she was salome who is there at the crucifixion and the discovery of the empty tomb in mark but we can t be certain the request their mother puts forward is that james and john have a seat at either side of jesus in his kingdom it s interesting that in response jesus addresses james and john directly rather than their mother presumably seeing that getting her to do the asking was either cowardice or an attempt to sway jesus what jesus says is revealing for understanding this exchange can you drink the cup i am going to drink jesus asks the idea of a cup is significant in the bible in the old testament drinking a cup is associated with judgment for example awake awake rise up jerusalem you who have drunk from the hand of the lord the cup of his wrath you who have drained to its dregs the goblet that makes people stagger isaiah 51 17 jesus seems to be alluding to the fact that he will drink the cup of judgment and condemnation through his death on the cross it is one of the great reversals and inversions that we find in our faith that this means that we may drink the cup of salvation of the new covenant which we recall at the eucharist whether james and john understand the full implications of what he is saying or not they say that they can also do this jesus then foretells that they will as james will be martyred and john is believed to have been exiled behind this conversation is a different understanding of power jesus is conveying to them that his kingdom and the use of power within it is fundamentally different to how it usually is with human beings james and john are wanting preferential seats close to jesus because they are still interpreting life as a competition to get on you need to get ahead and that means making sure others are behind you and are lower in the pecking order but of course that is a state of permanent anxiety worrying that someone else might get jesus ear first or get ahead and it means always looking over their shoulder at the competition effectively jesus says those are not the rules by which his kingdom works instead of a struggle for power his kingdom is a way of service it doesn t see the value of someone else as a threat to one s own value it doesn t see the success of another as somehow demeaning everyone else it doesn t see the need to put down others in order to achieve some security because if you place your trust in the trustworthy one in whom there is genuine and ultimate security then you cannot be threatened by anyone else jesus models this himself here he talks about coming to serve in john s gospel jn 13 1 17 he famously washes his disciples feet doing the work usually left to a servant or even a slave despite being their rabbi their leader and their lord that is not the action of someone who believes in fighting their way to the top elbowing others out of the way but it is also not the action of someone who feels insecure or anxious about what others may think of them those who understand properly the true way of service of the kingdom don t have the need to worry about those things more than that jesus is to give his life to set us free mt 20 28 a ransom was a payment to pay for a slave s freedom apparently a few slaves would manage to get together the funds from tips gifts etc to meet the ransom price and buy themselves back i have read that here are examples where a master would give a slave the money they needed so they had the full amount to buy their freedom as a reward for years of loyal service their ransom was paid for them however for the vast majority of slaves this was unachievable jesus uses this image to convey what his death will mean for his followers his life will buy freedom for all of us enslaved to sin guilt shame and despair and to do so will be the ultimate act of service james must have learned his lesson well as when the time came he was not afraid to be identified with jesus the suffering servant it seems that he didn t seek self preservation by fleeing herod was able to find him and execute him as he started persecuting the early christians the death of james was a tragic loss the first of the apostles to die and many must have feared for what might follow however somehow peter eluded capture by herod who later died these events seem to have been the prompt for the mission of paul and barnabas to go out from antioch across the mediterranean and the message spreading across the known world james faithfulness and willingness to follow his lord in the way of service and self sacrifice may well have given that early christian community the spur and inspiration it needed to go out and change the world posted by mike peatman at 9 53 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels evangelism gospel james mission sacrifice saint service saturday july 06 2024 election reflections the post election analysis is now well underway by people better informed than me but here are a few thoughts from an amateur observer about what we have just been through calling a snap election was a disastrous decision for the tories i don t have any inside information on this but it seems clear from multiple news sources that rishi sunak s decision to go for an election on july 4 took nearly everyone by surprise including many of his own party the only rationale that makes any sense is that he thought things might be even worse in the autumn and he might take his opponents unawares unfortunately for him it appears to have wrong footed his own party at least as much as anyone else labour won decisively i have seen some rather grudging posts online about the votes cast for labour especially comparing to their performance under jeremy corbyn of course the overall turnout was lower this time around so absolute vote numbers are likely to be down and tactical voting certainly seems to have played a part however we cannot ignore the fact that this time labour managed to gain and or retain votes where they needed to win new seats rather than consolidating their core vote in safe labour territory winning seats in wales despite being the party in power in the welsh assembly and big gains in scotland also played an important role uk general elections are decided by seats won and recovering from a substantial defeat to an outright win in under 5 years has to be acknowledged as an extraordinary result whatever our political persuasions speaking of scotland a big story north of the border will be the collapse of the snp vote it looks like many scots were more keen to get rid of the uk conservative government by voting labour than voting snp support for independence still seems quite strong but the snp can no longer rely on that being decisive in the way people vote for the westminster government recent scandals and the fact the snp have been in power in holyrood for a long time probably also played into this that result looks like putting any further moves to another independence referendum on hold for the foreseeable future canny campaigning the demise of the conservative vote was not just down to labour the liberal democrats were careful in their campaigning to focus most of their resources on winnable seats the majority of which were whe...