Only One Book Group

John 12:1-11 The most expensive perfume you can buy on the market today is Clive Christian No. 1 Imperial Majesty perfume. The advertisers say that if you wear this perfume, you will smell like the Greek goddess, Aphrodite. Although this perfume sells for  £9095 an ounce (as seen in the packaging above), you can also buy the no-frills container version which costs £1538 an ounce. But that's cheap! The 'pure nard' perfume in the Bible passage we read this week cost more than that. It has been estimated that the current value of it would be £2146 an ounce. And Mary used the whole twelve ounce bottle! A pint! That's £25,752... Didn't Judas have a point? You could make a serious charitable donation with that! But Mary wasn't being lavish because she wanted to be remembered as a platinum donor. She was worshipping Jesus, showing faith in him and his mission - to die. She believed and supported him when he said that he had to go to Jerusalem. Everyone k...

John 11:17-45 In a week where we celebrate one hundred years since some women were allowed to vote, it's heart-warming to notice a nice little detail about Jesus' own attitude towards women.  In a passage which is remembered more frequently for one of Jesus' most stunning miracles, bringing a man back to life after four days in a tomb, there is a conversation between Martha and Jesus which would not have taken place if Jesus had thought that a woman's views and opinions were not important - like the religious leaders of his time. "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this? '" Does  Martha  believe this? Jesus has all of his disciples with him - he's on the road, heading to Bethany on his way from the Jordan desert. But Jesus doesn't ask the disciples what they think, he asks Martha. ...

It isn't much fun driving to school in the morning when the news is on and the kids are listening. Most days the radio gets switched off half-way through the headlines. There are too many stories of things that I didn't hear about when I was that age and why should they? It makes me angry that they pop up in the middle of Radio 2's 'family' breakfast show. Stories about an unsafe world, where unsafe people do unsafe things in unsafe ways. If we follow Jesus, surely he'll make the world a safer place for us, won't he? Well, when we look to the Bible for reassurance, it doesn't always seem that way. Not in John chapter 11:1-16, anyway. Jesus was staying in the Jordan desert when he got a message from his friends, Mary and Martha, about their brother Lazarus. This good friend of Jesus' was seriously ill and they were hoping that Jesus would come and perform a miracle and make him well again.  Jesus decided not to go. The disciples thought th...

John 10:22-42  An artist's impression of Solomon's Colonnade in the Temple of Jerusalem East of the Jordan River where John baptised Have you ever witnessed a miracle taking place? You might think about a birth, or an amazing change in someone, or a life and death situation that ended in life. Miracles leave us with our hearts in our mouths, with a chill running through us at the way something impossible has just happened in front of our eyes. It's different from a magic trick which we know must be false, even if we can't explain it. A miracle is wonderfully real. When Jesus went to the temple in Jerusalem for the Winter festival of Dedication, known to us today as the Jewish festival of Hannukah or the festival of lights, he was celebrating a miracle that was not recorded in the Bible. It happened in the time between the writing of the Old Testament scriptures, about 167 years before his birth. This miracle had enabled the Israelites to rest...