The woman laden with Christmas shopping bags knows it; the alcoholic wit hate one remaining friend knows it; the athletic woman recovering from her car crash knows it: the hard-won hope in Isaiah's words, "Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, 'Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come ... and save you.’"

A talk for The Third Sunday of Advent, 11 December 2022.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

As the worldwide church sings, ‘On Jordan’s banks the Baptist’s cry announces that the Lord is nigh’, a reflection on whether reconciliation is possible today in the land of the River Jordan.

A talk for The Second Sunday of Advent, 4 December 2022.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

Why call Jesus a king when everything we know about his life demonstrates that he was the anti-king, a humble man with the least autocratic tendencies imaginable? It's an imperfect turn of phrase but the Lord of earth and heaven, the One we call our King, is the One through whom God ‘was pleased to reconcile to himself all things’... His kingdom of love, joy and peace is unlike any we’ve seen or can otherwise imagine. But it is the truest active force at work in the universe, and without a doubt, that’s why our hearts are stirred up to call Jesus our King.

A talk for Christ the King, 20 November 2022.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

Whatever our views on war and nonviolent action, the warriors and the peacemakers of old together call us to live faithfully, and in our own time of conflict to involve ourselves in doing what is right, being prepared to embrace both the trouble and the hope that this will bring.

A talk for Remembrance Sunday, 13 November 2022.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

The words of committal in the old Prayer Book Funeral Service seem to sum up well our usual state of being: ‘In the midst of life we are in death’, it says, and it seems we are, each of us people who are keenly affected by loss, continually bereaved. Yet Jesus quotes the book of Exodus where God tells Moses ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ - three people who Moses understood to be dead at the time. Jesus is trying to help us to begin to understand that the power of God involves being completely and entirely alive, living without any reference to death. There is no death in God. ‘To God, all are alive’. To God, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive. What would  happen to us if only we really believed only in life? 

A talk for The Third Sunday before Advent, 6 November 2022.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

'Turning the other cheek’ and ‘giving up your coat as well’ - these are actions of defiance, rather than defeat in the face of a bully; these are actions of protest rather than passivity in the face of an oppressor. Today we honour those people who live lives of hope, who demonstrate what hope means in the face of challenge and hardship.

A talk for The Last Sunday after Trinity, 30 October 2022.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

The Parable of the Unjust Judge and the Persistent Widow teaches that when ordinary people exercise pester power then the world can become a better place. It's about prayer and protest and how, when people combine these two, the world changes . 

A talk for The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, 16 October 2022.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

The story of the one healed leper who returned - the foreigner of the group - a story which may encourage even those of us at our lowest ebb that it is nevertheless possible, with thankful hearts, to experience respair, to move from despair towards a place of hope. To make a faith journey forwards with Christ at our side, giving thanks to God.

A talk for The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, 9 October 2022.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, says Paul to Timothy. For there is treasure all around us if we look. Treasure in the people with whom we share our days; treasure in the creatures whose home is this precious earth; and treasure in the earth itself and all that grows and flourishes within.

A talk for The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, 2 October 2022.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

The Prodigal Manager, facing the sack for squandering his landowner boss's profits, asked himself, "What will I do now? I'm not strong enough to lift and I'm too proud to beg." It was a moment of desolation that became for him, an epiphany. For, realising that he had nothing to lose, he gambled on a plan which, if it worked, would make his chastened boss look good again and would make the poor tenant farmers feel even better.

A talk for The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, 25 September 2022.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.