I love Simple Sermons

I love those sermons which have a simple message that you can take away, ponder upon and act on. I have often been in churches where the sermon of the day has been so complicated because it has involved too many messages that do not mesh together. Today's message was a back to basics one about helping those in distress. The context for this sermon was the spread of Ebola. In fact this church is even doing a fundraising event for the Ebola crisis.

Some of you reading this will be in bewilderment about the fact that I have even blogged about simple sermons because, you may be thinking, isn't that what church is about? That is indeed what church should be about because a message that touches on the basic Christian beliefs of care and compassion is one that we can all act upon in small ways everyday. I once listened to a sermon about the mission to mars and couldn't apply it to my week, try as I did. 

Have you ever wondered what members of the Klu Klux Klan look like behind those masks and white hoods?

A Black teenager called Michael Brown, aged 18, was shot dead on the 9th of August this year by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael Brown was allegedly unarmed and his killing sparked weeks of unrest in Ferguson. The policeman was given anonymity and was taken into safe hiding for his own protection. This week the Grand Jury in Missouri is deliberating on whether to indict the officer. He has since been outed and named as Darren Wilson. It is at this point that the long arm of justice seems to get longer and more opaque.

Darren Wilson does not appear to have been censured so far, 3.5 months after the incident. The Grand Jury is deliberating this week on whether or not to indict Darren Wilson. In anticipation of problems, the Governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon has put the National Guard on standby. This has inflamed people's ire. The Klu Klux Klan in a further incendiary move gave out flyers threatening to deal with rioters. The activist group called Anonymous stepped up to protect the people of Ferguson and has hacked into the KKK's Twitter account. What it has found is that a network of Klan members operate in all spheres of life masquerading as honest citizens who uphold normative life. It is being heavily hinted at that Darren Wilson himself is a member of the KKK, hence the image below which I have taken off  Twitter.

Anonymous have also released the comment below which was posted by a KKK member called 'Frank' calling on other members to 'deal' with Anonymous in a prescribed manner.



Question of the day: Why hasn't the Klu Klux Klan been banned in America?

Did you wear a Red Poppy today?

For the first time in many, many years I noticed that only a few people at church today were wearing Poppies. I don't know why this was but I was not one of them either. Let me start by assuring you that I did donate to the Poppy appeal. Helping soldiers and their families is part of Christian charity and a very important one too but for the first time I find that I am in conflict between celebrating war victories and feeling impotent over the devastation that war brings.


I started questioning the meaning of wars in Summer when Israel unleashed the forces of hell on Gaza. Watching little children suffer and either live on with terrible injuries or die from devastating injuries made me question how and why countries seek to protect their sovereignty. Weren't the lessons from two world wars about peace and diplomacy? Into this equation we have drone wars where countries do not even have to send soldiers out to fight but drones can inflict as much devastation and, often, on the innocent.

While I observed the two minute silence I prayed for an end to wars. Naive as this may sound I do think that this is a relevant prayer because there is much geopolitical trouble looming as between Russia and the Eastern European countries and between China and Japan over island boundaries. I fear that all the lessons of post world wars are conveniently being forgotten as countries, once again, rise up to assert their military power. Perhaps there is much significance to the White Poppy after all.