graham's blog

Went to the Champions' League Final in Rome last week. Just a fantastic time. Hot day, wandered around the city - tons of Barca & United fans around. Saw a few ruins, museums, art galleries (strangely Wayne Rooney didn't seem to take in any art galleries...) Getting into the game was the most complicated thing ever - endless security gates,checking ticket, passport etc.. Great view (pic attached), great atmosphere. Fun to see the opening ceremony - you don't see it on TV and the Italians know how to put on a good show.

Watched a fascinating programme the other day. I used to know Michael Ward in Oxford a little while ago and the BBC ran a documentary on his PhD resarch (something most doctoral students dream of but never achieve!). He was doing research on the Narnia stories of C.S. Lewis. They are a little odd in not being a proper series at all, with all kinds of different themes, characters, disjointed patterns, and people had wondered for a while what was missing. He seems to have stumbled on the answer.

I preached at St Paul's Cathedral recently at the consecration of a very fine man and a good friend, Paul Williams, the new Bishop of Kensington. This is the text of what I said, in case you're interested:

I realised recently that there is a section of the HTB website where all my sermons are in one place! If you need some help getting to sleep sometime, you can listen to them here:

http://www.htb.org.uk/media/media/graham-tomlin/all/all/all

The Credit Crisis and the Church

Just been in the Philippines, filming some lectures for a video version of our SPTC ‘School of Theology’ .Jane (Williams) and Mike (Lloyd) were there too & it as good to listen to some other lectures – they are good! It’s also good to know we roughly believe the same things! We did a few ‘video Godpods’ – in other words, Q&A from the audience, video’d for the course.

Just back from the summer holidays. Been reading some good things, including one of the best responses to Dawkins et al that I’ve seen so far. It’s called ‘What’s So Great about Christianity’ by Dinesh d’Souza. The title isn’t great and at times the theology is a bit wayward, but as a polemical response it’s much more direct & confident than most anti-Dawkins books.

Well, we (Bristol City) lost. 1-0. I really thought we would win before the game. We played OK. Not as well as we can, but lost to a team who had one moment of brilliance and defended pretty well. So the whole season ends with a whimper not a bang. For us anyway.

This Saturday is going to be some day. My beloved Bristol City are in the Championship play-off final at Wembley. 90 minutes away from the Premier League. Yes I know we’ll probably come straight down again, and we might even do a Derby and win only one game all season, but it would still be worth it.

One of my aims for 2008 is to read the whole Bible in the year. In Genesis a little while ago, and I came again to the story of Abraham (nearly) sacrificing Isaac. When you think of it, it is a horrific story - the idea of God asking Abraham to engage in child sacrifice is bizarre. Imagine someone in your church saying God had asked them to kill their own child... Why on earth does God ask Abraham to do what the nations around were doing, and something that Israel and the rest of the Bible just abhors? No idea.