To be a preacher requires two apparently contradictory qualities: confidence and humility.

The unutterable violence of the Holocaust shook our confidence in the possibility of telling any story of faith at all.

The pretence leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.

Thinking that morality is all about commandments is a relatively new way of thinking, since the Reformation.

At the centre of Christianity is community; we are gathered by the Lord around the altar.

Celibacy is not just a matter of not having sex. It is a way of admiring a person for their humanity, maybe even for their beauty.