Sermons And Gubbins

This meditation was written for our Good Friday Last Hour at the Cross service - Friday 30th March 2018. The service included five music tracks that fit the theme of Good Friday, focussing on death, and the cross. You can find a list of them at the bottom of the meditation. So, this is it. The Last Hour. I remember when I was small, an hour would last a lifetime;  boring car-journeys that went on for miles bending the laws of time and space;  dull maths lessons that stretched out over eons, as far into the future as I could imagine.  Now? Now, those sixty minutes can pass by in the blinking of an eye.  I can sit down for ten seconds only to find an afternoon has been spent. I look at your cross. I wonder how long that Last Hour lasted for you.  Did it feel like eternity to you? Was it eternity to you?  Is it eternal? To you, outside of time, it must surely have been both –  the blinking of an eye, and the life...

This sermon was preached at our Good Friday service, held on 14th April 2017. Why are we here today? If you were here yesterday evening, you’ll recall that I said that this season of Lent and Easter was one that particularly made us Christians stand out as weird . Today is no exception. When the rest of the country is out, enjoying their bank holiday, playing football, or making the most of the long weekend, here we are; over lunch-time, sat in a bare church, preparing ourselves for a dose of despair and, perhaps, grief. Why are we here, going through this act of death, year after year? Why are we putting ourselves through this again? Why aren’t we out there, enjoying our day off? Why are we here and not out there? Because it is real . We’re not going through a charade here, or acting out the parts. We’re not, even, attending an act of remembrance. We’re here because Christ’s death was real. It was not an act, or a misunderstanding. It was not a ploy. It was not a...