Sermons And Gubbins

 This sermon was preached on our Sunday morning service on 8th September. The gospel was Mark 7:24-37 . I hope you enjoy reading it! The Jesus of the first half of today’s Gospel is – I have to say – a Jesus I don’t really recognise. I don’t know if you feel the same? It starts off normal enough; in our gospel, we hear that Jesus leaves his own community and sets off travelling. Maybe he’s visiting extended family, or perhaps he’s on a tour, spreading the Good News to other members of the Jewish faith (or, potentially more apposite to today’s Gospel, the Jewish race ). Either way, he’s in foreign climes. Whilst there, he finds a place to stay. He’s approached by a local woman who asks for his help. Not for her, but for her daughter, who, she says, is possessed. And here’s where Jesus looks to go off the rails. He says ‘no’.   Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman     He says ‘no’, and really not politely. He’s rude to her. His language is discriminatory...

  This sermon was preached at our Sunday morning service on Sunday 16th August. The gospel that morning was Matthew 15:21-28 Today’s gospel is difficult. Difficult because it presents us with a Jesus who – at least at first – doesn’t seem particularly Christ-like. Jesus in this passage is parochial. His concern is for his people and his nation. He’s got a mission to the House of Israel, and that is where he believes his focus needs to be. He's not concerned about helping the Canaanite woman who begs for his aid. She is not Jewish, and she is, seemingly, not worthy. I’m sure you’ve heard it before that different Gospel-writers had different focuses. John, for example, was particularly concerned with writing a theology about Christ, and Mark was writing for the benefit persecuted Christians in Rome. Matthew – who wrote our passage today – was particularly writing for a Jewish audience. Perhaps this makes Jesus’ viewpoint here more understandable; it’s an expression of solidar...

I often see posts on Facebook trying to flood the site with music, or superheroes. There's one doing the rounds at the moment asking people to post 'then' and 'now' photos of their relationship. They're all fun, but I think, at the moment, Facebook in the UK probably needs to be flooded with something different. There's a tide of racism sweeping the country, with some people thinking the Brexit vote legitimises the voicing of torrid, vicious, nasty views. I hope it's just the media publicising these things more widely at the moment. I fear it is not. Even so, if these views are *not* being expressed with more force, volume and frequency at the moment, they *are* still being expressed, and that scares me - *especially* so if this is normal (or the 'new' normal). I believe that staying silent whilst this is happening is to be complicit. If I do not speak out, how can I expect others to do so? If no-one speaks out, then there is no challenge...