Sermons And Gubbins

This sermon was given at our Evensong service on Sunday 14th January 2017. The New Testament reading was Hebrews 6:17-7:10 .   The Bible, as we know, is full of all sorts of weird and wonderful characters. There are those that are more well-known, like Jonah , who was famously swallowed by a big fish, or the giant Goliath , slain on the battlefield by the young David; and there are those that are more obscure, and therefore, perhaps more tantalising – Balaam , the prophet, who had a talking donkey, or the wicked Simon the Sorcerer encountered in the book of Acts, who, according to apocryphal sources, was a powerful wizard, with the ability to fly. One of the more mysterious characters, though, was mentioned in our New Testament reading this evening – Melchizedek , the King of Salem. Our reading from the book of Hebrews goes some length in explaining why he’s seen as so mysterious. It brings together the only two references to him in the Old Testament – a passage in the bo...

This sermon was first given at our Epiphany service on Sunday 7th January 2018. The gospel was Matthew 2:1-12 . I am quite sure you’ve heard the joke about imagining if, instead of three wise men, there’d have been three wise women in our reading today? They would, of course, have planned their journey well ahead, got directions to the stable instead of to King Herod’s gaff, turned up in time to actually see the child as a baby, rather than – as is currently assumed – roughly two years later, made a casserole, and brought useful gifts, like nappies, baby clothes and a Moses basket. Gold, frankincense & myrrh - the more traditional gifts of the magi...   Things would have all gone that much smoother for the holy family in those early days if that were the case, wouldn’t they? That’s not how the story goes, though. No. Instead of that, we are told about the visit of the magi; mysterious astrologers from a pagan religion (probably Zoroastrianism), with their...

This sermon was preached at Evensong on Sunday 8th January 2017 - when we celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany . Today, we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, when the wise men arrived in Bethlehem to worship the new-born Jesus. The magi follow the star Our readings this evening have not mentioned it explicitly – no, you’d have needed to be here this morning to hear the story of the arrival of the magi – but, we have heard references to it, in the verses from Isaiah – “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn”, and how the camel-train will “bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord”. You all, I am sure, know the story of the three kings, and don’t need me to retell it. My guess is that you’ve been hearing it for many years. For me, I’ve been a Christian for nearly 25 years now, and in that time, I’ve heard plenty of sermons about those three kings; about how we don’t know that they were kings, and nor ...