Sermons And Gubbins

I've been thinking a lot about our reading from the Old Testament this week. It's probably the most famous section from the book of Ecclesiastes, and many of us probably know it as a pop song, rather than a quotation from the Bible - from the song ' Turn! Turn! Turn! ', made famous by The Byrds in the 1960s. The concept that there is a season for all things under the sun has been what's got me thinking this week. In the past four days, I've been to two funerals. I've absolutely been thinking about there being a time to weep, a time to mourn, and a time to die. For one of the funerals I attended, that idea of 'a time to die' was fitting. Marion was 91 years' old. She and her husband Philip had raised a son, of whom they had excellent reasons for feeling proud, seen their two granddaughters grow into successful and strong women, and lived to see and enjoy the presence of four beautiful great-grandchildren, the latest being Miriam, my daughter....

This sermon was preached at Evensong on 27/09/15 where we celebrated Michaelmas - the feast of St Michael, to whom our church is dedicated. The readings were Daniel 10:4-end and Revelation 5 . Names have always been seen as important things. I’m sure you know the story of Rumpelstiltskin – whose name likely literally means ‘Noisy, Limping Imp’, who struck a ghoulish bargain with the fairy-tale queen that he would take her first-born son unless she could tell him his name. In our Christian and Jewish tradition, we hold much reverence over the name of God in particular – in Judaism, the name of God cannot be spoken or written, instead, the tetragrammaton   – the four letters ‘YHWH’ – are used whenever the name of God needs to be invoked. Through the years, we have added vowels, to make the name ‘Yahweh’, or even ‘Jehovah’. In our bibles, the four letters will often be replaced by the way we now commonly refer to God – The LORD (often written in capital letters). God’s name is too...