Sermons And Gubbins

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...

This sermon was preached on Sunday 2nd August. The Old Testament reading was  Exodus 16:2-15 Our prime minister, David Cameron, caused something of a stir this week, when he referred to the number of migrants attempting to make the journey from Calais to the UK as a ‘swarm’. This use of language, comparing this group of people to insects – whether meant that way or not – was de-humanising and antagonistic. It was also sad. Perhaps, in his role as prime minister of the UK, he can little afford to show empathy here – his focus in his job, after all, is the country he governs. The same is not true for the rest of us, however. We are called to be empathetic, to put ourselves in the place of the outsider. As Christians especially, we are called to remember that we ourselves are migrants. The New Testament reminds us several times that we are in the world, but not of the world (John 15:18-19, John 17:16) – that we are strangers and exiles upon earth (Hebrews 11:...