Sermons And Gubbins

This sermon was given at our All Saints service on the morning of Sunday 4th November. The gospel reading was the story of Lazarus, from John 11:32-44 . If you think about it, All Saints Day is a bit of a weird celebration for us in the Church of England, isn’t it? We’re not really that big on the whole width and breadth of saints outside of the usual suspects – you know, the ones who churches get named after. And, as for praying to the saints? Well, that all sounds a bit too much like Popery to us, doesn’t it? It doesn’t really fit with our (Church of) English sensibilities. But, if it wasn’t for All Saints Day, or All Hallows’, as it’s also known, there’d be no Halloween. And I looove Halloween. I know I probably shouldn’t – Christians more religious than I will tell you that we should avoid Halloween, due to its pagan origins and its preoccupation with monsters and the dead. But, it might surprise you to know that the Anglican Church in America does provide a...

This sermon was given at our evensong service on Sunday 18th March. The New Testament reading was  Romans 5:12-21   During the week leading up to the service, both  Ken Dodd  and  Stephen Hawking  passed away. Whenever I prepare to preach a sermon, I look at the readings, and first of all try to find something that strikes me as odd or unusual to preach on. Sometimes, I’ll find that when I’m looking at the readings, that there’s one which is hard to understand, or I need to read several times and do quite a bit of research on to really get what is being said. When that happens, I know that that is what I should be preaching on – if I find it hard to understand, then others might too, and spending my sermon unpacking that difficult reading could be really helpful to at least some of the people who are listening (I hope!). And so, you can imagine how thrilled I was – the sheer joy of the inner voice in my head when I saw that today’s New Testament readi...