Sermons And Gubbins

This story was given in place of a sermon at our 10:15 service on Sunday 22nd September. The gospel that day was Luke 16:1-13 , a particularly tricky parable of Christ's in which he commends a cheating manager for looking out for his own future. Lots of very learned people have written lots of clever stuff about the passage, and the one thing that people agree on is that it is just very hard to understand! In the past few weeks, I've read lots about it, and tied my thoughts up in knots! One piece I read compared the parable to a particular trope in Roman comedy, in which a cunning servant tricks his master, and everything works out fine in the end (think Frankie Howerd in ' Up Pompeii ').  There does seem to be a similarity, and that got me wondering whether the parable might actually have been based on a play that Christ saw. I then (in turn) reimagined that as a real-life situation that Christ happened to come across, and... well, the result is below. I hope that f...

This story was written for an all-age harvest service, and told on Sunday 9th October 2016. I enjoyed writing it, but it was tricky to ensure it appealed to (and had a message for) the adults and the very young children in the service.I hope I managed to get the balance right, and that you get something out of it too!   O NCE Upon A Time... many years ago; before you could order a takeaway from an app on your smartphone, before battery hens or McDonal d’s cows, back when all fruit and vegetables were organic, and all animals were free-range, back before potatoes were made into chips, before tomatoes were made into ketchup, or before meat was made into sausages, before even supermarkets were invented, there lived a small tribe of desert people. They lived – these desert people – in dusty desert tents, unsurprisingly, out in the hot, dry desert, near a great big mountain, as tall as the sky itself. Now, because supermarkets were not invented yet, this tribe of desert peopl...

This sermon was preached at Evensong on Sunday 29th May 2016. The Old Testament reading was Genesis 4:1-16 . I came across the idea for the sermon from an article on a website I've referenced before. Whilst the idea of reciprocity is probably one that isn't really found in the Genesis passage, I thought it was a good one to explore, especially as no reason for the rejection is given. It would be hard to make an academic argument that this is what the passage is about, but, to be fair, it would be hard to make that argument with any interpretation. I hope you find the sermon helpful at any rate!   It’s interesting how the rivalry between brothers can become legendary. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of myths and the ancient world, and have recently enjoyed watching Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome on the BBC – the first episode harked back to the foundation of Rome, and the two famous brothers, Romulus and Remus, who vied to found the city. In English legend, we have the...