Sermons And Gubbins

  This poem was one of two written for our monthly church poetry group at St Michael's. The theme was 'time'. This one is a bit less bleak than the other! Time and Tide The old boys sit on the bench by the sea, smoke fags and shoot the breeze. The north wind blows salt from the surf in their eyes  and ash falls unnoticed on their knees. They talk of the times and the girls they had. They eat chips and mushy peas. They talk of more recent heart pains and aches, of strokes and lung disease.  The old boys shuffle their shoes in the sand then stand with aged ill-ease. They nod, and turn and wander off. Time, gentlemen, please.

This poem was written for our monthly poetry group, The theme for November was memories/remembering. I hope you enjoy reading it! November Memories "Remember, remember"; you excitedly recite the poem you have learnt to me.  "Do you know it, Daddy?" And my childhood memories suddenly burst into my mind. Grabbing a stick to check for hedgehogs under the bonfire my own Dad had built in the back garden. And when it was lit - the siren-song of the beckoning heat and hypnotising flames, Calling me closer, only to make me recoil and flinch as the fire suddenly cracks  And a burning scrap of paper flies free from its boundaries, Racing towards my face before suddenly fleeing and fading  into the cold night sky. I can see the enticing tin that the fireworks came in,  looking all the while like a magical box of forbidden treats; Fountains of gunpowder sherbet. Explosions of neon popping candy. A golden sparkler; a treacherous lolly-pop I hold at arm's length  for fear of ...

This sermon was preached on Remembrance Sunday 2022. The Gospel was  Luke 21:5-19 . I hope you enjoy reading it. Our gospel this morning is a jarring one for Remembrance Sunday. Here we are this morning – joining thousands of people across our country – coming together to contemplate the horrors of war and recommitting ourselves to work for peace in our world, and – instead of a gospel message about the coming Kingdom of God, where there will be no more war, and no more pain, and no more tears, we get this : Wars and insurrections? These things must happen, says Christ. Nations will fight nations, and kingdoms will fight kingdoms. Earthquakes, and famines and plagues. All will be thrown down. I don’t know about you, but I was expecting something else; something about Heaven, and peace, and love. I wanted to hear the passage from Isaiah about beating ploughshares into swords, and spears into pruning hooks and nations not learning war anymore. But instead, Christ tells his disciples ...

  This homily was given at our Remembrance Sunday service on 8th November 2020. Apart from being the first ever lock-down Remembrance Day, it was also the day after Joe Biden was eventually named as the President elect of the United States of America. The gospel was John 15:9-17 . I'm not going to preach for long today. Today's service has more than enough in it without a lengthy sermon from me too. And I think that's right, because some things are more important than words. Today is an auspicious day. There has never been a Remembrance Day like this before. In over one hundred years, the day has been about taking part in an act of public remembrance. That cannot happen today, for obvious reasons. Some people have even been unable to buy a poppy this year. No; today cannot be about a public show. Instead then, let us make it a private resolution. And I mean that word not in the sense we use it at New Year; an objective to be tried and given up as a failure within a few ...

This sermon was given at our Remembrance Sunday service on Sunday 10th November 2019. The first Remembrance Day took place one hundred years ago, almost to the day. Back then, Remembrance Sunday wasn’t a thing. People commemorated the end of the “Great” War – the “war to end all wars” – on the anniversary of Armistice Day itself. It was only after the Second World War that services such as this, on the closest Sunday to the 11th November became common place, overtaking, if not replacing, the observance of a minute’s silence on the actual anniversary of the end of that first world war. But, before that, between the two world wars, the vast majority of the population of the UK marked an act of remembrance specifically on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month every year. That tradition has been revived within the last 40 years or so, and now, many workplaces across the country will also hold a minute’s silence tomorrow morning too. A colourised photo of...

This sermon was preached on the morning on November 15th 2015, a few days after the terrible attacks in Paris on the night of November 13th. The sermon was written before those attacks, but required some last minute tweaks to take them, and their effect upon us, into account. In researching and writing it, I am indebted to another sermon I found online preached by the Rev'd Dr Willimon in 2012 - A World Rocked by God . If you have the time, I highly recommend reading it. Part of me toyed (for a moment only, mind) with reading out his sermon instead of writing my own. I'm sure you'll see the sermon below owes much to it. The readings were Daniel 12:1-3 , Hebrews 10:11-25 & Mark 13:1-8 . Before I start my sermon, I’d like to invite you to take some time to look around you. Notice the walls, the ceiling, the beautiful stained glass, the intricate tiling on the floor, the pew on which you are sitting. All this? With all the years it has been here, and...