Sermons And Gubbins

This sermon was written for our Sunday morning service on 28th December; the festival of the Holy Innocents . The Gospel was Matthew 2:13-18 . I hope you enjoy reading it! May I start this morning by wishing you all a very happy Christmas!   After this morning’s Gospel reading, that sounds a bit incongruous, doesn’t it? Herod learnt that he had been tricked by the wise men, and so set out and killed all the infants in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger. Happy Christmas everyone! What a way to begin our Christmas season – mass murder and infanticide.   This part of the Christmas story is one we often gloss over. It does not – for obvious reasons – make it into our nativity plays. It does not feature in our crib scenes. It does not align with the message of peace and joy and hope that comes with the birth of the Christ child. As such, it may not be one that you’re that familiar with. Let me provide a synopsis:   The magi have visited He...

  This sermon was written for Remembrance Sunday 2025; eighty years since the end of World War  II. Today we mark eighty years since the end of the Second World War. I remember clearly standing here only six years ago, marking one hundred years since the very first Remembrance  Day. I also gave my first remembrance day sermon 11 years ago, marking one hundred years since the start of the First World War. This is my fifth Remembrance Sunday sermon. Each year that I write these sermons, I realise that fewer and fewer of us remember.  Back in 2014, I remarked that to have met anyone who had died in World War I – that great war to end all wars, you would have needed to be at least 96 years old then. You’d need to be 107 now. There are about 130 people living in the UK who are 107 or older. You would need to be over eighty years old now to have ever met anyone who died in the  Second World Wa.  That’s about 4% of the UK population. Even with that, you’d probabl...