Sermons And Gubbins

This sermon was preached at Evensong on Sunday 28th May, 6 days after the Manchester bombing that claimed the life of 22 people and injured many more. The New Testament reading was Ephesians 1:15-23 . Like many, if not all, of us, I have been trying to come to terms this week with the horrific actions of Monday night, when, after a pop concert at Manchester Arena, a young man, full of religious fervour, set off a bomb, killing himself and 21 other young people, and wounding many others in the area.  “How can this happen?”, we ask ourselves. How does God allow it? Where is God in this awful situation? These are natural questions to ask ourselves, and ask of God. I’d go so far to state that not only are they natural, but they are necessary . Ours would be an immature faith if we did not ask; if we simply stopped our ears at the sound of the question. An immature faith ignores this issue. Not as immature and perverted a faith as one that persuades its adheren...

This sermon was preached at our Good Friday service, held on 14th April 2017. Why are we here today? If you were here yesterday evening, you’ll recall that I said that this season of Lent and Easter was one that particularly made us Christians stand out as weird . Today is no exception. When the rest of the country is out, enjoying their bank holiday, playing football, or making the most of the long weekend, here we are; over lunch-time, sat in a bare church, preparing ourselves for a dose of despair and, perhaps, grief. Why are we here, going through this act of death, year after year? Why are we putting ourselves through this again? Why aren’t we out there, enjoying our day off? Why are we here and not out there? Because it is real . We’re not going through a charade here, or acting out the parts. We’re not, even, attending an act of remembrance. We’re here because Christ’s death was real. It was not an act, or a misunderstanding. It was not a ploy. It was not a...

This sermon was preached at our Maundy Thursday service on 13th April 2017. The gospel reading was John 13:1-35 .   If there were one season of the year that marked us Christians out as ‘weird’, it would be Lent through to Easter. That difference between us and the rest of the UK was particularly hammered home this year back at the start of March, when SNP Member of Parliament Carol Monaghan attended a Commons select committee meeting after having attended a service to mark Ash Wednesday. She showed up in Westminster, still bearing the ashes on her forehead, and uproar went forth amongst politicians and the media , believing she was making a political statement about the place of faith in society. Perhaps, even more odd, though, than sporting an ashen cross is what we do here in this service this evening; the foot-washing, the stripping of the altar, even the name of this day is odd. What on earth is a Maundy Thursday when it’s at home? What does this whole thing mean ? B...

This sermon was preached at the evening service on Sunday 19th March. The New Testament reading that evening was Ephesians 6:10-20 . There is reference to it having been an awful few weeks for the church; tragically, Natalie, the wife of our priest-in-charge died on Tuesday 28th February having only been diagnosed with cancer within the past few months. Her funeral was on Monday 13th March. I’ve mentioned in my sermons before about how I love stories, especially mythological ones. Growing up, I enjoyed hearing tales of the court of Camelot; of King Arthur, Merlin and Sir Lancelot, but also of other knights – of George and the dragon, and of the perennial battle between the white and the black knights of folklore. I don’t think I’m alone in that. The stories are popular for a reason; we all like tales of good versus evil, of individual bravery and bravado, and – if we’re honest – someone in a cool, shiny metal suit. That’s probably one of the reasons that this evening’s New ...

This sermon was preached at the Sunday morning service on 12th February 2017. The Gospel that morning was Matthew 5:21-27 . So… who’s up for a good, old-fashioned sermon on the evils of adultery and divorce this morning? Jesse Custer, from the Vertigo comic series, Preacher  No? Me neither, to be honest. But… the reading from Matthew’s Gospel is what is allocated for us today as part of our Church’s lectionary, so we’d best get cracking, I suppose! <cough> <nervous silence> I joke, of course. But… today’s Gospel reading is not an easy one, especially not for those of us who like to inhabit the space on the liberal end of the theological spectrum. I like my Jesus to be a religious rule-breaker, non-judgemental and concerned about social justice. I like him to be the man we see in Mark chapter 2 , who rebukes the Pharisees when they complain about his work in breaking heads of corn to eat on the Sabbath day; the man who we see in Joh...

This sermon was preached at evensong on 5th February 2017. The Old Testament reading was Amos 2:4-end . I am somewhat tempted, this evening, to not give a sermon. I don’t know if you’re inwardly rejoicing at that, or not. Instead of me preaching, we could take 5 minutes of silence, to think, or to pray, or to maybe have a small nap?  My reasoning for this temptation is not – surprisingly enough – down to the fact that I haven’t come up with anything to say (though I did find this evening’s readings difficult to think about what to talk about), but actually because we’ve already had one sermon already. Or at least, we’ve already had the end of one sermon already. Did you hear it? Don’t worry, you didn’t blink and miss an itinerant priest bound up to the pulpit and deliver a pithy and precise homily. No – it was, as you’ve probably guessed, one of our set readings for the evening – our piece from the book of Amos. You wouldn’t know it from tonight’s reading – it wa...

This sermon was preached at Evensong on Sunday 8th January 2017 - when we celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany . Today, we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, when the wise men arrived in Bethlehem to worship the new-born Jesus. The magi follow the star Our readings this evening have not mentioned it explicitly – no, you’d have needed to be here this morning to hear the story of the arrival of the magi – but, we have heard references to it, in the verses from Isaiah – “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn”, and how the camel-train will “bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord”. You all, I am sure, know the story of the three kings, and don’t need me to retell it. My guess is that you’ve been hearing it for many years. For me, I’ve been a Christian for nearly 25 years now, and in that time, I’ve heard plenty of sermons about those three kings; about how we don’t know that they were kings, and nor ...