Sermons And Gubbins

This sermon was preached at our Sunday morning service on August 25th. It was my first Sunday back after my paternity leave. The sermon borrows heavily from one I gave in Oldham three years earlier , but I think that's ok! The gospel this morning was Luke 13:10-17 . Hope you enjoy... It’s lovely to be back up here in the pulpit this morning. It’s been quite a long time since I last preached, and I’m really thankful that Huw, Alex, Cath, Fi and Vaughan have picked up the extra services and sermons whilst I’ve been off on paternity leave. Thank you all! The ministry team here are fortunate to have the freedom of being in a large team that allows one of us time off when needed. Even with that, however, the time has still gone pretty quickly, though! My last sermon before Miriam was born was right at the beginning of June, and I wasn’t on the rota to do anything then until after she was born. She was 6-weeks-old on Friday, and this is my first time back in the pulpit sinc...

This sermon was first given on Sunday 2nd June, a week after the EU election results were announced. The Gospel that morning was John 17:20-26 . I’ve had a song stuck in my head most of this week. Does that ever happen to you? You’re just sitting there, minding your own business, and a few small seconds of a song pop into your head and keep going on a loop. It’s never enough of the song to actually entertain you, only enough to just make you think you might be starting to go mad, and that you might never think of anything else ever again. It’s called an earworm, which is a weird image when you think about it! They say that one way you can get rid of an earworm is to share the song with others… so, thank you all for the help you’re about to give me this morning! The song is by one of the most famous bands in the world, U2. I suspect you know it; it’s called ‘One’.   The first lines say this: Is it getting better, or do you feel the same? Will it...

This poem was written for our Sunday morning service on Sunday 28th April, the second Sunday of Easter. The gospel reading was John 20:19-31 . In the news that week had been the horiffic bombings in Sri Lanka and the murder of Irish journalist, Lyra McKee . The poem was inspired by the idea of resurrection being a process as espoused in this sermon by Michael K. Marsh, especially this quote:   " The facts are just the starting point for the story. The fact of the empty tomb is the starting point for the resurrection story. Whatever facts you woke up to on Easter Monday are simply the starting point for your story of resurrection. Too often, however, we take the facts as the entire story. Isn’t that what we’ve done with St. Thomas?"  I think we certainly do think of Thomas like that - he is the perennial doubter, rather than the saint who brought Christ's message to India, and had grown so much in faith that he was prepared to die for his God. It made me wonder wh...

This sermon was preached at our Evensong service on Sunday 24th March, a week that had been pretty eventful in the political life of the UK, as the country prepared to leave the EU - the original 'Brexit Day' was supposed to be 29th March, but at this point in time, who knows if/when it will be! The Old Testament reading for the evening was Genesis 28:10-19 . Hope you enjoy the sermon... What a week it’s been for the UK politically! As the now-potentially-postponed Brexit-day loomed ever nearer, concerns this week grew amongst the public and politicians over the possible impacts of the UK leaving the EU with no deal. We’ve heard about all sorts of planned emergency operations on how as a country we’ll mitigate any fallout, including measures to control traffic, a ministry of defence underground control-centre and the stockpiling of food and medicine; and across social media, the UK’s fastest growing petition has been shared thousands of times garnering literally mill...