Sermons And Gubbins

This sermon was first preached at our Sunday morning service on 10th July, following a week of political turmoil in the UK, triggered by the resignations of Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Health Secretary, which eventually led (a few days later) to the resignation of the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. The Gospel was a particularly famous passage, known as The Good Samaritan, and can be found in Luke 10:25-37 . I hope you enjoy reading it. It’s a cliché, but it’s very, very true: a week is a long time in politics. I don’t normally preach two weeks running, but I think it’s fair to say that more has changed in the world of politics since I last stood in this pulpit seven days ago than in the whole time since I preached before that, which was as far back as Easter Sunday!   No-one would have ever predicted this time a week ago that our government would have imploded to the extent that it has. I think roughly 40 ministerial positions have changed...

This sermon was preached at our Sunday morning service on 3rd July, when we celebrated the feast day of St Thomas. The Gospel that morning was John 20:24-29 . One of the things that makes humans so special is our ability to spot patterns. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from the rest of creation, and has allowed us to become creative beings ourselves. It’s a blessing, because it opens up the worlds of mathematics and science, and also of art and poetry. But, it’s also a curse, because we are prone to seeing patterns that are not actually there, and whilst sometimes, these can be benign – the face of Jesus in a slice of toast, for example – at other times, our incorrect joining of the dots can lead us to jump to very false conclusions. I don’t know if I’m jumping to false conclusions or not, but the pattern I’ve been seeing in the news this week is one of the stories of women. From the overturning of the Roe vs Wade abortion laws in the US last Friday, to the very different d...

This sermon was given on Easter Sunday 2022. The Gospel was John 20:1-18 . Happy Easter to you! I n the beginning , the very beginning, the world was without form, and darkness covered the face of the deep. God spoke something different into that formless void, into the literal chaos. God spoke a word, and the word was light . In naming it, it came into being. On the first morning of the new creation, the world was dark. The sky had turned black on the Friday, and it was still dark when Mary came to the tomb. We expect great new things to start with a fanfare ; with fireworks and a party. They don’t. Things start in the dark. That’s when most births happen – for humans as well as animals – when it is night time and the sky is black. The world may seem a dark place today. It is still Easter; Easter always starts in the dark. The light of Easter  The thing about darkness, is it hides what’s really going on. Mary got to the tomb in the dark, and – although she could see t...

This is a  version of a sermon  I first preached in March 2016, updated for Sunday 12th March 2022. Consuming our thoughts was the ongoing war in Ukraine. The Gospel that morning was  Luke 13:31-35 . We love an underdog, don’t we? Whilst we are all – rightly and obviously – appalled and horrified by the ongoing war in Ukraine, I think we all have to admit that one of the major reasons this inv asion by Putin has caught our attention in the way his previous war crimes have not, is down to the canniness of Ukraine’s president Zelensky. Zelensky’s cabinet have outright stated that  social media is part of their war-effort , and it is clear that the Ukrainian people are winning the war of hearts and minds of the world in the virtual realm, even if they are suffering immense losses on the very physical ground. The Ukrainian people, and to a major extent, their president too, have been portrayed exactly as that underdog we all love; they are a besieged nation, and Zelensk...

This sermon was given at our Sunday morning service on 13th February 2022. The Gospel was Luke 6:17-26 . I hope you enjoy reading it. Our Gospel reading this morning is one we rarely hear in church. That might surprise you? It’s one we know well, of course. But actually, prior to this morning, the last time we had this reading was in February 2019, and the time before that, incredibly, was over 15 years ago – 11 th February 2007. So, in 15 years, we’ve only heard this reading twice; once this morning, and once in February three years ago, when the biggest news of the day was Piers Morgan getting all hot under the collar that bakery chain Greggs had released a vegan sausage roll. Do you remember when that was the sort of thing we actually thought was worthy of getting angry about? Since we last heard this reading, the country has been busy to say the least – we’ve left the EU, we’ve seen new leaders of all three of the traditional main political parties in the UK – including a new ...

Is it too late to wish you a happy new year?    I’m sure there must be some convention here to follow; a piece of good etiquette that says something along the lines of “new year’s wishes may be conferred upon others up until midday on the Feast of Epiphany, unless there was resting snow on New Year’s Day, in which case – in exceptional circumstances – you may continue to wish someone a happy new year until the first bells of Evensong on the following Sunday”. If that etiquette exists, I must confess my ignorance as to not knowing it, and so I’d like to take this opportunity this morning to wish you a happy new year. May it be kind to you. I think we could do with a kind year, don’t you? The past two years have been hard and cruel. They’ve changed us. None of us are the same people we were this time in 2019; our lives have become smaller and more insular. We’ve lost colleagues, friends and loved ones. Covid has changed our plans and rewritten our rules and – even if we have man...