It has been a busy week for me in the run-up to Freshers Week at the University. When I finally got time yesterday to prepare this sermon I was already somewhat ‘highly strung’. My wife, Jo, feminist and academic, had gone away on a hen weekend with her future sister-in-law, part of which included a […]
Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 ‘Give me an undivided heart’ It would be difficult to find two readings that are more different. The one, part of the beautiful love-poem of Song of Solomon with its invitation to “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away!”; the other a showdown between […]
Mark 6 v 30-34 and 53 to the end. Meeting God when we are busy We meet up with friends maybe after a service on a Sunday morning and we ask the time-honoured conversation starter “how have you been?” and after a pause for thought one of the stock answers that we give is “Busy”. […]
Amos 7.7-15, Mark 6.14-29 Amos and John the Baptist I want to talk about prophets this morning. It’s a big topic and I can only consider a few aspects in a sermon. I’m also aware that prophets can be controversial and that we won’t all necessarily have the same view of them, so hold […]
Mark 5:21-43: Compassion Our gospel reading today has two more of Jesus’ miracles, healings this time, as we follow on from the calming of the storm that Claire talked about last week (Mark 4:35-41): Jairus’ daughter and the woman suffering from bleeding. Claire’s sermon asked, Where is the miraculous today? Does God intervene in […]
Mark 4:35-41 Jesus Stills a Storm 35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ 36And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the […]
The Parable of the Growing Seed Mark 4 v26 – 34 So here we are in Mark chapter 4, towards the end with Jesus speaking in parables to those who are following him. This is only one of the ways that he used to teach, at the end of the chapter directly after this section […]
The Inside Out Family: Mark 3.20-35 Please forgive me, but I have decided not to preach today on one of the thorny issues in our gospel reading, such as who or what is Beelzebub – or what might or might not be the ‘unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit’! Instead, I will focus on a […]
Romans 8.12-17, John 3.1-17 Having worked our way through Easter, Ascension Day and, last Sunday, Pentecost, we are now celebrating the Trinity. This is not another event, but the start of exploring the new dimension in which we are to live our ordinary, everyday lives, following the breath-taking events of Easter. Appropriately enough the church […]
Luke 24.44-end, Acts 1.1-11 Looking up Ascension Day sermons on my computer I discovered that I’ve preached a number here, and so I’ve probably said most of what can be said about the background to the Ascension – the significance of mountains and links with OT epiphanies like those to Moses and Elijah on Sinai […]