Mark 13.24-27 Happy New Year! Advent marks the start of the church new year. Our 3 year lectionary covers a different gospel each year. It’s Year B now and we move to the gospel of Mark. We’re near the end of that gospel this morning in what is sometimes called ‘the little apocalypse’, or bible-speak […]
Matthew 6.19-end Tomorrow is the day we remember St Matthew and our lectionary encourages us to start celebrating him with evening prayer today. The collect, with its prayer that we ‘forsake the selfish love of gain and the possessive love of riches’, reflects Matthew the tax collector’s willingness to leave his lucrative, but corrupt, job […]
I want to consider Jesus’ parables in our gospel today, with a passing reference to that wonderful passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans. I’ve never found the idea of process very easy. By that I mean that I struggle sometimes with the idea that things take time. On the whole I’m more interested in […]
Homily offered at the first service in the church building after lockdown on Sunday 12 July 2020 at 4.00pm. Only those members unable to join in morning zoomed worship had been invited. We followed Common Worship Evening Prayer Luke 19.41-20.8 ‘As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it’ In the weeks […]
My sermon on Sunday was interrupted by a young macaw called Tango, stuck in our garden during lockdown (usually to be found in Chris Smith’s props box. Thank you, Chris!) Hello. The Lord be with you. I want to talk about the ascension this morning. (Tango arrives, scattering nesting material everywhere. What follows is my […]
Sermon Luke 24.13-35 One night last week we had to call out an emergency plumber because we had a leak in our kitchen. He arrived, a big man with no hair and a mask over his face and set to work, mumbling to us occasionally through the mask while his head was under our kitchen […]
John 8.1-11, Isaiah 58.1-12 One evening when I was in Sweden, two of the art students from my college said hello to me in the street and said they were going to an art exhibition and would I like to go with them? It was the launch of the exhibition so there was a jazz […]
Sermon 26 January 2020 Isaiah 9.1-4, Matthew 4.12-23 This week the Davos summit has been in the news, as well of course, as the adventures of Harry and Meghan! I was picking up from the Davos summit that we’re at a kind of tipping point globally, mainly around climate change, but also about how we […]
Isaiah 52.7-10, John 1.1-14 Sermon Christmas Eve 2019 The opening words of tonight’s gospel are from John the evangelist, our John, as I like to call him. They echo the very first words in the bible, ‘In the beginning…’ where a lyrical description of how God created the universe follows. The power of God’s word […]
Today, continuing in our season of Advent, as we prepare for Christ’s birth at Christmas, the spotlight is on two prophets – Isaiah and John the Baptist. It’s over 4 months since I last preached here and I felt a bit rusty as I was preparing for today! Most of you will have gathered that […]