By quirk of calendar, this day, the hundredth anniversary of the end of the First World War comes to have two names: Remembrance Day (which is the name for the Sunday nearest the 11th), and Armistice Day, the day that marks the 11th itself. I’m intrigued by those two names, and the different emphases they […]
40th Anniversary 28 October 2018 Genesis 28.11-18, Matthew 21.12-17 The 1970s were a challenging time for the church. It looked as though religion would play a smaller and smaller part in the lives of people. Church attendance was falling, but the C of E still had large churches to maintain. There had been much building […]
There is something of an irony about us town-dwellers continuing to observe harvest festival. I suspect only a very few of us will have harvested anything at all in the past year – or perhaps even in our lives: for many of us our harvesting might have been limited to picking a few blackberries during […]
Baptism Sermon – Mark 9.38-end, Psalm 124 “Come to Church” they said “it will be fine.. it’s a baptism! they don’t talk about all the scary stuff any more.. it’s all luvvey-duvvey now. None of the gratuitous violence or random maiming… it’s all fine and fluffy”….. er… well . .. (whoops!) We are here on […]
Mark 9.30-37, Proverbs 31.10-end Our readings today continue the theme started last week about God’s wisdom, a wisdom, as Richard said last week, that turns conventional wisdom on its head. It’s an upside downness that we saw Jesus trying to put across to his disciples on the road to Jerusalem where he would face execution, […]
16th September 2018, Creation 3 Proverbs 1:20-23, Mark 8:27-end The lectionary – and this is important stuff, so listen up – the lectionary is a book with readings in from the bible for every day of the year. All Anglican and RC churches use this, and some other churches do as well, and it’s […]
Introduction I wonder if there are some common phrases or words of wisdom that you or your parents often use? Here are some that might be familiar to you: Pride comes before a fall The early bird catches the worm Practice makes perfect Or you may know this more modern one: ‘With great power comes […]
Mark 7:1-8 Song of Songs 2:8-13 Sermon – 2 September 2018. 1st Sunday of Creation On 21 February 2012, five members of the group Pussy Riot staged a performance in the sanctuary of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Their actions were stopped by church security officials. By evening, they had turned it into […]
I recently watched the film ‘A Quiet Place’… a story about ‘post-apocalyptic’ survivors fending themselves from alien creatures who hunted by sound alone.. The family we focused on could not make any sound because of the mortal danger.. and so resorted to living in total silence. Inside the clever premise was a deeper story about […]
John 6 v35, 41-51 A man was grumbling, he was sick and tired of going to work every day while his wife stayed at home. He wanted her to see what he went through each day, so he prayed: – “Dear Lord, I go to work every day and put in 8 hours of hard […]