A sermon preached on Matthew 4:12-23. Unfortunately the recording didn't come out well for this one so there is just the text below.
Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand! These are the opening words of Jesus’ public ministry, spoken shortly before He calls His first disciples, and they can almost be treated as a summary of the rest of His teaching, it’s either about repentance or the Kingdom of God. So I want to look at those two aspects this morning. Repent! I wonder how that word makes you feel? What image it conjours up? For me it’s shouty preachers bashing the pulpit, (I must admit I had to restrain myself from doing so when preaching this), or men walking round the streets with placards ‘the end is nigh’. Repent is an archaic word which we may wish to relegate to history, but as the first half of Jesus’ first words, we don’t really have that option.
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On the feast of the Baptism of Christ I reflect on our own Baptism and what that means for us. The text used is Matthew 3. 13-17
In our Gospel reading today we have a beautiful picture of the Trinity, here alone in Scripture do we see the Trinity in this way. The Son rising out of the water as the Spirit descends and the Father speaks. This moment is suffused with God’s presence, we can reach out and touch Jesus, we see the Spirit like a dove and we hear the Father speaking words of love of His Son. It’s one of those ‘wow’ moments of Scripture which I wish I could go back and see and hear for myself, it’s a real spectacle.
It’s not however a spectacle for the sake of spectacle, God doesn’t decide to put on a show because He felt like it. This moment is important. The Spirit descending is to empower Jesus for the temptation which will soon follow and, beyond that, His ministry. But those words of God ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’, those words aren’t for Jesus. Jesus knows exactly who He is, He doesn’t need a quick self-confidence boost to get Him on His way. No, the voice is for those looking on, and by extension us.
Christmas may seem like a distant memory at this point however the Church is still celebrating, and as such it's not too late to upload my sermon from Midnight Mass (that's the excuse I'm going with anyway). As usual the audio is below (which was recorded at our early morning communion service on Christmas day itself).
This sermon is based on John 1:1-14 and Hebrews 1:1-4
Glen Scrivener writes:
‘They say there’s a big man, who lives far away, supposedly jolly but it’s hard to say. I’ve never seen him and neither have you, but the children believe and I s’pose that’ll do. He’s known as a loner with many a quirk, no time for a chat he’s embroiled in His work. He keeps to Himself for most of the year, I reckon we’re grateful he doesn’t appear. We send him requests for particular needs, but we never hear back, who knows if he heeds. We try to be good, give his arm a twist, to merit our place on his blessed little list. And maybe one day, if we do what we should, he’ll give us our things just so long as we’re good. I’ve had it to here, I’m calling his bluff, he’s a weird, moralistic dispenser of stuff.’ Now, neither I nor Glen are going after Santa here, Santa is certainly odd when you think about it, but how often do we think of God like this? When you think of God are you thinking of St Nick in the sky? A big bearded man in a far away place, ‘he see’s you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he’s watching and waiting to catch your next mistake’. |
AuthorAn Anglican Curate in my 20's I was raised in an Anglican Church, went to a Youth Club run by an Evangelical Church, attended a Baptist Church while at Uni and was a member of a New Monastic Community after graduating. As such my faith has been influenced by these experiences and traditions into what I hope is a more rounded viewpoint. Archives
September 2022
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