I took a slightly different approach to writing this sermon, I kept preaching it until it felt right. As such there isn't a transcript like there would normally be. The video below should start at the sermon but do feel free to watch the whole service if you wish.
0 Comments
My Easter Sunday sermon reflecting on the Resurrection and hope in the face of the current pandemic.
As we are unable to gather in church our services are being recorded and uploaded to YouTube so below is the video of the whole service but it should start at my sermon.
I wonder if you’ve ever been reading a book or watching a TV series and the plot is getting rather concerning, the protagonist is in dire straits, everything seems to be going wrong. And I wonder if, halfway through, when things seem really dire, you’ve flicked ahead to the last page, or googled the plot to see if things get any better, to see whether it all ends in tragedy or if somehow it all works out in the end. And then armed with this sneak peak you can decide if you want to carry on reading or watching.
At first glance the story of Jesus seems like a tragedy. A travelling preacher and teacher who seemed way ahead of his time. Who went about having compassion on the poor and the sick, the downtrodden and oppressed.
This sermon is based on Joel 2. 1-2, 12-17 and Matthew 6. 1-6, 16-21.
Well here we are, Ash Wednesday, the cusp of Lent. It seems like only a few days ago we were celebrating Christmas and yet here we are, beginning our journey to Easter.
Lent, despite what it’s become in the wider mindset, isn’t New Years mk 2, another chance to have a stab at cutting down on chocolate (a resolution which you managed to break at approximately 2pm on January 1st). Lent goes much deeper than that, it’s an annual Shofar call to return to God, to come back when we have wandered off. 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.
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’.
A sermon based on Luke 15: 1-10 about how God comes to rescue us. A recording can be found below and the script below that.
When my wife and I were first dating we used to spend a lot of our time walking along the river and up the mountains around Abergavenny. And once we were climbing the Sugarloaf with some of our friends. We had made it up the one side to the top and were now coming down the other. This second side I knew very well as my Grampy had lived in a cottage halfway up so I’d been along that track many times. As we were coming down we passed the gate to the cottage (my grampy wasn’t living there anymore at this point but we still owned it) and I spotted a lamb inside the gate bleating loudly, it was trapped. Somehow it had got through the fence or over the walls from the mountainside into the cottage grounds and now couldn’t get back out.
A sermon based on Luke 14. 25-33. You can listen to it below, or read the script underneath (the audio and the script don't match perfectly).
Jesus has gathered quite a reputation for Himself by this point in Luke’s account. People are coming from all over to hear Him speak and see what He’ll do next. But Jesus isn’t interested in having lots of followers, unlike our culture of today where, especially my generation, are obsessed with how many followers you have on Twitter or on Instagram, where politicians ride or die based on how many people they can whip up to follow and agree with them.
Jesus isn’t interested in this.
The sermon below is based on Luke 13. 10-17 The transcript below is more or less the same as the recording (as I never read directly from it) so it's probably easier to either listen or read rather than do both.
By this point In Luke’s Gospel the religious leaders of Jesus’ day had already written him off, they weren’t interested anymore and were constantly looking for any excuse to catch him out or arrest Him. They ask difficult questions and try to hold him to every minutiae of their law, not just God’s laws but the stuff they have added over the top just to be sure.
So Jesus heals a woman who has been suffering for years and rather than celebrating like Luke tells us everyone else is, they condemn Him for the fact that He has ‘worked’ on the sabbath by healing her. They’re so determined to see the bad in Him that they can’t even see the good He is doing anymore, they see everything as negative.
The sermon below is based on Luke 12:49-56 and Hebrews 11:29 - 12:2. The transcript below is more or less the same as the recording (as I never read directly from it) so it's probably easier to either listen or read rather than do both.
The Jesus who speaks in our Gospel reading today may feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable to many of us. ‘I came to bring fire to the earth’, ‘do you think I have come to bring peace? No…but rather division.’ Most of our time interacting with the Bible and especially Jesus we are faced with many things which we find agreeable, if a little confusing at times, usually Jesus is found speaking truths which fit in nicely with our modern disposition. However the words we are faced with today leave a slightly off taste in the mouth. Fire on the earth? Pitting families against each other?
Down the ages we have often, both as individuals and as a Church, swung between two understandings of God, a God to be feared, who is wrath and judgement, who we obey because if we don’t He might smite us. And a God who is cuddly and safe, a God who is love, our best friend God. You may this morning identify with one of those understandings, I have caricatured them a little, but we, and those we meet in our daily lives will fall broadly into one of these categories. God is either terrifying or cuddly. The Jesus we meet in our Gospel today seems to fit far more into the former description whereas we are used to putting Him into the latter. |
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
|