Hark, the glad sound - the Saviour comes!

This sermon was preached at Lincoln Cathedral on Sunday 19th November 2017, using the lectionary readings for the day with a particular focus on  Matthew 25: 14-30 , the Parable of the Talents - a parable that ends with a note of judgment and condemnation. The other readings ( Zephaniah 1: 7, 12-18,  1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11 ) were also what might be characterised as a bit depressing. So I thought I'd begin where I was and where I suspected a lot of the congregation might be... This parable is pretty near the bottom of my wish list of passages to preach on. I don’t like it. I don’t like the idea of judgment; the unfairness of the set up; the perfectly reasonable behaviour that gets the poor third bloke cast out. And that’s leaving aside the notion of slavery that underpins the whole parable. But that’s the way the church’s cycle of readings works – it confronts us with the uncomfortable parts of the Bible. And the point of the sermon is to make us face up to them....

This sermon was preached at St John the Baptist, Ermine. I spent a long time trying to find the right angle for this, and eventually decided to play with the idea of the letter - not just to preach on Thessalonians, but to see how the church would react to the idea of receiving their own letter from Paul. I did a bit of business at the beginning with finding the letter, opening the envelope, seeing who it was from, asking if I should read it - just for setting the scene and getting people interested. This was also the Sunday that the long-serving Vicar announced his retirement, so I wanted a sermon that said something about who the community was and would remain; that suggested that change was not necessarily destructive; and that would stay with them into the announcement to offer some hope.  In retrospect, there are things I'd do differently, but I was pleased with the concept of the letter-from-Paul. I probably can't do it again in the same community though! It might...

Harvest time is a pretty important time in the church's year - like Remembrance and Christmas, it's a point at which lots of people who rarely attend church find themselves coming to services (especially if they are part of schools or uniformed organisations) and so, as with Remembrance and Christmas, the challenge is to find ways of relating the Gospel and Christian tradition to the secular understanding of this time of year.  I think Harvest is a particularly interesting example because it is such a secular festival - i.e. not one rooted in the Christian liturgical year - and yet it is really only celebrated in churches. There is no suite of Harvest-themed merchandise in the Tesco Seasonal aisle, unlike Hallowe'en or Christmas, but equally, Harvest celebrations tend to be quite thin theologically. So I was excited to be able to engage with three Harvest readings for the Cathedral sermon. There are many other ways to take Harvest (and I took it another way in the Messy...

Sermon preached at St John the Baptist, Ermine; Trinity 15, 24/09/17 Readings: Jonah 3:10 – 4:11;  Matthew 20: 1-17 May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Salvation What kind of a God do you believe in? Now I’m going to ask a slightly different question. What kind of a God do you want to believe in? I think Jonah’s answer to those two questions would have been very different. We’ve heard him talking to God – he says “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” Those sound like good things. But Jonah says that’s the reason he didn’t want to do what God called him to. That’s the reason he ran away (and got into that whole mess with the whale). God is gracious and merciful, always ready to listen to an apology and forgive, no questions asked. And Jonah is not a fan. Jonah wants a...

Sermon preached in Lincoln Cathedral, Sunday 17th September 2017 Matthew 18: 21-35 (The parable of the Unmerciful Servant) Then Peter came and said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if another member of the church  sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven  times.  ‘For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents  was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow-...

Sermon preached at Lincoln Cathedral, 19/02/2017 (Second Sunday before Lent) Matthew 6: 25-end “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink.” Thanks, Jesus, for that helpful advice. Is there anyone at all who finds being told not to worry actually makes them stop worrying? Personally, the more I’m told not to worry, the more on edge I get. Over the last few months, plenty of people have been telling me not to worry – about labour, about becoming a parent, about looking after a baby – and the more they tell me in very specific detail the things I don’t need to worry about, the more worried I get. Sometimes about things I hadn’t even registered as potential problems before. And I don’t think this is just me. Worrying is something we all do – at least at times. Diagnosed cases of debilitating, life-limiting anxiety are rising all the time; and even if our anxieties aren’t bad enough to send us to the doctor, we all know w...

I put a rather pretentious sentence in the description of the blog: towards an Advent theology. It's only fair to justify it - especially as it's June and about as far from Advent as you can get! Advent has always been my favourite season. I've always preferred anticipation to actually getting to wherever it is I'm going. And when I was in my teens, the church notice sheet for the first Sunday of Advent included a picture that has stayed with me. A cloud was split by lightning and the text, in capitals, read "O that you would tear the heavens open and come down!" That has become the idea which sums up Advent for me. It's a longing and an impassioned plea for God to appear in power, to come into the world and bring healing and hope. That shapes my approach to Advent but also my whole theological standpoint. I am drawn to liberation theology with its argument that God wants the poor and oppressed to flourish; to Niebuhr's  Protestant argument that...