Hark, the glad sound - the Saviour comes!

sermon preached in Merton Chapel for Evensong of Easter 3 Psalm 86;  Isa 38: 9-20; John 11: 17-44 A few years ago, some American Episcopalian friends introduced me to Lent Madness: an online knockout tournament between saints from every period of Christian history. From Ash Wednesday to the end of Holy Week, the 32 saints nominated from the start of the tournament are whittled down to one, the saint of the year, who is celebrated as the winner of the Golden Halo – via rounds highlighting the saints’ stories, quirky quotes and saint-themed tat. It’s exactly as much fun as it sounds. This year’s winner was Martha of Bethany: and, having followed her through the tournament from the Round of 32 all the way to the Golden Halo, I have come to think that Martha is both interesting and important – important in what she says and does, and also an important element in the structure of John’s Gospel where she is the catalyst for Jesus to reveal himself as the resurrection and ...

a sermon  preached at Christ Church for College Communion on 14/10/2018. Trinity 20 Hebrews 4: 12-end Mark 10: 17-31 +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. Today is a very exciting day. In a few hours, in Rome, Oscar Romero will be canonised – made a saint. (The question of how one makes a saint is one for another day!) Oscar Romero was the RC Archbishop of San Salvador in the late 1970s, until his death in 1980. As Archbishop, he spoke out in an increasingly corrupt society against social injustice, against poverty and exploitation, against a government that ruled by fear, torturing and assassinating their political opponents. And he died by assassination, shot as he celebrated Eucharist, by a government that was frightened by the truth he spoke. Oscar Romero was one of the major figures in liberation theology, the Catholic theology that grew up in the secon...

A sermon for Epiphany 4, preached at College Communion at Christ Church on Sunday 27th January 2019. Epiphany 4 Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-10 Luke 4: 14-21 If you had the chance to be present at one event in the life of Jesus – to witness one moment from the gospels – what is the moment you would choose to see? Perhaps the birth of Jesus? Or the feeding of the five thousand? The Sermon on the Mount? The crucifixion? The Resurrection? The Last Supper? We’re unlikely to get our wish. But the moment we would choose has something to do with what we think about Jesus – what is most important for us about his message, his life, his identity. And there’s no wrong answer! Everything about Jesus is important. Everything the gospel writers wrote down was something they judged important enough to remember, and to teach new Christians about – communicating something important about who Jesus was. The Gospel stories are moments, incidents where Jesus, his identity...

A sermon preached at Keble College, as guest preacher for the evening Eucharist, 20/01/2019. I don't usually start sermons with jokes, but after the way this one was received, I see why people do! Epiphany 3 Isaiah 62: 1-5 1 Corinthians 12: 1-11 John 2: 1-11 +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. As part of my role at Christ Church, I’m chaplain to the cathedral school where the choristers, as well as about a hundred other boys, go; and every week I take an assembly for the Pre-Prep boys. And this week I told them the story we’ve just heard. On reflection, 4 to 7 year olds may be the wrong audience for a story that is essentially about how very nice a good bottle (or three) of wine is. It certainly seemed that way when one boy stuck his hand up and told me his dad had drunk a whole bottle of wine the night before. At this point I tried to catch the teacher’s eye ...

(an old sermon, preached at St John the Baptist, Ermine on  2 6/05/16) When I celebrated my first Eucharist, I looked down at my hands. I couldn’t believe that my human hands – even blessed, even set apart, even still smelling of chrism – could be used by God to make Godself present. How could God entrust Godself into my hands – my sinful, human hands? And more and more, as I’ve been celebrating, I’ve been thinking about the Eucharist as God making Godself completely vulnerable. Those of you who heard my Easter sermons will have heard my image of God as a baker – baking bread which will be taken and ripped apart. Bread which is ripped apart on Maundy Thursday – bread which is the body of Christ, ripped apart on Good Friday on the cross. That’s what Jesus’ words at the Last Supper tell his friends: this bread is my body. This wine is my blood. I am broken; I am poured out for you. So the breaking of the body of Jesus on the cross is made present, made real for us in...

This is an old sermon from several years ago, but I've revisited it thanks to the lectionary sending us into Joshua at Mattins and some Twitter conversations.  Somebody once said “the optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true.” People often try to divide themselves into optimists and pessimists – and I think the three readings we had today might be one of the things that optimists and pessimists hear differently. So I wonder what you heard in those readings – were you an optimist or a pessimist? did you hear about sin or about redemption? When I read the readings first, I was a pessimist – all I could hear was sin and despair. But we know that sin is never the end of the story – God will never abandon us to despair. And these readings are also full of hope. Even from the very beginning of the Genesis reading – from the first moment after sin has entered the world – God is still there. God knows what has happene...

Yesterday was the Jazz Mass at Lincoln Cathedral - as part of the Lincolnshire Jazz Week, we invited a quartet who were playing various concerts during the week to accompany our worship. We had Bob Chilcott's A Little Jazz Mass, we had songs rather than hymns and finished up with singing O I Wish I Knew How it would Feel to be Free. And in his wisdom, the Chancellor thought I could cope with preaching. Obviously, it had to be on the theme of jazz. Various people, including Richard Holloway, have written on jazz theology or jazz and theology - usually with some link between improvisation and ethics. I wanted to do something slightly different - something that worked with the readings, with their Eastertide emphasis on love and on the early Church in Acts. And my husband wisely suggested that if I was thinking about love, there was a pretty important jazz album that I might do well to listen to. So this is what I preached. Acts 10:44-end 1 John 5: 1-6 John 15: 9-17 In...