preaching

Prayer for today

Look up a bible passage here.

Lately I have posted in WordPress. Here is the opening from the latest sermon.

As they used to say, are you comfortable, so let us begin, as we “listen with mother” today, Mothering Sunday.

“Woman, here is your son.” What a verse we have from the gospel this morning! Jesus looks down upon the Mary’s gathered at the foot of his cross and speaks these enigmatic words. These words give all of us a great deal to think about, don’t you agree?

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Other sermons are available

Since arriving in Slimbridge, I have been saving my sermons and producing them on my website. A number of different ways of presenting them have happened. Here is a listing of the earlier sermons.

Sermons before using WordPress

Some sermons

Here are the openings for some sermons as they are being kept on these pages.

Lent iii

I would like to paraphrase some words from Paul’s letter which we read this morning.

For some demand signs and others desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to the former and foolishness to the latter, but to those who are the called, everyone who are called, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Everyone who is “the called” gets the best of everything, don’t they? But who are the called? Do some of us want only miracles which speak of some unearthly power? Do others among us want only revelatory pronouncements that will become statements which will never be questioned? The third way denies the power of the crowd, some of which are seekers of the magical and the others who rely on the words whispered by no one, both ways are flawed, don’t you think? For both ways take away one’s autonomy, one’s own self. After all, I have no part in the crowd’s deliberations. The crowd will take over my whole being, if I let it. Either the miraculous or the siren song becomes the arbiter of all I would do in my everyday, normal life in the world. One or the other part of the crowd will overwhelm me.

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Lent ii

Who likes to read? And what sort of thing do you like to read? I know most people have to read set books as students. I wonder if you have ever picked them up again and tried to read them with new eyes, seeing the motifs, the language and the whole course of the story as if it were the first time, with the literary eye which your teacher tried to develop in you when they were trying to teach you.

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Lent 1

“Forty days and forty nights” – with that phrase we have begun our great fast in preparation for the events proclaiming our salvation, in preparation for Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.

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Second Sunday before Lent

Recently, I have been reading two novels which had to do with murder and the mayhem such an event engenders. In both the victim was a young girl. The horror which all felt at such a crime was on every page. The pathos everyone feels when hearing such news draws out the character of the sleuths. They show their humanity in their behaviour, evoking in the reader a sympathy with victim and detective. The author is trying to describe just how the lost life affected all the world around each of them.

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