Category: Sermon

On preparing for holidays, bags are packed and we’re ready to be off.  It’s an illustration I often use at a Baptism service. Once your bags are packed and loaded into the car you don’t then just sit on the drive for a week and come back raving about what a lovely time you’ve had of it.  That would be pointless.  You’ve made preparations: you make the journey. 

A picture of wisdom was drawn by comedian, Milton Jones, comparing it to cutlery. He said wisdom is not like that special set of knives and forks you keep for certain occasions, locked away in a velvet-lined box – all pristine and shiny. Rather wisdom is like a Swiss Army knife, worn and pitted, used and useful, honed and sharpened.

Immortality & eternal life might seem to mean the same thing, but they don’t – even tho’ they both describe something that won’t ever end.  What matters is to look at the start of what they describe rather than the end. 

Wisdom says, “lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”  That implies getting up and leaving the table, going back to where you were called from and sharing the invitation.  The seats at this table will never be full!  This is a perfect party from which no-one will be turned away once they respond. 

Church is a school for freedom. We are free to do as we will, but we have to do that in community. So we have to learn to be free and love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Church is the community where we learn this. This means that sometimes church is boring, tedious, other times it is bursting with excitement.

We’ve heard about gluten intolerance but I think some people suffer from ‘church intolerance’. They may be very spiritually aware and seeking – but don’t come anywhere near a church. I believe there are parallels between the two conditions.

Miracles are hard to believe, hard to understand and impossible to explain rationally.  We can’t explain them because, well because they are miracles and by their very nature defy natural and physical laws and go beyond our understanding: ‘far more than all we can ask or imagine’

We have a new sermon archive section on the website! We’ll still add the sermons as posts to the home page but after a while they’ll get removed to give space for other new posts. So the archive allows us to keep the sermons accessible for longer.

The main reason for remembering Mary Magdalen is her presence in the garden where Our Lord was buried; her recognition at last of the risen Jesus and her errand to tell the others of what had happened. Mary Magdalen, the apostle to the apostles and 1st witness to the Resurrection.

So if it is true that royalty, sex and religion sell newspapers then if there had been a tabloid newspaper in Galilee in the first century, the events we heard about in our Gospel reading would certainly have made the headlines. Even without a newspaper, stories about that birthday party would have spread rapidly throughout the region. It is a sordid, shabby and shameful tale.

There’s a novel called ‘Night flight’ and in it there’s this line: “In every crowd are certain persons who seem just like the rest, yet they bear amazing messages.” Amos was minding his own business when God interrupts him, taps him on the shoulder and makes him an offer he couldn’t refuse…