Category: Sermon

Welcome, hospitality, acceptance isn’t compromise – it stretches our own horizons. It brings its own reward. It allows you and me to hold and provide sanctuary for the weary, the frightened and those dusty from travel.

If you think about the words of the Advent Carol, ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’, we’re asked to rejoice whilst Israel is mourning in lonely exile; to rejoice whilst in the gloomy clouds of night; to rejoice whilst in death’s dark shadow. These are tough things to ask.

Rather than a sudden burning-bush-type-moment, it appears that the word of God comes to John as a slow-burn over a number of years until he was ready to share it.

A king who comes to usher in his kingdom – but needs us, implores us, to recognise the kingdom already around us – and by our minds, wills, hearts and bodies to make him and his kingdom more visible for the world.

Today is Remembrance Sunday and so we remember. Kitchener pointed his finger and said: ‘your country needs you’.

Maybe you see yourself within the description of the suffering servant? If so, take heart for these verses might be telling you that you are being used by God to bring salvation for others.

Do your possessions allow you to love or do they prevent you? ‘Where your treasure is’, says Jesus, ‘there your heart will be also’.

Harvest needs us to do our bit too. To work alongside God. To prepare ground and sow seed and bring in the crop. To be a thin place for others, spreading a new light and changing landscapes for those we encounter.

You and I are those frail, vulnerable human agents. It might be today that we are asked to speak those words where they’re desperately needed and deeply resisted. Or it may be tomorrow.

In the imagination of the preacher, Jesus tears them off a big lump of bread and says ‘Thank you. You both deserve more than crumbs.’

We must mind the gap between knowledge and wisdom. What is it that keeps us from doing God’s word and desiring what God desires?

That’s true of this Collect. It’s both pleasurably right and compellingly wise. Despite the virtual reality that our senses and our reason present to us, we live in a world in which God is more near, more present, more active than we ever dared to hope or to dream.

God calls us all, he equips us all. If, like the boy who brought the loaves and fishes we all brought the little that we had – our gifts, our abilities, our love and, yes, our fabulousness too – then there would be more than enough to share around. No-one would need to hunger. All would be fed and with plenty to spare…. ‘I am the gluten-free bread of life.’

As Jesus did with his disciples in our reading, he is telling us that, if we’re normally in a rush, then we must also slow down and pay attention to our own hearts, our own movements.

‘In every crowd are certain persons who seem just like the rest, yet they bear amazing messages.’ Is someone here called to be a prophet?