Tag: Sermon

As the Word made flesh and dwelling among us, Jesus physically demonstrated the continuity of God, his unchanging love and mercy that we can always count upon. But he also showed us the God of surprises too. He changed what we thought about God and challenged the pre-conceived ideas that he came across. In physical, bodily form – as the body language of God – Jesus re-imagined God for us.

What a lovely idyllic picture we have in our reading from Isaiah today. Woody Allen once said of this vision: “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb. But the lamb won’t get much sleep!”

Jesus the king wore a crown of thorns; his throne was a cross; his royal banner a scribbled sign. This is the gospel image of royalty; the king and a criminal going together into paradise. This is the king we believe in; the king we celebrate and whose values we are pledged to live by.

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centred; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.

Shortly after the destruction, the cathedral stonemason noticed that two of the charred medieval roof timbers had fallen in the shape of a cross. He set them up in the ruins, on an altar of rubble, with the moving words ‘Father Forgive’ inscribed on the Sanctuary wall…

The grace of God shows its full colours in the glory that is at work in all of God’s people who are called to be saints. That grace which is at work in you, the saints of God who are in Bury.

What is important to you? What is worth fighting for? What would make you be determined and persistent, not give up on, not be put off until you got it sorted? Is there something that you are so passionate about that you would stick with it and be prepared to struggle for as long as it takes?

Into the story comes a tiny, unnamed, Israelite slave girl. She would have been on the bottom rung of society, if she was on the ladder at all. A slave, female, foreign and young. In modern parlance we’d say she’d been trafficked.

The message from Nigel and I is: go, share your experience, tell about what you’ve seen, testify to what you know to be true. Because whether you know it or not, or like it or not, you’re all preachers! You each have a story to tell, a testimony to give…

When I first looked at our readings for today, I thought “O Good, the gospel of Luke. It will be a nice parable. But Oh no. A very difficult piece –and when I read the other passages it did not get much better” I didn’t get it. It was doing my head in.

I read an article recently that said in the year 2000, TV adverts had to grab a persons’ attention within 12 seconds or they weren’t effective. By 2013 that had dropped to 8 seconds. The attention span of a goldfish is said to be 9 seconds. So, longer than humans now…

There are four gospels in the bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Three are similar to each other: Matthew, Mark and Luke. One is very different: John. Why are there four gospels that are so different and yet so similar in the case of three?

In a book written some 50 years ago, the Editor quotes a poem written on the wall of a prison cell by an English Prisoner of War. It was written before his execution. In it he unites himself to his suffering Redeemer and prays for his murderers. This poem is all we know of that heroic martyr.

My Mum’s family were very keen on taking and keeping photos. Her Dad wasn’t the greatest photographer though and most of them have the top of the heads chopped off, or half a person to one side, or a finger part-way over the lens. However, these photos were precious and kept in a box rather than thrown away.

Faith, says Hebrews, ‘gives substance to our hopes and makes us certain of realities we do not see’. We have not seen Jesus, unless we have had a vision. We have not seen Jesus but at some level, in some way we believe in him and trust in him and see him as our friend and saviour.