Category: ‘Sermon’ like material

  • demolishing the demons of domination

    Monty Python once asked:  What have the Romans ever done for us? This question ends with a rather long list: the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health.  But what have the Romans ever done for us?  To which the final answer is given:  Brought peace? …

  • The point of Baptism?

    An American Lady travelling to Paris 1913 asked Ezra Pound what art is for. Reply:  What is a rose bush for?  If someone asks me what is baptism for, I might reply with the same. Water as we have seen only too often in recent weeks is regularly the means of destruction, often violent extreme…

  • Epiphany: offerings that cost us nothing?

    “We will not offer to God, offerings that cost us nothing” An opening verse and response from the morning prayer of Iona Abbey. Offerings for a newborn:  The top ten required gift items maybe?  Cloth nappies wraps & pins, changing mat, grow-suit, (Though it seems you can spend your life in one of these now…

  • Fight or Flight?

    I wonder how comfortable we are?  I’m not referring to the need to loosen the belt a little after Christmas lunch.  Or the uncomfortable feeling that we might have forgotten to send a card to someone important this year, or even the uncomfortable job of writing thank-you letters. How comfortable are we sat here in…

  • A Multicultural Christmas? – it's nothing new!

    It is said that this country is only nominally Christian and that there are places in the UK where Christianity is a minority religion.  Of course Christianity has been a minority religion in other countries since the time of Christ.  Neither is the recent persecution of Christians anything new, though the portrayal in news items…

  • Beit Lahem – The House of Bread

    Midnight Mass 2013:  Beit Lahem – The House of Bread. It’s not Christmas without the ‘Christmas Special’.  Call me old and past it if you like, but – they don’t make them like the used to!  Except perhaps for Dr. Who and we’ll have to wait till the evening of Christmas Day for that.  The…

  • The Journey

    Nothing Changes: “A just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly” From Matthew Ch1 Joseph to Mary’s father perhaps:  “it wasn’t me, it was the Holy Spirit”  No really, that’s a good one – at least it’s original! Whatever Joseph might have been – the angels put him straight. …

  • A chrismas list

    It is most odd to me that many people often say, ‘O vicar, this is your Busy Time’.  As if I have the rest of the year off.  The more enlightened might mention something about Easter as well.  I’ve never come up with a suitable retort and have resigned myself to the benign ‘yes there…

  • Locusts and Wild Honey for Christmas Dinner?

    John the Baptist, the voice of one crying in the wilderness:  Prepare the way of the Lord.  He’s a strange character – Locusts and Wild Honey!  What a diet.  Relationships between many things are changing.  This is especially noticeable at Christmas.  The relationship between the winter festival and the celebration of Christmas for example.  Cadbury…

  • Lent One: The walls that contain us.

    Well Lent has begun.  40 days of fasting of sackcloth and ashes.  Are we enjoying it? – don’t answer that, I really don’t want to know!!  For those who have given something up for Lent this year, you’ve had four days already since Ash Wednesday, so 36 to go and remember that Sundays don’t count. …