Category: ‘Sermon’ like material

  • Becoming who you are

    Esther de Waal writes in reflection on the rule of St. Benedict. The prologue to the Rule presents us with the image of God in the marketplace “is there anyone who yearns for life and desires to see good days?”  Mind, Body and Spirit is in effect what the rule reflects. An holistic view of…

  • Walking in the Garden

    I’ve found a magic money tree.  Really.  It’s on the Llanberis path just past halfway house on the way up Yr Wyddfa.  This picture doesn’t do it justice, you’ll have to go and see for yourself, though you’ll be hard pushed to find a space to press a coin into it.  (There are plenty of…

  • Seeing Jesus

    Seeing Jesus

    If your mind were to work in the strange way that mine does, you might imagine the Gospel passage John 12.20 set for today finding its way into the letters page of a respectable newspaper: Sir, we wish to see Jesus. Yours, etc. The Greeks. I suppose then the challenge to the editor would be…

  • Tables turned

    If we are to believe the idiom dictionary, then turning the tables as we hear it in regular use means being given the hand you dealt to your neighbour. Jesus on the other hand turns over the tables in the temple, not reversing the fortunes of those involved, but revealing the hand of the temple…

  • Love. Death. Time.

    Love. Death. Time.

    It is Lent, which means it is time for a film to help us through the wilderness. I prefer the title (in translation) “The Hidden Beauty.” But because this is hollywood, (with an all star cast, and a slating by the critics) It is called “Collateral Beauty.” A story of beauty and of pain. A…

  • Shepherds, Angels, Stars

    As Christmas fades towards Epiphany and the interest of the masses in Christmas and religious observance returns to normal levels Jesus is set loose from the confines of the crib, but not before the shepherds have made their visitation in our last but one attempt to domesticate him in this Christmas season. A domesticated Jesus,…

  • according to your word

    ‘According to your word.’  We live by that, not always knowingly of course, but often, according to the word of another, often those with authority, or those we find ourselves unable to influence. Sometimes through gritted teeth – if you say so. Let it be to me according to your word.  This is the story…

  • Snow, Trump, and a Quiet Defiance

    What does the recent / expected Snowfall and Donald Trump have in common? And no, that’s not the beginning of a very bad joke, though if it were the punchline probably ought to contain the words ‘slippery and slope’. Perhaps they have in common that we love to hate them? That both are the target…

  • Welcome to the feast

    Matthew’s parable of the marriage feast (Matt. 22. 1-14) has its origins in something much older. Luke has a version of it too, both probably added to it in order to say something to their communities. Matthew to the Jews, Luke to a wider audience. So the great supper in Luke becomes a Marriage feast…

  • Three Pillars of Anglicanism.

    If I were going to preach a traditional sermon, then I might tell you that  Matthew 13. 1-9, 18-23 displays the three pillars of Anglicanism. Scriture. Tradition. Reason. But I don’t often preach traditional Sermons. I do want to talk about seed, soil and roots which are I suppose the same thing as Scripture, Tradition…