Christmas 2018

Christmas! How do you help people to engage with a familiar story in a way that is enjoyable and meaningful? This was my attempt from our Christmas Celebration service on Christmas morning.

Remembrance 2018

What do we remember? To remember is to seek to be a hope-giver and a peace-maker.

Christmas news 2017

What does good news look like when there’s so much fake news around? What about the links between our own news, fake news and good news?

Our Vision

What’s our vision? What are we looking forward to, working towards? What’s our plan for trying to get there? These were the questions that we’ve spent some time thinking and praying about as a church. This sermon was to let people know what we think God is calling us to do.

Christmas 2016

My all-age talk for Christmas morning was about Star Wars and Easter eggs! I’m posting this now in memory of Carrie Fisher, who very sadly died this week.

Advent Sunday 2016

What is the season of Advent is about? How should we respond, inamongst the busyness of this time of year?My sermon for Advent Sunday.

Jesus’ Parables

One of the major way that Jesus taught was through parables. But how do we use those stories? How do we learn from them and allow them to shape us?

Distorted by sin

How do we see ourselves? Do we think that we are better than other people? Worse than them? Do we recognise our weaknesses and our strengths? Do we excuse our sins, or are we too harsh on ourselves? What about a more realistic reflection on what we are like?

Wondering about Easter

Peter went away wondering. The disciples wondered what had happened that first Easter morning and we’re invited to join in with the wondering. What happened? What does it mean? What does it mean for us?

Remembrance 2015

Stories shape our lives, both as individuals and as nations. What stories do we allow to shape our lives? Are they stories of hope or of fear? What do those stories inspire us to do? Those questions were my challenge this Remembrance Sunday.

Re-telling stories

Telling stories is an important part of how the Bible was written. But how reliable were those stories before they were written down? Recent research on the accuracy of Indigenous Australian story-telling shows how reliable it can be!

God our Mother?

Can we talk about God being our mother? Can we use feminine pronouns to refer to God? Is there advantage in doing so, and what might the dangers be? This issue is currently making the news, with reports of calls for the Church of England’s liturgy to be altered to reflect this set of ideas.…

Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday is the (largely ignored) day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. But what does it tell us about our faith? The experience of Holy Saturday is more widespread the we realise and is more important than we often credit. This is my attempt to get us thinking about it.

Presentation of Christ

What does the faith of Simeon and Anna have to teach us? They watched, waited and looked forward to the new things that God was promising. This was part of a service where we also renewed our baptismal vows as a way of looking forward to the new things that God is doing.

Saints

We are all saints! So, what does that mean? What difference should that make? We thought about this on Sunday, when we celebrated All Saints Day, including with a baptism.