Author Archives: Ian Poulton

A Sermon for Palm Sunday, 13th April 2025

For the fainthearted . . .

As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road Luke 19:36

How much of our life is spent travelling roads? How many of our memories are connected to roads?

As Jesus rides into Jerusalem and looks down at the road strewn with cloaks to welcome him, what roads might he have remembered? Journeying is often a time for thinking and in the many. many hours Jesus would have spent walking the roads there must have been countless things he saw and heard and had cause to ponder. As …

A Sermon for Sunday, 6th April 2025

For the fainthearted . . .

‘Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair’. John 12:3

Being honest, I don’t remember sermons very often, I would be hard pressed to tell you what I had said myself last Sunday, but I remember a sermon I heard in in a college in Bristol during the first week I was there, some eighteen years ago.

On Wednesday evenings the college gathered for Holy Communion and the preacher on that first week I was there was the …

A Sermon for Sunday, 30th March 2025

For the fainthearted . . .

“Son, you are always with me” Luke 15:31

On this Mothering Sunday, the word “mama” gives an acronym to help people to remember four words from the story of the Prodigal Son: man, anything, music, and always.

The four words help thoughts about those who care for families.

Thinking about the letter “M” for man, there are the words from Saint Luke Chapter 15 Verse 11, “There was a man who had two sons.”

Jesus does not tell his listeners much about the man in the story, other than …

A Sermon for Sunday, 23rd March 2025

For the fainthearted . . .

”  . . . unless you repent, you will all perish as they did”. Luke 13:3

On a wall of a building where Jews hid to try to escape the Nazi persecution were scratched the words, “I believe in God, even when he is silent.” It was an astonishing declaration of faith, that despite the overwhelming evidence against God, the writer still believed.

In Saint Luke Chapter 13, Jesus responds to those who would have questions about the suffering of innocent people, to those who would have questions about why …

A Sermon for Sunday, 16th March 2025

For the fainthearted . . .

“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” Luke 13:34

Foxes, hens and chicks – Jesus spoke in the language of the ordinary people.

“Go and tell that fox for me”, he says in Saint Luke Chapter 13 Verse 32. Calling him a fox, Jesus is speaking about Herod in less than complimentary terms. Comparing cunning and devious behaviour to that of a fox goes back a long way.

Foxes in the Bible are not often encountered and when …

A Sermon for Sunday, 9th March 2025

For the fainthearted . . .

” . . . where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” Luke 4:2

The practical, the powerful, and the personal, the three temptations the devil puts before Jesus.. The temptations are very clever, very beguiling, but temptations are like that, if they were not they would not be temptations, they would be things that could be rejected without a second thought.

What might we learn about ourselves in these conversations between the devil and Jesus?

Jesus is hungry, he is famished and the devil …