Religion – For the fainthearted . . .

A Sermon for Sunday, 19th January 2025

‘He thus revealed his glory and his disciples put their faith in him.’ John 2:11

There is no such thing as Blue Monday, it was invented as a marketing ploy for a holiday company. Nevertheless, there will be lots of people tomorrow saying it’s blue Monday. It’s said to be the worst day of the year, Christmas is long past, credit card bills have to be paid, payday is at least a week a day.

There’s not much glory on a grey day in January. If someone came and asked …

Rude religion

Lines from David Copperfield came to me forty years after I might have used them

Growing up accustomed to the gentle tolerance implicit in the beliefs of people in rural Somerset, moving to Northern Ireland in 1983 came as a severe shock. Of course, we had all heard of the Reverend Ian Paisley and his ilk, but there was a tendency to imagine that the views he expressed were the rants of an extreme minority and that the majority of ordinary people were reasonable, attached to a rational view of …

A Sermon for Sunday, 12th January 2025

” . . . when Jesus also had been baptized” Luke 3:21

The letters A, B, C and D can help thoughts about the story of the baptism of Jesus: A for “all”, B for “baptized”, C for “Christ”, and D for “dove.

A is for “all.” Saint Luke uses the word “all” three times in the verses of the Gospel reading: “all were questioning in their hearts concerning John”, says Verse 15; “John answered all of them,” says Verse 16; and “when all the people were baptized”, says Verse …

Tell me the old, old story

The early episodes of the television series Heartbeat seemed to treat of more serious themes than those more recent. There was a comic element in Bill Maynard’s character Claude Greengrass but the situations faced by PC Rowan seemed more rooted in the realities of rural life.

Religion was still a part of the weekly life of ordinary people. In Heartbeat country, religion meant ‘chapel’. In our village in the 1960s, there were three chapels and two churches. Two of the chapels still function at a reduced level, the church just …

A Sermon for Sunday, 5th January 2025

‘Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.’ John 1:17

There is a always a sense of thanks to God for reaching the beginning of a new year.

For Anglicans, the words of the prayer of General Thanksgiving from the Book of Common Prayer express that sense of God with his people through time: ‘Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all men. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, …

A Sermon for Sunday, 29th Dedember 2024

“Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” Luke 2:41

The story of the boy Jesus in Jerusalem is a troubling one. “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” he asks, in Seventeenth Century English.

How did his parents not even notice he was missing? Many of the people of rural communities were part of large, extended families and to have gone off for a day would have not been unusual, but parents would always have known with which member of the family …