Sermons

A talk from 9 Lessons and Carols in 2017.

The world can be a dark place.

It’s been quite a year. I searched the internet for newspaper headlines from 2017. I got many screens full, from all over the world.

Here are some:
Suspected cop killer shot dead.
British meat in horse hormone scandal.
Carnage at pop concert.
NHS cuts 15000 beds in 6 years.
UK relations with Russia at all-time low.
Trump ready to strike Kim’s nuclear sites.
Some victims of tower blaze may never be identified.

Let me ask you a question. Is history haphazard, or is it going somewhere? Is it like watching tennis, as the ball of power gets passed from one nation to the other, and then back? Or is it like going on a journey? For all the twists and turns in the road, we’re heading to a destination?

This effects how you live. If history is haphazard, there’s no more to life than making the most of the hand you get dealt. If history is going somewhere, your life needs to line up with where things are going.

Life can be tough. And we come to God, come to church, read the Bible, wanting to feel better. And often we do. But sometimes, God raises our hopes that things will get better, not just that we’ll feel better. We have to live in a world where there’s a mismatch. A mismatch between the promises of God and the realities of life. A mismatch between sermons that invite us to trust God and a life that feels like it’s falling apart anyway.

Daniel knew all about this. He was in captivity, in Babylon. And then he opened his Bible.

On Thursday, we had our monthly church prayer meeting.

We prayed for Christians in Egypt. Here’s a report from one website:

Coptic Christians in Egypt do not accept the condition of submission imposed on Christians in Islamic societies: they continue to build churches and even promote television networks to spread the Christian proclamation. This is why they must be attacked as "infidel fighters", and their churches must be blown up. This is, in short, the message of instigation.

Sometimes, the world appears to be utterly chaotic. Evil can appear unchecked. It can seem as if there’s no-one at the driving wheel, no-one at the controls. History is one big runaway train.

A sermon given on Remembrance Sunday 2017.

2017 has had us worried at times. We’ve watched the tensions between the United States and North Korea ratchet up. The fear that any actual war could turn nuclear is very sobering.

This is the most important service we hold each year – our quarterly combined services. It’s such a precious thing to come all together, to worship God as one church. There are good reasons why we don’t do it every week, but it’s vital that we come together, once in a while.

Indeed, the two PCCs have been going through the process of formally merging our two parishes. It is increasingly the case that our two churches work together in partnership, so we’re cementing that partnership for the generations to come. That’s a really good thing to be doing.

This is one of the most famous stories in the Bible. Daniel in the lions’ den.

It’s a story that fascinates, captures the imagination. Children love it, because it’s about lions, loins that roar. Adults love it, because it’s a story extremely well told, and a dramatic rescue miracle.

But it can be hard to relate to. It’s a good story; it’s entertaining. But how does a one-off, miraculous rescue of hero named Daniel speak to the lives of ordinary Christians like us?

They say that wise people learn from their mistakes. And really wise people learn from the mistakes of other people, without having to make them themselves.

Today, we come to one of the great cautionary tales in the Bible, Belshazzar’s banquet. It’s in the Bible so that we might learn from Belshazzar’s mistake. We’re going to look at what his mistake was, and what we need to learn if we are to avoid repeating it.

Personal testimony can be very powerful.

We’re motivated by the stories of brave men and women, who have struggled against the odds, and come through.

As Christians, we have Christian testimony. It’s good to hear Christian men and women tell stories of their God. As they’ve battled through illness, unemployment, addiction, personal sin, they can look back and testify how God helped them, sustained them, got them through.