Sermons

Many of us know from experience that the waters of life are not always calm. Things can get decidedly choppy.

A number of us have had the experience of Jesus being with us and looking after us in the stormy times. But others would say that those times have been even harder because Jesus has felt absent.

Today’s Bible story is for everyone who’s known a season when their life is like rowing into the wind. And for everyone who will ever have such a season. Which means all of us.

What do you make of the person of Jesus? To many he was little more than one of the great figures of history. A good teacher, who said some memorable and wise things. Some doubt he even existed. To Christians, he’s much more than a good teacher. He’s our Lord and our God. Our Saviour and our King.

To work out what you make of him, you’d need to look at the evidence. It’s something many people have never done. Look at the evidence for Jesus’ claims.

What did you make of that reading? It’s a strange story. One that some people find hard to relate to.

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.