Sermons

I have four Sundays left with you before we head up north, so I have to decide what message I would like to leave you with as the time comes to move on. If you've been with us for any length of time, hopefully you have by now observed that as I prepare for a Sunday morning, I don't sit down and say, "What would I like to say on Sunday?" nor even, "Here's the Bible reading that will be read during the service—what would I like to say based on that reading?"

I enormously enjoy reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles series of books written by an author called Bernard Cornwell, which has been renamed the Last Kingdom series after the title of the first book of the series. I’ve also enjoyed watching — it’s set in the late 9^th century, early 10^th century in England, when groups of Danish Viking raiders were crossing over from Scandinavia to the east coast of England and trying to establish a kingdom here.

Jesus tells what would have been a very familiar story for the people of his day. It’s a favourite story of mine in the Gospels. In fact, just before lockdown, I had an assembly all set up, ready to take into Kemsing Primary School to do, and then I wasn’t able to go in because they had to shut the school. I still have, in a tray in my study, a folder with all my visual aids prepared — even a packet of Blu-Tack — and I’m not hopeful that I will get to go and do that assembly that’s been prepared before I go. But you never know. It’s great fun, this story.

Following Jesus Can Be Extremely Costly

In the Bible reading I gave us just now, I deliberately included at the beginning the end of the reading we looked at last time. I thought it'd be helpful just to set the context for us. Jesus predicts how, for Peter, following Jesus will lead him to an extremely painful and involuntary death.

Can I Trust You?

That’s the right question to ask whenever you are given an amazing sales pitch. The past few weeks we’ve been working our way through John chapters 20 and 21, talking about Jesus rising from the dead. We’ve said that we won’t get to see Jesus alive for ourselves, so we are going to have to trust him based on the fact that his first disciples did see him alive. We’re going to have to take their word for it.

Jesus tells another story about some familiar scenes from everyday life to tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like. Jesus has come, he’s king of this world, the invitation to follow him as king now stands. What is life like in a world where that invitation to follow Jesus is there? And this time the story is based around a wedding party.

There are four stages of the story, and each stage tells us something about what life in this age is like.

What Does It Look Like to Live After the Time of Jesus on Earth?

It’s all well and good to see in the four Gospels how people followed Jesus while he was with them, but what about us as we live between Jesus’s first and second comings? Physically he’s absent from us. What does he leave us to do, to get on with? And if you’re not yet following Jesus, what would it look like for you to do so at this point in history?

It’s good to meet a proper sceptic.

The past couple of Sundays we’ve been talking together about Jesus rising from the dead, and today it’s time to ask, “So what?” Two weeks ago we went with Mary, Peter and John to Jesus’s tomb to see the stone that had been removed from the entrance and the linen cloth left behind in two distinct neat piles. Last week we were with Mary Magdalene looking inside the tomb, where she saw two angels where Jesus’s body had been, and when she then turned around and wonderfully met Jesus himself, alive.

We reached the story where Mary Magdalene meets the risen Jesus.