Listed below are over 100 sermons preached by Kevin Carey (unless otherwise indicated) since 2006.
Sermons are listed in Liturgical order by default (ie, by year A, B or C; then by Sunday/festival from The First Sunday in Advent through to The Forth Sunday Before Advent (The Feast of Christ the King)). Sermons that are not specific to a particular year or Sunday/festival can be found at the bottom of the list.
If you would prefer to see the most recently-added sermons first, click on "Date Added" below.
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The assent to the conception of Jesus is more important than the mechanics; what is important for us is that Mary and Joseph took an immense risk for what they believed.
Year A, The Forth Sunday of Advent; Added: 19th January 2008
The crude bawling of John the Baptist contrasts with Johannine calm but, nonetheless, the Baptist died for his faith and we must stay faithful to our Creed.
Year A, The Second Sunday of Epiphany; Added: 19th February 2009
The Lamb of God did not take away the sins of the world but put sin back into its proper divine perspective.
Year A, The Third Sunday of Epiphany; Added: 21st January 2008
It is dangerous to confuse what we know about our own wishes with what we do not know about 'God's wishes'; that mistake has led to the Church's undue exercise of power, particularly in sexual matters.
Year A, The First Sunday of Lent; Added: 19th February 2009
Can you remember the last time you held an intimate conversation about a big idea where you asked questions, listened and came away wiser?
Year A, The Second Sunday of Lent; Added: 20th February 2008
Simeon knew that bringing light into the world would mean suffering and death for Jesus; it is because of this light that we are here now.
Year A, The Forth Sunday of Lent (Mothering Sunday); Added: 6th March 2008
There were very good reasons why people changed their minds between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday.
Year A, Palm Sunday; Added: 25th March 2008
The Best of Times, The Worst of Times
Humanity was responsible for the death of Christ; and Christ was responsible for giving himself in Eucharist.
Year A, Maundy Thursday; Added: 7th April 2008
The institutional church has tended to hijack the Holy Spirit as its own private property.
Year A, The Second Sunday of Easter; Added: 7th April 2008
After an era of solidity, the 1960s brought a time of turbulence which persists and tempts us to nostalgia, just as the era of Jesus was nostalgic for David and Solomon; his listeners had not tools for recognising him; are our tools any better or do we rely on 'childish' religion?
Year A, The Fifth Sunday of Easter; Added: 27th March 2007
Church leaders who style themselves "Orthodox" or "Authentic" are endangering the "Anglican Spirit" of toleration by seeking to impose a high degree of confessional detail and oppression. Bishops should be shepherds not security guards. If we think of The Church as an aircraft, it will crash if we put operating procedures above ensuring that we have enough fuel, in the form of love, to stay airborne; all the instruments are on red.
Year A, The Fifth Sunday of Easter; Added: 28th April 2008
The faith required at the end of the Sermon on The Mount is tough stuff, not to be confused with doctrine and its doubts. Faith is emptying ourselves out and recognising God working through us. Faith in God, not human sand, is the good foundation for a house.
Year A, The First Sunday after Trinity; Added: 27th March 2007
Re-Constituting The Royal Priesthood
Although the Church recognises that the harvest is great while the workers are few, it has become sclerotic and inward looking. The Lambeth Conference will only serve to show that the hierarchical model of church has broken down. We need to re-constitute the idea of Peter's "Royal Priesthood".
Year A, The Forth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 15th July 2008
We are not good at welcoming; sadly, that extends to our clergy. They are our prophets but also the most vulnerable among us.
Year A, The Fifth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 27th March 2007
We are not asked to behave like the merchant to obtain the Kingdom pearl; we must rank it higher in our daily lives.
Year A, The Ninth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 7th March 2007
Solomon chose the essential of wisdom; the merchant gave up all for a pearl; in the search for our 'pearl' of the kingdom we have sacrifices to make but we are not alone; we have God and each other.
Year A, The Ninth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 27th March 2007
In the face of recent teenage murders, we are tempted to blame others; but 'outsiders' come from among us. Economic well being and social policy have failed to secure happiness. There will be calls for longer prison sentences and we must resist this but can only do so if we commit ourselves to engagement, love and sacrifice.
Year A, The Ninth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 28th July 2008
Although civic justice is an inevitable consequence of imperfection, Christian justice is reserved to God. We should resist calls for ever more punitive sentences. Although we are privately kind, we are often publicly punitive, even though we are not righteous of ourselves but only through God.
Year A, The Ninth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 28th July 2008
Literal and Literary Biblical Interpretation
There is a long tradition in the English Speaking world of viewing The AV Bible as great literature which contrasts with a requirement that it be understood literally. The accounts of Solomon and a baby and one of Peter's trials can be read at many levels. We should compare a theory of theological stasis with Newman's organic model.
Year A, The Ninth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 28th July 2008
Holy Cross Sunday comes like Summer hail; it was the end of the blue skies by the lake and the journey to Jerusalem. In the return to Autumn routine we must take up our cross.
Year A, The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 7th March 2007
We have lost the physical and psychological shape of the seasons; we have lost the Austen parsonage and ancient controversies; and taking up our cross is different when we do not personally suffer as our forebears did; but preserving moral integrity has become more difficult.
Year A, The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 7th March 2007
Superficial forgiveness helps no-one. We must know the pain and work from there, probably with friends, to a holistic forgiveness, knowing we are sinners and that Christ is in each of us.
Year A, The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 7th March 2007
We live in an unfocused, corrosive miasma of dislike so that our systems become toxic; so forgiveness is a self cleansing for which God has given us unlimited capacity.
Year A, The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 7th March 2007
Most of us are kind without calculation and calculation in human affairs is the source of our trouble; we should be channels for giving as transmission.
Year A, The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 7th March 2007
In recent years there have been attempts to curtail competition because of its harmful effects on self esteem; but the problem is not competition but our attitudes to it. It is a part of our human nature but collaboration is often better. Jesus' love is unlimited but incomplete in us without our exercise of human love; in competition we must love the loser.
Year A, The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2008
Our neighbour is the alien and the stranger; and we love, like the Trinity, like the three colours - red, green blue - which produce all the colours on television; in love we are different from but equal to God.
Year A, The Last Sunday after Trinity; Added: 7th March 2007
The commonest Christian heresy is that the spiritual is higher than the physical: creation is The Father's sacrament; The Church is The Son's Sacrament; and love between humans is The Sacrament of The Spirit.
Year A, The Last Sunday after Trinity; Added: 7th March 2007
We have separated church and state both by saying that religion and politics do not mix and by accepting the 'privatisation' of religion and ethics, narrowing the latter largely to biological issues and exempting finance from ethics. We must turn back to God (as the Jews did when times get hard) but we must not only accept the balance of Jesus' proposition, we must restore to God things we have recently rendered to Caesar.
Year A, The Last Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2008
Richard Harries reminds us that a Christian ethic is one which responds to God's self disclosure in Jesus; this is a much more developed response that that required in Isaiah III. How did we respond to Jesus when economic times are good and have we changed our position now they are bad? The response, in turning back to Jesus, must be personal; we are not detached from the society which has acclaimed greed as a public virtue but now wants regulators not personal responsibility to sort out the problems.
Year A, The Last Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2008
Jesus' mission of love is now remembered in a church of fear; the image of God as a banker misunderstands God's fundamental purpose; no wonder it alienates so many. Matthew, Paul, Augustine and Luther were wrong on this point but that is because theology is a high risk business which must involve all of us.
Year A, The Third Sunday before Advent; Added: 18th November 2008
Matthew's story of the Talents bases our behaviour on fear and greed rather than on love. This strand of theology, elevated by Paul and Augustine, sees humanity as fundamentally corrupt, as opposed to the view of Aquinas that we are fundamentally good. Sebastian Moore poses questions in the context of desire and love which force us to ask where we stand.
Year A, The Third Sunday before Advent; Added: 18th November 2008
Power without service is hollow; Ezekiel and Matthew both show that the powerful must serve; and as subjects we should worship God as brothers and sisters of King Jesus.
Year A, Christ the King (The Sunday next before Advent); Added: 7th March 2007
Matthew's dark account of the Nativity contrast with Luke but they both focus on deprivation and suffering which should encourage is to empathise rather than emphasise difference.
Year A, Feast of the Holy Family; Added: 24th October 2007
The lengthening of the eschatological horizon lowers the intensity of religion but we should live in joyful hope.
Year B, The Third Sunday of Advent; Added: 6th March 2007
Isaiah and John Baptist are lighting pink candles amid the purple; getting ready we have the purple of penitence and the white of Christmas but also the secular red. Let us enjoy them and allow them to inform each other.
Year B, The Third Sunday of Advent; Added: 7th March 2007
Although Mary was taking a terrible risk when she responded to God, she responded, as we should, not in fear but in love. We can only understand her radicalism when we recognise the radicalism of The Word.
Year B, The Forth Sunday of Advent; Added: 23rd December 2008
It is easier to understand the "Two natures, one person" formulation if we begin with the standpoint that it is in our nature to do good rather than to be corrupt because then we can more readily come to terms with Christmas human nature.
Year B, The First Sunday of Christmas; Added: 9th January 2009
I prefer kings to wise men but our generation likes celebrity; but it both blunts are concern for the victims of arbitrary power; and distances us from wisdom. We are not suffering from compassion fatigue as passion fatigue and we confuse cleverness with wisdom. We need to stay in touch with the mystery of the God made child.
Year B, The Epiphany; Added: 6th March 2007
Bishops who speak out against materialism are in a line going back to Samuel; but why do so few say anything? And do we support them or the politicians?
Year B, The Second Sunday of Epiphany; Added: 26th January 2009
Unlike the high profile leadership of Samuel, most of us are called to the quiet ministry of Philip and Nathaniel. If we think that the current economic crisis has nothing to do with us and the Church, we are denying the incarnation.
Year B, The Second Sunday of Epiphany; Added: 26th January 2009
The Church has been under constant attack from "Dualism", ranking Agape above Eros; but both involve risk and vulnerability.
Year B, The Second Sunday of Epiphany; Added: 18th January 2010
One of the vital forces in society is our ability to turn imagination into reality; but this is nothing to God causing the Word to be made Flesh.
Year B, Sixth Sunday of the Year; Added: 19th February 2009
Bonhoeffer & Costly Discipleship
We do not witness to God monastically but in a difficult and corrupted world; but how can we spread the good news if we give up thinking about it when we reach puberty? As Bonhoeffer says, there is no such thing as cheap grace. Managing the Church's decline is not enough.
Year B, The Forth Sunday before Lent; Added: 6th March 2007
Our trouble is that we think we are the New Testament leper and are superior about Naaman; what matters is how we come to God, how we maintain our faith and are prepared to make sacrifices; but, remember, for all his poor behaviour, Naaman was cured.
Year B, The Third Sunday before Lent; Added: 6th March 2007
The New Testament leper's story is relatively simple; but it is difficult being powerful and flawed, like Naaman. We think we are like the leper but we're more like Naaman.
Year B, The Third Sunday before Lent; Added: 6th March 2007
The Word Was Made Flesh prompts us to focus on three ideas: agape is not superior to Eros; the gender of the child is not significant; and the divine and human are precisely replicated in the Eucharist.
Year B, The Second Sunday before Lent; Added: 6th March 2007
We are all dwellings of the divine presence; Lent is a good time for spring cleaning before the Temple of Jesus rises from the dead.
Year B, The Third Sunday of Lent; Added: 6th March 2007
It is not easy to remain constant in the love of God and we should not look for "signs" to support us but always keep the Resurrection in view.
Year B, The Third Sunday of Lent; Added: 24th October 2007
Propitiation and philosophy are not enough; in our contemporary crisis of trust we need to recognise that love is our spiritual DNA.
Year B, The Third Sunday of Lent; Added: 23rd March 2009
At this time of crisis we regret our ability to see emerging paradigms; the Disciples suffered similarly when they went through the Holy Week experience.
Year B, Maundy Thursday; Added: 17th April 2009
Knowing what we know, being able to put all the post Resurrection pieces together, seen through fiery Pentecostal prism, how can we fail to respond?
Year B, Easter Eve; Added: 17th April 2009
Food storage and the accumulation of income and wealth place new obligations on Christian stewardship.
Year B, The Second Sunday of Easter; Added: 9th February 2007
Belief is not set in stone, it takes account of growth and experience but in the 'combat' with science we have adopted some scientific method; belief is provisional, subject to doubt and must be discussed in charity.
Year B, The Second Sunday of Easter; Added: 6th March 2007
The financial crisis is no cause for Christian triumphalism; we have all subscribed to a liberalism expected to achieve social justice without sacrifice; and if we doubt our obligation to achieve it we are worse than Thomas.
Year B, The Second Sunday of Easter; Added: 22nd April 2009
As the Chosen People the Jews necessarily had a problem with difference; but we are equal before God in the power of the Good News.
Year B, The Fifth Sunday of Easter; Added: 9th February 2007
The image of the vine is incarnational; but being a vine requires faithfulness and suffering.
Year B, The Fifth Sunday of Easter; Added: 9th February 2007
The Ascension is not a 'mysterious' adjunct but is a necessary completing of the Incarnational purpose which shows how our spiritual life will be completed.
Year B, Ascension Day; Added: 5th June 2009
If we concentrate too much on "in the beginning" and "ever shall be" we lose the dynamic presence of the Trinity in our lives.
Year B, Trinity Sunday; Added: 9th February 2007
One way of understanding the dynamic of the Trinity is to try and imagine it with one 'person' missing.
Year B, Trinity Sunday; Added: 9th February 2007
The Apostles turned to Jesus in a crisis, as we often do; but prayer is not solely intercessory; we need to build up the discipline of prayer to bring us closer to the pulse of the heart of God.
Year B, The First Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2007
We make promises for all kinds of reasons, sometimes sinful; and the readings contrast the shallowness of human promises with the depth of God's promise. Unlike Herod who couldn't deliver "anything you want" God can. We should concentrate on our own promises to God and not worry how well others appear to be keeping theirs.
Year B, The Forth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2007
The recent move by the House of Bishops to refer the issue of women bishops to the whole General Synod shows how the simple division between sheep and shepherds no longer applies.
Year B, The Sixth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 17th October 2006
The metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep is only of limited value; we are called upon to exercise our consciences and Bishops should be more than 'Of Flock'.
Year B, The Sixth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 22nd July 2009
The Platonic tendency to view man as imperfect rather than created in love to create, has ultimately led to humanism and the subversion of religion into moralism
Year B, The Sixth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 22nd July 2009
The Creator is in the world; The Spirit is in the Church; and the Jesus who was with us in Palestine is with us in Eucharist.
Year B, The Ninth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 17th October 2006
Of the great Reformation reformers, only Cranmer and Zwingli denied the real presence in the Eucharist in which Jesus under-wrote his physical reality. Reformation Protestantism tended to be dualist which accounts for it stance on the relative importance of incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Eucharist.
Year B, The Ninth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 17th October 2006
The solid bourgeoisie are always gong to be at the back of the queue for heaven behind the poor and needy and the only way to improve our place it to serve them.
Year B, The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 17th October 2006
How would we feel if the Government enacted tough new laws on asylum seekers? It is the people we despise most that Jesus loved most. Justice is not good enough; we must love and serve.
Year B, The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 17th October 2006
Our peculiar burden is to be unflinchingly open hearted and open minded in the face of human failure and intolerance. Goodness can be the most seductive sin of all.
Year B, The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 13th November 2006
God's white light of grace passes through us to create earthly colours; the greater danger is not dirt but the contemporary tendency of selecting colours.
Year B, The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 13th November 2006
Although we recognise that we cannot replicate the life of Jesus as the only full human being, we should lead self-critical lives as servants.
Year B, The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 27th October 2009
Although there is no harm in thinking about the 'after-life', we are better off concentrating on loving God and each other in his Kingdom on Earth.
Year B, The Second Sunday before Advent; Added: 18th November 2009
Although we are tempted to live in a state of nostalgia and fear of the future, hope calls on us to live for the present.
Year B, The Second Sunday before Advent; Added: 18th November 2009
Imagining heaven is impossible but it is the kingdom - thinking of Luke - of the lost sheep and the Good Samaritan.
Year B, Christ the King (The Sunday next before Advent); Added: 9th February 2007
The purpose of the kingly metaphor is that it points us beyond ourselves to the limitless mystery of God; The Kingdom is not an escape from earth but a lifelong embracing of it.
Year B, Christ the King (The Sunday next before Advent); Added: 9th February 2007
We have three reasons for celebrating Christ The King: His unconditional love for us; our thankful re-dedication of all that we have done in the last year; and our anticipation of The Kingdom.
Year B, Christ the King (The Sunday next before Advent); Added: 24th October 2007
The problem with advent is that this time of quiet runs in parallel with the restless preparations for Christmas; the purple of the Church competes with the red of the superstore.
Year C, The Second Sunday of Advent; Added: 9th February 2007
Remember God, remember yourselves before you made your straight ways crooked, remember love.
Year C, The Second Sunday of Advent; Added: 9th February 2007
We tend to be sentimental about the family, confining our care to what is ours; but the Holy Family offers a more radical template.
Year C, The First Sunday of Christmas; Added: 5th January 2010
Words change their meaning through time (Vico) and those who do not accept this need to say when changes of meaning ceased. Reform and Mainstream are apparently rigid about meaning but question the Biblical meaning of church authority.
Year C, The Third Sunday of Epiphany; Added: 25th January 2007
The precariousness and warmth of the candle in contrast to the light bulb causes us to think about our creatureliness.
Year C, The Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Candlemas); Added: 5th February 2010
Christianity is the religion of the first person, not in boasting but in affirmation. Our great prayers are written this way. Matthew's Sermon the Mount is "they" whereas Luke's on The Plain is "you".
Year C, Sixth Sunday of the Year; Added: 12th February 2007
The Outrageous Demands of Jesus
Church attendance and obedience are not enough. What kind of "fishers of men" are we? We must witness in our daily lives and then we will better understand Isaiah's reply to the question: "Who shall I send?"
Year C, The Third Sunday before Lent; Added: 24th October 2007
Although we often think of contemporary art as self indulgent, in thinking about a prophetic church we can learn from its self-criticism.
Year C, The Second Sunday of Lent; Added: 5th March 2010
In order to understand Jesus the Priest and King we must first understand him as our Prophet.
Year C, The Second Sunday of Lent; Added: 5th March 2010
Jesus the gardener is interested in scrubby as well as opulent trees but his message only makes sense if we recognise that he has left us in charge of the garden.
Year C, The Third Sunday of Lent; Added: 27th March 2007
The Resurrection is God's irreversible promise to humanity that with Grace we will attain everlasting life (Rahner). We have problems with eschatological perspective; we think it will never happen; but it will!
Year C, The Fifth Sunday of Lent; Added: 27th March 2007
I have some sympathy for Thomas; but we know that something cataclysmic happened between Good Friday and Pentecost, that his Disciples believed that Jesus was truly present with them and that nobody doubted the significance of these events.
Year C, The Second Sunday of Easter; Added: 23rd April 2007
Jesus asked Peter if he loved him not because he did not know the answer but because he wanted Peter to continue to ask himself that question. Love is not deal making it goes and it goes and it goes. The more space you make in love the more we can make and the more there is for us.
Year C, The Third Sunday of Easter; Added: 23rd April 2007
John's "New Commandment", driven by the Holy Spirit within Peter, brings about a revolution, the recognition that non Jews can be Christians. Grace is our means of living the Commandment, in spite of the deluge of temptation.
Year C, The Fifth Sunday of Easter; Added: 24th October 2007
Peace is not an absence nor an escape into emptiness, it is being open to the Spirit, imitating Jesus and making an unconditional offer to God. When we exchange The Peace it is not ours but the peace of the Cross.
Year C, The Sixth Sunday of Easter; Added: 24th October 2007
The difference between human and divine love is that humans talk about beloveds but don't share them; but the quintessential desire of the spiritual lover is to share.
Year C, The Seventh Sunday of Easter (Sunday after Ascension Day); Added: 28th May 2007
King David and Mary Magdalen, on one interpretation, an ex prostitute who sat at the feet of Jesus, are linked not by their sin but by their penitence.
Year C, The First Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2007
The stories of Bathsheba and the anointing woman are linked by a spurious implication of female allurement and adultery; but they are really about power and exploitation.
Year C, The Second Sunday after Trinity; Added: 3rd September 2007
We are all flawed and God knows best but prayer should still be argumentative.
Year C, The Eighth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 3rd September 2007
Three rules; retain goods if this enables our better lives; learn some economics of cause and effect; take the issue personally.
Year C, The Ninth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 3rd September 2007
The Law was not made by men but given on Mount Sinai; as Fragments of Jesus, in observing it we should not care what other people think, particularly in acting kindly.
Year C, The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2007
We may no longer believe in sin and the devil or a Sacrament of Reconciliation but it is so easy to slip away from our relationship with God and we need the corporate support of the church in facing up to penitence.
Year C, The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2007
Today, simple choices are beyond us: sometimes we are Dives, sometimes Lazarus; we should never forget the power and wealth we have.
Year C, The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2007
Is prayer the last taboo? Prayer is the religious equivalent of going to the gym; it should be full of "lively hope"; but there is no connection between asking and receiving.
Year C, The Twentieth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2007
We are both sinners and Pharisees: sin makes us equal under God and we exercise power as Pharisees; we have to be conscious of the first in fulfilling the second which is an honourable profession.
Year C, The Last Sunday after Trinity; Added: 24th October 2007
The mystery of the heavenly life encompasses body and should, thereby doing credit to the body; just as The Word stretches towards the divine, so the Sacrament of the Eucharist brings the divine to us.
Year C, The Third Sunday before Advent; Added: 24th October 2007
We cannot think about war now the way we did 100 years ago; the default position must be peace, with all the unpleasantness that goes with it. The red poppy has been lukewarm to the peace agenda.
Year C, The Second Sunday before Advent; Added: 19th January 2008
We should see penitence and hope as integral to each other as we prepare to greet Jesus as our earthly guest
The Third Sunday of Advent; Added: 5th January 2010
Samuel and Paul are key vocational figures respectively in the Old and New Testaments from whom we can learn that we all have a vocation.
The Second Sunday of Epiphany; Added: 18th January 2010
Although Christians have their differences, the Gospel of salvation, the patient and generous Gospel, says that Jesus came to save the whole world.
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Candlemas); Added: 19th February 2009
The cosmic event of the Crucifixion emphasises our propensity for doing evil and God's unlimited capacity for doing good; and it is the Cross that binds the incarnation and Resurrection together. Salvation is for all mankind but Christians must pay what Bonhoeffer calls "The cost of discipleship".
The Fifth Sunday of Lent; Added: 19th February 2009
When Mary broke open the jar of ointment she was breaking open all her pent up richness and poverty.
Monday of Holy Week; Added: 6th March 2007
We know more about the pragmatic Martha and fanciful Mary than their brother who died, was raised and then threatened by the religious authorities.
Monday of Holy Week; Added: 27th March 2007
Integrity is not the same as consistency. Judas saw Jesus as the Grand Old Duke of York whereas he wanted a ruthless and consistent line.
Tuesday of Holy Week; Added: 6th March 2007
During this week of sorrow we are asked to celebrate with joy the birth of the universal Church.
Tuesday of Holy Week; Added: 27th March 2007
Humility means putting ourselves in a right relationship with God, recognising we can do nothing of ourselves; Judas got his relationship with Jesus out of proportion.
Wednesday of Holy Week; Added: 6th March 2007
Judas and Victorian Triumphalism
Judas had earthly ambitions for Jesus; do not we also hanker after the apparent Church glory of the Victorian era; perhaps we are now in need of going back to a 1st Century mind-set.
Wednesday of Holy Week; Added: 27th March 2007
Except for Martha and Mary, the women served and said nothing; from the time of his discovery among the elders of the Temple, Mary said little to a son who seemed difficult; but as she stood at the Cross, did she really know that something would happen?
Good Friday; Added: 27th March 2007
From the sunny days in Galilee the life of Jesus grew ever darker until the Crucifixion; now, in the last seconds, he knew he was not abandoned.
Good Friday; Added: 27th March 2007
Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea
In the face of oppressive orthodoxy Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea helped but was it enough; and what did they think would happen after the burial?
Good Friday; Added: 27th March 2007
Judas & Peter: Fraud and Self Delusion
The denial of Judas is more stark than that of Peter but often self delusion is as dangerous as outright wrong.
Tuesday of Easter Week; Added: 27th March 2007
The same quality that makes us strive makes us discontented but, unlike the Jews in the wilderness, we have been brought home in the Resurrection and fed with the Eucharist.
The Forth Sunday of Easter; Added: 9th February 2007
Although we often see the world as hostile, our approach to it should not be like the weight lifter's snatch but should be more like taking part in a tug-of-war team.
The Fifth Sunday of Easter; Added: 27th March 2007
We need to give beyond what is comfortable but there is no giving without taking; we must be brave for Christ but vulnerable to him.
The Fifth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 27th March 2007
The distinction between good and bad is not clear; when stewards act badly on our behalf the responsibility is ours.
The Ninth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 27th March 2007
Ancient learning involved dissecting text rather than comparing texts. The 'Enlightenment' down-plays the reality of mystery and the primacy of love.
The Twentieth Sunday after Trinity; Added: 13th November 2006
Although we think of saints as different in degree, they are exemplars with a degree of difference from us.
All Saints' Day; Added: 11th November 2009
Church and Mission in a Postmodern World
Mission is not primarily concerned with outsiders but with the people we know and it needs to be based on Word and Sacrament not doctrinal tidiness; and this means taking seriously Peter's concept of the "Royal Priesthood". People do not want to know what we believe but how God has changed our lives. To succeed we will need to understand better The Holy Spirit within us.
The Forth Sunday before Advent; Added: 19th December 2008
Postmodernism and the Death of Doctrine
Steve Hollinghurst's exposition of Christianity in a Postmodern age presages the end of doctrine and priesthood; it certainly means the end of most church buildings. If we are to succeed in mission we must appeal to personal experience and get free of doctrinal red tape.
The Third Sunday before Advent; Added: 19th December 2008
Public life is short of humility and silence, grounded in an understanding of human nature. IN thinking about war, we should distinguish infallibility and integrity, remember that love and force are not incompatible and we should avoid a superior moral tone.
Added: 13th November 2006
Mary is the icon of the potential of Christ her son’s redeeming grace; the Spirit is always with her.
Mary and the Holy Spirit; Added: 27th March 2007
Even though we have unprecedented control over our lives, we are prone to victimhood. We have devalued the word "love"; Jesus died because of who he was and what we are; he was a victim of his own love. We are still chopping down the tree and forging the nails.
Added: 24th October 2007
Benedict, not the founder but the father of monasticism based on stability, reform of manners and obedience; but what we need to think about today is hospitality.
Benedict of Nursia (Abbot of Monte Cassino, Father of Western Monasticism, c.550); Added: 24th October 2007
As Christians, instead of catastrophe theory (the butterfly flapping its wings) we have constructive practice because the Cross teaches us that every tiny decision we make affects the whole world.
Added: 24th October 2007
Autumn Sermons & Prayers: Lord of The Feast
In our age of plenty we find it difficult to understand the contrast between the feast and the routine. The celebration in Nehemiah is a liberation party of the theological imagination. To restore feasting we must do a little fasting.
Added: 18th November 2007
Autumn Sermons & Prayers: Lord of Contentment
We do not cast our bread upon the waters as if we were a fisherman baiting his hook but because we were made to love for God's sake. Our contentment should lie in our possession of bread and our God given capacity to commit it to the waters.
Added: 18th November 2007
Autumn Sermons & Prayers: Lord of The Saints
The saints help us to make reality out of the very unreal promise of eternal life, giving a glimpse of how a life of hope can be lived in an imperfect world.
Added: 18th November 2007
The least we can do for the oppressed and for ourselves as the oppressed in waiting, is to refuse to collude in our own downfall.
Added: 20th February 2008
Sermons and Prayers for Lambeth
Reflections on the Forthcoming Lambeth Conference (2008)
Added: 15th July 2008
Although Lawrence is best known for his supposed good humour as he was being roasted to death, his exemplary life of service as a Deacon, Sacristan and librarian, culminated in his decapitation as an act of loyalty to his brother The Pope. We should heed his example, committing ourselves to Christian service, not relying on secular liberalism.
Laurence of Rome (Deacon, Martyr, 258); Added: 24th October 2008
A distinction needs to be drawn between Christian art and the Christian view of art. Attitudes to art largely reflect attitudes towards the relationship between the divine and human: one model portrays humanity as 'inferior' to God whereas the other considers this to be a category error bordering on idolatry and looks at incarnational humanity as fundamentally creative. Although much art is necessarily concerned with love and death, a large corpus deals with suffering; and for this reason we should occasionally rejoice.
Added: 24th October 2008
Things are rarely as they seem and we should not confuse the caricature of the pantomime with real life.
Added: 18th November 2008
The Concordance of Divine and Erotic Love
Because of a series of accidents, Christianity has sought to exercise control over erotic rather than economic behaviour and has frequently degenerated into dualism. Human and divine love (Eros and Agape) are symbiotic, if not isomorphic.
Laurence of Rome (Deacon, Martyr, 258); Added: 19th December 2008
Praxis is better than exegesis, to love rather than to write about it. We are better than we think: only if we love all creation; if love is corporate; and if it embraces fusion and creating space for the beloved.
Added: 24th February 2009
Protestant dualism and 'election' rule out saints but this confronts the conclusion of the Nicene Creed and presents Mary as an anomaly.
The Blessed Virgin Mary (The Assumption of Our Blessed Lady into Heaven); Added: 8th September 2009
This sermon was presented in an informal format to children, not as written here.
Added: 15th October 2009
In a paradoxical way, Dawkins is a gift to Christianity but we are failing to exploit our opportunity.
Added: 15th October 2009
Added: 18th January 2010