I have discerned, with the support of my Bishops Philip and Jill, that it is :me for me to step down as Vicar of the United Benefice. I am enormously grateful for the opportunity that I have had to serve here over the last two years. I have met some amazing people, and been encouraged in many ways. I’m par:cularly grateful to have seen an enormous growth in lay leadership with so many people coming forward and thriving as they have taken on new roles serving God’s Church.I came here to learn, to serve, and to love, and I want to thank you all for all the many ways you have enabled me also to grow. AGer 10 very full years raising my 3 boys whilst studying, serving as an ordinand, then curate, then Incumbent, I will be taking a sabba:cal from parish ministry and exploring some avenues for academic study and chaplaincy, perhaps in the educa:on sector. Our family hope to find a new home in Warton, and con:nue to be a part of the village community. I hope to con:nue my involvement in educa:on and sustainability work here.My final service as Vicar of the Benefice will be the St John’s Patronal Fes:val on December 28th. I hope you will be able to join me then to give thanks for all that God has been doing in our Benefice, and to commit the future to Him.Please pray for me and for my family as we con:nue to follow Jesus and be faithful to His call. I truly believe this is God’s purpose – both for me and for the Benefice – and so though there are different emo:ons today, I want to invite you to once again place your trust in Him, trus:ng that ‘He can do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine’ Ephesians 3:20.Mother Alice1st Sunday of Advent November 30th 2025
Sermon for the 1st Sunday of Advent 2025Amongst my youngest son’s collec:on of drawings and pictures brought back from Forest School last week, I found one par:cularly special drawing that caught my aCen:on. It was :tled ‘Theo’s world’, and it had on it a picture of a house in one corner and a picture of a tree in the other. Between the house and the tree were two lines, one straight and one that went round in a bend. I realised that he had drawn, with remarkably accuracy, a map showing our route to Forest School up at Leighton Hall. The straight line was the Coach Road, the route we take if we’re running a liCle late and need a direct way up, and the line in the big bend was Hyning Road, the route we normally take up through Hyning Wood to Yealand Conyers and then up Peters Hill. I always smile when we get there because my dad’s name is Peter Hill. What I saw was the clarity and confidence that my son had to orient himself. These are Theo’s places, these are his ways.As we begin this new Church year and our beau:ful season of Advent we are faced with a similar opportunity for a roadmap spiritually. We’re all got our new lec:onary, we’ve all got the rota, we know what Christmas is going to look like. And some of the more giPed planners in our congrega:ons have already got their 2026 roadmaps well underway – with dates and :mes and ideas and considerable planning. It is necessary and indeed useful to be able to see clearly and to see ahead.Except that we need to hold some tension. Because all of our readings today invite us to press pause, even perhaps to press stop on the whole thing. And to acknowledge that in tension with our hopes and expecta:ons and our desire for certainty and the confidence of having a plan, God’s ways are not our ways. We live daily with the things that are known and the things that are yet unknown. I’ve been reading a beau:ful book by the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Mariann Budde, who speaks about driving in a fog – with just enough light to illuminate sufficiently for us to keep going, but with sufficient darkness and obscurity to ensure cau:on and humility of speed. I really sense that. Because God is God and we are not God. We can never know His ways, there is always mystery, and by His grace a slow and steady unfurling of His plans and purposes in only the way that we are able to somehow grasp them and understand as best we can for now.I know that feels so deeply uncomfortable but it is the paradox at the heart of faith – that we trust in God, and yet we do not fully know God. It is Paul’s image in his first leCer to the Corinthians of seeing now through the mirror darkly, knowing that then we shall see face to face. It is the refrain in Psalm 42 of puZng our trust in God, knowing that we will yet give Him thanks for all that will come to pass. It is Minnie Louise Haskins invita:on at the turn of the new year to put our hands into the hand of God, knowing that He will show us a beCer way.And so the invita:on is to bring before God our honesty and our vulnerability, because through those postures a space opens up. A space between heaven and earth, a space in our bodies and souls, a space where once again, laying down our wills and our plans and our purposes, we can whisper ‘Come, Lord Jesus’. Come, into our sorrows and our despair. Come, in the darkness of our lives and our world. Come, into your Church. Make us humble,give us eyes to see and ears to hear. May we be the new crea:on that you have made us to be. May we lay aside all that burdens and hinders us and fix our eyes on you, Jesus.I feel the Lord promp:ng me to say through Advent this year that ‘Hope looks different’. Because I think it is so easy to seCle into tradi:on, because it is comfortable and oh so familiar. We like tradi:on because it reassures us of a certainty which I do not think we can own. It is a lie to say that all is well, that our Ways of being and doing are aligned fully with the God’s Ways of being and doing. I really want to pray that though we do have our plans and we will do what we normally do, that there is space to be, as CS Lewis calls it, Surprised by Hope. That our posture through Advent is one of openness to the ways of God so that through our plans and purposes we allow thank chink to let the Light in. And maybe even more than than. In our repentance, can we lament, with Isaiah, the ways that are so dark. Causing so much misery in the world. In our intercessions can we pray with Paul for the Church to wake up, and to respond with urgency to our need for a renewed commitment to living lives worthy of our call? And in the Gospel that we proclaim, can we speak confidently about the Hope we have in Jesus, he truth of the promise that we have that He can come amongst us and He will come again?Come, Lord Jesus, we pray. S:r us up, break us open, make us to be hearers and doers of your Word as we await your coming amongst us. We want to make room in our hearts for you. We want to see your paths and your Ways unfolding on our spiritual roadmaps. We put again, afresh, our every Hope in you.Amen
Sermon for Parish Gift Day 2025 – 1st after TrinityReadings: Isaiah 65.1-9; Psalm 22.19-28; Galatians 3.23-end; Luke 8.26-39. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. AmenLast week as we reflected on God as Trinity, we concluded that the Trinity is not a puzzle to be solved, but a relationship with God that we are invited into. Today as we hold our Parish Gift Day we have the opportunity to reflect on how we respond to God’s love. To notice how God’s love changes us, both our thoughts and our behaviours around giving, and also to reflect together on how God is inviting us to use our resources at this time to serve His Church and His mission in this place.I don’t know what comes to mind when you hear the word ‘offering’ or ‘collection’. Our language around money and giving can sometimes feel dull, heavy, awkward or embarrasing even. It lacks joy and gratitude. Churches are not places where people are queuing up to give money!Some of this is cultural – British society is traditionally not as philanthropic as other places where people recognise their responsibility for cultural capital. Some of this is misinformation – I count myself as one of many who thought for a number of years that the Church somehow was paid for by the state. It is not. Some of this is logistical – are we supposed to give every week in every service we attend? Are we supposed to give monthly or annually? What is the best form of giving – in the plate as a physical offering at the same time as the physical offerings of bread and wine are offered to God, or virtually in a more secure, efficient, and yet somehow less personal way? Some of this is a confusion around money verses other forms of resource. We may give our time to the church, our gifts and our energies to the church, in place of or as well as a financial offering. Some of us may have less money and more time, for instance. All of these things need to be considered.But some of this is also spiritual. We may not be sure why we are giving, and so we may not be giving at all. If we have not received the grace of God, the generosity and blessing beyond all measure that God has given us in Jesus Christ, how can we possibly be growing in generosity ourselves?Church is of course not at all like a shop because it is a total inversion of that process. In shops we give money and then receive something in return. Here we give because we have first received. Our gift is a response to what we first have received from God. And our gift is a free, offering of love and gratitude to the God who in Jesus Christ has won for us eternal life, freedom from sin and death, an everlasting relationship with God our Father, and a Church which through every generation proclaims this good news, providing space to worship together, enjoy fellowship together, and commit to making the good news known. We give because we are overwhelmed with gratitude to God, and because we have hope in the mission of His Holy Church.In the Old Testament, the Levitical code set out the 5 forms offering and sacrifice that God’s people were required to make. These were presented so that the people could say sorry to God, and receive atonement. But as Isaiah acknowledges, it was perfectly possible to make these offerings without any real change of heart – and so the law failed because people thought that obedience to the law was enough to reconcile them with God, rather than understanding that these offerings were intended as an outward marker of an inward change of repentance. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians we see him explain this, and celebrate that now by the blood of Jesus this old way of making sacrifices for the atonement of sin has been replaced by a new covenant of love for all people, Jew and Gentile.So the shift is that our offerings are not about our sin but about our gratitude. There is no offering we could ever make that could cleanse us from sin in the way that Jesus has. His sacrifice is made so that our lives can bear witness to the joy and freedom of life we have in Him. And our offering therefore becomes a joyful, grateful response to what He has done for us.This is so evident in our Gospel reading today. Our own personal testimonies may not be so dramatic, but each of us here today has had an encounter with Jesus, each of us in our own way knows His power to heal, to liberate, to completely change our lives. And so the command that Jesus gives to the man who has been released from demon possession is this: Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you. And this is the same command to us. Go and tell others. Go and live a changed life. A life full of gratitude and hope and love! Let your life speak. Let your heart speak. Let your wallet speak of your gratitude to God!Today we are very specifically asking you to review your giving to God’s Church, and where possible increase what you give, ensuring giving is efficient and regular. It is also a good opportunity to consider leaving a legacy to the Church. We plan to do this at least annually, and I do encourage you to respond boldly and in faith. Very often we develop giving habits which can remain unchanged for a long time, but our giving should reflect our situation, both our financial situation and our spiritual condition. Today you may reflect either that in this season you would like to give more or in a different way, or indeed that at the moment you need to reduce your offering for a while. Today you may feel so overwhelmed by gratitude to God for His faithfulness in your particular life situation, that your heart is moved to give a single additional gift. I cannot convict you of anything, only God can do that. And there is no judgement in giving because only God sees our hearts.I do need to impress on you that there are significant costs of ministry and mission. Our buildings, our ministers, our resources for worship, our community outreach – have physical costs associated. All of these are detailed in annual reports and on diocesan websites for complete accountability and transparency and our treasurers I’m surewould be happy to assist with any questions you have about the cost of ministry in this place.But if nothing else, my greatest prayer for today is a shift of attitude. From seeing money in Church as something which is scarce, something that feels burdensome, heavy or meaningless, into something full of joy, full of gratitude for what Jesus has done for you, and celebration and hope for the mission of God’s Holy Church.I would like to honour all those who assist with the finances of our church, those who count, our treasurers, our gift aid secretaries, our independent examiners of accounts. I pray God’s blessing over your ministries, and ask that you too will be renewed with a sense of trust in God’s bountiful provision and a hope for the future of His Church.As I close I offer you this prayer of St Ignatius of LoyolaLord, teach me to be generous.Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost,to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest,to labour and not to ask for reward, save that of knowing that I do your will.Amen.
