A place to read recent sermons from our Sunday morning services

Bible Sunday and a Quiz more than a sermon:

Bible Sunday is considered by some as a Protestant or Reformed rather than a Catholic idea. Some assume that because the reformed church accepted the Bible in translation far sooner than the Catholic Church, they take it more seriously.

There was an irritating joke told in Cambridge, when I was studying for priesthood, about being able to hear the more Catholic end of the church ripping the packaging off their new Bibles because they’d not read them before. I always found it profoundly annoying as Catholics, particularly those who say regular morning or evening prayer or come from a liberation theology background, as I did, have Biblical reading and reflection built into every day's prayer. So as someone from a more catholic background I’m very happy to celebrate Bible Sunday.

I toyed with the idea of reflecting on the Bible this morning by way of a quiz. And I’m still happy to do that if you’re up for it? If you are, let’s go for it… if not I’ll carry on preaching and address the Quiz questions in that way… with a whistle stop tour of the Bible.

Bible Quiz for the Church…

1) What language(s) was the Bible originally written in? Hebrew and Greek

2) And when was it written? Very roughly 4,000BC in oral tradition, then bits began to be written down from 2,000-1,500BC; the New Testament was 1st written from 50/60 CE (Letters), then 70CE for the first Gospel (Mark's) and up to 150CE for Revelation

3) Who was it written by? There are a range of people named throughout the Bible as writers of books or letters etc but it is likely that at no stage did a single person sit down and write a Gospel. Each book of the Bible would have been the oral tradition of communities of believers. It could be argued though that the editors of the Bible were the Council of Nicea who determined the Canon. 

4) What was the first language that the Bible was translated into? Greek for the Old Testament which went from Hebrew to Greek, the language of the then Empire, in the Septuagint. The whole Bible was then translated into Latin in the Vulgate Bible by St Jerome. 

5) How many books are there in the Bible? 66

6) Name 3 different types of books in the Bible: Law, History, Story, Poetry, Wisdom (or philosophy), Letters, Prophets and social history 

7) Which book of the Bible includes the Creation story? Genesis

8) Who built an ark? Noah and his sons

9) Which bit of the Bible is Israel’s history? Arguably the whole of the Old Testament, but especially the first five books (the Pentateuch), Samuel, Kings and Chronicles

10) Who led the people of Israel out of Egypt and why? Moses, to freedom from slavery

11) Who was the wisest person in the Bible? Solomon is often cited as the most wise, he asked God for wisdom as a youth; But, Job whose book is also in the Books of Wisdom, has a strong claim too.

12) Who is believed to have written most of the Psalms? David

13) Which bit of the Bible is Jesus’ life story? The Gospels

14) Who wrote most of the letters in the Bible? Paul, but there are also some from Peter, John, James

15) Which bit of the Bible is the history of the early church? Book of Acts

16) Which bit of the Bible is Apocalyptic? Revelation

17) For further reflection have a think about which is your favourite Bible Story? Mine are Nathan's parable, Samuel and the Syro-Phoenician Woman

18) Who is your favourite character in the Bible? Jesus! Mary, Mary Magdalene, Peter

Sermon: St Luke, the Apostle; weekend of 18/19th October 2025

In the first century CE, St Irenaeus of Lyons, who to my mind is one of the most humane of the early Church writers, wrote the wonderful words that, “The Glory of God is a living human…” often slightly amplified as “The Glory of God is a human being fully alive”.

Irenaeus wrote those words as part of a work called Adversus Haereses, Against Heresy, in the battle for the true meaning of Christianity against the Gnostics and the Marcionites. The heart of the disagreement was about the nature of body and spirit. Orthodox Christian teaching, which is affirmed by the Church today, is that we are only complete and body and soul. When we are resurrected, when we enter eternal life, we do so as body and soul, not as a disembodied spirit.

In the funeral service we speak of our frail bodies being glorified in Christ’s body, so the illnesses and disabilities that may beset us in older age, may be put right again. But there is a strong sense that we are not who we are without some bodily form.

The Gnostics and Marcionites didn’t want to be bothered with bodies; they had a vision of a nice, free disembodied spirit floating off to heaven, which the church has always decided is heresy. After all our bodies are part of the identity that God has given us; our bodies are part of the glorious image of God in which God has created us.

And Luke, as a physician, is one of those who really gets the Good News for our whole being, body and soul, material and spiritual. 

In that same piece of writing, Against Heresies, Irenaeus also speaks of the four Gospels. We take the fact that there are four Gospels in the Bible for granted, after all they have been like that for 17 centuries. But Irenaeus was writing in the 1stcentury, before the canon of the Bible had been established, so to speak of four Gospels was not that usual.

Of the four Gospels he wrote: ‘...since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the “pillar and ground” of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh. From which fact, it is evident that the Word, the Artificer of all, He that sitteth upon the cherubim, and contains all things, He who was manifested to men, has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit. ‘ St. Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 120-202 AD) – Adversus Haereses 3.11.8

Which is why I think it is important to celebrate the Gospel writers. The other weekend, on 21st September, we celebrated St Matthew and today we celebrate St Luke, whose feast day was technically yesterday, 18th October. In case you are wondering St John’s feast is on 27th December and the feast of St Mark is 26th April.

But today we celebrate Luke, who is credited with writing not only Luke’s Gospel, the third in the Bible but also the book of Acts, the story of the earliest days of the Church. Luke’s Gospel is generally agreed by scholars to have been written in 80-90CE, about the same time as Matthew’s Gospel. So it is after Mark’s Gospel which it is agreed was the first to be written, in about 70CE and before John’s in 90-100CE.

Both Matthew and Luke drew heavily on Mark’s Gospel but added to it, in different ways. Mark spoke far more to the Jewish people to convince them that Christ was the Messiah they had been waiting for, whilst Luke spoke to a wider, gentile audience. This is probably because he is thought to have been a Greek, from the city of Antioch in Syria, the place where the community of the Way was first called Christian. It is thought that Luke had studied medicine at Antioch, a city known for the development of science, philosophy and learning; and it is worth remembering that in the ancient world theology, talk of God, was the highest of the sciences.

It is thought that Luke did practice medicine for a bit, he is known as Luke the Physician, but he was drawn to Christianity by the preaching of St Paul. And it is understood that having been drawn to him, Luke then joined Paul in the journeys and became a valuable companion to him. It is thought that he acted as Paul’s Dr and travelled with him following his arrest, getting shipwrecked with him and going to Rome. After Paul’s death Luke is credited with preaching the Gospel in Italy, France, Libya, Egypt, Dalmatia, Achaia and Greece – where he is buried. That he was Paul’s companion has some credibility because it is from Luke’s account in Acts that we know about Paul’s journeys, as we see in today's second reading from Acts. 

Luke’s Gospel, which I have to confess is my favourite, is the most human, and the most socially conscious, of the Gospels; for example, is the only one that really gives us anything of a picture of Jesus’ childhood. It is to the account in Luke that we owe all the images of angels and shepherds, Jesus lying in a manger in a stable, the census and journey to Bethlehem and the glorious prelude to his birth of Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary and the Magnificat, her prayer about magnifying the Lord.

And the social message of Jesus’ teaching, its emphasis on loving forgiveness and discipleship, is writ largest in Luke’s Gospel, as we see so well in today's Gospel reading about sending out 70 disciples to heal, forgive and spread the word. 

It is Luke who has shepherds visiting Jesus, by contrast with Matthew’s Wise, Learned and rich men; and with Mark and John who say nothing about Jesus’ childhood. It is Luke alone who shows us the boy Jesus left behind in Jerusalem, holding forth to the elders in the Temple. It is Luke alone who has the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son (also known as the Generous Father), the persistent widow seeking justice, faith like a mustard seed, the lost coin and so on… Perhaps it is because he was a Dr that he was more familiar with the healing and pastoral side of ministry, that he cared so much about justice and forgiveness, understanding and welcoming the stranger. Luke’s symbol is the Ox; there are shades there of Luke being a beast of burden, bearing with Paul and all his trials but also of sacrifice for the ox was a sacrificial animal.

In celebrating social justice and welcoming the stranger Luke emphasises the call of Christ to die to ourselves so as to find the fullness of life in Him and with and for the other. Luke’s Gospel’s first story is of Zecchariah, father of John the Baptist, called to name his son John instead of Zecchariah, a major departure from tradition, especially for one of the priestly class like Zecchariah. Sacrifice and calling come in many shapes and sizes. I will close with Malcolm Guite’s poem for St Luke and his Gospel:

His gospel is itself a living creature, A ground and glory round the throne of God,

Where earth and heaven breathe through human nature

And One upon the throne sees it is good. Luke is the living pillar of our healing,

A lowly ox, the servant of the four,

We turn his page to find his face revealing

The wonder, and the welcome of the poor.

He breathes good news to all who bear a burden

Good news to all who turn and try again,

The meek rejoice and prodigals find pardon,

A lost thief reaches paradise through pain,

The voiceless find their voice in every word

And, with Our Lady, magnify Our Lord.

Sermon Sunday 12th October 2025: 

This week in exploring faith we have been considering parables, those wonderful stories that Jesus tells to illustrate what the kingdom of heaven looks like or what being open to God or living a good life is about. And one of those favourite parables was inevitably the Good Samaritan. But that is not the only time in the Gospels that Jesus refers to the Samaritans as a people who get God more sometimes that the people who were supposed to be chosen. Today’s Gospel reading is another example, where out of ten people suffering from leprosy who Jesus cures, the only one to turn back and say, “Thank you” is a Samaritan.

Why is that so significant? After all, in today’s Israel Samaritans are treated as Israeli citizens and have a vote despite living as a separate community in the area around Mount Gerizim, unlike many Palestinians living in Israel. Yet in Jesus’ day they were seen as an alien people, a different religion, worshipping God in different ways. Theologically the difference between the Jewish people and Samaritans is a bit like the difference between Catholics and Protestants, which may not be seen as so significant these days but was seen as the cause for war in past centuries.

The other time that Jesus is revealed to a Samaritan, besides the Good Samaritan and today’s reading, is the Samaritan woman at the well, who is chosen to tell her people that she has seen the Messiah. That story gives us some idea of the religious differences, about where and how God is worshipped, at John 4: 19 19 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’

The point of Today’s Gospel story – the point of all the stories about Samaritans – is to give a very real example of Jesus’ commandment to love not only our neighbour as ourselves but also to love our enemies. It is a message that is repeated explicitly in both Matthew and Luke’s Gospels. In Matthew (5:44) Jesus says, ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” and in Luke (6:27) he says, “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…”

But in all the stories and parables about Samaritans Jesus is making exactly the same point. These Samaritans are people you see as enemies, as alien, as not like us – and you need to love them. In fact, not only do you need to love them you also need to recognise that much of the time they get God’s message better than we who claim to be God’s chosen people, or his followers and adopted children.

Now, some people try to split the Old and New Testament suggesting that it’s only from Jesus onwards that God is revealed as a God who bids us to love all neighbours, even enemies. But today’s first reading shows that Jesus was not inventing something new; He was repeating a theme that is also there in parts of the Old Testament. Because that theme of loving your enemies is also echoed in today’s first reading. Jeremiah is writing from Jerusalem, part of the small Jewish community left there, after Jerusalem was sacked and most of the Jewish peoples were taken captive and taken into exile in Babylon. Jeremiah is writing to advise them not only to make the best of their exile, but also to pray for the people who have kidnapped and captured them. They are being told to pray for people who not only have a different worldview from them but who have taken them from their homes and all they loved, and they are being asked to pray for their welfare. This is a very radical form of love; but it is what we are commanded to do by the God who is revealed as the ultimate in love.

So how do we do that? Does it mean that anything goes? Isn’t it a hopelessly naïve way of behaving? Surely Jesus also says that those who are wicked, hypocritical and other evil things will be punished. Goats will be sorted from sheep and wheat from chaff, and some will get thrown into the fires of hell. So how does that fit with loving enemies? In a world filled with differences of opinion, belief, political views and so much more, both within our own faith communities and in wider society how do we stay true to our convictions while fulfilling Jesus’ command to love others? All others?

I think for me the most straightforward way to achieve this radical love is to remember that God created each one of us and loves each one of us, however much we may disagree with someone or dislike things they do or believe. And another aspect of this love is that it is easier to love than to hate; hatred and grievance eats us up. A good example of living this out in practice is Nelson Mandela, who could rightly have felt aggrieved at his 27 years in prison, mostly isolated on Robin Island, with hard labour; yet he said on his release: “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

It is not an easy thing to do, it takes time, practice and patience but it is the Christian thing to do, to let go of hatred and grievance and seek to recognise our common humanity. It has been said that,“The true mark of a Christian isn’t loving Jesus; it’s loving Judas.” Mandela grew to respect his jailers and they grew to respect him; it meant that when Mandela left prison he had got things to show for his time there. As well as leaving prison with respect and sufficient trust of the apartheid government to enable negotiations, Mandela had learnt the skills required to build relationships across communities.

And that is the key to loving our enemies, to welcoming and living alongside the person we do not agree with, building the relationships that enable genuine engagement and recognition of our common humanity. In that way we grow together. It does not mean that we don’t call out things that are harmful, that damage or divide people, but it does mean that if we have a relationship such calling out is more likely to be respected and have an impact. It is something that the Archbishops Advisers on Appointments noted at our meeting on Tuesday when they said, “It is quite a surprise to come to a Diocese where people actually like each other!”.

So let us live up to that witness, showing those we don’t get along with, those we might even consider enemies, the respect that every human being deserves and think of them with compassion. Let us open ourselves up to different perspectives so that we can learn and love and grow and let us seek, in the words of the Todmorden Cantata, to live well in this place of “Three valleys, two rivers, one community and no divisions”. In doing so we can be a witness to others that differences can be overcome and we can live together well, even with our differences. 

Sermon Sunday 5th October: Harvest and Feast of St Francis

Today we celebrate Harvest and St Francis, the world’s first environmentalist, who wrote that wonderful prayer to brother sun and sister moon, celebrating the whole of life and creation. Yet creation is struggling today; the climate is at a critical turning point. Our first reading today, in the words of the Prophet Habakuk, says, “Write the vision, make it plain on tablets so that a runner may read it… For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end and does not lie.”

For most of the past few decades the vision and warning, that has been written in plain

writing so that all can read it, has been that the planet is heating up, that climate change is

happening and that the critical turning point was a rise in temperature of 1.5C. Although it

was only in 2015, at the Paris COP summit, that the nations of the world committed to the

target of trying to avoid breaching the 1.5C year on year temperature rise it had been

known about decades before. At the UN in 1989 a speech was made, from which the

following is a prophetic extract:

“During his historic voyage through the south seas on the Beagle, Charles Darwin landed one November morning in 1835 on the shore of Western Tahiti. After breakfast he climbed a nearby hill to find advantage point to survey the surrounding Pacific. The sight seemed to him like “a framed engraving”, with blue sky, blue lagoon, and white breakers crashing against the encircling Coral Reef. As he looked out from that hillside, he began to form his theory of the evolution of coral; 154 years after Darwin 's visit to Tahiti we have added little to what he discovered then. What if Charles Darwin had been able, not just to climb a foothill, but to soar through the heavens in one of the orbiting space shuttles? What would he have learned as he surveyed our planet from that altitude? From a moon's eye view of that strange and beautiful anomaly in our solar system that is the earth? Of course, we have learned much detail about our environment as we have looked back at it from space, but nothing has made a more profound impact on us than these two facts.

First... “once a photograph of the earth, taken from the outside is available … a new idea as powerful as any other in history will be let loose”.

That powerful idea is the recognition of our shared inheritance on this planet. We know more clearly than ever before that we carry common burdens, face common problems, and must respond with common action.

Second, as we travel through space, as we pass one dead planet after another, we look back on our earth, a speck of life in an infinite void. It is life itself, incomparably precious, that distinguishes us from the other planets. It is life itself—human life, the innumerable species of our planet—that we wantonly destroy. It is life itself that we must battle to preserve…

While the conventional, political dangers—the threat of global annihilation, the fact of regional war—appear to be receding, we have all recently become aware of another insidious danger. It is the prospect of irretrievable damage to the atmosphere, to the oceans, to earth itself…. What we are now doing to the world, by degrading the land… by polluting the waters and by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate—all this is new in the experience of the earth. It is mankind’s activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.

That speech was not made by some alarmist eco-warrior lefty, such as Greta Thunberg; this was 1989, Greta wasn’t even born then… it is a speech by Margaret Thatcher, one of the few scientists to have served as PM of this country, who understood the science and went on to lay it out to her UN colleagues. That speech led eventually in 2015 (the UN works even more glacially slowly than the Church of England) to the Paris Climate Change commitment to limit climate change to 1.5C by reducing carbon emissions.

Sadly, that critical turning point has now been breached; in February 2024 scientists showed that the average temperature rise has gone past 1.5C and that is why we are seeing so many adverse climate events. That is why we are seeing the hyper-hot summers and droughts, the extreme winds and torrential downpours and floods. It is part of why we are seeing increased migration as people are forced off land that is uninhabitable because of environmental degradation. It is why we are seeing increased wars as people live in fear and fight for liveable land, under the pretext of other differences. It is why we are seeing increased food prices as war and climate change affect the availability of the crops we import and why there is increasing poverty worldwide.

What would St Francis make of it all? Would he turn up his toes and despair? Absolutely not. Francis just got on with listening to God and doing what he was bidden to do… building God’s church, across the whole of the world and the whole of God’s creation. He is quoted as saying as follows, which I think we can take as a rallying cry…

“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” “For it is in giving that we receive.” and “…when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that have received--only what you have given.”

Of himself he said, “I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, He can work through anyone.” “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where these is hatred, let me sow love...” "The only thing ever achieved in life without effort is failure." "Do few things but do them well, simple joys are holy." “A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.” And my favourite -“Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” "The deeds you do may be the only sermon some persons will hear today."

And nor did Prime Minister Thatcher despair; nor should we. In her speech she outlined things that we can do, as individuals, as communities, as nations. We are now in a place where international political consensus seems to have broken down; where the vested interests of the oil companies have won out again by watering down recent COP summits and thwarting a much-needed international agreement about oil-produced plastics.

Yet just because negotiators seem unable to fend off the oil companies does not stop us acting. And following Francis’ suggestion of keeping it simple I can recommend the environmental trilogy of Reduce your use – if you don’t need to take the car but could walk or take the train, do so; if you don’t need plastic packaging avoid it. If you do need to use something Re-use it – plastic cups should not be disposable they can be washed and re-used several times before they crack and that goes for many other things. And if you do use and exhaust the life-span of something, Recycle it – and that goes not just for food waste, papers and plastics but also for clothes, household items and many other things.

And I will close with the words with which Mrs Thatcher concluded her UN speech: “The environmental challenge which confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out… we must not try to be, the lords of all we survey…. we are the Lord's creatures, the trustees of this planet, charged today with preserving life itself—preserving life with all its mystery and all its wonder. May we all be equal to that task.

Sermon Sunday 28th September 2025: St Michael and All Angels

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Michael and All Angels which is known as Michaelmas in England, and this first autumn term in many schools and universities is still called the Michaelmas term. It was a time of year when the harvest was mostly gathered in and people could celebrate, safe under the protection of St Michael – who unlike most saints is also an angel.

The Archangel Michael is traditionally thought of as the Captain of the Heavenly Host, and, following an image from the book of Revelation, is shown standing on a dragon, an image of Satan subdued and bound by the strength of Heaven. The power of love and good overcoming evil and all those things, that in a short while, Edith will promise to turn away from in her baptism vows.

He is also shown with a drawn sword, or a spear and a pair of scales or balances, for he represents, truth, discernment, the light and energy of intellect, to cut through tangles and confusion, to set us free to discern and choose. He is celebrated and revered in all three Monotheistic religions – Judaism and Islam as well as Christianity. He is first found in 2nd century Jewish writings.

As befits a captain he is an Archangel and there are other Archangels as well – Gabriel who tells Mary that she will bear Christ – and Raphael. But they are part of a host of angels. So what is an angel? The word comes from the Greek word for messenger; angelos – so angels come in all sorts of forms and shapes, not just the guys with blond hair and shiny wings, or singing with harps – they come in messages, hints of conscience, visions and dreams; a sense that we need to make a particular choice. In today’s readings they are the hope that Jacob sees in the angels ascending to heaven and descending on the ladder between God, heaven and earth. They are the sign of hope that Jesus holds out to Nathaniel just after he calls him to be a disciple.

But in the passage from Revelation it is a more alarming picture of War in heaven; Michael and his angels fighting with the dragon… it is a dramatic and alarming passage and even more alarming to find that Michael and the angels didn’t prevail, but the dragon was cast out and landed on earth, where the war continues. It is an age old war between good and evil or righteousness and sin; a war that appears in various different forms and stories throughout the Bible and a war that still goes on today. And it can be tempting to think when we look around the world today that like Michael and the Angels, good is struggling to prevail.

Sadly, we are living in challenging times, where differences of politics and religion are being used as reasons to kick off and perpetuate war and violence. We have seen it most recently on our streets, in various cities across the country, with anti-migrant protests being countered by anti-fascist protests causing tensions and in some cases outright physical conflict. We have seen the impact in our own congregation with one of our members, who is a police officer, requiring dental treatment after getting punched in the mouth at one of the protests. And it takes us into areas of ethics, philosophy and religion about which I am a little anxious to speak knowing that we have two teachers of EPR in our congregation this morning supporting Edith at her baptism.

For me, one of the most alarming aspects of some of these protests, is those – like Stephen Yaxley Lennon - who would try to hijack Christian symbolism, and regrettable bits of Christian history such as the crusades, and harness them to a cause that is fuelled by hatred of the other. All too often that hatred is against those of a Muslim or Jewish faith, non-white ethnicity, a different sexuality or physical appearance. That hatred and warfare is not Christian. The Crusades were political and imperial, not Christian. Christianity may have been the religion of this country in one form or another for many centuries but Christianity is a faith and should never be a tool of patriotism or nationality; they are different things.

Above all Christianity is not a crusade, it is about prayer and community, about Jesus commandment to love our neighbour – and even our enemy – as ourselves. When the New Testament refers to war it is not talking of physical pitched battles, it is talking of that cosmic war of good and evil, right and wrong, sin and virtue. When the New Testament talks of spiritual warfare it is talking of the battle of forces like love and hate, forgiveness and vengeance, hope and despair, not taking up arms under a Cross.

Some might suggest that the terminology is somewhat outdated; we don’t really talk about sin and evil today. In appraisals it is customary to speak of Good and Even Better If – rather than good and bad or right and wrong. Even OFSTED has moved to “Needs Attention or Urgent Improvement” rather than Inadequate. And there are good reasons for that; nothing is more demoralising and likely to put some people off than being told they’re bad or rubbish or inadequate – so “Even Better If…”, acknowledges some good and encourages scope for improvement.

Yet for truly bad and awful events like acts of murder, wars in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere, riots on our streets and environmental devastation, there is no “Even better if…” What is happening is plain destruction and evil; wars and violence and physical conflict, including riots on our streets, need to end.

As Christians – and indeed I believe all people of good faith – we fight not with physical weapons but with those virtues of love and hope that can overcome hate and despair. The virtues of kindness and community that are so treasured in many places in Todmorden. For those are the virtues that enable each person to live in harmony, to live their life to the full and contribute their unique and God-given creativity and gifts to build up community.

And so let’s finish our thoughts today by turning to St Michael and asking for his help in discerning these weapons of the struggle against evil – seeking the angel or fire and love. Help us be part of the wisdom to seek change for the good, following Christ wherever he may call us.

Michaelmas gales assail the waning year,

And Michael’s scale is true, his blade is bright.

He strips dead leaves; and leaves the living clear

To flourish in the touch and reach of light.

Archangel bring your balance, help me turn

Upon this turning world with you and dance

In the Great Dance. Draw near, help me discern,

And trace the hidden grace in change and chance.

Angel of fire, Love’s fierce radiance,

Drive through the deep until the steep waves part,

Undo the dragon’s sinuous influence

And pierce the clotted darkness in my heart.

Unchain the child you find there, break the spell

And overthrow the tyrannies of Hell.

Sermon: Sunday 21st September 2025

Another Sunday and another celebration; well more than one really as we celebrate Jenson and Tania’s baptism, as well as St Matthew’s feast day. What I love about the story of Matthew is that his story is another bit of the Bible that shows some things don’t change even over the course of 2,000 years. Human reactions to some things are the same today as they were in Jesus’ time.

Matthew was a tax collector and just as not many people are keen on tax collectors today, they really weren’t popular in Jesus’ day. Today tax collectors are mostly unpopular because many – though not all - people don’t like paying taxes. In Jesus and Matthew’s day it was also because being a tax collector was an opportunity for fraud and exploitation.

Matthew would have been collecting for the Romans, which was unpopular as they were the invading power, so collecting taxes for them was like being a collaborator.

But tax collectors were even more unpopular because it was common practice for them to take not only the tax owed, but also a bit extra for themselves. It was a chance to make a bit on the side and people, understandably, hated them for it.

So for Jesus to call Matthew, a tax collector, to be one of his disciples, one of his chosen and closest followers, was quite something and, from Jesus’ point of view, quite risky.

It was a bit risky calling Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John, a group of uneducated fishermen; but at least they were good guys. They weren’t educated or powerful or wealthy, but they would have been respected for the work they did, netting fish, bringing people food and taking the risks of stormy seas, and other hardships to do so.

But tax collectors? Grasping, greedy, collaborative tax collectors? What I find interesting about Matthew is that though he was a tax collector, he seems to have been a fairly decent bloke, as far as tax collectors go… Matthew is just called and goes to follow Jesus. By contrast Zaccheus, another tax collector, whose story appears in Luke’s Gospel, protests that as part of following Jesus he will give back any money stolen and repay people several times over. Matthew makes no such protestation, so maybe he was chosen because he did not have to pay back money defrauded from people.

However, Jesus is clear that he is eating with Tax collectors and other sinners because they are the ones who need help and need to turn their lives around. Matthew is not exempted from that so it is clear that he has to do some turning around of his life.

Whatever the circumstances at his calling Matthew goes on to be one of the 12 core disciples and in due course, by tradition, he also wrote Matthew’s Gospel. It is worth noting that Matthew’s Gospel is the only one in which he is called Matthew – in Luke and Mark he is called Levi; so, there are questions about whether it is one and the same person. But it probably doesn’t make that much difference.

What is clear is that a tax collector would probably have more education and literacy and so be better placed to write down the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry. Of all the four Gospels Matthew’s is the one that is most clearly directed at the Jewish people. It was originally written in Hebrew and only later translated into Greek.

Matthew’s Gospel is also the most hardline, the most focused on trying to get Jewish people to follow Jesus and recognise him as the Messiah, foretold in Hebrew scriptures. He has the toughest line on divorce; he has a more judgemental approach to God, with God sorting sheep from goats, wheat from chaff and consigning the goats and the chaff to darkness and hell. Matthew also has the full genealogy of Jesus in the Christmas story and only Matthew tells the story of the Kings coming to visit Jesus, instead of the shepherds found in Luke’s Gospel.

Matthew’s is also the first of the Gospels in the New Testament, starting with the Good News for Jesus and Matthew’s own people, before spreading out to the other evangelists who spread the news to a wider audience and other nations. But in many ways the most important thing about Matthew is that he is a tax collector, he is so different in his vocation from most of the other disciples. He demonstrates that Jesus really does call everyone, across the whole spectrum of society and work and character.

And that is important for today when we welcome Jensen and Tania for baptism. They are further proof that Jesus calls everyone, from Jensen – and his brother Carson who was baptised a couple of years ago, both christened as babies – to Tania, getting baptised as Jensen’s aunty and now fully qualified as a lawyer. Jesus really does call everyone and it is great that in this way he is adding to our number, building up the community of the Church.

And like Matthew, he calls us all to be disciples; he calls us all to put away those things that take us away from love and caring, sharing and community; all those things that undermine life. And instead he calls us to turn to his way of life, the way of life and love that Jesus showed us, following in the steps that lead to eternal life.

And I will finish with a poem by one of my favourite poets, who is also a priest, called Malcolm Guite – it is his poem for St Matthew.

First of the four, saint Matthew is the Man;

A gospel that begins with generation,
Family lines entwine around the Son,

Born in Judea, born for every nation
Born under Law that all the Law of Moses,

Might be fulfilled and flower into Grace
As every word and deed in time discloses,

Eternal love within a human face.

This is the gospel of the great reversal,

A wayside weed is Solomon in glory
The smallest sparrow’s fall is universal,

And Christ the heart of every human story
‘I will be with you, though you may not see,

And all you do, you do it unto me’

Sermon: Holy Cross Day: 14th September 2025

Numbers 21: 4-9, Philippians 2: 6-11 and John 3: 13-17 

Sermon:

Today we celebrate Holy Cross Day. Holy Cross Day is so called because it celebrates when Helena (mother of the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine) discovered a cross in Jerusalem. It has given rise to so many bits of the true cross, that you could probably re-build the cross several times over. It suggests it has been abused but the proliferation of bits of wood from the cross does not invalidate the symbol.

Some say that Helena’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem, that led to the discovery, was a literal “guilt trip”, driven by her involvement in Constantine’s murder of his son and wife. No one knows the truth of that double killing, but, if it did inspire her pilgrimage to the Holy Land, it shows how repentance can lead someone to strive for good. Again, the murky origins of the visit and the discovery does not take away from the power of the cross.

At one level we celebrate the cross every day. We have at least 10 crosses in Church – counting the crosses in church is a great task to set Primary School RE Classes. It is a symbol that is seen throughout our probably post-Christian society, often taken for granted or misunderstood. So to have a day dedicated to the cross seems appropriate.

The world is full of crosses, not just in churches but on walls of houses, at wayside shrines, hung around necks, carried in purses, clutched in prayer. They are all “holy”, because they all communicate the meaning of the cross. Although throughout history the cross is first known as an instrument of execution, its symbolism and sacred significance can also be found in other parts of the Bible.

Divine-human history contains fragments of the cross in several places; in the tree of Eden, the oak at Mamre where Abraham and Sarah encounter the angels and Sarah laughs at the idea of having a child. It is found in the outstretched arms of Moses and in his serpent-staff, as we hear about in today’s first reading (Numbers 21:9). In east and west alike, the cross is found in Elisha’s axe-head (2 Kings 6.1-7).

The cross is everywhere; like God it is eternal and meaning-full. In 1 Corinthians 1.18, Paul says, “The meaning, ‘message’, ‘preaching’, logic or ‘reason’ of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but for us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

It is seen in acts of judicial cruelty – Banksy’s quickly erased mural of the judge at the Courts of Justice this week is the epitome of the unjust judge in the Bible. It is seen in undeserved suffering, caused by human cruelty and violence; it is there everywhere and always in all our lives. And we are reminded of that suffering, those wrongs, that injustice every time we see a cross materially, our vision attuned to detecting that sacred shape, outside churches as well as within. But the cross of Christ is also more than a chance symbol detected by our pattern-hungry eyes.

Philippians 2 today’s second reading, speaks of having “the same mind” as Christ Jesus. That is our clue to understanding the cross. If that sounds too challenging, Paul’s words can be expressed another way: if we “think like Jesus” we shall share in his death on the cross, and, by that means, come to share in his resurrection. We share in the forgiveness and new life that the cross brings. For every time we say sorry and ask forgiveness we die to our selfishness and ego and step into the view of the person we have wronged. And that is the way to new life. It forms us in the power of the cross, the way of true love, deep and growing love, that Jesus came to share.

Crosses are everywhere, but there is only one Holy Cross. Would it matter if what Helena found was a cross, not the cross? No. The meaning of every sacred object that we use devotionally, is to point us beyond material reality to ultimate reality, for “we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4.18).

When Paul proclaims that Christ Jesus became “obedient to the point of death —even death on a cross”, his focus is firmly on the body of Christ. He is not investing blood-soaked wood with miraculous power. Even the one true cross is only ever a means to an end, an instrument of God’s purpose. Kissing the cross on Good Friday is worshipping not the wood but the Son of God who died to save us. That is why we should seek and celebrate crosses everywhere, inside and outside church, for every glimpse of the cross is a fresh restatement of the promise.

That promise is simple. As the Son came into the world hallowing human flesh, so he died hallowing the world that human beings inhabit. He made what is supremely ordinary — wood, material stuff — into a cradle of holiness. Touching the wood of the one true cross does not automatically, miraculously, make us something which in truth we are not. The Last Word — in the sense of ultimate message — is about people, not wood: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3.16).

Sermon Sunday 7th September 2025: 

Today we have a double celebration, with St Mary’s dedication festival, on the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and also the start of the season of Creation. At one level we celebrate creation all year round as we can never stop being thankful for it. However, the church has set aside September, season of Harvest Festivals, as a time of year with a particular focus on Creation.

The origins of the season of creation are ecumenical. In Orthodox Christianity 1 September has been long observed as a “Day of Creation”, marking the day God began the creation of the universe, as described in Genesis. Building on this tradition, in 1989 the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I proclaimed 1 September as a day of prayer for the environment; a day to offer “prayers and supplications to the Maker of all,” giving thanks for all the gifts of Creation and praying for the protection and salvation of all creation.

In 2015 Pope Francis also adopted 1st September as the Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation in the Roman Catholic Church across the world. And in July this year General Synod voted for the Sunday after the 1stSeptember, the start of the season of creation, to be marked as the Feast of God the Creator in the Anglican church.

The season ends on 4th October, with the feast of St Francis of Assisi, possibly the first known environmentalist most notably celebrated in his Canticle of Creatures, a hymn reflecting on our relationship with brother sun, sister moon and all God’s creation. The full season of creation was proposed in 2007, at the 3rd European Ecumenical Assembly, and was adopted a year later by both the World Council of Churches and the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland.

In the face of increasingly alarming statistics about climate change, the hottest summer on record in Britain this year and growing crises of water shortages and environmental disaster elsewhere in the world, focussing on the whole of God’s creation seems timely. And holding onto the themes of this season, of hope, peace and action with creation, aims to overcome the fatalism with which the overwhelming scale of the environmental challenges can all too often leave us.

But what has this season of creation got to do with Mary? Well, quite a few things actually. For many centuries the Church has recognised Mary as the Mother of God and therefore at the heart of God’s plans for the recreation and redemption of the world. As St Anselm wrote in the 11th CE, “God is, then, Father of all created things and Mary is mother of all that has been recreated. God is Father of the institution of all things and Mary is mother of the restitution of all things. God begot him through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him through whom all things are saved. God begot him without whom nothing at all exists and Mary gave birth to him without whom nothing that exists is good.”

Mary is the person who gave birth to God incarnate in the world, she is the bearer of God, or Theotokos as the Orthodox tradition would call her. So, Mary is essential for the project of the creation and salvation; she is the mother of hope, the hope for a world that was lost and fallen; the young woman chosen out of all creation to bear the saviour and re-creator of the world. And so, in turn, as Pope Benedict says, “veneration of Mary as Mother of all that has been recreated must find its expression in care for the earth.

In 2015, when Pope Francis named 1st September as the Catholic Church’s Day of Creation, he also wrote Laudato Si, his second encyclical which focuses on Creation and begins with the words of St Francis’ greatest prayer, Praise be to you Brother Son and Sister moon. In that lengthy document, which includes 6 chapters and 172 footnotes, Pope Francis also reflects on the role of Mary and her husband Joseph in Creation.

He speaks of God (para.238) as, “the ultimate source of everything, the loving and self-communicating foundation of all that exists.” And of Jesus, as “God’s reflection, through whom all things were created, united” with the “earth when he was formed in Mary’s womb”. And working with the Spirit, the “infinite bond of love,” “intimately present at the heart of the universe, inspiring and bringing new pathways,” that is, new creations.

And he goes on to say (para.241), “Mary, the Mother who cared for Jesus, now cares with maternal affection and pain for this wounded world. Just as her pierced heart mourned the death of Jesus, so now she grieves for the sufferings of the crucified poor and for the creatures of this world laid waste by human power…. she is the Woman, “clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev 12:1). Carried up into heaven, she is the Mother and Queen of all creation. In her glorified body, together with the Risen Christ, part of creation has reached the fullness of its beauty….”

“And at Mary’s side, in the Holy Family of Nazareth, stands the figure of St Joseph,” who, “through his work and generous presence, cared for and defended Mary and Jesus, delivering them from the unjust violence of Herod by bringing them to Egypt… Joseph is a just man, hard-working and strong but also with the great tenderness… of those who are genuinely strong, fully aware of reality and ready to love and serve in humility. He too can teach us how to care;.. to work with generosity and tenderness in protecting this world which God has entrusted to us.”

What I find most inspiring about Mary is that she was an ordinary young woman, only in her teens. If we feel overwhelmed at the call on us to do something about the environment, imagine how overwhelmed Mary felt when asked to be the Mother of God! Apart from the societal obstacles of being pregnant, to someone other than her betrothed, there is the mind-blowing ask that she give birth to God! And her prayer, told in today’s Gospel, flags up just how radical God’s plan can be… And what I find so inspiring about Joseph is that he went along with it…

Together, Mary and Joseph, responded in hope and trust, to God’s call to redeem a hurting world. We too are called to respond to God’s call in a still hurting world. We never know what our little bit of trying to change the world will end up achieving. But if we all do our bit together things can be changed. Mary did not know where her pregnancy would lead, though her Magnificat which we hear in today’s Gospel is a pretty radical hope…

There was a glorious example of responding to the spirit in trust, not knowing where it will lead, at Greenbelt this year. A new movement called the Climate Choir Movement were showcasing some songs as an ad for their gig on the Saturday. At the end of the workshop a shy woman, called Kate Thomas stood up and said quietly, “I wrote that song”. Her song has provided inspiration to a whole movement. I will close with that song,

“So let us stand, as we face the coming storm; for we love this land, let us work for a better dawn and let us love, like we’ve never loved before, people of the planet, all together, let us stand…” Let us stand as Mary and let our souls magnify the Lord… for we can never tell where in God’s plans for creation, that will lead….