Category: Sermons

I forgot to add yesterday’s sermon. It’s below the fold — Continue reading “Oh, Sermon”

One of my axioms for student preachers is always to remember to preach about death and other hard circumstances in good weather, when things are going smoothly. No one has ears receptive to catechesis when they’re grieving; the time to lay foundations for themes to which you’ll return when needed is at a time when there’s as little stress in the congregation as you’re likely to encounter any time. Some clouds hover over dear brethren at St Helen’s, but this seemed as sunny a Sunday as I was likely to see in the near future, so I undertook a sermon that I deposit as savings against a spiritually rainier day. The sermon itself appears below the fold, as it were.
Continue reading “The Sun Shining”

I haven’t been able to post sermons for most of July, so weeks of preaching are clogging up the pipes. I’ll post several below the fold, as it were (‘“As it was” — we know this to be true from our Prayerbooks’, as my father used to say).
Continue reading “Sermon Backlog”

I preached this morning at St Helen’s, on the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul, while we await the revelation of the outcome of our search for a new Team Rector.I append the homily below for the record…
Continue reading “Peter, Paul, and Who’s Next?”

Welp, I got a decent night’s sleep, and ran a wooden two miles this morning, fruit and toast for breakfast, and the Easter Sunday service went swimmimgly. I’ll add the sermon below, in the ‘More’ zone.

Margaret spent all day yesterday baking two Easter Lamb cakes, one black (chocolate) and one white (vanilla). The baking worked out perfectly (with the help of some carefully planned toothpick infrastructure), though the frosting challenged her. The final results, though, were according to one parishioner ‘too cute to eat’.

Narrator’s voice: ‘But nonetheless, they were eaten.’

Continue reading “Risen Indeed”

Just for the curious, below the ‘More’ fold I will drop this morning’s sermon and the handout from the Faith Forum talk I gave on the Incarnation.
Continue reading “Homily and Handout”

I’ve let sermons back up a bit. Below the fold, as it were, I’ll post Sunday’s sermon, then Sunday evening’s homily from the Healing and Wholeness service, then this morning’s homily from the 10:30 Communion service. Sometimes people ask — the answer is, ‘here’.
Continue reading “Homiletical Tripleheader”

Two miles at a mid pace, rolling average creeping up to 20:09; coffee and fruit, say Morning raayer, then after a while, coffee and toast; shower, dress, fine-tune sermon (in the ‘Continued’ section), then to church for Mass and sermon. I’ll preside at Evensong tonight. Continue reading “Fun Day”

I was meditating on the Feast of All Souls, and sought to remember whether I hasd preached on this feast. So I searched my trusty outboard memory when sure enough, in the year 2022, Fr George Westhaver invited me to preach at Pusey House. I brought the day and the readings in conjunction with one of my favourite poems, and the result made for a good sermon, I think — worth offering to you, anyway. (Click below for the PDF.)

At the end of this post, I’ll add the sermon I preached for a dear former student of mine’s First Mass, on St John’s Day — that’s the rationale for the title.

Otherwise, a pleasant enough start to the day: two miles in the warmest early-morning temperatures of the year, fruit and coffee, cleaning up, Morning Prayer, further coffee and a pain au raisin with Margaret at R&R, where several friends stopped by to chat. Did some shopping, came home to the ladies in time for lunch, and now settling down to do some actual scholarly reading and (heven permitting) writing (!). But first I will post the sermon in question.