Category: Sermons

There’s getting to be quite a volume of my columns at Working Preacher (if you get enough, do you get an honorary degree from Luther Seminary?), and I thought it might be… something, to compile all the links in one place. I think I hadn’t noticed till just now that I’d done 1 Timothy 6:6–19 for them twice.

So here you are:

Commentary on 1 Timothy 1:12-17 — September 12, 2010

Commentary on 1 Timothy 2:1-7 — September 19, 2010

Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:6-19 — September 26, 2010

Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:6-19 — September 25, 2016

Commentary on 2 Timothy 1:1-14 — October 3, 2010

Commentary on 2 Timothy 2:8-15 — October 12, 2025

Commentary on 2 Timothy 3:14—4:5 — October 19, 2025

Commentary on 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 — October 26, 2025

Commentary on Philemon 1:1-21 — September 7, 2025

Commentary on 1 Peter 2:2-10 — April 20, 2008

Commentary on 1 Peter 3:13-22 — April 27, 2008

Commentary on 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 — May 4, 2008

Commentary on James 1:17-27 — August 30, 2015

Commentary on James 2:1-10 [11-13] 14-17 — September 6, 2015

Commentary on James 3:1-12 — September 13, 2009

Commentary on James 3:13—4:3, 7-8a — September 20, 2009

Commentary on James 5:13-20 — September 27, 2009

I know, it was yesterday, but the parish observes All Saints on this Sunday, and the rector wasn’t well this morning, so after my run and morning shower, coffee, and fruit, I hastened in to St Nic’s for the 8:00 morning Communion for All Saints Day.

I grabbed a sermon I’d preached before, another that draws on the conceit of John Hollander’s ‘The Widener Burying-Ground’, a touchstone for me, on which I drew several years ago in a longer All Souls sermon at Pusey House. With a few localising editorial steps, it did well for the morning (text below the ‘More’ fold), and now I’m sitting at home with the ladies, working on the conclusion of this evening’s All Souls homily for St Helen’s — which will probably draw obliquely on Yeats’s ‘All Souls Night’, because that’s my magpie imagination.
Continue reading “All Saints Morning”

Looking forward to a somewhat less intense week, I began with a run very close to my recent average. Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, and public office hours at R&R, and in a few minutes I’ll go to get a jab at the GP’s surgery. Maybe I’ll finish my MDR today? I should work on the last unfinished article, too.

Oh! I forgot to upload yesterday’s sermon — here it is, below the fold…
Continue reading “Calmer Week?”

I set out on this morning’s run with a deliberate plan to focus on breathing from my diaphragm, as opposed to the ordinary gasping, panting, upper chest breathing. I don’t know about the long range, of course, nor do I know much about physiology, but it definitely felt as though I was breathing more effectively. I couldn’t do it every breath, but I kept up a pretty good pattern of alternating deep and shallow, or one longer deep breath and two faster shallow breaths. The overall pace of the run was a little below recent average, but it seems as though it’s a better slower.

Coffee and fruit, gave the sermon a once-over edit, cleaned up and hastened to St Michael’s. After the service I picked my way through the set-up phase of the Ock Street Fair for lunch, attention to the dogs, and a bit of unwinding. Oh, and both ears went deaf during the service, so I was ragged from concentrating on hearing, and from hearing my own super amplified voice. I’ll mention this to my GP.

And I’ll include the Harvest sermon below the fold…
Continue reading “Sunny Day, Deep Breath, and Harvest Sunday”

As I suggested, I had a busy time before my coffee pause at Java, having printed handouts for Margaret’s Faith Forum talk on ‘Prayer’, and then presiding and preaching at St Nicolas’s Communion service. I revisit that because I remembered to post today’s Michaelmas homily (below the fold) and this post provides a container (as it were) for the homily. Margaret’s talk, by the way, went fabulously; she’s a great teacher and this is yet another occasion for her to display that gift for appreciative parishioners. Continue reading “Full Morning”

This morning’s run began (as so often) with a half-expectation that I’d just ratchet it down to a walk partway through. I gave it a firm push at the beginning, and wound up not needing to break (although I did raise my rolling average by a bit, since the day I lost from the ‘roll’ was my recent best time). I don’t enjoy all this running even a tiny bit, but I do appreciate the health benefits.

This morning’s sermon went well, even though in this fraught political environment I made the theme ‘hospitality to strangers’. I realised as I preached that my way of addressing charged topics almost always involves weaving them into a richer context, so that I’m not so much haranguing people to welcome migrants as I’m saying, ‘Since this and that, and in keeping with the other, welcoming strangers fits right in with what Jesus teaches about… (or ‘Paul teaches’ or whomever). I know many preachers want to make their single point inescapably clear, so that they focus on justifying their claim and spelling out the consequences; I’m not that preacher, though, since I find that when I preach to possibly-resistant listeners, it helps keep us on the same side if I underscore the extent to which my proposed reading harmonises with a great deal more that they would agree with. In any case, it seems to have gone down well. (Sermon text below the fold.)

Brendan and Rosie came to St Helen’s this morning, bringing the dear, delightful Edith Wren with them. It will be a great treat to live so conveniently near them — and possibly to catch opportunities to visit with Edith while Rosie and Brendan do tedious adult things. Continue reading “Stalled As Expected”

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”