Category: Sermons

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”

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.

Got up, grudgingly, to run my miles and have a fruit and coffee breakfast. Said the Morning Office at home, fine-tuned today’s sermon a bit, cleaned up, and meandered down to St Helen’s for the first Mass in a couple of months, I think. After checking through the liturgical pattern at my home base (after serving for a couple of months, if not more, at the different St Nic’s and the very different St Michael and All Angels), I presided and preached, and came home to two fretful dogs. They were bereft, cos Margaret went to Oxford to Mary Mags this morning. All well.

(Oh, the three nativities are those of Jesus, Mary, and John the Baptist, the three births observed in our liturgical calendar. Otherwise we observe the saint’s entry into the Church Triumphant, or the translation of their relics, or another ritually significant date.)

Two miles in pleasant weather (at a decent pace), Morning Prayer, hot breakfast, Pentecost Mass at St Nicolas’s, home to unwind for the early afternoon. Sermon below.

In a couple of hours, we’ll connect with family and friends in Connecticut for a memorial to my sister Holly. Then sleep, and begin a fresh week.