I sometimes preach at my church, which is St Vigor's with All Saints, Fulbourn, an Anglican church in Cambridgeshire, England. The Lord alone knows why you should want to read my sermons. At the top of each sermon you get a link to the text or texts, and other Scriptures are referenced in the sermon, in a new window - all from the very good Bible Gateway.
Which of has not at some time felt that the Christian life was a bit too much like hard work? So often God, speaking through his church or Scripture such as we have read this morning, seems to want us to give up the things we like in everyday life in favour of something far off and supernatural ...
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There is an uncomfortable message that appears again and again in the Bible, including the passages we've just heard. Time and again we're told to get rid of our wealth, and concentrate on the things of the spirit. "Sell your possessions and give to the poor". "Faith is being sure of what we ...
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If you'll forgive me, I'm not going to go into detail about our Old Testament reading this evening. If you want to reflect on this passage perhaps I could offer one idea for your consideration. This is not just the end of the book of Genesis: it's the start of the book of Exodus. Joseph and ...
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St James, whose feast we celebrate today, is as you might say the Everyman of Apostles. If we read further on in Mark's Gospel we find him at many of the critical events. When Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus from the dead "he did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the ...
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The story of the Good Samaritan is one of the best known in the Bible. It has a simple moral: that we should make ourselves practically useful to other people. We read that the Good Samaritan goes to great lengths to make sure his help is useful: he gives the inn keeper money to look after ...
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Everybody knows the story of the Good Samaritan. It has a simple moral: that we should make ourselves practically useful to those in trouble. The hero of the story is a Samaritan, and as you know, Samaritans are essentially good chaps. Today there is an extremely valuable voluntary agency ...
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I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men
Can you think of somewhere you went on holiday as a child and the later, after years or even decades passed, visited again? Sometimes ...
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Imagine how you would feel if someone close to you, a son or daughter, brother or sister, friend, began getting involved in one of those cults. Perhaps you’ve heard about them. A crowd of undesirables – drunkards, ex-convicts, illegal immigrants, women of easy virtue. They call themselves ‘the ...
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Your faith has healed, you, go in peace.
One of the hard things about preaching on the Bible is that there is so much in it. The two stories we've heard today are full of interest. We could go on for hours considering the tenuous chain of providential co-incidences by which Isaac ...
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Many of us will have been thinking about historic battles this Trinity Sunday. I'd like us to cast our minds back now beyond 1944, to another battle, a spiritual battle and a battle of the mind but in its way no less momentous than Operation Overlord – a battle for the truth about God. It ...
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If I asked you who Isaiah was, you would probably say he was a prophet. But what is a prophet? Often people think prophecy is about telling the future. But although that comes into it (as I’ll mention later), prophecy is a much more wide ranging activity. A handy definition, which I’ll ...
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unless you repent you will all perish
Our Gospel reading this morning is a grim one. It starts with a mass execution. Jesus then mentions another catastrophe, when part of the fortifications of Jerusalem fell and killed eighteen people. These events were fresh in the memory of ...
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Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips
Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man
This morning in our readings we read one piece of theology from St Paul, and two stories, from the Old Testament and from the Gospel. I want to concentrate mainly on the ...
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Today being Plough Sunday there are no doubt many here who would be glad to disabuse anyone of the idea that farming is a bed of roses. Then again it's an odd image, "a bed of roses", because anyone who's ever had anything to do with roses in their natural state knows that no matter how ...
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"My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways", declares the Lord.
Isaiah's words are a good motto for a discussion of this evening's reading from St Paul.
Romans 6 is not an easy passage to understand. One of the verses of Scripture that makes me smile ...
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Good morning everyone. Before I start my sermon proper, I’d like to introduce myself – since I’m not a priest, you may reasonably wish to know who I am and, even if I’m lucky enough that you already know that, why I’m here.
My name is Joshua Rey, and I’ve lived in the village for four ...
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"Nevertheless, I have a few things against you."
I think we're most of us decent and kind people here. But there's a danger inherent in being decent and kind and going to church. The risk is, one gets to feeling that being kind and decent and going to church is enough. And this, in ...
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Where does wickedness come from? : And, perhaps a more pressing question, what tools do we have for cleaning it out again?
Both our readings today have something to say about this, and I shall begin by reviewing the story in the first of them. God gives Adam and Eve a beautiful ...
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"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
Now, I must begin by apologising, because I am going to limit myself to preaching for the customary ten or fifteen minutes, whereas you might quite understandably expect me to preach for four or five hours on the tremendous passages we've read ...
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Let me begin by wishing you a happy Candlemas. Candlemas is the fortieth day after Christmas (can it be that long? - yes). In the Jewish tradition, a mother had to sequester herself for forty days after the birth of a child, and then at the end of that time she and her husband went to give ...
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