New Kid on the Blog

So time to share a sermon, this one from July 7th, to give a little background to where my thinking processes have moved to since I regularly wrote here sooooo long ago, and to give an idea of where I think we should be going, as a church, as people of God, and as those who seek to follow Christ... With our new church website I can't embed it here, but here's the link: https://www.stjohnthedivine.bc.ca/podcasts/media/2019-07-07-let-us-not-grow-weary-of-doing-what-is-right

And here's my sermon from the Tuesday in Holy Week service for healing that we have as part of our lead up to the Triduum at St John the Divine Luke 10.1-9 Proclaiming healing As you probably know, I grew up a full on, high octane, almost Fundamentalist Conservative Evangelical.  I was high on salvation, and down on sinners, I was big on Jesus’ blood, and knew little of social justice. I was keen on songs, and not so good on theology, I was content to condemn people to some kind of eternal punishment but not so sure about grace being for those outside the church…. And I carried a WHOLE load of guilt around about readings such as our one this evening.  A reading which told me to go out, or so it was interpreted, and tell everyone about Jesus, and let them know that they were going straight to hell if they didn’t believe the right stuff in the right way. At least that’s what I thought the 70 disciples of Jesus were doing when I read about them, or heard about them i...

Once every month or so I get the great privilege of presiding and preaching at the Tuesday Afternoon 12-Step Recovery Eucharist at our Cathedral: Christ Church Victoria .  It's a quiet, healing, thoughtful Eucharist at which I normally offer a few thoughts... I'm sure I speak more than most visitors, but I've never really got the hang of 'reflection' - I seem to be much better at 'chatter'. So here's my thinkings from last week... Psalm 71.1-14 John 12.20-36 Yelling at God In this Holy Week – leading up to Good Friday and finally to Easter, we are confronted with the stark reality of human suffering. We see suffering in the last hours of Jesus (traditionally known as ‘The Passion’ – which comes from the Latin Passio, meaning suffering, or enduring) but we also get a glimpse, as in today’s Psalm, of the suffering that all of us go through, which is also a part of the reflection of this Holy Week. In today’s Psalm the writer, we don...

Back in the mists of time, sometime around May, I was at the exceptional Festival of Homiletics in Minneapolis . A five day feast of speakers, worship and making new friends that I enjoyed and felt very refreshed by.  The purpose, to talk about preaching, and to have great examples of preachers and to consider how our preaching can be improved and be stimulating and engaging. A full Central Lutheran Church, Minneapolis (from Festival Flickr Stream https://www.flickr.com/photos/lutherseminary/sets/72157644910650154/) We did a lot of how, I didn't pick up a lot of 'why?'.  It seemed to taken as a given that we accepted the importance of and the reasons for preaching.  It wasn't the nature of the conference.  But as I consider the possibility of taking on a course of Study - a Doctorate of Ministry in Preaching - the question of the nature and purpose of preaching is at the forefront of my thinking at the moment, Let's start with me, though, as it is kind o...

To keep things moving on the blog, here's the sermon from Sunday.  I have been thinking about the purpose and nature of preaching lately - but such lofty thoughts will need to wait....

It's been a good, thoughtful Advent.  The Advent Doors project which I talked about in my last post have been very well received and highlighted a lot of creative ability within the members of St John the Divine, Victoria . I've also been writing for the staff blog - including a tribute to Nelson Mandel a, some thoughts about changes we are making/have made at the Churc h, about the process of choosing a Bishop for British Columbia (a very different affair from Episcopal appointments in the Church of England) and some reflections on Social Media and retelling the Christmas story . I keep on preaching, with sermons podcast each week, which you are welcome to listen to and comment on.  As an Arch-liberal I a surprised I don't have quite as many responses as I thought I would!  Lots of support here in the congregation! If you want to have a catch up on the Advent Sermons, then here they are embedded... Advent 1 Advent 2 Advent 3 Advent 4

It's been a busy day, funeral visiting, sermon writing a renewal of wedding vows service in a garden, some attempts and trying to get my car sorted (I blew something in the engine management system by not sending it to the garage earlier!) alongside the usual collection of phone calls and looking despondently at my study (see last picture and add lots of mess). I was thinking about writing sermons - I never liked writing sermons early in the week, which I had to do as a curate - as I think they are meant to be dynamic, responsive and open to what is going on at the moment, offering perspectives on a truth that we as Christians believe to be eternal in a way that speaks to the everyday and even to the moment. I have a meeting later in the week where I have to preach a 'trial sermon' to a panel which I am spending more time putting together as it is a special event but usually I like to read the Bible verses set for the Sunday early in the week and leave them to percolate fo...

Three positive comments on the sermon below when I preached it again this evening.... Did someone cause some kind of tilt on the world's axis whilst I was asleep last night?

Actually, all I threw away on Sunday were my sermon notes, but i thought the title might get attention! Sunday was a good day, a great return to work and a really enjoyable way to spend time in Church! I stayed up until stupid o'clock in the morning writing a sermon which I preached at the traditional Communion (1662) service at 8.30am. I like this service, a good way to start a Sunday, reflective and quiet using words filled with resonance and depth which say so much despite being originally written in 1549! The sermon worked there, it wasn't a bad talk at all (though I say so myself) but having got to the next Church for our 10.30am Contemporary language Communion I decided that it wasn't the right sermon for that congregation! I am always telling those on the Worship Leading course I run that context reigns supreme in our worship (well, actually God reigns supreme, but context is important) so I took notice of what I said (yes, Clergy do try and practice what we prea...

It's Bible Sunday tomorrow and I thought I should preach on the Bible... Pretty simple, you might think, but thirty years of being in the Church (yes I was eight when I started) and twenty years of more formal study make it a huge subject and I am having real problems narrowing it down. What makes it more difficult is that the theme given by the Bible Society is 'a feast of God's word' which is essentially what I have been saying over the past few weeks as we have been studying the Bible at our teaching evenings. I know that most of the people who will be coming to my main service tomorrow haven't been at our evening sessions, but some have, and i wonder whether I am selling them short, as it were, by re-using material I've used before. Some Clergy reuse sermons all the time, we have a three year cycle of readings, so three years down the road it is possible to pretty much preach the same thing - I know of one minister in a University who did exactly that, bec...

Boring title, but it does exactly what it says on the label Trinity 4 (2007) Year C RCL Principal PROPER 8 2 Kings 2.1–2, 6–14 Luke 9.51–end Discipleship and discipline I t does often seem that whenever there is an ordination, or a celebration of ministry in the Church then we try to take the clergy down a peg or two! I say this slightly tongue in cheek, but today’s readings and the readings used in the Cathedral yesterday, and the readings we use on Maundy Thursday every year at the renewal of Ordination vows all have something of a hard edge to them, as if we don’t want the Clergy to become too carried away with their status! And in many ways this is quite appropriate. For years us Clergy enjoyed a certain status and, indeed, power, which led to arrogance and a certain amnesia about the message we are called to proclaim, one of humility, servanthood and the need to rely on God’s grace alone. Today’s readings bring this home in a rather stark way. There’s so much it would be possible...

This Sunday's sermon It's the Sunday no one wants to preach, lots of theology! So here's how I get around it... to a certain degree. How does the Trinity help? Today is Trinity Sunday, so I am going to talk about the Trinity. But I am not going to try to explain the nature and meaning of ‘God in Trinity’. I am not going to tell you that God is like a Shamrock with three leaves, or explain one of the Church’s profoundest teachings using the image of a Triple Decker chocolate bar or of toothpaste with three stripes in - all of these things do not do justice to the depth and wealth of theological thought around what exactly it means to describe God as ‘The Holy Trinity’ Neither, you will be pleased to know, am I going to try and explain any of this theological discussion around themes such as ‘what is the trinity’ or ‘how do the persons of the trinity exist together’ nor will not be exploring the words ‘consubstantial’ and ‘co-eternal’. The reason I won’t be looking at the d...