Another sermon, this one for Advent Sunday

We had a service on Sunday for all of the five Parishes in the 'Five Alive Mission Community' which was an advent Carols service, most enjoyable with a very good choir indeed and lots of 'lusty singing' as Wesley might have said!

So here's the words I offered, or the taster anyway!
Genesis 1.1-5
Psalm 43
Isaiah 45.2-8
Isaiah 9.2-3,6-7
Psalm 36.5-10
1 Thessalonians 5.1-11, 23-24
Isaiah 60.1-5a
Matthew 5.14-16

Advent 1 2008 Year B RCL

Looking for the Light

Have you started dreaming about what presents you hope to get for Christmas yet? Have you started thinking of the wonderful reaction hope to see on the faces of friends and family as they open up the gifts you bought them. Are your expectations high? Us human beings are pretty good at building up our expectations - a theme that is particularly pertinent as we dream of the wonderful gifts we hope to receive and as we tell ourselves that we’ve finally found the perfect present for the person who has everything.

Unfortunately most of these expectations seem to be dashed as we find our new video game, gardening equipment and expensive jewellery have become badly knitted jumpers, funny coloured ties and an abundance of hankies with your initial on the corner - and that the inventive and original gift you gave is exactly the same as that which three other people gave as well. Our expectations never really seem to be live up to.

God never seems to live up to our expectations either. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, though.[more]

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trying to connect the dots, unnecessarily

Image
Another sermon - as seems to be the way of this blog at present! Life is busy and complicated, and good, and bad, and exciting, and challenging, and (in short) not conducive to getting Blog posts written! So, here's my thought for today taken from these passages (Click for details): Exodus 16:1–5, 9–15,  Psalm 78;18–29 Mt 13.1–9 Grace and Meaning In the words of St Paul, or perhaps St John, or maybe St George, or even St Ringo “When I was younger, so much younger than today.” Ah, sorry, couldn’t resist!  No, it’s not a tubby boy story – but just a general reflection that today’s story from the book of Exodus used to cause me great consternation.  Or at least was one of those parts of Scripture that didn’t seem to fit… I knew the story, the mythological story I am now convinced, of the temptations in the wilderness when Jesus proclaims, quoting Deuteronomy 6 ‘you shall not put the Lord your God to the test’. As I moved into the Anglican Church and ...
Read more

A Sermon which upset someone

So, I'm not a theological conservative.  That probably comes across in pretty much everything I write, but I thought I should say it.  I believe myself to be orthodox, however, and hold to those things which the Church expresses in the catholic creeds.  I also have a relatively 'high' theology regarding the inspiration of Scripture. But I am not a Biblical literalist, nor do I hold to a doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture. I can't.  The Bible is too rich, too deep, too difficult, too flawed for that.  And by flawed I mean I understand it to be the record of human beings trying to make sense of God at work.  It has the breath of the Spirit blowing through it's words and on every page, but when we try and make sense of God there is a chance we will go awry.... 'Hey lets condemn (and or murder) pretty much everyone who isn't in our tribe, that's obviously what God wants' kind of awry.  And if we study this book carefully then we see that ideas ...
Read more