Talks, Sermons and Reflections

Matthew 24.36-44 Advent is about keeping awake. Jesus tells the story the man who was burgled. He tells us that if the man had known when the burglar was coming, he would have stayed awake. Jesus is saying to us, in pretty dramatic terms, that we need to stay awake because there will be a day when the Son of Man comes with great power and glory. An audio of this talk can be found here We speak of it as the second coming. The first coming was when Jesus the Messiah was born in Bethlehem. This is about his second coming. It will be the end of space and time as we know it. It will be God closing the books on history. Jesus is coming in glory.  Of course it is hard to imagine. We can only think in categories of space and time, and this event goes beyond those categories. So all we have is picture language. But we need to stay awake because nobody knows when that second coming will be, not even the main character! Jesus says that only the Father knows. So don’t get misled by people wh...

We have just bought ourselves an Advent calendar. We couldn’t find one with the nativity scene but did find one with a village church in the snow - so it sort of has a Christian association! Advent is the four weeks in the Church year which comes before Christmas. It is a time for glorious music. Marian, our music director, goes on an annual pilgrimage to a different cathedral each year for their Advent carol service. We plan to have one at All Saints Sutton in Burnham Market on Sunday 7 December at 6:30pm. It may not quite be of cathedral standard(!) – but it is a good opportunity to sing some of the great hymns. Advent is about waiting . The readings from the Bible we hear in church tell how the Jewish people waited for a promised child to be born, a Messiah who would get them out of the mess they were in. They tell of the months before the birth of Jesus: of John the Baptist who came ‘to prepare the way’, and of the angel who came to Mary with the astonishing news that she is to...

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY 2025 A couple of weeks ago I heard an interview with a woman who had lost her father 50 years earlier, when she was a little girl. He had worked on the boats taking oil workers to the rigs. There had been a storm and he had been killed. The oil workers with him had been officially remembered, but he had not been. 50 years later she approached the chaplain for oil workers, and in their annual service in Aberdeen they named him. They also welcomed her. The audio of this talk can be found here It was a very small act – the including of a name on a list – but it made such a difference to her. It meant that she felt that her father mattered. And it in fact opened the door to be able to talk about him and to find out more about him. We come together this morning to remember because people matter The reading from what is known as the Beatitudes (‘Blessed are’) and from Ecclesiastes are separated by 1400 years or so. But they are connected in one line. King Solomon , who i...

KEEPING THE MAST UPRIGHT  What Nelson Can Teach Us About Faith and Duty A sermon preached in All Saints , Burnham Thorpe , the birthplace of Lord Nelson It is astonishing that there is a monument in the centre of a square that is known all around the world in the centre of London to a local boy born in Burnham Thorpe. And he would have spent more time than he probably would have wanted to in this building (where Nelson's father was the vicar)! Admiral Horatio Nelson, Trafalgar Square Nelson was not perfect. Far from it. He made big mistakes. I’m listening to the podcast, ‘ The Rest is History ’ about his life. It is fantastic and I do recommend it. I’ve just heard about the session of the disaster at Naples , he was spectacularly unfaithful to Fanny and quite cruel to her, and he was not the humblest of people – he liked people to praise him. Having said that, there was quite a bit for people to praise! Isaiah 33:23 states, “Your rigging hangs loose. It cannot hold the mast firm ...

Luke 18:9-14 I love this story that Jesus tells. It is about a familiar theme that we find in Luke – a theme that is introduced in the Mary’s song : “God will scatter the proud in the imagination of their conceit. He will cast down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly” The audio of this talk can be found here And we saw that illustrated in Jesus comments about guests at a dinner party who choose the most important places. The host will say to them, ‘Move down’, and will say to those in the lower places, ‘Come on up higher’ (Luke 14:11) And we see it here. God hears the prayer of the broken tax collector but not of the self-justifying Pharisee . The Tax collector and the Pharisee. Mosaic from St Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna. c505AD It is not that what the Pharisee is doing is wrong. He fasts twice a week. That was over and above what the law required. The law required fasting on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:29) and possibly on 4 days in memory of the destruction of J...

  Last month I had the privilege of visiting Herculaneum. The archaeological site is smaller than Pompeii and more manageable. There was obvious wealth - a huge villa set on the edge of what would then have been the sea. This was the equivalent of Cornwall or the North Norfolk coast where wealthy Roman citizens could get out of Rome. In the local exhibition centre we saw beautiful jewellery, some of which was very similar to what we would see in our shops here. And down, where the beach was, in the place where the boats were kept, we saw the skeletons. They are of the people, young and old, free and slave, who fled to the shore as Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79, hoping against hope to be rescued by sea. It is incredibly poignant, not least because at least two of the skulls have open jaws set in what appears to be an eternal scream as the scorching gas cloud enveloped them. We hope their death was pretty instantaneous. It really brought home the fragility of life. Here were people ...