Talks, Sermons and Reflections

Matthew 27:45-49  (A talk for Good Friday 2011) We will all experience moments of abandonment It might be when the partner walks out on you or when the child or the parent rejects you. It might be when the organisation or party or church, for which you have given your everything, tells you that you are no longer needed or wanted. And perhaps the greatest tragedy of death is the sense of abandonment that the surviving partner can feel. As WH Auden so powerfully put it,  Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.  He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I th...

Luke 19:28-44 Our passage today is headed ‘The Triumphal Entry’. It is about the events that happened on the first Palm Sunday. Jesus enters Jerusalem riding a colt, glory is given to God 1.       Jesus, God’s King, comes to Jerusalem, God’s city Jerusalem was God’s city: it was the home of the temple, the place where God had said that his name would dwell, the place where God and humans meet together. But he comes openly as King. And Jesus is God’s King. We’ve been told that in Luke from the very beginning – from when the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary and tells her that her child will be the Son of the Most High, and that he will reign over God’s people for ever. Earlier in Luke, Jesus has kept his identity hidden. In Luke 9:21 , we are told that he strictly charged and commanded his followers to tell no one that he was the Christ, that is – the one who was to be God’s anointed ruler But now, on this first Palm Sunday – now th...