Talks, Sermons and Reflections

Luke2:22-40 [A sermon preached at St Luke's West Holloway] I was vicar of your neighbouring parish, Mary Mags, for 10 years from 1995-2005. It was rather daunting to have Dave Tomlinson here on one side and Stephen Coles on the other and to be this nobody in the middle. I became vicar in Bury St Edmunds for 12 years and then, from 2017-2023 I was the Anglican chaplain in Moscow. Alison and myself returned to the UK last summer. Our final weekend in Moscow was the weekend that Prigozhin, rather like the grand old Duke of York, marched his troops to the edge of Moscow and then – fatally for him – turned them around and marched them back. There is nothing that can justify what Putin did on 24 February 2022, even if some of his grievances against the West have some justification. It has led to what some calculate to up to 500000 deaths from both Ukraine and Russian; millions of people – some of you may be here – had to flee their homes; terrible things being done: the problem w...

John 1:43-51 It is very difficult to be unseen, invisible I remember on one occasion when we were having a meal. There was Alison, myself and the three boys. Maybe others. We were having an intense conversation. John, our son who was probably about 5 at the time, had clearly been trying to say something, but nobody was paying him any attention. He was invisible to us. So he stood up on his chair and he shouted out, ‘Listen to me!’ Perhaps we feel invisible at work. I've just started work in a large organisation and at times it seems that I am invisible. That everybody is getting on with their life, their interests, their systems and I don't exist, I don't really matter.  And as a new person in a new place – perhaps we’ve moved to a new village or town or country, or begun college – maybe at first people notice us, but later it can feel that nobody notices us. We begin to feel that we do not matter. And as we grow older, or suffer sickness – maybe we are stuck in h...