Talks, Sermons and Reflections

Matthew 2:13-18 We’ve only just had Christmas and in our readings we are now, only three days later, in a real mess. ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey’ are in Egypt having had to flee Herod, who wants to destroy Jesus. The audio of this talk can be found here And there is overwhelming desolation in Bethlehem. Mothers weeping for their dead babies. Their children, their world has been torn apart “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children because they are no more”. It is a quote from Jeremiah 31. The massacre of the innocents. The scroll reads (in slavonic) 'Rachel weeping for her children'. Rachel was the beloved wife of Jacob, the father of the Israelite nation. She was the mother of three of the tribes of Israel, and she died – incidentally in Bethlehem where she was buried - giving birth to Benjamin. Ramah, in the North of Israel, is one of the cities of Benjamin. In Jeremiah 31 Rachel is said to weep because her child...

The big event for the Church this year has been the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene creed. Those are the words we say when we begin ‘I believe’ in every communion service. In 325 Emperor Constantine brought together all the bishops, the church leaders, many of whom had, until a few years earlier, been persecuted for their faith. He wanted them to come to an agreement on who Jesus really was. Was he human, or was he God-human? It was a passionate debate.  It was so passionate that even Santa Claus got locked up in a cell for the night. Nicholas the bishop of Myra, who later became St Nicholas, Santa Niklaus, was so impassioned that he punched his opponent in the face and was taken to the cell to cool off for the night. I guess that year he was on the naughty list. But at the heart of it was a discussion about Christmas, and the baby lying in the manger. Who was he? The people on the human side of the debate said that Jesus was born of a virgin, that he was the greatest and most Go...

We had a Christingle this afternoon. This is my Christingle. It looks like one of those old sputniks The key thing about the Christingle is the candle – signifying Christ the light of the world. But it got me thinking. If the orange represents the world, how many oranges would I need to fill the real earth? And the answer is 5 septillion, where a septillion is 1 with 24 0’s after it – give or take one or two! And if we had 5 septillion oranges we would need 5 septillion candles. They would produce as much light as the entire global energy output for one year multiplied by a trillion times. That is quite a long way short of what the sun produces, but it would still make the earth quite a bright bauble in the celestial sky, which could be seen from 15 trillion miles away John writes that in the Word, in Jesus Christ, was life and the life was the light of all people. I guess John is remembering the opening chapter of the Bible.  ‘In the beginning God created ..’  And the wind of...

Christingle 2025 I loved the school nativity play.  It was about Bethlehem – and the imagined police force in Bethlehem. They had a problem. There were so many people coming for the census that there was no room in the town. So the police force were trying to keep people out Joseph and Mary were OK – because they had come for the census But the shepherds – no, and the wise men – definitely no, and the angels – a categorically definitely loud no no no! We hear about Bethlehem in Christmas readings We sing about Bethlehem: O little town of Bethlehem It was an old town. Its name means 'house of bread', so probably there were lots of bakers there. I wonder whether they had any shops selling oranges? But when people thought about Bethlehem, they didn't think about three wise men, but two wise women. There was Rachel.   She lived a long time before Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey. Rachel was one of the mothers of the Jewish people. One quarter of the nation looked back ...

In Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi’s Adoration of the Magi, a rather chubby baby Jesus sits on Mary’s lap and blesses the wise man who kneels at his feet. Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, The Adoration of the Magi , c. 1440/1460 I don’t think it was like that. The audio of this talk can be found here Not because the wise men were not blessed by coming to Jesus, nor because it requires a rather unimaginable precociousness for the baby to raise his hand (but then we speak of a virgin birth, so anything could happen!), but because at the heart of the Christmas story, God really does become one of us and makes himself vulnerable. The newborn Jesus was just like any other newborn baby: unable even to hold up his own head. He was totally dependent on Mary and Joseph. That is astonishing. God, who is all those omni-words: omni-present, omni-potent, omni-scient, who lacks nothing and needs nothing, chooses to become a helpless baby. George Macdonald wrote: “They all were looking for ...

James 5:7-10 “Strengthen your hearts for the coming of the Lord is near” Images from the west side of St Marys Westgate, Burnham Market parapet. The first arch shows the attendant carrying the head of John the Baptist, and the second shows Herod and Herodias, sitting at table on which are dishes, while Salome is tumbling tête à terre before them. Photos taken by drone, courtesy of Sowerbys (and the lightning conductor cable across the attendant has been erased courtesy of AI!). When James says ‘strengthen your hearts’, he is saying set your hearts on a firm basis. The audio of this talk can be found here I think of a post in the ground. It has become a bit wobbly.  The post James wants us to knock in deeper is this conviction: the Lord is coming. V7: be patient ‘until the coming of the Lord’ V8: ‘for the coming of the Lord is near’ V9: ‘see the judge is standing at the doors’ Our conviction is that one day the Lord Jesus will return. It is something that we say every time we have a...

Matthew 3:1-12 John was a wild man. The Assembly of the Holy Prophet St John the Baptist , Old Believer Icon, C19th Nevyansk school, Urals. All the people of Jerusalem go out to John to be baptised. Notice the lion, camel, unicorn and deer in the wilderness (on the left). He lived wild He dressed wild. He preached wild. The audio of this talk can be found here He was part of a tradition that went back many years. He was a prophet - and the prophets were God's shock troops, God’s disrupters. There was a man in the Old Testament called Saul. He was searching for lost donkeys. But he meets the prophet of Israel, a man called Samuel. Samuel tells him that he is going to become king of Israel. And the Spirit comes on him and ‘he fell into a prophetic frenzy’ (1 Samuel 10:10). Or there was Elijah. There are strong echoes of Elijah in John the Baptist. He wore hairy clothes and had a leather belt and spent much time in wilderness. He was the one who challenged the 700 or so prophets of Ba...

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...