Talks, Sermons and Reflections

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...

  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 ...

Luke 17:11-19 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus  was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.  As he entered a village, ten lepers  approached him. Keeping their distance,  they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’  When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean.  Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.  He prostrated himself at Jesus’  feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.  Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?  Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’  Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’ Harvest is much more real here than it was in the centre of Moscow or London. The audio of this talk can be found here We are conscious of the weather, not just for sai...

Luke 17:5-10 "The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith! The Lord replied, ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea”, and it would obey you. ‘Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”? Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”’" Faith is central to absolutely everything that we do. Faith. South doors of the Baptistery in Florence, by Andrea Pisano, 1330 We all have faith. Without faith we cannot live. An audio of the talk can be found here If you walk into church and sit on the chair, th...