Talks, Sermons and Reflections

The Anglican Church has about 85 million members in 39 Provinces across 165 countries. The average Anglican, as the current Archbishop of Canterbury often says, is not someone from the UK, but a 30-year-old woman in Africa who is earning under $1 a day. It is a family of Churches, a fellowship or communion of Churches, which grew out of the Church of England, with shared saints, linked histories, theology, worship and a shared relationship to the Archbishop of Canterbury. So what is Anglicanism? What does it mean to be an Anglican? BEING PART OF THE ONE CATHOLIC CHURCH There is a continuity with the past A maintenance of the three-fold order of bishops, priests and deacons. An unbroken link through time and space with the apostles, and a very early ordering of the Church. Confession of the historic creeds: Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian Celebration of the sacraments: and particularly Baptism and Holy Communion Use of liturgy, rites and prayers which reach back to the...

                  1. Limitations of language ‘If you can understand it, it’s not God’. (Augustine of Hippo)   2. Experience of disciples a) They knew that there was only one God Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord. ( Deuteronomy 6:4 ) For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me. ( Isaiah 46:9 ) The first followers call the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, God (Colossians 1.3)   They also saw that Jesus prayed to God as Father (eg. John 11.41), is conscious of being loved by the Father, of being sent by the Father, of being given all things by the Father (3.34), of speaking the words of the Father (12.49f), doing the works of the Father (4.34, 6.38), judging with the judgement of the Father (8.16), sharing in the glory of the Father (8.54; 17.5), and of being one with the Father (John 10.29). Jesus had this sense of being in the Father and o...

These questions were asked by children (aged 7-8) at the Guildhall Feoffment Primary School Some of these questions are very difficult to answer because when we are talking about God we are talking about someone who is bigger than what we can think of. So, for instance, asking who made God, is a bit like Elsa and Anna of the film Frozen asking who drew Walt Disney? They live in a world in which everything and everyone is drawn. They would not be able to imagine a world where people are not drawn. Or describing what God is like is like trying to describe the colour blue to someone who has never been able to physically see. Did God make Jesus? Yes and no! No: in the sense that Jesus is the eternal Son of God who has always existed. There never was a time when he has not existed and there never will be a time when he does not exist Yes: in the sense that at one particular point in our history, Jesus became a human being. He grew in his mother's womb and became a human bab...

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 listen to ‘The nature, cause and consequence of evil’ on Audioboo This is a passage which is helpful  as we come to  the first Sunday in Lent. It forces us to examine ourselves.  It tells us about the nature of  evil , the  cause  of  evil  and the consequence of  evil . 1.  The nature of  evil . We like to think of evil as something that is out there that happens to relatively good people like me. Evil   is in those uncontrolled forces: natural disasters (floods), sickness, death. It is  in  those few people who do really appalling things  – the Hitlers, Ceaucescus, Fred Wests of this world . But the stark reality is that evil is not out there. It is in here. I was struck by an illustration that I read. A man called Key Warren visited Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. He writes, “ The first time I visited Rwanda, I went looking for monsters, albeit a different c...