scene of birth of christ

Christmas: The Importance of Stories

December 18, 2022Posted inSermons
I am sure that many of us will have Christmas traditions at home or with our families. A key one for me has been watching a particular film at Christmas, every Christmas, something I have done for as long as I can remember. I have never seen it earlier or later in the year. It has always had to be watched at Christmas. This year, I broke this tradition – by seeing it early! I am, of course, talking about the best Christmas film in existence – and now I’ve uttered those words, I know that this is bound to go down as a controversial sermon. Any guesses as to what the best Christmas film ever is?

Holier Than Thou

October 23, 2022Posted inSermons
The story of The Tortoise and the Hare must be one of the most well-known in the world. Yet, I struggle to think of the last time I heard it read or even read it myself. I suspect that the reason is that I did not really need to read it again. Aesop’s fable is so simple and so well drilled into our children through schooling that we could all probably tell it from memory. A comment such as “slow and steady wins the race” comes to our minds so easily and so often, and with it all the imagery of tortoises and hares to last a life time. All of this is likely what makes it such a successful fable. It is a simple story that presents the moral it wishes to impart to us clearly and with consistency.
brown wooden gavel on brown wooden table

Justice

October 16, 2022Posted inSermons
[A sermon preached to Hinckley Unitarians on Sunday 16th of October 2022] (Readings: A 17th Century Folk Poem: Stealing The Common From The Goose, and Luke 18:1-9) Justice is a hard concept to…

Better the Devils You Know

September 11, 2022Posted inSermons
[A sermon preached to Hinckley Unitarians on Sunday 11th of September 2022] (Readings: Luke 15:1-10 and Letter 2 from The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil by C. S.…

Humility and Liberation

August 28, 2022Posted inSermons
[A sermon preached to Hinckley Unitarians on Sunday 28th of August 2022] (Readings: Sirach 10:12-18 and Luke 14:1,7-14) “It is the responsibility of the host or organiser to tell people where to sit…

“Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”: The Example of Mary?

July 17, 2022Posted inSermons
Our reading from the Gospel of Luke today is one that causes many people to get cheesed off with Jesus. Here are two women, one leaves all the work for the other to do and when she has the nerve to finally ask Jesus to tell her lazy sister to finally get up and do some work, what does he do? Criticises hard working Martha and praises lazy Mary! Where is the justice in that?
Mental Health and Social Stigma: The Gerasene Demoniac

Mental Health and Social Stigma: The Gerasene Demoniac

June 19, 2022Posted inSermons
“Keep to yourself; do not come near me, for I am too holy for you” (Isaiah 65:5). This is the ‘holier than thou’ attitude that the prophet Isaiah spoke against in our second reading today. For the Hebrew prophets this attitude smacked of hypocrisy. Worshiping out of a belief that we are better than everyone else is not true worship but a selfish enterprise. Yet so much of our lives is geared towards giving us a sense of superiority over our neighbours. We see this in the consumerist sense “buy this car and be the envy of your friends,” “wear this dress and be the envy of your colleagues” etc. but also in how competitive our society has become, “look how hard working and productive I am,” “look how much money I have.”

Queerness, Shepherds and the Holy Family

December 30, 2020Posted inSermons
Liturgically it is not too late for another Christmas address. We are, technically on day 5 of what is a 12-day long festival of Christmastide! The life of Jesus queered social boundaries from the start. Who outside the Holy Family should hear of his birth first but shepherds. Shepherds were, according to the religious orthodoxy of the day, seen as ritually and physically unclean. They were at the mercy of the constant demands of their flocks and had no time for the meticulous program of ceremonial hygiene that would have been demanded of the average person.

First Sunday After Christmas

December 27, 2020Posted inSermons
So in this past week we arrived out of the season of Advent into Christmas. Many of us completed our Advent calendars, listened to carols from King’s College, Cambridge, and left appropriate festive fair by the fireplace for Santa and his reindeer on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day you might have been lucky enough to have your family with you for a great dinner, you might have called friends and family members from afar, or maybe you felt slightly green around the gills after over indulging in the chocolate from your selection box.