selective focus of purple candle

Advent: The Importance of Being Woke

November 27, 2022Posted inSermons
Being ‘woke’ has become something of a pejorative term. The other day an article in The Telegraph blamed “namby-pamby woke HR types” for trying to ban swearing in the workplace. Yesterday a Daily Express headline read, “BBC's World Cup coverage blasted as 'woke'”. But where did this term come from before it became widely used as an insult for anything or anyone considered to be a bit too left-wing? Well, it originated in the African-American community in the United States. If someone was ‘woke’ it meant that they were “alert to the issues of racial prejudice and discrimination”. That eventually expanded to mean being alert to other social issues.

Meetings and Partings

June 6, 2021Posted inSermons
So, this is it. The day is finally here. My last service of my first official ministry and my first time saying this sort of goodbye. The theme of this service ‘Meetings and Partings’ was taken from one of the Engagement Group sessions that I led with you this year. That Engagement Group was, appropriately, on liminal space. As I speak to you now, about to leave my official role as Student Minister behind at the end of this month and not quite fully knowing what is next, liminal space is exactly what I’m about to be entering into.

New Year: Predictions and Perspectives

January 3, 2021Posted inSermons
About a week ago, my Dad forwarded me an article that he found highly amusing. It was published on the website of the Daily Mirror with the headline ‘Nostradamus terrifying predictions for 2021’. Now I’m know that the tabloid press is commonly perceived as having no aversion to kicking people while they are down, however to do such to the hopes of an entire population first struck me as being in bad taste and highly frivolous. It still strikes me as very frivolous, but we might be able to use it to our advantage. It is, after all, a very useful and, depending on one’s sense of humour, fun, way to think about the future.

Remembrance Sunday

November 8, 2020Posted inSermons
[A sermon given via Zoom to the Oxford Unitarians congregation on Sunday, 8th of November 2020] (Readings: Parable of the Old Man and the Young by Wilfred Owen and Matthew…

Pride in Tying Times: Princess Dresses and Stormy Seas

October 11, 2020Posted inSermons
I have to start by saying how wonderful it is to be preaching to what for many years was my home congregation while I lived, worked, and studied in the wonderful city that is Leeds. This must be a really odd time of you as a congregation. You would, in any other year, be recovering from putting on a host of activities as a part of Leeds Pride. However, with 2020 being the year that it is, it was sadly not to be. Pride may not have been the same this year and I cannot possibly make up for that with a sermon – but I’m going to try. Just for you – and whoever is watching this online afterwards – I am going to try to make this my most Queer Theology packed sermon yet!