Sermons

The Poor have good news preached to them. (Matt 11:5) What is that good news? In this story it is that “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up.” Luke’s version at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, in the synagogue in […]

“May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power”. ****************************** It is often remarked that many today long for the simplicity, resolve and effectiveness of the strong man, almost whatever the aim and whatever the methods. Christ the King – celebrated for the 100th time this year – puts […]

Luke 20.27-38 Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. His ninth is so stupendous that you couldn’t imagine what could possibly follow it. Imagine someone discovers a long-lost score of his 10th Symphony, and a friend of yours has just been to the first performance. Your friend tries to describe to you what the music is like. The […]

Two men went up to the Temple to pray… In the name of the Father… Two men went up to the Temple to pray, and one prayed badly and one prayed well. Two men went up to the Temple to pray, and one went home justified and the other went home unjustified. Two men went […]

Sermon Proper 24. 2 Timothy 3.14-4.5; Luke 18.1-8; Genesis 32.22-31 “Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it.” In today’s reading from the Second Letter to Timothy, Paul reminds us that our faith is hereditary. We learned it from someone who learned it from someone, who eventually learned […]

Amos 6:1-7 6Alas for those who are at ease in Zion, and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria,    4Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the stall; 5who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, […]

Luke 16.1-13 This parable of the unrighteous steward is notoriously difficult to make sense of, and so I’m going to start somewhere else and come back to it. I want to think of a painter. The painter makes a few strokes with the brush on the canvas. Then she stands back and looks at it. […]

Smorgasbord! One of the mild pleasures of my life comes to me here in the monastery on Wednesdays and Sundays when we eat up our leftovers. Brethren and guests often put the strangest combinations of food on their plates, combinations they would never normally have: a piece of fish and a piece of meat; soup […]

“Lord, open our hearts to the riches of your grace.” ************************ “Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” So the Lord asks those who hear him, all those farmers and fishermen who know just how to interpret the appearance of the earth and sky. “Hypocrites”, he says. Their hypocrisy seems to […]

Without you O God my table is empty :   Make haste O Lord, and do not delay.  Amen                            Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also Last Sunday  we had a great sermon from Steven on the parable of the self-satisfied rich man who built bigger barns to store his grain, laying […]