My Sermons

Casting out Demons 22 June 2025 Proper 7C 1 Kings 19.1-4, 8-15a ps 42 Luke 8.26-39 It’s heartening that even in dark and anxious times - like the times we are currently living through - you still sometimes get glimpses of how things should be. Maybe you came across this before I did - but just yesterday I heard of a movement spreading across Instagram called ‘New Evangelicalism’. A heavily tattooed former pastor who rejoices in the name of Brian Recker is spreading the message that Evangelical churches in the US have been hijacked by the far right’s rhetoric of exclusion and hate, hijacked to the extent that many churches in the US have become little more than barrackers for the boorish and divisive politics of Donald Trump. Jesus - Brian Recker says - is not about exclusion, not about deportation and attacking social cohesion and supporting genocide and lining the pockets of dictators - but about love. About building up, about being for others, not against ot...

Trinity Sunday Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Psalm 8 Romans 5:1-5 John 16:12-15 One of the risks of following a faith that is as old as ours - two thousand years and counting - is that along the way, lots of stuff gets set in stone as immutable doctrine. And passed down as ideas about God that other people came up with centuries ago and argued and fought over until finally they achieved the musty sanctity of extreme age. The even greater risk is that we can lose sight of the fact that as Christians we daily experience God for ourselves - and are called to reimagine and express our knowledge and love of God in the shapes and colours and movements of an ever-changing world. The 1600-year-old notion of God as a Trinity is a prime example. A doctrine that was hammered out in passionate disagreements and much bloodshed over centuries into an uneasy compromise at the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451; and which preachers, once a year, are still invited to explain. Well, it can’t be ...