Sermons
Reign? What do you mean by that anyway?
We don’t talk about “reigns” very much anymore, other than indulging in Commonwealth angst about what will happen when Elizabeth II dies and Charles ascends the throne (just so you know, nothing will happen really). Most of us have no idea what it might be like to have a hands-on kind of monarch like in the old days, or currently in some other countries. If this is true, and I’m…
Remembrance Sunday
It is that time of the year again, a time to remember. But a time to remember what? Is this a time to remember and glorify war? A time to remember and glorify peace? A time to remember and grieve? A time to remember and celebrate? I have heard all of those and many more besides. I remember at this time of the year because I can’t not remember; but…
What does change look like?
How is that for a completely non-provocative and almost banal question, “What does change look like?” But is it really banal in the sense that it is so drearily commonplace that it isn’t worth consideration? I don’t think that is the case. What I do think is that we have heard so much about change: “be the change”; “the new constant is change”; “change is everywhere . . . and…
What does grace look like?
I am writing this blog post whilst listing to Lou Reed’s music, a peculiar choice to be sure but I heard this afternoon that he died today. He was 71, which I suspect might be considerably older than many predictions might have been. But why bring him up at all when I preached about grace and what it looks like today? I’m not entirely sure but I think it has…
Let’s look at something else we all know!
I have mentioned it more than once in the past that one of the best things we can do, at least now and then, is to look and think about what we already know. I’ve made, or at least attempted to make, the case several times that it is looking at what we already know that we discover that no matter how well we know it (whatever “it” might be)…
Everything comes from something
So you may be looking at the title of this blog and saying to yourself, “Duh! Of course!” and I wouldn’t blame you a bit if you did. Saying that everything comes from something hardly counts as a new insight. If I understand the law of conservation of mass then once you have everything (see creation, ex nihilo), then it is just a matter of one thing becoming another thing…
Another taboo talked about
I think it was last week that I mentioned that we are not supposed to talk about religion or politics . . . well there is another thing we aren’t supposed to talk about and that is money. Soooo, this week I preached about money. By the way, I am not on some sort of taboo-busting, taboo-discussing trend, I go where the Lectionary leads as much as possible and sometimes…
Politics? Yes I went there, but not how you might have thought
I know, I know, I know. The two topics you should never talk about are religion and politics. Now I am more or less forced to talk about the former but to bring the latter in too . . . well, what was I thinking? What I was thinking, was a slightly different take on 1 Timothy 2:1,2. I have always been slightly uncomfortable with this passage. I get that…
Stop being so binary!
I like logical fallacies. Well, let me clarify. I don’t like “doing” logical fallacies. I like recognizing them and knowing that they have names and cool things like that. Heather is much better at identifying logical fallacies when they pop up, as they do so often in public discourse, but I find my fair share. There are all sorts of logical fallacies out there, some of the more common are:…
A micro primer on hermeneutics
This Sunday’s sermons come from the Lectionary’s Gospel lesson, which is taken from Luke, in fact Luke 14:25-33 (click here for the texts). The actual title of the sermons is “Hyperbole” and what I was attempting to do was to provide some guidance into how we interpret, or at least hear, the hyperbolic statements and stories; especially from Jesus. Dealing with hyperbole is just one part of hermeneutics, which is…