Latest Sermons

Goodbyes can be hard.  As a young man, I recall having to leave Australia after a seven-month sojourn which had changed my life.  The family which had hosted me, came to see me off from the airport.  They’d loved me deeply, and I’d returned their love.

“For we walk by faith” says St Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians. But how easy is it to do that, to walk by faith? Is it even desirable? In the age of risk assessment and the increasing need for constant vigilance and accountability can we really afford to walk by faith?

There’s a great tradition in the Church of England. Perhaps most of the clergy, about all of the retired clergy, and a disturbingly large number of the laity, at some stage toward the end of the week or over the weekend, fumble their way towards the letters page of the Church Times.

Yesterday I returned to London after sharing the first two days of the pilgrimage to Canterbury. I am part of what is known as “the Steady Group.”

Yesterday Sarah Mullally was installed at St Paul’s Cathedral as Bishop of London. This history-making service was a wonderful welcome to Bishop Sarah and an opportunity to give thanks for all that she will bring to the Diocese as the person that she is and as the first female Bishop of London.

You can live in a city and almost become unaware of the natural world, especially if like me you have no garden. It’s like missing a miracle of God in our midst.

I envisage forgiveness as part of a twelve-step process as follows…

‘The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’ Jesus repeats the phrase ‘lay down my life’ five times during his discourse about being the Good Shepherd…it is a phrase with multi-layered meanings that have significance for us in terms of laying down our lives and taking them up again.