Recent Sermons

Fourth Sunday of Advent December 2024

By David Richardson (Licensed Preacher)

For He that is mighty has magnified me.

Let me start with a warning for those highly conscious of their Body Mass Index, that the message I’m working towards today is that this Christmas, we should be willing to expand. This might appear to be in breach of NHS advice, but bear with me and I’ll try to explain…
In the first two chapters of his gospel Luke (uniquely among the Evangelists) flips the focus like a skilled film director, between two interrelated stories. The story of Mary and the birth of Christ is interwoven with that of Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist.
In today’s gospel those two storylines come together, as the newly pregnant Mary visits her older, cousin Elizabeth, who is entering the third trimester of her pregnancy.
So why does Luke tell these stories in parallel? Well, the first thing to say is that this is no accident. Luke is a sophisticated, cosmopolitan author, with a Greek literary education. He writes nothing by chance. So you may be sure that he is using this twin-track structure with purpose - to make us think.
One intention, I believe, is to give a credible context to the Nativity; to root Mary and the birth of Christ in time and place. Mary and Elizabeth are presented as real Judean women, with flesh and blood pregnancies, and relatable personal challenges – infertility for Elizabeth, and pregnancy outside of marriage for Mary. I think we see Luke’s empathy with women here - he is after all the only Gospel writer to make clear that, during his ministry, Jesus was constantly accompanied by female disciples.
So, we hear this morning that “Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country” to meet Elizabeth. I love the picture Luke gives us here, as Mary (not having the benefit of WhatsApp) hurries to take her Big News to her kith and kin in the hills. It shows us a Mary who has agency, who is active not passive, who literally has “get up and go”. And for me the story has the ring of absolute truth. This feels like the real world.
It is also a world of miraculous connection with God. Both pregnancies follow a visitation by the Angel Gabriel. And the two stories have striking similarities. But, at the same time, by setting them alongside each other Luke is provoking us to think about the binary difference between them, to see the unique cosmic significance of the child conceived by Mary.
Elizabeth’s pregnancy, late in life, is miraculous, but it is a human affair. She is to bear the last of the Old Testament prophets, the end of the Old Covenant line. John will, as Luke says, be strong in spirit. He will be, an extraordinary human being. But only that.
In the story of the younger woman, perhaps not much older than a child herself, we are witnessing the conception not of a prophet, but of the one who has been foretold by the prophets – Immanuel, the bringer of the new Covenant; God choosing to enter directly into His creation as a human being, in order to redeem it.
Even in utero, John recognises this as he leaps in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary and the unborn Jesus enter the room.
A further reason that I think Luke runs the stories in parallel, is to prefigure the fundamental Gospel message that calls upon us, his readers, to change our lives. In presenting these two children, Luke wants us to think about the men they will become: reminding us that the two children who’s birth we are witnessing will grow up to offer us the method and the means of our redemption.
Elizabeth’s child will cry out to us from the wilderness telling us what we must do to be saved, Repent and be Baptised. Mary’s child will offer us the how of our redemption, the means of salvation, because by being both God and man, and by his sacrifice on the Cross, He will connect us irrevocably and forever to the gracious love of the Father.
The ten verses that follow immediately on from those in our gospel are those that we heard as our psalm – Mary’s song, the Magnificat.
When Shakespeare wants to convey dramatic moments of emotional significance, he shifts from prose to verse. And in the same way Luke moves into a lyrical form in this wonderful song (or canticle) to convey Mary’s intense experience. For me, it is one of the most beautiful passages in scripture – gloriously preserved in Anglican liturgy when Thomas Cranmer cut and pasted it from monastic Vespers into Evening Prayer.
I want to focus on one key word, which is the word that gives the Canticle its name, traditionally translated into English as magnify. The same Greek word is used twice in the Magnificat but, I think, with a nuanced variation in sense which might allow us to unpack some additional meaning from these familiar verses.
The Greek word used twice by Luke is Megalano. And we generally interpret this as meaning to exalt, or praise. That is the sense in which it is used in the first line of the Magnificat, as Mary in her purity and humility, praises God, with her heart and soul.
A few lines later the phrase is echoed, but with the subject and object reversed. Having magnified the Lord, Mary sings (in the traditional translation we use at Evensong) “For He that is mighty hath magnified me.”
Does this simply mean that God has exalted Mary, held her up for praise? Or as in the translation we heard today that He has “done great things for” Mary, Both are of course true, She is blessed among women as the Mother of God.
But consider the root of the word Megalano, of which Luke would have been very aware, and I think we will find additional resonance.
In modern idiom we use the prefix mega to denote a million, as in Megaton, or Megahertz. But the original meaning of Megalano is to make greater, to expand, to increase.
Let us think for a moment of Mary, not in her uniqueness but in her universality as the representative of all humanity, at this turning point in human history.
In bearing the Christ child. In her obedient response to God’s call, Mary carries the humanity of us all into a new, infinitely richer, into an infinitely bigger, relationship with God.
I think that this is the transformation, the magnification, of which she sings.
Through his incarnation, Christ magnifies us all, infinitely expanding our potential. He offers all people, for all time the transformational opportunity to connect with the Father as his children, because the Son has entered this material world as our brother, even now resting in his mother’s womb, in the way of every human being since the dawn of time.
So this is Mary’s song. But it is also a song for us all. For He that is mighty has magnified you, and me.
But how to respond to this great invitation to exponential growth? Well, Mary shows us how: with gentle obedience, but also with courage, ready to embrace God’s will for us, not as mere vessels of His will, but actively grasping the opportunity He gives us to step forward into a brave new world, full of grace.
Hence my proposal that we should see Christmas as a time to expand, to grow towards that full potential for our lives that the Christ child brings us, here, now and forever; the opportunity which Mary was the first to grasp and acknowledge.
What might that mean in our lives? What opportunities might we grasp to stretch and extend ourselves through the grace of God? And how do we draw on that grace to be courageous, as Mary was, in living the life He offers us?
In the hectic festive week ahead, perhaps we might do as Mary did, treasure up these things, and ponder them in our hearts. And perhaps we might use the Magnificat as our own prayer.
AMEN

Second Sunday of Advent December 2024

By Katherine Price (Vicar)

He will refine them like gold and silver until they present offerings pleasing to the Lord.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Some people are really difficult to buy presents for! I mean what do you give the God who literally has everything? When we’re children, presents are the fun bit of Christmas. And maybe when we have children, it gets fun again, as long as their tastes aren’t too expensive! But as we get older, the whole gifting thing can become a bit stressful. Will they like it? Do we know each other and each other’s tastes as well as we think we do? Very often the answer is no: my sister and I are still giving each other the things we would each have liked the last time we lived together which is now about twenty years ago! So this passage from Malachi is giving us a Christmas day nightmare: Our offering to God is not “pleasing to the Lord, as in former years.” We do not know our heavenly Father as well as we think we do. He doesn’t like what we’ve got him.

In our Advent sequence, today, the second Sunday in Advent, represents the Prophets. Next Sunday we will look specifically at John the Baptist who also features today, as the culmination of that Old Testament prophetic tradition, but today is prophets and prophecy in general. And, if you recall Frances talking last week about the four ‘last things’, death, judgment, heaven and hell that makes today also the day for judgment! Those two themes go together Because the prophets of the old testament are, a lot of the time, being very judgy – telling us where we are going wrong. That’s not all they do; Today is also a day to remember the promises of God and his blessings. But a lot of prophecy is about where we are going wrong and where we will end up if we keep on in that direction.

All of our readings today reflect this theme of our imperfection and our need for change. We are reminded today that our life with God is not just about our salvation, our once-for-all redemption in Jesus Christ but also involves an ongoing process of refinement, of purifying, of repentance, of learning, of crooked ways being straightened out and rough edges knocked off. It feels right now as if everyone and everything is under judgment. Just in the last week in the news we’ve had the scandal involving Gregg Wallace, the BBC cookery presenter; and we’ve got an enquiry going on into the murders committed by the nurse Lucy Letby and how that was not spotted and stopped sooner. Over the course of 2024 every single national institution in this country - the NHS, the Post Office, the BBC, Ofsted, the Police, local government, obviously the Church of England – every one has been exposed and judged for some major failing. “There is nothing hidden that will not be brought to light” – it feels as though nobody, no organisation, nobody in a position of trust or authority has lived up to what was expected of them.

I think Christmas is also a time which shines a light into our lives and particularly into our family lives, our domestic lives. And that can be a warm cosy firelight or it can be a very uncomfortable harsh searchlight. Christmas is an intense time – we’re maybe spending more time with our family than usual, probably spending more money, maybe drinking more. And what that reveals may be something beautiful: neglected relationships being renewed and rekindled around our quirky old family Christmas traditions and new families building new traditions of their own. But this season can also bring to the surface those tensions and resentments – family feuds, fallings out, trips to A&E! And it can be a really lonely time for many people.

The light of Christmas might show up what is missing in our lives especially for those who are bereaved, or recently separated, or estranged from family. We see the contrast between the ‘perfect’ Christmas which exists in our memory or our imagination or in the supermarket Christmas adverts and the reality of our bleak midwinter.

The light of Christmas can cast a dark shadow. This is what Malachi warns us of. The God whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple – and he will come like a refining fire. The coming of Jesus at Christmas is the fulfilment of everything we have been waiting for but the power of his presence, the light of his truth shining into our fallen lives, is going to be like fire, like lye, burning away the dross and revealing who we truly are. We aren’t talking here about the kind of cleansing that involves putting on a facemask and steaming in the bath. This is more the kind where you roll up your sleeves and put on your yellow gloves and clean the oven, really scour off all the burned bits: that’s what it’s going to take to make our lives ready
to present as an offering worthy to God.

Jesus comes at Christmas as prophet, and as fulfilment of prophecy, but he comes also because prophecy has failed. God has sent messenger after messenger and the message has not got through – so in the end he comes himself, ‘not to condemn the world but to save it’: Not to tell people yet again where we’re going wrong – that never gets you very far – but to show them a different way. The incarnation is a judgment on us – because in Jesus we see what we could be, and we see how very far we have fallen short. But in the incarnation God is also doing something new, setting us an example to follow. Jesus is the Father’s gift to his people but he is also the perfect offering of humanity to the Father – the offering that we too can be part of.

I don’t know about you but I like to open my smallest present last. In this Gospel passage I really like the way these grand names are piled up –Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiaphas Each with their titles and honours… And the word of the Lord came to none of them, But to John son of Zechariah In the wilderness, far way from the palaces of power. The gift that God is giving The ultimate, most special gift of his own self does not come in a grand package But small and hidden in a tiny child in a manger surrounded by the animals And heralded by the voice crying out in the wilderness. After this year and all the things I’ve talked about, it is really easy to be cynical; It is easy for judgment to become a counsel of despair. We can lose sight of the magic of Christmas because we are looking at the big things – war, corruption, poverty. But we know that God has not hidden himself in the big things, But in the little things – the things sometimes too small for any but a child to see.

So this year I invite you to allow God to scour away our self-righteousness and self-delusion, our pomposity, our judgment of others, all the burned-on accretions of age and cynicism to receive with the wonder of childhood the gift of the God who comes as a little child. Amen

 10 November 2024

By Katherine Price (Vicar)

Christ did not enter a mere copy of the sanctuary.

Earlier this year, we marked the eightieth anniversary of the D-Day landings.
But those landings were only the beginning of a long and often brutal operation to re-take France from the occupying Nazi forces.
In the city of St Malo – the port where today the cross-channel ferries come in to Brittany –
What we commemorate as the ‘liberation’ of the city is remembered by the Maloins as one of the darkest times in the city’s history. I was there earlier this year, and when I’m on holiday I like to read a book with some connection to the place, So I was reading ‘all the light we cannot see’ –
you might’ve seen it recently as a netflix series - and this story is set during the occupation and liberation of St Malo.

If I hadn’t read that book I would never have realised that the ancient walled town I was staying in
was almost entirely reconstructed after the war. St Malo’s citizens lost 85% of their historic city in 1944 destroyed not by the Germans but mostly by the Americans, who were coming to rescue them.
Amongst so many other things, The people of St Malo had lost their past, their physical connection to their history. Other cities were also destroyed and were rebuilt in a new way – we think in this country of Coventry, and its remarkable cathedral. But the mayor and people of St Malo chose to painstakingly rebuild the original city, using the original stones.

When we gather each year on Remembrance Sunday we are no longer sharing a personal remembrance – we cannot reminisce together about our wartime experiences as former generations might have done. We are not simply repeating or copying something from year to year. Rather, what we are doing is ‘rebuilding’, reinventing, creating from our history something which is both new and old and most importantly, which meets the needs of our present generation and our future.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus is calling his disciples… Specifically, he is calling young, working men.
When I hear, on this day, of fishermen dropping their work and going to follow and to become part of something bigger I immediately think of the many young men of Grimsby – where I used to work – a fishing port – The young men who signed up straight away at the outbreak of war in 1914 – And other young men like them across the country – Seeking adventure, sharing friendship, wanting to be part of something. Although the leaders who called them – unlike Jesus – Were all too willing to shed ‘blood that was not their own’. And I wonder what there is for those young men now? For those lads who are looking to be part of something?

Well, we’ve seen one answer to that this week in the United States of America: Donald Trump won a majority across the board but he was particularly popular with young, working class men. People like Andrew and Simon-Peter, and James, and John, in Smallsville Gallilee, who wanted something more from their lives than catching fish for the next thirty years – or in Peter’s case mostly failing to catch fish! That may be kind of a horrifying thought but maybe it’s also kind of a hopeful thought. People still want to belong. People still want to follow someone who seems to have something better to offer them. It’s just that most of those who invite us to follow them are not very much like Jesus.

Jesus gave one condition for following him: Repent and believe the good news. In other words, we can rebuild a better future but only by dealing honestly with the past and having hope for the future. Making peace with one another, and making peace with our past is so often about how we choose to remember and what we choose to forget. November is a season of remembrance in the UK; as well as Remembrance Sunday today and Armistice Day tomorrow, we had all saints and all souls earlier in the month, and last week we ‘remember remembered’ the fifth of November Gunpowder treason and plot!

But do we commemorate it as the survival of our parliament and our constitutional monarchy against terrorism? Or do we risk reopening old wounds and the uncomfortable legacy of anti-catholic persecution in this country? I often think about the way we talk about things being ‘catholic’ or ‘protestant’ in this church, and are we careful enough about that history of religious division and persecution?

Or is the fifth of November now just “firework night” –we remember the date but forget the meaning
and just enjoy the fireworks together? Is the ‘forgetting’ part of the healing? I spent Monday evening at an ecumenical celebration in London – we were celebrating friendship between Anglicans and Methodists – there were Roman Catholics there as well – we shouldn’t underestimate just how extraordinary it is that we have got where we are today from where we have been at times in the past.

Today for the the first time the Remembrance Sunday service in Belfast will be attended by a politician from Sinn Feinn, the Northern Irish First Minister. That is a really powerful illustration that remembrance is not just about the past; it is not just something we replay or repeat or re-enact year on year. It is an invitation to build something new If we can repent and believe in good news.

Amen.