Sermons

Good morning and welcome to the first Sunday in Lent, as we prepare for the Eastertide Feast of our resurrected Saviour, shining on a hill some 40 days away. With prayer and offerings on our regular Christian menu, the speciality Lenten plat du jour is fastingusually by “giving up” something...

What is sin? This important question on Ash Wednesday goes to the heart of the matter. Words from the Miserere – Psalm 51, a broken and contrite heart O Lord thou shalt not despise, hint at the anxiety that people of conscience have over the morality of their actions and...

What did the caterpillar say to his friend as he saw the passing of an iridescent butterfly? “You’ll not catch me going up in one of those things!” – Metamorphosis. From: Alice Through the Looking Glass ‘There’s glory for you.’ ‘I don’t know what you mean by glory,’ Alice said...

Thanks to Father William for the invitation to preach, and it is lovely to be here and worship in St. Mark. From today’s passage, we see Christ is hurt when the Church is hurt Christ comes down from heaven to meet Saul God does not take away Saul’s passion but...

‘I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain .’ Those strikingly negative words stand out for me from our readings today.  We heard them read as the words of God’s servant in Isaiah’s 49th chapter, after the Lord’s claim that he formed and...

“Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” “Epiphany” means manifestation—the unveiling of God’s hidden purposes. Today’s Gospel isn’t so much a tale of exotic visitors Theology as drama, a show: “Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the...

Today, Gaudete Sunday—the Church says rejoice. In the midst of Advent’s quiet longing and sobriety, a note of joy, rose-coloured and unexpected. Yet the readings set before us are not obviously joyful. They speak of waiting, of suffering, of imprisonment, of questions emerging from the darkness of prison cell. And...

The Old Testament Lesson Isaiah 2: 1-5 THE word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.  And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above...

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Nigel Farage, the leader of the political party known as ‘Reform’ has described this country as ‘broken Britain’. Organisations not functioning properly, a weak economy and an increase in homelessness are examples of this breakdown...

“As some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, Jesus said,  As for these things, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” I wonder if you have ever asked:...

In the first reading, we hear Job’s raw cry: “O that my words were written printed in a book, engraved on rock forever.” Job longs for his story of innocent undeserved suffering, to be captured. In an oral culture the engraving of words into rock was itself a prophetic statement...

I realised when planning this sermon that in an intentional way I have been studying the Bible for over 40 years. I started A level RS in 1985, here is my Bible, and my Greek Testament; and here is something I am so excited about, I was showing the SC...

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Recently I watched a programme on television about cyber-attacks and the attempts being made to stop them. The attacker finds a way into the computer system of an organisation and then locks out the victim...

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Nothing, to my mind, demonstrates more clearly than today’s Gospel reading the emphasis Luke puts on the significance Jesus gives to people on the margins of the culture of his time.  The alien, the refugee...

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The theme of my sermon today is ‘glory’.  In our earthly life we use the word ‘glorious’ to describe that which we have seen that we think of as uplifting, joyous and magnificent.  It is...

This Sunday of the Good Shepherd, Ruth Peel will be leading Sunday School. Her father was a shepherd, in two senses of the word. He was both a farmer and a priest. And I am sure what will be being learned downstairs will be more authentic than anything I can...

Today I would like to pose and endeavour to answer two simple questions. The first is simply, Who was St. Mark? The second, for us in this Church dedicated to St. Mark, Who is St. Mark? Our Patronal Festival is the occasion to think about what it means to be...

Easter Day 2025 (1700th Anniversary of Council of Nicaea) The year is 1550. For fans of Wolf Hall, we’re ten years on from the death of Thomas Cromwell, and three from Henry VIII. There’s another season to be made, and here’s my pitch for the screenplay. I want to explain...

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Thy sight oh Lord our strength and our Redeemer! Amen. Dear Friends in Christ, The whole Church in the East and West, regardless of denomination, is today placing the cross before our eyes. The...

Friends, I’m here today at William’s request to do 2 things. The first is to speak about the Jewish festival of Passover- and this is the eve of day three of 7, running sunset to sunset- and the second is to allay some myths and point out some similarities between...

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The theme of my sermon today is compassion. Compassion is very much a feature of Luke’s Gospel and is particularly evident in today’s Gospel reading. I would say that compassion is pity, inclining one to...

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Good morning. I greet you today with a cheerful welcome and two extracts from today’s reading and gospel. From Jeremiah: I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every...

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If we look at the passages in Mark’s Gospel that precede today’s Gospel reading, we can see that there were many questions that were being put to Jesus by the chief priests, the scribes and...

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows:  yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. For 2,000 years Christians have seen in those words, and in that whole passage of the...