Andrew's Sermons

  Compassion in the Interruptions  Sunday, 21 July 2024                      The Eighth Sunday after Trinity In this church year, the lectionary guides us through most of Mark’s Gospel, as a result we get a chance to see what it means to live like Jesus. We are guided by what he does and what he says. Even before we consider his miracles and resurrection. Living like Jesus can mean having a purpose, to aspire to be intentional about being Christlike. Despite his intentions, Jesus is often interrupted, healing a woman who touches his cloak, or as people stop him in desperation, perhaps a reminder that we need to pay attention to interruptions, because that’s what Jesus would do and is where God often shows up. At other times, we must really look for God in order to see God at work, because it’s in the silence or contemplation where we meet God. Now Mark brings us back...

Our cosmological God transcending the infinity of the universe Today’s Gospel could easily be retold as crime bosses being accused by a local preacher of infidelity, then meeting his end in a bizarre fashion with a dramatic cinematic reveal at the end. While full of drama, which could easily be reflected in the news today, the death of John occurs as a warning and as a sign of what is likely happen to any prophet like John who dares to challenge the authorities of the time. I’m not going to dwell on that too much though, because while I was away last week, I read an article [1] about science and faith which resonated much more and told of a God more vast and unknowable than we or those who encountered God in Jesus time could have imagined. As a precurser, when I was a child, I took a keen interest in space and remember watching the first space shuttle launch when at primary school, after asking the teacher if we could have the TV in the classroom to see it. I’d watch the sky at ni...

  Leading by Listening with Compassion.  A sermon for Sunday 30th June 2024 There is a river running through it, in the same way a river borders this parish, a river often symbolises a life, from its birth at its source in the middle of Wales to the end of our mortal lives, where the symbolic river meets the sea, and begins a new life in the ocean, a few miles downstream. From our birth, to the end, we journey, navigating as best we can, through storms, droughts, new beginnings, growth and a multitude of events and emotions to an end and beyond. Our readings today, also have a theme running through them, as well as other stories to tell. The first clue is in the title of the book where we began, the book of lamentations, written as Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in the sixth century BC. Yet the passage we heard today is about steadfastness of God, which is New every morning and Great is your faithfulness. In spite of great loss, the people are reassured by God’s fai...