Andrew's Sermons

Creator God, I pray that my words may be to your honour and Glory. Amen. I’ve always been an avid reader of science fiction books, and recently, have been reading the Fifth Season. The story is set on a planet, like earth, which could be a far-future earth, with just one super-continent, called the stillness. Which is anything but still, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunami are frequent. They have four seasons, as we do, but occasionally, there is a fifth season, it can be caused by a volcano filling the air with ash and dust, by poisoned air causing crops to fail, by sea levels rising and so on. The fifth season can last months, years or centuries. People plan to survive a season, but know that one day, they may not survive, and perhaps their race will end. A quote from the book is, “Winter will come early, and hard, and it will last a long, long time. It will end, of course, like every winter does, and then the world will return to its old self. Eventually. Eventually....

Heavenly Father, I pray that through the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus Christ our Lord, these words may be to your Glory. Amen. The year after we got married, Louise and I decided to go on foreign holiday. It was a very long journey and it was through a wilderness, we stopped at B&B’s on the way, we crossed the border into Scotland, our journey taking us to Inverness, and we thought, it can’t be far now. Three hours later, direct north, after the crossing the Sutherland wilderness, we arrived in our remote holiday cottage, on the north coast of Scotland, halfway between Cape Wrath in the west and John O’Groats in the east. Now that seemed like a big journey, partly because we realised that once we had arrived, we would have to get home again, it was a beautiful place, a true wilderness and required planning and a good road atlas, there were no sat-navs or google maps in those days, oh no. I’m not comparing our journey to the Israelites spending forty years in the wilder...

Sermon for Pentecost – May 31 st 2020 Heavenly Father. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable to you, my lord, my God and redeemer. Amen.   The Holy Spirit, is with us, and in these strange days the way it connects us all this morning feels more important than ever, and no, I’m not filled with New Wine, or even old wine… The word Pentecost is from the Greek pentekostos, (like pentathlon or pentagon) meaning "fiftieth," and today marks fifty days since Easter. Ten days ago, we marked the resurrected Jesus ascending to heaven to be with God the Father once again, today, we mark the coming of the holy spirit, as promised by Jesus. At first glance, this is a little odd, as it is said that the Holy Spirit hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation, the Holy Spirit inspired the Old Testament Prophets and the book of Wisdom says: “The Spirit of the Lord fills the whole world.” So what has changed. Unsurprisingly, the answer...

S ermon for Sunday 10 th May 2020 L et the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable to you, my lord, my God and redeemer. Amen. These are very strange, difficult days. And while I do have a message of hope and Good News and it can also be very easy to say all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. And they will, be well. But I think its’s important to acknowledge what is happening, and especially, how we feel about it. We all know the facts so I won’t dwell on them, but we have all lost so much, plans, holidays, income, jobs, contact with family and friends and so it goes… Then wherever there is loss, there is grief, and yes, we experience grief when we lose someone we love, but also when lose certainties in our lives, when the foundations which held us up crumble, whether it’s job security, the next holiday or the carefully planned diaries, losing these is painful. We can feel lost, numb and this can bring anxiety,...

Sermon for Sunday 15 th March 2020 The Gospel according to John Ch. 4: 5-42 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank fro...