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Fourth Sunday in Lent and Mothering Sunday
1 Samuel 1: 20-28 Colossians 3: 12-17 Luke 2: 33-35 If you have recently tried to make a train journey on a Sunday, you will know that the British Rail timetable can be rather complicated. Add Comment In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
I am not going to let Father Peter outdo me in his succinct description of the one sermon he would like to preach. You may remember his words last week, if he had one sermon to preach it would be very brief and would be "God is love". Well, mine is this: "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again". To me, when we proclaim the mystery of faith in these or similar words, the entire reason for our own joy and our own gathering together comes into focus for me: "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." Should I say "amen" and sit down, well no, I had better not, especially if I want to be ordained to the Permanent Diaconate on 30th June. More is expected and I will now, in the next few minutes, attempt that by offering you my version of what the one sermon I would like to preach, if I only had one sermon to preach, this would be it, I think. Isaiah 42. 1-9; Romans 10. 8b-13; Luke 4 1-13
"Sorrow for sin is indeed necessary, but it should not involve endless self-preoccupation. You should also dwell on the glad remembrance of the loving kindness of God". Bernard of Clairvaux Lent is the time when we think of Jesus in the Wilderness and that story is the Gospel reading we have just heard. But the wilderness also belongs to us. It is always lurking somewhere, as part of our experience, and there are times when it can seem pretty near the whole of it. Most people's wilderness is inside them, not outside. Our wilderness is an inner isolation. It's an absence of contact. It's a sense of being alone, sometimes boringly alone, or saddeningly alone, or terrifyingly alone. Exodus 12:1-14a ; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26(27-32) ; St John 13:1-15, 31b-35
(Jesus) said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?” In tonight’s readings and liturgy, as always (if we’re paying attention) we find good news…and bad news…or at least good news and not-so-good news… Jeremiah 31. 31-34; 2 Thessalonians 1. 1-5; St John 12. 20-33
Laudabo Nomen Domini Our Lenten series this year at St Matthew’s has been on the theme Mirroring God’s Love’, and over the past weeks we have been looking at ways in which we are called to reflect the love of God as individuals - as Christians - and as members together of the Body of Christ, the Church. We started by looking at the person of Jesus Christ, who is in himself the image of the unseen God, and have gone on to look at how we are called to reflect the love of God to each other, at the margins, and to the world. Deuteronomy 10.12-22, 1John 4.7-21, St Matthew 12.28-34a
In the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of the World When you think of the world, what do you think? When you hear that the ice in the artic is melting that will raise sea levels and flood low levels of the country who do you think about? When you hear global warming will lead to a draught who do you think of? When you hear there may be bird flu coming to this country who do you think of? When you pass a homeless person on the street who might look threatening, who do you think of? Mark 14.1 - 8: Jesus anointed at Bethany
It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, "Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people." While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, "Why was the ointment wasted in this way? In the name God; Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. Amen.
It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant we all can be. Today is Mothering Sunday, and wouldn't you know the male dominated people who create the rules by which we live, even in Church worship across the road, have chosen, on this day, a day that at least gives a token nod to motherhood or, as we would say in the United States: Motherhood, the Flag and Apple Pie, is a day when they appoint for the Gospel the story of the Forgiving Father, The Prodigal Son and rather jealous Son - three males. So on the day designated as the one that we look to mothers, we have the story of three men. I suppose we are to think the mother was probably inside the house cooking the fatted calf. The New Yorker magazine had a cartoon recently. A couple was descending the steps of a church after Sunday services. The husband was pondering the sermon and finally turned to his wife and said; “how can I love my neighbour, when I don’t even like him?” this sounds like a familiar dilemma to me.
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