The following is the text from my sermon this evening at Ripon Cathedral. The readings are Exodus 6:2-13 and Romans 5:1-11. The story is told of the man who was out for a walk on a mountain one day, when a freak gust of wind blew him over the side of the cliff. Fortunately he managed to grab hold of a tree root as he fell, but he was left dangling over almost certain death. He called up for help, but there was no-one around, so then he looked up to heaven and shouted out “Is there anyone up there? […]

A couple of weeks ago, I dropped and broke a glass while I was preaching at church! Actually, it wasn’t real glass, and I dropped it on purpose to illustrate a point. Took me longer to make it then it did to write the rest of the sermon!! (Plus I spent the rest of the service sweeping up the fragments). But I digress… I believe the Bible teaches that there is a cost to sin, which Jesus takes on (or “covers”) in our place, as a substitute. Now I greatly dislike the “cosmic child abuse” charicature set up regarding substitionary […]

The following is the text of my sermon at Midnight mass today. Well, we’re nearly there, the wait is almost over! I don’t know if your household is anything like mine, but we’ve all been getting really excited as Christmas has drawn closer – and my younger son even wanted to set up a “santa-cam” in his bedroom so that he could catch Father Christmas filling his stocking! But I don’t know if it has ever struck you as odd to have this huge celebration now – at this time of year? I mean, here we are – it’s literally […]

I preached my first sermon at St Mark’s on Sunday, at the 7pm service! Always nice to get a ‘first’ in the bag. One of the challenges that I’m finding around being a new curate – especially at a church as large as St Mark’s, and even more especially as a self-supporting minister – is working out where and how I (and my family) fit into the life of the church. On the one hand, just turning up on a Sunday and sitting in the congregation doesn’t really feel like the point; on the other hand, I’m still learning the […]