For reasons that are shrouded in mystery we begin a new church year today. Advent Sunday begins the story all over again. And also turns our attention to the end of the story. The Bible story also ends where it begins, although in a dramatically heightened way.
Advent means ‘coming’. The story starts with an anticipated coming, and ends with an anticipated coming. The first coming took a long time coming. Lots of preparation went into getting the people ready to know who to welcome. And in helping them know who he was and why he was coming?
Who was the coming one? God, the Lord, David, David’s descendant, a powerful King, a servant, a despised outcast, a Spirit endowed agent, a commissioner for justice and poor relief, a shepherd, a victim ready for killing. A bit of a paradox in fact. Confusing in a way until you met him. Then you realise that your confusion was only half of it.
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Sermon preached at Christ the King Willetton on 18 November 2012
If the King is coming, what do we need to know and do in the meantime?
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Sermon preached at a baptism service at Christ the King Willetton on 11 November 2012
How to avoid the holier than thou people: see God for who he is; see yourself for what you are; cry out for mercy; go with God.
Nobody likes a hypocrite, or pretenders in general. The trouble with hypocrites is that they give the impression they are better than us. Or at least we get the feeling they are looking down on us.
One of the ways to deal with this is to look down on them. After all they are a despised class, and even Jesus disapproved of them. Hypocrites are pretenders, actors, presenting an image that is false. The inner reality doesn’t match the outward show.
Even though they are pretenders, we can distinguish them from actors, and “celebrities” since we don’t expect the latter to be anything more than what they show. It is the claim to reality (and virtue) that marks the hypocrite.
So why don’t we like them? If we were honest we might say, ‘Because they look a bit like us.’. But as well, we don’t like being shown up. In fact some of us might feel that anyone who shows us up must be a hypocrite.
But we don’t all feel like that.
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Sermon preached at Christ the King Willetton on 4 November 2012
How to keep praying and not to lose heart. Some models of praying the details.
A few weeks ago we were waiting for a book to arrive that had been ordered from the eastern states. It was ordered on a Monday and had to be here by Friday to meet a certain deadline. By the Thursday it had not arrived, so a back-up plan was prepared – a different book on hold at the local bookshop. Telephone calls revealed that it had been posted on the Monday. By our 1pm Friday deadline it still had not arrived, so I went to the bookshop, bought the back-up book and delivered it. And when I got home the original book was there on the door step.
So what was the problem? Slow transport? Got lost in the sorting room? Too many stops on the way? Mondays and Fridays are not good days to get things done? Bad expectations? Parcel post is not like email? Impatience?
I thought it was a bit like praying. Sometimes it seems that we pray and nothing happens for some time. Perhaps the prayer has gone astray in the mail. Perhaps the answer has been held up. Perhaps there is no answer, we wonder.
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Sermon preached at Christ the King Willetton on Sunday 28 October 2012
Jesus teaches disciples to be shrewd with the wealth they have so as to gain friends in heaven who are there because of what we did with the money God gave us.
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