Sermons (mostly based on the Revised Common Lectionary, Church of England)

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(All preached within Diocese of Birmingham, mostly at St Mark's., Londonderry)

Advent 1, Year A (Coming)
Advent 2, Year B
(Practicing the presence of God)
Advent 3, Year A
(Optimistically prepared by God to be surprised)
Advent 4, Year C
(In Christ God opens up for all his way of mercy, righteousness, justice and peace.)
Christmas Day, Set III, Year B
(I
n Jesus we have met the one who has made known the Father as the God who is Love)
Christmas 1, Year B (Cof E Gospel)
(Incarnating God's love in everything that we do)
Presentation of Christ in the Temple
(The Holy Family and our support for families)
Third Sunday before Lent, Year A
(The wise/powerful/well-born pattern and Jesus' and our humanity)
Third Sunday before Lent, Year B
(The right kind of faith)
Second Sunday before Lent, Year C
(Sonship. image, and the wise-powerful-wellborn humanity)
Sunday next before Lent, Year B
(
Baptized in order to show forth God's glory in serving others.)
Sunday next before Lent, Year C
(Transformed from glory to glory as we die to ourselves daily)
Ash Wednesday
(Freed in Christ to be failures)
Lent 2, Year B
(Faith includes both trusting obedience and acknowledging Jesus as the Way by following him)

Lent 3, Year B
(Freed by God's love to love our neighbour)
Lent 3, Year C
(1 Cor 10.1-13 and the four sons)
Lent 4, Year C
(Luke 15 and joyfully welcoming the 'outcast')
Maundy Thursday
(The sacraments free us to love and serve)
Easter 2, Year C
(Shift to 'Trinity'; Jesus has no merit)
Easter 4, Year A
(My vocation [and how I came to it] and yours)
Easter 6, Year B
(
Luke-Acts (1)  keeps everyone onboard, (2) deflates the rigid, and (3) thus invites us entertain new ways.)
Easter 7, Year C
('Going' in love and 'abiding' in love)
Pentecost
(Luke, the Missioner, shifts the giving of the Spirit from Easter to Pentecost)
Pentecost (Luke, the conservative and revolutionary 'inverter' who upsets apple carts)
Proper 6, Year A, Track 2
(We come to church to be free)
Proper 6, Year C, Track 1 (We are freed from within to be walking-wounded, showing forth God)
Proper 9, Year C, Track 2 (What kind of  'miracle' de we think accords with the Gospel in the twenty-first century?)
Proper 10, Year C, Track 1
(God fits his chosen; human beings are rationalizers, not rational: we need godly disquiet.)
Proper 11, Year B, Track 1
(We gather to be St Mark's, the temple made without hands.)

Proper 13, Year A, Track 2
(Feeding 5,000-cosy Jewish feeding; Feeding 4,000-pushes boundaries outwards)
Proper 13, Year A, Track 2 - Mark II
(Ditto)
Proper 13, Year A, Track 2 - Mark III (Ditto)
Proper 14, Year B, Track 1 (In word and sacrament we feed on Christ in order that we may show forth Christ.)
Proper 14, Year C, Track 1
(
Persevering trust: Hebrews' meaning of 'faith' is part of our calling.)|\\
Proper 17, Year B, Track 1 (The rich Pauline understanding of faith as trust in God who has acted for us in Christ)
Proper 20, Year C, Track 1
(Jeremiah as a prophet of doom and hope, gearing us to action)

Proper 21, Year B, Track 1
(How open are we to those who differ from us?)

Proper 23, Year C, Track 1
(St Mark's  without a building would be where two or three were gathered together 'in my name'.)

Proper 24. Year A, Track 1
(Image as a sign of ownership and sovereignty; we are to be conformed to Christ's image to God's glory.)

Proper 25, Year A, Track 2
(The four-sons pattern in Matthew's narrative and Jesus' call for radical obedience.)

Proper 28, Year A, Track 2
('Wrath', 'kindness'; growing in love by loving)
Proper 28,, Year B, Track 2 (The life of love in Christ is the means and the goal of sharing the Good News.)

Christ the King, Year C (This is God's good world, so let us love and live by the Spirit in Christ our King to the glory of the Father
All Saints Sunday, Year A
(Saints are sinners who nevertheless authentically show forth Christ)
All Saints Sunday, Year B
(All Saints celebrates, with all other Christians,  our own calling to be saints)

Conversion of St Paul, 25 Jan. (Paul's vision of God's love in Jesus turned him from being exclusive of others to being inclusive of all.)
Presentation of Christ in the Temple
,  2 Feb.
St Mark , 25 April (Go in the way of the Cross or you will not know the Lord)
SS Philip and James, Apostles,
1 May (QCB; Recognize our parallels to Philip: faith, evangelical zeal, but continued need to grow)
Saints Peter and Paul
, 29 June (We look at saints and say they're wonderful; they look at God and claim nothing for themselves.)


St James the Apostle,
25 July (The good news is that all the saints, including James, like us, are walking-wounded who walk by grace.)
St Matthew
, 29 Sept. (
Matthew witnesses to Jesus' and our humanity in terms of the wise-powerful-wellborn model.)
St Luke
, 18 Oct. (Queen's College, Birmingham) (In our diversity of witness and understanding we are complementary to each other.)
St Luke
('Teaching' sermon, St Mark's)  (Luke is concerned with out-going and on-going mission to everyone.)
St Thomas, 21 Dec. (Do doubt, but trust God's love, break the Bread of the Lord, and love and serve the neighbour)

The Queen's College, Birmingham
Preaching Service,  7/3/78 (We are all walking wounded)
Preaching Service, 17/3/81 (Get lost -here and now: ministerial formation calls for losing old securities)
QCB Friday Eucharist, 20/1/84

Leavers Sermon
, 14/6/84 (Drop dead - Get Lost - Stand there)

Founder's Day Address, Alleyne's Grammar School, Uttoxeter, 1968

Meditation on 'therefore', UTC, 4/9/76