EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2015 EPHESIANS 2:11-22

Everyone over the age of sixty remembers where they were when they heard the news. I know where I was. I was two months old and I was in the arms of my mother. She was listening to the BBC. She did what many young mothers around the world did that moment when they heard. She prayed, shed some tears, and wondered what kind of world she had delivered her baby into. This was a volatile and even paranoid period of history already, but now there was this added anxiety. America’s president had been assassinated and who could tell what in the world would happen now. Would there even be a world as we know it by the time the tragedy had played out? There was already a dividing wall of hostility across the globe, and now here was another layer of hurt.

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SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2015 MARK 6:14-29

There are t wo t ypes of people in t he world – those of us who are happy to live with uncertainty and those of us who like to have everything nailed down; those who are comfortable with ambiguity and mystery, and those who prefer things to be precise and accurate. Now, I know which kind I am, and it ’s not the one I’d like to be. I’d like t o be t he first kind – from where I sit it looks like that

person must have a pretty stress-free life. He doesn’t need all t he answers, she doesn’t need t o have rules in place, they don’t need clear instruct ions – they just live a life of freedom and spont eneity. But , I’m not that person. I’m the other one. So imagine my angst , my inner turmoil, if you please, when last week I found myself st anding at the supermarket checkout labelled “ about 15 it ems”. About 15 items? What does t hat even mean?

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FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2015 MARK 5:21-43 This week I’ve been thinking about superstitions. It’s something you more or less have to think about when you watch baseball. You are confronted with it with every at-bat, it seems. Batters kissing jewelry, pitchers pointing to the sky, fielders deliberately wearing odd socks. I’ve even heard that there once a Major League player who always carried a cheese sandwich in his hip pocket.

Like, what did he think was going to happen if he ran onto the field without his sandwich? Would the stadium collapse? The other reason I’ve been thinking about this subject is that someone lent me a talisman. One that you secure to the top of your dashboard, via its Velcro bottom. I’ve brought it to show you, even though most of you won’t be able to see him. It’s a Pope bobblehead. And the likeness is uncanny. He’s got his arms out in papal benediction, and as you drive he will wiggle his head for you. I find it.....

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FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2015 MARK 4:35-41

If only you could buy faith from a shop and carry it with you, and then when you needed it take it out and brandish it or swallow it, or whatever it is you’d do with it if you could buy faith from a shop. Wouldn’t it be good on those rare moments when we actually get it right in the Christian life, if we could bottle those moments; maybe put them in an aerosol, and then when we needed to we could just take it out and spray ourselves. Wouldn’t that be great? Well, now you can.

Liquid Trust. Developed by a New York lab, and sold on Amazon for.....

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MARK 4:26-34

Last month I lost five giants. Not the kind that say “Fee, fie, foe, fum”, although that kind does smell the blood of Englishmen, and so it’s always a relief to rid the world of one of those. No these were gentle giants. They don’t galumph through the countryside, swinging clubs and climbing beanstalks. Truth be told they are not the hugest of giants. They were not the gigantic giants that live in California that almost touch the sky. These were smaller giants, but still way taller than me. Two years ago my son Rob and I met the giantest giant of all. He is called General Sherman, and he is in Sequoia National Park. He towered over us. 275 feet over us, to be precise. He is the largest tree (by volume) in the world, and the largest living thing on the dry land of God’s good earth. My giants were only 25 feet tall and they were only thirty years old. That’s what their rings told me, because giants have rings that talk. But giants don’t talk as loudly as the technology that brings light, heat, knowledge and entertainment to human beings, and so because my giants threatened to damage PP and L’s electric cables, they had to go, even though it would still be several years before any of them got within ten feet of the cables.

I guess it made economic sense to destroy them now, while the foresters were in my neighborhood. Efficiency required it. There was no rite of passage to mark their eparture from God’s earth. No funeral was conducted with teary family and mourning community. Just a leaflet through my door, a courtesy phone call, and that was it. I came home one day and my giants were gone. I don’t even know where the bodies were taken, or what use they are being put to. I read on Wikipedia that hemlocks make good pulp which later can give life to paper. Knowledge, art, wisdom. That would be a good end. To be reborn as a book that educates a child, who grows up to invent a cure for cancer, or develop a strain of plant that brings food security to the entire world. Or becomes the canvass for breathtaking art, or a manuscript for inspiring music. Maybe the tissue that dries the eyes of the heart-broken, or the napkin on which is written the great love song. Then my giants.......

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SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2015 MARK 3:20-35

Now, you know those nauseating religious types don’t you? Those people who have had amazing conversion experiences and are so full of excitement and joy

that they have to tell everyone? No matter what you’re talking about, they are always trying to turn the conversation around to God? You know how nervous they make you feel? You know how when you see them coming down the street you duck into a shop doorway, or pretend you haven’t noticed them? Well, I’m here to tell you today that I used to be one of those Christians. It’s not that I was wrong, it’s not that I regret my zeal. After all, my motives were good. I loved God and I loved the people I was harassing, at least I thought I did. But I was convinced that showing them my love meant being disrespectful of their time, privacy and their own convictions – convictions that I never even bothered to listen to. It’s just that I thought it was better to be rude and impose the truth on them than to let them blindly grope their way through their dark lives of ignorance and unbelief. Now, as I look back on the months after my conversion to Christ at the age of fifteen I cringe with embarrassment as I remember some of my over- zealous attempts at sharing my new-found faith with people. But I also see God’s hand at work in me, even if his other hand was holding his head as he watched me in disbelief.

Now there were a handful of people who were the main targets of my mission to convert the world. My family. And here is where my embarrassment turns to penitence, because, really, who needs a fifteen year-old telling you that your faith is dead and your religious life a sham? Well not my mum and dad. Especially my dad. For him my zeal was.... (Read the full Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3208251/20150607_Nobody_understands_me.pdf)

Over the years people have applied for some very strange patents. Some of those ideas eventually see the light of day and make our lives easier; and some the inventors have quietly forgotten about, and others they wish they had. One of the strangest is owned by an amateur  inventor named David Kendrick. For some reason that I can’t work out, in 1991 Kendrick applied for a patent for a watch that would count down the minutes until your death. He designed this reverse watch to crunch lots

of actuarial data, like your health, family illnesses, diet, lifestyle, and so on, and then calculate your life expectancy. It would then count down to the day you are supposed to die, according to that actuarial data, and

display the somber truth of how long you have left. Kendrick believed his invention would serve a useful benefit to people because it would spur the wearer on to acts of kindness and heroism. Only got 25 years, 3 months, and 12 days to go – better write the great American novel, or swim the English Channel, or invent a cure for the common cold. I can see one beautiful and important application. It could give you a great excuse for

getting out of something you don’t want to do. Your boss wants you to come into the office at the weekend and you can say, “Sorry, I’d love to, but according to my reverse watch I’m going to die on Friday.” It may be a lie – your reverse watch may still give you forty years, but your boss doesn’t know that, so it’s worth trying, I think. Even better that this, if you beat your actuarial data and outlive the prediction of the watch, you have a perfect excuse. Sorry, I can’t feed your cat while you’re on vacation – according to my watch I am actually dead. I can’t think why, having gone to the time and expense of applying for the patent, Kendrick seems never to have got around to making his invention. There must be a market for this.

Measuring our lives backwards..... (Read the full Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3207801/20150531_Counting_Backwards.pdf)

DAY OF PENTECOST 2015 ROMANS 8:22-27

The weat her t hat day was suit ably bleak. The overcast sky seemed t o be aware t hat it was t he day of a funeral. Like every parish priest in England I found myself in the disconcert ing posit ion of having t o conduct the

burial service for someone I'd never met . Those are t he days when English vicars curse Henry VIII and t he bizarre hist ory t hat led to the Church of England to be 'est ablished', wit h t he result t hat 'parishes' are not congregat ions, like t hey are in t he US, but geographical areas on a map; and everyone living wit hin t he boundaries of t hose few square miles are ‘Church of England’ unless t hey choose t o be somet hing else. At t hat time I had 2,000 parishioners to whom I had a responsibility, but only 200 of them ever came t o church.

So, on t hat fat eful and, frankly cursed, morning as I frequent ly did, I found myself committing to God one of t he ot her 1800. The borough council’s crematorium that day was t hinly populated by a few dozen people who

had, I presume, many things in common with the deceased, including being completely unknown to me. I had met wit h one of t hem, I remember that , and they had furnished me with some sketchy biographical

informat ion. But I was in t hat disabling place of flying wit hout the safety net of a relationship with the people who were now gazing at me for something – enlightenment , comfort , meaning, hope.

One of t he ironies of England is that..... (Read the full Sermon here): http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3207606/20150524_Lost_for_words.pdf

SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER 2015 JOHN 17:6-19

Well I want to tell you all this morning that my work here is done. There’s nothing left to do. I’ve been ordained now 22 years, been a priest for 21 of them, I’ve served in four dioceses in two provinces of the Anglican Communion, and I can now retire. My work is finished. That’s because last Tuesday Melanie invited me to Pizza Club. Nothing remarkable about that, I often find my way downstairs

when the aroma of that Italian delicacy has just wafted upstairs. No, Tuesday was unusual because I was there on a mission. I was there to teach. Not the Bible, or some simple theology, but an ancient art form. A craft many hundreds of years old that sits atop the list of mankind’s greatest cultural accomplishments, the very pinnacle of all that is good and true and noble in human endeavor. I was

probably one of the most qualified people in all of Pennsylvania to teach this art form, as the first ever written reference to this noble pursuit was of it being

practiced at my high school in the year 1598. So, on the greensward by the columbarium, despite the surprising absence of journalists and TV cameras, I taught a bunch of American kids how to play cricket. Now, when I talked about bats and balls, innings, runs, outs, and catches there were signs of understanding on their young faces confirming the fact that our two summer games, are, after all, distantly related cousins. But when I told them that to score the batter only needed to run directly to where the bowler had delivered the ball from, a cultural gap opened between us; and that divide widened to a vast chasm

when I told them that a top professional game lasts six hours a day for five days. I think we’ll give rugby a miss. The carnage. 

So, as I was saying........(Full Sermon found here): http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3207374/20150517_Collaborating_with_the_inevitable.pdf

SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER 2015 JOHN 15:9-17

This week I’ve been doing some research into the subject of friendship. Actually, I was surfing the internet, but ‘research’ sounds so much better, doesn’t it? It sounds like I was doing something constructive, rather than idling away Friday afternoon. So, be very suspicious when a preacher tells you they were doing research. So, I found some fascinating things about friendship. I discovered that William Scott has 6,223 friends. Facebook friends, that is. He holds the world record. Over 6,000? How is that even possible? I have 86, and some of them I rarely even think about, let alone communicate with them except at a very superficial level. I also found out that there’s a website called Rentafriend.com. Are you traveling to a new city? Do you need someone to show you around town? Maybe you want to take in a movie or enjoy a nice restaurant and need some pleasant company to share it with. Well, if you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions this service is for you. For just $10 an hour you can meet up with a ‘friend’ who will be that perfect someone for a round of golf, or a coffee, or just a marathon Netflix binge. Now, it’s not a dating site, it is rentafriend.com and as of last Friday, there are over half a million friends available for hire worldwide. 

And then I read about Robin Dunbar..... (Read the full Sermon here): http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3207380/20150510_Friend_or_slave.pdf