THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER B 2015 1 JOHN 3:1-7  I used to live near a town called Middlesbrough in the North-East of England. It has a population of around 140,000 people. Now shortly after I left the region for the US a resident named Michael O’Neill decided on the spur of the moment to take a long, once in a lifetime trip to Australia to visit a friend. He made his plans without telling anyone and off he went. A few days later his neighbors grew worried and called the police, who broke down the door of Michael’s apartment to find that he had disappeared, leaving no evidence of what had happened to him. 

So far, nothing very remarkable. But it gets weird..... (read the full Sermon here): http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3206485/20150419_God_has_no_Grandkids.pdf

EASTER DAY 2015 MARK 16:1-8

I’ve discovered a new way to save time. I’m not a very good typist, and I spend

quite a few hours each week at the keyboard doing this: mime typing with one

finger of each hand. But, now that I have a smartphone with a voice recognition

feature, I can dictate letters, emails and even sermons, and the phone types

them, and I save myself maybe a couple of hours a week. The only problem

with this is that what the voice recognition thing types is sometimes very

different from what I say. It’s an accent thing. Even though I have the setting

on ‘British English’ (like there’s some other kind) its performance is pretty hit

and miss. So, for example last week I dictated the phrase “the theological

content of the sermon”, which my phone typed as “the theological content of

the salmon”. Smart fish. Then there was this gem: "The Bridge currently

serves those in need residing in Zip code 17011." It typed, "the British army

says those in need residing in sectors won seven of one more." What is the

British army doing in my sentence? It’s like the 19th century all over again.

Turn your back for a second and the British army are invading. We’re here to

add this sentence to our Empire. But, the best, and maybe the most eerily true

one, is what it typed when I said the word, ‘Episcopalians’. ‘Escape aliens’.

Those of you getting confirmed next month – do you really want to become

escape aliens? I couldn’t decide if this was a warning, ‘escape aliens, they’ve

landed. They want to take us off in their spaceships and do experiments on us’;

or if it was a new classification the Immigration Service are using. I have a

green card in my wallet that says I’m a Resident Alien, maybe I should have one

that says I’m an Escape Alien. Or maybe it’s a comment on Episcopalians.

We’re all so weird that we may as well be from another planet.

Read the full Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3205892/20150405_Escape_Aliens_easter.pdf

At first you can’t believe it. You must have misheard. He would never do that.

She couldn’t possibly. Like someone telling you you have pixies living in your

vegetable garden, it’s unreal, you don’t know it is joke or this teller of news is

deluded. Yet they are rational and don’t appear to be teasing. You know what

your ears heard, your mind understands the meaning of the words, but your

heart, the seat of your emotions takes time to catch up. Minutes turn to hours

and the truth begins toRea be credible. And the denial you had been experiencing

seems like a good friend. You much prefer their company to the tsunami of

emotion that’s now just beginning to creep menacingly over the horizon. It will

overwhelm you to a degree that you cannot imagine. I say tsunami, but

tsunamis don’t sting like this, they don’t cut you and slice you like this artillery

of emotions. A tidal wave is a blunt instrument that kills with bludgeoning

force. This violence is more precise and bloody. Death by a thousand cuts.

And then comes the anger, strong enough to demolish walls; hate,

vindictiveness, the lust for revenge. You are shocked by the power of your

feelings and the base destructiveness of them.

Read the full Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3205895/20150402_The_rapier_of_betrayal_maundy.pdf

PALM SUNDAY 2015 PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11

From time to time I like to tell you about some of the differences between the British and americans, from my vantage point as a Transatlantic citizen. And in my experience, one of the most striking differences between over here and over there is the way people receive compliments. Over there, well, they don’t actually receive compliments. It’s way too vulgar to concede that you may have done something well or that your hair looks nice. So, in Britain when someone congratulates you on a great piece of work, or for acing a test, or for a really good victory in a game you’re supposed to say, “It was nothing, you’re the person who deserves all the credit … really, I just got lucky with the questions, I only studied three things and all three happened to be on the paper.” So suppose you wanted to tell a Brit that they had just preached a brilliant Palm Sunday sermon, the way you’d do that is to give them a check. Or at least a Cadbury’s Easter egg.

Read the full Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3205534/20150329_Get_off_your_high_horse.pdf

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT 2015 JEREMIAH 31:31-34

It’s been a bad week for God. I’ve given him lots of work to do. Because God is like my cleaner. I make mistakes and he goes around afterwards, clearing up the mess. Sometimes he makes it so that I never even have to face the consequences of my foolishness. Some of you know I teach a course on preaching for clergy and prospective clergy in the Diocese. And one of the points I make is that if you’re going to talk about yourself in a sermon make it self-deprecating. So don’t be the hero of the story,make yourself the butt of the joke or be the illustration of how NOT to do whatever it is you’re talking about. And my students would be proud of me this morning because, I’m warning you, I do not come out of this opening story looking good. I was in the supermarket and I was wearing my clerical collar. Now there was a lady bagging my groceries as they passed through the checkout. And she was a very talkative person. She was chatting away to the bagger on the next checkout about nothing in particular, actually, it was about make-up. And I made some instant, and

not very positive assumptions about her.

Read the full Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3205354/20150322_March_Badness.pdf

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT 2015 NUMBERS 21:4-9 

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT 2015 EXODUS 20:1-17

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT 2015 MARK 8:31-38

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT YEAR B 2015 MARK 1:9-15

LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY YEAR B 2015 MARK 9:2-9