Advent prayer

O God, who waits so patiently for us and is so eager to reach out in love, give us grace to wait with you so that good things may grow in our hearts and peace and hope may bless the world, today, tonight and always, Amen.

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Prepare the way!

I’m sure you all know this story, but I’ll tell it anyway! It’s told about a rabbi, but it could just as easily be a priest or a minister, or just about anyone. A rabbi prayed to God that he would win the lottery. The synagogue needed a new roof, the poor needed to be […]

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The end of the world as we know it

Sermon by Peter Henderson based on the gospel reading: Mark 13:1-13 Introduction I can vaguely remember, as a small child, getting quite upset about something that was not going my way, and my mother saying to me: 
“It’s not the end of the world, you know.” And it turns out that she was right! But, […]

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Finding the good news in a grim text…

I’m struck, having read the Gospel for today, by a quotation from Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest; ‘God is not a torturer. He only wants us to be merciful with ourselves.’  That seems a wonderful truth to me, and quite a contrast with some verses from the Gospel we heard today… ‘If your […]

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Be opened!

For me, and I hope for you, being a Christian is what opens up life to a whole world of experience, love and joy. It’s what means I can live in freedom from fear, and in hope for the future. It’s what makes it possible for me to face just about anything and to be […]

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Angels with dirty faces

You will laugh, or at least smile, if I tell you that this week I’ve had the grand children staying  and so I’ve spent quite a bit of time saying things like ‘Don’t forget to wash your hands!’ – or ‘Have you washed your hands?’ – or ‘Are you sure you’ve washed your hands..?’ or […]

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I could eat him…

I wonder whether you share the experience of admiring something so much that you just want to eat it. It’s a pretty basic kind of instinctive feeling, but there’s little doubt that when we really desire something or someone we find ourselves saying somehow something like – ‘Oh, I could eat it..’ or even, ‘I […]

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Get up and eat…

‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you..’ 1 Kings 19: 7b   At first glance it’s hard to think that any of us here have much in common with the prophet Elijah. He lived a long time gone, many centuries ago, even before Jesus. He’s considerably more BC than […]

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Keeping calm…

I think that whoever we are, and even if we’ve never been in a boat, we know what it’s like to be in the middle of a storm. It’s no surprise that Britain’s favourite poem is said to be that one by Kipling called ‘If’. You probably remember the opening lines; ‘If you can keep […]

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The mystery of God..

Many people might look forward to a sermon on the doctrine of the Trinity as much they look forward to a trip to the dentist. I can offer you some crumb of comfort, should you need it. A grateful member in a congregation I once served said to me ‘We can understand your sermons, not […]

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Opening the windows!

I want to begin this sermon not with a Bible text but by telling you that Taunton Deane Borough Council have given us planning permission to re-open the windows behind me, the windows that are now alcoves with the ten commandments and the beatitudes on. We have permission to return them to being windows and […]

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Whatever happened to…?

In today’s New Testament reading we have the story of the church finding a replacement for Judas. Of course, the tragedy of Judas is that he didn’t have time to repent and to find the forgiveness that he would surely have been given. If Judas could have found a way to repent and change his […]

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