Mount Calvary Sermons

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY YEAR B 2015 PSALM 111:10 When I was very young there was a place I would never go. In fact, the very thought of going there would cause me to panic – heart racing, hands sweating,pupils dilated, feet restless – all the signs that my small, four year-old body wasgetting ready to fight or run away. And for me, running away has alwaysseemed the smart option. So, there was no way I was ever going to go anywhere near That Place. That Place - this location of blood-curdling horror,was in my grandmother’s backyard. When my family went to visit, my brotherand I would be kicked out into the garden to play while my parents supped teawith Nanny, as we called my mother’s mother. It was there in that otherwise perfectly serene backyard in the London suburbs that my brother...... Read the full Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3203066/20150201_Facing_your_cow_spider.doc.pdf

THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY YEAR B 2015 MARK 1:14-20   It is the most popular participation sport in the United States, and also in the United Kingdom. Actually, strictly speaking, it is the second, but in my rulebook the most popular participation sport, walking, is disqualified. How does taking a leisurely stroll to your car count as taking part in a sport? Come to think of it, I’ve never been too convinced that the second placed pastime should be called a sport either. When I was a kid I used to argue with my friend Ian about exactly this. It was Ian’s main hobby. He used to go every Saturday with his dad, sit on a riverbank and cast a nylon line into the water. And then he’d wait. For hours. Then he’d go home again. So I used to annoy him by saying, “Come on Ian, that’s not a sport.” To which he would proudly tell me that angling was indeed a sport, and the most popular one in Britain. But it never really caught my imagination, even though Ian would horri

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY YEAR B 2015 JOHN 1:43-51   You know those moments when you’re talking to someone and they say something so outrageous that you can’t quite believe your ears? In fact you wonder for a moment if you aren’t actually asleep, because what you just heard can only be said in a fantasy world or in dreamland. You must have slipped into some parallel universe, where everything looks the same but there is something deeply twisted about the laws of physics in this universe that make possible things which in our normal universe just could not happen. Well, this happened to me nearly twenty years ago, and even though many thousands of days have passed since then it remains firmly in my memory. That is how deep the scars go from this conversation. About a year earlier I had begun my first job as a parish priest. I was the rector of two small villages in the heart of the English countryside. Think ‘Vicar of Dibley’, but more eccentric. The parishes were righ

BAPTISM OF CHRIST YEAR B 2015 MARK 1:4-11  During my trip to London after Christmas I came across a couple of examples of what makes the British stand out from the rest of the world. The custom of not talking to someone you don’t know unless you have been introduced. The first example came at King’s Cross train station where I overheard a young boy ask his mother, “Mummy, why was no one talking on the train?” His mother answered, “Because it’s against the law.” “What happens if you do it?”, the lad followed up. “They arrest you.” “What happens then?” “They send you to prison.” “How long for?” “27 years.” The other example I came across in the newspaper The Independent. Apparently, there is about to be launched on the British people, a bold new solution to the problem of, how can I put this delicately, dog waste on sidewalks and in parks. A new company called ‘PooPrints’ offers a s

SECOND SUNDAY OF CHRISTMAS YEAR B 2014 LUKE  2:41-52    One afternoon when I was nine I took the bus into town with my eleven year-old brother, Keith. We lived about four miles from the city center, and Keith and I often used to hang out there, looking in the shops and staying out of mischief. Keith was mature and responsible, at least he was in my eyes. But somewhere during that afternoon we became separated and I was lost. I wandered around the city center retracing our steps hoping to find him. Read the Full Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3201545/SermonNotes20150104_Finding_yourself_in_the_Lost_and_Found.pdf

CHRISTMAS EVE 2014 ISAIAH 9:2-7  Read the Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3201543/SermonNotes20141224_Have_you_got_a_light.pdf  

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT YEAR B 2014 LUKE 1:39-45 Read the Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3201110/SermonNotes20141221_Luke_1v39.pdf  

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT 2014 ISAIAH 61:1-4, 8-11 Read the Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3200993/SermonNotes20141214_The_Mighty_Mongoose_Is_40v1.pdf  

SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT 2014 ISAIAH 40:1-11    Read the Sermon here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3200996/SermonNotes20141207_Living_in_Exile_Is_40v1.pdf  

TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2014 MATT 25:14-30   So, I’ve been cleaning out the cupboards in the kitchen.  I must confess that I don’t like cleaning the house.  It’s a rotten job.  But it’s got to get done.  So I’m cleaning out the cupboards, and in particular the spice cupboard.  Now, when they designed my kitchen in the late 1970s they put this small storage cupboard in the most inaccessible place they could think of.  They probably hired someone just to make things difficult – put this cupboard where no one can reach it, unless they stand on a chair and lean over three feet of countertop, just next to the hot stove.  So, because no one can reach it the spice cupboard hasn’t been cleaned out for years.  So, while I was feeling keen to do some housework I thought I’d tackle the spice cupboard, and at least throw out all the little jars that are past their sell-by date.  And I came across a little tub of

TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2014 MATT 25:1-12   When I was a boy there were seven words I dreaded hearing.  They were small words, each one but a single syllable.  But when strung together they formed a question that overwhelmed me with a flood of strong emotions.  I didn’t like those emotions.  Anger was probably the strongest, followed by resentment that someone bigger and more powerful than me was about to put me in my place.  The seven words were only ever spoken by my father.  You may have jumped to the conclusion that these seven words were a prequel to punishment.  The equivalent of ‘wait till your father gets home’.  But they weren’t.  On the contrary, they were words of grace.  They offered a second chance.  A mulligan of compassion.  The scene was battle.  Royalty, knights on warhorses, senior clerics, and fortifications.  Chess.  And my dad was good.  I never beat him ever, not even

(notes not available)

18TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST    MATTHEW 22:15-22   You can say it with flowers, you can say it with a smile.   You can say it with chocolates or cards.  And you can say it with coins.  Larry Gasper of Redding, California, decided on the last of these.  Larry had got a bit behind in paying his property taxes.  In fact he owed the Shasta County tax collector $12,658.  So, just as the authority was planning to auction off his house, Larry made a trip to the tax collector’s office and paid his bill.  In coins.  In a wheelbarrow and two large buckets.  “It took four of my staff a little over two hours just to count all the cash,” says Mary Axelson, chief deputy tax collector; “and then it took probably another hour to get it bagged up to go to the bank.”  The loss of 12 staff-hours, however, was better than the alternative, thinks Mary.  She says, “I could have turned him away. There is a taxation code sec

EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2014 PHIL 4:1-9   This week has been full of occupational hazards for me.  We all have them, don’t we.  Postal workers have to deal with vicious dogs, salespeople have to handle angry customers, and office workers have to tackle temperamental copiers and phone systems.  And for preachers the occupational hazard is preaching on a topic and then all the following week, facing situations where your sermon comes back to haunt you.  So, last week, if you were here or if you listened online, you’ll remember it was week 1 of our annual stewardship campaign, and I talked about how everything in all creation is God’s rightful property and we don’t actually own anything – we’re just the managers of God’s stuff.   So, the power went out in my garage (sorry, that’s God’s garage that I look after).  I called out an electrician.  He was there for less than an hour, changed a part which had blown o

SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2014 MATT 21:23-32   I’ll never forget Paul Murphy.  Paul Murphy was in the year above me.  He rode a shiny new Honda motorcycle to school each day.  It was a 250cc machine, which, for a 17 year-old was plenty of power to get him into serious trouble.  It also gave him that most precious and sought-after commodity – the ability to impress girls.  My motorcycle was only 125cc, so Paul Murphy was twice the man I was, with double the prospects on the romance front.  His bike was silver and it shimmered in the sun in a way that made it appear like some chariot from heaven, or even more impressively, from hell.  Mine was red.  A perfectly acceptable color, if you’re choosing curtains.   I don’t like Paul Murphy.  But it’s not because he had a flashier bike than me.  No.  The reason I remember him so vividly and why I dislike him so intensely that 30 years later I still can’t let it

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2014    JONAH 3:10-4:11   A couple of weeks ago I received a DVD in the mail.  It was a movie from the UK.  Here it is.  ‘The Foley Artist’, it’s called.  By the look of the box it appeared to be a well-made production, although I’d never heard of it.  On the back it has one of those snippets of reviews that you get in advertising for films, and it apparently received “Two thumbs” from a critic at something called the Mayhem Horror Film Festival.  That disturbed me.  Because, you see, I don’t do horror movies.  When I was a kid I used to hide behind the sofa in Dr Who, which shows you how bad I am at anything vaguely scary.  I also hate rollercoasters, because I just don’t get the appeal of being scared out of my wits.  To me that just isn’t entertaining.  And neither do I do all the blood and gore in slasher flix.  I have to look away.  Ac

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2014    MATT 18:21-35   I remember Nicholas’ sermon very well.  Because he preached it every week.  The same one.  Week after week, month after month, for the full fifteen years he was rector of the parish.  But that didn’t matter.  He was never one for poignant illustrations or memorable soundbites or those other devices that we preachers who are lesser people than Nicholas have to employ if we’re to have any chance of people listening to us.  Nicholas didn’t need fancy rhetoric because his message oozed out of him in a way that made you know you were in the presence of holiness.  You almost wanted to take your shoes off.  He didn’t need more than one sermon because you could listen to Nicholas read the phone book and still his words would touch you in a way that you knew this was God reaching down into your soul and giving your heart a great big hug.  He had been to seminary, beca

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2014    MATT 18:15-20   They call it pivoting, and when it is done well no one even notices.  It’s the skill of being asked a question and giving a long, and very impressive reply - on a completely different subject.  And if you practice hard, study the dark arts deeply enough, and have so little conscience that you could fool a lie detector, you can pull it off so magnificently that no one will notice that you completely failed to answer the question.  It also helps if you’re running for office, or have worked in the British civil service, where they run courses on this.  But we’ve all done it, haven’t we?  I remember my French and German teacher.  Mr Strauss, his name was.  At the equivalent of 10th Grade British kids go through a hideous trial by fire.  It’s a series of public exams, compiled in places like Oxford and Cambridge; and they are so important that you carry your success or

No text for this Sermon (sorry) http://mountcalvarycamphill.diocpa.org/Sermons%202014/sermons-2014.html