Author Archives: Avril Hannah-Jones
Sermon: Choose to believe – at the core of the cosmos is love
… why not make the choice to believe that the Creator of the cosmos loves us, that love is at the core of the universe, and that God has come as close to us as a next-of-kin, as this psalm tells us? If we hold on to this, then we can look up at heavens and the firmament and believe that we are just as important to God as they are. Continue reading
Sermon: Not just those like us
this encounter between Jesus and a Gentile woman can remind us of the words attributed to John Wesley: ‘Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.’ Continue reading
Sermon: Counting our blessings
I do encourage you to follow Bonhoeffer’s example in lockdown and be grateful for the little things, including being allowed outside and able to observe the coming of Spring. I am, as your minister, encouraging you to count your blessings. Continue reading
Sermon: Blaming God
We may have ultimate faith that God is love, that God responds to our suffering with compassion, but in those times when we cannot feel God’s love, the heritage of our faith tells us that kicking and screaming and blaming God for God’s absence is also a faithful response. Continue reading
Sermon: God comes to us in bread
We do not have a disembodied faith in which only the spiritual is important. We have an embodied, physical, material faith in which food is vitally important. Christianity is most definitely not about ‘pie in the sky when you die’. It is about bread here and now, because our God comes to us in bread. Continue reading
Reflection: More of the David Soap Opera – rape, rebellion, death, grief.
I think today’s passage is in our lectionary because in the depths of David’s love for Absalom we get a hint of the love God feels for us. Continue reading
Sermon: Bringing down walls
We do not need to create ourselves; we have been created by God and redeemed by Christ. That is the most important thing we can know about ourselves; that we are citizens with the saints, members of the household of God, built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God. Continue reading
Not really a sermon about Michal
The pious answer is that it is not about who David is, but about who the Lord is. The Lord remains faithful to David regardless of David’s wrongdoing. That answer makes sense if we are reading the books of Samuel through the eyes of David, but not if we try to read them through the eyes of Michal or Bathsheba. So, I do not have an answer. I just do not want Michal to be forgotten. As the lectionary leads us through the deeds of the great King David, remember his wives. Continue reading
Sermon: Success and Failure
We may think that we can only be sure that God is with us if we are growing greater and greater, like David. But the gospel according to Mark tells us that God is with us even if people take offence at us and we can do no deeds of power. Continue reading
Reflection: Gender Equality in Jesus’ healings
You may have noticed my tendency to talk about the way that Jesus treated women, the way he welcomed them as equals in a patriarchal society. That is not just because gender equality is a personal obsession of mine; it is because this equality is a characteristic of the new community that Jesus created, the body of Christ. Continue reading
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