Easter

Sermons for the Season of Easter

A Sermon for Pentecost (28/05/23): Pentecost; The Work of the Spirit

Acts 2:1-21 Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, seven weeks after Jesus’ resurrection and ten days after his ascension into heaven, Pentecost raises a number of questions raises a number of questions for the Church. None of these questions are as straight forward as they might at first appear, and not all or any …

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A Sermon for the Sunday in Ascensiontide (21/05/23): The Ascension and the World as it Should Be

Acts 1:6-14 At this point Jesus has spent almost six weeks with his disciples since his resurrection. In that time, not only has he given them convincing proof that he is alive, he has also continued his teaching with them. It is clear now that that time is drawing to a close and the disciples …

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A Sermon for the Sixth Sermon of Easter (14/05/23):Zealots for Doing Good

1 Peter 3:13-22 Sometimes, perhaps often, we lose something of the Bible in translation.Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?That translation of Peter’s words rather hides an allusion that he is making when he urges us to be “eager.” I hunted through lots of translation and only one, …

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A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (30/04/23):Religion and Politics

Acts 2:42-47 (1 Peter 2:19-25) They say that religion and politics shouldn’t mix. Which is probably true in some sense. We don’t ever have to look far to find some toxic combination of political power and religious fervour to see that such a combination is a bad thing. But on the other hand the resurrection …

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A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter (23/04/23): Meeting the Risen Christ

Luke 24:13-35 Everyday life goes on. It is the nature of our lives, of our experience of reality. Things tend to continue as the always have. There are moments that stand out from that norm. There can be highs, like the birth of children, some great or unexpected success, or some amazing transformation in circumstances. …

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A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter (16/04/23): Hope and Rebirth

1 Peter 1:3-9 He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It probably goes without saying, that being a Christian now is a very different experience from being a Christian when Peter first wrote his letter. And not simply because of the massive historical, …

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A Sermon for Easter Day (09/04/23): The Empty Tomb Is Not The Resurrection

Matthew 28:1-10 The Easter narrative fails to supply the thing we most eagerly anticipate. There is no description of the very thing which make Easter what it is. We do no see, there is no account of the resurrection.As the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to …

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A Sermon for the Day of Pentecost (05/06/22): When We Cry “Abba, Father!”

Acts 2:1-21 / Romans 8:14-17 When we cry, “Abba, Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. What does the Spirit do? This seems to be the most appropriate question to ask on the one Sunday in the year when all our attention is focussed on …

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A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter (29/05/22): Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 There is no getting round it, Revelation is a very strange book. It is filled with weird images and visions. We know they aren’t “real” in any sense that we might understand. But at the same time they are being offered to us as a picture of how things will be! …

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A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (15/05/22): Who are we that we should hinder God.

Acts 11:1-18 The disciples in Jerusalem, James, John, Andrew, Philipp and more, are the leadership of the beginning-Church. They knew that certain things were meant to be a certain way. Some things are just the way they are intended to be. Even though they had had their world turned upside down, even though they had …

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