Easter Vigil
The very first time Do you remember the first time? Whatever it is that is important to you, whatever it was that changed your life, even if you didn’t realise it at the time. The...
Good Friday
Response and responsibility We don’t even know we’re doing it. No we really don’t know we’re doing it. We are blithely unaware, wholly insensible, utterly oblivious. Because that’s the way we see the world, it’s...
Palm Sunday
Speaking truth to power Just keep looking straight ahead. Try to blend in. Keep quiet. Fit in. They’ll always smell fear, they’ll always jump on weakness, always punish deviance. Don’t make any demands. Don’t dream...
2 before Lent
What are you saying? Being a school governor is a common occupational hazard for the clergy- it’s always in the risk assessment for any particular parish- but that is one peril of a post that...
3 Before Lent
It ends with love Saint Paul, second only to Jesus himself, is without doubt the person who most moulded and shaped the Christian faith to be what it is today. Paul’s are the earliest of...
4 before Lent
The real you Contrary to what all the stereotypes might lead you to believe, I am not a fan of musical theatre.I know I’m letting the side down but there is something that just fails...
Epiphany 3
Prepare for the best No matter how well you plan, no matter how much you’ve prepared, no matter how carefully you’ve read the runes, consulted the cards, tested the tea leaves and studied the entrails;...
Safeguarding
The parish of St Mary Beddington takes the safeguarding and care of children and vulnerable adults very seriously. Further information about this can be found at Safeguarding.
Epiphany 2
Running in parallel Quantum physics is, well, bonkers. I know people say that about religion as well, but us fakirs of faith have nothing on quantum physicists. That stuff is really, seriously, away with the...
Baptism of Christ
Trying to remember… So… what have you forgotten? I’m not trying to make you anxious- it’s guilt that churches do not anxiety- but I know it might, so apologies in advance. The sermon needs me...
Watch Night
Working it all out What if? What if eh? Just imagine it? Get your head round that? What if! We love to speculate, to consider what might have been, what might be waiting round the...
Christmas 1
A holy family? Although I sat down to write this sermon more than a week before Christmas, at the time I felt confident enough of my powers of empirical observation through fi(cough)eight odd years of...
Midnight Mass
Unicorns at Christmas Each December, millions upon millions of our kith and kin decorate a christmas tree, open each day of an Advent calendar, send everyone they can think of a christmas card, scratch their...
Christ the King
We three kings… I want to talk today about three kings. I know for the supermarkets it’s been that time of year for a couple of months now, but we’re not going to be jumping...
Second Sunday before Advent
Don’t sweat the small stuff Perhaps the scariest thing I have ever seen was at most an inch long. No more than an inch long. Just a few millimetres tall. And dead. It was a...
Remembrance
Remembering loss Today I would like to take us on a trip to Coronation Avenue. No, not the television programme that’s Coronation Street and where we’re going is several hundred miles further south in inner...
All Saints
Ism, ism, ism It looks like the same St Mary’s this morning, but something is not quite the same today. Even more so than usual, the Rector, for some reason hanging around the lych gate,...
Last Sunday after Trinity
Ignorance is bliss Do we ever really forget our schooldays? If only. I certainly remember mine, those far off days of gas lights, corporal punishment, rote learning, and writing slates (the twentieth century came late...
Trinity 21
Convenience is king In the middle of August ‘temporary’ traffic lights were installed and the A232 Croydon Road, Beddington, was reduced to two single lane bad tempered queues. A day later the workforce scarpered; occasionally...
Dedication Festival (Evensong)
The human house I know I’m more than a little odd, but it’s not just me whose attention will be hooked by next to nothing, superglued to superficialities, pinned to the peripheral. I once spent ...
Harvest Festival
It’s worrying… Part of the experience of being human is always having something to worry about.The biology books may name our species Homo sapiens but the reality is always Homo sollicitus the worrying ape. Though...
St Michael & All Angels
The weird and the wonderful Just occasionally I like to start one of these sermons by insulting you. So if you didn’t do it before you set off this morning, now is the time to...