Tag Archives: Jerusalem

Advent hope

I wonder what you are looking forward to. Christmas? A holiday? Seeing friends or family? A medical procedure that you hope will make life easier? Maybe there isn’t anything. You are finding life hard, and seeing hope or joy in the future is just beyond you. Perhaps when you look forward all you see is […]

Sheep and Goats

Before we dive into the text that we are focussing on this evening, let’s take a step back and look at the context in which Jesus originally shared it. The first thing to note is that this is the end of one section of Matthew’s eye witness account of the good news of Jesus. If […]

Who gives a fig?

Welcome to Advent. I’m not sure why, but I do seem to have a habit of turning up at St Catherine’s on the first Sunday of Advent. And here we are again, at the beginning of a new church year, looking forward to Christmas. In previous years, I’ve brought along a round tuit, talked about […]

Facing Opposition

I wonder if you ever get the feeling that there’s always something getting in the way. Somehow life has become one big obstacle course. Now obstacle races can be fun at a school sports day, and some people enjoy adventure racing over assault courses, but when life itself – work, family life, friendships, projects, become […]

Centered on the Word

I feel like recently I’ve been starting a lot of sermons with references to TV programmes. I wonder if that’s anything to do with lock down? Anyway, I wonder if there are any other fans of the The Great Pottery Throwdown out there? For those of you not in the know, it’s like Bakeoff, but […]

A Tale of Two Cities

Some weeks as a preacher, it’s like the sermons write themselves. A nice, straight forward parable, a heart warming encouragement, something about God’s love. Those are the easy weeks. Recent weeks have not really been like that for me. Last Sunday morning at St Catherine’s we were looking at Jesus’ teaching on divorce. This morning […]

As we have heard

The Psalm we heard this morning begins with a call to praise God. The place where God dwells is declared to have taken on God’s character – Holy – beautiful – elevated. Zion is these things because God abides there in the temple. It is God’s presence that suffuses the mountain and the city with […]

Change it round a bit

What is the fascination with half time team talks? Whatever the match is, every single time we get to half time the first question that Adrian Chiles asks Roy Kean, is “what will the managers be saying in the dressing room?” Of course no one knows the answer, they’ve just got airtime to fill so […]