For whom the Bell tolls

Queens’ College, Cambridge Trinity Sunday 2018 Firstly, thank you to Fr Tim for the opportunity to preach this evening. That said, Trinity Sunday is not exactly a preacher’s dream. Often hailed by clergy as a yearly opportunity to play a round of ‘heresy bingo’, there is a distinct chance that anyone wanting to say anything about the nature of God will, instead, simply prepare the prosecution’s case for their own excommunication. I will almost certainly commit such heresy tonight – but, I would argue, that to push the boundaries and learn by thinking is not only sensible, but also very Anglican. Doctrine needs to be lived and learnt and tested – it’s not a museum piece, and if it becomes one, then it needs a good clearing out. A lot of people have a problem with the concept of doctrine. To many outside the church, it is often seen to embody the more bewildering and off-putting nature of the church – the elements that stop people from even going through t...

Given at S Paul, Deptford, Easter III 2018 Alleluia, Christ is Risen! It’s a very great pleasure to preach to you today – many thanks to Fr Paul for the invitation. And what a set of readings on which to preach! Easter probably feels quite a long time ago to many of us today – all the penitentiary mood of Lent evaporating in a joyful Easter weekend, and then ‘back to normal’ – back to work or school, and back to grind of daily living. With air strikes in Syria, an ever-rising violent crime rate in London, the world doesn’t feel quite like the world of the resurrection we are told to expect. Of course, in the Revelation of St John we hear all about the terrors and disasters that have to come before the end of time, but looking at the world through the lens of the past two thousand years, the current behavior of the human race looks more like ‘more of the same’ than anything exceptional. Humans can’t, it seems, just get on – we can’t behave in a way ...