Sermons

 

The Second Sunday before Lent - 8th February 2026

Presentation of Christ in the Temple - 1st February 2026

 

Imagine, if you will, the scene. It is the Temple, at the heart of Jerusalem, the heart of Israel…
It is in ordinary day in what we might now call late September. The place is thronging, people everywhere all going about their business. It’s noisy. The moneychangers and dove sellers are plying their trade all hoping that their stall will be where the people come. There is the sound of sheep, goats, waiting for the sacrifice… the Temple staff fussing about their duties, the police keeping order. The occasional priest wafts through the courtyard, the crowds parting before them out of respect, and perhaps a little fear.

In the corner is the rather crumpled figure of an older woman. Maybe she’s slightly dishevelled, giving off an air of slight eccentricity. The Temple staff work round her, perhaps with a hint of irritation. For she is there every day – every night for that matter – but at dawn she always finds that special place, that pool of light, as the rising sun pierces a high window descending to the floor. She always knows the time. She’s studied how the sun rises and falls, you can set the clock by her. Every morning, she has to find that place, and stand in it.

This is Anna. Anna the widow. Anna the eccentric old lady. Anna who is always there, part of the furniture. Anna the gently ignored, a member of the lost tribe of Asher …Anna the prophetess… one of only seven that appear in Scripture. Anna, the daughter of Pennel, whose name means one who has come face to face with God.

By the way, the name Anna means one who is graced and favoured. Ironic really, for Anna seems, at first sight, to have been a little short of grace and favour. Happily married for seven years before disaster struck so that she became one of the most vulnerable categories of person in society – the widow. That was when she was in her twenties. Now she is 84, alone and fending for herself these last 60 years.
She had had a choice. She could have dwelt in bitterness, wallowed in her misery and grinding poverty. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable; such was her lot. Plenty of us do just that. But Anna chose a different path. Instead of turning in on herself, she turned to God. She turned to the light. 

Taking root in the Temple and rooted in prayer, she had become fascinated by the passage of sunlight around the building. Living through one of the most difficult times in her nation’s history … the Romans … the evil of Herod’s puppet reign … she had made connections with a God who had promised that one day a New Light would shine in Israel, and with it the dawning of a new age.

Of course, she had known Simeon. Rarely had they exchanged many words, but she knew that he knew. He knew the light was coming. And he had been promised he would not see death until he had come face to face with the Messiah. Time was short, though: he too was old, and as many of us know, old age doesn’t come alone. She had seen him shuffle into the Temple to say his prayers.

Today it was different. Old men rarely have a spring in their step, but day that is exactly what Simeon had, entering the Temple his eyes darting to the right and to the left as if he was looking for someone.
You know how it is, when you are looking for something you know is there, and then you suddenly light upon it… that sense of relief, perhaps even of joy. Simeon catches sight of this North country couple, an older man and a young woman ever so slightly nervous at the scene around her, waiting in the queue with their own bundle of joy, for a priest to come and, “do what was required by the Law of the Lord.” He takes the child in his arms as he utters those time-honoured words…

“Lord, now let you servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation…”

And Anna can contain herself no longer as an avalanche of praise to God pours from her lips.

The four adults smile a deep smile of knowing and of joy. Around them the life of the Temple goes on as it does day after day. No one else has seen what has happened that day. But, no matter, God has visited his people.

St John would later write…

“What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
“And the word was made flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s son, full of grace and truth.”

This story, which only appears in Luke’s Gospel, is one of those moments you get in Scripture when everything seems to come together in a moment of revelation. A key moment in which we get a glimpse of what God is doing.

If you care to sit down with this passage and a good, devotional commentary – not one of those academic ones, but one that speaks to your soul – you will see that the story is packed with significant detail… the names and their meanings, the history, echoes from the Old Testament, upon which so much of the New depends if we would truly understand it. To redeem a certain phrase, the blessing is in the detail.

What is easy to overlook is the ordinariness of people’s lives, even in a story like this…
The long, tiring journey from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, with a seven-day old baby, which brings a weary Mary and Joseph to the Temple to fulfil a religious law – echoing that journey of only the previous week from Nazareth to Bethlehem to fulfil a civil one.

Anna’s tragic early life. Her decision to spend the rest of her days, 60 years or more for a glimpse of God’s purposes, her Saviour. Sixty years of waiting doggedly, day in day out, perhaps even being the butt of the odd joke. Certainly, humoured more than she was loved.

Simeon, bravely holding on to something that the rest of his people and even the clergy, seemed to have forgotten – or placed into the realm of a future dream more than a present reality. He had received his promise, but on his darker days, with each ache and pain of older age wonder whether he would make it.

We too live ordinary lives. We go to work we come home. We pay our bills. We have our families to look after, to worry about, to live alongside warts and all. We see the world around with the troubling and the troubled. Even saying our prayers can sometimes feel more of a duty than a joy. A life full of beginnings and endings, some that are what they are, others deeply significant, occasionally leaving us wondering which is which. And in our darker days we echo the words of the Psalmist when he says… 

“How long, O Lord. How long…”

But every now and again, if we are awake, we will see a glimpse of glory. It may be in a chance encounter, kind words or actions – even a smile. A great view or a lovely day. Or it may be that in the humdrum study of the Scriptures or a time of prayer we will suddenly “get it” in a way we never had before. And perchance we will see God at work, hid from our eyes but never far away, steadily working, steadily loving us towards the renewal of all things.

In this Candlemas service, on this last day of the Christmas season, as we will later hear the Choir sing those words of Old Simeon in a version of the canticle we call the, “Nunc Dimmitis,” we take one last fond look back at the Crib, for Lent is near and the Cross looms into view.

Today we are invited to remember that Christmas and Easter, the Crib and the Cross, death and resurrection, are two sides of the same coin. Each day, each month, each outworking of every Christian year as we live out the seasons, all point to Light who came into the world, the Word made flesh who dwelt among us, to the One who says to the thief…

“Today you will be with me in paradise,” 
And to us, “Behold I am with you to the end of time.” 

At the end of, “The Last Battle,” the final book of C.S.Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, there is one last terrific battle between good and evil. Aslan brings the world to an end, and leads the faithful into his own country, urging them to go, “further up and further in… for the term is over, the holidays have begun!” 
Meeting with friends from past adventures, long since dead, Aslan explains that they are now in the true version of Narnia, the previous version being an imperfect shadow.

Lewis was cagey about whether he connected in his mind Aslan with Christ, but for the reader the parallels are there. For I do believe we have a vision of what we might call Heaven, and glimpse of what it might mean to inherit eternal life.

And so, the series ends as Aslan declares that the life they had known was only the beginning of the true story. A story which goes on for ever, and in which every chapter is better than the one before.
Amen.

 

Second Sunday of Epiphany - 18 January 2026
Joint Covenant Service with Rowbarton Methodist Church

Last week, at St Andrew’s, we recalled Jesus’ baptism by John. We recalled our own baptisms and gave thanks for them. We remembered that it was at that moment that we, officially at least, became Children of God, loved, held and sustained by the love of God.

Conversion is usually a process rather than event. Next week, we can, if we wish, commemorate the Conversion of St Paul. That was a very particular conversion, striking and spectacular, as God took this angry young man by the scruff of the soul, so to speak, for a particular purpose at a particular time. It is a reminder that this Epiphany season, the showing of the Christ Child to the world, is about mission. But we should also remember that not everybody comes to faith by falling off a horse.

But for all of us there is that moment of decision; that point that we said, “This is what I believe.” Like John Wesley, we may suddenly find our heart strangely warmed. Yet it may be some time before we work out what we are meant to do with our faith. For in the end, it is not about our personal love affair with God, it is about change. Change within ourselves and change in how we live… and serve.

That last bit. Service. That is what today is all about. It is that moment when we say to God…

“Here I am, warts and all. But I know you love me and have more confidence in me than I can ever have in myself. Allow me to serve you and your Kingdom as you have served me. And give me your grace that you might hold me lest I fall.”

This then, is the heart of this Covenant Service.

When I am preparing couples for marriage, I often say that in God’s eyes we are sealing a covenant not a contract. A contract stands or falls on whether the participants do what they have agreed. In the biblical use of the word covenant, one’s promise is kept no matter what. In marriage two people promise to love each other no matter what – as God does. In the same way baptism expresses God’s love which says…

“I love you no matter what … you may drive me up the wall, make me tear out by beard in frustration … but I will never stop loving you.” 

This is what it means to be a Child of God.

But we are recalcitrant children. We are not always obedient. We are not always faithful. It is not for nothing that few acts of worship do not contain, somewhere, an opportunity to confess our sins. The ones that do usually contain an act of baptism or the renewal of baptismal vows. They do the same job. It is a response to God’s love, frail as it may be.

Of course, none of this is new to God.

Right from the start humankind has messed up…

Remember Adam and Eve, the serpent and apple.

Remember Noah and the flood, not forgetting the rainbow. God always leaves us a way back.

Remember too, the people of Israel worshipping the golden calf before Moses had even come down the mountain with the Ten Commandments.

And so on – that troubled cycle of sin and redemption. A troubled and troubling humanity, but a gracious God, who never gives up.

It is for that reason we speak of covenant. God never gives up. We might think this is all about us, and we certainly have a part of play in this relationship, but in the end, it is all about God and his faithfulness.

And it is on that basis that we stand before God and offer ourselves in his service, knowing our unworthiness and sin, but also knowing that God has confidence in us even when we do not have confidence in ourselves.

Remember too that our offer of ourselves is an act of humility. Because we rely upon God, because God sees the bigger picture, which includes our potential as well as reality, we may not necessarily choose how we serve. Our readiness to serve is only so that we may employ the gifts and skills we have been given. In that way each one of us helps to make up the whole, and the whole is not quite whole when one of us is missing.

Put it like this…

One day, a Church was preparing a special birthday party for a greatly respected member of the congregation. They were going to use their church hall, of which they were very proud, but which also had become rather ramshackle over the years. The preparations were almost complete when the lady delivering the birthday cake arrived. However, as she entered the hall, suddenly she tripped over a piece of torn lino and the cake came crashing to the floor.

This was the signal for the whole church to swing into action.

The one who had the gift of leadership said, 

“Right, let’s get organised. Someone fetch a broom.”

But the one who had the gift of service had already gone to get the broom. 

The prophet in their midst spoke up and declared,

“I told you this would happen if we didn’t fix that lino!”

The teacher among them agreed saying…

“There is indeed something we can learn from this.”

Meanwhile, someone who had a ministry of encouragement was comforting the poor unfortunate who dropped the cake, saying…

“It wasn’t your fault, it was the lino…”

And not wishing to see the birthday celebration spoiled, one who was invested with a spirit of generosity quietly slipped out to buy a new cake.

St Paul wrote…

“The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”

Of course, all that sounds very nice, very effective… very cosy. But sometimes exercising your gift can be costly.

I remember once hearing a minister saying that his congregation, who took the gifts of the Holy Spirit seriously, told him that they felt that he had the gift of prophecy.

It troubled him. He didn’t want to be a prophet. Prophets are unpopular. Nobody feels entirely comfortable around a prophet. Sometimes people don’t listen to prophets. Sometimes being a prophet can be frustrating, unrewarding or both.

It’s not that prophets foretell the future, at least not directly. Prophets say, “If you pursue this course of action, then that consequence will follow.”  Prophets name the elephant in the room. Prophets ask us to come out from behind our masks of pretence and face our realities. And sometimes, bad things happen to prophets.

No one wants to hear that they should have fixed the lino. They all knew it was broken. Maybe they also knew that they hadn’t taken responsibility for it. Maybe the Health & Safety lead had been asleep. Maybe the church council were too mean to get new floor covering. And so on…

No wonder the poor chap didn’t want it.

But we would all be the poorer without our prophets.

It was Richard of Chichester who prayed for strength to give and not count the cost, to fight and not heed the wounds.

But he also asked not to heed any reward except to know that he had served his God.

So it is with a certain sense of trepidation that we renew our covenant with God this day, willing to serve, but not quite knowing what that will mean for us. But that is what having faith is all about, stepping out knowing that God is faithful and has our back.

And I must say, I’m rather glad.

Before I finish today, given that I retire in exactly 3 weeks time, I just wanted to thank you who are part of Rowbarton Methodist Church for your fellowship these last 16 years. The partnership St Andrew’s has with you is a very precious thing and it has borne a great deal of fruit. May God bless you as you all go on serving alongside each other as partners, neighbours and friends, and may you be a blessing to the community we serve.

Thank you for listening.

 

Revd Preb. Robin Lodge

 

Baptism of Christ - 11 January 2026

In a few minutes time in this service, we are going to gather in our hearts and minds around the Font and give thanks for our baptism… that moment when we became, formally at least, Children of God. It is an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to God, as, in a similar way we shall do when we meet with the Methodists next door for their Covenant Service. It is a moment of response. A response to the love of God freely given to us. It is also the response to an invitation.

John the Baptist made a whole ministry around invitations to respond to God. As we now know, he was the promised Elijah, whom the Scriptures taught would come to prepare Israel for the Messiah, and ours. It was a striking message, like nothing else they had known. John’s call to repentance found it’s mark with the ordinary people in a way the existing religious authorities never managed to do. John was direct. He appealed to the heart.

A good many people came to him for baptism. In all the films made about the life of Christ there is this queue, and, although John meant every bit of what he did, there must have been an element of “next, please,” after a while.

Opinions differ about how well John and Jesus knew each other before the moment described by Matthew this morning. They were cousins, but they may well have lived very different lives up to this point. No matter, because when Jesus appears before John as the next in line, John knows exactly that he has come face to face with God.

“I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?”

“Let it be so now.”

Let it be so now. For now is the time. Now is the time for the Christ to be revealed to the world, and if that is in any sense going to work, the Christ must follow the path of every human being, for that is the whole point of the Incarnation. Even the one who is without sin humbles himself and submits.

At that moment John knew his work was done. As he would say not long after, “He must increase. I must decrease.” Before him lay only Herod’s prison and the executioners sword.

I could not possibly say how many children and adults I have baptised in nearly 36 years of public ministry. But there are some that come to mind…

Baby G. … an emergency baptism in hospital following a severe shaking by a frustrated father. Her inability to stop crying nearly killed her.

Ruth who walked into church off the street one day with no church background, liked what she saw and stayed.

George moved by the anniversary of the D-Day landings to look again at faith – conditionally baptised before confirmation. The church of his real baptism was bombed in the war and no records remained.

Each one, some consciously, some unconsciously, came to that point where God met them in their lives and invited them to walk with him.

When I was a curate I would sometimes have to take the monthly baptism service at which we could clock up to six families at a time – and note I said families not children! 

For various reasons, of my three daughters I only baptised Emily, our youngest, myself. It was a moving occasion, although, at the moment of baptism I had to remember that I was dad as well as Vicar. It’s just what you do. Children are brought to font. You baptise them. It’s part of the job.

So sometimes, a priest needs to be challenged to remember that, in that moment, God is touching their lives in a very special way. And, perchance, as I hold the baby over the font, they see God over my shoulder. I hope so anyway. Very spiritual beings are babies. Less to get in the way.

I doubt many remember the occasion. I certainly don’t remember my baptism. If you were baptised as infants, I don’t suppose you do either. But whether we remember or not is – in the end – unimportant. Because God remembers. And whether they perceive it or not, God sticks around.

Baby G ended up brain damaged. But she remains a child of God.

Ruth continued to grow in faith, though I’ve lost touch years ago now. But her baptism was a sign to her unbelieving but curious husband.

George has since died and has realised the inheritance received at his baptism – whenever it was.

For baptism is a sacrament and that is what makes it so powerful. Now at theological college one is taught that a sacrament is an outward sign of an inward grace – an action that reveals a spiritual reality within in. But in ordinary speak I suppose you could say that in a sacrament God keeps his promise to do something for us. In baptism he promises to count us among His people. And in the Eucharist he undertakes to empower and nourish us spiritually through the bread and the wine for the journey that we undertake from that moment on.

When preparing couples for marriage I often say that in God’s eyes we are sealing a covenant not a contract. A contract stands or falls on whether the participants do what they have agreed. In the biblical use of the word covenant, one’s promise is kept no matter what. In marriage two people promise to love each other no matter what – as God does. In the same way baptism expresses God’s love which says, “I love you no matter what … you may drive me up the wall, make me tear out by beard in frustration … but I will never stop loving you.” This is what it means to be a Child of God.

At that moment, it’s as if we can hear God say once again…

“This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

But the journey of faith is a turbulent one. God keeps his promises, but we do not always keep ours. We have not always been faithful as God is faithful. We have made mistakes, some of them in all honesty, deliberate ones. It is these sins that have violated the covenant we have with God, and it is these sins that again and again God has forgiven us. It is in the very face of that loving, patience of God that we naturally want to rededicate ourselves anew to Him, to renew the covenant we have broken. For George, an unhappy event 50 years before was transformed into an opportunity to proclaim with triumph the new life he had found. With God the invitation is always open, to be taken and to be taken anew as he says…

“This is the way. Walk in it.”

So today we can give thanks for the baptism we have received, and if you haven’t received yours, there is still time. In the sprinkling of water from the font we can feel embraced and included once again. And next week in our Covenant Service, we can stand before God and say…

“Here I am, warts and all. But I know you love me and have more confidence in me than I can ever have in myself. Allow me to serve you and your Kingdom as you have served me. And give me your grace that you might hold me lest I fall.”
Amen.

Revd Preb. Robin Lodge

Epiphany of our Lord - 4 January 2026

Back in the days of the old British Rail, commuter lines leading to London were, for a time, marketed as Network South East. On occasions, as a loss-leader to encourage off peak travel, a Network Day would be held when you could get unlimited travel for a day around the region for about £5.00, from memory. (This was the 1980’s!).

It was the sort of occasion when train buffs like me would have a field day, and when a Network Day was advertised while I was training for the ministry in Chichester I travelled from that South Coast city all the way to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, calling in on the way to buy a pair of jeans in Marks & Spencer’s … in Kings Lynn!

Most of the time, however, more sanely, we book our rail tickets so that we come back the same way as we went out. Usually, we’re given a ticket in two parts – Outward and Return. Different pieces of card for different purposes.

Before you take down all your Christmas cards, take a look at the ones that feature the Wise Men. I’d be fairly confident to bet that, unless they’re actually with the Holy Family, they will be making their outward journey from the East – probably modern-day Iran – towards Bethlehem. They’ll be following that famous star. One of them may well be pointing to it as they travel.

No one ever depicts the Wise Men coming back.

Outward journeys are different from return journeys. We make an outward journey full of expectation about our destination, especially if the place we’re heading for is new to us. We think about what we will do when we arrive and the people we will meet. The journey home is less exciting. We’re heading for the familiar, and while we may also be thinking about what we’ll do when we get back, the chances are that those things will be a lot less exciting than where we have just been.

The wise men’s return journey, however, was a bit of an exception.

They, like us, had set out with that same sense of expectation. They had seen a star, and, according to their training, it was an unusual star. One that presaged something rather special. A king. But not just any king – not even an M&S one(!) – but a king with a difference. A king with world-changing implications. They just had to take a look.

It wouldn’t have been an easy journey. It’s likely that had to cross deserts and mountains, valleys and plains, their camel train a very different one from my mis-spent youth! But it was worth it. At least, it would be when they got to Herod’s Palace in Jerusalem. Only when they arrived the baby wasn’t there. In fact, no one knew where the baby should be. So Herod called his own wise men and asked them. The answer was Bethlehem. Without delay, the Magi continued their quest.

What happened when they found the Infant Jesus was important. The puzzlement of Mary and Jospeh, their polite but mystified acceptance of the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Odd gifts for baby, not that teddy bears and cloth books had been invented yet, and whether they twigged the threefold meanings of kingship, divinity and death, of all things, is not recorded. But none of this need be our focus right now – I’ll come back to that. The main things is that, having done what they came to do, they got up, mounted their camels and set out on the long journey home … by another route.

What the Magi made of Herod when they got to Jerusalem is also not recorded. There would undoubtedly be a language barrier, and probably a cultural one too, not to mention the protocol of turning up unannounced at a royal palace. We now doubt the three travellers were kings in their own right, but they would have thought of themselves as important. If you owned camels and servants, you were important … and rich.

So we don’t know whether they decoded Herod’s manner, not that he would have given anything away. They would know that kings are instinctively nervous about rivals, but it is unlikely that they knew that such was Herod’s paranoia, he had even murdered his favourite wife and two sons. When he told the Magi that once they had found the new king that he too would come and worship, naïve or not, they probably accepted that Herod too was caught up in these momentous times and possibly batted not an eyelid.

It’s at times like this, when reason and good sense lead away from the intended outcome of God’s plan that God chooses to intervene.

Now, I don’t know how you react to your own dreams, but I tend not to make major decisions on the basis of mine. They’re usually too muddly anyway. But if you happened to have a dream that was so striking that you shared with your nearest and dearest the next day, and then found that they all had had exactly the same dream, you might think that there was something in it.

Was that how it was for the Wise Men? Again, we don’t know, but what we do know is that their return journey was very different from their outward journey. And as return journeys go, that one was remarkably different too. They set out, probably via alternative deserts and mountains, valleys and plains, this time with no special star to guide them – just what they knew of the heavens from before. In an age with few if any reliable maps that wouldn’t have been easy.

But it is something they knew they had to do and that wasn’t just about their collective dream, it was about what they found in that little house in Bethlehem… not a regal king, but a tiny baby in quite ordinary surroundings. Yet they knew that they had been led to a momentous discovery. Partly that the good and the great were not always found in palaces. It was that most of all, they knew in the hearts they had come face to face with God, and it had changed them forever.

T.S.Eliot puts it rather well in his famous poem, “Journey of the Magi,” which ends with one of the wise men speaking in reflective mood some time later…

All this was a long time ago, I remember, 
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down 
This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? 
There was a Birth, certainly We had evidence and no doubt. 
I had seen birth and death, 
But had thought they were different; 
This Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us,
like Death, our death. 
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, 
With an alien people clutching their gods. 
I should be glad of another death.

If you choose to come home by train on another route, you’ll have to buy another ticket. The old one is not valid for the new route. But some journeys, costly as they are, are worth making.
Amen.

Revd Preb. Robin Lodge

 

 

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