Purple magnolia

A sermon preached at St Paulinus, Crayford Sunday 17 June 2007, 8am and 10am Mass 2 Samuel 11.26 - 12.10, 13-15; Psalm 32; Galatians 2.15 - 21; Luke 7.36 - 8.3 "But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord." Words from our first reading. David was king. He saw a woman – Bathsheba – who he fancied a great deal. She was married, but her husband was away in battle, so David had her brought to him. He thought her husband would never find out. Unfortunately for David, Bathsheba became pregnant. Since her husband Uriah was away in battle for many months, it would be obvious that the baby wasn't his. So after various attempts to solve his problem, David eventually succeeded in getting Uriah killed. What he did, was that deliberately send Uriah to the hardest part of the battle, and commanded the other soldiers to withdraw to leave Uriah alone on the battlefield surrounded by enemies – there was no doubt he would be killed. This was the thing that displeased the

Talk given on Wednesday 13 June, 2007, 9.30am Mass, with Year 1 in attendance Saint Anthony of Padua was born about 800 years ago in Portugal. He became a friar when he was just 15, and in his community they all lead a very simple life, with no possessions. St Anthony decided that he wanted to do something big, something impressive for God. He decided that he might be a martyr. He thought he might die for his faith. A bit strange. So St Anthony set out to travel to a part of North Africa which is now Morocco, where at that time some of his fellow friars had been murdered for sharing their Christian faith. Here, he thought, he could do something really impressive for God. Here he would try to convert people to the Christian faith, and because some people probably wouldn't like that very much, he might become a martyr. [Note: St Anthony's private intentions have been imagined for this purpose: there were certainly people around who had this view of martyrdom as something

Given at all-age worship at 10am on Pentecost, Sunday 26 May 2007 First we learned how to say hello in different languages.... I don't know most of the languages that we've used today. But I still know what you all meant when you were just calling out. We were speaking in different languages, but we could still understand each other. That's what it was like on that first Pentecost, the birthday of the church. It wasn't that everyone started speaking the same language. They didn't all become the same. But they discovered they could understand each other – despite their different backgrounds, and coming from all over the known world, they had something in common, but it didn't make them all the same – wherever they were from, whether they were rich or poor, whatever languages they spoke. We're not all the same either – see how many different people are here, and what variety we have. God's spirit which came at that first Pentec

A reflection given at 9.30am Mass on Wednesday 23 May 2007 (With Year 4) In our gospel reading Jesus was praying. We talk a lot about praying, but we don't always know what it means. Sometimes praying can be asking God to do things. But praying can also be very different from that. So today for this part of the service, we're going to pray in a different kind of way. Instead of closing our eyes, we're going to keep them open. We're going to look at something. We're going to look at something that we always have in church during our services and we also always have it at school during assemblies. You don't only get them in church or school though. Sometimes you have them on the table when you have a fancy meal, maybe in a restaurant or at home. You also get them on a birthday cake.... We're going to talk about praying with a candle today because we use them so much in church – but also because we're coming up to the end of Easter, the time when we have t