Purple magnolia

A sermon preached by the Rev’d Natasha Woodward At All Saints' Church, Orpington 6.30pm Evensong, Sunday 24 February (Lent 3) Joshua 1.1-9, Ephesians 6.10-20 Philosophy books refer to 'the problem of evil' – how to explain the existence of evil when God is good. Evil, in these books, is something to be 'explained'. I'm not so sure of the value of such 'explanations', even if they were to be successful. I think there are some things that happen, which go beyond explanation; they may be explicable in some sense, but somehow it's not enough. There are degrees to which an explanation of something difficult is helpful to people. For a small child, especially, the death of a pet is very sad, and we find ways of making it easier for the child to cope, perhaps by trying to explain what has happened. The animal isn't suffering any more, he's in a better place, or simply his time was up – if old dogs didn't die, there would be no room left for

A sermon preached by the Rev’d Natasha Woodward at All Saints' Church, Orpington 9.30am Eucharist Sunday 10 February (Lent 1) Matthew 4.1-11 What do you do when you have a big decision to make? Whether to accept this job, whether to move, whether to get married, what course to study.... Do you make a list of pros and cons, carefully weighing the merits of each course of action in an (apparently) objective way? Do you ask advice from all and sundry, before making the same decision you were going to make anyway? Do you go into your room on your own and just decide, presenting the world with a fait-accompli? Often – perhaps most of the time – a decision is forced upon us. There is some reason – some external reason – why we need to make a choice. Personal circumstances have changed, the work environment has changed, children have grown up or we have changed – in some way, there needs to be a change: for some reason things can't stay the way they were before. Sometimes a maj

A sermon given by the Rev’d Natasha Woodward At All Saints' Church, Orpington 6.30pm Evensong Sunday 27 January 2008 Our first reading this evening was from the book of Ecclesiastes. It's a funny little book, coming in between Proverbs and the Song of Solomon, which, together with the book of Job, form a little group of 'wisdom literature' within the old testament – distinctive in style and content – generally they aren't history, or directions for the worship of God, or praise, or theology – they have very few direct references to God – they are more collections of teachings, typically pithy sayings which seem to capture something important, some useful guidelines for life, but which also often seem to contradict each other. All of these books are strange for us to read. So, as I'm inclined to start with the hard thing first, I read Ecclesiastes all the way through, I think for the first time in one sitting. I discovered that the book of Ecclesiastes has thre