Purple magnolia

A sermon given by the Rev’d Natasha Woodward At the Church of Unity, Ramsden 11am Eucharist, Easter Sunday, 23 March 2008 Acts 10.34-43, Matthew 28.1-10 Last year, the supermarket Somerfield did a survey, to find out about people's religious knowledge. It made a press release, making a very big deal of the fact that people were so out of touch, they didn't know that Easter eggs were about celebrating the birth of Jesus. Birth? Well – no – an employee of Somerfield made a mistake. You could perhaps say that Easter Eggs are about celebrating a birth, but a different kind of birth, a sort of new birth, but not quite – the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. But I don't think Somerfield was really thinking this through quite so thoroughly - if Easter Eggs were about Jesus's birth in the way that they suggested, we would have them at Christmas, not Easter. But it's understandable how one might make that mistake - eggs are about birth, actually – in an obvious way,

A sermon given by the Rev’d Natasha Woodward At All Saints' Church, Orpington 8pm Eucharist, Maundy Thursday 20 March 2008 We are here tonight worshipping in a church hall. This is not what this church community is used to. It's a hall where the heating is a little noisy at times, the air is a little dry, the chairs are – well – functional – the paint is coming off the walls in places. The church may have been in need of refurbishing, and I didn't see it beforehand, but I guess that even before the refurbishment, it was in many ways a more attractive building for worship than this one might seem to be. I have no doubt it will lift all our hearts when we move back into the church, such a fitting place for the gathering of God's people for prayer, fellowship and worship. But here we are, gathering in the hall. Here now, in this place, we have a church. We have the Church – expressed in this group of people gathered here today and who will gather here over the next f

A sermon given by the Rev’d Natasha Woodward At All Saints' Church, Orpington 6.30pm Evensong, Sunday 15 March (Isaiah 5.1-7 , Matthew 21.33-end , Psalm 89 ) We read this parable from Matthew's gospel, and the response, and we might wonder whether or how it might apply to us. Are we like the evil tenants, who withhold the landlord's due and eventually kill his son – or are we like the new tenants, who do all the right things and do indeed pay their rent? Are we on the right side or the wrong side? It's a natural question, a slightly scary question. So let's look a little closer.... This story Jesus tells is utterly fantastical. It starts off as a believable tale about a landlord with unruly tenants. But at each stage it grows and grows – it becomes a taller and taller tale. Such that the tenants kill the landlord's son – a nonsensical thing to do even within the story, because the death of the landlord's son would not change the tenants position – it w