March 2026

There is no sermon on Palm Sunday as the Passion Gospel Matthew 26:14-27:66 speaks for itself. Please take time to read through the words from St.Matthew's Gospel account and ponder on the events of that first Holy Week some 2000+ years ago.

I can never hear the first reading from Ezekiel with out the words of the Spiritual going through my head:

"Dem bones, dem bones dem dry bones, hear the word of the Lord."

Don’t you just love that first reading with those Oh! so vibrant images of the valley of dried bones coming back to life. It reads like a cinematic script despite being rather fanciful and I can see why it has been beloved by many film makers over the years. I don’t, however,  think that we are expected to take the story literally but to read it as...

Mothering Sunday is a time to reflect on the reasons why there is a long-standing tradition of regarding the Church as a mother. Saint Cyprian, a north African bishop of the third century famously wrote that 

 "One cannot have God for one’s Father who does not have the Church for one’s Mother".

How we understand those words is, of course, shaped by our personal experiences of being fathered and mothered. Such language can be very difficult if those experiences were negative. Today’s readings help us towards a positive understanding of the nature of motherhood and of the ways in which...

In many ways I am tempted not to preach to you this morning but to just encourage you to sit quietly and to re-read a couple of times today’s Gospel. Not only is it a long piece to read in a service of worship it also contains things that can turn on its head what we might first think is going on.

At face value we read about Jesus asking for a cold drink from a woman drawing water from Jacob’s well. He’s obviously thirsty. We might be struck, however, by the fact that he has to ask the woman...