Short Talks
This section of the website comprises short stand-alone talks and articles on different aspects of the Christian Faith, including the teaching of Jesus, the seasons of the Church’s Year and Feasts and Festivals. More talks/sermons/homilies/articles will be added in due course.
The section of the website entitled The Christian Faith provides more extended teaching on larger content areas, such as the Creed and the Sacraments.
The unmerciful debtor
“Then came Peter and said to him, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven’ “ (RSV, Matthew 18: 21,22)
The Parable of the Unmerciful Debtor takes us behind the scenes of the court of an Eastern King. Over each of the provinces into which the Kingdom was divided there had been appointed a high official. His chief duty was to see that the King’s subjects duly paid their taxes and that the money so collected passed into the royal treasury. Such a position, involving each year a vast sum of money, furnished a dishonest governor with an opportunity for embezzlement on a grand scale.
The Labourers in the Vineyard
“When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage” (NRSV, Matthew 20: 9)
The parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard vividly illustrates the truth that God does not think as human beings think, and that in our hopes of eternal life we are wholly dependent on his compassion and generosity.
Christian mysteries
“How can these things be?” (NRSV, John 3: 9)
Last Sunday we were paying especial honour to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth whom Jesus promised would lead us into all truth and who, as the Proper Preface declared has, by the Gospel which he has inspired, brought us “out of darkness and error into the clear light and true knowledge” of God the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ. (1) And now immediately afterwards we are confronted with the humanly unfathomable mystery of the Holy Trinity.