Sermons and Talks

Sermon #39 (24th November 2019 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

I’ve got a confession to make. It’s about something that’s afflicted me all my life. And I guess some of you already suspected. You’ll have seen the signs. I’m sorry to say… I’ve got a bit of a problem with procrastination. [pause]

Or possibly it’s more of a problem with the length my to-do list and the every-growing number of tasks I take on and say ‘yes’ to (without taking account, realistically, of how many hours there are in the day). A lot of these tasks get done just-in-time, I’m sorry to say, while I’m burning the midnight oil, with more deadline-related drama than is probably necessary. I’ve always been this way. And I know last week Sarah spoke about her own relationship to time too: the habit of – hopefully – cramming just-one-more-thing into an already-busy schedule.

So, a while back, in an attempt to break this procrastinate-y habit-of-a-lifetime, I started reading up on strategies for time management and productivity. I signed up for various motivational mailing lists offering hints and tips on how to make the most out of your day and achieve your full potential.

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Sermon #38 (29th September 2019 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

Our theme of the month, for September, has been ‘Moving On and Staying Put’. The last few Sundays have mostly been given over to considering the joys of movement – considering what we can learn from travelling, or going on pilgrimage, and wilfully wandering following the way of the open road – and reflecting on times in our lives when we have voluntarily upped sticks, walked away, left the familiar behind, and sought a change of scene. Jeannene spoke a few weeks ago about those times when people move on – or are moved on – against their will. Those whose freedom to choose is constrained by economic and political factors. And today we’re going to briefly consider the virtues of ‘Staying Put’: making a positive choice not to move – to stay in one place and put down roots – in one home, or community, or job – instead of actively seeking novelty, change, or as Alix Klingenberg put it, another PLOT TWIST! – something that seems increasingly counter-cultural in a society which (shaped by the demands of global capitalism) discourages us at every turn from developing lasting ties.

I don’t know about you, but the last few years have brought a few more changes and plot twists than I bargained for, at both a political and a personal level. It’s been an unsettling time. And in times like these I particularly value those things which are constant, reliable, and stable in life.

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Sermon #37 (4th August 2019 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

Once again it falls to me to introduce our new ministry theme for the month of August: For the next few Sundays we’re going to focus on the topic of ‘Hopes and Dreams’. When Sarah, Jeannene and I sat down to plan our service titles a while back, I immediately thought of a well-known quotation – one that’s often, wrongly, attributed to Goethe – in fact it’s by a Scottish mountaineer called W.H. Murray (and I’ve included an extended version of it on the back of your hymnsheet today). It’s just the last few short lines that came to mind though, in connection with this topic of ‘Hopes and Dreams’, as they’re rather memorable and stirring words. Murray says: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it! Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now!’

In truth I didn’t remember the exact quotation until I went to look it up. In my mind, I had somehow just stored the essence of it, and it was distilled to this: ‘Dream boldly! And then get on with it.’ Not nearly so poetic but I still think it’s a fairly accurate representation of the sentiment…

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Sermon #36 (7th July 2019 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

If I had my way, I wouldn’t be giving a sermon this morning. Not even a mini-sermon like this. What I really would have preferred to do instead – were it not for insurmountable technical issues – was to show you a rather special little film. It’s nine minutes long and forty two years old. I’ve borrowed the title of that film for today’s service: ‘Powers of Ten’. Who’s seen it?

This film was directed by Charles and Ray Eames, a couple most famous for their work in furniture design and architecture, and it exists in two versions. They had a first go in 1968 and then produced the definitive version in 1977, which has the full and unwieldy title: ‘Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero’. The title is nearly as long as the film! Seeing as I can’t just screen it for you today – though it is on YouTube – I’ve brought a book and a flick-book of the film for you to look at, and I’ll read you a brief description of the film from the Eames’ own office.

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Sermon #34 (12th May 2019 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

One of the best things about being in community – especially a community like this one – is, as Sarah’s already said, the opportunity it gives you to meet and get to know people who aren’t like yourself and who you might not ever get to mingle with in other settings. Here, people of different generations, different socio-economic groups, different backgrounds, can become friends, hear each other’s stories, and learn from one another’s varied perspectives. We Unitarians often speak with pride of celebrating diversity and being enriched by it.

However… as well as being a source of delight, differences can sometimes be… difficult. When we first chance across a community like this one, there can be a temptation to idealise it, and imagine that everybody’s chosen to be here ‘cos they think in much the same way as we do – with broadly similar theology, politics, ethical values, manners even – but that’s not quite true. We can’t take it for granted that we’re all pulling in exactly the same direction on every single issue. So when we bump up against people who see the world in a different way than we do – whose life experiences have given them a different outlook, temperament, or habits of behaviour – well, that can sometimes cause a bit of friction. We might rub each other up the wrong way.

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Sermon #33 (6th January 2019 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

Here we are then: it’s the start of a new year. An opportunity to re-focus. And it’s also the start of a new monthly ministry theme at Essex Church. Throughout January we’re going to focus on the topic of ‘Choices and Decisions’. And this morning I’m going to offer just a few thoughts on one possible way that we might approach our everyday decision-making; for, after all, our days and lives are filled with countless small choices and decisions (and perhaps a few of these choices and decisions turn out not to be quite so small, in the end).

On the front of your order of service today is a quote from Kent Nerburn. He says: ‘Life is an endless creative experience and we are making ourselves every moment by every decision we make.’ Now, depending on what mood you’re in, that quote might strike you in one of several different ways. Like (excitedly): ‘Life is an endless creative experience and we are making ourselves every moment by every decision we make.’ That might sound, to you, like a wonderful gift – life is an adventure of infinite opportunity! We can – at least in part – invent ourselves through our own choices, through our own volition. On the other hand… (in a downtrodden voice): ‘Life is an endless creative experience and we are making ourselves every moment by every decision we make.’ …this notion might instead strike you as rather weighty, and burdensome. Rather tiring! There’s a certain pressure that comes with the thought that every choice we make will end up having a bearing (even if only a tiny one) on who we will become – a bearing on our very self.

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Sermon #32 (2nd September 2018 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

There’s a certain sort of conversation I find myself getting into from time to time – the sort you might describe as ‘benign gossip’ – hopefully this is something you do too: catching up on stories of mutual friends, their trials and tribulations, successes and surprises – catching up on how everyone we know is getting on in life and what they’re up to. Somewhere in the course of every chat like this – after a while spent dissecting some of the various complications, difficulties, and peculiarities our friends and acquaintances are inevitably facing – the testing circumstances that I couldn’t imagine having to deal with – there’ll be a lull in conversation, a quiet moment, before one us sighs, and says something like: ‘Well. Other People’s Lives.’ That’s where the title of today’s service came from. It’s almost a catchphrase.

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Theme Talk (20th August 2018 at Hucklow Summer School)

Part One: ‘We’re All Going to Die’

The theme of this year’s summer school poses just about the biggest question we humans can ask ourselves: ‘How, then, shall we live?’ I take this question to have several questions implicitly wrapped up in it: ‘How shall we live knowing that – sooner or later – we are all going to die?’; ‘What constitutes a good life anyway, in this troubled and chaotic world?’; ‘What are we meant to be doing in our all-too-brief span?’; and ‘What’s the point?’… Now, I can’t say I feel especially well-equipped to answer these questions… but then, who is? So I’ll give it a go. Seeing as I’m here.

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Sermon #31 (5th August 2018 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

This Sunday is the first tackling our new theme for the month of August: ‘Paying Attention’. And this morning I want to talk about a particular kind of paying-attention – I knew what I wanted to explore today as soon as we set the month’s theme – but, even now, as I stand here… I don’t know exactly what to call it. It’s something a bit elusive. Just for now – just to be getting on with – let’s call it ‘sensitivity’.

The distilled message of today’s service is this: There’s nearly always more going on in any given situation than is apparent at face value and we could – and maybe should – put a bit more effort into paying attention to these subtexts and subtleties, into reading between the lines, listening out for what’s not being said, the stories untold. I reckon it would be of benefit to everyone if we could each cultivate greater personal sensitivity in order to have a better sense of what’s going on around us (by which I mean: what’s really going on).

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Sermon #30 (8th July 2018 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

This is the second service in our monthly ministry theme of ‘Freedom and Liberation’. And I’m going to do my best, in the next ten minutes or so, to give you a whistle-stop tour through the origins and evolution of the movement known as Liberation Theology. I’ll also try to tell you a little about where it’s at in the present day and why we should care.

Liberation Theology emerged in the 1960s, in Latin America, and although that was its ‘moment’ – in the 60s and 70s, perhaps into the 1980s – to understand its origins and popularity at that time and in that place we need to bear in mind the context: best part of 500 years of suffering that preceded it. There was horrendous treatment of the native population by the colonial powers (Spanish and Portuguese) that had arrived from Europe: exploitation of the people, their land, and resources, and the suppression of their native culture and religion, as the various settled societies were converted (largely by force) to Christianity. By the mid-20th-century there were a number of military dictatorships in the region, and civil rights and human rights were curtailed or at least under threat in a lot of places. Poverty was widespread (though there were aristocracies who were doing very alright for themselves; the contrast between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ was increasingly stark). This is the backdrop, the context, to the emergence of Latin American Liberation Theology.

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