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Readings&nbsp;Luke 16.19-31; Amos 6.1a, 4-7; Psalm 146; 1 Timothy 6.6-19
Find the sermon after&nbsp;the readings, starting on p.4

&nbsp;Amos 6:1a, 4-7
Warnings to the wealthy

6:1aWoe to those who are at ease in Zion and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria.

6:4Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and lounge on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the stall,

6:5who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David improvise on instruments of music,

6:6who drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

6:7Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.Psalm 146
Help and hope come from God

146:1Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul!

146:2I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

146:3Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.

146:4When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.

146:5Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God,

146:6who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever;

146:7who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free;

146:8the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.

146:9The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

146:10The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD!1 Timothy 6:6-19
Pursuing God's justice

6:6Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment,

6:7for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it,

6:8but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.

6:9But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

6:10For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

6:11But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.

6:12Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

6:13In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you

6:14to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

6:15which he will bring about at the right time--he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

6:16It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

6:17As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

6:18They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share,

6:19thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.Luke 16:19-31
Poor Lazarus and the rich man

16:19"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.

16:20And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,

16:21who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.

16:22The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.

16:23In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.

16:24He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.'

16:25But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.

16:26Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.'

16:27He said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house--

16:28for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.'

16:29Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'

16:30He said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'

16:31He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"Sermon&nbsp;
“Put not your trust in princes, nor in any human power, for there is no help in them.” So says our psalm today. Taken on its own, this is an unusually easy religious message for people to swallow in our times. In polls it’s clear that a majority of us have little or no trust in our government and politicians, and a significant minority have no trust in other powers like the police. Instead, people are turning inward – reserving their trust only for those they know or who they see as being like themselves. Many people go even further, concluding that the only person you can really trust is yourself. And our culture, with its focus on self-reliance and self-care, only serves to reinforce that focus. If you can’t trust others, then it’s a kind of protection to do everything you can to look out for yourself. If focusing on ourselves in this way will make us happier and healthier, as all our wellness media seem to tell us, then that’s an added bonus.
But the underlying message of the psalm, and of all our readings today, is actually the opposite of that. Rather than narrowing our focus, refusing to trust in the powers of this world is meant to make us look outward, placing all our trust in God. “Happy are those&hellip; whose hope is in the Lord their God.” God is the source of everything that exists, God cares about those whom the world exploits and forgets, and God’s loving reign shall long outlast every powerful person or thing we encounter in this world.
And today’s readings give a very practical focus to what it means to trust in God. Quite obviously, they all talk about money and its effects, and I’m going to do that today as well. But first, I want us to understand that what underlies all of these readings is love. God’s love for us, God’s generosity in providing and sustaining us with all that we have, God’s self-giving in Christ’s sacrifice for us, so that we might share in eternal life with him&hellip; this is the context for everything that these readings say, because it is God’s love and generosity that call on us to make a response in kind. This is what discipleship means. Following God means keeping the law of love: we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul and with all our strength, and we are to love our neighbours as ourselves.
This loving response to God can shape our whole lives, everything that we are and all that we do. It should upend and overturn the values of the world, with all its selfish loves and hatreds. It’s not something that we can confine to our worship on Sundays. And I know that this is a message that so many of you here know already. This isn’t a church full of idle rich people lounging on beds of ivory of the kind that Amos describes. I see you look after each other, I hear your care for those outside these walls. I know how many of you have pursued careers that involve looking after others. I know how many of you with little money work an honest job or more than one to keep food on the table for your families, and still find time to care for others in hundreds of different ways. Above all, I have the privilege of hearing privately from many of you about your prayer lives, those intimate relationships with God that sustain and guide you, so I know that you are not guilty of relying only on yourselves.
But today’s readings still challenge us to go further, to let God rule over more and more of our lives. Our reading from Amos and the Gospel put the choices that face us in the starkest terms, predicting devastation of more than one kind for those who enjoy the good things of this world at others’ expense. But just because they are so stark, if we’re not careful in how we read them, then we can end up giving ourselves too much wiggle room, too much plausible deniability. I’m not taunting a poor guy outside my house by standing at the window eating a roast dinner, so surely Jesus’ parable doesn’t apply to me. I enjoy eating and dancing with my friends, but I still care about suffering people, so surely Amos’ warnings don’t apply to me. By thinking like this, we can allow ourselves to become complacent, forgetting the ways in which we do still enjoy our lives at the expense of others.
That doesn’t mean that Jesus is telling us that we’ve got no hope with God unless we give up everything we have and become like Lazarus, starving and covered with sores. That wouldn’t be a very inspiring message, nor is it true to the character of God as we know it. God is nothing if not merciful, and God’s love isn’t conditional on our actions. The rich man in Jesus’s parable doesn’t end up in torment because he has more than he needs, but because he failed to respond to his good fortune with care for others. He failed to love God back.
In the same way, we’re called on to be generous to others not because we want to make a bargain with God for a good afterlife, but as a thankful response to the gifts God has already given us, including above all the gift of eternal life that is freely given to us in Jesus Christ. As the letter to Timothy makes clear, generosity is a practical way of living out our love for God, of helping ourselves keep focused on that love in a world that wants to make money, power and social status occupy the place in our hearts that God should have.
Generosity can take many forms, from taking the time for a cup of tea with someone who’s lonely to volunteering on the front lines of a global crisis. All of us can be generous in ways that go beyond money. The reason all these readings focus on the dangers of wealth isn’t because money matters more than these other things, but because our tendency to focus on money is one of the most powerful things that can draw us away from love for God and love for others, even while we’re being generous in other ways.
I’ve no interest in guilt-tripping anyone about what they own, nor do our readings today. What they do ask of us is that we search within our own hearts to see where we’re truly placing our trust. Is our trust in God or in human powers? Money is nothing if not a human power, and like all human powers, it will pass away in time. By giving it away, we reduce it to its true value – simply a tool, like any other, in the service of what we value most.
Take a moment now to ask yourself: does the way you treat money reflect the things you value most? Does it connect you with others, or keep you apart from them? Does it show your love of God?
By being generous, in whatever way we are able, we help ourselves to keep focused on the things that really matter, taking hold of the life that really is life. And we help others, too, both directly with what we give, and – if we can do it cheerfully – by setting an example of lives lived to the full, open and loving in a world torn apart by suspicion and hatred. We help them to see God’s love in our own. So I encourage all of us to grab hold of this life, to let God liberate us from the love of money, and with that liberation to empower us to make Christ known throughout the world, with all the generosity we can.&nbsp;Amen.

St Mary Church, Banbury

Readings

Luke 16.19-31; Amos 6.1a, 4-7; Psalm 146; 1 Timothy 6.6-19

Find the sermon after the readings, starting on p.4

Amos 6:1a, 4-7

Warnings to the wealthy

6:1aWoe to those who are at ease in Zion and for those who feel secure on Mount Sam...

Sermon Sunday 28th September 2025

Sermon Trinity Sunday 2025 15th June 2025
So today is Trinity Sunday, the day all ministers try and explain the Trinity! Yet, trying to do that can mean that we start thinking about the Trinity being this separate entity in itself! I think instead of focusing on the concept of the Trinity, we should think of today maybe as know God better Sunday. So let’s think about how we can know God better. One of the ways is by reading scripture. Through it, we read the stories of God’s relationship with us and in the New Testament we have the significant acts of God through his Son Jesus Christ.

In Luke’s gospel we learn how God became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and humbled himself by becoming human. Through this miracle God draws us into relationship with him, so that we can relate and understand God’s love for us through human relationships.

Each gospel tells the story of Easter, how Jesus Christ set us free from sin by sacrificing himself on the cross. The gospels tell us the intimate details of his last moments on earth being both human and divine and how only God could die and suffer and yet be resurrected fully.

Last week was Pentecost, where the book of Acts describes how the Holy Spirit came among the disciples, this helps us to understand that the Holy Spirit has and is always among us.

Yet this Sunday is not a specific story in the bible or a book, it is fully dedicated to understanding our experience as a Christian community of who God is.

Throughout the New Testament, the idea of the Trinity is hinted at. This morning’s reading from Romans talks of God the Father whose grace we have obtained through our Lord Jesus Christ and how God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

It is not just in the New Testament that God is talked about in different ways and having different characters. In this morning’s reading from Proverbs chapter 8 verse 27 onwards, ‘When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, 31rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

From a Christian perspective this reading can be seen to be referring to the Holy Spirit, rejoicing in the inhabited world and delighting in us, God’s children.

To help the early Christian community to understand how God could be human yet divine, many discussions and debates took place until the meeting at Nicaea in the year 325AD, which brought about the Nicene Creed.

We believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

God is the Father who is our creator and the creator of everything.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made.

I like this part of the creed and the way it describes Jesus. Jesus was divine yet human, who came on earth through the miracle of the incarnation of the Virgin Mary and lived among us as a human. He suffered for us on the cross as a human yet was resurrected and redeemed us from our sins through his divinity.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

The Spirit of truth who is with us and has been with us from the beginning and sustains us.

Rather than seeing the Trinity as some puzzle that needs solving so that we can comprehend God, we need to think about the Trinity as the way God is in relationship with us. He is in relationship with us like a Father or Mother are, watching over us and guiding us without controlling our lives. God is Jesus, a God that loved us so much that he came down from heaven humbling himself, not just to be with us, but to experience what it is to be human and then sacrifice himself for our sins. God is the Holy Spirit; she has been among us from the beginning and continues to be with us enabling us to feel God’s presence with us.

Scripture is our human testimony of God; it is people speaking of what they know and have experienced of God on earth.

Throughout scripture the nature of God is described for us, so we can understand God more fully. If God was completely understandable then God would no longer be God.

I understand the need to use analogies or ice cubes or fidgets to help children understand how God can be three but still one, but I think instead of seeing Trinity Sunday as a puzzle that we need to figure out, we should see this Sunday as know God better Sunday, or maybe even God is here Sunday.

Cynthia Rigby said in her book Holding Faith that, the doctrine of the Trinity undoes any concept of God that keeps God and creation at a distance from us. Instead, the Christian confession that God is Triune invites us to participate in the beautiful dance of God's actions in the world. (Page 20 Holding Faith, Cynthia L. Rigby)

The Bible shares the testimonies of people describing how much God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us. The triune aspects of God bring us on a journey of relationship between God and God's people that help us understand more fully the nature of God. God meets us and claims us and is with us as all aspects of the Triune God, not to confuse us or make God more complicated, but actually to make God more knowable and understandable.

&nbsp;So on this know God better Sunday, let us give thanks for God, Father, Mother, Jesus, Holy Spirit, creator, redeemer and sustainer.

Amen

Stained glass window depicting religious scene with many figures.

Sermon Trinity Sunday 2025 15th June 2025

So today is Trinity Sunday, the day all ministers try and explain the Trinity! Yet, trying to do that can mean that we start thinking about the Trinity being this separate entity in itself! I think instea...

Sermon Trinity Sunday 2025 15th June 2025

Pentecost 8th June 2025

&nbsp;Acts 2. 1-21 Day of Pentecost
Gospel John 14. 8-17

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Living God, Take these all too human words and anoint them with your Spirit so that in their hearing we may each encounter the living Word, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

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What a selection of texts we have today. It’s overwhelming. It’s hard to know where to begin. One of the challenges with this selection is sometimes we leave talk of the Spirit to days like Pentecost and the preacher feels they have to say it all in one go. That would not be possible or helpful.

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There is a prior question, though, why don’t we talk about the Spirit more? Sure, we make reference to it frequently but why don’t we talk about who the Spirit is or what the Spirit does as much as Jesus?

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There could be lots of reasons for this, but I think one of the main ones is that the church has always had a bit of an uneasy relationship with the Spirit. Concepts like Father and Son are easy for us to compute – but Spirit, which in Greek means wind – is much less tangible or less obviously relational. It evokes a sense of freedom and newness which is hard to pin down.

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How to gender the Spirit has also been difficult. Often the Spirit is given female pronouns, but some feminist theologians have argued that this reinforces the maleness of the father, and of course Jesus, over and against and leaves us with two blokes and a bird. They argue for a more fluid recognition that there is no gender in God, God is Father and Mother. There is a strong medieval tradition of talking of Jesus as a mother also. Much more could be said about this, but the point is the Spirit doesn’t fit our categories as easily.

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Throughout the history of the church, the Spirit has often been a cause of controversy. The sense of freedom and newness means talk of the Spirit can be vulnerable to nefarious claims for new action by God, which are harmful. There have been numerous heresies declared in the name of the Spirit.

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This speaks to the fragility of discernment but this freedom, this risk, is also fundamental to what is to be church. Without the newness and freshness of the Spirit the church would be a historical reenactment society, we’ve got the fancy dress box for it for sure. And the bible would become a rule book to be copied out to the letter in every situation, regardless of relevance – is this sounding familiar?

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It is the freshness wind of the Spirit that keeps the church alive and gives it breath fresh life. It’s what makes it possible for God to say something new. But this new thing must be consistent with the Gospel, the Gospel of Christ, the Gospel of love, if it is to be truly of the Spirit. The Spirit is, most fundamentally, the Spirit of Christ. So, if a claim contradicts what we know to be true of Jesus then it is not of the Spirit. However, we can still be challenged as to whether we’ve understood Jesus by what the Spirit is saying or doing – do you see the challenge?

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In our Gospel passage, Jesus talks about going away but that the Father will send another, the Spirit of truth, who will be – the Greek word is Paraclete. This is sometimes translated as comforter, sometimes as advocate, helper or intercessor. The Spirit fulfils the same role Jesus did in his earthly ministry – the Spirit is God close to us, with us, closer to us than we even are to ourselves. Again, without this, Jesus is gone, and the Bible is about the past. The presence of the Spirit means God is with us and the pages of the Bible breathe, they are about today and tomorrow as much as about the past.

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We see in our reading from Acts that what the Spirit does it does publicly – as Jesus did. This is not the private spirituality of the modern imagination. This is not spiritual but not religious. It’s free and open but it’s a fresh interpreter of a tradition, a way of life – the way of the people of God. It adopts people into that family as Paul says in our Romans passage.

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Our Acts passage is one of the most famous passages in the New Testament and the whole bible. Unlike John, it doesn’t tell us who the Spirit is, it shows us what the Spirit does. The whole passage is an echo and inversion of the Tower of Babel story from Genesis 11. This time, multiple languages do not bring confusion, instead, diversity brings unity within the Spirit.

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People could hear the good news for themselves in their own culture. They didn’t have to give up who they are to hear from God or become Children of God. This is the fulfilment of Joel 2:28-29. It’s a barrier-breaking moment, God spoken through whatever language was necessary to communicate the good news. There is obviously a lesson here about our own assumptions about where and how God speaks and to whom. We all have biases after all. A clear implication of this passage is that differences of culture or ethnicity, or indeed other types of human difference, are no obstacle or barrier to God and are actively embraced by God. And this again is another reason why the Spirit has sometimes been perceived as threatening and shied away from in the Church. The ‘Spirit blows the B&hellip;.. doors off’ and interrogates who we think are in and out.

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There is a kids’ song that goes, Our God is a great big God&hellip;’ It’s always bothered me because God obviously has no physical mass. God is neither Big nor small. God is close. But beyond that pedantry, it makes God sound scary – a great big God might be a bully. But our God is a dangerous God and a surprising God. Our world is turned upside down, we may end up doing what we least expect – a few weeks ago, we heard how God sent Anais to break bread with Paul, who was a persecutor and enemy of Christ and the Church. What we know is that we don’t know where the Spirit will lead, and nothing is out of bounds – so our only choice is to get comfortable with uncertainty and to pray for courage to follow.

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In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

Amen

Sunset viewed from airplane window with clouds below

Pentecost 8th June 2025

Acts 2. 1-21 Day of Pentecost

Gospel John 14. 8-17



Living God, Take these all too human words and anoint them with your Spirit so that in their hearing we may each encounter the living Word, Jesus Christ, in whose name...

Pentecost 8th June 2025

Sermon Easter Sunday 2025
Acts 10. 34-43 summery of Jesus’ death and resurrection

John 20. 1-8 Mary Magdalen discovers Jesus, and he says her name

Lent course diving deeply into Baptism

God calls us.
Over lent we have been exploring baptism and what that means to us as Christians. We are each on our own journey of faith with God. For some that might look like coming to church most Sundays and being part of a Christian community. For others, their journey of faith may have meant a time away from being part of a community of faith or never having been part of one at all. However often something inside will draw us back to God. As Augustine says, our hearts are wrestles until they find their rest in you.

During our Lent course we have been considering earth, water, wind and fire and how these elements relate to us as God’s children. On Ash Wednesday the cross of ash is put on our foreheads and the pray ‘you are dust and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and stay faithful to Christ,’ is said. We are all created from the dust of the earth and through baptism our sins are washed away by water. We are putting an end to our sinful selves and accepting the life that God wishes us to have. A life where we are sustained by God’s living water shared with us by the working of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit moves among us like the wind that blows. Sometimes it is a gentle breeze and at other times is a strong wind that encourages us to move one way or the other. When we listen to the spirit, sometimes we will feel the warmth of its fire within us, sustaining us in our conviction of God’s call on our lives. The fire that is within us is not so strong that we will be consumed by it, like the burning bush that Moses saw is not consumed, but the fire will give us the strength to do the will of God.

On Easter Day as we celebrate Jesus being raised from death to new life, we have an opportunity to each be raised from our sinful lives into a new life with Christ. We renew our baptism promises and are reminded of Jesus life giving water and pray that this will sustain us throughout the year. As Christians we know what joy comes from our belief in God and how Jesus’ life and resurrection saves us from the death of sin and brings us to new life. However, for others to experience this joy takes courage and a leap of faith. It takes someone to listen to that still small voice within them but also to be welcomed into a community of faith. As disciples of Christ, we are called to share the good news of Jesus’ life and death with others and to welcome all who come wanting to know more about Jesus and God. This is one of the reasons why here at St Mary’s we are trying to open this building more often, to offer people the opportunity to come into this place. To see the story of God in the stained-glass windows, to see the people of faith in this building helping and supporting people. Being part of a community of faith brings a sense of belonging and support, but to those who aren’t part of that community, it can make people feel excluded and unsure. If we think about the language of our services, they clearly talk to those who are already members of the family of God. This is why offering other opportunities to come into this space and feel welcomed are so important.

I was talking to another priest recently and they said that they loved the secret language that we have as Christians that develops over time. I do understand what they meant, when you get into a habit of talking to God, reading scripture and worship you become familiar with the language that other Christian’s use. However, I challenged them and said that I felt it was this that sometimes made people not feel welcome. We can easily slip into patterns of behaviour where we assume everyone knows what’s happening, or what is being said, when actually the opposite is true.

When Jesus gathered his disciples around him, he didn’t ask people who were Pharisees or scribes to follow him, he asked tax collectors and fishermen. Each of us, no matter how long we have been a Christian, or whether we profess not to be a Christian, is of infinite value to a Christian community. We need to be open and welcoming enough to enable all voices to be heard and valued. How can we share the good news of the gospels afresh for each person who comes into this place? The answer is within you. What is the Holy Spirit whispering or maybe even shouting at you to do to share Jesus’ story?

Today, we are celebrating that Jesus lived and ministered to all people, that he welcomed the marginalised and unappreciated to be his followers. That he opened his arms of love and died for them and for all of us on the Cross and finally that he defeated death and rose to new life. Let us as God’s children recognise that we are all made equally in the image of God and ask God how we can help others come to know more about Jesus Christ. Let us all listen to that still small voice within each of us, no matter whether we come to church ever Sunday or have never been before. Is that voice warming your heart and kindling a flame within you? Let us have hope that on this Easter Day our sins are washed away by the ever-living water that Jesus brought to us through his life. Let us have courage and trust that God is here among us and welcomes us all to his table.

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Amen

Sermon Easter Sunday 2025

Acts 10. 34-43 summery of Jesus’ death and resurrection

John 20. 1-8 Mary Magdalen discovers Jesus, and he says her name

Lent course diving deeply into Baptism

God calls us.

Over lent we have been exploring baptism a...