parables

The Pearl and the Furnace – Sermon Preached on 26th July 2026 (Eighth Sunday after Trinity)

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Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot, Christ Church, Bulkington, and Holy Cross, Seend

Romans 8.26–39; Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52.

“‘Have you understood all this?’ They answered ‘Yes.’

A woman stands bent over a large open trough or tub, her sleeves pushed back and her arms sunk into a mass of dough, working leaven through the meal. She wears long, plain robes gathered at the waist, her head covered, inclined toward her work. The setting is a spare domestic interior with a suggestion of a wall and floor behind her, and light falling from one side. The composition is close and shadowed, the figure filling most of the frame. Fine cross-hatching models the folds of cloth and the bulk of the dough.
Sir John Everett Millais, The Leaven (1864) in the Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, London.

Have you understood all this? The yeast and the flour and the treasure in the field, and the pearl of great price? And the good fish and the bad fish – and the furnace of fire?

The disciples confidently told Jesus that, yes, they had. But at this stage of Matthew’s Gospel, when He is still teaching and healing in Galilee, there is much they don’t understand about Jesus Himself. The disciples are far from working out that Jesus is the Messiah, further still from realising that Jesus is not here to bring them a lifetime of comfort and worldly success, but to die for the sake of their eternities. So perhaps one of the things that we’re seeing in this morning’s Gospel is how much the disciples have yet to understand about Christ, how much work the yeast has yet to do, how far the mustard seed has yet to grow. As with them, so also with us – or at least let us hope that God still has much spiritual growth to raise in us.

One point of parables is that people can never understand them in their entirety – they land differently with each of us, and each of us will read them differently at different points of our lives. Like the kingdom of heaven itself, when we try to grasp the parables too tightly, to turn them into definitive statements of policy that we can use to make ourselves into insiders and others into outsiders, then they disappear into meaninglessness.

Yet there are insiders and outsiders, says Christ. Which is which is for Him to judge, not us, but there are good and bad fish – and the bad fish will be thrown into a furnace of fire. I always like to sidestep the implications the implications of the bits of the Bible where people get put in the fire by talking about the refiner’s fire, the furnace that turns a cheap alloy into gold or silver. But what is left when you throw an unhealthy fish into a furnace, but perhaps a few charred bones? This set of parables isn’t just hard to understand, it finishes on a hard and judging note.

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Of Dandelions and Oaks – Sermon Preached on 12th July 2026 (Sixth Sunday after Trinity)

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Preached at Holy Cross, Seend and St Mary’s, Potterne

Romans 8.1–11; Matthew 13.1–9, 18–23

“Listen! A sower went out to sow…”

I thought I’d start today with a bit of science. Why does a mouse have dozens of babies, and an elephant just one? Some species, whether animals or plants, have a low number of offspring and put a lot of effort into raising them – we are one of these, so are elephants and gorillas, big animals like us, but so are parrots. Some species have lots of offspring, so cannot, of course, put the same amount of effort into raising any single one of them – rats famously breed like… well, rabbits.

A thickly painted oil landscape. A large yellow sun sits low on the horizon at the centre, its rays radiating outward across a yellow-green sky in short, dashed brushstrokes. Below the sun, a band of pale gold stubble or standing corn runs the width of the picture; a small blue farm building with a red roof stands at the far left, and dark trees mark the horizon at the right. The foreground is a broad ploughed field rendered in dense, choppy strokes of blue, violet, white, and orange, with a pale furrow curving through it. A peasant in a straw hat, olive jacket, and blue trousers strides across the field from the right, seed sack cradled against his body, his right arm swinging out as he casts. Three dark birds are scattered across the soil.
Van Gogh, The Sower (1888). Hangs in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.

A similar spectrum is seen in the world of plants – blow on a dandelion clock and many dozens of seeds will float on the breeze; oaks are very different, sometimes waiting for years to produce acorns, with each acorn loaded with enough reserves to survive decades of burial, drought, and being nibbled by squirrels – after all, the forest floor will still be there in fifty years’ time.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” writes St Paul to the Christians in Rome. There are many implications of the phrase “in Christ Jesus”. But one comes from remembering that Jesus is God, and God is Love – the Bible says so in those same three words. To be in Jesus Christ is to live in love. The Holy Spirit is love too – the love that flows between Father and Son, and a person in its own right, who ripples out from them through the whole universe, a universe whose beauty at every scale shows that it is loved.

We human beings are made in the image and likeness of our creator God; we reflect that image most clearly when we love. We are called both to receive God’s love as seed sown in us, and to sow seeds of that love in others.

God is constantly sowing seeds in our lives out of His love for us, usually without us really noticing. Some fall on the path, in the rocky ground, or amid the thorns. Sometimes our hearts are too hard for the seed to flourish; sometimes we’re too distracted by material things to respond; sometimes to respond to God’s love would mean doing unpopular or costly things, so we back off. We fear the condemnation of those around us, but the only condemnation we should truly fear is that of God, and when we respond to God’s love by sharing that love with others, then we are truly in Christ, and we need not, as St Paul reminds us, fear God’s condemnation. If you fear your harvest is thin, trust that the same God who sows in love also forgives and restores.

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Keep ‘Er Lit in the Face of Armageddon: A Reflection for Holy Week (Monday 30th March 2026)

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Given at St Mary’s, Potterne

Reading—Matthew 25. 1-13   

A watercolour depicting ten female figures against a dark nocturnal landscape. On the left, five women stand composed and luminous in pale robes, holding lit oil lamps on chains; the central figure extends her arm firmly, pointing to the right in a gesture of dismissal. On the right, five women in darker clothing react with distress — one kneels with arms outstretched in supplication, another throws her hands upward in anguish, a third slumps toward the ground. Their lamps hang unlit. In the middle distance, a city with illuminated domes and spires is visible against the dark sky, suggesting the wedding feast now out of reach. Above, a floating angelic figure blows a long trumpet, heralding judgement. The overall palette is cool grey and silver, with the warm glow of the lit lamps providing the only warmth in the composition.
William Blake, The Wise and Foolish Virgins (ca. 1800). Owned by the Metropolitan Museum, New York; not currently on public display.

The story of the human race has been one where we gradually, but continually, amass more knowledge, more advanced technology – and more power. Even before writing was invented, we were already unique because of the wheel, the domestication of fire, the domestication of other species, and perhaps most of all speech. These things also made us uniquely deadly to other life forms. Our kingdom is very much of this world.

In recent generations, we’ve also potentially become lethal to ourselves. We’ve lived with the risk of nuclear war for 81 years now, and the wars unfolding in different parts of the world at the moment are frightening and violent events. Experiments in Genetic Modification of humans and other life forms are rapidly increasing in ambition and potential to do good, but also in risk of disaster. But it is Artificial Intelligence that is currently most in the public eye as a potential risk to our survival. One after another, some of the world’s top computer scientists – in many cases people instrumental to making Artificial Intelligence a reality – have either quit the field warning that it could lead to our extinction, or called for development to be slowed dramatically to allow adequate safety checks before AIs are made more powerful.

The logic of human relationships, however, is such that the two great empires of our time, China and the USA, must race as fast as they can to develop more powerful forms of Artificial Intelligence. This technology could be as transformative of human existence as the wheel, or fire, or speech, perhaps even more so. If one country blinks, it risks ceding the future to the other. Such are the constraints that govern how human kingdoms relate to one another.

The kingdom of God is different. It lives in its citizens often because of what they are and how they approach life as much as what they do, still less what they achieve. It doesn’t have a capital city or any fixed territory to defend.

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Can We Really Do Likewise?: Sermon Preached on 13th July 2025 (Fourth Sunday After Trinity)

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A vibrant painting depicting a figure with a beard, dressed in a green robe with diamond-patterned shoulders, holding a sleeping or resting man with dark hair. The figure's large, white, wing-like arms or cloak envelop the woman, set against a background of earthy greens and browns, suggesting a protective or comforting scene.

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend, St Peter’s, Poulshot and Christ Church, Bulkington

Colossians 1. 1-14; Luke 10. 25-37

“Go and do likewise.”

A vibrant painting featuring two figures riding a horse along a path. One figure, dressed in a yellow robe and blue pants, carries another figure on their back, who wears a red headscarf. The background includes swirling, textured landscapes with trees, a river, and a figure standing near a wooden cart, rendered in the distinctive brushstroke style of Vincent van Gogh.
Vincent van Gogh, The Good Samaritan (1890). Hangs in the Kröller-Müller Museum, near Arnhem.

Does the name Olive Cooke mean anything to you? Ten years ago, Olive, who was ninety-two years old, was found dead in the Avon Gorge in Bristol. This generous lady, still tireless in charity work into her nineties, had given so much money to charity that she was constantly plagued by begging letters, receiving up to 3,000 a year. Some of the charities she gave money to passed her details on to other charities, and she eventually became so distressed by the tragic stories they sent her, and her inability to do more to help than the huge amount she was already doing, that she took her own life.

The Good Samaritan is one of the most famous of Jesus’ parables and it still resonates with people even in our post-Christian culture. There are two reasons for that. Firstly, it allows us to thumb our nose at hypocrites. We all hate hypocrites. In particular, it allows non-religious people to thumb their nose at Christians for being hypocrites, with Jesus’ approval (or so it seems). That allows them to keep doing what they want to do, which is to ignore what Jesus actually taught. But the second reason this parable resonates is because, whatever faith or lack of faith we hold, we all know that we do pass by on the other side, far too often. It’s true that we all hate hypocrites; but we also all are hypocrites, at least in some situations.

But hold on, we don’t want to end up like Olive Cooke, driven to despair by our inability to fix everybody’s problems. So let’s ask ourselves if Jesus was doing something more with this story than just telling people off for not always practising what they preach.

For there are different ways of exploring this parable, all of them tell us something interesting. One is to note is that the Samaritans were the traditional enemy of the Jews in Palestine. The Samaritans agree with the Jews about many religious matters, but also disagree with them about some very important things[1]—so they’re the classic example of the enemy similar and familiar enough to be truly hated. Therefore, I’ve often heard sermons on the Good Samaritan that read it as a warning against prejudice generally and religious bigotry in particular. That isn’t wrong. It’s an important part of the message of the parable, but I want us to explore it from a different angle today.

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Destined for Salvation: Sermon Preached on 19th November 2023 (Second Sunday before Advent)

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The Parable of the Talents (2013), © Andrei Mironov

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend and St Peter’s, Poulshot

Readings – 1 Thessalonians 5.1-11; Matthew 25.14-30

“For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

So, Jesus Christ will return like a thief in the night to judge the world, and He told a story about what that judgement would be like that ended with a poor servant of a harsh man being thrown out into the outer darkness—where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I have to be honest, this morning’s readings make me uncomfortable, and I suspect they made most of you uncomfortable too.

Partly, I think, our discomfort come from not wanting to be like those Christians, you know, the ones who are very sure that they are going to be Jesus Christ’s personal hitmen when He returns, when they’ll happily help Him out as He casts a few wretches into the outer darkness. We’ve all met a few of them in our time. It is right that we don’t want to be like those Christians, far too certain for their own good that they have this Christianity business nailed down – and far too inclined to forget that Scripture is clear that judgement belongs to Christ and Christ alone, and not to them nor anyone else.

The Parable of the Talents (2013), © Andrei Mironov
The Parable of the Talents (2013), © Andrei Mironov

But unless we ourselves are also too certain for our own good that we have this Christianity business nailed down, we should accept that if the Gospel is worth believing, it must be capable of disturbing our comfortable certainties. If Jesus Christ is going to actually come back in glory to judge the world – and He repeatedly stated that He would – that means He’s going to come back to judge us. And we all know that we aren’t quite the lovely people we like to pretend we are for public consumption – certainly, I know that I’m not. Quite apart from that, few of us could mount a case that we have made the spectacular 100% Return on Investment from the talents God has given us achieved by the profitable servants in this morning’s Gospel. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t solved many wars, ended many famines, or brought many people to Faith.

When I hear readings like these from the Bible, at first blush I can find myself thinking that God may be a being I need to fear, but He’s hard to love, and I even wonder sometimes if want to associate myself with this Jesus Christ fellow and His tales of mistreated servants.

But let’s dig a little deeper into the readings, because there are a few points that can be easy to miss, and which are far more hopeful.

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