Tag Archives: Matthew

25th January 2026 – Matthew 4:12-23

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There is a saying about leopards – I guess you know the one I mean … “Leopards never change their spots”. We use it to talk about someone who has been in prison, or someone who we have caught lying, or someone who has offended us. We can’t believe it when they seem to have changed. And we are convinced that their motives must be odd or that eventually their true base character will show through.

There are other similar phrases:

“Truth will out:” I guess this means that the truth will become known eventually, you can’t hide who you really are for ever. The phrase comes from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice – Launcelot says:

“it is a wise father that knows his own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of your son: give me your blessing: truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man’s son may, but at the length truth will out.”

The hidden things we have done and the parts of who we are that we want to hide will always eventually come to the surface and become known.

“Once a thief, always a thief:” … or  Once a cheat, always a cheat. These suggest that once you have learned to behave in a particular way you will always revert to type!

I have heard the same formula used in a different way. … “Once a priest, always a priest,” and: “Once a bishop, always a bishop.” … I’ll leave you to decide whether those are positive or negative! … However, what they share is a conviction that a person who’s done a certain kind of job will always have the characteristics of people who do that job, even after he or she no longer does that kind of work.

Is this right? Are we defined by our past?

the-ugly-duckling-storyHans Christian Anderson tells a very familiar story whose main point is  that ugly ducklings can become beautiful swans. We know that ugly caterpillars can become amazing butterflies, tadpoles do become frogs and toads. Things do change.

In our Gospel reading today we hear the story of people being called by Jesus. He chooses them to follow him. James and John, Andrew and Simon Peter.

They encounter Jesus and in so doing are changed for ever.

We don’t know that much about Jesus disciples. We do know quite a bit about Peter. We know that, like James, John and Andrew, he was a fisherman. But we know more than that. What was Peter like?

… Hot-tempered, always making mistakes, a rough diamond, not someone to suffer fools gladly, someone who lived a hard life, a no-nonsense kind of guy. … Perhaps a typical country fisherman.

And then Peter meets Jesus. Something in this person, Jesus, changes Peter for ever. It doesn’t all happen in an instant, but it starts to happen as Peter listens to Jesus speak and when he sees Jesus’ miracles. He is changed as he follows Jesus.

“Peter, I have a job for you, follow me,” Jesus says. Peter I can see the potential in you, I can see who you will become. Peter I want you to be my fisherman now – only you’ll be catching not fish but men and women to be my followers.

And we know how the story ends – this ugly ducking of a man becomes a Swan – he becomes one of Jesus most faithful followers and eventual becomes the leader of the church.

In our Gospel, Jesus does not just call Peter – he calls Andrew, James and John to be his followers. And in just the same way he calls each of us to follow him. Rough diamonds that we are, self-deprecating or over confident, angry or depressed, rude and negative, fearful or fearless, strong or weak, trapped in difficult relationships. All of us called to be his followers, his ambassadors.

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And you know, just like Peter, there is potential for change in each of us. Jesus can take me, he can take you, and he can transform us. We no longer need to feel that we are no good – just like Peter we can admit to God our weakness and our failings and then God takes us as we are and makes something special.

Please forgive all the mixed metaphors. … We no longer need to feel like the Ugly Ducking, for God in Jesus sees the Swan that we really are – and as we give ourselves to God – God draws out all the good that is in us. It really is a case for us that a leopard’s spots can change!

The Servant of the Lord – Isaiah 42:1-9 and Matthew 3:13-17

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The apostle Paul writes in I Corinthians 1:27 – “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

I want to invite you to travel with me in your imagination, back to another time and place. … If it is helpful, you might want to close your eyes. … It’s an unbelievable place. It has a sense of heavy quietness about it. You might know what I mean. I suppose, it’s like a cathedral. People are talking to each other in hushed tones. … Yet it still feels quiet.

Countless people from every nation under the sun are here. Some splendidly dressed in their finery, some carrying the tools of their trade – blacksmiths, … jewellers, … carpenters. Others, clearly with little money, have made every effort to look their best.

It is the 5th Century BC and as we scan the wide room we can see people of authority and power; Kings of Babylon, Media, Persia and Egypt stand erect and tall with their courtiers in attendance. Other kings and queens from unknown parts of the world are also here – Incas, Aztecs, Chinese, Indian and Ceylonese – everyone is here, with their monarchs standing proud in front of them.

This is no ordinary kind of cathedral, it’s too grand and large for that. The walls – too far away to see, the roof – higher and wider than anything we’ve ever seen. No columns hinder the view. The splendour of the room is beyond telling – it’s as though everything is covered in gold, silver, and precious jewels. … Yet despite all this beauty everything in the room seems to point to its centre.

On a raised platform is a magnificent throne. It’s like looking at the sun – seemingly all of the light in the room comes from that throne – … it is dazzlingly bright. It seems that wherever you are in the room the throne dominates your view.

Then, without any warning, everyone is suddenly aware of someone on that throne – the hushed conversation draws quiet. This is the moment we’re waiting for. … Our host stands up and as they move forward the brightness which had seemed to come from the throne moves too. No one needs to say anything – everyone around us just knows who this is. The whole room is first on its knees, and then flat on its face before God.

Our invitation to the heavenly court, said that God would be announcing his plans. Plans that mean declaring a chosen nation who will know God, and who’ll make God’s character known throughout the world. …

All of the kings and queens are ready – jealously wondering which of them God will choose. …………………. One word from God and everyone is standing once again; eagerly straining to see who it is. … Who has God chosen? …………..

From the back of the hall, somewhere behind the King of Babylon, a scruffy beggar stands and walks unsteadily forward to the throne. Some in the crowd look the other way as he passes, others try to stop him. It is only the voice of God which holds them still.

God welcomes the beggar at the centre of the throne-room and crowns him … ‘The Servant of the Lord‘. … It turns out that he is Israel, one of the small nations that have been conquered by Babylon. Insignificant, unimportant and of no consequence. What is God doing, choosing this non-entity, this tiny country, Israel? ……………..

As you think about that question, take a moment to adjust back to being here, wherever you are now, reading this blog …………….

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I have tried to help you to understand the picture that chapters 40 to 55 of Isaiah want us to see.

Israel was a nation on its knees. Its people were in exile, depressed, defeated and angry; … God must have deserted them for ever – or so it seemed. A once proud nation, they were now snivelling with self-pity, full of shame and guilt. … Yet, in Isaiah 40 and 41 it is almost as though God whispers words of encouragement to this beggar Israel as he walks forward through the jealous and condemning ranks of the nations. Listen to his words:

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for.

My people, I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you. I said, “You are my servant”; I have chosen you and have not rejected you.

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

In Isaiah 42, God presents Israel to the nations as his servant. God confirms his love and protection of Israel and commissions Israel to serve him again.

With hindsight, we know that Israel never lived up to its calling.

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As Christians we see these passages of Isaiah pointing forward to another Servant of the Lord, to Jesus. The one who through death and resurrection brings healing to the distressed, binds up the wounded and releases all sorts of captives from prison. In our Gospel reading Jesus receives the same kind of blessing from God:

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

But even with Jesus this passage has not been fully fulfilled. Jesus once said: “As the Father sent me so I send you.” Jesus passes on to us both the privileges and responsibilities of being the Servant of the Lord. We are called to bring justice, to be a light to the nations. Ultimately, it is us that God is speaking to in the Isaiah passage. He wants us to hear his encouragement as he picks us up, dusts us down and sets us on our way again.

God knows that we so easily see ourselves as Israel saw itself – depressed and defeated – often struggling with self-pity, and full of shame and guilt. Or at times we see ourselves as right when others are wrong, we seek to build ourselves up at others expense, we cannot hear God’s love for us because we are so busy trying to establish our own reputation against that of others.

And we are no different to Israel. Weak, mis-understood, seemingly at the end of ourselves, seemingly without answers to the problems of our day and if we are not very careful, seeing everyone else as the problems rather than ourselves. Whether it be our lack of numbers, the suffering and injustice of our world or the disregard of spiritual things by so many people, we have no overwhelmingly obvious, argument settling answers to the difficulties that life brings. Yet God speaks to us in the same way as he spoke to Israel. “You are my servants,” he says. God speaks to us in the same way that he spoke to Jesus ….

“My son, my daughter, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

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God wants us to hear his words of comfort, to hold onto them as our own. To listen to his challenge to bring justice, to bring his assurance and to shed his light into the lives of those outside of the church community. God wants us to be those who show love and compassion, who because we are loved by God give space for others to flourish, God wants us to be those who because we are loved do not need to compete for affection and status, a people who build others up rather than tear them down.

The truth is that it is our recognition of our own weakness that will mean that God can work through us to bring healing to our world.

I Corinthians 1:27 – But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

Matthew 2:1-12 – Epiphany 2026

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Collect

O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Sermon

Today we celebrate the Epiphany. The visit of the Wise Men bringing gifts to the baby Jesus. I’d like us to think about two different aspects of the story this morning.

Firstly, we are told that the Wise Men who came to Jesus were guided by a star.

Second, The Epiphany and the arrival of the Wise Men is the moment when the wider Gentile, non-Jewish, world first engages with the story of Christmas. It is the point at which the birth becomes good news for the whole world, Good news to be shared.

We are told that the Wise Men who came to Jesus were guided by a star throughout their long journey. We use maps to guide us – or at least we used to. Many of us now use some form of satellite navigation to help us find our destination when we are in the car. Jo and I tend to use the directions provided by Google Maps. If you do not have a satnav or a hands-free mobile phone, then you will still rely on a map when you are driving. And a map of some sort is still useful to those of us who enjoy walking. When walking you might also follow a guided route for a country walk – either one on paper or one that has signs, way-markers along the route.

What matters most is that the guide we use is reliable. … We’ve all heard stories of lorries using satellite navigation getting stuck in country lanes or under bridges. … I’ve followed guided walks where either the written description is not good enough, or where someone has maliciously changed the waymarks and I have got lost. …

In life just as in driving or walking we need a reliable guide. A guide that we can trust. We have guides to follow in our Christian lives. The bibles that many of us own, are perhaps our clearest guide for the journey.  How familiar are we with our bibles. Do we keep them on the bookshelf and only take them out sporadically? Some of us are overwhelmed by the amazing language of the King James’ Bible and celebrate it as a wonderful work of literature. However, this was not quite God’s intention, when he gave us his word. The beauty of the language, or the excellence of the binding, while of great value, are not what really matters. … It is no good having a map, or guidebook or satellite navigation system and then putting them in view on the mantelpiece or on the dashboard of the car and never using them, never switching them on. They are only valuable if they are used as they were intended to be.

The Wise Men saw the star and chose to follow it. We don’t really know what it was, perhaps a comet that moved gradually across the night sky, night by night. The wise men studied the heavens and when they saw this particular star they knew what it spoke of. But knowing what it was about was not enough. They had to follow where it led. Otherwise, the Star would have been of little value. … So it is, with all that God promises in his word. We need to hear what the bible has to say to us about who we are and how we should relate to others. We need to make God’s word and promises our own. God is with us, and will be with us in the year ahead.

The poem “The Gate of the Year” by Minnie Louise Haskins, was famously quoted by King George VI in his 1939 Christmas broadcast in the early months of World War II: “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year. “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied. “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” May that Almighty hand guide and uphold us all in uncertain times, enabling us to trust in divine guidance as 2026 unfolds.

So, the Epiphany speaks of God’s guidance.

But it is also so much more! It is the moment when the curtain is drawn aside and the whole world looks in on the birth of the Jewish Messiah. The Epiphany is the point when the Christmas story makes it clear that the Christ-child is not just the Jewish Messiah, but is Saviour of the World. What was once known only to the Holy Family and shepherds at Christmas is made known to a greater and a wider audience in the group of wisemen who visit sometime after Jesus’ birth.

In this season of Epiphany, Jesus is ‘revealed’ as Son of God to the Wise Men who come to worship and give their tribute. Jesus’ Epiphany as Son of God reaches out to all the nations on earth. … So today we celebrate Jesus as our Saviour. As well as him being the Jewish Messiah.

“Come and see,” say the shepherds and the wise men. “Come and follow.” But perhaps most importantly of all; “Go and tell.” ……..

The season of Epiphany is all about mission.

Epiphany is our special season of being sent out as God’s people, guided by the grace and love of God. This season of the Epiphany gives direction to our lives as God’s missionary people. The scriptures call us on to follow Christ, in the way we choose to relate to each other, in living the lives God calls us to, in witnessing to the love of God which conquers all adversity. Epiphany reminds us that people should be able to see in us the life and love of the Christ-child.

Epiphany reminds us that if we follow God’s guidance, in seeking to welcome all. If we endeavour to offer God’s inclusive welcome – welcoming the stranger, welcoming those different from us, welcoming those we find challenging, and those we fundamentally disagree with. If we truly are a welcoming and loving community, quietly and faithfully getting on with the business of being God’s welcoming people, we will become so attractive that we will draw others to faith in Christ.

Sunday 14th December 2025 – Matthew 11: 2-11

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How are you doing with your presents? Bought them all yet?

Surprisingly we’ve bought nearly all of ours already – and don’t ask me how much we’ve spent! It is hard work though, isn’t it, trying to pick something that you think someone will appreciate. And then comes that exciting job of wrapping them up – trying to hold three different bits of paper together at the same time as cutting the sellotape; sticking the sellotape onto one finger and trying to fold everything back up, only to discover that a bit of the tape has stuck to the paper and ripped it! Then there’s the present which turns out to be just too big for the largest sheet or roll of wrapping paper you could find.

I find wrapping presents to be is a bind!

And then you sit back a look at your endeavours and it’s still pretty obvious what most things are – it isn’t easy to disguise the shirt with the collar which sticks up above the rest of the pack, a tennis racket is a tennis racket even inside Christmas wrapping, a bottle of wine is a bottle of wine however you try to wrap it – and a mountain bike – well what else could it be?

It is a wonder that anyone is surprised by the presents that they get.

And yet we are, aren’t we. There is always something that comes as a complete surprise – even if we’ve given everyone a list of what we want, we still get that present or presents which are impossible to guess from their wrapping. We look at them and wonder what they might be.

Sometimes the surprise is positive. I’ve had some wonderful unexpected presents. But the surprise can also be negative. … As a teenager in the 1970s, I set my sights on a lovely pair of cowboy boots that had good 3 inch high heels, and 1.5 inch platforms. They were bright orange in colour. I told my parents about them and they assured me that my boots would be waiting for me on Christmas morning.

As teenagers are wont to do, I slithered downstairs on Christmas morning, trying not to betray my excitement. Mum and Dad had always said “No!” to my choice in clothes before and they still held the purse strings!

When we started opening the presents, I was immediately aware that I was going to be disappointed. There were no presents large enough. Still I maintained a slim hope that perhaps the boot calves had been folded over to get them into a smaller box. But no, when I opened the present from Mum and Dad, there were a pair of boots, ankle height, elasticised slip-on boots with half inch heels – Chelsea Boots. How could they have got it so wrong? I thought. I don’t think I wore boots more than once. I was really disappointed!

John the Baptist believed that he was preparing the way for a Jewish Messiah. He had in mind what he wanted. The trouble was that when that Messiah arrived he did not fit John’s idea of a Messiah. God’s gift to Israel was not what it wanted. Not even John the Baptist, who did so much to prepare the way for Jesus had any confidence in what Jesus was doing now that His ministry had started.

I guess John the Baptist was sitting in prison wondering whether his life had been wasted!

In our reading, Jesus has to remind John of passages from Isaiah about the suffering servant.

 Israel, and John the Baptist, had ignored these prophecies about the Messiah and clung onto the one’s they preferred – those that foretold a military messiah, a powerful leader who would free them from the yoke of oppression.

‘No,’ says Jesus, ‘I am here to inaugurate a different kingdom, a kingdom built on justice for all, and peace and healing for the oppressed.’

The thing with God is … that we can never pin God down. We think we have listened. We form our ideas of what God wants, or what God is doing. And then, … well, God does something different. We’ve tried to understand what he wants and yet again we’ve been trapped by our own ideas and our limited understanding of God.

It is wonderful when God surprises us with something new, something different. The incarnation of Jesus, was one of those occasions: the most important of them. In Jesus’ life and death he turned convention on its head, he disturbed the status quo, and out of a shameful death brought new life and hope to the world.

Jesus is God’s present to us this Christmas. ……… But don’t go thinking that you’ll get the present you’ve asked for!

Jesus at work in our lives is more disturbing, more exciting, more wonderful than we can anticipate. I was disappointed with my boots back in the 1970s, but I have never been disappointed with Jesus. Occasionally confused, sometimes disturbed, sometimes bewildered, sometimes wondering what I believe and why, but following Jesus’ lead has taken me all over the place – to University to study Civil Engineering, to different Councils to work as a bridge engineer, to Uganda for a time, into training for the ministry, marriage later in life, into ministry in the Church of England in and around Manchester, and most recently to retirement here in Shropshire! And God continues to change and challenge me – and I am still slow to learn and slow to trust!

Ultimately, John the Baptist died before he could see Jesus come in his glory.

In Jesus’ death, shame became glory. The Bible reminds us that the cross was itself Christ’s glory, Christ’s throne. It was the place where the love of God for the world was revealed.

As Christians, we can look back with gratitude to those days. … For those who lived through them, they were days full of hope …. then of deep disappointment … and then of hope once again. … Days full of shocks and surprises. Their world was truned on its head more than once.

Our God is a God of surprises. God asks for our loyalty and trust. God wants to surprise each of us with God’s presence in Christ this Christmas time. May we be those who are open to those surprises. Amen.