Episodes
Tuesday Jan 24, 2012
Anglican Centre Rome 24.01.12 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
Tuesday Jan 24, 2012
Tuesday Jan 24, 2012
A
sermon for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity by Ken Howcroft at the weekly
Tuesday lunchtime eucharist at the Anglican Centre, Rome. It is published here
by kind permission of The Very Revd
Canon David Richardson, who is the Director
of the Centre and The Archbishop of Canterbury's Representative to the Holy See.
The service also commemorated St Francis de Sales. The readings were 2 Samuel 6. 12-15, 17-19;
Psalm 24. 7- end; and Mark 3. 31-end.
Tuesday Jan 24, 2012
22 January 2012 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
Tuesday Jan 24, 2012
Tuesday Jan 24, 2012
A sermon for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity at the service organised by Churches Together in Rome and hosted by Ponte Sant’Angelo Methodist Church. The preacher was Dr Donna Orsuto, a professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University and Co-founder and Director of the Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas, Rome. The readings were Habbakuk 3.17-19; 1 Corinthians 15.51-58; John 12.23-26.
Monday Jan 23, 2012
PSA 22 January 2012
Monday Jan 23, 2012
Monday Jan 23, 2012
Ken Howcroft.”Fishing for Unity!”
A sermon for the third Sunday after Epiphany and in the Week of prayer for
Christian unity. It is of course dangerous to pray for Christian Unity, just
like it is dangerous to pray for anything. You ask God for things, you tell God
what you are wanting or hoping or wishing for, and as soon as you open the door
a chink, you may find the Holy Spirit slipping in and changing the way you look
at things, transforming your mind into the mind of Christ, and so changing everything
you are and experience and do. Jesus called his rag-bag group of followers his
family. The one thing about family is that you cannot choose your relatives.
Some of the worst arguments and tensions are inside families. You might not get
on with them, but you cannot get rid of them. It is just the same in the body
of Christ. Jesus calls us out of our comfort zones to be part of one family
with people we do not necessarily approve of or like. He also challenges us to
adjust our priorities. So are we prepared to let the Holy Spirit transform our
minds into the mind of Christ, and our whole beings into being parts of the
body of Christ? Are we prepared to respond to Jesus’s call to us to become his
disciples – a call that is both comfort and challenge?
Monday Jan 16, 2012
PSA 15 January 2012
Monday Jan 16, 2012
Monday Jan 16, 2012
Ken Howcroft. “Being Seen and Seeing Truly”. A sermon for
the second Sunday after Epiphany. When Jesus calls Simon he renames him Peter to
show the role he was to play as the rock on which the other disciples will be
built, just like after Jacob the cheat discovered that you cannot run away from
people, from yourself or still less from God and he was in turn cheated but committed
himself to return and take up his role, he was renamed Israel, the one who see
God. When Jesus encounters Nathanael, he does not rename him: he is already a
gift of God. Moreover he is not like Jacob, but a real Israelite. he sees
things clearly and tells them bluntly: can anything good come out of places
like Nazareth? But like Philip had promised him, everything they had learnt
about God seemed to make sense when you met Jesus. Nathanael, a true Israelite,
sees that Jesus is his king, the King of Israel. Jesus says that like Jacob he
will see ladder of communication from God to people on earth. But the ladder
will come down now to Jesus not Israel. And at the same time, Jesus himself
will be the ladder down which God’s communication will come. The readings were
1 Samuel 3: 1-10 and John 1:43-51.
Thursday Jan 12, 2012
PSA 08 January 2012 Covenant Sunday
Thursday Jan 12, 2012
Thursday Jan 12, 2012
Ken Howcroft. “Follow the Star of Grace!”. A sermon on
the Sunday after the feast of the Epiphany which was also Covenant Sunday, when
the opportunity was provided for any who wanted to do so to renew their
covenant relationship with God in the context of a communion service. Christian discipleship
does not mean being given an easy way round problems, but a way of living
through them and redeeming them. And it is a great comfort to know that God is
with you, carrying you, loving you. Even when things go against you, and your
health or your relations or your work or world events or the government or even
the
The readings were Jeremiah 31.31-34; Romans 12.1-2; and Matthew
2.1-12.
Tuesday Jan 03, 2012
Preparation for the Renewal of our Covenant relationship with God
Tuesday Jan 03, 2012
Tuesday Jan 03, 2012
On 8 January 2012 our service will include the
opportunity for any who will to renew their covenant relationship with God. The
Covenant Service has been a very important part of Methodist understanding and
practice of discipleship. The attached document was prepared to help introduce
it to people and help them prepare themselves for it.
Tuesday Jan 03, 2012
PSA 1 January 2012
Tuesday Jan 03, 2012
Tuesday Jan 03, 2012
Ken Howcroft. “He came to his own…..”. A sermon on New
Year’s Day. The ending of one year and start of another is a time for
reflection. Half way through the Christmas season it is time to ponder what the
Christmas story means, just like Mary stored up her memories and pondered them
in her heart. The opening to John’s Gospel is like a deep and profound
meditation on the meaning of it all. As we grapple with it, we have to hold on
to the picture of that tiny baby. When a newborn baby is put into your arms you
have all the wonders of life, and suddenly everything seems to make
sense – the life brings light and that in turn gives us life. If you
want to see what God who spoke in the beginning and created the universe is
like, look at his Word made flesh in the form of Jesus. Jesus does not come to
where God is not, because God has created everything. Rather when God comes to
us in the form of Jesus, he comes to where God already is, even though we often
do not recognise God in the world. Jesus is the human face of God. We are
blessed because God has created us and the world in which we exist. When God
comes to us in Jesus we recognise and receive more of the fullness of God. We
receive blessing on top of blessing, grace upon grace. And if we accept Jesus
into our hearts and let him grow up within us, we will find that we are becoming
children of God in the world because we are one with the Son of God. The
readings were Ephesians 1:3-14 and John 1:1-18.
Monday Dec 26, 2011
PSA 25 December 2011 Christmas Day
Monday Dec 26, 2011
Monday Dec 26, 2011
Ken Howcroft. “Glory to God in the Highest! But are you frightened enough?”. Christmas can be a scary time. It is surprising how many times the Bible stories for this season mention that people were afraid. But if God starts speaking to you or coming into your life, that tends to turn your life upside down. So perhaps there is good reason to be afraid. The angels calm Mary and the Shepherds. They all have to be prepared to go along with god, and see what is happening. They have to experience things, and accept that the meaning will only become plain to them afterwards. So Mary ponders everything in her heart. The miracle that gradually unfolds is that the birth of God’s son is the revealing of God’s love in human experience. We see God’s glory in ways that we can touch, and hold, and understand. That make us give glory to God in return. But it also brings peace to all those to whom god is favourably disposed. And since God is a God of love, God is favourably disposed to all of us no matter who we are, what we are like or what we have done or failed to do. God places his love and forgiveness into our hands like Jesus was placed in the hands of Mary and Joseph. We can choose to abuse it or to accept it. If we accept it, we start to feel the peace flowing within us and reaching out to others from us. The shepherds ended up giving glory to God in an echo of the song of the angels. Pray God that we do the same! The readings were Isaiah 52:7-10 and Luke 2:8-20.
Monday Dec 26, 2011
PSA 24 December 2011 Christmas Eve
Monday Dec 26, 2011
Monday Dec 26, 2011
Ken Howcroft. “Are we ready? For God’s love to be placed
into our hands like a tiny, helpless baby?”. It was not somewhere far away, or in palaces, or in
government buildings that God’s son was born. It was in the lives of ordinary
people like Mary and Joseph who were finding life hard, who were being pushed
around by forces beyond their control. But the power of God is the power of
love. So God’s love was put into human hands as a tiny, defenceless baby. Because
that is what God is like. And because God is like that he is likely to place
himself not just into Mary’s hands but into ours as well. What we therefore celebrate
at Christmas is not just something that happened all those years ago, but
something that can in a sense happen to us now. The question is, when it is our
time to hold the baby, will we be ready? Because “The Word became flesh and
lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only
son, full of grace and truth”. [John 1:14]. So let us welcome this
extraordinary God into our ordinary lives in this troubled world. Amen.
Monday Dec 19, 2011
PSA 18 December 2011 Carol Service
Monday Dec 19, 2011
Monday Dec 19, 2011
Ken Howcroft. “Saying Yes
to the Way that God Loves”. A sermon for the fourth Sunday in Advent. The
sermon followed straight on from a presentation by the children and young
people entitled “The Way that God Loves”. For God’s love to become real in the
form of the birth of Jesus, lots of people had to play their part. We often act
as if we want Christmas to be unreal, a fancy story that is not about lives
like the ones that you and I live. If people like the innkeeper, the shepherds,
the magi, Joseph and Mary were really human, and God came into their lives,
then God might come into ours. That might be one of those Christmas presents
that we prefer not to get! Mary had to say “yes” to God. She had to let herself
be turned upside down. She had to put her reputation and her life on the line
to let God be God in ordinary, everyday human experience. Pray God that we can
do the same at this Christmas time.
The reading was Luke
1:26-38.