Ken Howcroft

PSA 01 April 2012 Palm Sunday

Ken Howcroft. “Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord”. A sermon for Palm Sunday, the second Sunday of the Passion. Have you heard the rumours that Jesus is coming to Rome this weekend with some of his friends? How will you recognise him amongst all the tourists and pilgrims? He will not look different to the others, just like he did not look different when he rode in to Jerusalem. He came in as an ordinary pilgrim, doing what pilgrims do. There were clues there as to who and what he was, but you had to work it out for yourself. Who do we say that he is? It is as we think and pray that we shall start to recognise him. We will see the love that makes him give himself away for God and for others. We will start to feel that love that makes himself give himself away for you and me, and for others. As we gather round his table later on we have the chance to take into ourselves his life, his way of living, his way of being human and of embodying God’s love – and what we eat today we shall become tomorrow, more Christ-like in our everyday lives. The readings were Philippians 2:5-11 and Mark 11:1-11.

PSA 25 March 2012 Passion Sunday

Ken Howcroft. “We Want to See Jesus”. Do the Pope and Fidel Castro want to meet when the Pope goes to Cuba? Intermediaries are doubtless  going to and fro trying to make the link. In the Gospel reading we hear of Gentiles who are interested in God as known by the Jews at the time of Jesus, but who are not able to take part in Jewish sacrifices. They try to reach out to Jesus through intermediaries. They turn to Jesus because they begin to recognise that they can see God in Jesus and know God in Jesus, because you do not need sacrifices to be at one with God. When Jesus prevented animals being sold and money changed in the Temple, he was not saying that people were cheating but that this way of religion has come to an end. Something as dangerous radical as that was bound to take him to a cross. In a sense he is replacing any need for animal sacrifice with his own self-sacrifice in love. He becomes a new bridge-builder, a new priest if you want to think like that, between earth and heaven. It is all about love. The challenge for us as for those Gentiles in the reading is “Do you really want to know that love? Do you really want to see Jesus?” Because if you do, he is here. Amen. A Sermon for the 5^th Sunday in Lent, the first Sunday of the Passion. The readings were Hebrews 5:5-10 and John 12:20-33.

PSA 18 March 2012 4th Sunday in Lent

Ken Howcroft. “God So Loved the World……”: readings Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-21. A sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent, preached whilst the Rome Marathon was going past the door of the Church! The children of Israel were on a marathon journey through the wilderness. They were tempted to make themselves the centre of their universe and complain about God, just like the first humans had been tempted to do by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. It became their downfall. They began to be bitten by snakes. But if they looked at a representation of that tempting, serpent-like inclination in their hearts and acknowledged it to God, they were able to survive. The same tendency in us means that when we encounter God’s love for us in Jesus, we try to obliterate it. But the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus show that God is able to absorb all the evil we can do to him and still go on loving. These are difficult readings, which stretch our minds and understandings to the limit and beyond. But the basic thing to hang on to is that no matter what we are like, God does not abandon us but still loves us. If we are able to acknowledge who we are, what we are like and what goes on inside us, and if we are able to offer that to God, God is able to transform us. Rather than being creation going into reverse, the world will start to go forward again.  

PSA 04 March 2012

Ken Howcroft “Taking up your Cross and Following”. What on earth can we say about what is going on in Homs in Syria? It begins to feel like a situation without hope. All we can do is hold people before God and believe that somehow God will be able to redeem the mess, and bring hope out of despair and life out of death. That takes a lot of faith. Again and again when he did not know what to do or what was going to happen, Abraham hears the call of God to step out into an unknown future. That means that you cannot know or decide in advance what God will do. We have to be prepared to go along with God no matter what happens. That is what Peter has to learn when Jesus rebukes him for tempting Jesus to be God’s son but not in God’s way. Peter has to learn that it was both through the hardship of the crucifixion and the joy of the resurrection that God brought new things, new life, to the world through Jesus and through his followers. Today let us pray that we may have the courage and the trust to put our commitment in Jesus, the same sort of trust that Abraham had in God. A sermon for the second Sunday in Lent. The readings were Romans 4.13-25 and Mark 8.31-38.

PSA 19 February 2012

Ken Howcroft.  “Transfiguration: transforming the way we see”. The story of the Transfiguration is not about Jesus changing from something he wasn’t into something else. Jesus was always filled with the glory and the love of God. What the story is about is the change in the way the disciples understand Jesus, the way they see him and recognise what God is doing through him. God says “If you want to hear me speaking, listen to him”. And the first place we hear Jesus speaking is not through some mystic new communication, but in his words recorded in the New Testament.  Yet somehow we do not want to pay much attention to the words of Jesus, and we do not really want to see what God was doing in Jesus and still is doing in Jesus in the world. It is as if the social conditions, the ways of thinking of our age dim our eyes, put curtains across our understanding, says St Paul. But God has said “Let light shine out of darkness”. God therefore can light a light in our hearts, the light of the love and glory of God that you see shining in Jesus, which as you respond to it and accept it, starts to glow in your own life, in your own heart. And other people will start to hear God speaking through you, will start to feel God loving through you  - and you probably won’t even know that it is happening. The Transfiguration is a transfiguration of us. May we all be committed to be followers of Jesus and start to glow with the love and the glory that we see in Christ. A Sermon for the Sunday before Lent. The readings were 2 Kings 2.1-12; Mark 9.2-9 and 2 Corinthians 4.3-6.  

PSA 12 February 2012

Ken Howcroft. “You can make me clean”. Think of the things you would not expect Jesus to do for you, because “you do not deserve  them” or because “you are not good enough”. Then hear Jesus saying to you like he said to that man in the Gospel reading “I am angry that you think that I am not going to be bothered with you. I am angry at the system that has made you think like that”. And in your imagination feel Jesus touching you, and telling you that you are free, that you are holy, that you are OK. And thank God! A sermon for the 6^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (after Epiphany). The readings were 2 Kings 5:1-14, Psalm 30 and Mark 1.40-45.

PSA 05 February 2012

Ken Howcroft. “Praying, Proclaiming and Evicting Evil”. A sermon for the 5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (after Epiphany). When Rome has its worst snow for 25 years and grinds to a halt, and you are trying to get a guest to the airport, you have to become like the Romans, react like them and go with their flow to get anywhere. If you are not to be duplicitous, that takes integrity. Last week we heard in Mark’s Gospel how Jesus burst into Galilee with an integrity in which what he said, what he did and what he was were all of a piece. This week we hear how he sees and responds to everyone’s deep need. He comes from the synagogue into Simon’s house ready to talk and eat with his male disciples and notices that all is not well with Simon’s mother-in-law. He notices her and touches her. It is true  that he does not ask her to sit and talk, but rather than healing her in order for her to resume a subservient role in the house it is more likely that he frees her from what is stopping her from doing what she wants to do to help him. Mark then gives a typical day in the ministry of Jesus in which he preaches and frees people from the problems and forces and evil that prevents them flourishing. He refuses, though, to be trapped just in one activity or one place. E takes time to pray, reflecting on what is happening, seeking guidance, looking to do God’s will. And he is driven on by the restless energy of God. It is the praying that produces the integrity. St Paul knew that. He discovers that to avoid getting trapped in old arguments that would prevent people encountering Jesus, he has to approach them within their own culture and ways of behaving as much as possible. But that takes integrity. And that takes prayer. The readings were 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 and Mark 1:29-39

PSA 29 January 2012

Ken Howcroft. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”. Is it alright to take things from other cultures (food, statues and images, Christmas trees, festival dates etc) and make use of them as Christians? And if it is, what do we do about those people who have doubts or scruples about doing so? Paul says that we have to be true to what we  believe to be true. We have to be true to ourselves and to them. That requires a sort of loving integrity. Jesus appeared in his early ministry teaching and acting with an authority that came out of the core of his being – an integrity in which what he said, what he did and what he was were all of a piece. A disturbed man recognised that integrity but was frightened of letting go and stepping forward into a life free of the things that had oppressed and restrained him from becoming his true self. Jesus’s love enable him to take that step. He offers the same to us. The readings were 1 Corinthians 8.1-13 and Mark 1.21-28.

Anglican Centre Rome 24.01.12 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

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.

22 January 2012 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

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.