Ken Howcroft “My Lord and my God!”. Today is a time to reflect on the significance of the great events we celebrated last Sunday. Is it easier for us to cope with the events of that first Easter than it was for those first disciples or more difficult? They must have been overwhelmed by what was happening and incredibly confused. Thomas is our link to them. He was not physically there when Jesus first appeared to the others, but he arrives at the deepest understanding of what is happening in the resurrection and of who Jesus is. John’s Gospel has Jesus speaking to Thomas but it is as if he is looking over Thomas’s head at you and me and saying “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” That is you and me. We did not physically see him before he was crucified. The resurrection appearances as recounted in the gospels came to an end with Pentecost. We meet him now but not in the same way. Blessed are you who have not seen him like Peter and Mary and the others, and yet have believed – and have started to act on that belief, sharing his self-giving love in the world. A sermon for the second Sunday of Easter. The readings were Acts 4:32-35 and John 20:19-31.

Ken Howcroft. “Christ is Risen!”. Why have we come here today? What are we looking for? If you are looking for irrefutable evidence that Jesus has been raised which will enable you to say “Oh thank goodness for that, now I know that it is true” and then enable you to walk out of this place and then live the rest of your life just like you did before, you are going to be sadly disappointed.  The resurrection is not something that you can argue people into believing. The early Christians experienced it as true. The Easter message they pass on to us is a call to follow Jesus, to say the sort of thing he said and do the sort of thing he did; to be his body in the world. It is then that we shall know him. We are called not to believe 600 impossible things and strange doctrines before breakfast but to commit ourselves with all our weaknesses and failings to follow Jesus as best we can, knowing that as we do he will be with us and that he is risen indeed! A sermon for Easter Sunday, when two members of the congregation were confirmed. The readings were 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 and Mark 16:1-8.

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.

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.  

Muriel Sowden. In the Temple people had been trying to buy God’s favour with sacrifices.  They thought that righteousness was a commodity they could buy and that if they made the right  offerings at the right time, they could be assured of salvation; believing that salvation was in their own hands and not God’s hands.  Jesus was trying to show them that this was not the way. His actions in the Temple that day effectively brought the Temple worship to a complete standstill. Jesus offers us a pattern for a Christian response in the secular world to bring about justice in the name of Christ.  The Church needs to constantly call for justice and solidarity in both national and international economic relations. This is trying to live out the Ten Commandments, our first reading this Sunday, from the book of Exodus.  God’s eternal, perfect law. As relevant today, in our age as it has ever been. So the cleansing of the temple - what at first may seem like a straightforward case of “zeal for the Lord’s house” actually has deeper levels of meaning.  It has to do with the replacement of the old way of worshipping God with a new way of relating to God.  His ridding the Temple of all that is unclean and sinful can also be seen as a metaphor for his work in us.  First he converts us to new life, then he sets about transforming us to be more Christ-like. The Jerusalem temple then ultimately is symbolic of the body of Christ himself.  Through baptism, we become part of that body, and we are sustained by grace.  The Temple of God is not a building. The temple of God is God’s holy people. We are God’s holy temple. A sermon for the third Sunday in Lent. The readings were Exodus 20.1-17 and John 2.13-22.

Ken Howcroft. “Entering the Wilderness: a place of Tempting, Training, Testing and Attempting”. A sermon for the first Sunday in Lent. To reduce Lent to a matter of merely giving up some luxury or personal indulgence like chocolate is to trivialise it. Lent is more important than that! Lent is about recognising that everything we posses or have use of in this world is not ours but God’s, and we have it by grace and on trust. The way we do that is through thanksgiving. So Lent is about cleaning out the clutter of our lives, sweeping up the rubbish in our souls and making room for God. In a sense, that is precisely what Jesus does in today’s reading from Mark’s gospel. In the temptation Jesus wrestles with what it means for him to be God’s Messiah and God’s Son. He is tempted to be God’s son in the wrong way. And what is true for Jesus as God’s Messiah and Son is going to be true in some sense for those who follow him.  But even at the worst points of wrestling with God’s will and how to live out God’s love in our daily lives and in a world that sometimes seems to be going to wrack and ruin around us, we have the grace of God. When Jesus wrestled with his temptations in the wilderness, he was nurtured and supported by angels. God will support us as well.  So perhaps the best greeting we can give is: Have a Holy Lent! The readings were Genesis 9.8-17; 1 Peter 3.18-22; and Mark 1.9-15.

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.  

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.

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

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.

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;

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? 

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.

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

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.   

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.