Category: preaching

The Withdom of God

David HerbertLeave a comment

Sometimes a new word is needed — not to replace what we know, but to help us see it more clearly.

Withdom is one such word.

In this Easter reflection, I explore how the risen Jesus is made known not in power or distance, but in presence — walking with, staying with, and being with us wherever we are.

A few weeks ago, some of us met for conversation around the subject of finding our voice in worship.
There were so many of us that we had to break into small groups to get the best out of each other.
As we fed back into the larger group a phrase was coined which seemed to sum up the meaning of our conversation.
We were talking about how we enable the worship of the people of our churches and villages.
A voice of one of our shepherds came over loud and clear.

She had found that the most important thing in her work
was winning the trust of the sheep.
And she talked about how she did that.
By staying with them.
Not driving them. Not fixing them.
Staying with them until they found their own voice.

That opened our eyes to what we were exploring.
How do we enable the worship of the people of God
when so often we are led to believe that we have to be anything but ourselves?
It is by staying with people, as they are, that encourages people to be as they are.

And one good shepherd reminded us of another good shepherd,
who knows the voice of his sheep
and whose sheep know his voice.

And so, a word was born.

And we called that word … withdom.

Some of us weren’t so sure.
“Withdom is not a proper word,
it’s not in the dictionary.”

But we let it stand
because it carried our meaning.

It was never meant to find its way into the dictionary,
or become word of the year.

It was meant to lodge
in our theological imagination …


as just the way God is,
with us,
full of withdom,

and the way we’re called to be
with all those God loves
and chooses to be with,
all those blessed by withdom,
the least, the last, the lost.

We dared to imagine
the rule of the kingdom of God
being the withdom of God.

And once we begin to see it,
we notice it everywhere.

There is much withdom
in our readings today.

In our reading from Acts (Acts 2:14a, 36-41),
Peter stands with the eleven
and addresses the crowd who were with them.
Three thousand of them accepted his message
and joined the eleven –
not just agreeing with them,
but coming to be with them.

The Road to Emmaus: Painting by: Ronald Raab, CSC

The gospel (Luke 24:13-35) puts us alongside two grief stricken disciples
as they make their way home.
They are joined by a stranger,
who walks with them,
in their grief,
through the valley of the shadow of death.

He is with them.

Nothing could stop him being with them.

Not their confusion.
Not their grief.
Not even their walking away.

He would not be separated
from their lived experience.

This is what he shows them
as he walked with them, stayed with them,
broke bread with them.

And this is the truth we are given –
that nothing … can separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus,
neither death nor life,
neither angels nor demons
neither the present nor the future,
nor any powers that be,
nothing in the whole of creation
can break the withdom of God. (Romans 8:38-39)

And if this is the withdom of God …
then this is the life we are called into.

Not to drive people.
Not to fix them.

But to be with them.

To stay with them
until they find their voice.

To be a people who can be trusted …
because we come alongside.

To be with those
who have been told they are not good enough …
and those who are walking away …
and those who don’t recognise hm.

This Easter morning – r evening –
the risen Jesus
comes alongside two disciples
who are confused,
disappointed,
walking away,
not good enough … perhaps in their own eyes.

And he is with them.

Nothing could stop him being with them.

So, if you have ever been led to believe
that you are not good enough …
that God is somehow not with you …
hear this story again.

The Lord is here.
His Spirit is with us.

What We Thought Was Sealed

David Herbert3 Comments

The first Easter began with people who weren’t sure of anything. They were running, confused, and grieving… until they noticed that what they thought was sealed had been opened.
This sermon explores how resurrection begins not with certainty, but with the slow, surprising discovery that God is already at work — breaking open the boundaries we thought were final.

There’s a quiet pressure around Easter …
that this is the day you’re meant to be sure.
Sure about what happened.
Sure about what it means.
Sure what you believe.

But the strange thing is –
in the very first Easter story …
nobody is sure of anything.

John paints a picture of that first Easter morning.
Everyone seems to be rushing around.
They’re all running.

First there is Mary Magdalen,
then the so-called “beloved disciple”,
then slow-coach Peter.

All running around like headless chickens,
not quite knowing what they’re looking for,
or what they’re going to find.

That’s the risk for the preacher
and for all of us,
running around Easter Day
pretending we’re sure,
pretending we know what we’re talking about  …

when the truth is,
the first Easter began
with people who didn’t.

The first thing they didn’t understand
wasn’t an idea, or a belief, or a theory.

It was something much more concrete than that.

It was a stone.

The stone was supposed to settle things.

To close the story down,
To seal it.
To make it final.

This is how the world works:

when something is over,
it is over.

We know about stones like that.
Moments that feel sealed.
Doors that don’t reopen.
Relationships that don’t come back.
Hopes that have run their course.

And Mary arrives …
not expecting a miracle,
not looking for resurrection …
just coming to a place that would have been closed.

And the first thing she sees is this:
the stone has been moved.

The very first sign of Easter
is not that Jesus appears,
nor that anyone understands

but that what they thought was sealed
isn’t sealed anymore.

And they don’t know what it means.
They don’t suddenly become certain.
They just know this:
something they thought was final …
has been opened.

And that is how resurrection begins.
Not with explanations,
but with boundaries giving way.

The boundary between life and death.
The boundary between what we think is possible
and what God is doing.
The boundary between who we think belongs to God
and who God is already calling.

It will take Peter a long time to understand that.
Years in fact.

Before this moment, he had been confronted with strange visions.
Voices telling him to let go
of what he had always been sure about.
An invitation to enter the house of people
he never imagined God could use.

Step by another stone step, another stone was being moved.
Not at a tomb this time …
but in Peter’s own heart.

And finally he says:
“Now I understand …
God shows no favourites.”

And what he realises is this:

that Gd has been moving stones
that he, Peter, didn’t even know were there.

Stones he had lived with all his life.

Stones that had quietly built walls –
about who belongs
and who doesn’t.

Because Peter had grown up in a world
where there were very clear boundaries.

Between Jew and Gentile.
Clean and unclean.
Inside and Outside.

Lines you didn’t cross.

People you didn’t eat with.
People you didn’t enter the house of.

People you certainly didn’t imagine
were part of what God was doing.

And it’s as if, step by step,
another stone is being moved …
not at the tomb this time,
But in Peter’s own heart.

Peter’s world is not so very different from ours.

We have our own ways of sorting people.

Our own quiet lines
about who fits …
and who doesn’t.

Our own assumptions about
where God is likely to be at work …
and where God couldn’t possibly be.

Isn’t it funny that Jesus called Peter the rock?
The solid one, the dependable one,
the one we might think would always have it together.
And yet here he is, confused, unsure and learning
that God’s work doesn’t obey the walls he’s built.

The rock … is still learning to listen.
And in that, he becomes truly solid –
not because he knows everything,
but because he has learned where God is really at work.

Just as Mary had to learn
that resurrection wasn’t where she expected it …
Peter had to learn
that God wasn’t limited
to where he expected.

This morning, Gary and Brittany were confirmed in Coventry Cathedral.
Not because they’ve worked it all out,
not because they are completely certain,
but because, like Mary, like Peter
they are learning to listen for a voice that calls them by name.

And that’s what Easter invites us to do:
to pay attention, to listen,
to notice where God is already at work
in ways we didn’t expect.

The stone at the tomb
was only the beginning.
Because once that stone moves
all the other stones
we’ve built around us –
and within us –
begin to shift as well.

Just as they had to for Peter.

The stones we place between ourselves and others.
The quiet assumptions about
who belongs,
who counts,
who could possibly be part of God’s life.

Easter begins not with certainty,
but with a stone that refuses to stay in place,

with confusion,
with running,
with not quite understanding what we’re looking at.

And then – slowly –
with learning to listen.

Because in that garden,
everything changes
not when Mary works it out
but when she hears her name.

“Mary.”

And that is perhaps where Easter begins for us.

Not when we are finally sure.
Not when we have all the answers.

But when, somehow,
in the middle of everything that feels closed

we hear God calling our name.

And we begin – slowly,
sometimes hesitantly,
to realise
that what we thought was sealed …
including our fate …

is already being opened.

It turns out –
God has always been in the business
of moving stones.

You might even say
God put the Rolling Stones on the map.

Passion That Stays

David HerbertLeave a comment

Ezekiel stands in a valley of dry bones. Jesus stands at a tomb that smells of death. Neither turns away. This sermon explores a quieter, deeper meaning of passion—not as feeling, but as staying. And what might happen when we remain present in the places where hope seems lost.

Perhaps I should not ask what comes to mind when we hear the word passion.

We often hear the word passion and think of strong feelings.
Intensity. Emotion.

But the scriptures speak of something deeper.
Our scriptures give meaning to the word.

Passion is engagement.
Passion makes you stay with something,
with someone,
refusing to walk away.

It is remaining present
even where everything feels lost.

Our scriptures are not lifeless words on a page.
They are not dry bones,
or dead leaves,
pages in a book.

They have a life of their own.

It is passion that brings them to life,
and it is their life that inspires passion.

These scriptures have been carried through the generations:
people who have known defeat, exile, grief, and despair.

They belong to such people.

They cling passionately
to our experiences of devastation and annihilation.

They will not let us go.

Such is the character of our scripture,
such is the passion of scripture
for those who feel abandoned, lost.

They cling to them,
and they belong
to the people
in those places
at those times
when hope seems lost.

They’re not nice reading.
They’re not polite texts.

They are full of grit,
full of determination,
full of passion,

because they come from the valley—
the metaphorical valley
that stands in the shadow of death.

They belong to those who have stood in the valley
and wondered if anything could live again.

The vision Ezekiel shares with us this morning
comes straight from that valley,

a bleak valley
of bleached bone,
dried and scattered,

in a scene so devastating
that we’ve hardly been able to contemplate it
without making light of it—
turning it to comedy:
dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.

From the devastation
comes the question:

Can these bones live?

It’s a question Ezekiel hears from heaven.

How else could he have heard it?

It’s a question none of us would ever think to ask,
because the evidence of an ending
is so overwhelming.

We can almost feel him hesitate.

“What a question…”

“I don’t know.”

“Can these bones live?”

“I don’t know.”

And yet—he stays with it.

He does not turn away.

He remains.

“O Lord God, you know.”

And the wind begins to stir.

From all directions,
through all times,

the breath moves—

clinging to dry bones,
wrapping them in a love that will not let go,
stirring hope
where everything seemed lost.

We stay in the valley in the gospel reading.

The valley in the shadow of death.

As John tells us about Lazarus,
and the passion of Jesus for his friend,
and the passionate mourning of his sisters.

Lazarus has been dead four days.

John does not soften it.

The grief is real.
The loss is final.

This is a passage that stinks.

“Lord, already there is a stench.”

And again, there is no hurry to escape.

Jesus stands there—
overwhelmed in all his senses by loss,
in the midst of wailing,
with the stench of death.

And he weeps.

That is passion.

Before anything is changed,
before anything is restored,

passion is remaining—
particularly at the point
when all seems lost.

And it is there—
in that place—

that something happens.

Not an explanation.
Not an answer.

A call.

“Lazarus, come out.”

No one expects this.

No one is ready for this.

Because nothing in that place
suggests that life is possible.

And yet—

life does not wait
for another time,
or another place.

It comes here.

Into the tomb.
Into what has already been given up for lost.

And then—almost quietly—

“Unbind him, and let him go.”

The life is given.

But the unbinding—
the restoring, the freeing—
is given to others.

To those who stayed.

That call of Jesus—
“Lazarus, come out”…
and, “Unbind him, let him go”—

has echoed far beyond that tomb,
into every place
where people feel bound:

by grief,
by fear,
by the weight
of what others have said about them.

That voice still calls.

Jesus calls—
but leaves the unbinding
to others.

And perhaps we recognise this.

On a Radio 5 phone in,
I heard a cancer survivor—
speaking about what brought her through.

She spoke about treatment.

But more than that, she spoke about people.

The doctors who cared for her.
The nurses who stayed with her.
Those who sat alongside her.
Those who did the small, unnoticed things—
even making tea.

And she spoke about someone
whose vision and determination
had built that place of care over time.

They weren’t speaking about religion.

They simply spoke about people
who did not walk away.

People who remained
in a place most of us would rather avoid.

People through whom, slowly, patiently,
life was given back.

And perhaps this is what begins to happen
when we stay.

When we do not turn away.

When we remain present
in the places that feel like the end.

Something of that same passion
begins to take hold of us.

Not a loud passion.
Not a dramatic one.

But a steady, quiet refusal
to let go of life.

It becomes a passion for people—
for their dignity, their healing, their wellbeing.

A passion for the fragile life of this world—
for all that can so easily be lost.

A passion for justice—
that what is broken might be made right.

A passion to take our place
in the work of restoring life.

And perhaps we do not need
to name it too quickly.

Perhaps it is enough
to recognise it—

in the valley,
at the tomb,
in those who stay,
in those who serve,
in those who help unbind
what has been bound.

Because this is where the scriptures live.

Not far from us.
Not above us.

But here.

In the places where hope feels thin,
where loss is real,
where the ending seems certain.

And here—
not somewhere else, not later, but here—

breath begins to stir.

A voice is heard.

And where people will not walk away,
where they stay, and serve, and love,

even now,

the dead begin to live.

Seventy-Five and Still Counting

David HerbertLeave a comment

Abram was seventy-five when God told him to go.
Nicodemus was long established when Jesus told him he must be born again.
New birth is not punishment for failure — it is rescue from stagnation. It is never too late for God to be the making of us.
A sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Lent (Year A)

One goes, another comes.

It is Abram who goes.
It’s Nicodemus who comes,
Carefully, at night, to see Jesus.

For both, it’s about being born again.

Abram, we are told, was 75.
75.
By that age you’d expect him to be set.
If you’re not settled by 75, when will you be?
He’s established, formed and known.

Then he hears God say:
GO.

Leave your country.
Leave your people –
the people who made you who you are.
Leave your father’s house.
Leave everything you’ve ever known.

Even, in a way, leave your whole identity.

This man is Abram. That is who he is.
Abram is the “exalted father” –
“high father” – that’s what his name means.

And yet he has no child.

He sets out as Abram.
He sets out before anything has changed.
Before the promise is visible.
Before the future is secure.

And only later does God give him a new name:
Abraham – father of a multitude, father of nations –
the one through whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed,
and from whom, to this day,
Jewish, Christian and Muslim families
trace their story
and count their blessings.

It is Abram who goes.

Then there is the one who comes,
out of the dead of night he comes,
emerging from the shadows of
darkness and despair comes Nicodemus.

We don’t know his age, but he is no youngster.
He is old enough to have made his mark.
He is a Pharisee – a serious student of the Torah.
He is a member of the Jewish ruling council.
He is a teacher of Israel.
In fact, he is a person of substance,
and has spent a lifetime becoming someone.

And yet, he comes to Jesus and says:
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.”

Jesus tells him,
“No one can see the kingdom of God,
unless they are born again.”
“You must be born again.”

There we have it.
Abram is seventy-five.
And Nicodemus is no spring chicken.
Both are too old, humanly speaking,
for new beginnings.

Their story matters to us.
The two of them, they are both settled.
Abram is settled geographically, socially, economically.
Nicodemus is settled intellectually, religiously, institutionally.
Neither of them is wicked.
They’ve just grown old.
And we can become rather settled in our ways when we get old, can’t we?
Sometimes we are just tired.
Sometimes we get fixed in our opinions.
Sometimes we know our lines too well.
Sometimes we have become experts in being ourselves.
Some of us have had a lifetime of building ourselves,
making something of our lives,
with a lifetime of defending ourselves,
and the castles of our achievements,
Probably just like Abram and Nicodemus.

Perhaps we are too settled.
Settled in habits.
Settled in grudges.
Settled in roles.
Settled in the versions of ourselves we defend.

Perhaps, we too, need to stop that.

These scriptures spell out the good news
that we can stop that
and that we can be born again,
that we can stop all of that
so God can be the making of us.

New birth is not punishment for failure.
It is rescue from stagnation.
Nicodemus is right to ask the question,
“How can someone be born when they are old?
Surely they can’t enter a second time
into their mother’s womb to be born!”

We cannot make the new start ourselves.
We cannot birth ourselves.
It is God who makes the new start.
It’s God’s creation story.

In our own creation story
the firstborn stands secure.
The firstborn inherits.
The firstborn has position.
The younger is “spare”.

But in God’s story
it’s the younger who carries the promise,
the one born last – as we see in Abraham’s own family.
It’s younger Isaac, not older brother Ishmael.
It’s grandson Jacob, not Esau.
It’s Ephraim, not Manasseh.

The line of blessing doesn’t follow seniority,
it follows grace.

The last born is the new born.
The first born is always the older one,
relatively speaking.
The first born is the settled one,
just like Abram, just like Nicodemus,
just like all of us.
And the first born is never the new born,
unless willing to be born again.

The Gospel of John tells it different to the other gospel singers:

“No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
The other gospel writers say it like this:
“Noone can enter the kingdom of God
unless they become like a little child”.
The newborn are the last and the least.
They come with nothing.
They’re not dressed up with status or with achievements.

The newborns are never first.
Nicodemus is first.
He is first in power – he’s on the ruling council.
He is first in knowledge – he’s the teacher.
He’s the first in religious competence

But if he is to see the kingdom of God,
if he is to understand the way of God,
he must become new,
he must become small enough to receive
He must become, in a sense, last.

And the same with Abram.
He was established, named, known,
but becomes the stranger,
and the beginner again.

Abram was seventy-five.
Seventy-five.
That’s the age to qualify for lifetime achievement awards.
We spend our lives making ourselves,
our opinions,
our reputation,
our security,
our case before others.

Seventy-five.
It’s never too late
for God to be the making of us.

If Abram can begin at seventy-five,
and if Nicodemus can learn again
after a lifetime of teaching,
then none of us are stuck.
No one here is “too formed”.
No one is past beginning.

No one is past beginning.

And if we need one more witness —

there is Saul.

Certain.
Certain he was right.
Certain he knew God.
Certain he was defending the truth.

Established in his learning.
Established in his zeal.
Established in who he was.

And then —
stopped.

On the road.
Thrown down.
Blinded.

Led by the hand like a child.

He who saw so clearly
cannot see at all.

He who led
must now be led.

He who was first
must become last.

God does not improve him.
God remakes him.

He too must be born again.


Seventy-five.
It’s never too late

Abram was my age when he left it all.
I am still at that age when I don’t know,
when I don’t always like how I am,
when I need to hear “stop that”,
so that I can begin as the new-born,
as the last.
Heaven forbid I ever get settled in the way I am
and the way we are.

The amazing thing about God’s grace
is that we can always start again.
God so loved the world,
loves the world too much to leave it settled,
too much to leave us stuck,
so much as to come to us in the night,
to call us out of what we have made of ourselves.

Let us pray.

Lord God,
Father of Abraham,
giver of new birth,

We pray for the first borns among us —
for those who have grown established,
respected, secure.

For those who know their lines too well.
For those who have built lives
and learned how to defend them.

For those of us
who have become experts in being ourselves.

Make us willing to become small again.
Make us teachable.
Make us new.

And we pray for the new borns —
for the fragile beginnings,
for tender faith,
for hesitant steps into the unknown.

For those setting out not knowing where they go.
For those coming in the night with questions.

Breathe your Spirit upon them.
Guard what you are bringing to birth.
Carry to fullness what you have begun.

For you so loved the world
that you did not leave us settled,
but came among us
that we might be born from above.

Make us new, Lord.
Amen.

It is never too late for God to be the making of us.

There is a Hum in Humanity

David HerbertLeave a comment

There is a hum in humanity — a low note that runs through our lives. From the garden of Genesis to the wilderness of Gospel of Matthew, that hum carries the strain of mistrust, hunger and longing. But in the desert, Jesus holds a truer note — and the music of the world begins to change. A reflection for the first Sunday of Lent (Year A).

There is a hum in humanity.
A low note that runs through our lives.

It is there in the very beginning of the word itself,
the hum as we grow up as humans,
part of humanity,
challenged to be humane,
struggling to keep our feet on the ground – the humus,
finding humility so difficult.

There is a hum in humanity.
A low note that rumbles through our lives.

It is not just the hum of dust and breath –
but the hum of strain.

It is the hum of a myth
that resounds through all our lives,
a myth that can’t be dismissed
because it rings so true,
so true that it becomes the earworm
that casts our psyche
and scripts our story.

This is the story from Genesis.

It is not a fairy tale about a perfect world once upon a time,
but the beginning of difficulty.

The first mistrust.
The first fracture.
The first hiding.
The first blaming.

And the rest, as they say, is history,
herstory and ourstory.

Ever since, life has carried that note.

Work that exhausts.
Relationships that bruise.
Bodies that fail.
Power that corrupts.
Fear that whispers.

There is a hum in our ears and hearts
that tells us life should be easier than this –
easier than it has ever been.

A hum that suggests it was never meant to be this hard.

And yet –
it has been this hard from the beginning.

And then we hear the Gospel from Matthew.

The same hum.
The same strain.
The same voice that once whispered in a garden now speaks in a wilderness.

“Turn these stones to bread.”
Make it easier.
Fix the hunger.
Work a little magic.

“Throw yourself down.”
Let God catch you.
Prove yourself.
Court admiration.

“All this can be yours.”
Take control.
Overrule the chaos.
Dominate rather than trust.

These are not exotic temptations.
They are ours.

The temptation to solve difficulty by spectacle.
To escape vulnerability by popularity.
To end uncertainty by control.

Jesus stands where we stand.
He feels the same pull.
He hears the same hum.

But he stays.

He stays with the hunger.
He stays with the trust.
He stays with the limits of being human.

And he answers —
not with magic,
not with drama,
not with force —

but with Scripture,
with remembered truth,
with the steady note of dependence.

And that steady note
sees the back of the devil.

After the discord of the devil,
a new note sounds,
a different music,
harmonies and the ring of truth.
This is the sound of angels,
the sound of heaven attending earth.

This is the sound that swells our hearts
as we walk our 40 days of Lent,
through our temptation,
through difficulty,
through wilderness.

It’s not the sound of despair and desolation,
nor the sound of punishment and shame,
it is the note Jesus brings to the garden,
the hopeful note of humankind.

This is the joy Paul conveys to us in his letter to the Romans.
By the obedience of one
the music of our lives has changed.
Not by the brilliance of one.
Not by the power of one.
By the obedience of one –
in the wilderness,
in the difficulties, pressures and temptations of life,
humanity is re-tuned.

The hum of strain is not denied.
Jesus is still hungry.
Jesus is always hungry.
As long as anyone is hungry,
Jesus is hungry.

But discord becomes fidelity.

That’s the good news.

The gospel is not that life suddenly becomes easy.
The good news is that within the difficulty –
the wars, the privations, the despair –
a new sound has entered the world.

The hum is still there.
The world is still hard.

But now –
it is not the only sound.

These forty days are a gift to us –
time to learn again how to listen
for the music of accompaniment.

The Glory that Straightens Us

David Herbert1 Comment

A reflection for the Sunday just before Lent, when the Church’s readings gently remind us that Lent is not about self-improvement, but about staying with the glory of God.

There is a great noise in the world just now.
Nations in tumult. Rulers devising their plots. Power protecting itself.
The psalmist’s question hardly feels ancient: “
Why are the nations in tumult, and why do the peoples devise a vain plot?”
It is the sound of anger, of rivalry, of ambition —
the sound of a world bent in on itself.

And beneath the public noise there is another noise:
the private ache,
the anxiety we carry,
the way we can find ourselves almost doubled up with it —
bent backs and bowed heads under the weight of it all.

This is how we’ve come to worship today,
with our minds dripping with the headlines
from the Sunday papers, the TV news
and fed by the crooked algorithms of social media.
This is how we began our worship,
with those lines from the psalm appointed for today,
Psalm 2: Why are the nations in tumult,
and why do people plot so cruelly against one another?

This is the noise that we take into Lent,
the noise of anger and anxiety.

And then, in today’s gospel,
Jesus leads his friends away from the tumult.
Up a high mountain.
Not to escape the world, but to see it truly.
The air is thinner there.
The noise falls away.
The cloud settles.
The voice speaks.

And as we stand on the edge of Lent —
forty days that echo Moses in the cloud —
we are invited to climb with him.
Not to try harder.
Not to straighten ourselves by effort.
But to behold a glory that does not crush us,
does not dazzle us into denial,
but straightens us.
“This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”

The mountain is not where we live.
We live mostly in the valleys —
in the ordinary press of work and worry,
in the shadowed places Psalm 23 calls “the valley of the shadow of death,”
in the deadly ways that bend our backs and narrow our vision.

But in Exodus, Moses is called up into the cloud,
into fire and mystery,
for forty days and forty nights —
not to escape the people below,
but to receive something that will sustain them in the wilderness.

And as Lent opens before us,
those forty days are not an ordeal to be survived,
nor a spiritual boot camp in self-improvement.
They are a grace-filled ascent.
An invitation to step, however falteringly, into the cloud with Christ —
to let the noise fall away,
to let our sight be cleared,
to let our crooked wills be gently bent back toward God’s goodness and glory —
to have our hearts set straight and our wills aligned with his love –
so that when we walk again through the valleys,
we do not walk weakened,
but strengthened by the glory we have glimpsed.

So we will walk down the mountain again.
We always do.
The noise will still be there.
The nations will still rage.
The valleys will still wind their way through shadowed places.
Lent will not remove us from the world’s tumult,
nor from the private aches that sometimes leave us doubled over.
But we will not walk alone, and we will not walk unstrengthened.

For we have heard the voice: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”

And if we listen —
not perfectly, not heroically, but honestly —
something in us begins to straighten.
Not by effort, but by grace.

The glory of Christ does not crush us;
it steadies us.
It does not blind us;
it clears our sight.

It does not demand that we prove ourselves;
it bends our wills gently back toward the goodness and glory of God.

This is what these forty days are for.
Not self-improvement, but reorientation.
Not spiritual ambition, but deeper attention.
So that when we walk through the valleys —
even through the valley of the shadow of death —
we are not bent by fear or twisted by the world’s rage,
but strengthened by the glory we have seen,
and guided by the voice we have learned to trust.

The Glory that straightens us is not found in noise or power or spectacle.
It is found in the Beloved Son — and it is enough.

Train the Eye, Follow the Finger, See the Lamb

David Herbert1 Comment

In a world shaped by global empires, Isaiah and John the Baptist train our eyes to see differently – to notice where God’s light truly shines for all nations. This sermon for the Second Sunday of Epiphany (Year A) reflects on Isaiah 49:1-7 and John 1:29-42.

John doesn’t argue.
He doesn’t explain.
He points.

“Look,” he says.
“There.”

We follow his eye.
We follow his finger.

This is the beginning of John’s gospel — the first chapter.
This is what John the Evangelist wants us to see first.
He wants us to follow John the Baptist’s trained finger, his trained eye.

“Look, the Lamb of God.”

He wants the people around him to see what he sees,
the person he’s pointing to.

“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

His finger is not trained on a figure of strength or certainty,
but on a lamb.

Many of you know what lambs are like:
how easily they are lost,
how dependent they are,
how little control they have over their lives.
Their vulnerability is well known.

The proverb “like lambs to the slaughter” captures not just their vulnerability,
but the vulnerability of the powerless —
those whose lives are shaped by decisions made elsewhere.

And slaughtered this lamb would have been,
had Joseph not been warned in a dream
to flee Bethlehem
and escape Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.

Our eldest son gave us vouchers for the RSC in Stratford.
We used them to see the Shakespeare Theatre production of The BFG.

The giants loomed over us as enormous puppets,
their movements controlled by visible operators pulling the strings.
They were noisy, careless — care-less — devouring powers.
They eat children for breakfast.

You could name the giants of scripture,
the ones who devour children.
There is Herod slaughtering the innocents,
and Pharaoh ordering the death of Hebrew babies.

It is the giants who make our news,
who make our wars,
who force people to flee for their lives,
who devour the lives of children
in Gaza, in Ukraine,
in gas chambers and killing fields,
who threaten to gobble up nations.

All except the BFG — the Big Friendly Giant —
despised by the other giants
because he would rather eat snodcumber
than eat children.

His eye is trained on Sophie,
a small, overlooked orphan girl,
without the protection of parents,
trying to survive inside a giant institution.

Isaiah has the same trained eye.

He looks at the world honestly —
at kings and rulers and empires.
He knows who makes the news.
He knows who decides who lives safely
and who must flee.

And then he looks again.

And what he hears
is not God addressing the giants,
but God speaking to the one
they have already decided does not matter:

“Thus says the Lord…
to one deeply despised,
abhorred by the nations,
the servant of rulers.”

In the train of their eyes
and the direction of their fingers,
both Isaiah and John the Baptist
are training our eyes.

They train us to look again —
to see as God sees,
to behold the Lamb,
to honour the despised,
refusing to let ridicule decide
where we look.

Because most of us have been trained —
almost without noticing —
to look first at the giants.
to follow the headlines.
to measure importance
by size, certainty, and control.

The giants have trained our eyes.

They ridicule the way John looks,
and Isaiah looks,
and the way we look
when we dare to notice the damage they cause.
They want us to look another way.
They want us to look their way.

Giants don’t just dominate by force.
They dominate by shaping
what is respectable to notice.
That is why they battle for control of attention
and of the media.

They hate it when people see
what they would rather keep hidden.
They accuse those who honour the despised
of being over-sensitive, unrealistic,
ideological, divisive — woke.
They want us to look stupid.

Classic giant behaviour
is to make compassion look naïve,
attentiveness look hysterical,
listening look weak,
and those who point to the crushed
look ridiculous.

The giants are not afraid of anger
as much as they are afraid of people who are awake —
awake enough to notice who is being crushed,
and awake enough not to look away.

They despise and abhor them.

This is how the giants train our eyes,
but the church is the place
where eyes are trained differently.

Not because we are braver,
or purer,
or better informed —
but because we have learned
where to look.

Week by week,
we are gathered and retrained.

We are taught to say,
not “Look how big the giants are,”
but “Look, the Lamb of God.”

And when we do,
our eyes change.

We begin to see differently —
to see the ones the giants have already dismissed,
the ones they ridicule,
the ones they despise and abhor.

And we discover that these are the ones
who are the apple of God’s eye.

This is how the church becomes light for the nations —
not by speaking louder than the world,
not by competing with the giants,
not by being big, or even successful
(that is the giants’ way),
but by honouring the very ones the giants ignore:
the lambs,
the small voices,
the ones whose lives are shaped by decisions made elsewhere.

By seeing them.
By standing with them.
By refusing to look away.

The trained eye looks away from giants
to the overlooked.

Look, the Lamb of God —
the one they despised, abhorred, and crucified,
and in him,
all the lambs
upon whom the world piles its sin.

Going Home After Christmas – another way

David Herbert3 Comments

Here is a sermon for Epiphany, about getting home after Christmas — about what it means to return to ordinary life once the magic of Christmas has done its work.
(Readings: Isaiah 60:1–6; Matthew 2:1–12)

This morning I want to take up the star of wonder
and see how far we have come this Christmas,
exploring the way to the manger,
and how on earth we get home.

Our readings cover many miles —
the miles in the reading from Isaiah,
the miles nations will come
to the light of the glory of God,
the miles rulers will travel
to the brightness of the dawn
of a new day, a new time, a new year.

The miles the children of Israel will travel:
sons coming from afar,
daughters carried on the hip.

The miles wealth will cross the seas,
and the camels… the camels —
from Midian and Ephah,
even from Sheba,
bearing gold and incense,
proclaiming the praise of the Lord
when he comes.

And in the gospel for today
there are the Magi from the east —
the Magi who believe in the magic of life,
who follow the star of wonder,
always wondering what kind of magic
can turn hatred into love
and a world at war into a world at peace.

Our readings cover miles of wonder.

The magic the travellers trusted
was not illusion or trickery,
but the stubborn hope
that the world could be other than it is.

It is a hope as old as time.
It is God’s hope we join.

The Magi are ones who travelled so far,
going first one way,
and then finding a better way.

First they went the usual way,
the old way, the well-trodden wrong way.
They found themselves in Jerusalem,
in the twisted streets of the medina,
the religious capital,
the political and social capital.

Everyone said they would find
what they were looking for there,
because that’s where we always expect God to be —
close to influence, respectability, and control.

There’s no doubt that Google Maps
had led them to a king.
But Herod wasn’t who they were looking for.

There was no magic in his palace —
just the same old rules,
the same old rule of oppression,
ruling out the magic
of the least, the lost, and the last.

They stayed awhile — long enough
for the priests and lawyers
to consult the ancient books of magic,
the scriptures that had forgotten
just how dangerous they really are,
to remind themselves
that the place of magic
is the smallest of places,
never Jerusalem.

They’d got it so wrong.

Nine miles wide, one theologian says —
the distance between Jerusalem and Bethlehem,
the distance between power and promise,
the distance between knowing the words
and recognising the child.

Nine miles on, they saw the star
stop over the place where Jesus was.
Overwhelming joy brought them to their knees.

They bowed from their lofty heights.
They opened up their gifts —
all their power and glory:
their gold, their frankincense, their myrrh.

Gifts laden with meaning —
the gold of their wealth,
the incense of their power,
the myrrh of their mortality.

They handed them all over.

They do not leave Bethlehem lightly.

They have loved this place.
They have loved the silence,
the smallness,
the nearness of God in a child.

They have lingered long enough
to be changed by what they have seen.

And then they went home another way,
considerably lighter.

We are in the same room as the Magi.
We are with them in Bethlehem.
We too have travelled far this Christmas.
We too have knelt at the place of wonder.

But no one can stay in Bethlehem.
It was too dangerous for Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
They had to flee from Herod’s terror
and his slaughter of the innocent.

Nor could the Magi stay.
They had to return to their own country.

They had two choices.
They could go back the way they came —
through Jerusalem,
through Herod,
through the centres of religious, social, and political power.

Or they could take the road less travelled.
They chose to follow their dream,
to heed the warning,
to go home another way —
refusing the way of fear and exclusion,
the way that protects power
by crushing the vulnerable.

And nor can we stay at the manger.
Christmas does not ask us to linger,
but to return.

There are just twelve days of Christmas,
and we are nearly at the end of them.
The road home opens before us.

We go back to the same people,
the same work,
the same complications and demands —
just as the Magi did.

The question is not whether we go home,
but how we go home.

Will we go back the way we came —
shaped by fear, habit, and power?
Or will we go home another way —
refusing fear,
trusting the stubborn magic of love,
seeing God not in the centres of control
but in the smallest of places,
among the least, the last, and the lost?

Home calls us —
the place that knows us,
the place we know,
the place whose joys and wounds
we carry in our bones.

The Magi return to their own country —
to their villages,
their households,
their responsibilities and loves.

They go back to the same world,
but not by the same road.

And so do we.

We go home
not because Bethlehem has nothing left to give,
but because it has given us enough.

Enough light
to see differently.
Enough love
to travel lighter.
Enough hope
to believe the world can be other than it is.

That is the road less taken —
and it is the way
into a new year of grace.

God on the night shift

David HerbertLeave a comment

We’ve stayed up!
We’ve stayed awake
to make this night,
this night above all nights, holy.

And we’ve sung praise to this holy night.
Perhaps for the first time tonight in this church
have we sung congregationally the lovely carol, Cantique de Noel.

Noel is a word from Anglo-Norman French. It means birthday.
So when we sing Noel, we are singing a birthday song to the world –
a new beginning sung into the night.

This holy night we see God
as light, forever a-light in our darkness,
a light in our fears, aloneness and confusion.
Tonight we see night as the time God acts.
God’s creation begins in darkness.
That’s our Genesis.
The Exodus began in the dark.
The resurrection begins “while it was still dark”.
God works the night shift.

Tonight we see God –
the very nature of God,
seen and worshipped
as the smallest,
the most vulnerable of life.
This is how we see God,
in a stable, in the busyness
of a crowd of people, in a state
preoccupied by the presence of enemy power.

We see God in that darkness,
and we begin to love the name of that baby,
Jesus, the one who saves us
by joining our darkness with the lightness of love.
As night follows day, he is with us
in the darkness of hurt and disappointment,
rejection, betrayal, the loss of loved ones,
the anxiety of making ends meet,
in a world of war, and a world in flight –
he is with us, our boy, Emmanuel.

Grace doesn’t come with a sword
to overcome the darkness with a spectacular blow.
Instead God illuminates the darkness
with everlasting companionship.

And in this new light, we see ourselves again
as the very image of God.
This holy night, God appears small,
and that smallness reveals what God is always like.
The manger isn’t camouflage, it is revelation.
The manger is our mirror image.
We are made in the image of God,
not born to be high and mighty, first and foremost,
but born into smallness – humble at heart.

And this is the best possible light,
this night, to see one another.
Even though we are in the dark
God helps us see his work begin in smallness,
even with the least, the last and the lost.
God imagines us all worth visiting,
all worth illuminating, all worth saving.

And perhaps, finally,
this holy night invites us
not only to consider how we see God,
or how we see ourselves,
or how we see one another –
but how God sees us.

God does not look for the impressive,
the sorted, the strong.
God looks with delight
upon those awake in the night,
those keeping watch,
those doing their best to get through.

This is the light God shines upon us:
not a searching light,
not a judging light,
but a warming one.
A light that says,
You are worth visiting.
You are worth staying with.
You are worth saving.

This holy night,
God sees us as beloved.
And that is blessing enough
to carry us back into the dark,
Unafraid.
Good night.

This Is How It Began – in the middle of winter

David Herbert1 Comment

Preached on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, this sermon sits with Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ birth at midwinter — when the light is weakest and hope can feel thin. It explores how God chooses to begin again not in tidiness or certainty, but in the mess, risk, and vulnerability of ordinary human lives.

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about.
These are the words Matthew uses to describe the birth of Jesus.
This is how it happened.
This is how it began.

When I say,
“these are the words Matthew uses,”
what I really mean is,
“this is how we have translated the words Matthew wrote.”
Matthew wrote in Greek,
and the key word in that opening sentence is a Greek word we know very well, the word genesis.

Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἡ γένεσις οὕτως ἦν· μνηστευθείσης γὰρ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ Μαρίας τῷ Ἰωσήφ, πρὶν ἢ συνελθεῖν αὐτοὺς εὑρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου

Genesis.
Beginning.
Origin.
The start of something that will change everything.

Matthew is not just telling us how a baby was born.
He is taking us back to the very beginning.
Back to the beginning of the world.
Back to the beginning of God’s work with humanity.
Back to what begins with Jesus.

It is no accident that we hear this reading now
— on the shortest day of the year,
at midwinter,
when the light is at its thinnest and the night feels longest.

Because beginnings often come like that.
Quietly. In the dark.
When the ground looks bare and the fields seem empty.
When nothing much appears to be happening at all.
This is when God makes his presence felt.

Matthew takes us back to a beginning that looks very small.
Just as in Genesis, there is a young boy and a young girl.
But they’re not Adam and Eve. They are Joseph and Mary.
Ordinary people with complicated lives.

Adam and Eve walked freely with God.
They had no backstory.
No reputation to protect.
No neighbours to worry about.

But Joseph and Mary live in a world where things are already tangled.

Mary is pledged to be married, but not yet married.
Joseph is a good man, but suddenly faced with a situation that could cost him his standing, his future, his place in the community.
This is not a beginning without consequences.
This is a beginning that arrives already burdened.

And God does not wait for a cleaner moment.
God begins again here — not in freedom, but in constraint;
not in clarity, but in confusion;
not in daylight, but in the deepening darkness.

This is how the birth of Jesus comes about.
Not by sweeping the mess away, but by entering it.
Not by restoring the world to how it once was,
but by beginning something new within the world as it is.

in a teenage love story,
in the vulnerability of these two youngsters.

Both are vulnerable.
Mary is pledged to Joseph but not living with him.
She’s pregnant. People are going to talk.
If she’s not been with Joseph, who has she been with?
She is at risk of being shamed, isolated and abandoned –
a public disgrace.

Joseph is vulnerable too.
He has the reputation of being a righteous man
because he tries to do the right thing.
If he stays with Mary he risks his reputation
(costly to his business and his standing).
If he leaves her she is exposed.
There is no clear path.

And here God begins.
In this mess framed by confusion, risk and fear.
God begins again by stepping into lives that are already complicated
— and trusting them with something holy.

Genesis does not wait for spring.
It begins when the light is weakest
in the midst of winter,
and slowly grows from there.

When God begins here, it is not with explanations.

Matthew tells us that Joseph makes up his mind.
He decided what he will do.

And then God speaks.
Not in public,
not with spectacle,
but in the dark night,
In a dream.

The angel does not tidy the situation.
He does not remove the risk.
He does not promise that everything will be all right.

He says only this:
Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.

Do not be afraid to stay.
Do not be afraid to be seen.
Do not be afraid to let your life be changed.

And then Matthew gives the child a name.
Emmanuel.
God with us.

Not God with us when the mess is sorted.
Not God with us when the rumours stop.
Not God with us when life feels safe again.

But God with us, here,
in confusion,
in vulnerability,
in teenage love that chooses faithfulness over self-protection.

When Joseph wakes up,
he does what the angel has told him.

And that is how the story moves forward.
Not through certainty.
Not through control.
But through trust.

And this is the genesis Matthew chose to share with his readers,
how God begins his work
these days that are long with darkness.

He begins with a boy and a girl,
with ordinary people inspired to trust.
Slowly, quietly, faithfully the light begins to grow.

This is how the birth of Jesus comes about.
God begins again –
with us –
in the dark.

NOTE
I make no secret of the fact that I’m greatly helped by AI when preparing sermons. Used well, it doesn’t write sermons for me, but helps me listen more closely — to Scripture, to season, and to the lives of the people I’m preaching among. This sermon is better than it would otherwise have been, and I’m grateful for the help.