Thinking allowed

Civic Sunday 20 September 2026

on Monday, 21 September 2026 at 11.43 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Ser­mon preached at the Civic Ser­vice at St Ives, before the Deputy Lieu­ten­ant, the High Sher­iff, the Vice-Chairs of Cam­bridge­shire County Coun­cil and Hunt­ing­don­shire Dis­trict Coun­cil, the May­or of Peter­bor­ough and oth­er neigh­bour­ing towns, and the Town May­or and Coun­cil of St Ives, togeth­er with a detach­ment from 42 Engin­eer Regi­ment (Geo­graph­ic), and youth organizations.

Read­ings: Micah 6.6–8; Mat­thew 22.16–21

Here’s a ques­tion to start a sermon –
why are we here?

Don’t worry,
I’m not ask­ing one of those great exist­en­tial questions –
“what is the mean­ing of life?”
Or “are you saved?”

No, I mean it much more literally.
Are you here because you were invited?
Or – did your com­mand­ing officer tell you to come?
Maybe your par­ents said you had to go
and brought you to the Cattle Mar­ket car park.

Well, of course, the real reas­on we’re here
is for Civic Sunday,
when our Town May­or and Council
come cere­mo­ni­ally to church,
as they have for hun­dreds of years;
an oppor­tun­ity to give thanks,
and cel­eb­rate all the good things about our town.

And people come to this church for all sorts of reasons.
Last week­end, for example, was the Her­it­age Open Days,
and sev­er­al hun­dred people came here
to explore the architecture,
and the vest­ments that were on display.

Among the prom­in­ent fea­tures that people stop and look at
is the big col­our­ful stained-glass window
at the end of the south aisle –
over there, to your right.
It’s not the best win­dow in the church,
but I reck­on it’s far from the worst either!
You may not be able to see it prop­erly from your seat,
but if you get a chance later do have a closer look,
or per­haps come back anoth­er time.
And there’s a pic­ture of it
on the back of our order of service,
so you might like to have that before you.

It’s a typ­ic­al col­our­ful Vic­tori­an window.
There’s Jesus in the middle,
wrapped in a red cloak.
Over to the left are his disciples,
per­haps cower­ing a bit behind their leader.
And on the oth­er side there’s a group of people
clearly in dis­cus­sion with Jesus.
The one at the front,
wear­ing a green cloak,
is point­ing to some­thing in his right hand.

It’s a small coin.

And under­neath
in small lettering
that you per­haps can­’t read without your glasses on
is an inscrip­tion beginning
“Render there­fore unto Caesar”.

I hope you might recog­nise these
as words that we just heard read by our Town Mayor.
That’s the story that this win­dow depicts.

So – what’s going on?
Well, in Jesus’s time
if you wanted to wor­ship at the temple
you needed spe­cial temple money,
not ordin­ary every­day Roman coins.
But what Jesus’s ques­tion­ers produce
is an ordin­ary Roman coin, a denarius.
They’d been try­ing to trap Jesus:
they wanted him to say that a reli­gious person
did­n’t have to fol­low the rules of the state.
And Jesus replies that they
– and we –
all have to do what the Emper­or Caesar requires,
what the state requires.

But,
and this is the import­ant bit,
Jesus says we should also do what God requires as well.

So what is it that God requires of us?
What does God want us to do?

And that[s where our first read­ing comes in.
The proph­et Micah lived
some 700 years earli­er than Jesus –
so get­ting on for 3000 years ago.
And maybe you think
that someone who lived nearly 3000 years ago
has­n’t got much to say to us in the 21st century.

So let me remind you what Micah said.
He says that God
does­n’t really care about temple sacrifices,
or about reli­gious ritu­al generally.
You might think
that’s a strange thing for a preach­er to say:
that God does­n’t care about reli­gious ritual.
This ancient Jew­ish proph­et says
that what God cares about is –
to do justice,
to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with God.
These are rules that go to the heart
of Jew­ish-Chris­ti­an mor­al­ity and ethics.
The mor­al­ity and eth­ics that form the basis of our society.

And we can tease this out a little more;
tease it out into two basic themes
that can guide each of us in our lives.

The first of these themes is:
com­pas­sion.
So, com­pas­sion is about see­ing things
from the oth­er person’s point of view.
It’s about hav­ing sym­pathy and empathy –
sym­pathy and empathy with people who are suffering;
sym­pathy and empathy with people we know –
and with people we don’t know.
It might mean going out of our way
to help a per­son or group dif­fer­ent from us,
or who we don’t even like,
or who per­haps don’t like us.

That might be … mem­bers of a life­boat crew
risk­ing their lives
to res­cue people try­ing to cross the sea.
It might mean sol­diers risk­ing their lives
to keep the peace between war­ring parties,
or defend those at risk.
Or it might mean …
sit­ting and listening
to a per­son who just needs someone to talk to.
I’m sure you can think of oth­er examples.

And the second of my two guid­ing themes
is … recon­cili­ation.
Reconciliation.
This is about not hold­ing grudges for slights and wrongs –
wheth­er real or imagined.
Recon­cili­ation is about say­ing “sorry”,
it’s about
not wait­ing for the oth­er per­son to say “sorry” first –
or maybe even at all.
Even if they don’t, even if it’s their fault,
we can still work for that recon­cili­ation.

Recon­cili­ation stops hate from eat­ing away at our lives,
it stops hate and con­flict spreading,
and it lets people and groups
over­come past issues, past conflicts –
in our per­son­al lives and between lar­ger groups.

Now maybe you’re think­ing that this all sounds very well.
Com­pas­sion and Recon­cili­ation – lovely ideas,
but it isn’t always easy to carry them out, is it?
Because it takes prac­tice and awareness.
We have to prac­tise com­pas­sion and reconciliation
so that they become ingrained in us.
We have to prac­tise them
in the small ordin­ary every­day things
so that if we are called upon
to exer­cise them in some­thing important
they have become our nat­ur­al way of doing things.

And this is the mes­sage for all of us.
It’s the mes­sage for young people
set­ting out on life’s journey.
It’s the mes­sage for sol­diers on the battlefield –
or guid­ing oth­ers on the battlefield.
It’s the mes­sage for politicians –
May­ors and Coun­cil­lors at all levels of loc­al government,
and for nation­al and inter­na­tion­al politi­cians too.
For all of us here.

Com­pas­sion and Recon­cili­ation.
If we equip ourselves with these two
then we shall be doing justly and lov­ing mercy,
and we shall be giv­ing to God the things that are God’s.

Finally, then, let’s return to that win­dow over there.
We’ve seen that it shows Jesus
remind­ing us to give to God the things that are God’s.
So now let your gaze wander upwards,
above the col­oured can­op­ies in the middle of the window
right to the top.
And in that top light is an angel,
an angel with rain­bow-col­oured wings,
hold­ing a scroll.
And what do you think is writ­ten on that scroll?

It says …
“do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with thy God”.
It’s the key verse from our oth­er reading.

So I invite you
to take away this ser­vice leaflet
when you leave the church.
Stuff it in your pocket.
And later, when you get home,
take it out and look at the picture,
and recall these two bible verses:
“Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s
and to God the things that are God’s”;
and
“What does God require?
Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly”.

And then – prac­tise com­pas­sion and recon­cili­ation,
prac­tise them in the little things of life,
make them your core values,
and togeth­er we will make our town
and the world around us
a bet­ter place for ourselves,
for our children,
for everyone.

Amen.

(1248 words)

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Ash Wednesday: 18 February 2026

on Wednesday, 18 February 2026 at 9.25 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Isai­ah 58.1–12; Psalm 51.1–18; Cor­inthi­ans 5.20b – 6.10; Mat­thew 6.1–6, 16–21.

In the name of the Fath­er and of the Son and of the Holy Spir­it. Amen.

So are you giv­ing some­thing up for Lent?
It’s an old tra­di­tion isn’t it?

As small chil­dren we talked about giv­ing up chocolate –
but to be hon­est we nev­er had a lot of chocolate,
so there wasn’t much to give up!
And as an adult I have tried eat­ing a bit less,
with lim­ited success;
and I know a num­ber of people
who refrain – or try to refrain –
from alco­hol dur­ing Lent.
Of course all these things,
we are told,
are good for our health.
But Lent isn’t really about our health,
not our phys­ic­al health anyway.
It’s not a sort of “dry Janu­ary” for Christians.
So what is Lent for,
and what does Ash Wed­nes­day mean?

Our ser­vice book­let tells us a little about the history –
that Lent per­haps originated
as a peri­od of instruction
for those who were to be bap­tized at Easter.
It seems possible
– and we don’t really know –
it seems possible
that East­er was ori­gin­ally not always on a Sunday
but could fall on any day of the week.
And the day before Easter,
the eve of East­er, whatever day of the week it was,
was kept as an extra day of fasting.
But even­tu­ally the annu­al Easter
was fixed to the weekly celebration
of the resur­rec­tion each Sunday.
The fast before it was gradu­ally extended,
becom­ing forty days
under the influ­ence of the gos­pel account
of Jesus’s fast and tempta­tion after his baptism,
a story we will hear next Sunday.

Now in a little while
we will all be invited
to begin Lent
by being marked with an ashen cross on our forehead.
And yet we have just heard
what Jesus has to say on the top­ic of fasting.
Let me read those words to you again …

whenev­er you fast, do not look dismal,
like the hypocrites,
for they dis­fig­ure their faces
so as to show oth­ers that they are fasting.
Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.
But when you fast,
put oil on your head and wash your face,
so that your fast­ing may be seen not by others
but by your Fath­er who is in secret

“Put oil on your head and wash your face”
Jesus tells us –
and oil here is both a soap and a perfume,
cleans­ing and giv­ing a pleas­ant fragrance.
Jesus, it seems to me,
does­n’t want us to parade our faith,
or at least, not this aspect of our faith.
What are we to make of this?

Well, first we should remember
that Jesus is a mas­ter of pub­lic speaking,
of oratory or rhetoric.
And one of his favour­ite rhet­or­ic­al devices
is hyper­bole – the art of exaggeration.
Jesus just seems to love to exag­ger­ate for effect.
And we see that clearly
in the first part of today’s gos­pel reading.
Remem­ber the bit where Jesus talked about
not let­ting “your left hand
know what your right hand is doing”?!
So we should always take into account
that Jesus is speaking
to a par­tic­u­lar group of people
in a par­tic­u­lar time and place,
and we can­not tell if he had a grin on his face
or the way in which he told a story.

And let’s also look for a moment
at our first read­ing this evening,
from the proph­et Isaiah.
Per­haps it can give us a bit of a clue as well.
Here are a couple of verses
from the middle of that reading,
verses 6 and 7 from Isai­ah chapter 58

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the home­less poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cov­er them,
and not to hide your­self from your own kin?

That really does give it to us pretty straight, does­n’t it?

Isai­ah tells us
that the sort of fast­ing God wants
is to help those
who are caught up
in the injustice and unfair­ness of this world.
The hungry and homeless,
those without a stitch to their name.
And then there’s that bit at the end
about not hid­ing your­self from your own kin –
what on earth is that about?
It’s not, I think,
about ignor­ing the phone
when a rel­at­ive you don’t want to speak to telephones.
Rather it refers to the sys­tem of obligations
that Israel­ite soci­ety placed on fam­ily members
to sup­port each oth­er in hard times.
Don’t find excuses,
God says through Isaiah,
don’t make excuses not to help them.

Well, Isai­ah is not alone among the proph­ets in proclaiming
that this is what God wants the people of Israel to do.
And we see the same theme
car­ried dir­ectly through into Jesus’s ministry –
one reas­on why he was described
by his contemporaries
as a prophet.
For example,
we read in Luke’s gospel
the story of Jesus com­ing to Nazareth
at the start of his ministry
and read­ing the pas­sage where Isai­ah says
“[God] has anoin­ted me
to bring good news to the poor,
release to the captives,
recov­ery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free.”

And now we can see
the hypo­crisy that Jesus refers to.
Jesus warns each one of us against hypocrisy –
the hypo­crisy of mak­ing it look
as if we are being pious and holy,
but not actu­ally doing
the things that Jesus
(along with the prophets)
reminds us that we should be doing.

So let us use these com­ing weeks of Lent
to review our daily life
and our Chris­ti­an discipleship.
It’s not about giv­ing up chocol­ate or going on a diet –
well maybe we should do those things anyway
and try and live more healthily,
more eth­ic­ally and more responsibly.
But more than that
it is an oppor­tun­ity for each one of us,
you and me,
to review our response
to the good news that Jesus proclaims,
the good news
that all of us are made in God’s image
and all of us are loved by God.
All of us –
not just you and me,
but all people across the world,
those we know and those we don’t know,
those we like and even those we don’t like,
wheth­er indi­vidu­ally or as groups.
All are made in God’s image
and are loved by God.

And our response to that
must be
to work for
the loosen­ing of the bonds of injustice,
to work for
the care of the poor and hungry and the oppressed,
that those people too
may live lives made in the image of God
and the love of God.

May you have a holy and blessed Lent!

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The Baptism of Christ: 11 January 2026

on Sunday, 11 January 2026 at 8.37 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Isai­ah 42.1–9; Psalm 29; Acts 10.34–43; Mat­thew 3.13–end.

Words from today’s gos­pel reading: 
“Jesus came from Galilee
to John at the Jordan,
to be bap­tized by him.”

In the name of the Fath­er and of the Son and of the Holy Spir­it. Amen.

When I was a bit younger,
we used to hear from time to time
about Billy Graham.
I’m sure many of you remem­ber him too.
And for any­one who doesn’t,
he was a renowned Amer­ic­an evangelist
from the 1950s through to the 90s.
And every few years
he would come to the UK
and hold rallies
in big aren­as and stadiums,
and in the later years
tech­no­logy meant
these could be sim­ul­tan­eously relayed
to smal­ler, loc­al venues.
Per­haps you know someone
who atten­ded one of these rallies –
maybe you even went to one yourself.

And Billy Graham
stood in a long line of “reviv­al­ist” meetings,
encour­aging the young –
and the not so young –
to com­mit their lives to God.
There was a big revival
at the start of the 20th century,
largely in the USA,
which became the Pente­cost­al movement.
And a cen­tury earlier
reviv­al­ism had swept through
the vil­lages and com­munit­ies of Wales,
lead­ing to a mul­ti­pli­city of non­con­form­ist chapels
through­out the country.
And we can look fur­ther back
to Meth­od­ism in the early 18th century
and back before that to earli­er revivals.

And I won­der wheth­er we can see
the min­istry of John the Baptist in this same light.
There he stands
on the banks and in the shallows
of the River Jordan,
(the arena of his day perhaps?)
and the crowds come out
to hear him preach.
“All Jer­u­s­alem”, we are told.

And then instead of an “altar call”,
those who had heard his message
and wanted to be part of it
were dunked in the river water
as a sign that their sin was washed away
and they were begin­ning afresh.
John’s message
was that people needed to repent
and live a godly life
because judge­ment was coming,
indeed it would arrive,
he seems to have thought,
very soon.

And into this reviv­al­ist meet­ing comes … Jesus.

Now I want to make three points this morning,
and the first of these points is about – Jesus.

Because the pres­ence of Jesus
here
with John the Baptist
gives the gos­pel writers
some pause for thought.
You see,
bap­tism was a sign
of repent­ance for sins committed,
and yet …
and yet
we believe Jesus was without sin.
So why was Jesus baptized?
In this morning’s reading
we can see
a bit of the struggle with this question.
In Mat­thew’s account
we heard Jesus and John
debat­ing the issue –
and we can eas­ily imagine
that these are the sort of arguments
that must have been debated
in the early years of the Chris­ti­an Church.

But we also have to take into account
what is repor­ted after the baptism.

Mat­thew tells us that

“just as [Jesus] came up from the water,
sud­denly the heav­ens were opened to him
and he saw the Spir­it of God
des­cend­ing like a dove and alight­ing on him.

“And a voice from heav­en said,
‘This is my Son, the Beloved,
with whom I am well pleased.’ ”

If we read carefully,
we see that Mat­thew tells us
that it was Jesus him­self
who saw the heav­ens open.

If we were to put this
in the lan­guage we would use about any­one else,
we might per­haps say
that this was a pro­found reli­gious experience.
It had (as the theo­lo­gian Joe Cas­sidy wrote)
“all the hall­marks of a power­ful con­ver­sion experience,
a real turning-point”.

It was the moment when,
per­haps with hindsight,
Jesus recog­nised God’s spe­cial call to him,
the spe­cial rela­tion­ship of a son to his fath­er.

If indeed things happened some­thing like this,
then Jesus must have subsequently
told oth­ers of his experience –
how he had been affirmed
in the min­istry he was about to undertake –
that ministry
as a wan­der­ing preach­er and teach­er and healer
that would ulti­mately lead to Jerusalem
and to the Cross.

And for my part
I find the human­ity of Jesus
pro­foundly meaningful.
But each of you
will have to come to your own conclusions
about how plaus­ible this is.

And the second thing I want to say is about – us.

We too – nearly all of us here I imagine –
have been baptized.
For many of us
that happened when we were tiny infants.
It’s an event we are unable to remember.
For others,
being bap­tized was a delib­er­ate decision
we made when we were older.
(And maybe – one or two of you
have not yet been baptized,
or per­haps you are con­sid­er­ing being baptized.)
Well, today is an oppor­tun­ity for us
to think about baptism,
to think about our own baptism
(or per­haps to think about
the pos­sib­il­ity of our own baptism).

So one of the things
today’s gos­pel read­ing tells us
is that bap­tism is something
we share with Jesus.
In bap­tism we are incor­por­ated into Jesus;
incor­por­ated with Jesus
into the life of the Chris­ti­an Church –
all those people who down the ages
have tried to fol­low the teach­ing of Jesus.
All those people who in our own time,
and in our own lives,
have tried to fol­low the teach­ing of Jesus.

Now in a few moments
we will take some time
to remem­ber our own baptisms.
The water of bap­tism is life-giving
and brings refreshment.
But we shall also remember
that we don’t always live up to the prom­ises we made
(or that were made on our behalf)
at our baptisms.

And yet the water of baptism
washes away our wrong-doings.
Through the water of bap­tism we are,
as I said, united with Jesus.
Through the water of baptism
we are giv­en life –
new life in God’s kingdom,
new life where we are called
to share God’s love with the world:
shar­ing our food with the hungry,
and our houses with the homeless,
shar­ing our hope with those who are in despair,
shar­ing for­give­ness and reconciliation
with those who have wronged us.
This is the life that our bap­tism inaug­ur­ates us
– each one of us – into.

And that brings me to my third point, my final point.

The story we have heard today
about Jesus’s baptism
marks the start of the story
of the adult Jesus.
Yes, we have heard over the last few weeks
the story of Jesus’s birth and the com­ing of the Magi,
and those pas­sages form
a sort of pro­logue or prequel
to the rest of Mat­thew’s gospel.
But today’s read­ing is where the action starts.
It begins with the crowds
com­ing to see John the Baptist:
they hear him and many of them are baptized.

That is how the gospel,
the good news about Jesus,
begins,
with John bap­tiz­ing and mak­ing disciples.

Now bap­tism is not men­tioned again in the gospel.
Not until the very end.

We have to turn
to the very last three verses
of Mat­thew’s gospel,
and there we find that it ends
with a pas­sage that has some parallels
with this beginning.
At the end of Mat­thew’s gospel,
Jesus tells his followers
to go out …
and preach to the whole world
and to bap­tize all people,
to teach every­one about God’s love.

And that is our mission.
To give people
the oppor­tun­ity to hear the good news of Jesus,
the good news of the king­dom of God
where those in need are blessed.

That is our mission.
To give people the opportunity
to have a reli­gious experience
and to turn their lives around.
We ourselves always need to be open to this,
and we ourselves can some­times be
the per­son who helps someone else
– a fam­ily mem­ber, a neigh­bour, even a stranger –
to come to that moment in their own life.
And when we do this
we are strengthened by the promise
with which Mat­thew ends his book:
“Remem­ber,”
Jesus said,
“I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

[pause]

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

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