{"id":220,"date":"2026-06-28T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/?p=220"},"modified":"2026-07-08T08:32:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T07:32:26","slug":"welcome-sermon-at-st-marys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/2026\/06\/28\/welcome-sermon-at-st-marys\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome Sermon at St Mary’s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

4th Sunday after Trinity 2026, Year A<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, after that Gospel reading what is there actually to say in a sermon?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, says Jesus to the twelve apostles, and while I am not equating myself with any of the apostles, the warm welcome which I, and Petra and Larissa, have received here is indicative of a genuinely Christian community here that does open its arms to welcome everybody, understanding that it is in welcoming everyone that we truly welcome Christ into our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two weeks ago I was preaching my farewell sermon at Holy Trinity, and the passage was the beginning of this section of Matthew\u2019s Gospel, where Jesus was sending out the apostles having given them authority to act in his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, having been sent out by Holy Trinity, I am being welcomed here by you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In between, Jesus has warned his apostles that the road ahead will not be an easy one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a hint of this in our passage.  Jesus says whoever welcomes a prophet will receive a prophet\u2019s reward, and whoever welcomes the righteous will receive the reward of the righteous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think Jesus makes it quite clear elsewhere that the rewards of the prophet and the righteous are not in this world, but in the coming kingdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Christian journey is not necessarily an easy one.  Having spent six years of discernment and training, including failing a selection panel and having to reapply a year later, I can say that even the journey that I have taken in order to be here as your curate today has not been an easy one, although I wouldn\u2019t dare to compare it to the struggles that other people have faced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the setbacks that I have faced in this journey have been, in retrospect, good setbacks \u2013 they have forced me to examine myself, and come to terms with issues that I was ignoring or burying.  It has been a painful but cathartic process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those of you who I haven\u2019t talked to about it before, I was brought up in a largely non-religious household, and only really started going to church properly around 20 years ago, prompted by my wife Petra.  In the end I was confirmed twelve years ago, and the confirmation preparation process opened up for me a love of discussing and debating about Christianity that led me to offer myself for discernment as a licenced lay minister.  I trained to be a lay minister from 2016 to 2019, and so was licenced just before Covid hit \u2013 I may have had plans for what I was going to do as a lay minister, but that was an early lesson in how as a Christian minister you need to be flexible and adaptive to the needs of the people, rather than needing them to adapt to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My experience of training for licenced lay ministry opened me up to the possibility that I might be being called further, into ordained ministry, and I spent several years examining and exploring that vocational calling before offering myself for formal discernment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, after some false starts, I have spent the last two years in further training, and then yesterday, as some of you witnessed, I was ordained as a deacon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a deacon then?  Of the three ranks of ordained ministry, it has the earliest roots, dating back to almost the start of the book of Acts, when the apostles appoint seven people, including Stephen, the first martyr, to wait at the tables in the communal meals of the early Christian community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the word in Greek literally means \u2018servant\u2019 \u2013 and can be used in both meanings \u2013 as a servant, or as a title of someone in a leadership position in the church, through the rest of the New Testament.  It is a disappointing reflection of the failings of the Church that there are still Bible translations out there that will translate the male version of the word into English as Deacon, and yet the female version of it as servant, even when it is obvious that the meaning is as a Deacon, i.e. a church leader, for both men and women.  In the final chapter of Romans, when Paul refers to Phoebe as a diaconon, he is saying that she is a Deacon, the leader of the church of Chenchrae, and a benefactor of Paul, not a servant.  Female leadership in the church goes back to the time of St Paul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I am now come to you as a servant \u2013 I am here amongst you to serve and to learn, from Reverend Julia obviously, but also from all the rest of you here.  Bishop Lusa sent me here to St Mary\u2019s because he felt that it would be a place where I could learn much, and which would help me to be better Christian.  So I stand here in humility before you, and thank you for your welcome, and hope that over the next three years I will be able to serve you well, and that I will learn much from each of you and from this community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4th Sunday after Trinity 2026, Year A Well, after that Gospel reading what is there actually to say in a sermon? Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, says Jesus to the twelve apostles, and while I am not equating myself with any of the apostles, the warm welcome which I, and Petra and Larissa, have received … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Welcome Sermon at St Mary’s”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-service","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions\/221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/rum\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}