Sermons by Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall (Page 21)
Mimetic Desire
This morning I’m continuing the Lenten series on the meaning of the cross and of atonement. Today I’m going to focus on the work of Rene Girard. Much of Girard’s early work was in literary criticism, and he became a Christian through studying the work of Dostoyevsky. Later he formulated a specific theory which he and others have applied to theology. It is known as the “mimetic” theory. Girard says that we all imitate one another. In fact, we want…
Metaphors
When I was ordained, many people kindly gave me gifts. I was amazed at how many crosses I was given. Crosses to go on the wall, crosses to go on the sideboard, crosses to hang around my neck, crosses to put in my ears. Now please don’t get me wrong, these were beautiful crosses and lovely gifts. But it amazed me that the symbol which Paul describes as a scandal, foolishness and a stumbling block has become an ornament. At…
Plan A
We are now fast approaching the celebration of the core mysteries of our faith – in Holy Week we remember the passion and death of Jesus followed on Easter Sunday by his astonishing resurrection. So this is a good time for us to think about the big picture – what it’s all about. I’m going to be doing that in my sermons on the Sundays of Lent. As we approach this it’s helpful to remember that no-one really knows what…
Transfiguration
I’ve always been a bit bothered by this gospel. I can understand transformation – when one thing gets changed into another – and in the spiritual life we constantly seek to be transformed into the Christlike beings we were created to be. But transfiguration has seemed fairly pointless. Why would God go to the trouble of changing Jesus’ appearance for a brief time with only three witnesses who were later sworn to secrecy? This year it makes more sense to…
Prayer of Assent
This morning’s gospel reading comes from the very beginning of Mark’s gospel. Jesus was beginning his ministry, and we are told that he got up early in the morning and went to a deserted place to pray. Mark doesn’t tell us anything about how he prayed, but we can imagine that this was a regular practice of Jesus’. He rose early in the morning to pray. Prayer, contemplation or meditation are fundamental to the spiritual life. Prayer was foundational to…
Pageantry and passion
There are at least two ways of approaching Scripture. I’m going to loosely categorize them as the Engineer’s way and the English Major’s way. The hypothetical engineer wants to know the facts of the situation and how these fit with other known facts; the English Major is more interested in metaphoric layers of symbolism in the passage. This morning’s reading is especially troubling to the engineer. There are more unanswered questions than there are certainties with this narrative. Where did…
God Likes Us!
In the Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge the miserable and cold-hearted miser is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Marley, who also spent his life making money and exploiting the poor. Marley warns Scrooge that if he doesn’t change his ways he will, like Marley, be damned. But in order to give him one last chance at redemption, Scrooge is visited by three spirits, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost…
The Bigger Picture
I don’t usually watch television, but every morning I check the headlines on the BBC News app. This morning the first one is “Row over Trump team email trove.” If I were the BBC I might have led with the deadly attack on a Methodist church in Pakistan or the mudslide that has buried a remote village in Chile. Life is hard, and now we have learned our connectedness with others across the planet, we know more than ever about…
Entirely Fire
After the last few weeks when we have heard parables of violence and exclusion, it’s something of a relief to get to the two great commandments, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ And ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ For most of us this is the center of Jesus’ teaching. But I wonder whether that is right. Jesus himself says, “On these two commandments…
What is Caesar’s?
In this morning’s gospel reading we hear an attempt by the religious leaders to trap Jesus into saying something that will get him into trouble with the Roman authorities, and probably with the people as well. Paying taxes may be unpopular today but in Jesus time it was much more so. Taxes were collected by unscrupulous tax collectors who made their living by the tax they pocketed, and the money they passed on went to support the Roman emperor and…