SOUL SURMISE

DON'T PLAY SAFE - PARABLE OF THE TALENTS

When I was working with students, back in the day, I used the Parable of the Talents once a year.

As students appeared to begin their University lives I could sense that those from a sheltered conservative background were most determined to stay safe from the big bad world.

The theory was that if you could stay out of the bottom bar of the Queens Students Union and avoid drink and those without a faith then maybe you could get through University without getting tainted or back sliding.

Now I lived in what might have been a very safe Hall of Residence so many parents prayed that their children would get in there and be safe.

I remember one mother phoning (apologies if it was you) and when I explained that I didn’t have any more rooms she almost broke down at the thought of her son in the Elms Halls with non Christians. He might even have to share a room with one.

To encourage her I spoke about a friend of mine who came to faith in Jesus because he had to share a room with another friend of mine in those exact Halls. "That’s what happened to me," she said. I couldn’t quite believe the conversation.

Anyway I always warned my students against playing safe with the talent God had given them. This parable was against digging holes and hiding so that we wouldn’t get tainted or grazed. 

This parable was God telling us that he had gifted us an abundance of faith and spiritual gifts and that we were to be out there taking risks in the world to extend the Kingdom of God.

If we were the light of the world I suggested there was no point in shining in the light. It was the dark we were called to. Get out of the hole. Get down from the ivory tower. Playing safe is not an option. Ask Jesus.

 

Listen to the full sermon from November 19th 2023 here:

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FR ALEC REID - 14 DAYS - CLONARD/FITZROY - NOV 29th, 2023

 

CLONARD/FITZROY FELLOWSHIP 

FR ALEC REID- BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS

Wednesday, 29 November 7.30pm in Clonard Church

includes a showing of the documentary 14 DAYS (60 minutes)

Light refreshments in the monastery after. All welcome.

14 Days is an amazing piece of documentary.

When the directors, Dermot Lavery and Jonathan Golden from Doubleband Films, started thinking about remembering the worst 14 days in the Northern Irish Troubles they felt that it was too inflammatory.

In that short time span three unarmed members of the IRA were murdered in Gibraltar as they planned a bombing. That they were shot and not arrested raised tensions in Republican communities.

At their funerals a mad loyalist terrorist Michael Stone started shooting and throwing hand grenades, killing three and injuring sixty mourners.

Then at the funeral of two of those victims two British soldiers got somehow caught up in the huge cortege and were dragged from their car and murdered.

It was a time of bloody carnage and poisonous tension. Both sides could have been enraged at the remembering. In the midst of all this Dermot and Jonathan started to investigate Fr Alec Reid’s story.

They discovered a Catholic priest pastoring his own community in mourning and doing what he could to stop the violence getting worse. Reid tried to save the British soldiers by covering them with his own body from the terrorists seeking vengeance. He was told to leave or he would be shot and then returned to find the soldiers, now dead, attempting the kiss of life. He was photographed kneeling over them with their blood on his face.

That was almost a story... and then... the eureka moment. As Jonathan researched Fr Alec’s story the modest priest suddenly mentioned “the letter”. What letter? Well it seems that Fr Alec was at the second funerals in order to pick up a letter from Gerry Adams to hand to John Hume.

The letter was the terms for negotiations and a way into a peace process. Fr Alec had that letter in his pocket when he gave the British soldiers the last rites. Indeed he explained that he had to change the envelope because there was blood on it.

After that day when most of us would have gone home traumatised Fr Alec Reid drove to Derry with a letter from Sinn Fein to the SDLP that set out the building blocks for what in six years time would yield a cease fire and the peace process we enjoy the fruits of today.

Dermot and Jonathan had their way to tell the story of that dark fortnight. They had the light that was flickering into life at that darkest of times. Fr Alec Reid had redemption in his blood stained hands. It is responsible and prophetic journalism that is so often so sadly lacking.

FITZROY SUNDAY SERMON PODCAST - October 29, 2023

This week's Sermon Podcast is up in all of the usual places.

This week we were looking at the fulcrum in the history of engagement with God. 

For centuries the Jewish people engaged with God through the keeping of the law.

Jesus shifted the entire deal. In the Lectionary Reading John 8: 31-36 Jesus explained this to the Jewish Leaders in the Temple Courts. They had been slaves to the law but now a righteousness apart from the law had arrived - Jesus himself.

We then look at Romans and Galatians and Philippians and bring out this new freedom in Jesus, the truth of who Jesus is and living his ways, the good news for all people invited into this cosmic possibility of being the human beings we were created to be.

There were also warnings that as the Jewish Leaders of Jesus day we can go down roads that make us dogmatically arrogant, judgementally self righteous, pushing others away in a pharisaical exclusively.

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SUNDAY SERMON PODCAST - SEEING CREATION WITH THE HEART OF GOD

Fitzroy's Harvest Service saw me riffing off two songs by our friend Paul Keeble who brought us two songs that he had written.

The first This Is Your Doing was a song of praise and thanks for God's spectacular creation inspired by Psalm 118:23 - The Lord has done this and it is marvellous in our eyes.

Out of that song I looked at Psalm 104 and asked how God sees his creation and where he holds it in his heart.

The second song What Will it Take asks just that - What will it take?/How many times must creation cry out? 

Out of this I suggest that our faith is least credible in our complicity in the climate crisis. Do we hold it in our hearts or see it as God does?

LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD HERE 

SUNDAY SERMON PODCAST - 8.10.23

This week's Sunday Sermon Podcast takes on yet another of Jesus parables in Matthew 21. At this stage Jesus is cranking up the tensions with the religious leaders. In this parable Jesus doesn't mess about. Like William Wallace in the movie Braveheart he is off to pick a fight. He reveals more of himself and his imminent death. We went from this to communion... perfect... 

 

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FITZROY SUNDAY SERMON PODCAST #6

This week's Sermon Podcast sees me open up the Parable of the Two Sons. I do that by illustrations from meeting the Pope, from my old boss, from author Douglas Coupland and Canadian master preacher Darrell Johnston... Is it better to know God or do God's will?

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SUNDAY SERMON PODCAST #5 - THE SHOCK AND SURPRISE OF GRACE

This week's Sermon Podcast sees me preaching about the workers in the field who all got paid the same no matter how many hours they worked.

What was Jesus telling us from this Parable in Matthew 20.

We look back into Matthew 19 to get a context and then I talk about wanting to be a potato picker in Galgorm in the 1960s, how grace is crazy, scandalous and irrational, and how the micro culture of the Kingdom of God is full of surprises and shocks.

Where is God shocking us with his grace today. 

 

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SUNDAY SERMON PODCAST #4 - HORIZONTAL FORGIVENESS

This week's Sunday Sermon podcast is now available. It is a little bit of a shorter mix this week as we edited our service after a missional morning to Belfast City Half Marathon.

We continue on the them of forgiveness, a word that is so central to our faith. We all like the vertical forgiveness from God but we struggle and debate and hesitate about the horizontal forgivenes, personal and national. We surmise Jesus parable, paraphrasing it into a Drug Barron and his pusher. 

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SUNDAY SERMON PODCAST #3

Sunday morning's Sermon Podcast is now available and ready.

On Sunday we were looking at divisions and restoration of relationships from Matthew 18: 15-20. The Sermon looks at how in a world driven by vengeance we as followers of Jesus should be driven by reconciliation. Sin pushes away but grace draws in. We then got personal. Who in Fitzroy do we like least and are they the resource that God has given to us to make us better disciples and live out the fruit of the spirit. 

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SUICIDE REFLECTION - SUNDAY SEPT 10th 2023

Suicide is a devastating thing to hit families, friends and communities. We in Fitzroy know. 

Belfast has the highest number of suicides per 100,000 in the UK. 2022 saw 10.4 suicides per 100,000 in England and Wales. belfast was 17.9. 

Fr Martin Magill and I do many things together and sadly suicide is one that we have joint experience. `we had an experience in St. Peter's in Rome last year that had Martin, my wife Janice and I in tears as we prayed for those who have experienced the suicide of a loved one.

I guess what we are doing on Sunday night is an extension of that. It is a Reflective hour, featuring music from Fitzroy and St. Johns. I will lead a reflection on that moment in Rome and there will be reflective music space to respond to that.

Sunday 10th September 2023 at 7pm, St. John's Church, 444 Falls Road, Belfast