One of the most powerful encounters in the ministry of Jesus is found in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well in Gospel of John 4:5–42. It is a story about thirst, physical thirst, spiritual thirst, and the deep human longing to be seen and valued. But it is also a story about dignity, compassion, and transformation. At its heart, it reveals a Messiah who deliberately crosses boundaries that society insists should never be crossed. And in doing so, it challenges us as

I used to hate Lent   Not my words but those of a nun, a rather extraordinary nun called Liz Dodd   I struggled with Lent, she elaborates , because I found it performative, a season spent contorting ourselves into sadness. And every  year I thought, why play at being sad when there is already so much sadness. War, genocide, poverty and homelessness will not come to an end because we give up chocolate for a few weeks.   Easter in Disguise  is a new book for Lent, by our unusua

The train to Amritsar, and thence to Peshawar and the border with Afghanistan rested quietly in the sidings that night before its 20-hour journey in the morning. Carefully I stepped over the tracks, guided by a railway worker, to board the train several hours before it would draw into the platform and thus get a precious seat. For a few hours, alone, I was very nervous…was it the right train? I had put my trust completely in the hands of the railway worker…..as it drew into t

The temple courts were filled that day,With Pharisees in pride;A trembling woman dragged in shame,No place to run or hide. They flung her down before the crowd,Their verdict fierce and grim:“Caught in the act—Moses commandsThat we should stone her—what say Him?” And in the dust, while tempers burned,And hatred filled the air,Jesus knelt and traced the ground—A silence deep with care. “Let he who has no sin at allCast first the stone,” He said.And one by one the stones fell do

During his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says these deceptively simple words: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34) Simple words. Familiar words. And yet, if we are honest, some of the hardest words in all of Scripture to live by. Because we worry. We all do. Some worries feel small, what someone thought of something we said, a tone of voice, a look that suggested disapproval.

Wednesday 21 st January 2026 1 Samuel 17 , Mark 3: 1-6   May I speak in the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen   I see from my diary that I preached here on Wednesday 22 nd January 2025 — on the Gospel reading Mark 3: 1-6, today’s reading, the man with the withered arm. On Sundays we are used to a three year cycle before the readings come back again – but this has come round rather quickly. I don’t flatter myself that you’ll remember what I said a yea

11 th January 2026 Rev Sarah Curl Or at least, that’s what we say.But if we’re honest, times like this often bring a mixture of excitement and anxiety, hope and uncertainty, all held together at once. When I moved here to Putney in 2023, I knew no one. I had heard and trusted God’s voice, and I had followed that call, but when I arrived, I was alone. My family were still in Somerset, and here I was, stepping into something completely new. I remember those early days vividly.

The word "Apology" has changed meaning. In ye olde days it simply meant "a defence", or "an argument supporting". Below are my last sermons on 4 January 2026, thanking St Margaret's for their confidence in my ministry and partnership in the Gospel and praying for their future flourishing. I would like to begin by sharing the vicarage's favourite joke: There are three cows in a field: pardon, pardon-pardon and pardon-pardon-pardon. Pardon-pardon and pardon-pardon-pardon leave

by the Revd Dr Brutus Green ‘Hell is empty. And all the devils are here.’ A line from Shakespeare’s Tempest.   You can hear an echo in the Italian writer Gramsci, who was recently quoted by Rutger Bregman, who memorably called President Trump: the most openly corrupt president in American history, which was then awkwardly edited out by the BBC, who are never completely sure which direction they are facing. Gramsci wrote: ‘The old world is dying and the new world struggles to

It begins in mystery and ends in mystery.We enter the world crying, gasping for air, and one day we leave it with a sigh, returning, perhaps, to the same quiet we came from. Between those two moments lies everything: joy and sorrow, love and loss, laughter and pain. We are like twins in the womb, living in a world we think we understand, not knowing that beyond the veil of what we see lies something more. There’s an old story about twins in their mother’s womb. They live in

Lamorna Ash, who is a voice of her generation, tapping the zeitgeist , in her last book uses the story of Jacob wrestling the angel as a metaphor for her explorations within Christianity – a wrestling with faith – ‘my personal match with Christianity’, as she puts it. Sometimes it made life better, sometimes harder; It changed everything, it changed nothing. “All that wrestling, though” she says, “it was exhausting.”   She takes faith seriously; It’s what I’ve heard young peo

The church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without.   Words by TS Eliot that are always on my mind. At the first church I served in, the vicar, introducing the parish, told me, “ we lose a third of the congregation every year, as people leave central London. That means, just to stay still, you need to grow the congregation by a third each and every year.” Putney is more stable, but judging by Oberon’s class, which has dropped fr

I’m going to embarrass people. People often think the British are squeamish about sex. But actually they’re really squeamish about the ‘sordid subject of money’ which anthropologist Kate Fox calls out as a taboo, resulting from the peculiar British characteristics of ‘social-unease, modesty, hypocrisy and class-consciousness’ (559). She reports how an American-immigrant she knew had resorted to only discussing money in letters and emails as the English found it impossible to

There are two facts, two doctrines if you like, on which Christianity, as a philosophy, a religion, a world-view, depends and takes all its meaning.  The second is  the birth of Christ, the Incarnation,  But we can’t start talking about Christmas yet. The first and most definitive fact is the Creation, or more precisely, creatio   ex nihilo, creation from nothing. This separates Christians from two sets of other belief. On the one hand are the pantheists and pagans. The moder

1Tim 1:12-17, Luke 15:1-10 I believe in the forgiveness of sins.   I like to think of myself as a modern man. And us modern men have learned that listening is important – and so to curtail our problem-solving-instinct and our helpful… suggestions. So when Rhiannon texted me from an online meeting in the top of the house: “Desperate for a massive glass of squash.” I immediately knew how a modern man responds. I texted back: “Do you want me to listen, or to fix it.” [I had a

My preteen years were in the 1970s. At school, we read Ladybird books about Peter and Jane’s domestic adventures. A packet of crisps cost 5p, my mum collected Green Shield stamps, and our black-and-white TV flickered through Doctor Who and Tales of the Unexpected   while my sister and I hid behind the sofa. I still have a fear of electric pylons thanks to those haunting public information films, especially the one where a boy is electrocuted trying to retrieve a frisbee from

Trinity 6 Proper 12 27th July 2025 Writing a sermon is never just about finding the right words. For me, it always starts in prayer, and...

Petertide is a season that carries deep personal meaning for me. Traditionally, it's the time when many in the Church of England having...

It all began with Peter Pan I was 5, in the Scala theatre near Tottenham Court Road I was captivated I was lost My love of the theatre...

And such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered into them that they felt they had never really been happy or...