• Sermon preached on 26 August 2012

    Here’s what I said this morning:

    Jesus said, This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But whoever eats this bread will live forever.

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

    I was trying to think how to relate to this idea of the bread of our ancestors and I remembered a childhood holiday.

    For some reason, my parents had taken my sister and I for a holiday on a farm in south-west Wales. It was a great place to have a holiday. Lots to do on the farm and lots of places to go in that lovely area.

    And I remember my father getting a notion.

    He decided, quite out of the blue that if we were on a farm, then we needed to bake our own bread. I’m not quite sure how his logic worked because the farm in question was in the business of breeding pedigree Hereford bulls. But that doesn’t matter. He decided that bread needed to be baked and bread on the table we would have.

    So we went off to an old working flour mill to buy flour because my father didn’t do things by half when he got a notion in his head.

    And back we came to bake the family loaf.

    There was kneeding. There was proving. There was shaping. There was baking. There was a wonderful rich smell. (more…)

2 responses to “Cedric’s Sermon – 22 January”

  1. Rosemary Hannah Avatar
    Rosemary Hannah

    Laughed a lot – thought it was bang on.

    I will say it again, though – in my experience no church ever grows unless it is offering a really good quality of worship and has an involved and welcoming congregation.

    Similarly, any church which cannot offer these is a disaster waiting to happen.

    But every shrinking church is not a church without these things, though too many are.

    Learning to look out, to ask ‘How can we serve others by offering what they truly need?’ is a good place to start. Asking: ‘What if God wanting here?’ is indispensable.

  2. Rosie Bates Avatar
    Rosie Bates

    Thank you so much Canon Cedric. Must admit to a touch of the spiritual glums last Sunday re the history of my personal stance in the Diocese of Oxford. Now you have me laughing all the way to the ‘bank of grace’ and the hope that lies within us.

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