Here’s the sermon that I preached on Sunday morning.
(The video is also available on the Cathedral website).

Because of the peculiarities of the clergy rota and the fact that we’ve had one or two special things going on like baptisms and hosting visiting preachers, it feels like a long time since I’ve been in the pulpit preaching. Indeed, I think it is about eight weeks since I stood here.

Whenever I have a break like that from preaching and I sit down to write something new I tend to find my mind goes all blank. This game is actually easier if you play it every week.

And as I sat this week, my mind went back to one of the people who taught me how to preach. He was someone who used to go around listening to students preach most Sundays and could tend towards the caustic in what he had to say about them. “Ah,” he used to say, “the traditional Scots sermon – three points, a poem and a death bed scene”.

I don’t have a deathbed scene but let’s take three points – which today will be three ways of reading the story. Firstly looking at it at face value, then looking at it as an allegory and finally looking at it existentially.

But let’s start with a poem. [Read more…]