Month: June 2026

Genesis 24.34-38,42-49, 58-67, Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30 

The Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 5 July 2023, Eldroth, Clapham 

‘Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’ 

Such gracious words tell us that ours is not a God who makes hard demands on people – contrary to what we may have been told. Ours is a God who wants to free us from our burdens. 

Neither is our God one who controls us by keeping us busy – though the Church can tend to do that. Our God wants to give us rest. 

Nor is ours a God who imposes on us – no, our God is gentle and humble in heart. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. 

So if we are carrying heavy burdens, we must understand that those burdens are coming from somewhere else. God invites us to turn ourselves away from those places, and come to him to find rest. 

The burdens we carry, they’re often to do with our relationships with others. It doesn’t take very long in the Bible before the perfect couple sail into troubled waters and Adam is blaming Eve for taking the apple – ‘she told me to do it’, he tells God, and god is unimpressed. 

Then there’s Psalm 45, a song for a royal wedding, where the Psalmist sings to the princess, ‘Forget your own people and your father’s house. The king … is your master; therefore do him honour.’ [2] Imagine what pressure that put on this bride: the burden of her being pulled in two opposing  directions at once: one way towards her beloved family, and the other way towards her beloved husband. Maybe you’ve sometimes felt torn like that.

We are always listening to what others say about us: how we respond to them is what shapes and forms us into the people we are. And when others’ expectations of us tear us in different directions or are impossible to fulfil, that’s a heavy load to carry. And, if we’re honest, then we must admit that sometimes we are the ones who burden others with our expectations of them. 

I don’t think people have changed that much since New Testament times. Jesus said that his generation were never satisfied. They berated the ascetic John the Baptist for neither eating nor drinking, but when they saw how Jesus enjoyed eating and drinking, they called him a glutton and a drunkard. 

Each of us feel the pressure imposed on us by outside forces: whether that’s what our friends and neighbours are doing and saying, or how the Sunday supplements or social media are telling us how we should live. It can be depressing, feeling that you don’t measure up.

Maybe the greatest burdens we carry are those we impose on ourselves. Whether it’s the young worrying about their image, their body shape, their looks, or the old worrying about their legacy, dealing with unfinished business, regrets. 

Jesus invites us to turn our backs on these pressures, to cease comparing what others have achieved or what they want us to do and be, and to gently attend to our own, unique, life story. 

Jesus invites us to trust God, to carry our anxieties to him in prayer. Our knees may buckle under the weight of these prayers; he promises that as we bend the knee before him he will take the load away. 

Some things which burden us are outside our control and may not be easily fixed: so the pressures they impose are intense. Prayer can help us to cope with the pressure and to change these circumstances; in prayer God can reveal to us a way to deal with the challenges which life throws at us. 

And praying with others can inspire and guide us to work together to change our material circumstances, and those of others who are in need or distress. [3] 

Let us take a few moments now, to unburden ourselves before God….

Jesus says, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, 

and I will give you rest.’

Come to me. Take a step back to forget for a few moments what others think of you; and to remember what God thinks of you. 

‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.’

Know yourself to be loved by him, so that love will fill your heart so much that that it flows out in blessing into all your other relationships too. 

We thank you, Lord, that your yoke is easy, and your burden is light. We thank you that you always long to lift us up when we are down. Help us to always come to you with our burdens, to always trust in your care. Amen

Notes 

[1] A rewrite of Unburdening: life in the divine presence, preached at Austwick and Keasden, 2023, and Come to me all you weary and burdened, preached in Devon, 2011.

[2] Psalm 45. 

[3] See e.g., Deirdre Brower Latz with Carmel Murphy Elliott and Sarah Purcell, Church on the Margins. Church Action on Poverty, Referenced February 2023. 

Romans 6.12–23, Matthew 10.40–42

The Fourth Sunday after Trinity, 28 June 2026, Austwick, Clapham

When the slaves were released, they came out singing.

In 1873 a group of freed slaves from North America came to the UK to sing. Newspaper adverts announced that The Jubilee Singers from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee would be giving a rendering of their “Marvellous and heart-stirring melodies” in concert halls, cathedrals and churches across Britain, including an appearance before Queen Victoria herself. [1]

They sang Spirituals, songs that convey both the hardships of slavery and the freedom the singers find in Christ. Having been emancipated in 1865 these Singers were on a mission to raise funds for Fisk, America’s first black university, proclaiming the right of all African Americans to education.

Touring the world the Fisk Singers introduced audiences to their “songs of sorrow” like Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Steal Away to Jesus, and Nobody Knows the Trouble I See, which went on to become anthems of freedom and equality across the world. It was reported that Queen Victoria and the Prime Minister Gladstone ‘treated the Singers like equals’ – a very telling turn of phrase.

For Victoria they performed “Go Down, Moses”, a song drawing on the ancient Hebrew scriptures which reminded the singers and their audience that just as slavery has a long history, so does liberation, as enacted by Moses, who was tasked by God to set the enslaved people free:

When Israel was in Egypt’s land – let my people go

Oppress’d so hard they could not stand – let my people go

Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land

Tell old Pharaoh, let my people go [2]

Musician Harvey Brough, who recently brought the story of The Jubilee Singers to the London stage, said of those who sang the Spirituals, “They had the most shocking terrible inhumane treatment for all their lives as slaves, but there is not a word of anger or revenge in the songs. It’s about: ‘We are going to get to a better place and it will be different’.” [3]

This echoes the words of African American theologian James Cone that “Through all of the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope — a faith in the ultimate justice of things.” Even when being treated most fearfully, through their songs the enslaved were able to say, “I’m no longer a slave to fear. I am a child of God”. [4]

A century after The Jubilee Singers visited England, another musician rose to prominence. Bob Marley, the son of Norman Marley, an English colonial army captain, and a Jamaican woman, Cedella Booker, a descendant of the Coromantee slaves who had staged the strongest uprising for freedom in Jamaica’s plantation era. In ‘Redemption Song’, Bob Marley sang: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds.” [5]

Mental slavery, Marley suggests, is the real slavery, the fundamental slavery from which one must free oneself. This emancipation is something towards which the enslaved peoples of the Americas were constantly reaching, as they sang their sorrowful, spiritual, songs. 

And this leads us into another discussion of slavery – that of St Paul in his epistle to the Romans. He wrote about the slavery of sin, which seems to have a lot in common with the mental slavery Bob Marley sang about. “Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions,” Paul wrote. 

What were the passions of the colonisers who developed and drove the transatlantic slave trade? The passion to explore the world and discover lands new to them, to derive as much wealth as possible for themselves from these places by fully exploiting the natural and human resources, as they saw them, which they found there.

And what was the sin which exercised dominion in their colonial hearts and minds? The sin of white supremacy, the belief that white people are superior to those of other races. One slave owner, future American president Thomas Jefferson, wrote in 1785 that blacks were “inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind.” Lawmakers created codes which socially segregated white colonists from black enslaved people, creating divisions which would hinder their ability to unite. [6] The enslavers who were themselves enslaved – to the sin of segregation – formed the modern world, its inequalities of social structures and of spirit their legacy which we carry with us.

Paul asks his readers, “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” 

Those who seek to live a spiritual life understand the need to search ourselves, to ask the question – to whom are we enslaved? Living a spiritual life often requires a change of heart, a conversion. [7]

And Paul is writing to those who, in seeking to live a spiritual life have experienced a change of heart, a conversion. “But thanks be to God,” he says, “that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

Slaves of righteousness – this is a different form of enslavement altogether. It is a willing giving-over of oneself to the God of righteousness. Those of the colonial mind who experience a change of heart, a conversion, give over our passion for wealth and status for a passion for goodness and justice; we gave over our belief in our superiority over those of other races to discover the joys of travelling in unity with all people; we give over the angers and fears which fuel division, for love and peace.

There is still in our society a widespread reluctance to truly grapple with colonialism and its legacy, and so the colonial mindset lies deep within each one of us, and in our communities and institutions, and it is not dormant. ‘Othering’, the way we separate ourselves from peoples unlike us, is ever-present, driving anxiety and fear, weakening and destabilising society. 

But redemption songs are for everyone, they are for the sons and daughters of former slaves and of former slave owners willing to gather at the table of fellowship. [8] They help us all to say together joyfully, that ‘We are going to get to a better place and it will be different.’

When the slaves were released, they came out singing. Paul, in his theological Greek, and Bob Marley in his Jamaican patois,together ask us to humbly acknowledge that we all carry something of the Pharaoh within us: whilst also celebrating that, by the grace of God, we can also all be Moses. The question they pose to us provokes a change of heart, a conversion: “Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom… [these] redemption songs?”

Notes

[1] Emma Bartholomew, Fisk Jubilee Singers: Amazing story of how freed slaves sang in Hackney 150 years ago. Ham&High, 21 February 2019.

[2] Wikipedia: Go Down, Moses. 

[3] Emma Bartholomew, Fisk Jubilee Singers: Amazing story of how freed slaves sang in Hackney 150 years ago. Ham&High, 21 February 2019.

[4] Bethel Music, Jonathan David Helser, Melissa Helser, No Longer Slaves.

[5] Bob Marley, Redemption Song; Horace Campbell, Bob Marley and Emancipation From Mental Slavery. United Reggae, 25 May 2011.

[6] Wikipedia: White supremacy. 

[7] “Living a spiritual life requires a change of heart, a conversion. Such a conversion may be marked by a sudden inner change, or it can take place through a long, quiet process of transformation. But it always involves an inner experience of oneness.” Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Spiritual Life: Eight Essential Titles by Henri Nouwen.

[8] “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” Martin Luther King Jr, I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World.

Romans 6.1b–11, Matthew 10.24–39

 The Third Sunday after Trinity, 21 June 2026 

Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth

In early 1933, the poet Dylan Thomas’ friend Bert Trick suggested that he and Thomas both write a poem on the subject of ‘immortality’. Trick’s poem contained the refrain “For death is not the end,” and Thomas wrote a poem which was destined to become a modern classic: “And death shall have no dominion”. In 1936 Thomas included it in his second published volume of poetry, Twenty-five Poems, which revealed Thomas’s personal beliefs regarding religion and the forces of nature.

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

The poem’s title references chapter 6 of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, which we’ve heard today: “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.” Death – Thomas seems to be saying, under the influence of St Paul – Death, in Christ, is a guarantee of immortality. 

You’ll recall another famous Dylan Thomas poem about death, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” which is notable for its defiant anger and its passion, both of which are familiar emotions to anyone in the throes of bereavement. “And death shall have no dominion” is less angry, but it does strongly express Thomas’s faith that the dying and the bereaved would not be defeated by their experience, but healed and liberated. 

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again…

It seems to mark for Thomas a turning from his early agnosticism towards an appreciation of the Christian view of death – that what follows for the deceased and for the bereaved is good, and lasting.

Though lovers be lost love shall not…

It is our faith that death shall have no dominion. It is our faith that the power of death is too weak to overcome us. The effect of death is not enough to defeat us, for  the greater and brighter power of love is at work in the world and in the heavens. Death shall not dominate us. Love will remain.

It’s a message for us in frightening times. We need not “fear those who kill the body,” says Jesus, for they “cannot kill the soul”.

The gospels and Paul’s writings remind us that in the ultimate act of self-giving love, God himself has been through death – in Jesus. This assures us of the strength of God’s promise that everyone else who goes through death with him will also experience what he did: a rebirth, a resurrection.

Paul wrote, “We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” This reassures us that all who have been baptised, together with all who have had a Christian funeral, receive God’s gift of immortality.

“So we too might walk in newness of life” teaches us that resurrection is not only for the deceased in heaven: it is also for us here on earth. Although we suffer little deaths, every day, endings, frights and failures, God is always alongside us working to bring about new beginnings, new life. 

We know this when we watch what God is doing in nature. In the depths of winter when all is dead and seems forever lost, we have learned to trust that before long the spring will come, that the hibernating creatures will crawl out of their little tombs and begin to move and mix and mate again; that the trees will start to blossom and the birds begin to sing because the earth is once again budding with food for them and all the other creatures around. 

This all teaches us that it is God’s natural way to ensure that there is a gentle, generous, power in life which will always be overcoming death. And so we, being part of God’s good creation, find our winter blues fall away as the dark nights fade and the light days return. Through this we learn to trust that when we’re at our lowest, God’s green shoots of rebirth and growth are already at work in our hearts and lives. 

“And death shall have no dominion” echoes the revelation of Jesus Christ himself in the gospels, in celebrating immortality as belonging to the everyday world. It is a thing as much as air, water, or mud. If we are “alive to God”, then even here and now in our imperfect fleshly bodies, eternal life is ours.

Notes

A rewrite of Romans 6 / John 6: And death shall have no dominion, preached in Croxteth, 2008.

Sources, accessed 17 June 2026:

Wikipedia: And death shall have no dominion.

Casey Morris, Exploring Dylan Thomas: A Maverick Poet’s Legacy. Decadent Serpant, 22 January 2025.

Romans 5.1-8, Matthew 9.35-10.8

The Second Sunday after Trinity, 14 June 2026, Austwick, Keasden 

Today I’d like to give you my World Cup sermon. But if that makes your heart sink, having already had your fill of football which is all over the media right now, let me try to keep your interest a little longer by saying that I’ll be talking about a World Cup with a difference, a World Cup competition which is already over, having just held its final game, in Mexico City, on the 16th of May. 

I’m talking about the Street Child World Cup, a football tournament of 30 teams of young people from around the world, children and teenagers who have a significant connection to the streets, whether living on the streets, or working on the streets, or both. These are children who might sleep in public spaces like parks, bus stations, or abandoned buildings, or spend most of their day on the streets trying to earn their family essential money, or to avoid abuse at home, or for other reasons: young people facing various risks, including exploitation, violence, abuse, and health issues, who often lack access to education, healthcare, and other basic services. 

The Street Child World Cup is organised by Street Child United, which since 2010 has been dedicated to championing the rights and the dignity of street-connected children and young people around the world. Football is what brings them together, in the same place and time as every FIFA World Cup. But there are bigger goals than winning a competition: the idea is to ensure that young people with experience of life on the streets are not only seen, but heard and taken seriously. Beyond the pitch, Street Child United works hard to ensure that street-connected children are not treated as invisible or criminalised, but recognised as people with agency and a voice.

So while the football competition goes on, there is also a Congress, where young leaders from every team come together to debate, draft and deliver a collective call-to-action on the rights of street-connected children, and there is an arts programme co-created with the players, who turn their lived experience into murals, film, photography and performances that travel beyond the tournament, helping to raise the general public’s awareness of street children and their lives.

“It is the World Cup of hope and the World Cup of peace and the World Cup of joy. It really is a positive World Cup,” says John Wroe, who is the CEO of Street Child United. 

Now, I know John. We used to work together helping to organise a Christian music and arts festival called Greenbelt. Occasionally we’d take time out with some others to kick a ball around the festival camping fields, he proudly wearing his Swansea City shirt, me my Everton one, both of us supporting teams which made us familiar with repeated failure and disappointment, occasional moments of joy, and with a deep sense of community, belonging, love. Later John, who worked then in community arts development, helped me and a friend put together a proposal to turn an old Methodist church in North Liverpool into an arts centre; which in the end didn’t work out but which is still, to this day, a popular church volunteer-run cafe.

It was on a trip to South Africa that John got the vision for the Street Child World Cup. He recalls travelling in a small group with his wife and children “to show our kids that the opportunities they had in life were unusual,” he said. What he encountered instead changed everything. The project the family visited was run entirely by former street-connected young people. It was on a makeshift football pitch that one boy, 14, who had lived on the streets since the age of four, told John: “When people see me on the streets, they say I’m a street child. But when they see me playing football, they say I am a person… a person like you.” Those comments showed the transformative power of sport not just to engage, but to reframe how society sees and treats street children. Thus an idea began to take shape that would grow into Street Child United. “If we can change the way people see street children, we can begin to change the way they are treated,” John says.

To cut a long and beautiful story short, the first Street Child World Cup was held in Durban, South Africa, in March 2010, just prior to the FIFA World Cup being hosted there. Featuring teams of street children and former street children from Brazil, South Africa, Nicaragua, Ukraine, India, the Philippines and Tanzania, each squad of nine players, aged between 14 and 16 years old, included three girls. The teams are organised by frontline organisations working with homeless and socially excluded children. A representative team of young people from Manchester also took part in the tournament, and Blue Peter brought it to the attention of our nation. Since then, there have been Street Child World Cups in Brazil, Russia and Qatar, and this year’s, just completed, in Mexico. 

The impact can be seismic: after one tournament, the Tanzanian team returned home to national TV coverage, a reception in parliament and a meeting with the president. “We had no idea the impact in-country that this football tournament would be having,” said John. 

Countless young people have shaped Street Child United, including Sadock John from Tanzania, whom John Wroe met at the first World Cup in 2010. Sadock, once living on the streets, received his first birth certificate and passport through Street Child United.  The bureaucratic hurdles that come with crossing borders are very challenging for those who have grown up without formal documentation. Today, Sadock is studying at The University of West England and will graduate this  year. Stories like Sadock’s, and countless others, are at the heart of why Street Child United exists.

John says, “We find ourselves when we lose ourselves in the service of others.” Which, for me, connects with the charge which Jesus gave his disciples: “Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”

If we take this to be Jesus’ charge to all his followers, including ourselves, then this can sound daunting. But not so much, I think, when we break it down.

“Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” means go home – start from where you are, go to the people you know and can relate to; those you have something in common with. If your thing is football, go to those others who also love playing it.

“Proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near”” means telling those people that whatever their circumstances, God loves them, is close to them, wants the best for them.

“Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons” means be a healer. Maybe you don’t see your kindness, your generosity with your time or your support of charity, as being healing miracles, but they are: small miracles, perhaps, but actions which make a real difference to those people you show care towards, and can even transform their lives.

“We find ourselves when we lose ourselves in the service of others,” says John Wroe. We find ourselves when we help people by doing something which we know about, something which we’re good at, something which we’re passionate about. 

Notes

Source material for this talk, accessed 10 June 2026:

Street Child United website.

Wikipedia: Street Child World Cup.

Jo Griffin, The heartbreaking, life-affirming story of the Street Kids’ World Cup. Big Issue, 21 May 2018.

Dahaba Ali Hussen, How the Street Child World Cup changes the game for homeless children: ‘It’s the World Cup of hope’. Big Issue, 4 May 2026.

Romans 4.13–25, Matthew 9.9-13,18-26

The First Sunday after Trinity, 7 June 2026, Eldroth, Clapham

Today the mood music in my head comes from the Beatles, because yesterday – now there’s a Paul McCartney song for starters – yesterday was my birthday, and so the question for me now and for the next twelve months is: ‘Will you still need me, will you still feed me…. now I’m sixty-four?’ And today’s gospel reading suggests a George Harrison song, released almost exactly sixty years ago today: “If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street, If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat, If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet. Cause I’m the Taxman. Yeah, I’m the taxman”

Keeping up the Liverpudlian theme, you may remember that back in 1989 Ken Dodd was tried for tax evasion. During the case, held in Liverpool, Dodd’s representative George Carman QC, quipped, “Some accountants are comedians, but comedians are never accountants”. The trial revealed that Doddy had very little money in his bank account, but did have £336,000 in cash stashed in suitcases in his attic. When asked by the judge, “What does a hundred thousand pounds in a suitcase feel like?”, Doddy replied, “The notes are very light, M’Lord.” [1]

While this court case rumbled on I was working in an office block which overlooked Liverpool’s Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts. I worked for the Department of Trade and Industry but the two floors above us housed the Inland Revenue – and the officers who had put together the case against Ken Dodd.

Every day of the trial Doddy left the court building with a large crowd of well-wishers cheering him through the square, while above them, lines of tax officers hung out of open windows booing and jeering him. On the day that Dodd was acquitted of all charges the boos from the tax officers were louder and bitter; but the enormous crowd on the square was jubilant. Beneath the Queen Victoria monument an impromptu street party broke out around the vindicated comedian. As I watched this astonishing scene through our office windows I thought, it shows just how much ordinary people love seeing someone turn the tables on the taxman.

Interestingly, in the gospels, over and over again, we find Jesus turning the tables on the taxman. He famously did it in the Temple, angrily sending the money-changers packing. He did it to the Pharisees by twisting their trick question about paying taxes to the emperor into an irresistible challenge to them to put God before politics or money; he did it in his observation about the widow who out of her poverty, donated all she had, in contrast to the wealthy whose gifts were meagre by comparison. The Widow’s Mite shows how the Temple tax most hurt the people on the lowest incomes, the people who Jesus most openly loved.

Jesus turned the tables on the scribes, those pious types who liked to be noticed in the market-places, and loved having the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets, who made a show of their lavish Temple sacrifices. Jesus saw how they gained their wealth and status through playing the Temple tax system to their benefit, a game which – they knew full well – kept the poorest people in poverty. 

Jesus condemned those who acted devoutly, but whose wealth was derived from the sacrifices they  forced the poorest people to make. [2] No wonder they began looking for ways to silence him.

His opposition to the Temple tax system got him crucified in the end. Those who profited from these tax laws set out to destroy the One who in his very body represented the laws of God – the laws of love for God and for neighbour. But they didn’t have the last word. “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, Jesus said to them, speaking of the Temple of his body. [3] 

The resurrection of Jesus was his ultimate table-turning act against these taxmen. For the sacrifice he made of himself on the cross condemned to death the old sacrificial system in all its corruption; it brought to life the ways of the God of mercy available to all those who embrace his law of love.

The story of the call of Matthew, a tax-collector, reveals that others caught up in the Temple tax system got damaged too. Tax-collectors were reviled in Jewish society because their daily work involved them in the practice of tax-farming, that is, they paid the Roman State the taxes for a certain area of the country, and then attempted to cover their outlay by collecting money or saleable goods from the people within that area. [4] 

Tax collectors made their money by demanding tax payments in excess of what Rome levied and keeping the difference. It was a murky business, just like the buying and reselling of debt is a murky business today. Whilst some tax-collectors would relish the potential lucrative rewards, they all had to sacrifice some sense of self-worth, and live with being detested by their peers because of their perceived greed and collaboration with the Roman occupiers. It’s likely that for many, tax-collecting was a last resort: they’d accepted the shame of it for the sake of their family’s financial survival. 

Matthew collected taxes in the village of Capernaum in the province of Galilee. Like all the other tax-collectors he would have been despised, treated with contempt by his neighbours. So imagine how Matthew’s heart must have melted when Jesus turned and said to him, “follow me”.

This was Jesus turning the tables on the tax-collector Matthew – but in a good way. While everyone else mistrusted Matthew, Jesus showed him trust. While everyone else shamed Matthew, Jesus lifted from Matthew the veil of shame which shrouded him and enabled him to hold his head up again, to know himself affirmed and loved. In being merciful towards Matthew Jesus also turned the tables on the culture which sacrificed tax-collectors on the altar of shame for the sake of the Temple.

In the eyes of the self-righteous, tax-collectors and sinners were all contaminated people. People unworthy to enter the Temple to make their sacrifices. This is why the Pharisees criticised Jesus  for eating with them. But Jesus turned the tables on the Pharisees by suggesting that it was their attitude that was toxic, saying, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I came to call not the upright, but sinners.’ [5]

We can relate to people who can admit their faults and failings. Like Doddy, who in the years  following his court case would come onstage and introduce himself as a “failed accountant” [6]

When it comes to turning the tables on the taxman, God knows that we’re all just people trying to get along financially, caught up in the system, making sacrifices sometimes in trying to do the right thing by the state, by our family,  and by our charitable donations.

What Matthew joyfully discovered is that above every other consideration in life, we are unconditionally loved by Jesus, and called to join him in the joyful work of practicing mercy towards ourselves and others, putting God’s law of love above every other concern. 

Notes

This s a rewrite of my talk Turning the tables on the taxman, preached in Devon, 2012 and Somerset, 2018.

[1] Wikipedia: Ken Dodd: Tax evasion court case.

[2] Mark 12.40.

[3] John 2.17-22.

[4] Wikipedia: Tax collector: Christian Bible; Tax farming.

[5] Matthew 9.10-13.

[6] Wikipedia: Ken Dodd: Tax evasion court case.

Acts 17.22–31, John 14.15–21

31 May 2026, Waterloo United Free Church

‘Paul stood up in front of the city council…’ the Good News Bible tells us. This might cause you to picture a mahogany-panelled Town Hall chamber full of worn leather seats, but this was ancient Athens and quite a different place altogether. Other versions of the Bible give the city council its name: ‘Paul stood in front of the Areopagus…’ they say.

The Areopagus. It sounds like the sort of name that we might give to a glitzy shopping precinct, or a multiplex cinema. In ancient Athens it was a place of great seriousness: the seat of civic power. For, named after Ares, the Greek god of war, the Areopagus was the principal council of Athens, imposingly sited just beneath the Acropolis overlooking the city on a rocky outcrop called the ‘Hill of Ares’. Less like a Victorian council chamber and more like a stirring ancient sports stadium. 

The Areopagus was where influential people exercised their power, where powerful people reinforced their influence, and their judgments and policy decisions were directed by their devotion to their many different gods. 

Although the people considered their gods immortal, and far more knowledgeable and powerful than humans, they also regarded them as being persons rather than abstract concepts. Spiritual and active in the physical realm. These deities were described as being similar to humans in appearance, albeit larger and more beautiful. Their emotions and actions were largely the same as those of humans; they were sexual and warlike, jealous and amoral. [2]

The gods were spiritual entities who took on real physical shape and form in the world. 

Their divine power allowed the Greek gods to intervene in mortal affairs in various ways: they could cause natural events such as rain, wind, or epidemics, they could make crops grow or withhold them, and they could dictate the outcomes of complex human events, such as battles or political situations. No wonder they were worshipped at altars all around Athens, and invoked at the meetings of the city council.

Among these gods, besides the violent warrior god Ares, there was Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty; Demeter, goddess of the harvest who gave feast or famine according to her mood; Apollo, the god of healing; and Zeus, father of all people, leader of the gods. 

Paul had noticed that there was a god in Athens for every eventuality in life, and the streets were full of altars to all of them. But he noticed something striking about one of these altars. It didn’t have a name on it: no Zeus, no Athena, no Medusa. Just a simple plaque which read, ‘To an unknown god.’ It fascinated Paul that with so many gods around to help shape their lives, the people had a sense that there was still another god who they didn’t yet know and couldn’t yet see, flourishing in a realm perhaps outside that of all the other divinities. A different sort of god altogether.

I want to suggest to you this morning that we, in our society today, are very like the ancient Athenians. We fill our villages, towns and cities with altars to all sorts of gods. These are “the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this present darkness”, as St Paul once described the spiritual forces which dominate our world in tangible ways: the spiritual entities who take on real physical shape and form in our world. [3] 

God-like forces rule our lives. It’s just that we don’t often think about them in this way. We might not regard them as ‘gods’, but when we consider the function that these Powers have in our world, we might see the similarities with how the ancient Greek gods functioned for their people. 

The ancient Greeks would have said, and so might we: that we look to these gods to provide for us in every area of life; we pay our tributes to them to satisfy them; to show our devotion to them we display their icons everywhere on our clothes, accessories, in our homes and on our city streets; we shape our very lives around the demands they make on us. So please bear with me as I suggest to you that…

• today we have the god Asda, a giant who straddles the earth providing all the food and drink we could ever need and whose priests are dressed in bright lime-coloured robes;
• today we have the god Bupa, who promises to attend to all our health needs at speed, though also at great cost; 
• today we have the god Lotto, who promises us the earth but disburses his gifts very sparingly; 
• and today we have the god Google, who offers us the knowledge of everything we ever want to know, whilst disclosing details of our every move to other ‘gods’ for profit.

Please bear with me as I ask you to consider that these prominent corporations are among the great Powers which dominate our lives. You may not find it helpful my calling them ‘god-like’, but I do this to try to encourage the understanding that these Powers are both earthly bodies and spiritual beings. The theologian Walter Wink devoted decades to studying and discussing what the Bible means by the ‘principalities and powers’, and what that means today. He wrote that

The Powers are not spiritual spooks inhabiting the air and leaping on the unwary. That was an earlier way of putting it. Nor are they merely institutions, political or economic systems, ideologies, or social structures. That has been the modern way of coming at it. Neither is adequate, though both contain some truth. 

The Powers consist, it turns out, of an outer manifestation and an inner spirituality. Every material or tangible manifestation of power has its inner or spiritual aspect, whether it be the spirit of a sports team, the morale of a business office, the ‘corporate culture’ of a transnational corporation, or the ethos of a nation. [4]

Paul said that the gods revered in Athens were “like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.” But that makes them no less spiritual. Bupa and Lotto, Nike and Asda are beings ‘formed by the art and imagination of mortals’, and they each have their particular spirit, their particular way of being in the world. We can sense this if we think of the different natures of, let’s say, Everton and Tranmere Rovers, or of the different cultures of Waitrose and Aldi, the different spirits at work in HSBC and our local credit union.

Whatever their tangible and spiritual differences, however, each of these bodies are part of God’s creation; indeed, part of Jesus’ creation – for in Colossians Paul teaches that “In him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” [5]

The Powers have been created for good: each of them having a purpose which glorifies God and benefits creation. So, just like Apollo, Bupa was created for the purpose of healing. Just like Athena, our universities were created for learning and wisdom. But, just as we individuals can fall away from God’s good purposes for us, so too can these great Powers fall away from their divine vocation – their purpose to serve the common good. “When an institution prioritises its own interests over this purpose, its spirituality becomes pathological or ‘demonic’”, writes Walter Wink. When corporations prioritise their own profit over health and education, for instance, then they are fallen, in need of redemption. [6]  

The ancient Greeks saw this in their gods. They were ambivalent about Ares, for instance, after whom the Areopagus was named. Although Ares embodied the physical valour necessary for success in war, the Greeks saw that he also personified sheer brutality and bloodlust; he had a savage, dangerous, militarised quality which troubled the people. [7]

Likewise today we feel ambivalence about so many of the Powers at large in our world. For we know that despite all the blessings these so-called gods may bestow on us, they’re incapable of satisfying our deepest-down, aching, needs: their behaviours lead to conflict and distress. We’re conscious that despite living in one of the wealthiest, most comfortable societies the world has ever known, the pursuit of the gods of wealth and comfort brings with it poverty and discomfort. The Powers-at-large so often fail us.

We can be both appreciative of the many positives about the internet, and deeply concerned about its darker side. We’re disturbed by the dissonance between our love of nature and our dependency on resource-devouring technology which is increasingly overheating the planet and decimating those very species which we love. We’re troubled that the creeds of consumer happiness driven by the Powers of this world create a cruel competitive culture of high anxiety, anger, fear and loathing, self-loathing and depression. 

I think that this disquiet, felt by so many people worldwide, tells us that there is an altar in our public space named for an unknown god: one who the people of our day and time hope might satisfy where the other Powers lack; a god not in competition with the other gods – who are all in competition with each other – but one who, rather, transcends them. 

In the council of the people of Athens, Paul put a name to their unknown god. A number of names, in fact. He called him the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; he said he is the God who made the world and everything in it; the Lord of heaven and earth who gives life and breath to all people and all things, in whom we live and move and have our being.

Paul told the Athenians that the unknown God is very different; that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ isn’t a warrior god who will conquer all by the force of arms, but a servant God known through his ultimate act of self-giving love on the cross. This unknown God is not a Power concerned with titillating or pampering us or making us affluent, but is the Father of all people everywhere, who calls us to turn around, to turn our faces towards this One who he has appointed to judge the world in righteousness, this man who he has raised from the dead. 

It is very good news, to many, to discover the Powers of this world are not, in fact, the ultimate gods, but are actually simply part of God’s creation. They are in our lives, and they are created to serve us; sometimes they do this well, and at other times they fail us. But our ultimate call is to walk with Jesus, to follow in his way to live in a state of love with God, the earth, and all people. 

So that we do not become entrapped by the spirit of these Powers, Jesus promises us the Spirit of truth, to be with us for ever, to give us the help we need to turn our lives around to live in His way, day by day. [8]

At the Areopagus Paul told the Greeks that in every generation people “would search for God… though they might perhaps grope their way towards him to find him… for indeed he is not far from each one of us.” [8] So let us pray – Jesus, give us the Holy Spirit to help us – and to help others –  in that search. 

Notes 

[1] An extended version of Groping our way towards the unknown god (2026), Austwick, 10 May 2026, and its previous iterations, Groping our way towards the unknown god, preached online, 2020, and Gods of yesterday and today, preached in Liverpool, 2005.

[2] Wikipedia: List of Greek deities.

[3] Ephesians 6.10-20.

[4] Walter Wink, The Powers Behind the Throne. Sojourners, September 1984.

[5] Colossians 1.12.

[6] Walter Wink The Powers That Be : Theology for a New Millennium.

[7] Wikipedia: Ares.

[8] John 14.17.

[9] Acts 17.27 in David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation. Other quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised.