Author: chrisbryan

INVITATION TO A BANQUET: Notes for a sermon at Evensong on the Third Sunday after Trinity in the Cathedral Church of St Peter in Exeter

I’d like to reflect with you for a few minutes this evening on the passage we heard in our Second Lesson. This is one of several times in the gospels when the evangelists set Our Lord’s teaching in the context of a meal—“table talk” as...

23 June, 2026

WHAT IS A SAINT? Notes for a sermon preached at St Stephen’s Church, Exeter on All Saints Sunday, 2025

Today the church invites us to celebrate the Saints—all of them! What, then, is a Saint? As what are sometimes called "Bible-believing Christians" (not, incidentally, a description with which I am entirely happy, since Christians are people who believe in the Triune God rather than...

01 November, 2025

Palm Sunday. A reflection.

Some time ago I watched the movie Moonstruck.  Mostly it’s just a pleasant romantic comedy about a woman who begins with the wrong man and ends up with the right one. Nothing very remarkable about that! It’s a story Jane Austen told, in one form...

11 April, 2025

FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR C. FOR THE GOSPEL: JOHN 12.1-8. “THE GIFT OF PERFUME”

Martha and Mary of Bethany and their brother Lazarus were evidently dear friends of our Lord. They crop up in the synoptic gospels as well as in John, so they must have been important to Jesus. If you want to know how I picture Martha and...

31 March, 2025

Third Sunday in Lent, Year C. For the Psalm, Ps. 63.1-8; for the Gospel, Luke 13.1-9. “The Failed Fig Tree”

I remember some time ago watching a man on television speaking about mass shootings that had taken place in Christchurch, New Zealand on 15 March 2019—shootings carried out by a single person during Muslim Friday Prayers, first at the Al Noor Mosque in Riccarton and...

17 March, 2025

Second Sunday in Lent, Year C. For the Gospel: Luke 13.30-35. “Jesus and the Fox”

At that very hour some Pharisees came, and said to Jesus, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." 32. And he said to them, "Go and tell that fox, See, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and...

13 March, 2025

Seventh / Last Sunday after Epiphany, February 23 2025. Sermon preached at 4.00pm Evensong in Exeter Cathedral. For the Old Testament reading: Genesis 1.1-2.3. “Creation”

I would like to spend a few minutes with you thinking about the creation story from Genesis which we heard in our first reading—the first of two creation stories with which our Bibles begin. I intend to do this, not by wasting time in discussion...

04 March, 2025

Fr John Crisp

Many people who know me have heard me talk about Father John Crisp, who was my parish priest when I was a teenager at St Mark's Church, Marylebone Road in the 1950s. And some will have noticed that the statue of Our Lady in the...

03 February, 2022

Things We Can Get Wrong about Scripture: notes for a sermon at St Olave’s, Exeter.

Epiphany 3. For the OT Nehemiah 8.1-3, 5-6, 8-10; for the Psalm 19; for the Gospel Luke 4.14-21 Three things one quite often hears said about Christian revelation. The first is this: “Christian revelation is through the Bible and only through the Bible.” The Latin tag “sola...

23 January, 2022

The Armour of God. For St Olave’s, Exeter. Proper 16b, 2021

The Armour of God. For Exeter Central Parishes (13th after Pentecost 2021). The parish has been reflecting in previous weeks on the lectionary readings from the Letter to the Ephesians, which is in its form perhaps originally a circular (or even, “encyclical”) rather than a letter...

22 August, 2021