Thursday 14 April 2011

The dignity of the body


My sermon for last Sunday, 5th Sunday in Lent, Year A:

A common pagan religious belief in Old Testament times and in Jesus' time was that human beings are made up of a body and a soul, and that when we die our soul separates from our body and carries on existing in some kind of eternal, purely spiritual realm.

"Consider that you might be mistaken"

My sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A:

The lines from the First Book of Samuel in the first reading today make up one of many Scripture passages that highlight the difference between God's way of thinking and ours, and, maybe more precisely, the difference between the qualities of character that God seeks out in a person when he wants him or her to carry out some aspect of his work, and the qualities that we tend to find admirable or striking.