The Green Chalice by Mark Coleman

In Matthew 5.13 Jesus tells his disciples that they are they salt of the earth, and that they should not lose their saltiness. If they have lost it, they need to become salty again, or risk being thrown out. Salt ... well perhaps you remember all about it from school. It's sodium chloride. It's present in seawater with about 35 grams per litre -  that's about 3.5 %. Salt is essential for our lives, you find it in our bodies, it's essential for tissues. Salting is used in food preservation. How is salt produced - from salt mines or by the evaporation of seawater. Salt has important place in religion. The ancient Greeks and Romans invoked their gods with offerings of salt and water. In our own faith, we learn that there are 35 verses which mention salt. Lot's wife was turned to salt as she looked back at the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Paul encourages us to let our conversation be always full of grace and seasoned with salt (Colossians 4.6) But for us, what may it m...

Ash Wednesday 2017 Sermon preached at St Mary’s in the Baum on 1 st March 2017 There’s not too much dust here in this Church. It’s kept pretty clean and tidy. But there is dust everywhere… of course. Today in our liturgy of Ash Wednesday we shall hear the words: “Dust you are and to dust you shall return” Dust is seen as the enemy of the house proud, it gets everywhere. Are you wining your battle with dust ? Do you have a Dust Buster – one of those little Hoovers or.. have you given up. Perhaps you only dust when family or the Vicar visits ! Dust and Soil have many ingredients. These include animal, vegetable, organic, inorganic. Dust has a lot of pollution bits in. Smoke particles. We are not just thinking about house dust, we are thinking about soil. Soil is again something that develops from waste, rotted matter. One day we shall return to the soil. One way or the other we shall be pushing up the daisies. I don't use that term flippantly – we shall play our part in the next phas...