Will you take the path that Christ has already opened for you? Will you begin by admitting that you do sin? You have made mistakes as Adam and Eve made mistakes. Will you ask Christ to help you resist temptation because he beat temptation in the wilderness? And then will you follow the path that he laid for you? Yes, a difficult path, but one which leads to the joy of complete freedom.

Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters explains that Lent is not about misery, but rather freedom. Because although we know these temptations and although we fall to them time and again, in fact, they have already been beaten in Jesus. And Lent is our opportunity to realise the victory, to realise the freedom that is already ours in him.

The practices of Lent aren't rules for their own sake. They are a path into the joyous freedom that Jesus won in the wilderness, into relationship with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Do you often hear preaching about loosing the bonds of injustice, undoing the thongs of the yoke, letting the oppressed go free or breaking every yoke?

In this episode Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters invites us to ponder on the question for us today is, will our fasting, our prayers, our rituals do anything to us? Will they shape us into people who have stones in their hands, ready to judge? Or will they strip us of our self-righteousness and make us people of grace? Because let me be clear, if you're fasting, and the ashes that you're about to receive don't change your heart, if you're not willing to change, then you might as well leave. This has nothing for you.

To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.

Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Where to you, when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. The Beatitudes, the list in which Jesus declares that those who are poor, hungry, weeping and hated for his sake makes for challenging reading.

Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters encourages us to trust that the one who is God will bring about the future he said he would, no matter how impossible that future seems, because God is God and you are not. If you don't trust that Jesus was who he said he was, then the question is, "How surely?" because the Beatitudes place across roads in front of each one of us. They say, there is a hard road and it will lead to God. And there's an easy route and it will lead nowhere. One way or another you've got to decide.

For this sermon we celebrate the feast of the presentation of Christ in the temple and in so doing, we close our celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany.

Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters reminds us that God is our perfect heavenly Father. He's not a supermarket. May we have this strength and trust to follow the plan that he has laid out for us, to hear the answers that he has for us, even when they're no and not yet. Whether he has plans to do this year a continuation of what he has done last year in our years past. Or whether he plans to do a totally new thing amongst us and in your life. May we have the strength and wisdom to greet his plans with gratitude.

Have you ever loudly walked into a room only to realise that everyone there was silent and had to back away in embarrassment?

Sam Rossiter-Peters explains that when we break God's expectations by acting without love, we distance ourselves from him. That's not because he stops loving us. In fact, it's the opposite. Acting without love is the choice to walk away from God, to put ourselves before Him. And God loves us enough that he honours our choice.

It feels impossible when we stare into those empty vessels, our lack of resources. When we know that we just don't have the strength to be the people that he calls us to be. But Cana is a promise. It isn't our job to provide the wine. We just provide what we have. Insubstantial as it is. And then he takes it and he turns it to abundance.

Are you aware of what it feels like to be left out?

Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters explains why the feast of the Epiphany is so important because today God chose to bring outsiders in.

As we start 2025, if you have ever felt unloved, if you've ever wondered whether you in fact you do matter to God, whether you've ever wondered whether you in fact do matter to God, whether you've ever wondered whether you have a place in this church or any church, if you've ever worried that you don't belong because you don't believe or think the right things or you don't know as much as the next person in the pew, if you've ever worried that you look or feel or act differently to other people in church, Epiphany is your answer.

The scriptures are so wonderfully alive. You can read the same passage repeatedly and through the Holy Spirit they speak to you in new ways on your Christian journey.

Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters explains that costly grace is the incarnation of God. This event we are invited to ask, are we ready to stand before Jesus when he comes tomorrow? Have we been pursuing cheap or costly grace? If ready means living that life of costly grace, may we all have the strength to say, "Yes, I am ready." But the road carries on.

If you knew that his Majesty the King was coming to a dinner party sometime in the next month, but you didn't know when. How would you prepare?

Jesus’s apocalyptic sayings like the ones we heard in our Gospel reading are some of his most difficult sayings to understand, like the first disciples we sometimes wish that he'd made them either easier to understand, like the first disciples, we sometimes wish that he'd made them either easier to understand, or else that he'd just chosen a different topic.

Fr Sam Rossiter-Peter explains that as an audience, we are pretty much guilty of the same lack of insight. We see, for example, how nations have largely ignored the warnings about the crisis of global warming. Even when we see the scientific prophecies coming true, errant weather patterns rising sea levels are more toxic atmosphere. We still can't bring ourselves as an audience to these modern-day prophecies to act as we need to. They're talking about something terrible happening in the future and we'd rather not hear it and so we don't believe it. He reminds us that Jesus Christ will come again and that we be encouraged in that knowledge. Let us work together and encourage one another and restore whatever is lacking in our faith.