Sermon: Resisting the Kingdom of Division

On Sunday 14 June at Evensong, the Reverend Canon Mark Birch preached on 1 Samuel 21: 1–15 and Luke 11: 14–28, exploring what demons lurk in our modern world, and how we can choose the Kingdom of God.

“Few would deny that the gospel has helped us to get our public life into some sort of good order over the centuries… [but] we still need it to encourage the kind of vigilance among us that can recognise the kingdom of division whenever it is resurgent…

To oppose this, we will need those distinctly unsecular practices of prayer and charity that are founded on the choice that Jesus alone makes possible. The choice to gather and not to scatter. To refuse the apparent safety of the castle, to open arms and hearts like the crucified one so that the anger and envy of the world may be, as the hymn puts it, absorbed in prayer and praise..”