Sunday in St Gilestide 2026 by Fr Jack

The Exodus 3:1-15

The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans 12:9-21

St Matthew’s Gospel 16:21-28

Intro to Mass: in various ways we spend whole parts of life feeling out of sorts. Square pegs, round holes. Or just not ‘it’, and then there are days like today: when it is just, right. Here we are, the Lord’s people, gathered together, on the Lord’s Day, in the Lord’s house, at the Lord’s Table, to receive the Lord Himself, given to us in these sacred mysteries of His saving love. Right place, people, time and everything.

After creed.

I’ve said it before - What a joy to be together. Here on the Lord’s Day, His people, House, Altar and mysteries. Only made better by who is here with us:

Bishop Simon of Warrington, giving some episcopal razzmatazz to proceedings this morning.

Pastor Roland Wither of Mariendorf Kirche, our link parish in Berlin (who will give the final blessing together with the Bishop as a sign of unity).

Francis Richardson, Churchwarden of Christchurch Meaford, our link parish in Canada, who will offer the intercessions today and on Tuesday.

Thank you so much for being here- your presence is a blessing and sign of friendship and reconciliation that is a sermon in itself. Thank you for all you have sacrificed to be here.

Also, how wonderful to have our choir back from their summer leave.

St Giles’ Day is the 1st September, and our ‘St Gilestide’ celebrations begin today; and in this 60th year of the roof being put back on after WW2, and the new United Parish receiving its new rector also in 1966 and beginning the modern existence of St Giles’ that has brought us all here today.

Today we also begin to use the Litany of the Cross of Nails. We will join Pastor Roland and his church in joining the Community on Tuesday. Canon Kate of Coventry Cathedral will admit us, and present us with our cross of nails which has been blessed at the Cathedral Eucharist in Coventry; and we will begin to make these prayers for reconciliation, prayers for the Kingdom of God, a regular part of our midweek liturgical diet here. More about the CCN on Tuesday evening, on St Giles’ Day itself.

We have themed today’s Eucharist ‘Looking back’. Tuesday’s St Giles’ Day Eucharist is themed ‘Looking forward’. So today we use the BCP of 1662, the Prayer Book that has held centuries of people and prayer before God in England. The music is by Morley and Smart and other great musicians of our parish history here. On Tuesday, the modern liturgy and contemporary music will point us forward.

And we’ve so much to celebrate. Peace and prosperity. Friendship and reconciliation. Hundreds of years of this community, this church at its heart. Every Eucharist, every prayer, every baptism and funeral, every absolution and blessing, every person who has looked on this church and felt the strength to go on, every person that (like you here now) has left these scared walls and been a gift from God to others: at home, work and in the community. All of it has lead us here, today. And we give thanks in this Eucharist for all of it.

And ‘looking back’ as we are, it all starts with the love of God in the life of Jesus Christ, and the ministry of the apostles He filled with the Holy Spirit, and sent. Of course it does.

But in this St Gilestide, in a way it also starts with St Giles himself, the holy hermit, in the woods of southern France in the 600s. Like Elijah in today’s first lesson out in the wilderness. St Giles sought God in quiet and prayer, and gentleness. He became an accidental abbot of what would become a thriving monastery, and a pilgrimage centre that some of us have made pilgrimage to.

But at the heart of all that, is the small life of a person who loved God, and with God, loved all that God has made. And because of his smallness and humility, God (as God does) brought about great love that has changed countless lives, and that we’re still talking about today. Thank God for St Giles.

Like Moses whom God calls today and makes a leader of God’s people. Moses could meet God in the burning bush because he was looking after Jethro’s sheep in the wilderness. Just like Giles in his quiet woodland hermitage, called to become the founder of a great monastery. How will you and I learn from Giles, from Moses, today about how God uses humility, and that our smallness is nothing small, when God is on the move?

Giles who walked the talk of St Paul’s Letter to the Romans, who enfleshed these very graces we heard about: of steadfastness, of zeal, of love, of forgiveness and generosity. He didn’t love them for gain or comfort, but because these things are true and good and real.

Giles who (as Jesus says today in the Gospel) gave his life away, and in so doing, found something really worth living for.

It’s all here. And St Giles would be the first to tell us that this path that we see stretching out before us as we ‘look back’ today - is the path of joy, the path of life, it is the Way who is Jesus himself.