Author: chapelchucamac
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Guest sermon by Caroline Blackmun: “Creation Care”
Caroline Blackmun is a regular at chapel services and an alumna of Churchill. She is also an Authorised Lay Minister at St Andrew’s Church, Girton. In her sermon, Caroline explores Genesis 1 along the lines of a call to humans to exercise stewardship. She points out that although humans are told to be fruitful and…
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Guest sermon by Dr Patrick Curry: “Ecocide – a religious (but non-Christian) view”
Patrick is an independent academic with a particular concern for the natural world and who has been much influenced by Buddhism. Patrick begins by reminding us of the parlous state of the earth. As an ecological citizen, he emphasises, “more people must to come to value the Earth, its places and creatures as not only…
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A walkthrough of the Eucharist
The choir had worked up Schubert’s Mass in G major for the Easter term in 2025. They sang much of it in the context of a Church of England Mass or Eucharist as well as all of it in a concert. This seemed a great opportunity to explain this central service of the Christian liturgy.…
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Guest sermon by Dr Nigel Walter “Angels in the Architecture? How Buildings Shape Worship”
This sermon was given by Dr Nigel Walter, who is a leading church architect and also a Licensed Lay Minister in the Church of England. He explored the concept of sacred space with particular reference to three buildings: our chapel, the parish church of St John the Evangelist, Little Gidding (made famous by T S…
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Trust
Trust seems to be plummeting in our society at this point in our history. Might Christianity have anything to contribute? I have been persuaded for a long time that the word in the New Testament usually translated as faith would usually be better translated as trust. Might this be a starting point, especially with those…
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A vigil on the theme of humans in creation: 16 March 2025
Our Director of Music, Dr Ewan Campbell, developed a special concert on the theme of humans and nature. He and I adapted this for use in the chapel in the form of a vigil service. These are the texts I composed for this. I was interested in the way one strand of biblical and Christian…
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The history of the Jesus tradition
Do we have the ipsissima verba of Jesus recorded in the gospels? I very much doubt it, but we do have a method and a theory that can help us assess how the tradition of Jesus’s sayings evolved up to the point they appeared in the synoptic gospels. This looks at a particular passage in…
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Guest sermon by Elsa Stietman, Fellow of Murray Edwards: “A frog before breakfast”
Evensong 1 June 2025 This talk was given by choir and chapel stalwart, Elsa Steitman. Elsa shared her wisdom with us, but with a special focus on those who were shortly to graduate and leave Cambridge. She exhorted us with a piece of French advice: “He who swallowed a frog before breakfast, for him the…
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Guest sermon by Elsa Stietman, Fellow of Murray Edwards: “Little Gidding”
A talk at Little Gidding on Eliot’s poem of the same name Following Nigel Walter’s sermon, many members of the choir visited Little Gidding church one evening. As the light was falling, Elsa gave an exposition of T S Eliot’s fourth Quartet, Little Gidding. This was for all, whatever one’s approach to religion. She reflects…