Wivelsfield Church & St Richard, Haywards Heath Our Father Luke 11:1-4 5 Oct 2022

 As we read this month through the gospel of St Luke at weekday eucharist we have reached the start of Chapter 11 and Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. It's shorter than Matthew’s but is still formative of the prayer we will use later on in our worship.

The prayer Jesus taught us has five aspirations: belonging, purpose, empowerment, forgiveness and direction. 

It starts Our Father which is an aspiration for the world to be a place of belonging that goes beyond this world. The building of bridges between Jews and Gentiles by Peter and Paul referred to in the passage from Galatians was an extraordinary new beginning in terms of inclusion. When we pray to God as Christians we pray Our Father, that is on behalf of all - especially, yes, on behalf of those who know Jesus, but also on behalf of all people since God ultimately wants everyone and everything to be gathered together in Christ.

This is captured as Jesus teaches us to pray Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. All three phrases effectively say the same, that God won’t let us waste our energies but direct them towards what’s right - and what’s right is the building of unity in the truth that is in Jesus, in our circle, community, nation and across the world.

Thirdly Jesus brings empowerment of body and spirit. Give us this day our daily bread. Even in Sussex that prayer applies to physical bread in the case of some of us, but Jesus promises food not just for the body. He came to bring the food for the spirit that’s given us day by day through prayer, the bible and the eucharist. At this eucharist we ask that Holy Spirit for ourselves and all who’re overwhelmed by the cares and crises of the world.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. No one else is equipped as Jesus is to bring forgiveness and a new start to all of us who’re caught by our past wrongdoing. Joseph called him Jesus because he saves his people from their sins.

The prayer moves to its conclusion with a plea for discernment. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. God sent Jesus so you and I could know what’s important in our lives and do it. God loves us so much he doesn’t want our lives lost in trivial things but caught up into his grand scheme. 

As we prepare to celebrate the eucharist we aspire as ever for what Jesus wants - for us and for the whole world – belonging for the isolated, purpose for the lost, empowerment for the overwhelmed, forgiveness for sinners and direction for those who’re wasting their lives. So be it - for the kingdom, the power and the glory are his for ever. Amen

St Bartholomew, Brighton New Year’s Day 2022

 

Today Christmas thoughts of eternity entering time in Jesus Christ give way to thoughts about time itself. 

It’s New Year’s Day under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary and with this new day the calendar moves further into the second decade of the second millennium.

The bible says in the book of Psalms that we’re made for seven decades, maybe eight. I’m well through and have lived almost all my life by that reckoning.

How many New Year’s Days lie ahead for you and I?

Time like a never ending stream bears all its sons away. They fly forgotten like a dream dies at the opening day.

This morning we’re reminded that our time is running out and will one day carry us out as mortality wears us away. This last year has seen the last days of several parishioners. I think especially of Mark Mytton and William Parker. Our prayers this morning are with them and with so many who have passed on through COVID and with their families

We’re frail mortals. We should approach a New Year with humility because we’re from the earth and will return to the earth.

We’ve also grounds for confidence though. God loves mortals and desires to plant immortal life within them in Jesus Christ whose naming we mark today. 

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, says Paul he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.

What’s most important as I live my life in the days and years ahead is to possess the Spirit who gives life to mortal bodies in this world and the next.

Every Eucharist is a calling down of the same Spirit, upon the gifts and upon the people, making holy gifts and holy people. 

Let’s welcome the holy and life giving Spirit as 2022 begins. He’ll be our main asset, the ground of Christian confidence to face the uncertainties ahead. Let’s give an invitation for him to empower us now in a moment of silence before we profess our faith together.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Feast of the Holy Family 29th Dec 2019

This morning the liturgy moves from Bethlehem via Egypt to Nazareth. On Wednesday we celebrated the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Today we celebrate the beginning of his childhood in Nazareth. As we heard at the end of the holy gospel, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph and he left [Egypt] for the region of Galilee [and] settled in a town called Nazareth. 

I once went to Nazareth. I’ll never forget seeing two young boys at a well drawing water for their families. They could have been Jesus and his cousin John. The water was probably from the same source as that drawn on 2000 years ago, for wells do not move. This morning we are all going in heart and mind to Nazareth, to the household of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We’re going, with the scriptures and the holy liturgy to seek inspiration from the Holy Family for our own families and for the family we enjoy here at St. Bartholomew’s as a local expression of God’s never-ending family, the holy, catholic church.

As we go to Nazareth we find welcome, challenge and empowerment.

We find firstly a welcome. The hearth of Mary and Joseph is an open hearth. How could it be otherwise? How could this couple who welcome God into their earthly home be guilty of turning any away?

In the Holy Family there is hospitality, the generous reception of friends and strangers alike. To enter the story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is to find yourself welcomed into that great hospitable procession of the people of God heading for the heavenly Temple. Mary and Joseph remind us we can never have Jesus to ourselves. To be a Christian is to be one with Mary and Joseph and Bartholomew and Francis and Clare – and the list goes on!

In the Holy Family we find the welcome that marks the church from its beginning, God’s people belonging to God and belonging together. 

You and I haven’t chosen one another but God has chosen us together to be his family here at St Bartholomew’s. As we heard in the first reading from Colossians: Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. (Colossians 3:13-15a) In Nazareth we see an image of Christian family, of mutual belonging. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are present to one another in a way we can only hope to imitate by the grace of God.

Our families and church families need to go to Nazareth, so to speak, and learn there how to be more present to one another. As we go to Nazareth we find such a welcome – and also a challenge. It is the Feast of the Holy Family today. 

There’s so much sentimentality surrounding Mary and Joseph, we need to get back to scripture to see them as they are – two of God’s holy ones and holiness is nothing comfortable but rather something challenging. This morning’s Gospel gives evidence of St. Joseph’s capacity to hear the voice of God and guide the Holy Family. And Mary! If she had not been what we call ‘ascetic’, a woman set apart and well disciplined in the spiritual life, she would not have become the God-bearer by whom God came down to live in your life and mine. As someone wrote, it was as if the human race were a little dark house, without light or air, locked and latched. The wind of the spirit had beaten on the door, rattled the windows, tapped on the dark glass, trying to get in – and yet the Spirit was outside. But one day a woman opened the door, and the little house was swept pure and clean by the wind. Seas of light swept through it, and the light remained in it; and in that little house, God was born as a Child.

As we go to the home in Nazareth we encounter the challenge of holiness, what Pascal said was the most important influence in the world. We see a Holy Child formed by a Holy Mother and her Spouse. How can we enter such a home?

There are families I know where there is such a sense of the Holy Spirit that I am made to feel deeply challenged. Some households have about them a transcendent quality, a joy that is pointer to heaven our true home. 

This is also true of churches. Just welcoming visitors is not enough. They need to be challenged, intrigued by what they see inside our buildings, both the worship of Jesus and the people of Jesus in their self-lessness and joy.

This morning we go to Nazareth to takes our seats in the school of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, of a welcoming love and a challenge to holiness. Lastly we will find at Nazareth a source of empowerment.

For 2000 years people have been empowered by the saving grace of Jesus Christ born of Mary. What a Saviour – a practical Saviour! As practical as his foster father, Joseph, in carpentry where Our Lord picks up his capacity to mend, yes, even families.

How many of us have had to bring our marriages and our families to be mended? To the Carpenter, the One who anoints and empowers and saves – and seen the difference Christian Faith makes?

How much we need to get back to Nazareth, to Jesus, Mary and Joseph and see there a work of intense spiritual transformation open to all. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour St Luke relates (Luke 2:52). He did so that we too might increase in the same fashion!

Either Jesus Christ makes a difference, either he is born ‘to raise the sons of earth’ or our religion is moralistic do-gooding. If Christianity is about ‘do gooding’ it is only in the sense that Christians have access to a power beyond this world that incidentally helps you do what is right. 

For that empowerment, for the challenge and welcoming love the Holy Spirit brings we go in gratitude once more this morning to Nazareth!

Through modelling Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may our families and our church be places of welcome so people may find a home with us and with the Lord!

May our families and our church be challenging places where people get intrigued by Jesus Christ living in the midst of his people!

Father grant that our families and our churches may become places of spiritual empowerment where we share in the anointing of your anointed Son, who with you and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 8 (16B) 22.7.18

The Lord’s prayer opens up Christianity as a place of belonging, purpose, empowerment, forgiveness and direction.  Reflecting on this Sunday’s readings I find they illuminate each clause of the prayer Jesus taught us. We’ll go for these five headings as a way to understand today’s scripture, as a framework for reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer and as a reminder of the main blessings we possess as Christians: belonging, purpose, empowerment, forgiveness and direction.

First belonging. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Our first reading from Ephesians stated that we believers have access in one Spirit to the Father. To be a Christian is to belong to God as Father and to one another. The Church is God’s never ending family. Sunday by Sunday we come to say ‘Our Father’ - not my Father but Our Father for the God and Father of Jesus is your God and my God. Jesus died to gather together the scattered children of God and that gathering occurs through baptism and through faith.

Someone asked that heroine of Calcutta’s slums Mother Teresa how she prayed and she answered I just say again and again ‘Our Father’. When we pray we affirm our belonging both to God and to our neighbour. Hallowed be thy name - Jesus leads us in contemplation of God as his Father and ours. Today’s Gospel is a striking example and reminder of our need to set time apart day by day to contemplate God and to say the Our Father. Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while, Jesus says. How can we take up that invitation in our own daily routine? To contemplate our belonging to God and bring to our loving Heavenly Father in prayer the sisters and brothers he has put on our hearts?

Second purpose. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done That purpose, that will is stated in the New Testament. Its a purpose for the cosmos and for the church, one stated in Colossians of bringing all things together in Christ and in today’s first reading stated as one of growing into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. As Christians we’ve a purpose in life: drawing the world together. I think of how iron filings randomly scattered form up beautifully when magnetised. You and I are here in Church to be magnetised by the love of God shown us through word and sacrament in Jesus Christ. We leave Church that bit more assured of God’s love and that bit better instruments of healing and reconciliation in a broken world.

I was preaching last Sunday in Bordeaux and quoted this saying from the Abbe de Tourville: Say to yourself very often about everything that happens, ‘God loves me! What joy! And reply boldly, ‘And I truly love Him too!’ Then go quite simply about all that you have to do and do not philosophize any more. For these two phrases are beyond all thought and do more for us than any thought could do; they are all-sufficing. We sometimes make Christianity more difficult than it is - its purpose, our purpose is to welcome the fact we’re loved and hand on that amazing truth to others.

Third empowerment. Give us this day our daily bread - being Christian is counter to self-sufficiency. We’re called to live in the love of God with an eternal perspective. In other words living in the here and now, in the present moment - for God is there and nowhere else. We don’t find God or life in the mental constructs of the past or future but in the present. And the present has a present! Give us this day our daily bread. This phrase has all sorts of interpretations, here at the eucharist for example when the Lord’s prayer is said as preparation for receiving Christ’s body in the form of Bread.

Christianity ultimately is empowerment. They found that empowerment in Jesus Christ from the very start as we heard in today’s Gospel. Jesus we heard had compassion for them... A God who answers prayers, who gives us the Holy Spirit. They laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed. It may be as you sit in Saint Bartholomew’s this morning you sit with a weight of care. Ask the Lord to empower you by taking that burden from you, to free you to be his more effective servant. He will do - if you ask!

Fourthly forgiveness. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Some say Christianity’s heavy on guilt. Its precisely the opposite because the Holy Spirit that impacts us from the Cross of Jesus delivers every penitent heart from guilt. As we heard in the first reading: in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace… Jesus has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility caused by unrepented sin.

To know your sins are forgiven is knowledge the whole world would quickly seek if only it knew it was on offer in Christianity. We come to church to receive that assurance in Jesus’s Hour, the hour of Sunday Mass which irradiates us with God’s love and mercy. Let all that is on your conscience be given to him this morning - prepare for the new start forgiveness offers week by week, hour by hour if need be!

Fifth and last direction. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. If Christianity brings belonging, purpose, empowerment and forgiveness it lastly provides spiritual direction. As we heard in the Gospel how many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and Jesus began to teach them many things. That teaching is handed on by the church through a network of spiritual directors with gifts of listening and teaching relevant to discerning the forward course in life set by the Holy Spirit. Did you know Anglican Communicants can be put in touch with a spiritual director by their clergy or by a phone call to the diocesan office?

To pray the Lord’s prayer is to set yourself against sin, temptation and evil. Jesus himself we know was impermeable to these but he left a prayer for us with a couple of phrases irrelevant to him. Since Our Lord came into the world to provide the remedy for sin the prayer he taught is a realistic prayer for us. We so often find ourselves going in a direction away from the prompting of the Holy Spirit through nameless fear, anxiety, inappropriate sadness, self-centredness, the tendency to see endless snags ahead or through a basic lack of hope. These feelings can prevent us doing what’s best and we need to counter them and seek help from God and maybe other Christians to do so. Our clergy are here too to help with guidance.

To sum up, the Lord’s prayer displays Christianity as a place of belonging, purpose, empowerment, forgiveness and direction. Ours is a deep, hopeful and forward looking religion.

The Lord bless us as we pray the ‘Our Father’ prayer of belonging and contemplate God day by day, as we pray and act according to his purpose with the empowerment of his Spirit, seeking forgiveness and spiritual direction.

For thine, Lord, is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Feast of the Holy Family 30th December 2012

This morning the liturgy moves from Bethlehem via Jerusalem to Nazareth. On Tuesday we celebrated the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Today we celebrate his childhood in Nazareth. As we heard at the end of the holy gospel, following the incident in the Temple: Jesus went down with Mary and Joseph and came to Nazareth.

I once went to Nazareth. I’ll never forget seeing two young boys at a well drawing water for their families. They could have been Jesus and his cousin John. The water was probably from the same source as that drawn on 2000 years ago, for wells do not move.

 This morning we are all going in heart and mind to Nazareth, to the household of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We’re going, with the scriptures and the holy liturgy to seek inspiration from the Holy Family for our own families and for the family we enjoy here at St. Giles’ as a local expression of God’s never-ending family, the holy, catholic church.

As we go to Nazareth we find welcome, challenge and empowerment.

We find firstly a welcome. The hearth of Mary and Joseph is an open hearth. How could it be otherwise? How could this couple who welcome God into their earthly home be guilty of turning any away?

In the Holy Family there is hospitality, the generous reception of friends and stranger alike.  We catch something of the extended life of the Holy Family in today’s Gospel story of Jesus getting lost in the Temple when the three of them travel in a large extended family. To enter the story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is to find yourself welcomed into that great hospitable procession of the people of God into the heavenly Temple. Mary and Joseph remind us that we can never have Jesus to ourselves. To be a Christian is to be one with Mary and Joseph and Paul and Augustine and Francis and Giles – and the list goes on!

In the Holy Family we find the welcome that marks the church from its beginning, God’s people belonging to God and belonging together.

You and I haven’t chosen one another but God has chosen us together to be his family here in Horsted Keynes. Welcome one another says the Apostle as God in Christ has welcomed you.

In Nazareth we see also an image of Christian family, of mutual belonging. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are present to one another in a way we can only hope to imitate by the grace of God.

Our families need to go to Nazareth, so to speak, and to learn there how to be more present to one another.

As we go to Nazareth we find such a welcome – and also a challenge. It is the Feast of the Holy Family today.

There’s so much sentimentality surrounding Mary and Joseph we need to get back to scripture to see them as they are – two of God’s holy ones and holiness is nothing comfortable but rather something challenging. The infancy narratives in the Gospel give evidence of St. Joseph’s capacity to hear the voice of God and guide the Holy Family.

And Mary! If she had not been what we call ‘ascetic’, a woman set apart and well disciplined in the spiritual life, she would not have become the God-Bearer by whom God came down to live in your life and mine.

As someone wrote, it was as if the human race were a little dark house, without light or air, locked and latched. The wind of the spirit had beaten on the door, rattled the windows, tapped on the dark glass, trying to get in – and yet the Spirit was outside. But one day a woman opened the door, and the little house was swept pure and clean by the wind. Seas of light swept through it, and the light remained in it; and in that little house, a Child was born and the Child was God.

As we go to the home in Nazareth we encounter the challenge of holiness, what Pascal said was the most important influence in the world. We see a Holy Child formed by a Holy Mother and her Spouse. How can we enter such a home?

There are families I know where there is such a sense of the Holy Spirit that I am made to feel deeply challenged. Some households have about them a transcendent quality, a joy that is pointer to heaven our true home.

This is also true of churches. Just welcoming visitors is not enough. They need to be challenged, intrigued by what they see inside our buildings, both the worship of Jesus and the people of Jesus in their self-lessness and joy.

This morning we go to Nazareth to learn in the school of Jesus, Mary and Joseph of a welcoming love and a challenge to holiness. Lastly we will find at Nazareth a source of empowerment.

For 2000 years people have been empowered by the saving grace of Jesus Christ born of Mary. What a Saviour – a practical Saviour! As practical as his foster father, Joseph, in carpentry where Our Lord picks up his capacity to mend, yes, even families.

How many of us have had to bring our marriages and our families to be mended? To the Carpenter, the One who anoints and empowers and saves – and seen the difference Christian Faith makes.

How much we need to get back to Nazareth, to Jesus, Mary and Joseph and see there a work of intense spiritual transformation open to all. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour (Luke 2:52). He did so that we too might increase in the same fashion!

Either Jesus Christ makes a difference, either he is born ‘to raise the sons of earth’ or our religion is moralistic do-gooding. If Christianity is about ‘do gooding’ it is only in the sense that Christians have access to a power beyond this world that incidentally helps you do what is right.

For that empowerment, for the challenge and welcoming love the Holy Spirit brings we go in gratitude once more this morning to Nazareth!

Through modelling Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may our families and our church be places of welcome so that people may find a home with us and with the Lord!

May our families and our church be challenging places where people get intrigued by Jesus Christ living in the midst of his people!

Father grant that our families and our churches may become places of spiritual empowerment where we share in the anointing of your anointed Son, who with you and the Holy Spirit live and reign, One God for ever and ever. Amen.

Feast of the Holy Family 27 December 2009

A seemingly devout couple who spent hours bowed before a statue of the Virgin Mary were actually waiting for their mobile to charge. The priests in a Milan Church found the pair had been plugging the phone into a socket used to light up the statue!

Well this morning we also bow before Jesus, Mary and Joseph but to draw a greater power into service. I mean the power of love at the centre of the Holy Family.

This morning the liturgy moves from Bethlehem via Jerusalem to Nazareth. On Friday we celebrated the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Today we celebrate his childhood in Nazareth. As we heard at the end of the holy gospel, following the incident in the Temple: Jesus went down with Mary and Joseph and came to Nazareth. Or in Matthew’s account of his infancy his home (was) in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazarene’

I once went to Nazareth. I’ll never forget seeing two young boys at a well drawing water for their families. They could have been Jesus and his cousin John. The water was probably from the same source as that drawn on 2000 years ago, for wells do not move.

This morning we are all going in heart and mind to Nazareth, to the household of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We’re going, with the scriptures and the holy liturgy to seek inspiration from the Holy Family for our own families and for the family we enjoy here at St. Giles’ as a local expression of God’s never-ending family, the holy, catholic church.

As we go to Nazareth we find welcome, challenge and empowerment.

We find firstly a welcome. The hearth of Mary and Joseph is an open hearth. How could it be otherwise? How could this couple who welcome God into their earthly home be guilty of turning any away?

In the Holy Family there is hospitality, the generous reception of friends and stranger alike. We catch something of the extended life of the Holy Family in today’s Gospel story of Jesus getting lost in the Temple when the three of them travel in a large extended family. To enter the story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is to find yourself welcomed into that great hospitable procession of the people of God into the heavenly Temple. Mary and Joseph remind us that we can never have Jesus to ourselves. To be a Christian is to be one with Mary and Joseph and Paul and Augustine and Francis and Giles – and the list goes on!

In the Holy Family we find the welcome that marks the church from its beginning, God’s people belonging to God and belonging together.

You and I haven’t chosen one another but God has chosen us together to be his family here in Horsted Keynes. Welcome one another says the Apostle as God in Christ has welcomed you.

In Nazareth we see also an image of Christian family, of mutual belonging. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are present to one another in a way we can only hope to imitate by the grace of God.

Our families need to go to Nazareth, so to speak, and to learn there how to be more present to one another.

This quality of mutual presence and attention is part of the welcome families are all about, the welcome of open ears and hearts, of people putting aside their own agenda in loving service of one another. What greater gift can you give to anyone than total, undivided attention?

As we go to Nazareth we find such a welcome – and also a challenge. It is the Feast of the Holy Family today.

There’s so much sentimentality surrounding Mary and Joseph we need to get back to scripture to see them as they are – two of God’s holy ones and holiness is nothing comfortable but rather something challenging. The infancy narratives in the Gospel give evidence of St. Joseph’s capacity to hear the voice of God and guide the Holy Family.

And Mary! If she had not been what we call ‘ascetic’, a woman set apart and well disciplined in the spiritual life, she would not have become the God-Bearer by whom God came down to live in your life and mine.

As someone wrote, it was as if the human race were a little dark house, without light or air, locked and latched. The wind of the spirit had beaten on the door, rattled the windows, tapped on the dark glass, trying to get in – and yet the Spirit was outside. But one day a woman opened the door, and the little house was swept pure and clean by the wind. Seas of light swept through it, and the light remained in it; and in that little house, a Child was born and the Child was God.

As we go to the home in Nazareth we encounter the challenge of holiness, what Pascal said was the most important influence in the world. We see a Holy Child formed by a Holy Mother and her Spouse. How can we enter such a home?

There are families I know where there is such a sense of the Holy Spirit that I am made to feel deeply challenged. Some households have about them a transcendent quality, a joy that is pointer to heaven our true home. This is also true of churches. Just welcoming visitors is not enough. They need to be challenged, intrigued by what they see inside our buildings, both the worship of Jesus and the people of Jesus in their self-lessness and joy.

I wouldn’t be here this morning if I hadn’t been bowled over by the awesome rites of a church I visited in Oxford over 35 years ago, a saint of a priest and many apparently humble, holy and humorous folk who gathered day by day to go unto the altar of God, the God of their joy and gladness.

This morning we go to Nazareth to learn in the school of Jesus, Mary and Joseph of a welcoming love and a challenge to holiness. Lastly we will find at Nazareth a source of empowerment.

For 2000 years people have been empowered by the saving grace of Jesus Christ born of Mary.

What a Saviour – a practical Saviour! As practical as his foster father, Joseph, in carpentry where Our Lord picks up his capacity to mend, yes, even families.

How many of us have had to bring our marriages and our families to be mended? To the Carpenter, the One who anoints and empowers and saves – and seen the difference Christian Faith makes.

How much we need to get back to Nazareth, to Jesus, Mary and Joseph and see there a work of intense spiritual transformation open to all. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour (Luke 2:52). He did so that we too might increase in the same fashion!

Either Jesus Christ makes a difference, either he is born ‘to raise the sons of earth’ or our religion is moralistic do-gooding. If Christianity is about ‘do gooding’ it is only in the sense that Christians have access to a power beyond this world that incidentally helps you do what is right.

For that empowerment, for the challenge and welcoming love the Holy Spirit brings we go in gratitude once more this morning to Nazareth!

Through modelling Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may our families and our church be places of welcome so that people may find a home with us and with the Lord!

May our families and our church be challenging places where people get intrigued by Jesus Christ living in the midst of his people!

Father grant that our families and our churches may become places of spiritual empowerment where we share in the anointing of your anointed Son, who with you and the Holy Spirit live and reign, One God for ever and ever. Amen.