Lent 2 Sacrifice 21 February 2016

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’. Mark 14:24

In this Eucharist we are being caught up into the eternal sacrifice of Christ and its profound challenge to our self-interest.

This gathering in the parish Church is part of an eternal gathering stretching back to Abraham and beyond and stretching forward to the consummation of all things.

This morning we are touching reality - we are drawn to the events represented here which institute God’s covenant with us, and we are drawn into a love which touches every human concern upon the earth.

To the outward eye we are a small gathering of religious people doing their own thing upon their weekly holy day. To the eye of faith we are Christians, caught up once more, on behalf of the whole creation, into the eternal sacrifice of Jesus Christ, through whom,and with whom and in whom in the unity of the Holy Spirit, we give glory to our Father in heaven.

The Old Testament reading from Genesis describes an awesome encounter between Abraham and the Lord.  In this holy eucharist we too should be in awe as we approach the same Lord in the Eucharistic sacrifice. This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, happy are those who are called to his supper.

One role of a preacher is to awaken, sensitise and draw God’s people afresh into this great mystery of the Christian religion which centres on the Lamb of God our Saviour truly present in the sacrifice and sacrament of the altar. If we fully realised what was going on in this rite our amazement would soon infect others to join in the most significant happening on any day in Horsted Keynes!

Jesus St John says is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The sacrifice once offered on Calvary and made present at this altar is rooted in the history of God’s people and the eternal covenant.

Genesis Chapter 15 describes the institution of that covenant with Abraham by the shedding of blood, an agreement between man and God pledging loyalty even unto death.  In the ancient world, when a covenant was ‘cut’ with the slaughter of lambs its breaking could be punishable by death. It also symbolised a death to independent living and the coming alive of a relationship or covenant.

In the covenant God made with Abraham there was a special sign.  The sacrificed animals were consumed by a supernatural intervention interpreted as an anticipation of the new covenant.  As the animal sacrifice was consumed by fire from heaven, so Jesus is to see his body and blood separated in death and then transformed by power from heaven in the glory of the resurrection.

So it is that in the Eucharist we witness the separate consecration of Christ’s body and blood. We pause devotionally on two occasions to recall the sacrificial sundering of the Lamb of God - this is my body...this is my blood...of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins

Some of us possibly visited the ‘Seeing Salvation’ exhibition at the turn of the Millennium 16 years ago at the National Gallery. One of the many images of Christ was this  (show) - ‘The Bound Lamb’ by Francisco de Zurbarin who lived in the 17th century.  It is an image that often appears on Nativity scenes, the Shepherds’ offering which anticipates Christ’s sacrifice. 

As Jeremy Paxman wrote in the Church Times of this painting: ‘no image I know so perfectly captures the astonishing force of the Christian story’.

The sacrificial imagery in today’s Old Testament links to this symbol of Christ as Lamb of God so familiar to us from the liturgy of the Eucharist - familiar and yet often rather empty of meaning to many of us until we examine the Old Testament roots as we are doing this morning. 

How often we hear those words ‘Lamb of God’? How much we need to ‘inhabit the words’ of our prayer and liturgy and not be empty ritualists!

There is a Church in Norway, I’m told, which has the image of a sheep sculpted half way up its tower.  Only when people enter that Church and hear something of its history do they discover the full Christian significance of the sculpted sheep.

Years before the sculpture was erected some renovation work was occurring on the Church steeple in this rural community.  One day a workman slipped from the steeple to almost certain death.  At the same time by a remarkable twist of providence a flock of sheep was being driven past the Church. 

The steeplejack fell on a sheep and his fall was cushioned. The sheep died to save him - an awesome happening! The workers expressed their gratitude to God by adorning that Church tower with a sculpted sheep.

Jesus is the Lamb of God whose voluntary sacrifice takes away our sin.  Our Lord on Calvary takes the full impact of sin and death for us at the cost of his life.

Our Lord has soaked up all the evil that would defeat me and offered me life to the full - life that cancels sin with forgiveness, sickness with healing, bondage with deliverance and even doubt with the gift of faith through the mighty Redemption he has won. 

All of this is powerfully present to me in every celebration of the Eucharist.

I cannot understand it but I will accept it. I cannot understand the way electricity works but that does not stop me switching on the lights. I take both on authority and it works to do so.

Jesus died in my place so that he might live in my place. Jesus died in my place to carry off the impact of evil upon me, through the gift of the Eucharist. Jesus lives in my place, cooperating with my will by his Spirit, as I welcome him again and again into my heart in this Sacrament!

This morning we make the memorial of the Offering of Jesus and enter into that Self-Offering! It is through the sacrificial Lamb of God that we can make a perfect offering to the Father, our sinful bodies made clean by his body..our souls washed through his most precious blood.

There is a deep continuity between the sacrifice of Abraham, the offering of Jesus the Lamb of God, the Eucharistic Sacrifice and our own sacrificial living as Christians.  They all hang together. In a culture so full of self-interest what we are about this morning is powerfully counter-cultural. Here, in union with Christ, we are offering our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice

No wonder the eucharist has been described as ‘a meeting of rebels in a mammon-oriented society’. Sacrifice goes against the grain of our contemporary culture in many ways, especially voluntary sacrifice.  People can make sacrifice when absolutely necessary - but to choose to give your life away Sunday by Sunday - well that’s heavily counter-cultural!

Faithful attendance and active participation in the eucharist is our great reminder day by day of God’s call for us to direct our energies more and more away from the service of self and more and more towards his service.  This self-offering is, in the words of the Eucharistic Prayer both ‘right’ and also ‘a good and joyful thing’.

Sacrifice is at heart about this voluntary choice about how we direct our lives - it is about love before it is about death.  It is about ‘joyous living’ just as sure as ‘God loves a cheerful giver’. It is not so much about forgoing what we desire but of binding our energies to what God desires. 

Here in this Eucharist week by week we’re drawn into such a school of sacrifice, into a love which touches every human concern upon the earth. We are caught up again and again into the loving sacrifice of Christ and its profound challenge to our self-interest. In offering our lives once again this morning we’re entrusting them afresh into the hands of God, renewing our covenant with him, so as to be employed to his praise and service in every situation we shall face in the coming week. In the name of the Father…

Lent 1 14th February 2016

In Lent we are called to discover afresh the power of Christ’s Cross.

This is why we started Lent with the signing of the cross on our foreheads and why the symbols of glory and resurrection are backstage for the next six weeks, so that the Cross shines forth.

Last month I was in Tenerife walking in the mountains.

I visited the small town of Santiago del Teide perched on the lower slopes of Mount Teide which towers almost 4000 metres above sea level, the highest point above sea level of any island in the Atlantic Ocean, and third highest volcano on any volcanic island in the world.

The volcano last erupted in 1909. When it did so the inhabitants of Santiago del Teide were faced with the prospect of their town’s obliteration.

It’s a deeply Christian place, Tenerife. When they saw the volcano erupt the villagers didn’t hesitate to act.

They took the cross from the altar and went up the hill to meet the lava. The flow stopped where they met and each year since there’s been a thanksgiving procession.

I walked to the place where the lava stopped and said a prayer by the Cross there and before the original cross that’s in the beautiful church there.

The people saw burning lava halt before the Cross and the victory of their Christian faith.

In my own experience the Cross is as sure a weapon against no less fiery assaults against my spirit.

To believe in the Cross is to believe in the risen Lord Jesus Christ who stands behind it and beside each one of us. His power in us, by his Spirit, is greater than the power of any enemy, however powerful.

For the next six weeks Christians are paying special attention to the Cross of our Saviour and how it engages with our personal struggle against sin.

You may struggle with lack of faith in yourself – the Cross says God loves you, turn from such disbelief.

You may struggle with lack of faith in other people – the Cross says God loves them as well as you and much more, so forgive those who upset you or who seem to be against you.

You may struggle with lack of faith in God – the Cross tells you God loves you enough to die for you.

Jesus said God loves us so much he numbers every hair on our head.

In Wednesday’s rite of ashing those who received the ashes of last year’s Palm branches on their foreheads heard the words Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ. These words can be paraphrased, as I did with the school children, as ‘God loves you. Turn from sin’.

‘God forbid that we should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’ Saint Paul once wrote (Galatians 6:14) and he goes on to invite us to let the Cross bring God's grace into our lives.

In Lent we seek more than usual such grace for the empowerment of our loves, grace that comes from the foot of the Cross.

Let’s turn there now as we think in a quiet moment of the immense love shown to us by the God and Father of Jesus in sending his Son to die for us and pouring the Holy Spirit into our hearts to bring assurance of that love.

Pre-Lent Sunday 7th February 2016

We read in the Gospel a very beautiful incident from the account of the life of Our Lord.

Jesus ascends a high mountain with Peter, James and John. While praying up there the Lord’s face glows with the brightness of the sun and his garments became dazzling white.

The splendour of Christ’s divinity penetrates through his human body as the Son of God appears in his splendour and glory.

The glory that was to shine when he rose from the dead at Easter shone in this isolated incident through the person of the earthly Jesus.

The disciples were shown as much of God as they were ready for.

At the heart of Christianity there’s a yearning to see God as he is. This has sprung up from the days Jesus walked and shone on earth with the promise we would be able to see God.

Not with mortal eyes but in the resurrection.

The Transfiguration of Our Lord anticipates both his Resurrection and our own. As children of God we’re heading for the full, glorious sight of God.

Beloved we are God’s children now; what we will be has not been revealed Saint John writes. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. (1 John 3:1-3)

As Lent approaches we should be in the valley of decision about some action that can help us better head for the vision of God. It’s a time to refocus upon Our Lord, to turn our eyes upon Jesus.

Lent challenges us to look to the main things in Christian life and to keeping them the main things.

This season has about it a call to study God’s word. I do commend what I wrote in P&P suggesting we do some extra bible reading from Exodus, Isaiah, John’s gospel, Acts and so on.

As I’ve written in the news sheet from my Premier Radio broadcast on Friday, Lent’s a time we can use to let the power of the Cross take more hold of our lives.

Give out - write a letter or e mail of encouragement to a different friend or colleague each weekday; give time to help a neighbour; save money on food and give it away to charity.

Give something up. Christ bore the Cross for you and fasting can remind you of that love. Just have drinks before and after eating one meal in the afternoon if family arrangements allow; give up alcohol or chocolate on weekdays.

Give out, give up - and give to the Lord in prayer. Make a weekly self examination; attend an extra weekly church group like the Acts for Action on Tuesday evenings in the Martindale or Stations of the Cross which you can always do on your own or with others Saturdays 5.30pm.

The yearning to see God more fully is at the heart of Christianity, and to see God we need to purify our vision. Through giving out, giving up or giving to the Lord in prayer we’ve got 40 days to work especially at this.

Beloved we are God’s children now; what we will be has not been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. (1 John 3:1-3)

A happy and holy Lent to you!

Education Sunday – 24 January 2016 (Deacon David Howland)

 Jesus was a teacher. We have just heard in our gospel reading that Jesus taught in the synagogues and everyone praised him. In St Mark’s gospel, we read that he entered the synagogue in Capernaum and taught and they were astounded at his teaching for he taught as one having authority (Mark 1:21-22). In our first reading, St Paul writing to the church in Corinth speaks about how all our individual gifts, abilities and callings are required to form the whole body of Christ, that is the Church of which Jesus is the head. Teachers are the third of the named callings but there is no indication that the order in which they are described relates to their importance. Indeed, one is not more important than the other, for all are required to make the body function and be whole.

God was a teacher. Jesus was a teacher. The Old Testament is full of God teaching his chosen people; from the garden of Eden to the Ten Commandments and through the prophets and then in the gospels we have the stories of Jesus teaching in the synagogues. Teaching is important so it is worth us celebrating teaching and the wider context of education, acknowledging the contribution that St Giles School and all schools make in the development of young people.

Back in 1451, I am sure you remember it well! Pope Nicholas V described education as ‘the profession of hope in the service of others’. The ‘profession of hope in the service of others’. It is the means by which other people’s dreams can be stirred up. It is the means of achieving social inclusion, raising aspirations, equipping people with the skills, techniques and means of acquiring knowledge to improve their situation. Teaching gives people the opportunity to shape the future of others – some call it a threshold adventure.

Three years ago I was at our Local Authority’s conference for school business managers and we were very fortunate to have Sir John Jones talk to us. Sir John was headteacher of three secondary schools over a 17 year period and has since informed Government policy on a range of issues related to education including poverty and social inclusion. He is a straight-talking Mersey-sider with a passion not only for Everton Football club but he also has a passionate belief in improving the chances of children through great teaching. He calls great teachers ‘magic weavers’, magic weavers. They are the people who can get alongside a child, spark a flame and kindle that small flame into something larger. They are the teachers that you remember – you remember them not for what they taught you, not the facts or the learning techniques, but for how they made you feel. Great schools and great teachers build powerful lifelong memories.

Sir John talks about how creativity can tend to get stifled by the straight-jacket of a strict curriculum and over-enthusiastic testing regimes. Children are naturally creative; if you ask a class of six year olds if they can draw, they will probably all put their hands up but if you ask a similar class of 11-year olds you might be lucky to get into double figures. There is a story of how during a visit to a classroom another renowned educator (this time from Liverpool) asked a young girl what she was doing. “I’m just drawing God” came the nonchalant reply. “Wow!” said the teacher, “nobody knows what God looks like.” “Well,” the girl replied, not looking up from the page, “you will in a minute.” How exciting it would be if we could keep that sort of thinking and creativity in every child not just in childhood but into adulthood as well.

Teachers and indeed all places of learning do more than just teach or enable learning; they nurture people, they develop people, they expand horizons, they guide people, they participate in God’s on-going creation and, yes, they also admonish. Teachers are like a parent, mentor, coach, carer and lawyer rolled into one. It seems to me that they have a model in Jesus. A model in God the Father, we see what God is like by the example of Jesus, by the life he led, by the way he taught and the things he taught. Teachers and good schools are co-workers with all of us in trying to help build and establish God’s kingdom here on earth. The church has a long tradition of providing and promoting education for all. I pray that it will continue to do so in these challenging times ahead so that all God’s children, us included, can flourish and grow to be more like Him who created us.

I want to finish with one more story and a quotation from Sir John Jones that illustrates the beauty of magic weaving. When Sir Christopher Wren had been commissioned to build St Paul’s cathedral after the Great Fire of London, he visited the site in 1671 and observed three brick layers. One was crouched down, the second was half-standing, while the third was working feverishly.

“What are you doing?” Wren asked the men.

“Laying bricks,” the first replied.

“Making a living,” answered the second.

The third paused from his labour and explained that he was helping to build a cathedral and that one day people would come to pray to God in the cathedral that he had helped to build.

So, remember your magic-weavers, if you can, find them and thank them for they were not just laying bricks nor earning money, they were helping to build your cathedral.

May God help each of us to help build someone else’s cathedral. Amen.

Baptism of the Lord 10.1.16

John the Baptist said, ‘I have baptised you with water;… but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit Luke 3:16

Why do we need the Holy Spirit?

To pray, to love, to serve, to evangelise, to be obedient, to forgive, to heal…

Without the Holy Spirit:

God is far away,

Christ stays in the past,

the Gospel is a dead letter,

the Church is simply an organisation,

authority is a matter of domination,

mission is a matter of propaganda,

the liturgy no more than an evocation,

Christian living a slave morality.

But in the Holy Spirit:

the risen Christ is there,

the Gospel is the power of life,

the Church shows forth the life of the Trinity,

authority is a liberating service,

mission is a Pentecost,

the liturgy is both memorial and anticipation,

human action is deified.

(Words for Pentecost Sunday from the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Athenagoras)

As baptised, confirmed - and some of us - ordained Christians we possess the Holy Spirit!

We possess the Spirit - but does he possess us? That is the key to a spiritual vitality!

As Our Lord says in St John Chapter 7:37-39 If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.

Our renewal in the Holy Spirit is about the releasing of the life of the Spirit within us.

The late Dom Ian Petit of Ampleforth wrote these words in his book You Will Receive Power: Baptism and Confirmation confer a supernatural gift, but ignorance or lack of understanding of the gift, can block its full effect. In other words, while the sacrament is valid and has been given, the effect has been blocked. When the block is removed then the full effect floods in... baptism in the Holy Spirit… an opportunity for awakening in (people) their sacraments of initiation..

The New Year begins with a liturgical reminder about our ongoing need for this unblocking and awakening to the power of the Holy Spirit who visits us in every Eucharist. We have the possibility after the sermon of receiving anointing on our foreheads with the oil blessed by the Bishop for use at baptism, confirmation and ordination. We call it chrism oil and it represents the anointing in the Holy Spirit given in baptism, confirmation and ordination. We are allowed to use it occasionally to express and effect the renewal of faith and baptism as this morning.

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is the grand reminder that Christians are people who have woken up to Jesus and to the Gift of the Holy Spirit, to the living God - nothing less.

An awakening to the Spirit, a releasing of the Spirit, an unblocking of his flow – this is the invitation and challenge of today’s Feast! 

There is one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and it confers the Holy Spirit. A gift though is given that needs to be received. For Christians to seek the renewing power of the Spirit – as we do as we receive Holy Communion every Sunday - is a matter of seeking to be more fully what we are in Christ and nothing more or less than that!

We want to be a people that live knowing their need of grace!

The Spirit is waiting to confirm to us the same words that were spoken to Our Lord at his baptism: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.

Christians share in the anointing of the Anointed One – Jesus is the Christ or Anointed One so he can share his anointing with us and speak into our hearts those words of adoption: You are my son, my daughter; with you I am well pleased.

There’s a great tale from C.S. Lewis' about a doubting Bishop. Lewis once imagined an additional scene at the Marriage at Cana - a sceptical bishop sitting further down the table from Our Lord and Our Lady. There are the guests with the water turned into wine. As everyone enjoys the new wine of the Kingdom Feast the doubting bishop is holding up his glass and scrutinising, "How can this be? How can water become wine? How can the philosophical difficulties about an interventionist God be overcome? Is this some sort of conjuring trick?" All the while the rest of them at table are drinking up the Spirit in whatever sense you like!

There are many who make an 11th Commandment Thou shalt not commit thyself!  Such folk – and they are around in the Church today – miss out on Christian basics, on the empowering promised in today’s feast.

If you hesitate about coming forward this morning shelve your doubts!

Be open to the touch of the Lord through his Church.

I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. This baptism or gift of the Holy Spirit is an ongoing reality for those who will commit themselves. The Gift is not so much a once for all thing or commodity but rather something dynamic and ongoing.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a process in which the relationship that opens up at Baptism involves an ongoing flow of love, praise and power leading into ongoing consecration in the Truth.

It is worth recalling that though Our Lord himself was conceived by the Holy Spirit he waited 30 years for his Baptism in Jordan. So it can be – as it was for me and can be for you- that though I had received the Spirit through Infant Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination the first deep experience came many years later – and through, of all things, a crisis of faith – and a recommitment!

I have mentioned my faith crisis before and how I went on a retreat years back and prayed God if you’re there show yourself, give me a vision of yourself more to your dimensions and less to mine – and he did – but it needs refreshing!

Another way to look at it is like this: if the Christian life is like a rose bush there are great spurts of growth from time to time that push out new branches with new flowers. One such branch ‑ and its some branch in its fruitfulness – is, if you like, a new opening up to the Spirit. Yet the life of the rose bush before and after such a new spurt of growth is the same life.

We possess the Spirit - but does he possess us? That is the question we are being asked on this feast of the Lord’s Baptism.  There is a commitment issue here we need to address.

As we come to receive Jesus in Holy Communion are we really committed and open to his empowering?  Are we ready to hear and to believe those wonderful words: You are my son, my daughter; with you I am well pleased.  

After the silence you have a chance to act in faith upon those wonderful words and come forward for the Father’s touch and anointing expressed sacramentally through his minister’s anointing touch upon your forehead.

As this happens we will continue in prayer (and sing hymns to the Spirit).

Epiphany 3rd January 2016

As I reflected on today’s celebration of the Epiphany two words came to my mind – spiritual journey.

Firstly the spiritual journey of humankind as we enter a new year.

Secondly, there’s the spiritual journey of the wise men to Our Lord and their offering at journey’s end.

Thirdly linked to this the Church’s spiritual journey through her Seasons. Today we enter the third season since we began the church’s year - Advent purple turned to Christmas white, a colour that continues into Epiphany season.

At St Giles we keep the shorter option which sees the ordinary green season return Monday week after the Advent-Christmas cycle climaxes with the descent of the Spirit on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, next Sunday, in parallel with how the Lent and Easter seasons climax with the Spirit’s arrival at Pentecost

The spiritual journey of humankind as we enter a new year. The spiritual journey of the wise men to Our Lord and the Church’s spiritual journey through her Seasons.

These three bring me to the final thought of another much simpler spiritual journey.

It is of but a few inches - fifteen inches…

The story goes there was once a rabbi in Cracow, Isaac son of Yekel, who dreamed one night that there was a great treasure under the bridge at Prague.

He set off at once for Prague, but when he got there found that there was a heavy guard on the bridge. The rabbi had no choice but to explain his dream to one of the guards.

When the guard heard the story he burst into laughter. ‘How crazy can you get? Suppose everyone went off after their dreams? Why I once dreamed that there was a treasure hidden in a house in Cracow. It was in the house of a man called Isaac, son of Yekel, but do you think I was going off to Cracow because of that dream?

The Rabbi Isaac returned to Cracow.  He had treasure at home. He did not need to go to Prague.

So it is with the spiritual journey. If we want spiritual riches we’re more likely to find them by opening our eyes to what we have already than by journeying the world over.

The truth of Epiphany is about God come down to our level to dwell in human hearts.

If people want to journey to God today they need move inches and not miles.

Fifteen inches, to be precise, down from the head to the heart. That is where we find God.

Too often our capacity for doing things and going places works against what’s most important – the short journey, always possible, to rest in God, to contemplate the one who made us and offers himself to us continually.

Our restless minds distract us. They move us away from the treasure to be found in the stillness of the heart. When the mind can be stilled, and lowered, into the heart - there is salvation.

The Kingdom of Christ is within us.

Accomplishing this short journey within means taking time day by day to reflect, to sit or kneel in God’s presence and indeed our own presence.

There we find hunger and longing, hurt and inadequacy, pride and fearfulness.

None of these melt away on the spiritual journey but they can be owned and offered to the Lord who meets us just as we are.

Fear not to enter his courts in the slenderness of the poor wealth thou wouldst reckon as thine.

The journey within takes courage. There’s so much that would keep us on the surface, even the so-called mission task of the Church, not to mention the multitude of recreational options available to us, the manifold activities we can choose to fill up our lives!

The inner journey takes courage and it takes time, time to be.

The famous writer Pascal said most of mankind’s problems derive from our inability to sit still in a room.

To do just that, to sit still Just maybe 15 minutes a day - 5 minutes with the Scriptures, 5 minutes in quiet worship and 5 minutes in intercession, prayer for others, including our parish - what a difference if we made that the flavour of our spiritual journey in the coming year!

‘Jesus loves us as we are’ it’s said.  

As we own that love day by day we own ourselves, our souls and bodies and make them more and more fully a living sacrifice to be united with his perfect Offering in the eucharist.

Speaking of this sort of spiritual journey T.S.Eliot wrote these great lines: And the end of all our exploring – will be to arrive where we started – and to know the place for the first time.

The Kingdom of Christ is within us.

Wise men still journey to Jesus but they don’t move anywhere.

Whatever we do in 2016 as individuals or as a Church may we be the Church better by being Christians better so that the depths of Christ may resonate from our prayers and our eucharist’s and our lives here in Horsted Keynes!  

Be still and know that I am God!

Holy Family 27th December 2015

Imagine a land of pure delight.

Imagine a kingdom shining through and through with glory.

Imagine a place abounding in joy and laughter where each cared for all and all for each.

Imagine a country with no fear and the only tears those of joy unbounded and gladness unalloyed.

Imagine joy and glory and love in that country flowing between its citizens and their Ruler who is source of beauty and joy and love and glory and so gives to whom he wills.

Imagine the enthusiasm of that Ruler of the glorious Kingdom to welcome other beings into the sharing of endless laughter and mutual encouragement, into glorious light and peace beyond understanding.

Then imagine this ruler becoming mindful of planet earth of the solar system and of beings there capable of becoming citizens of the glorious kingdom.

Imagine that he came to us. He came from the glory. He came from the glorious kingdom.

I can imagine such a kingdom and such a King. I see hints of glory in the sky at dusk and dawn. I see bold red colouration reflected in the clouds and at times, as the setting sun hides them, an incredible brightness, an incredible shining and I see this sight as a glimpse of something far more glorious, a reflection of Someone far more wonderful.

I can sense in the smile of a believer something that transcends, I mean something that goes right beyond this world.

In particular as I visit people in enormous pain and yet with shining faces I look beyond them and see the glorious kingdom in my mind’s eye. I imagine that land of pure delight I’ve been speaking of and its Ruler.

I imagine – but, then, suppose my very imagination were the inspiration of that distant Ruler?

Suppose more than that.

Suppose the Ruler of the glorious Kingdom, so mindful of the earth and billions of souls eligible for his fullest blessing, had come in Person to open up a way from this world into that glorious Kingdom?

Suppose, because his nature were love, there was no question of forcing people into his Land but He were to set before us a choice.

Suppose the only way He could make human beings capable of glory was to win and enter their hearts so his indestructible life could be in them for ever? And that whether his life entered a soul was for that person to choose?

Suppose that were true – that the King of the heavenly country had come, had chosen to bring his own glorious life and join it to ours? Or join it to those who would receive him?

Suppose He came! Suppose He came from the glorious Kingdom. Oh yes, believer, He came from the glory.

Suppose He came - that the Word became flesh. God became man.

The Virgin Mary had a baby boy, the glorious King pitched his tent on earth in a human family – Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the Holy Family?

Suppose the Prince of the heavenly Kingdom has come and his invitation is before me. Suppose I have chosen to invite him into my life?

Then I am not imagining that country of pure delight. I am destined for it. I have my citizenship.

Suppose the King of Heaven has come and opened his kingdom to mere mortals?

Then I have everything in the world to look forwards to, everything in this world and in the world to come!

Why? Because if He is indeed the King of glory, his possibilities go beyond my imagining.

In my imagination I can’t see a future for this mortal body beyond an earthly grave.

But if the Son of God brings his reality, his life, his power, his joy, his possibilities into the world and into my life I’m drawn by a love quite beyond what I can imagine.

Then, if He should choose to renew his life in me through the Bread which is his body – Christ Mass – So be it. I will not argue any more.

He came from the glory. He came from the glorious Kingdom.

The King who came to Palestine is coming now in Bread and Wine – that you and I may be raised beyond our fondest imaginings to his glorious Kingdom. So be it. Amen.