Holy Adventures

Luke 14:25-33

There are some Gospel readings that make you wish you had checked the lectionary and swapped the day, or passage, beforehand.

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children … cannot be my disciple.”

Well. Thanks Lord, Good morning to you too, Jesus.

It is a startling thing to hear from the one who tells us to love our neighbours, love our enemies, and honour our parents. And that should make us pause before taking it as an instruction to become less loving. Jesus is using deliberately shocking language to ask a serious question: where do your deepest loyalties lie? What shapes our choices when the things we love pull us in different directions?

Large crowds are following. Jesus wants them to understand what following will involve. They are travelling towards Jerusalem. The cross is becoming a real possibility. So he asks them to count the cost.

We understand that in other parts of life. Before making a commitment, we need some understanding of what it will ask of us.

Yet we can sometimes imagine that following Jesus should fit neatly around everything we already do and believe. A little prayer here. A Sunday morning there. Something reassuring that leaves the rest of life untouched. Jesus asks for more than that.

He asks for a faith that reaches our diaries, our bank accounts, our relationships, and the way we treat people who cannot offer us anything in return. That will sometimes cost us comfort. It may cost us the satisfaction of having the last word. It may mean admitting we were wrong, sharing something we would rather keep, or speaking when silence would be easier.  All of which can sound rather daunting. Yes, following Jesus is costly. It will cost us all we have if we are prepared to say yes, over and over again. But it is also utterly compelling.

Perhaps there is something burning in your mind and heart, even now, that you wonder whether God is asking you if you would ever be prepared to give that up. I had a job I loved that paid me well, a home that was my own, a future planned and a comfortable lifestyle when Jesus asked if I would follow him to theological college and to ordination, and to the slums of India en route, and to a future that I had no idea where it would lead.  And part of me was willing, part of me trusted, part of me chose to do it in spite of my reluctance and part of me grew in trust as the path unfolded.

Sometimes giving up what we believe is wonderful, life-filled and our forever-plan feels huge, way too costly, but it can lead to the biggest blessings and the most incredible challenges along the way. There’s no way this kid from Coventry could ever have dreamt of a life down under, especially not in a home, 200m from the Indian ocean, with a husband and 5 children. Following Jesus gets a bit like that. He outdoes us with grace and blessings.  And, yes, sometimes it isn’t ocean sunsets and clear blue skies. Sometimes it’s sad and painful and lonely and deeply costly.

But listen again to Paul: “It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

God is already at work in us—even in the desire to follow, even in our hesitant willingness to begin.

We can ask for the courage we lack. We can receive help. We can take the next faithful step without knowing every step that will follow. Perhaps that is our prayer this morning:

Jesus, help me see where following you is asking something of me today. Give me the courage to say yes to your eternal invitation to grow closer to you. Give me the willingness to respond, and the grace to trust you as I do. Amen.

Rev 7:9-end                Psalm 34:1-10, 22       1 John 3:1-13              Matt5:1-12

All Saints’ Day always makes me smile, because we sometimes talk about saints as though they’re solemn, glowing figures who float gracefully through life like spiritual ballerinas. But spend any time researching them and you discover they are anything but predictable. They are wild! Saint Joseph of Cupertino was reportedly prone to levitating during prayer. Then there’s Saint Drogo, popularly remembered as the patron saint of coffee and unattractive people—as if the two are linked. And my personal favourite: Guinefort, a French dog whom local people honoured as a saint after a story spread that he saved a baby. The Church never officially approved him, but I’m fond of the nomination. The history of holiness is more colourful than we sometimes allow.

But most of the saints we have known never floated anywhere. They put the kettle on. They could be stubborn. They had questionable taste in fashion and quirky sayings we can still hear. They loved fiercely, got things wrong, and sometimes needed forgiveness before breakfast. Today is All Saints’ Day. Not Some Saints’ Day. Alongside the great names of Christian history, we remember those whose holiness we encountered across a kitchen table. Those we have loved and no longer see. We remember them honestly. Some could be wonderfully generous and intensely frustrating. Some could pray faithfully and complain magnificently. We love them in the fullness of who they were, and all they still mean to us. Perhaps remembering them honestly helps us hear today’s Gospel.

We can turn the Beatitudes into a spiritual checklist. Become sufficiently meek. Achieve purity of heart. Make enough peace. Then perhaps you will qualify.

But Jesus begins with blessing. Before his listeners have had a chance to improve themselves, he announces God’s favour where people might least expect to find it.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Those who have reached the end of their resources. Those whose prayers have become, “God, help.” Those who arrive with empty hands, because empty hands are all they have. God’s kingdom is theirs.

“Blessed are those who mourn.” Those words may land somewhere tender today.

Grief doesn’t feel blessed, does it? It feels like reaching for the phone before remembering. An empty chair. The fear that you are beginning to forget someone’s voice. The ache of knowing there are memories you will never get to make.

Jesus doesn’t ask us to call that pain good. He promises comfort. He declares that people living with sorrow have a place in God’s future. You do not have to stop crying before you belong. Then Jesus blesses the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, those who hunger for righteousness. People whose gentleness might be mistaken for weakness. People who resist cruelty when cruelty would be easier. People who long for justice and cannot settle comfortably into an unjust world.

These blessings offer comfort and draw us towards a particular way of living. Grace welcomes us, then begins its work in us. We learn to offer the mercy we receive. We discover that making peace requires courage. Another person’s suffering matters enough for us to act.

So I wonder what echoes of Jesus’ blessings we might hear among us today.

Perhaps something like this:

Blessed are you who have worshipped here for decades, and you who still wonder whether you belong.

Blessed are you whose faith comes easily, and you who don’t know what you believe, but are here anyway.

Blessed are you who whisper a name and cannot say the next word.

Blessed are you who laugh at the memory of someone you love, and then cry at the same memory.

Blessed are you who are exhausted from caring, and you who are learning, reluctantly, to receive care.

Blessed are you who hunger for a fairer world, who cannot bear children going hungry or people being treated as disposable.

Blessed are you who interrupt the cruel joke, make room for the stranger, and keep choosing kindness when silence would be simpler.

Blessed are you who try to make peace in your family. May you find courage, and remember reconciliation cannot be carried by one person alone.

Blessed are you who have made mistakes you cannot undo, and are learning how to live differently.

And blessed are you who are thinking, “But surely she cannot mean me.”

Yes. There is grace here for you too.

Today we remember people whose love helped make us who we are. Some of their kindness is still at work in the world through us. Revelation offers a glimpse of a gathering beyond counting, and the promise that God will wipe away every tear. We entrust those we love to that tenderness, knowing we are held in it too.

In a few moments, we will share a foretaste of the eternal banquet. A little bread, a sip of wine: Christ welcoming and nourishing us, joining us in a fellowship that reaches beyond death. Those we miss are held in the same love. At this table, we belong together. And you are invited to light a candle for someone you are remembering. Let that small flame hold whatever you bring: a name, a memory, a thank you, a prayer you cannot put into words. A tiny light, into the darkness of grief, a reflection of the glory of forever.

Then we will go from here to carry that love into the ordinary life of the week. May God give us grace to become who we already are: beloved people, called to be saints.

And one day, when someone lights a candle for us, may they remember us as one who loved well. Amen.

Today we celebrate Saints Simon and Jude. They are very dear to me, because they are the patrons of the college where I was formed for ordination, on a green hill far away in West Yorkshire, England. Today, students from that college, old and new, will gather in small bunches to celebrate these saints, and what we have been gifted through the college that holds a devotion to them, so what can I share with you, in this country far from home about dear Simon and Jude…

Simon and Jude: Two apostles who can sound as though they are being introduced by elimination.

Simon—but not Simon Peter. Judas—but not Judas Iscariot.

The other Simon. The other Judas.

We know very little about either of them. Scripture calls Simon “the Zealot” but doesn’t give us enough to reconstruct his politics or personality. I rather enjoy imagining him arriving with banners and placards, ready to challenge injustice. But that is my imagination, rather than his biography.

What his name does offer us is a question: what are we zealous for? What matters enough to stir us into action? Following Jesus gives us plenty to care about: people going hungry, neighbours living in fear, those who are excluded or treated as though their lives matter less.

There are times when love needs to get to its feet. Make the phone call. Challenge the cruel remark. Offer practical help. Say, “We cannot simply allow this to happen.”

But zeal needs tending. We can become so determined to win an argument that we forget the person we are arguing with. We can pour ourselves into every need until there is nothing left. Our enthusiasm needs Christ’s direction, and our bodies and souls need rest.

And then there is Jude, whom Christian tradition remembers as the patron saint of desperate situations and lost causes.

That title has drawn people to him for generations. People who have run out of answers. People who have prayed for years and seen little change. People who are frightened that someone they love is beyond help. We don’t know whether Jude was the quiet one, moving chairs and locking up after everyone else had gone home. But his association with desperate situations invites us to consider another part of discipleship: the faithfulness that keeps loving when there is little encouragement. The visit that makes no headlines. The listening ear. The prayer offered again, when we have nothing new to say. Such things can become a lifeline.

Perhaps Simon and Jude, remembered together, can help us hold courage and perseverance together too. We need people who stir us into action, and people who help us keep going. Sometimes we need to be both.

So here are two small challenges for this week.

First, choose one thing you care about and give it one practical act of love. Keep it manageable. A conversation, a donation, an offer of help. Let something that concerns you become something you do.

Second, bring to God one person or situation you are tempted to give up on. You don’t need to find an answer or manufacture optimism. Simply name them before God. Ask for help to love faithfully, and for wisdom about what is yours to do.

Today we honour two apostles whose stories are largely hidden from us, but whose lives belong to the foundations of the Church. We come to the same Christ who called them. Here, at this table, we receive nourishment for our own calling. May we leave with courage to act, grace to persevere, and love enough for the next faithful step.

Amen.

Deut 34:1–12         Ps 90:1–6, 13–17      1 Thess 2:1–13      Matt 22:34–46.

Five little words caught me off guard at our midweek Eucharist on Wednesday.

Words I must have read hundreds of times. They introduce the confession in our prayer book and come from the gospel we just heard. Jesus is asked which commandment is the greatest. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” We know this. But did you hear what Jesus says next? “The second is like it.”

I was so struck that I checked my Bible after Mass. Had the prayer book created a useful paraphrase? But no. There they were: “The second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’” I had always heard two commandments. Love God wholeheartedly. Love your neighbour. This week, I heard the connection. Jesus doesn’t say, “And the next important thing is…” He says the second is like the first.

What does loving the invisible God with your whole self look like? The answer is found in how we love the person beside us. And how we love ourselves.

I wonder whether those five words might help us stand beside Moses on the mountain, because I find today’s Old Testament reading almost unbearably sad. I cried over it this week. Moses has given his life to this journey. He summoned his courage to confront Pharaoh, led the people out of slavery, carried their complaints and fear. He pleaded with God for them, lost his temper with them, and somehow kept going. And now, at last, there it is: The promised land. All that country stretching into the distance. The destination towards which his life has been directed. You can see it, Moses. But you will not enter it. After all those years of trying and failing and trying again. After all he has done to love God and the people in his care. Surely he could just cross the river. Stand there for a moment. Feel its earth beneath his feet.

Surely God’s grace could extend to Moses? The wider story gives reasons for his exclusion. But reasons do not remove the heartache.

There is a particular grief in coming so close to something you have longed for and discovering it will remain beyond your reach. Some of us know that grief. A relationship we gave everything to. A healing we prayed for. A future we thought we would share with someone who is no longer here. Sometimes we must face the possibility that the work of our lives will bear fruit after our lives have ended.

Moses will not enter. But the people will. The people he argued with and prayed for. The people whose freedom he helped bring about. They will cross the river, with Joshua leading them. Their children will make their homes there. That doesn’t make Moses’ sorrow disappear. But it means his love has a future. Perhaps loving God means loving our neighbours enough to work for a future they will enjoy, even when we will not.

Planting a tree beneath whose shade we may never sit. Working for peace we may never see. Challenging injustice whose roots go deeper than we can reach in a lifetime. Handing on faith to people who will carry the gospel into places we will never go. There is something deeply demanding about this. We want to know our efforts have worked. We want to see the change. Cross the river ourselves. There is nothing shameful about that longing. Moses wanted to enter the land. Of course he did. Faithfulness does not require us to pretend we don’t care about the outcome. Love makes us care very much. And love asks us to keep seeking goodness, even when we may never see its fulfilment.

Long ago, people from Mount Hawthorn were sent here with a charge: go to the water’s edge and plant a church. They could not have seen all that would grow from their work. Over time, priests and people came, each contributing something to the life of this place. Now it is our turn.

We are caring for a church we have received, shaping something we will one day hand on. Some of what we begin may flourish quickly. Some may become a gift to people whose names we will never know. Our call is to love, faithfully. Not all the results will be ours to witness.

As a priest, I feel that keenly. Six years in my first parish; so much began and continues under someone else’s care. Five years in Beaconsfield. What will grow from the seeds sown there? What fruit will someone else harvest? Perhaps that’s why I want to stand beside Moses and say, “God, it hurts.” We are allowed to say that. And perhaps, through our tears, we can look out with him across the land. Someone will live there. Someone will find freedom there. Someone’s children will have a future there. And the love that helped bring them to its border will always have mattered. So, we keep journeying.

Our call is to love God with everything we have. And our second is like it. Love your neighbour as yourself. May we do both, faithfully and diligently, with all we have.  Amen.

Exodus 33:12-end           Matthew 22:15-22

At the start of all my favourite crime dramas, each episode begins with a recap. We would benefit from one today too, because before this conversation between Moses and God, we witnessed a spectacular display of human emotion. You may remember last week’s reading: the disaster of the golden calf. Moses has been up the mountain, and the people have grown tired of waiting. They want a god they can see. Something solid. Something manageable. So they make one out of their earrings, and worship it.

Moses comes down carrying the tablets of the covenant, written by the very finger of God. He sees what has happened and, in a furious rage, smashes God’s own handiwork.

I love the humanity of Moses here. The man entrusted with God’s commandments is so furious that he breaks the whole lot before he has even delivered them. He has led these people out of Egypt, argued for them, worried about them, carried responsibility for them. And now the tablets lie in pieces. The question is whether their journey with God can continue, or whether they have smashed their relationship with their loving creator along with the tablets.

God tells Moses to lead the people onwards. But Moses needs more than a destination. Moses needs relationship. Who is coming with us? How am I supposed to do this? You say you know me by name. Then help me to know you. Underneath his questions is a very human plea: please don’t make me do this on my own. God answers with absolute reassurance: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Presence. And rest.

God knows Moses needs rest. After the climbing, fury and smashing, after grinding down the golden calf and making his people drink the god they made, after all the conflict, broken relationships, and anguish, God offers rest.

But Moses cannot quite settle into that promise yet. “Show me your glory.”

Perhaps he needs something to hold onto when the next crisis comes. Proof that this God is worth following. A certainty strong enough to carry him through the wilderness.

God answers: “I will make all my goodness pass before you.” Moses asks for glory. God promises goodness. I wonder whether Moses hears that as an answer. I wonder whether we would. Because goodness sounds rather quiet when you are hoping for glory. Glory sounds like triumph. The roar of the crowd. Your name in lights. Something magnificent enough to leave nobody in any doubt. Goodness might easily pass unnoticed. Yet goodness is what God promises to show Moses, along with grace and mercy. Perhaps God is teaching Moses what glory actually looks like.

Moses is sheltered in the cleft of a rock, covered by God’s hand as God passes. He is allowed a glimpse. He must continue without possessing the whole picture. But he will not continue alone. Moses has smashed the tablets of the covenant, and God is already speaking about a future together. There is glory in that. God seems remarkably free of our human need to be seen succeeding.

We spend so much energy wondering how things look. Whether we are doing enough. Whether there is enough to show for our efforts. Churches do this too. We heard a lot about it at Synod yesterday. We count, compare, worry. And there is nothing wrong with wanting our communities to flourish. But here, as we discern where God is leading us, perhaps this passage gives us another question:

Where is goodness?

Who is finding the security of human connection? Who has tried the door and found it wide open, with space for them at the table? Where are people sharing, making peace, offering kindness, finding courage? Those things help us recognise God’s presence. We might want glory—I know I often do—and God draws our attention to goodness, offers presence, promises rest. The very things that sustain us.

Today’s Gospel puts another kind of glory before us: the emperor’s face, stamped upon a coin. His image travels wherever money changes hands, reminding everyone who is in charge. Jesus says, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” The coin bears the emperor’s image. But we bear the image of God. Our lives belong to God.

In Jesus, we see what a life lived wholly for God looks like. He is approaching the cross. In the world’s eyes there is no glory in that. There is humiliation, abandonment, and a borrowed tomb. Even the resurrection happens unseen. Nobody witnesses the moment death gives way to life. God seems remarkably free of our human need to be seen succeeding. God does not need an audience to be glorious. God IS glory. And that glory is revealed in goodness. In mercy. In love that endures. In life where everything seemed finished.

Friends, we bear the image of this God, whose glory is revealed in goodness. May we seek that goodness, that presence, that deep relationship, knowing who we are and whose we are. And may others catch a glimpse of God’s glory in the goodness we share.   Amen.

Exodus 32:1-14     Psalm 106:1-6, 20-24     Phil 4:1-9     Matthew 22:1-14

This week, Janet, Judy and I took communion to dear Jean, who is 94 and mostly housebound. Jean has read her Bible three times from cover to cover. “Probably more than that,” she said. Then she asked me, “I still don’t understand a lot of it. Do you?”

And I had to say: quite often, no. Sometimes the longer we spend with scripture, the more we notice what we haven’t understood. A familiar story becomes strange again.

That is very much my experience of this morning’s gospel. I think I understood it better in Sunday school, when we cut out paper robes and put them on cardboard men. There was a wedding. You needed the right clothes. We had scissors and glue. It seemed straightforward. Now, I’m less sure. Before we reach the robes, people have been murdered. A city has been burned. And somehow the banquet is still going ahead.

This time, I found myself wondering: what did that room smell like? Roast meat. Bread. Wine. And surely, smoke. The king answers violence with violence. Then he sends his servants out again: the food is ready. Come and eat.

In the middle of death and destruction, come and eat?!

I find that deeply troubling. I don’t have an explanation that makes every part comfortable. Perhaps we can admit that together.

But there is something about this invitation. When the original guests refuse to come, the servants go out into the streets, and they gather everyone they find: the parable says, “both good and bad”. Both. They aren’t instructed to assess people’s worthiness. They are told to bring them in.  The feast fills with people who hadn’t expected a place. There is room before everyone has everything sorted. And yet Matthew won’t let us stop at the open door. There is still that troubling wedding garment. Why invite someone in, then throw them out?

Christians have understood the garment in different ways. One explanation sees it as a life changed by the grace received. We cannot earn our place at the feast. But accepting the invitation involves more than occupying a chair. If we receive mercy, will we learn to practise it? If we are welcomed, will we make room for others? That helps me hear the challenge. It doesn’t make the guest’s punishment less disturbing.

So, I need to hold this story beside another meal: the one Jesus himself will share within days. We are in the last week of his life. He has entered Jerusalem. Tensions are rising. Conflict is intensifying. Arrest and death are approaching. At the Passover table, the familiar food will carry the memory of liberation. But I imagine other things hanging in the air too: anxiety, suspicion, danger, love, irrepressible hope. Jesus will give bread to people who will deny, betray and abandon him. Judas will eat too.

Whatever we struggle to understand in the parable, we can look at what Jesus does. He feeds people whose lives are unfinished. People who will fail him. And when human violence falls upon him, he bears it in his own body.

The preacher Nadia Bolz-Weber wonders whether we might better recognise Jesus in that bound, silent guest, thrown into the outer darkness. What if that darkness is Calvary? It is a question to sit with. Even there, among the rejected and cast out, Christ comes to meet us. His table gives us somewhere to stand as we wrestle with this story. We receive a welcome we haven’t earned. And that welcome begins to ask something of us.

I felt that in a small way this week.

Kennie was bitten hard by her best friend at daycare. She wept. The teeth-shaped bruises were awful. I asked whether her friend had said sorry. “Yes,” she said, “and I said, ‘It’s okay,’ because sometimes, Mummy, when people say sorry, it’s good to say, ‘It’s okay.’” Later, at bedtime, she wanted to pray for the child who had bitten her. And she wanted me to do it. I was still furious. “Okay,” I said, “but this is going to be quite a stretch.” Apparently, our bedtime prayers had been taking root. Now they were asking something of me. The bite wasn’t okay. Kennie needed comforting and protecting. But the child who hurt her was still someone we could bring before God. Mercy, with the hurt still real.

Since my commissioning service, when Bishop Hans preached, a phrase has almost accidentally become our slogan: open the doors wider, make the tables longer. Open doors, long tables. And look —we have plenty of chairs, plenty of space at the table. But making room in our hearts may take more work. It may be quite a stretch. But we don’t have to understand everything before we come. We come, good and bad, and discover that the welcome we receive can, will, change us.

So we come to this table with the smoke still hanging in the air: our hurts, our fears, our anger, our hope. And Christ gives himself to us here. If we dare to accept the invitation, receiving his welcome teaches us to make room for others.

Open doors. Long tables. And grace for the stretch.

Amen.

Verses from Exodus 20              Psalm 19     Phil 3: 4b-14          Matthew 21: 33-46

Two weeks ago, our gospel reading took us to a vineyard. We met a generous vineyard owner who made sure everyone in the line received work and a full day’s pay, regardless of how long they worked—or whether anyone else thought they deserved it. We reflected on how there is enough. Enough, and some to share. We thought about the world’s resources, and committed ourselves afresh to looking towards the back of the line, towards those most in need, because that is where we will find Jesus. It was beautiful and encouraging, and a bit challenging, but so very like the God we have tentatively chosen to do our best to follow.

This week, we are back in a vineyard—and it couldn’t be more different, could it? There is still a harvest. But the people entrusted with the vineyard have decided that everything it produces belongs to them. They beat the servants sent to collect the owner’s share. They kill them. Finally, the owner sends his son. “This is the heir,” they say. Kill him, and the inheritance will be ours. They have forgotten whose vineyard it is. And perhaps that is where this story gets uncomfortably close, especially as we come to the end of our Season of Creation.

We live within a creation we did not make. We receive sunlight, water, soil, breath. We depend on countless lives and processes we scarcely notice. Before we have earned anything, we are being sustained. But somewhere along the way, we, humanity, begins to say: mine.

Now, I understand something of that word. I have a three-year-old. “Mine” is one of Kennie’s favourite words. Mine covers quite a lot of territory. Something she owns. Something she wants. Something somebody else is currently holding. We smile at it in a toddler. We roll our eyes. We try to hold boundaries and encourage sharing. She is learning.  But we don’t always grow out of it. Sometimes we just get better at explaining why everything ought to be ours. My land. My water. My right to take what I want. The tenants take that little word to its terrible conclusion. They want the vineyard so badly that another person’s life becomes something standing in their way.

Jesus tells this story to religious leaders: people entrusted with the care of others. The church needs to hear it too. What happens when protecting what we have becomes more important than caring for those entrusted to us?

And at the end of this Season of Creation, we must ask that question beyond these walls. Whose wellbeing pays for our convenience? Who loses a home, a livelihood, a future, so that somebody else can keep taking?

Into this world, God speaks the commandments. Before a single commandment is given there is a Divine reminder: I brought you out of slavery. I don’t want to see you back there.

These people know what it is to be owned. Now they must learn to live freely together. So God gives them parameters and boundaries, for their own benefit; for their good and their mutual flourishing, not to ruin their fun:

Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not allow jealousy and grabbing and ownership govern your life. And keep the Sabbath. Let your household rest. Let your workers rest. Even let your animals rest. You may not demand everything from someone else. There must be enough life left for living. Enough, and some to share. Be the ones who share.

But the tenants recognise no such limit. They kill the son. And Jesus asks his listeners: what will the owner do? Their answer is immediate. Destroy them. Give the vineyard to somebody better. We know that answer. We can usually identify somebody who deserves to be removed before examining our own grip. But we hear this story knowing where Jesus is going.

He will be taken outside the city and killed. Human beings will do their worst to the one who comes among us bearing God’s love. And what does God do? God looks death straight in the eyes and says, no way, and raises Jesus. The rejected one becomes the cornerstone. The risen Jesus comes among the disciples who deserted him and offers peace. He entrusts them with work again. And I want you to hear that because it is true for us too: Our rejection of God does not exhaust God’s love for us.

Love makes a new beginning possible. We can admit who we have become. We can loosen our grip. We can change how we live. We can build again on the Christ who gives himself for the life of the world.

So, as this Season of Creation ends, what would change if we remembered whose vineyard this is? Perhaps we would waste less because these gifts are precious. Share more because other lives need them. Look towards the back of the line before reaching for more ourselves. We have a vineyard to tend, and neighbours to feed.

In a few minutes, we will hold out our hands for bread. Christ will give himself to us again. May that gift teach us how to receive the world: gratefully, tenderly, with enough room in our hands for somebody else to have a share. There is enough. Enough, and some to share.

Let us live as though we believe it. Amen.

Ezekiel 1:4-12         Psalm 138                Revelation 12:7-12a                      John 1:45-51

In the office here at St Michael’s, there is a small glass plaque.  It says: From St Michael’s of Coventry. I did not notice it until I had been here for a fortnight. It was given to this church many years ago by a clergyperson who had visited Coventry—long before any of you knew me, long before I knew you, long before anyone imagined that this Cov Kid, born and brought up beneath the spire of Coventry’s Cathedral Church of St Michael, would one day become the priest of St Michael and All Angels, North Beach. It feels as though a message arrived here long before the messenger knew she was coming. And perhaps that is a good place to begin on our patronal festival, because angels are messengers. So, what is their message? I think our readings give us three answers.

First, their message is direct from God.

Michael’s name literally means: Who is like God? And the answer is: no one.

No ruler. No nation. No army. No church. No ideology. No power that promises to save us by teaching us whom to fear and whom to hate. Who is like God? No one. Not even an enormous archangel.  Angels do not carry their own message. They bring words from God.

Second, repeatedly, angels say: Do not be afraid.

They speak it to Hagar in the wilderness, to Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, to the women at the dawn tomb and to Paul in a sea storm. Do not be afraid. Not because there is nothing frightening. There is plenty that is frightening. The angel’s message is that fear does not have the last word.

And third, the angels announce the incredible Truth that God’s love will destroy everything that makes us enemies.

That is where Michael’s battle with the dragon matters. It would be easy to imagine that Michael is simply stronger; that God’s violence defeats somebody else’s violence.

But Revelation tells us that the victory is not won through force, but through the blood of the Lamb. The Lamb doesn’t defeat the dragon by becoming a bigger dragon.

Christ enters the violence of the world, bears its wounds, and answers it with a life that death cannot destroy.

And this victory is not simply the defeat of one enemy by another. God’s purpose is not an everlasting battle between good and evil, with God and Satan locked for ever in opposite corners of creation. If evil survives eternally as God’s undefeated opposite, then the dragon has kept some permanent territory. Some part of creation remains for ever beyond God’s healing. But the Christian hope is greater than that, far more audacious than that! It is the redemption of all creation. Every lie will be exposed. Every cruelty will be undone. Every desire to dominate will be healed. Nothing evil will survive—not because God destroys the creatures God has made, but because God destroys everything that has distorted and disfigured them.

Michael’s victory is not the promise that heaven will remain at war for ever. It is the promise that one day the fighting will end. God’s victory is not complete when an enemy has been destroyed. God’s victory is complete when enmity is destroyed. When there are no enemies left.

I learned something of that at another St Michael’s: Coventry Cathedral. After the medieval cathedral was destroyed in the Coventry Blitz, two charred roof timbers were found lying in the shape of a cross. They were placed on the altar of rubble, and on the Sanctuary wall the priest inscribed two words: FATHER FORGIVE. Not “Father, forgive them.” Father, forgive.

No attempt to divide the world into innocent people in here and wicked people out there. He knew the seeds of fear, cruelty and violence are not found only in other people. They grow in any human heart. Coventry’s answer to destruction was not revenge, but reconciliation. Not because the bombing did not matter. Not because justice did not matter. But because if hatred is allowed to determine the future, the bombing continues long after the flames have died.

So the example of one church bearing the name of St Michael’s brings us back to our name. What does it mean for us to be St Michael and All Angels?

If angels are messengers, what is our message?

Well, it still comes from God, not from us. And it is still the same.

Who is like God? No one.

Do not be afraid. Fear will not have the last word.

And God’s love destroys everything that makes us enemies.

So, when the world teaches people to fear one another, we refuse to feed that fear.

When somebody has been made to feel unwanted or beyond the reach of grace, we make the door wider, and the table longer. We refuse to believe that anybody is beyond the reach of God. That doesn’t mean pretending harm does not matter. Reconciliation is not the absence of justice. It is the fulfilment of justice: what has been broken is healed, and the power to continue harming is taken away.

God does not abandon the person who has been wounded, but neither does God abandon the one who did the wounding.  God will not allow evil to keep anyone forever.

In a few moments, our Eucharistic prayer will gather us together “with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.” Then we will hold out empty hands and receive one bread. Not a weapon to use against our enemies. Bread through which Christ makes us one body.

Perhaps that little plaque did not travel all the way from St Michael’s, Coventry, simply to hang unnoticed in an office. Perhaps it came carrying a message for us from God. A message for a frightened and divided world. A message we bear in our name:

There is no one like our God.

Do not be afraid.

Hatred will not have the last word.

God’s love will destroy everything that makes us enemies.

We are St Michael and All Angels. And we have a message to carry. Amen.

Exodus 16:2-15       Matthew 20:1-16

There is enough. There is enough. There is enough, and some to share.

I have carried those words with me for years, and I am so glad I get to share them with you now, so soon in our time together, because they are so precious to me.

I first encountered them years ago when I visited a dear friend’s extraordinary new church that she planted in Los Angeles, California, called the Garden Church. It didn’t have a building. It began in an abandoned city lot—hard-packed earth where cars had once parked—and they had turned it into an urban farm and an outdoor sanctuary. They grew food together. They worshipped together. They ate together. Their altar was the stump of a cedar tree, lavishly soaked in holy oil. Housed and unhoused people gathered around the same table. And my wonderful friend Anna, the priest who planted it—(and who actually came here incognito before I started!)—described her dream as: “A church that’s in a garden, a garden that is a church.” Each week, nobody quite knew how many people would arrive for worship, how many would need feeding afterwards, or how they would pay their staff, let alone their priest. So, part prayer, part prophecy, part desperate determination, they learned to sing: There is enough. There is enough. There is enough, and some to share. And somehow, again and again, there was.

Which seems to me to be exactly where our readings take us this morning.

The Israelites are in the wilderness. They are hungry. Frightened. Complaining.

These people have escaped slavery. Their whole lives have been controlled by somebody else. They have known absolute powerlessness. They don’t know where the next meal is coming from. And God gives them manna—this unknown, strange substance that seemingly falls from the sky becomes bread for today. Enough.

But the miracle is not simply that food appears. It is how the food is gathered and shared.

We are told: “Those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage.” Everyone has enough. And when somebody tries to hoard it—to keep tomorrow’s bread for themselves while others may still be hungry—it rots.

Manna teaches Israel a new economy. Pharaoh’s economy accumulated, exploited and enslaved. God’s economy provides enough for each day, enough for each person, with nobody abandoned and nobody stockpiling what everybody needs.

And then Jesus tells this extraordinary story about a vineyard. We know it so well that we tend immediately to allocate the parts.

Landowner: God. Workers: us. But Jesus doesn’t say that.

Jesus says: “The kingdom of heaven is like…”

And in Matthew, the kingdom of heaven isn’t somewhere we go when we die.

It is God’s future breaking into the present.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

So, the question isn’t: Which character is God? The question becomes: Where is heaven breaking into earth? And I think we see it most clearly at the end of the line. Because there are people still standing in the marketplace at five o’clock. All day, employers have come and gone. And nobody has chosen them. Jesus doesn’t tell us that they slept in. He doesn’t say they couldn’t be bothered. When they are asked why they are still there, they simply say: “No one has hired us.” Nobody chose us.

Imagine standing there while somebody chooses the younger person beside you. The stronger one. The whiter one. The one with better English. Then someone else. Again and again. Until eventually you are the one still standing there. Not chosen. Not wanted. Not enough. And you are still standing there because there are people at home who need to eat, and you know going home empty-handed is not an option.

And then the extraordinary thing happens. At the end of the day, those workers receive a whole day’s wage. Enough.

Not because they have earned it. Because they need to live.

A day’s wage was not a luxury or a prize. It was what might put bread into their children’s hands that evening.

And that is where grace asks a completely different question from merit.

Merit asks: What have you earned?

Grace asks: What do you need?

So where is God in this story? Instead of putting God in the landowner’s clothes, look down the line, towards the back. Look for the people nobody chose. The overlooked. The unwanted. The ones still daring to hope. God is always there because that is where the kingdom keeps breaking in. Where those who have been told they are not enough discover that there is enough for them too. Enough, and some to share.

And then we come to this table. And we hold out empty hands. Nobody asks how productive we have been this week. Nobody calculates how many hours we worked in the vineyard. Nobody asks whether we have earned what we are about to receive.

We simply hold out our hands. And bread is placed into them. Enough. The bread of heaven. The bread of tomorrow. A tiny taste, here and now, of the world God is bringing into being… A world where nobody is forgotten, or disposable, and nobody is left at the end of the line without enough to live. A world that is clean and safe. A world in which resources are shared equitably, and those who have been given least are given more, until the evil imbalance of provision and power is put right. Here we eat the bread of that longed-for tomorrow. And then we are sent out to make that tomorrow possible. To stand with those at the end of the line. To notice those nobody else chooses. To make sure people have enough. To give hope where the world has withdrawn it. Is that fair? Not according to the arithmetic of the marketplace. But is it just? Absolutely.

Marketplace fairness says: You receive what you earn.

Kingdom justice asks: Does everyone have enough to live?

And grace says: There is enough for you too.

So thank God the kingdom is not governed by the arithmetic of the marketplace.

Thank God it is grace.

From the garden, to the wilderness, to the vineyard, to this table, the promise remains the same: There is enough. There is enough. There is enough, and some to share. Amen.

                                                Exodus 14:19–31 | Matthew 18:21–35                         

The wind moves.

The waters divide.

The earth is revealed.

And the people walk free.

Did you hear that in our first reading? It sounds like creation happening again. In Genesis, darkness covers the deep. God’s Spirit moves over the waters. The waters divide, dry land appears, and life begins. Now, in Exodus, there is darkness, wind, divided water and dry land once again. But this time, what emerges is not simply the Earth; it is a people. People who had been enslaved, and exploited walk through the sea to freedom. This is a new creation.

God creates a way where there was no way—a framework within which freedom becomes possible. Israel is no longer Pharaoh’s property. They are God’s beloved people. This is why Exodus belongs within the Season of Creation.

Creation is constant; God’s continuing work of making space for life: bringing possibility from chaos, life from death and freedom from captivity. God creates the way into freedom. Then the people must walk through it. And they decide what they will carry with them.

Years ago, I went to live and work in India, with charities seeking to end human trafficking and disrupt modern slavery. There, I met people for whom Exodus was not an ancient story. It was their story. The people who have haunted me most were not only the girls trafficked into brothels, but the women who ran those dark, stinking places. The women, not the pimps; the older brothel madams. Many of those women had once been trafficked girls themselves. Others had been born in brothels to women who were sexually enslaved. Exploitation was the only world they had ever known. When they became too old to be profitable—or when HIV or other illness had ravaged their bodies—some were given another role within the same brutal system. They became the women who managed the brothels and recruited the next generation of girls.

The enslaved child became an adult who helped to enslave others.

The victim became an agent of the system that had first consumed her.

I don’t tell their story to excuse the terrible harm done to the girls they recruited. Nor to blame them for failing to escape (most were never offered any real path to freedom). I tell it because even though they appeared to be in charge, they had merely been moved from one room in Egypt to another. The system offered them survival only by making them serve the power that had destroyed their childhoods.

The thing with oppression is that it doesn’t only wound people; it teaches wounded people to reproduce the wound.

Egypt gets inside us. And even when a path into freedom appears, we carry the habits and chains of captivity with us. And that is where Matthew’s Gospel takes us.

Jesus tells of a servant who owes his king a debt so enormous he could never repay it. The servant pleads for patience, but the king does something extraordinary: he cancels the debt completely. A path opens. The servant walks free. Then he meets another servant who owes him a much smaller amount. He seizes him by the throat and demands payment. Although the second servant pleads for mercy, the first servant refuses, and has him thrown into prison.

He had received mercy but refuses the extend it.

He has received freedom—but immediately creates captivity for somebody else.

He has crossed the sea but had then rebuilt Egypt on the other side.

That is the warning at the heart of Jesus’ parable.

God’s mercy is not simply something we receive. It is an invitation into a new way of living. We are forgiven so we might become forgiving. We are liberated so that we might liberate others. We are shown mercy so that mercy might enter the world through us.

So where have we received mercy but refused to pass it to others?

Who do we keep imprisoned in the worst thing they have done?

Where has our own woundedness begun to wound somebody else?

Forgiveness does not mean pretending harm didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean remaining in abusive or dangerous relationships, abandoning justice or removing necessary boundaries. Of course, we may carry scars across the seabed. Of course we will remember what Egypt did to us. But we do not have to carry Pharaoh’s chains so that we can fasten them around somebody else.

Egypt is not found only in personal relationships. We reproduce it whenever we treat any part of God’s creation as objects to exploit. The same belief that turns a human being into a commodity turns a forest into timber, a river into a drain and the Earth into a resource whose only value is what we can extract from it.

But people do not belong to Pharaoh.

The Earth does not belong to Pharaoh.

Creation belongs to God—and we belong within it, creatures among creatures, called to receive God’s gifts without turning them into instruments of captivity.

So, our response is not to admire Israel’s journey from a safe distance. It is to walk it.

Perhaps that means loosening our grip upon a resentment we treasure. Perhaps it means recognising where our comfort depends upon another person’s exploitation. Perhaps it means consuming less, wasting less and refusing to treat the Earth as disposable.

And I am not saying this is simple! It really isn’t.

Perhaps forgiveness begins with the prayer:

“God, I am not ready to forgive, but I am willing to become willing.”

God creates the way into freedom, but we must decide if and how we will walk through.

As God created in the beginning, so God still creates now…

The wind moves.

The waters divide.

The earth is revealed.

The people walk free.

The invitation is ours. May we cross with open hands. May the freedom we receive become freedom for others. And may the Creator make of us—and through us—a new creation. Amen.