Tag: Bridges Group of Churches

Seventy-Five and Still Counting

David HerbertLeave a comment

Abram was seventy-five when God told him to go.
Nicodemus was long established when Jesus told him he must be born again.
New birth is not punishment for failure — it is rescue from stagnation. It is never too late for God to be the making of us.
A sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Lent (Year A)

One goes, another comes.

It is Abram who goes.
It’s Nicodemus who comes,
Carefully, at night, to see Jesus.

For both, it’s about being born again.

Abram, we are told, was 75.
75.
By that age you’d expect him to be set.
If you’re not settled by 75, when will you be?
He’s established, formed and known.

Then he hears God say:
GO.

Leave your country.
Leave your people –
the people who made you who you are.
Leave your father’s house.
Leave everything you’ve ever known.

Even, in a way, leave your whole identity.

This man is Abram. That is who he is.
Abram is the “exalted father” –
“high father” – that’s what his name means.

And yet he has no child.

He sets out as Abram.
He sets out before anything has changed.
Before the promise is visible.
Before the future is secure.

And only later does God give him a new name:
Abraham – father of a multitude, father of nations –
the one through whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed,
and from whom, to this day,
Jewish, Christian and Muslim families
trace their story
and count their blessings.

It is Abram who goes.

Then there is the one who comes,
out of the dead of night he comes,
emerging from the shadows of
darkness and despair comes Nicodemus.

We don’t know his age, but he is no youngster.
He is old enough to have made his mark.
He is a Pharisee – a serious student of the Torah.
He is a member of the Jewish ruling council.
He is a teacher of Israel.
In fact, he is a person of substance,
and has spent a lifetime becoming someone.

And yet, he comes to Jesus and says:
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.”

Jesus tells him,
“No one can see the kingdom of God,
unless they are born again.”
“You must be born again.”

There we have it.
Abram is seventy-five.
And Nicodemus is no spring chicken.
Both are too old, humanly speaking,
for new beginnings.

Their story matters to us.
The two of them, they are both settled.
Abram is settled geographically, socially, economically.
Nicodemus is settled intellectually, religiously, institutionally.
Neither of them is wicked.
They’ve just grown old.
And we can become rather settled in our ways when we get old, can’t we?
Sometimes we are just tired.
Sometimes we get fixed in our opinions.
Sometimes we know our lines too well.
Sometimes we have become experts in being ourselves.
Some of us have had a lifetime of building ourselves,
making something of our lives,
with a lifetime of defending ourselves,
and the castles of our achievements,
Probably just like Abram and Nicodemus.

Perhaps we are too settled.
Settled in habits.
Settled in grudges.
Settled in roles.
Settled in the versions of ourselves we defend.

Perhaps, we too, need to stop that.

These scriptures spell out the good news
that we can stop that
and that we can be born again,
that we can stop all of that
so God can be the making of us.

New birth is not punishment for failure.
It is rescue from stagnation.
Nicodemus is right to ask the question,
“How can someone be born when they are old?
Surely they can’t enter a second time
into their mother’s womb to be born!”

We cannot make the new start ourselves.
We cannot birth ourselves.
It is God who makes the new start.
It’s God’s creation story.

In our own creation story
the firstborn stands secure.
The firstborn inherits.
The firstborn has position.
The younger is “spare”.

But in God’s story
it’s the younger who carries the promise,
the one born last – as we see in Abraham’s own family.
It’s younger Isaac, not older brother Ishmael.
It’s grandson Jacob, not Esau.
It’s Ephraim, not Manasseh.

The line of blessing doesn’t follow seniority,
it follows grace.

The last born is the new born.
The first born is always the older one,
relatively speaking.
The first born is the settled one,
just like Abram, just like Nicodemus,
just like all of us.
And the first born is never the new born,
unless willing to be born again.

The Gospel of John tells it different to the other gospel singers:

“No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
The other gospel writers say it like this:
“Noone can enter the kingdom of God
unless they become like a little child”.
The newborn are the last and the least.
They come with nothing.
They’re not dressed up with status or with achievements.

The newborns are never first.
Nicodemus is first.
He is first in power – he’s on the ruling council.
He is first in knowledge – he’s the teacher.
He’s the first in religious competence

But if he is to see the kingdom of God,
if he is to understand the way of God,
he must become new,
he must become small enough to receive
He must become, in a sense, last.

And the same with Abram.
He was established, named, known,
but becomes the stranger,
and the beginner again.

Abram was seventy-five.
Seventy-five.
That’s the age to qualify for lifetime achievement awards.
We spend our lives making ourselves,
our opinions,
our reputation,
our security,
our case before others.

Seventy-five.
It’s never too late
for God to be the making of us.

If Abram can begin at seventy-five,
and if Nicodemus can learn again
after a lifetime of teaching,
then none of us are stuck.
No one here is “too formed”.
No one is past beginning.

No one is past beginning.

And if we need one more witness —

there is Saul.

Certain.
Certain he was right.
Certain he knew God.
Certain he was defending the truth.

Established in his learning.
Established in his zeal.
Established in who he was.

And then —
stopped.

On the road.
Thrown down.
Blinded.

Led by the hand like a child.

He who saw so clearly
cannot see at all.

He who led
must now be led.

He who was first
must become last.

God does not improve him.
God remakes him.

He too must be born again.


Seventy-five.
It’s never too late

Abram was my age when he left it all.
I am still at that age when I don’t know,
when I don’t always like how I am,
when I need to hear “stop that”,
so that I can begin as the new-born,
as the last.
Heaven forbid I ever get settled in the way I am
and the way we are.

The amazing thing about God’s grace
is that we can always start again.
God so loved the world,
loves the world too much to leave it settled,
too much to leave us stuck,
so much as to come to us in the night,
to call us out of what we have made of ourselves.

Let us pray.

Lord God,
Father of Abraham,
giver of new birth,

We pray for the first borns among us —
for those who have grown established,
respected, secure.

For those who know their lines too well.
For those who have built lives
and learned how to defend them.

For those of us
who have become experts in being ourselves.

Make us willing to become small again.
Make us teachable.
Make us new.

And we pray for the new borns —
for the fragile beginnings,
for tender faith,
for hesitant steps into the unknown.

For those setting out not knowing where they go.
For those coming in the night with questions.

Breathe your Spirit upon them.
Guard what you are bringing to birth.
Carry to fullness what you have begun.

For you so loved the world
that you did not leave us settled,
but came among us
that we might be born from above.

Make us new, Lord.
Amen.

It is never too late for God to be the making of us.

There is a Hum in Humanity

David HerbertLeave a comment

There is a hum in humanity — a low note that runs through our lives. From the garden of Genesis to the wilderness of Gospel of Matthew, that hum carries the strain of mistrust, hunger and longing. But in the desert, Jesus holds a truer note — and the music of the world begins to change. A reflection for the first Sunday of Lent (Year A).

There is a hum in humanity.
A low note that runs through our lives.

It is there in the very beginning of the word itself,
the hum as we grow up as humans,
part of humanity,
challenged to be humane,
struggling to keep our feet on the ground – the humus,
finding humility so difficult.

There is a hum in humanity.
A low note that rumbles through our lives.

It is not just the hum of dust and breath –
but the hum of strain.

It is the hum of a myth
that resounds through all our lives,
a myth that can’t be dismissed
because it rings so true,
so true that it becomes the earworm
that casts our psyche
and scripts our story.

This is the story from Genesis.

It is not a fairy tale about a perfect world once upon a time,
but the beginning of difficulty.

The first mistrust.
The first fracture.
The first hiding.
The first blaming.

And the rest, as they say, is history,
herstory and ourstory.

Ever since, life has carried that note.

Work that exhausts.
Relationships that bruise.
Bodies that fail.
Power that corrupts.
Fear that whispers.

There is a hum in our ears and hearts
that tells us life should be easier than this –
easier than it has ever been.

A hum that suggests it was never meant to be this hard.

And yet –
it has been this hard from the beginning.

And then we hear the Gospel from Matthew.

The same hum.
The same strain.
The same voice that once whispered in a garden now speaks in a wilderness.

“Turn these stones to bread.”
Make it easier.
Fix the hunger.
Work a little magic.

“Throw yourself down.”
Let God catch you.
Prove yourself.
Court admiration.

“All this can be yours.”
Take control.
Overrule the chaos.
Dominate rather than trust.

These are not exotic temptations.
They are ours.

The temptation to solve difficulty by spectacle.
To escape vulnerability by popularity.
To end uncertainty by control.

Jesus stands where we stand.
He feels the same pull.
He hears the same hum.

But he stays.

He stays with the hunger.
He stays with the trust.
He stays with the limits of being human.

And he answers —
not with magic,
not with drama,
not with force —

but with Scripture,
with remembered truth,
with the steady note of dependence.

And that steady note
sees the back of the devil.

After the discord of the devil,
a new note sounds,
a different music,
harmonies and the ring of truth.
This is the sound of angels,
the sound of heaven attending earth.

This is the sound that swells our hearts
as we walk our 40 days of Lent,
through our temptation,
through difficulty,
through wilderness.

It’s not the sound of despair and desolation,
nor the sound of punishment and shame,
it is the note Jesus brings to the garden,
the hopeful note of humankind.

This is the joy Paul conveys to us in his letter to the Romans.
By the obedience of one
the music of our lives has changed.
Not by the brilliance of one.
Not by the power of one.
By the obedience of one –
in the wilderness,
in the difficulties, pressures and temptations of life,
humanity is re-tuned.

The hum of strain is not denied.
Jesus is still hungry.
Jesus is always hungry.
As long as anyone is hungry,
Jesus is hungry.

But discord becomes fidelity.

That’s the good news.

The gospel is not that life suddenly becomes easy.
The good news is that within the difficulty –
the wars, the privations, the despair –
a new sound has entered the world.

The hum is still there.
The world is still hard.

But now –
it is not the only sound.

These forty days are a gift to us –
time to learn again how to listen
for the music of accompaniment.

The Glory that Straightens Us

David Herbert1 Comment

A reflection for the Sunday just before Lent, when the Church’s readings gently remind us that Lent is not about self-improvement, but about staying with the glory of God.

There is a great noise in the world just now.
Nations in tumult. Rulers devising their plots. Power protecting itself.
The psalmist’s question hardly feels ancient: “
Why are the nations in tumult, and why do the peoples devise a vain plot?”
It is the sound of anger, of rivalry, of ambition —
the sound of a world bent in on itself.

And beneath the public noise there is another noise:
the private ache,
the anxiety we carry,
the way we can find ourselves almost doubled up with it —
bent backs and bowed heads under the weight of it all.

This is how we’ve come to worship today,
with our minds dripping with the headlines
from the Sunday papers, the TV news
and fed by the crooked algorithms of social media.
This is how we began our worship,
with those lines from the psalm appointed for today,
Psalm 2: Why are the nations in tumult,
and why do people plot so cruelly against one another?

This is the noise that we take into Lent,
the noise of anger and anxiety.

And then, in today’s gospel,
Jesus leads his friends away from the tumult.
Up a high mountain.
Not to escape the world, but to see it truly.
The air is thinner there.
The noise falls away.
The cloud settles.
The voice speaks.

And as we stand on the edge of Lent —
forty days that echo Moses in the cloud —
we are invited to climb with him.
Not to try harder.
Not to straighten ourselves by effort.
But to behold a glory that does not crush us,
does not dazzle us into denial,
but straightens us.
“This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”

The mountain is not where we live.
We live mostly in the valleys —
in the ordinary press of work and worry,
in the shadowed places Psalm 23 calls “the valley of the shadow of death,”
in the deadly ways that bend our backs and narrow our vision.

But in Exodus, Moses is called up into the cloud,
into fire and mystery,
for forty days and forty nights —
not to escape the people below,
but to receive something that will sustain them in the wilderness.

And as Lent opens before us,
those forty days are not an ordeal to be survived,
nor a spiritual boot camp in self-improvement.
They are a grace-filled ascent.
An invitation to step, however falteringly, into the cloud with Christ —
to let the noise fall away,
to let our sight be cleared,
to let our crooked wills be gently bent back toward God’s goodness and glory —
to have our hearts set straight and our wills aligned with his love –
so that when we walk again through the valleys,
we do not walk weakened,
but strengthened by the glory we have glimpsed.

So we will walk down the mountain again.
We always do.
The noise will still be there.
The nations will still rage.
The valleys will still wind their way through shadowed places.
Lent will not remove us from the world’s tumult,
nor from the private aches that sometimes leave us doubled over.
But we will not walk alone, and we will not walk unstrengthened.

For we have heard the voice: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”

And if we listen —
not perfectly, not heroically, but honestly —
something in us begins to straighten.
Not by effort, but by grace.

The glory of Christ does not crush us;
it steadies us.
It does not blind us;
it clears our sight.

It does not demand that we prove ourselves;
it bends our wills gently back toward the goodness and glory of God.

This is what these forty days are for.
Not self-improvement, but reorientation.
Not spiritual ambition, but deeper attention.
So that when we walk through the valleys —
even through the valley of the shadow of death —
we are not bent by fear or twisted by the world’s rage,
but strengthened by the glory we have seen,
and guided by the voice we have learned to trust.

The Glory that straightens us is not found in noise or power or spectacle.
It is found in the Beloved Son — and it is enough.

This Is How It Began – in the middle of winter

David Herbert1 Comment

Preached on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, this sermon sits with Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ birth at midwinter — when the light is weakest and hope can feel thin. It explores how God chooses to begin again not in tidiness or certainty, but in the mess, risk, and vulnerability of ordinary human lives.

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about.
These are the words Matthew uses to describe the birth of Jesus.
This is how it happened.
This is how it began.

When I say,
“these are the words Matthew uses,”
what I really mean is,
“this is how we have translated the words Matthew wrote.”
Matthew wrote in Greek,
and the key word in that opening sentence is a Greek word we know very well, the word genesis.

Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἡ γένεσις οὕτως ἦν· μνηστευθείσης γὰρ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ Μαρίας τῷ Ἰωσήφ, πρὶν ἢ συνελθεῖν αὐτοὺς εὑρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου

Genesis.
Beginning.
Origin.
The start of something that will change everything.

Matthew is not just telling us how a baby was born.
He is taking us back to the very beginning.
Back to the beginning of the world.
Back to the beginning of God’s work with humanity.
Back to what begins with Jesus.

It is no accident that we hear this reading now
— on the shortest day of the year,
at midwinter,
when the light is at its thinnest and the night feels longest.

Because beginnings often come like that.
Quietly. In the dark.
When the ground looks bare and the fields seem empty.
When nothing much appears to be happening at all.
This is when God makes his presence felt.

Matthew takes us back to a beginning that looks very small.
Just as in Genesis, there is a young boy and a young girl.
But they’re not Adam and Eve. They are Joseph and Mary.
Ordinary people with complicated lives.

Adam and Eve walked freely with God.
They had no backstory.
No reputation to protect.
No neighbours to worry about.

But Joseph and Mary live in a world where things are already tangled.

Mary is pledged to be married, but not yet married.
Joseph is a good man, but suddenly faced with a situation that could cost him his standing, his future, his place in the community.
This is not a beginning without consequences.
This is a beginning that arrives already burdened.

And God does not wait for a cleaner moment.
God begins again here — not in freedom, but in constraint;
not in clarity, but in confusion;
not in daylight, but in the deepening darkness.

This is how the birth of Jesus comes about.
Not by sweeping the mess away, but by entering it.
Not by restoring the world to how it once was,
but by beginning something new within the world as it is.

in a teenage love story,
in the vulnerability of these two youngsters.

Both are vulnerable.
Mary is pledged to Joseph but not living with him.
She’s pregnant. People are going to talk.
If she’s not been with Joseph, who has she been with?
She is at risk of being shamed, isolated and abandoned –
a public disgrace.

Joseph is vulnerable too.
He has the reputation of being a righteous man
because he tries to do the right thing.
If he stays with Mary he risks his reputation
(costly to his business and his standing).
If he leaves her she is exposed.
There is no clear path.

And here God begins.
In this mess framed by confusion, risk and fear.
God begins again by stepping into lives that are already complicated
— and trusting them with something holy.

Genesis does not wait for spring.
It begins when the light is weakest
in the midst of winter,
and slowly grows from there.

When God begins here, it is not with explanations.

Matthew tells us that Joseph makes up his mind.
He decided what he will do.

And then God speaks.
Not in public,
not with spectacle,
but in the dark night,
In a dream.

The angel does not tidy the situation.
He does not remove the risk.
He does not promise that everything will be all right.

He says only this:
Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.

Do not be afraid to stay.
Do not be afraid to be seen.
Do not be afraid to let your life be changed.

And then Matthew gives the child a name.
Emmanuel.
God with us.

Not God with us when the mess is sorted.
Not God with us when the rumours stop.
Not God with us when life feels safe again.

But God with us, here,
in confusion,
in vulnerability,
in teenage love that chooses faithfulness over self-protection.

When Joseph wakes up,
he does what the angel has told him.

And that is how the story moves forward.
Not through certainty.
Not through control.
But through trust.

And this is the genesis Matthew chose to share with his readers,
how God begins his work
these days that are long with darkness.

He begins with a boy and a girl,
with ordinary people inspired to trust.
Slowly, quietly, faithfully the light begins to grow.

This is how the birth of Jesus comes about.
God begins again –
with us –
in the dark.

NOTE
I make no secret of the fact that I’m greatly helped by AI when preparing sermons. Used well, it doesn’t write sermons for me, but helps me listen more closely — to Scripture, to season, and to the lives of the people I’m preaching among. This sermon is better than it would otherwise have been, and I’m grateful for the help.

Hope Before Dawn: An Advent Imagination

David HerbertLeave a comment

Live for that day when God’s peace is all in all.
Love for that day when God’s light leaves no shadows.

These are the darkest days of our lives.
December draws a long shadow,
and we find ourselves longing for light.

These days seem to go on without end.

These are the days Isaiah fought through and hoped through
3000 years ago:
the same old, the same old.
the dark ages all over again.
This is the mean time.

This is the time to cherish those who’ve kindled hope,
those we’ve bound in scripture
who hoped in God when the world felt just as heavy as ours.
This is the time to pray.
This is the time to keep watch.
This is the time to live for another day,
to love towards another day
when the times will finally be a-changing.

These are very mean days
when nations make war on nations,
There may be no world war,
But there are too many wars
for us to call this peace.
The world is at war,
and we are all caught up
in a global propaganda war.

These are very mean days when dark forces
create a hostile environment for those seeking asylum and sanctuary,
days which leave so many children hungry
and too many families poor, 

when budget after budget
miss the opportunity to make things better.

These days, however bright the weather may be,
are dark days to too many people.

And so –
these are the very days to keep hope alive,
to pray for the day when God’s kingdom comes on earth, as it is in heaven,
to live for the day when God’s word settles disputes;
to love for the day when nation will not take up sword against nation,
and nor will we need to train for war any more.

Imagine that.
Imagine the difference
when the weapons of war,
the resources of war,
become tools for farming and feeding and healing.

Imagine the difference
if the resources of war were turned to farming.
Not just in the fields of our own villages,
but in Gaza’s broken orchards,
in Ukraine’s shelled wheatlands,
in every place where the soil has been scorched,
and the hands that sow can no longer harvest.

Isaiah’s dream has dirt under its nails.
It is a farmer’s dream,
a peacemaker’s dream –
swords hammered into ploughshares,
spears repurposed as pruning hooks,
the earth tended again.

And here’s another theme none of us can avoid,
if we care about justice and peace:
we need to be prepared in these days of darkness.
Advent comes with a wake up call.
The time has come for us to wake up, says Paul, (Romans 13)
and be ready for the Day of the Lord –
the day we live for,
the day we pray for,
the day we love for.

For Advent I’ve downloaded an app which notifies me of Fajr –
the prayer Muslims offer from dawn to sunrise.
So, this morning, at 6.05,
my phone buzzed to tell me it was time to pray,
and I was reminded of all those
who rise while the world is still dark
to end the night and hope for the day.

First they wash,
then raise their hands to acknowledge the greatness of God.
They then recite the Surah:

In the name of Allah – the Most Compassionate, Most Merciful.
All praise is for Allah – Lord of all worlds.
the Most Compassionate, Most Merciful,
Master of the Day of Judgment.
You ‘alone’ we worship and You ‘alone’ we ask for help.
Guide us along the Straight Path
the Path of those you have blessed
– not those You are displeased with, or those who are astray.

Then they bow
They stand and say, “God hears the one who praises him.”
They prostrate themselves, grounding their forehead, palms, knees and toes on the earth –
and from the ground they praise God.
They finish by turning their head
to the right and to the left
with a prayer of peace in both directions.
Then they are ready for the day
(and, dare I say, they’ve given themselves a good work out!).

There is something holy about any people
who pray before the sun comes up.
They remind us what Advent is for:
ending the night,
and hoping for the day.

And we are among those holy people
imagining that day which will end all days of wrongdoing,
when God’s word is truly heard.

That is why our time of prayer
is taken up with praying for the coming of God’s kingdom,
on earth, as it is in heaven.
Christians will always use their prayer time for that –
It’s what Jesus taught us.

It is a prayer of imagination.
It is a prayer for dawn in the dark.
It is a prayer for the day when ….
the day God’s peace is all in all,
the day God’s light leaves no shadows.

And so we live for that day —
when, as Revelation imagines,
there will be no more mourning, crying or pain,
the day that will see an end to night.

Until that day
we keep watch,
keep warm,
and keep hope alive
these dark days.

Luke’s Last Surprise: One Condemned Man Joining Another as the First in Paradise

David HerbertLeave a comment

This Sunday marks the end of the Christian year.
Next Sunday we hop on the next liturgical cycle of readings – it will be Year A.
Each year focuses on a particular gospel. Next year it will be Matthew’s. This year it has been Luke’s.

When I began this preaching year, I wondered what Luke would offer us.
I wondered how he might inspire us, challenge us, lead us.
And now, at the end of the year, I find myself saying one thing above all: WOW.
Luke has surprised us. Luke has stretched us.
Luke has shown us the kingdom of God in places we would never have thought to look.

This Sunday is a WOW moment,
a hinge on which we hang our wonder,
before the new year opens again.
Next week we begin again,
not from cold, not from scratch,
but already warmed by hope,
already knowing what God’s kingdom looks like
in the dominion of darkness.

We will return to the manger
knowing now what Luke has shown us all year –
that God’s kingdom begins with the smallest,
with the least, with the last instead of the first,
in a vulnerable baby held by exhausted parents
on the edges of empire.

These are the readings (Colossians 1:11-20 and Luke 23:33-43) that crown our year.
And this is where Luke has been leading us all along:
not to a palace, but to the place of the skull,
Not to a gold throne, but to a wooden cross.
A king.
A sign nailed above his head.
And a thief beside him.
That’s the gospel picture.
That’s where Luke brings us when the year ends and we crown Christ our King.

Our other reading, from Colossians, may seem difficult at first –
until we recognise it as a hymn.
A hymn praising the God who rescues us from the dominion of darkness,
who strengthens us with endurance,
who qualifies us for the kingdom of his beloved Son –
the kingdom of light,
the kingdom where Christ is King.

Luke paints the scene.
It is the “dominion of darkness” (to use the phrase from Colossians).
The place is the place of the skull,
Death Row in the Dominion of Darkness:
there is the smell of death
and the overpowering smell
of cruelty, injustice and wrongdoing.
There are three crosses.
One is for Jesus, the others for two criminals crucified either side of him.

Luke gives them very different voices.
One sneers – placing him with those who mock, jeer and insult Jesus.
“He saved others, let him save himself if he is who he says he is.”
(In other words, he isn’t who he says he is.)
“Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

The other criminal rebukes him, saying the two of them deserve their punishment.
Then he protests Jesus’ innocence. “This man has done nothing wrong.”
And in that moment he is just right.
He is right to defend the defenceless
against the forces which have conspired against Jesus.
“This man has done nothing wrong,”
and yet he is facing the same sentence, only worse,
because insult is added to injury.

Then he turns to Jesus.
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”

This criminal is the first to defend Jesus publicly.
He is the first to take his stand with Jesus.
And Luke wants us to see him.
This figure.
This last, least, condemned man
who becomes the first to declare Jesus innocent
and the first to receive a royal promise.

He is the last person in the world you’d expect
to be the first to defend Jesus –
(we are led to believe that there is no honour amongst thieves),
but here he is in the picture of paradise – alongside Jesus.
The last becomes the first in paradise,
that kingdom of love –
a relationship, not a place.

And here – right here – you can almost see it happen:

And perhaps this is Luke’s final surprise for us:
that the first to enter paradise with the King is not a saint or a scholar or a faithful disciple,
 but a criminal who can offer Jesus nothing but honesty and trust.

He offers no record of virtue.
No proof of goodness.
No last-minute achievements.
He can’t even lift his hands in prayer.
All he can do is speak the truth —
about himself, about Jesus, about the kingdom.
And Jesus takes that truth, that tiny seed of faith,
and makes it bloom.

“Today you will be with me in paradise.”

And that paradise begins there,
in the dominion of darkness,
with a king crowned not with gold but with thorns,
and a wrongdoer who sees more clearly than anyone else.

The only crown Jesus could ever wear is a crown of thorns.
They’re the thorns of scorn, the barbs of bitterness.
They’re our failures, our wounds, our complicity,
our inability to rule even ourselves.

But the kingdom Luke has been showing us week after week
is a kingdom where the last come first,
the lost are found
and where the crucified King gathers in his arms
those the world’s unjust powers condemn.

This is the WOW moment.
Everything has led to this,
when the thorns begin to flower.
This is what Luke is intent on showing us.

His sequel, Acts,becomes the story
of the cross in bloom.
The frightened disciples become bold and generous.
The failures become witnesses.
A crippled beggar stands up and walks.
An Ethiopian outsider becomes the first fully Gentile convert.
A persecutor becomes an apostle.
Prisoners sing hymns; jailers are baptised;
enemies share bread.

Again and again the thorns flower.
Again and again the barren places bear fruit.
Again and again the last become first.

This is where the King of Love leads us:
into a rule of life that puts the last first
and sees thorns flower with grace.

All year long Luke has shown us a kingdom that grows in unlikely places,
and now at the last,
he shows us the unlikeliest place of all,
the place of the skull, Death Row.
Yet even here, if we look through Luke’s eyes,
Something ]begins to bloom.

At the place of the Skull grows the tree of life.
The crown of thorns flowers with grace.
The King of Love
and the convicted criminal
become the first couple in the new creation –
the first to walk the way of mercy,
the first to step into the garden of God’s future.

This is how the Christian year ends:
not with worldly triumph,
but with this strange, saving beauty –
a King who makes the last first,
who turns a place of execution into a place of promise,
who opens paradise to the least likely of all.

This is the kingdom of God and the gentle thorn-crowned rule of Jesus.

Luke 23:33-43

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals – one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.’

The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’

There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’

But the other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’

Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’

Jesus answered him, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’

This is where mercy takes her stand: far off, in the distance

David HerbertLeave a comment

Readings: Luke 18:9–14; Ecclesiasticus 35:12–17

The clocks have changed. The weather’s changed.
And we stand now on the bridge between seasons.

Today is the last Sunday after Trinity.
Next Sunday is the first in the new Kingdom season –
when we see the darkness of the kingdoms of this world,
and pray again for the world to be turned the right way up
with the rule of God’s Kingdom founded in heaven.

As the light shortens and we cross that bridge between seasons,
it feels right to pause and ask what endures –
what stands firm when the world tilts and turns.

And Jesus gives us this story;
a parable about where mercy truly stands.

This is where mercy takes her stand: far off, in the distance.

I want us to notice this morning
the two men Jesus talks about in the parable –
a story he addressed to some
who were confident of their own righteousness
and looked down on everyone else.

Notice how the Pharisee did what was expected of him,
just as he was supposed to,
obedient to the teachings of his religion.

He tithed and he fasted.
He did just what was right.
He was a religious success –
the sort of success to make a temple proud.

He stood confidently still,
as if he owned the place –
the temple where he was the perfect fit,

And he smugly gave thanks
that he wasn’t like the others:
robbers, evildoers, and adulterers.

In fact, he put himself first,
the best he could be,
better than all the rest,
better than the tax collector they all despised,
standing over there, at a distance.

He gave himself the prize,
he was the pride of the temple –
the one to catch the eye
of those like him on centre stage:
the success stories,
the ones who come first in their own eyes
and the eyes of the world,
those who are proud of their achievement,
who look down on those who can’t match them.

But he’s not the one who catches Jesus’ eye.
Mercy’s gaze has turned elsewhere.

This is where mercy takes her stand —
not in the proud posture of the Pharisee,
but with the one who stands at a distance,
head bowed, heart open,
praying only, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

The tax collector hasn’t much to commend him.
He’s made a living making compromises,
lining his own pocket when he must,
doing the bidding of an empire,
taxing his people, cheating his people,
keeping them poor.

He too has come to pray.
He stands apart.
He knows he’s not fit
to join those who look down on him.
He knows the weight of those eyes
and their condemnation, surely justified.

But still he prays where he’s been pushed aside –
in that low place, in that honest place –
and he finds the only prayer he can manage:
“God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

That’s all.

There are people good at praying, like the Pharisee.
It comes easy to them.

But this tax collector has nothing to claim.
He can’t make comparisons; he can’t claim to be good.
He has no list of good intentions.
All he has are these few words –
and that’s enough for Jesus.

Jesus has highlighted two men –
two types, one self-righteous and sure of himself,
the other “worse” by some distance.

There’s only one who goes home justified,
and it’s not the one we expected,
the one who thanks God he’s better than all the rest,
the one who thinks he’s the best he can be.

It’s the other one, the one on the edge,
the one in the distance, going home justified
(whatever “going home” might mean).

That’s quite some punchline from Jesus,
punching the pride of the temple,
and those confident in their own goodness,
who look down on everyone else.

“All who exalt themselves will be humbled,
and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

That’s turning the world upside down,
and the truth inside out.

And it still happens today,
whenever we’re brave enough to look beyond ourselves.

There’s a man who sits under the bridge in our town.
I’ve passed him many times,
hesitating, not sure what to say,
worried about what it might cost to engage.
But this week, I stopped.
I’d found my opening line.
We talked.
He had plenty to say.
I found him articulate, intelligent, resilient,
unhealthy, unlucky.
I went away thankful.

I wasn’t thankful I wasn’t like him –
God forbid.
Rather, I was thankful that I am.
Thankful that mercy makes us kin,
that empathy builds bridges and common ground.

I had stood my distance – the shame was all mine.
The shame that it’s taken me so long
to learn how to join those down and those out.

This is where mercy takes her stand —
on the bridges, in the margins,
in the hearts of those who stand at a distance.

And maybe this is a small thing to notice,
but it strikes me that the Pharisee, in his way,
is saying what we so often hear today —
“I’m feeling blessed.”
Blessed that life’s gone well,
blessed that I’m not struggling,
blessed that I’m not like those who’ve fallen on hard times.
But the tax collector doesn’t say that.
He doesn’t feel blessed —
he only feels the weight of mercy.
And yet he’s the one who goes home justified,
seen, forgiven, restored.
Maybe that’s what blessing really looks like —
not success, but mercy meeting us
when we’ve nothing left to boast about.

Today is Bible Sunday,
a reminder that Scripture isn’t just something we read —
it’s something that reads us.
The Pharisee knew his Bible well,
but he used it to build himself up.
The tax collector may not have known a verse,
yet he lived the truth of one we’ve heard this morning:
“The prayer of the humble pierces the clouds” (Ecclesiasticus 35).
God’s Word lands where mercy already waits.

And that is what this parable shows us —
the way God’s kingdom comes:
not through pride or perfection,
but through mercy that stoops low
and finds us where we are.

For God sides with the penitent sinner,
with the humble, with the broken,
with those the world overlooks.
And when we begin to see as God sees —
when we recognise the brother under the bridge,
the sister on the edge —
we discover that the kingdom has already drawn near.

This is where mercy takes her stand:
far off, in the distance,
on the edge where humility meets hope,
and where God is already at work,
turning the world the right way up.

All who exalt themselves will be humbled,
and all who humble themselves will be exalted.
That’s not a threat.
That’s a promise.
That’s the way the world is set right.

Luke 18:9-14
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”
‘But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
‘I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

LimpLight

David Herbert2 Comments

This one’s for all who wrestle in the dark and rise, blessed but limping, inspired by reading Genesis 32:22-31 and Luke 18:1-8 – the Revised Common Lectionary readings for October 19th 2025.

How shall we describe the state of Israel today?

The state of Israel today begins with both our readings —
from Genesis 32, the story of Jacob whose name means twister;
and from Luke 18, the story of the widow struggling for justice.

The state of Israel begins at the end of a night of struggle for the twister,
a night of struggle in which Jacob never discovers
the name of the one he’s wrestling with,
but finds himself called by a new name — Israel.

Jacob’s struggle as portrayed by Sir Jacob Epstein (shown in Tate Gallery, London)

Israel struggles with God,
and God struggles with Israel.
That is the very meaning of Israel.
If Israel means anything,
it means struggling with God.

Jacob is the first to be called Israel,
and he is called (renamed) that by the one he struggled with
because he “struggled with God and with people”
and withstood the whole night.

It is the calling of Israel to struggle faithfully through the night.

Jacob is the patriarch of Israel —
the patriarch of those who struggle with God and with people,
and who carry on wrestling through long nights and times of darkness
without being overcome,

people like the widow singled out by Jesus —
a victim of some injustice.
In the face of an utterly unjust justice system,
personified by a judge who neither feared God
nor cared what people thought,
she struggled.

For some time she struggled.
She kept coming at that lousy judge.
She wouldn’t let go until he gave in.

Those who struggle through the night,
with God and with people —
those who struggle to see the night through,
for whom the night is very dark,
and for whom there is little daylight,
those who won’t give up whatever the night brings —
they are the ones whose hope is rewarded.

They carry a blessing for all who wrestle with God
and with the wounds people inflict.

It’s the blessing of God
who himself wrestles through the darkness of the world,
who struggles with people and the suffering they cause,
but who, in spite of all that,
wrestles the whole night long.

This is the love that shines in the darkness
to the break of day.

And yet, the night is long.
Not just one night in Jacob’s life,
not just one night in ours,
but the long night of the world —
a night as long as history.

Through that long night we wrestle,
and God wrestles with us.

There are three struggles woven into this story,
and all three belong to Israel:

We struggle with God.
We struggle with people —
and people struggle with us.
And through it all,
God struggles with us.

That’s what it means to be called Israel:
to live the long night of wrestling,
and to trust that, at the end of it,
there will still be blessing.

The struggle with God

Sometimes it’s the long silence of prayer —
when we ask and wait and hear nothing.
Sometimes it’s the ache of loss,
or the questions that faith won’t easily answer.
We wrestle with God when life doesn’t fit the promise,
when love feels hidden,
when blessing comes only after a wound.

But still we hold on.
Faith is not certainty —
faith is the grip that will not let go until morning.

The struggle with people

And we wrestle with people too.
Not just those who hurt or wrong us,
but in all the difficult ways love tests us —
learning to forgive, to be patient,
to stay kind when we’d rather give up,
to bear with one another’s weakness.

People struggle with us too —
our faults, our sharp words, our stubbornness.
We are all part of each other’s wrestling.

These are the struggles that form the fruits of the Spirit —
the quiet strength that grows only in the dark:
patience, gentleness, self-control,
love that endures through the night.

The struggle with ourselves

And maybe there’s a fourth struggle too —
the one Jacob knew best —
the struggle with ourselves.
The fight to face what we’ve twisted,
to tell the truth about who we are,
and to accept the new name that grace gives us.

Before we can meet God face to face,
we have to face ourselves in the dark —
the parts we’d rather not see,
the wounds we’ve caused as well as borne.
Even that struggle can become blessing.

The struggle of God

And through it all, God struggles too —
not against us, but for us.
God wrestles through the night of the world,
bearing our pain,
refusing to give up on us.
The cross itself is the mark of that struggle —
God’s own wound,
the divine limp that still bears the weight of love.

This is the love that shines in the darkness
to the break of day.

Jacob wanted to know the man’s name,
but the man would not tell him.

Maybe that’s the mercy of God —
that we never get to hold the name too tightly.
The namelessness keeps the struggle open.
It reminds us that this wrestling is for everyone,
that God stands with all who struggle through the night —
beyond borders, beyond certainty, beyond control.

It was not for ease that prayer shall be.
The story of Israel is not the story of the untroubled.
The story of Israel is the story of the very troubled —
the story of slavery, exile, persecution,
the horrors of history, the nightmare.

Amos got it right three thousand years ago.
He condemned the complacent,
those who are at ease in Zion.
He said they put off the day of disaster
and bring near a reign of terror.
They are not fit to be called Israel.
They duck the fight and ignore the struggle.

But Jacob did not.
The widow did not.
And the God who wrestles through the night does not.

Jacob’s blessing comes with a wound.
He carries it into the dawn,
every step a reminder of the night he endured
and the God who would not let him go.

Perhaps this is the mark of the blessed —
not the ones who have had an easy time of it,
but the ones who have been wounded and changed.
The ones who know that life is not straightforward,
that faith is not certainty,
and that love costs something real.

Israel limps into the sunrise,
blessed and broken.

And still, the night is long —
as long as history,
as wide as the world.
Still, God wrestles with us,
still struggles with his people,
still bears our wounds,
and still blesses us.

And when the dawn comes —
as surely it will —
the blessing will not erase the limp,
but redeem it.

For the love that shines in the darkness
will shine until the whole world
limps into the light.

Afterthoughts
What might it mean for a people, or for a church, to be known by its limp – to be blessed not in strength but in struggle?
If God still wrestles through the long night of the world, where do you see that struggle – and that love – happening today?

Border Crossing: the dangerous way of grace

David HerbertLeave a comment

Our politics, like our hearts, are haunted by borders and fear. But Luke’s gospel shows Jesus walking the edge — not to keep people out, but to draw them in. Preached in a week when fragile talk of a ceasefire in Gaza flickers across the news, this reflection on Luke 17:11–19 and 2 Timothy 2:8–15 explores what happens when the unchained word of God crosses the lines we draw, healing what fear divides.

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, travelling along the border between Samaria and Galilee.
This is what Luke wants us to notice —
that Jesus is on the edge, not in the middle.
He’s on the edge where belonging is uncertain.

In nature, the edge is often where life is richest.
When two landscapes meet — forest and field, land and river —
there’s a place called an ecotone.
It’s a place of tension, yes,
but also of surprising life,
where species from both sides mingle
and new life appears.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus walks the edge —
because that’s where new life is breaking out.

We’ve all walked that edge:
in the playground,
the first days in a new job,
moving into a new community —
will we be included, will we settle?

Luke introduces us to ten lepers,
forced to live on that edge
by their communities who have wrenched them from home,
from all they’ve ever known, by one word — Unclean.

They are the wrong side of the border,
cast over the edge —
and that’s why they have to shout to Jesus.
They have to get their word across that boundary.

This is how Jesus gets to Jerusalem —
by walking the edge,
the dangerous way,
where grace and fear meet,
where the kingdom begins to break through.

But not every edge is walked the same way.
Our leaders keep pointing us to the edge too —
the edge of our borders, our safety, our identity.
They edge us with fear.
They tell us who to blame, who not to trust,
who belongs, and who should stay outside.

And we see again what happens
when fear builds its own borders.
Across the news this week —
the fragile talk of ceasefire,
the first steps toward peace in Gaza —
we glimpse what it costs to live so long
behind walls of pain and suspicion.

Every side has its wounds,
every border its fear.
And yet even there,
the smallest word of peace,
the tiniest crossing of compassion,
is a holy thing.
It’s where grace dares to walk the edge again.

And that’s the challenge for us, too.
Because we all have borders of our own —
those quiet lines we draw in our hearts,
between those we find easy to love
and those we keep at a distance.

The question is:
whose edge are we walking?
The one that fear builds,
or the one Jesus blesses —
the edge where healing begins?

Fear has its own language,
and it spreads easily.
You can hear it in the way people talk,
the way headlines shout,
the way words build walls
long before bricks ever do.

That’s what happened to the ten lepers.
They were pushed to the edge by words —
words that said Unclean,
words that exiled them from home,
from family, from touch.

And now they have to shout from a distance,
just to be heard —
their voices straining across the border,
trying to bridge the gap
that other people’s words created.

And Jesus sends a word back.
No touch, no ceremony —
just a word that crosses the border:
“Go, show yourselves to the priests.”

And as they go, they are made clean.
The word runs free.
It doesn’t stop at the boundary;
it heals as it goes.

Paul once wrote, chained in a prison cell:
“I may be in chains,
but the word of God is not chained.”

It’s the same truth here.
The unchained word runs ahead of Jesus,
crossing the lines that fear has drawn,
healing what twisted speech has broken.

This isn’t the first time Luke shows us Jesus on the edge.
From the very beginning, his gospel has been about
the outsiders God draws in.
It’s Luke who tells of the shepherds —
night workers, unclean in their own way —
hearing angels sing of peace on earth.
Luke remembers the woman who wept on Jesus’ feet,
the prodigal welcomed home,
the beggar Lazarus lifted up,
and another Samaritan —
the one who stopped on the roadside to bind up wounds.

In Luke’s world,
the people we push aside
become the very ones who show us what mercy looks like.
And here again, it’s the Samaritan —
the one no one expected —
who becomes the model of faith,
the first to come home to God.

But one turns back.
One crosses the border again.
He’s the foreigner —
the one who, by every rule, should have stayed outside.
Yet he comes closer,
falls at Jesus’ feet,
and his first word isn’t a cry for help,
but a word of thanks.

Ten were made clean —
but only this one is made whole.
Because healing isn’t complete
until it finds its voice in thanksgiving.

That’s the word Jesus has been waiting for —
not Unclean, not Go away,
but Thank you.
A word that restores relationship,
that binds what fear has torn apart.

The Samaritan becomes the first citizen
of this new borderland kingdom —
a kingdom without fences,
where mercy is the mother tongue.

And maybe this is what it means
to follow Jesus on his way to Jerusalem —
to walk the edge,
not the safe, well-marked path,
but the dangerous way,
where love meets fear
and refuses to turn back.

Because that’s where the unchained word still runs free —
crossing borders,
breaking through divisions,
making strangers into neighbours,
and outcasts into brothers and sisters.

Prayer

May the Christ who walks the edges
find us there —
where fear builds walls
and grace dares to cross.
May his word set us free
to speak peace,
to live thanks,
and to walk the dangerous way of grace.

From the Riverbank

David HerbertLeave a comment

– Sister Itchen and the River of Life
A sermon for Harvest Festival at St Lawrence’s Napton, inspired by St Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures, the Warwickshire River Itchen, artist Stephen Broadbent’s River of Life sculpture in Warrington, the writing of Robert Macfarlane and the indigenous wisdom represented by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It’s a thanksgiving for the quiet grace that still flows through creation, and a reminder that we are family with all that lives.

We are brothers and sisters together,
one family, caring for one another.
It’s 800 years this year since St Francis highlighted the interdependence of all things that have life,
and I thought it would be appropriate to have Francis helping us in our Harvest thanksgiving,
when we give thanks for the fruits of God’s creation.

Today we praise God for his creation,
for the nature given to us.

We would be mistaken to think we praise God alone.
For Francis, all creation sings God’s praise —
our whole family: Brothers Sun, Wind and Fire,
Sisters Moon and Water.

If St Francis had walked here,
I think he would have sung of Brother Itchen —
the river that rises at Wormleighton and flows its way
past Priors Hardwick through here in Napton.

It seeps quietly through our fields,
watering crops and feeding wildlife,
joining its voice to the River Leam and the Avon beyond.

It’s not a mighty river like the Jordan or the Nile,
but a patient, life-giving one —
a reminder that the grace of God often flows quietly,
unnoticed, yet sustaining everything around it.

Robert Macfarlane asks in a book I’m reading,
“Is a river alive?”
I think the Itchen would answer yes.
It breathes, moves, nourishes —
and if we listen carefully, we can almost hear it praise.

Other songs of the church treasures spell this interdependence of praise out in more detail.
The Benedicite calls
the sun, moon and stars,
every shower of rain and fall of dew,
all winds, and fire and heat,
winter and summer,
the chill and cold,
frost and cold, ice and sleet,
mountains and hills,
everything that grows upon the earth,
springs of water, seas and streams,
whales and everything that moves in the water,
all the birds of the air, the beasts of the wild,
flocks and herds, men and women
all to praise and glorify God,
alongside those of upright spirit,
those who are holy and humble in heart.

Psalm 148 is a call to worship
for the angels, the sun, the moon and stars of light,
for the waters, sea monsters and all deeps,
for fire and hail, snow and mist,
for mountains and hills, fruit trees and cedars,
wild beasts, all cattle, creeping things, birds,
kings of the earth and all people,
men and women, boys and girls
to worship and praise together.

The prophet, Isaiah, anticipated the joy of creation.
He saw the mountains and the hills bursting into song
and the trees of the field clapping their hands.

And, of course, we know that the hills are alive with the sound of music.

This is ancient wisdom that is treasured in many indigenous cultures
but which has been forgotten over the years.
We forget we are called to worship with the whole of creation
and we presume we worship alone — homo sapiens.

Is that why our family ties with the rest of nature have broken?
We’ve stopped caring as brothers and sisters.
Instead, we’ve used our dominance for exploitation of our brothers and sisters.

Robert Macfarlane asks in a book I’m reading (and heartily recommend),
“Is a river alive?”
“Is a river alive?”
I think the Itchen would answer yes.
She breathes, she moves, she nourishes —
and if we listen carefully, we can almost hear her praise.

That same living flow runs through the Bible —
through the river that rises in Eden, watering the garden,
through the waters that break open in the desert,
through the River of Life that Ezekiel and John both saw,
flowing from the throne of God,
their trees bearing fruit each month,
and their leaves for the healing of the nations.

The artist Stephen Broadbent knows something of that healing power.
His River of Life sculpture in Warrington
was created after two boys were killed by a terrorist bomb there in 1993.
In that place of loss and grief,
Stephen imagined a river of life flowing through the heart of the town —
a river that gathers up pain and turns it into hope.

The bronze figures he shaped seem to rise from the water itself.
They are imprinted with the hands of children,
contemporaries of the boys killed,
their hands open in welcome and peace.

By the river are the leaves of trees – 12 of them,
one for each month of the year,
a monthly reminder that the river and her trees
are there for all time, even the worst of times,
always remembering, healing and renewing life.

That is what God’s river does —
whether in scripture, in the heart of a town like Warrington,
or in the quiet fields of Warwickshire.
She carries life wherever she goes.
She invites us to join her flow —
to live as people of blessing, healing, and renewal.

I’ve got an allotment this year.
I see something of that same grace there.

An allotment teaches you that nothing is wasted.
Weeds go on the compost, scraps rot down into soil,
and what looks like death becomes food for life.

The tiniest seed, almost too small to hold,
can multiply into a hundredfold abundance.
And if you care for the soil, safeguard the earth,
you discover her astonishing energy for renewal.

It changes the way you look at things.
You learn the value of everything,
you learn to work with the grain of creation, not against it.
And you discover joy in being part of that family again —
brother soil, sister seed, mother earth,
working alongside us in God’s garden.

So today, at Harvest, our thanksgiving is not a private prayer.
It is part of a chorus with the sun, the moon, the wind, the water —
with rivers that sing and trees that clap their hands,
with a creation that still waits for healing,
yet never stops praising.

St Francis knew it 800 years ago.
The Bible has sung it for thousands of years.
Artists and poets remind us in scarred places.
And even the humble allotment teaches us:
we are family with all creation.

Our calling is to live as grateful brothers and sisters,
giving thanks, safeguarding the earth,
and letting the river of life flow through us
for the healing of the world