Tag: Kingdom of God

Thy Kingdom Come

David HerbertLeave a comment

Today is the 7th Sunday of Easter, the 7th Sunday of the 50 day season of joy.

I just mention that because we always have to watch out for the number 7.
It is, if you like, our lucky number.
It is the number of completion and fulfilment.
It’s the days of the week,
the measure of our time,
the time of creation,
the span from start to finish.
It’s the number written into our rhythm of life –
the six day week, the day of rest, the gift of God.

So, we’ve had 7 Sundays inhabiting the Easter message,
letting the hope of resurrection work in our hearts and minds.

But the season isn’t quite over.
We are left with a question.
It is a question asked of the apostles, and by the apostles.
And it’s been left hanging for all who have followed them.

They gathered round Jesus and asked him:
“Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

As far as we can see, they don’t get an answer.
They were asking him – are you the Messiah we were expecting?
Are you the one to restore the fortunes of Israel?

There is no answer because it’s the wrong question they’re asking.

The question is a reflection of one of the great temptations of human nature –
the tendency towards nostalgia and restoration.

The temptation is still with us.

We long for restoration.
We dream of returning to some imagined greatness,
some remembered certainty,
some lost golden age.

Nations do it.
Churches do it.
We do it ourselves.

There are men in white suits in today’s readings.
They catch the apostles watching Jesus disappear from sight.
They see their grief and their pining for the past,

and then they tell them to stop looking that way,
and they redirect the gaze of their longing

They redirect the gaze of their longing –
away from nostalgia,
away from heaven as escape,
back toward Jerusalem,
back into the world,
back into prayer,
back towards one another.

They stop staring into heaven.

They turn around.

And they walk back to Jerusalem.

A sabbath walk.
Day seven.

And Day Seven becomes Day One:
not completion as an ending,
but completion opening into a beginning.

Easter gives its people a new body clock,
a new sense of time,
a life no longer ordered by nostalgia for the past
but by longing for what God is yet to do.

The time of our lives.

And what do they do,
these people learning resurrection time?

They pray.

They return to Jerusalem,
and gather in an upstairs room.

Men and women together.
Mary.
The brothers of Jesus.
The Church before it knows what the Church will become.

And they pray.

They do not launch a strategy.
They do not reclaim power.
They do not “make Israel great again”.

They pray:
waiting not for the restoration of the past,
but for the coming of the kingdom of God.

This is Day One of the prayer of the Church,
not longing for the past glory,
but longing for a glory like no other glory we have known,
not longing for the past
but longing for the future.

Thy kingdom come,
that’s the way to pray.

When we introduce the Lord’s prayer,
we casually say
“as our Saviour has taught us,
so we pray”.

But let’s be definite.
This is the way Jesus taught his followers to pray. To pray for the kingdom to come,
on earth as it is in heaven.

So we could say in introducing our prayer:

this is the way we pray
because this is the way Jesus prayed,

looking to our Father in heaven,
giving him the power and glory
instead of seeing power and glory
in wealth, or celebrity, or control.

This is looking the other way.

Looking away from power as domination,
and discovering power as compassion.

Looking away from glory as status,
and discovering glory as love poured out.

Because when Jesus speaks about glory,
he does not mean celebrity,
spectacle,
or triumph.

In John’s Gospel,
Glory means the cross.

Glory is love poured out.
Glory is love that gives itself away
for the life of the world.

Glory is love that gives itself away for the life of the world.

And that is why our Collect today dares to hold together two words usually kept apart:

power
and compassion.

Heaven’s power is compassionate power.
Worldly power is anything but.

Risen, ascended Lord,
as we rejoice at your triumph,
fill your Church on earth with power and compassion …….

that’s the way to pray,
for the sake of the future,
for those who suffer
under the world as it is,
and under the ways we have learned to look at one another,
for those “estranged by sin”,
by the wrongs of the world,
for those estranged,
disconnected, alienated, turned inward, turned backward.

For their sake,
that they may find forgiveness,
that they may know peace

that’s why we pray,
It’s for their sake,
for the sake of the lost, the last and the least,
that the glory of heaven
may be seen on earth,
in the troughs of human experience,
in the valleys overshadowed by death.

And so this week,
in churches,
halls,
homes,
and quiet corners,
Christians will gather again,
just as they did in that upstairs room.

Not looking backward,
not staring into the sky,
but praying toward the future:

Thy kingdom come.

When we pray the Jesus way,
Jesus prays alongside us still:

for the world,
for the estranged, the wronged,
for peace,
for glory shaped like love.

The Feeding of the Three Thousand and the Small Flock

David HerbertLeave a comment

In a world that prizes numbers, growth, and standing out, the early church points us somewhere different. In Christ, even a small flock—known, gathered, and fed together—is already enough. This reflection for two small churches takes its cue from the scriptures for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Year A): Acts of the Apostles 2:42–end, Gospel of John 10:1–10, and Psalm 23.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42).

That’s how Luke describes the life of the disciples after God has become present to them in a new way.
Those are the first words of our reading this morning from Acts of the Apostles.

But the verse just before – heard in our churches last Sunday – tells us something else.
It tells us that about 3000 people accepted Peter’s message and were added to their number.

Three thousand.

We’ve heard many times, the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand.
It’s in all the gospels.

And there’s another feeding – the 4000 – told by Matthew and Mark, but not by Luke.

But Luke does give us another feeding.

Not the feeding of the 4000.
But the feeding of the 3000.

In those gospel stories, crowds gather around Jesus.
They are hungry.
And with very little – just a few loaves and fish – Jesus feeds them.

A sign of the kingdom of God:
that what is little becomes enough …
that what is least becomes abundance.

And here, in Acts, there is another crowd.

Three thousand, drawn from a larger crowd in Jerusalem at Pentecost.

And Luke says of them:

They devoted themselves …
They were together …
They had everything in common …

He is speaking about those three thousand.

So again we might say:

Luke doesn’t tell us about the feeding of the 4000.
But he does tell us about the feeding of the 3000.

Because they too were hungry.

You can almost see it on their faces.

But not for bread and fish.

They were hungry for something deeper –
for a new way of life.

And what they are given is this:

Teaching.
Fellowship.
Shared life.
Bread broken together.
Meals shared with glad and generous hearts.

This is the feeding of a deeper hunger.

The hunger for meaning.
The hunger for belonging.
The hunger for righteousness – for things to be as they should be.

And what they are given …
is a whole new life.

Not just food for the day,
but life together in Christ.

The life of the risen Christ,
lived out in humanity.

And that life –
the life of the risen Christ lived out in humanity –
it didn’t end with those three thousand.

It is the life of the church.

It is our life.

And that’s where this meets us.

Because when we hear about the three thousand,
it’s easy to think: that’s not us.

We are not a crowd.
We are small in number.
A handful here … a handful there

More like a small flock than a great multitude.

A shepherd with sheep and lambs by Cornelis van Leemputten
This is a small flock. They too need a good shepherd.

But listen again to what Luke describes in Acts of the Apostles.

He doesn’t describe something that only works for large numbers.

He describes something close …
shared …
personal …

They devoted themselves …
They were together …
They broke bread …
They prayed …

That’s not a stadium.
That’s something much more like this.

And then we hear Jesus in John’s Gospel:

“I am the good shepherd …
My sheep hear my voice …
I know them …
and they follow me.”

Not a crowd.

A flock.

So perhaps the question for us is not:
how do we become like the three thousand?

But how do we recognise what we already are?

A small flock.
Known.
Gathered.
Fed.
Held together by the voice of the shepherd.

And the gift of a small flock is this:

You cannot disappear here.

You are not one face in a crowd.

You are known.
You are noticed.
You belong.

And yet … there is a danger for churches like ours,
in times like ours,
when it’s all about numbers, growth and influence.

Because when we hear about the three thousand,
it is very easy to start thinking:

if only we were more …
if only things were different …

And slowly, almost without noticing,
our attention shifts.

Away from who is here …
to who is not.

Away from what we have been given
to what we think we lack.

And when that happens, something else can creep in.

A quiet dissatisfaction.
Even resentment.

A feeling that we are being held back –
by numbers,
by circumstance,
even, perhaps, by one another.

But that is to go after the wrong prize.

Because the prize was never the three thousand.

The gift –
the miracle –
was what they became.

A people who shared life.
A people who belonged to one another.
A people who were fed with the life of Christ.

And that is not something we have to chase.

It is something we have already been given.

Here.

Among us.

So the question is not: how do we become more?

But:
how do we become more deeply what we already are?

More attentive to one another …
More ready to share life …
More open to the voice of the shepherd …

Because when that happens –

this small flock,
this ordinary gathering of people –

becomes something extraordinary.

Not because we stand out from the crowd.

But because we belong to one another,
and are led by the one who knows us by name.

In the end, the gift is not becoming something else,
or someone else,
bigger, better, or whatever it may be –

but recognising that, in Christ,
what we have …
is already enough.

The good shepherd
leads the small flock –

even the two or three –

through the valley overshadowed by death.

He leads us.
He sets a table before us.
He feeds us
as we break bread together.

He satisfies our deepest longings –

as he has satisfied thousands before us.

The Lord is here.
In this small flock.
In this shared life.

The Lord is here.
His spirit is with us.

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 Genesis of Gentleness and the Gentleness of Genesis

David HerbertLeave a comment

Read gently my friend.

Facebook friend, Josh Askwith, has just heard the book of Genesis read straight through. What struck him was not the violence, nor the intrigue, nor the strangeness. It was something else. He posted this:

“I was struck by how gently it ends.”

And that’s got me thinking. Gently. That is not the adjective most people reach for when describing the Old Testament.

His comment landed on top of a conversation I had recently with someone who confessed that she “struggles” with the Old Testament. She is not alone. Many Christians speak of it as though it were a necessary preface to the real story — darker, harsher, spiritually inferior. The implication is often unspoken but clear: the Old Testament is something Jesus saves us from.

I wonder how much of that instinct has been formed not simply by careful reading, but by centuries of misreading — by a habit of exaggerating the discontinuity between Old and New, of distancing Jesus from his Jewish roots, of quietly rendering Israel’s scriptures obsolete. When we treat the Old Testament as primitive or problematic, are we inheriting interpretative habits shaped, at least in part, by anti-Jewish assumptions?

And then Genesis ends — not with thunder, but with tenderness.

Joseph forgives his brothers. Revenge is refused. Fear is met with reassurance. “You meant it for harm,” he says, “but God meant it for good.” The story closes not in triumph but in trust — a coffin in Egypt, waiting for promise. It is strangely, stubbornly gentle.

But the gentleness is not softness. It is shaped by a deeper pattern running all the way through the book.

Near the end, in Genesis 48, we are given an image that feels almost like a summary of everything that has gone before. Jacob — old now, frail, nearing death — is brought Joseph’s two sons to bless. Manasseh, the firstborn, is positioned at Jacob’s right hand. Ephraim, the younger, at his left. Everything is arranged according to custom, according to entitlement, according to the straight lines of inheritance – so that Manasseh will be blessed first and Ephraim last. That is the way of the world.

But then Jacob crosses his hands.

The right hand rests on the younger boy. The left on the elder.

Joseph tries to correct him. It must be a mistake. But Jacob refuses. The crossing is deliberate.

Jacob Blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, miniature on vellum from the Golden Haggadah, Catalonia, early 14th century, at the British Library, London

It is hard not to smile at the irony. The name Jacob is bound up with grasping and twisting — the heel-grabber, the supplanter. The one who once twisted his way into stealing a blessing from his brother Esau, now twists his own arms to give one. The old twister twists again — but this time not to steal, not to secure advantage for himself, but to bend the future toward the overlooked.

Genesis has been rehearsing this pattern from the beginning. Abel over Cain. Isaac over Ishmael. Jacob over Esau. Joseph over his brothers. And now Ephraim over Manasseh.

This is not randomness. It is theology.

God’s blessing does not run along the straight lines of primacy, status, or expectation. It bends. It crosses. It interrupts the obvious.

For those who are first, secure, established, this is unsettling. For those who are second, small, despised, or displaced, it is life.

Read this way, Genesis is not primitive folklore. It is dangerous scripture.

It belongs to the Torah — to a people who would know slavery, exile, homelessness; who would know what it is to be second best. It is instruction for living under empire. It is a memory bank for those whose lives do not follow the straight lines of power. Again and again it whispers: the story is not over when you are overlooked. The blessing may yet cross in your direction.

No wonder such texts can be domesticated. If the Old Testament can be caricatured as angry, obsolete, or morally inferior, its critique of hierarchy is neutralised. If it is reduced to a foil for a gentler New Testament, its radical edge is blunted.

But Jesus does not stand over against this story. He stands within it.

When he speaks of the last being first and the first last, he is not inventing a new moral universe. He is speaking Torah-deep truth. When Mary sings of the proud scattered and the lowly lifted, she is echoing the long music of Israel. When the kingdom is announced as good news to the poor, it is not a departure from Genesis but its flowering.

The rule of the kingdom of God crosses old hierarchies. It must – if the second best, the left out and despised are to find favour.

That does not mean the first are hated or the strong despised. The point is not revenge. The crossing of hands is not retaliation; it is freedom. God is not bound by our ranking systems. Blessing is not the private property of the powerful.

Perhaps that is why Genesis ends gently. Because beneath its betrayals and famines and rivalries runs a deeper current of mercy — a God who keeps bending history toward life.

A God who crosses his hands.

And for those who have lived too long on the left side of the room – left behind, left out – that is not merely interesting theology. It is hope. It is radical gentleness.

The Cost of a Strong Church

David HerbertLeave a comment

“The exclusion of the weak and insignificant,
the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community
may actually mean the exclusion of Christ.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Bonhoeffer wrote these words during the Nazi era, at a time when entire groups of people were being labelled unworthy of life — useless, burdensome, disposable. Against that deadly logic, he insisted on something profoundly unsettling: that God is revealed not in strength or success, but in lowliness and weakness.

For Bonhoeffer, Christ is found not among the powerful, but among those who suffer — those pushed aside, silenced, or made invisible. Again and again, he warned that when a Christian community excludes the weak, it is not simply failing morally or socially. It is committing a theological act. It is removing the presence of Christ from its own life.

Christian fellowship begins with the last coming first. The church does not bear witness to Christ by appearing strong, efficient, or successful. It bears witness by putting the last first — by elevating the weak, the overlooked, and the forgotten — because that is where Christ has chosen to dwell, and where the kingdom of God is already breaking in.

I wish I’d stumbled across these words in time for last Sunday’s sermon. They say, more simply and more truthfully, what I was reaching for.

Going Home After Christmas – another way

David Herbert3 Comments

Here is a sermon for Epiphany, about getting home after Christmas — about what it means to return to ordinary life once the magic of Christmas has done its work.
(Readings: Isaiah 60:1–6; Matthew 2:1–12)

This morning I want to take up the star of wonder
and see how far we have come this Christmas,
exploring the way to the manger,
and how on earth we get home.

Our readings cover many miles —
the miles in the reading from Isaiah,
the miles nations will come
to the light of the glory of God,
the miles rulers will travel
to the brightness of the dawn
of a new day, a new time, a new year.

The miles the children of Israel will travel:
sons coming from afar,
daughters carried on the hip.

The miles wealth will cross the seas,
and the camels… the camels —
from Midian and Ephah,
even from Sheba,
bearing gold and incense,
proclaiming the praise of the Lord
when he comes.

And in the gospel for today
there are the Magi from the east —
the Magi who believe in the magic of life,
who follow the star of wonder,
always wondering what kind of magic
can turn hatred into love
and a world at war into a world at peace.

Our readings cover miles of wonder.

The magic the travellers trusted
was not illusion or trickery,
but the stubborn hope
that the world could be other than it is.

It is a hope as old as time.
It is God’s hope we join.

The Magi are ones who travelled so far,
going first one way,
and then finding a better way.

First they went the usual way,
the old way, the well-trodden wrong way.
They found themselves in Jerusalem,
in the twisted streets of the medina,
the religious capital,
the political and social capital.

Everyone said they would find
what they were looking for there,
because that’s where we always expect God to be —
close to influence, respectability, and control.

There’s no doubt that Google Maps
had led them to a king.
But Herod wasn’t who they were looking for.

There was no magic in his palace —
just the same old rules,
the same old rule of oppression,
ruling out the magic
of the least, the lost, and the last.

They stayed awhile — long enough
for the priests and lawyers
to consult the ancient books of magic,
the scriptures that had forgotten
just how dangerous they really are,
to remind themselves
that the place of magic
is the smallest of places,
never Jerusalem.

They’d got it so wrong.

Nine miles wide, one theologian says —
the distance between Jerusalem and Bethlehem,
the distance between power and promise,
the distance between knowing the words
and recognising the child.

Nine miles on, they saw the star
stop over the place where Jesus was.
Overwhelming joy brought them to their knees.

They bowed from their lofty heights.
They opened up their gifts —
all their power and glory:
their gold, their frankincense, their myrrh.

Gifts laden with meaning —
the gold of their wealth,
the incense of their power,
the myrrh of their mortality.

They handed them all over.

They do not leave Bethlehem lightly.

They have loved this place.
They have loved the silence,
the smallness,
the nearness of God in a child.

They have lingered long enough
to be changed by what they have seen.

And then they went home another way,
considerably lighter.

We are in the same room as the Magi.
We are with them in Bethlehem.
We too have travelled far this Christmas.
We too have knelt at the place of wonder.

But no one can stay in Bethlehem.
It was too dangerous for Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
They had to flee from Herod’s terror
and his slaughter of the innocent.

Nor could the Magi stay.
They had to return to their own country.

They had two choices.
They could go back the way they came —
through Jerusalem,
through Herod,
through the centres of religious, social, and political power.

Or they could take the road less travelled.
They chose to follow their dream,
to heed the warning,
to go home another way —
refusing the way of fear and exclusion,
the way that protects power
by crushing the vulnerable.

And nor can we stay at the manger.
Christmas does not ask us to linger,
but to return.

There are just twelve days of Christmas,
and we are nearly at the end of them.
The road home opens before us.

We go back to the same people,
the same work,
the same complications and demands —
just as the Magi did.

The question is not whether we go home,
but how we go home.

Will we go back the way we came —
shaped by fear, habit, and power?
Or will we go home another way —
refusing fear,
trusting the stubborn magic of love,
seeing God not in the centres of control
but in the smallest of places,
among the least, the last, and the lost?

Home calls us —
the place that knows us,
the place we know,
the place whose joys and wounds
we carry in our bones.

The Magi return to their own country —
to their villages,
their households,
their responsibilities and loves.

They go back to the same world,
but not by the same road.

And so do we.

We go home
not because Bethlehem has nothing left to give,
but because it has given us enough.

Enough light
to see differently.
Enough love
to travel lighter.
Enough hope
to believe the world can be other than it is.

That is the road less taken —
and it is the way
into a new year of grace.

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.’

Are the rich fit for the kingdom of God? Here’s the test.

David HerbertLeave a comment

A sermon for September 28th 2025 – the 15th Sunday after Trinity (Proper 21C)

All three readings, (Amos 6:1a, 4-7, 1 Timothy 6:6-19, Luke 16: 19-end) address the issue of wealth. (There is far more in the Bible about wealth and riches than about sexual morality, though that is hard to believe when we listen to the politics of the church).

Amos condemns those who are at ease in Zion, those who feel secure in Samaria – the notables of the first nations.
He condemns those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, who drink wine from bowls and massage themselves with the finest oils, but who don’t give a fig about those whose lives are ruined.
For Amos, they will be the first to be exiled.
The revelry of the loungers shall pass away – and we will be all the better for that.
Now, there’s a phrase to conjure with. “They shall pass away” –
dead, no more, nada – thank God –
and those who are the victims of their indifference will breathe a sigh of relief.
What use are the loungers to the world?

The kingdom of God does not belong to the comfortable and secure,
but to the last, the least, and the lost.

Then Paul, in his letter to Timothy talks about the great gain in godliness combined with contentment.
He doesn’t condemn people for having things but warns against wanting more and more.
True wealth is “godliness with contentment”.
That’s the way to be happy.
Paul warns Timothy about the dangers of desire.
“Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”
The danger of desire is that it makes us restless, blind to our neighbour, and forgetful of God. When we chase being first we often step over those who are last.
When we crave more, we forget those with less.
When we seek security in wealth, we leave others lost.

Paul warns that desire blinds us to our neighbour.
And Jesus shows us the tragic result – a rich man so blinded by wealth that he couldn’t see Lazarus at his own gate.

Isn’t it interesting that nobody knows the name of the rich man?
But we all know Lazarus.
The rich man has been forgotten.
That phrase again – he is passed away. He is no more. He is dead.
He is in torment for the torment that Lazarus went through at the rich man’s gate.
He was covered with sores,
and was so hungry he’d have gladly eat the crumbs from the floor of the rich man’s table.
See how the dogs came and licked his sores.
The compassion of the dogs is such a contrast to the indifference of the rich man.

The rich man was at his gate, on his doorstep.
Compassion was surely in his reach.
But he’d made wealth his wall,
and when death came, that wall turned into an unbridgeable chasm.
He passed away into torment, dead to the kingdom of God.
Whereas Lazarus is carried by all the angels to be with Abraham – carried as one of the people of God.
“The loungers shall pass away” says Amos.
And in this parable, the rich man – nameless, forgotten – has passed away.
Dead to God’s kingdom, dead to compassion, dead to life.

We are a rich nation.
And yet, how often we choose not to see the plight of the poor.
The men, women and children arriving in small boats —
are they not Lazarus at our gate?
They lie at the threshold of our common life, in need of compassion.

And here’s the Gospel twist:
Lazarus means “helped by God.”
God helps the poor, the overlooked, the forgotten.
They are not abandoned.
And in God’s strange mercy, they are also sent to help us.
Lazarus is not just a man to be pitied — he is a gods­end.

How the rich man needed Lazarus.
At the end of the parable, he begs Abraham to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers.
But Abraham replies:
They already have Moses and the prophets — they should listen to them.
He could also have said:
They already had Lazarus — lying at their gate.
That was their opportunity. How many more chances do they need?

Lazarus is the examiner of compassion,
who stands at the door and knocks to see if any love of God lives in this household.
This is where the kingdom of God begins: in the last, the least and the lost whom God helps.

The rich man failed the test.
He failed the test to help the ones God helps.
He was like those condemned by Amos – a reveller, a lounger,
and he becomes one of the first in the gospel to go into exile, into torment, into unending death.

Can a rich man ever enter the kingdom of God?
Yes, but only if they help the ones God helps.

The tragedy for the rich man was that he never recognised Lazarus as the gift God had sent him. Wealth had become his wall against him.
When death came, that wall turned into an unbridgeable chasm.
The rich man passed away nameless, forgotten, as Amos warned.
“The revelry of the loungers shall pass away.”

But Lazarus —
helped by God, sent by God —
was lifted up and carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham.

Pope Francis reminded us that the poor are our evangelisers.
They proclaim the gospel to us.
They show us the face of Christ.
They test our compassion
and teach us where the kingdom of God begins (and where it ends).

So the question is this:
will we see these godsends at our gate,
within our reach, and open the bridge of compassion?
Or, will we, like the rich man, turn away and pass away?

Safeguarding is the Mission of God

David HerbertLeave a comment

I had thought that this Sunday was Safeguarding Sunday. It’s not.
That’s November 16th.
But shouldn’t every Sunday be Safeguarding Sunday?
When we look at our readings for the day, (Amos 8:4-7 & Luke 16:1-13),
they are all about safeguarding,
and they expose our current safeguarding focus as hopelessly inadequate.

Safeguarding isn’t just reacting to scandals of abuse,
but is the mission of the church.
Our calling is to protect the vulnerable,
to care for creation and to defend the excluded.

And safeguarding begins with the little things.
The soil beneath our feet.
The worm in the allotment.
The bee that pollinates our food.
The sparrow that falls unnoticed to the ground.
Creation itself is vulnerable,
and safeguarding must mean cherishing the earth, not exploiting it.

If we cannot be faithful with the earth — the very ground of our life —
how can we expect to be trusted with the riches of the kingdom?

Safeguarding has a political edge which is being overlooked.

We are in the Season of Creation,
a season for highlighting the needs of the earth and the environment
and our responsibilities for safeguarding the planet.

And we are in the season of disenchantment and political turmoil
when we are seeing thousands of people taking to the streets
to protest against immigration,
who want to turn the clock back
to make Britain Great again,
or America great again,
or make themselves great again.

There are safeguarding issues here as well,
challenges to safeguard those who are vulnerable,
those in the firing line, those claiming asylum,
those terrified in the targeted hotels,
those who are scared to be seen in public.

My son told us of his experience last weekend.
He was in London during the protests.
Protesters surrounded the Uber they were in,
banging the windows, shaking the car
and shouting to the driver, “GO HOME”.
He was a Bangladeshi who has lived here for twelve years.
His home is here. That requires safeguarding.

And there is the other side.
Those protesting aren’t all fascist or racist.
They are people who feel they don’t belong,
who feel they’ve been left behind
by a society which has put financial gain above everything,
where the gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider.
It is hard for me to speak for them,
but have they had enough of “rip off Britain”,
have they lost hope? Have they been safeguarded?
Is what we are seeing on the streets a consequence
of the lack of safeguarding for these least and last,
with a poverty of opportunity?
I will not demean these people as racists or fascists.
I have lived in their communities.
Most of them have just reached the end of their tether.

They become easy prey for those who would exploit them for their own ends,
false shepherds who would mislead them with false promises.
You know who I mean.

And into this world — our world — comes the voice of Amos (Amos 8:4-7 – printed below),
eight centuries before Christ.
Because his scripture has been treasured,
we have been hearing Amos for nearly 3000 years!
He names what safeguarding failure looks like in his time:
people trampling on the needy, treating the poor as expendable,
twisting religion to cover up exploitation.
Are we any different now?
He cries out against a society where profit matters more than people,
and where the very ones who most need protection are sold for a pair of sandals.
Amos is God’s safeguarding officer, raising the alarm.

And then Jesus, in Luke’s gospel, gives us this line:

Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much.

It’s a complicated parable, but this is the heart of it: the little matters.
Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much.
The small ones matter.
The least matter.
The soil matters.
The worm matters.
The daily, unnoticed acts of honesty and care matter.
Because in the little, the kingdom begins.

Being faithful in the little means safeguarding creation itself:
tending the soil, honouring the creatures that work unseen,
the worms, the insects, the birds —
each one part of God’s great economy of life,
the web of life that holds us.

Being faithful in the little means safeguarding people:
the child, the refugee, the neighbour
who feels they don’t belong.

Being faithful in the little means safeguarding our choices,
managing ourselves in those moments
which could turn into flash points when we fly off the handle.

Being faithful in the little means safeguarding our community:
choosing honesty when it would be easier to cut corners,
choosing care when it would be easier to look away.

The little matters – because in the little the kingdom begins.

Jesus speaks of being our shepherd,
the true shepherd
who safeguards the last, the least and the lost.
That must include those who have been misled
by opportunistic shepherds who trade in fear.
They, too, are vulnerable, though they don’t always see it.
They are last and least in ways that make them lash out.
But they are still little ones Jesus longs to safeguard.
So safeguarding is not just paperwork or policy.
It is the mission of God, entrusted to us:
to safeguard the earth, to safeguard the poor,
(and protest against the causes of poverty and exclusion).
It is the mission of God
to safeguard even those who have lost their way.

Every time we join this mission,
we are being faithful in the little,
and the little is what God treasures.
The little are the treasures of the kingdom.

Our commonwealth is woven together
from moments of safeguarding the vulnerable,
moments of honouring the smallest,
moments of choosing care over indifference.

This is what God entrusts to us.
This is what it means to live for the kingdom.

The little matters,
because in the little, the kingdom begins.

Amos 8:4-7

Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
  and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
saying, ‘When will the new moon be over
  so that we may sell grain;
and the sabbath,
  so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,
  and practise deceit with false balances,
buying the poor for silver
  and the needy for a pair of sandals,
  and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’

The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds