Tag: year C

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.’

Hope Has Hooves: Keeping Faith When the World Feels Mean

David HerbertLeave a comment

This sermon was preached for the Second Sunday before Advent — sometimes called Kingdom Sunday, and this year also marked as Safeguarding Sunday.
It begins with the prophet Malachi’s vision of a day when “the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings,” and when God’s people “will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”
It’s a vivid, earthy picture of freedom — hope that doesn’t float above the world but thunders joyfully across it.
Hope, as it turns out, has hooves.

‘Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace.
All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble,
and that day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the Lord Almighty.
‘Not a root or a branch will be left to them.
But for you who revere my name,
the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.
And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.’ (Malachi 4:1-2a)

I thought I’d let Malachi do the talking this morning. 

He did his talking 450 years before Christ after the Jewish community had returned from exile.
They thought everything was going to be hunky-dory.
The Temple had been restored, the worship re-established,
and people hoped – and expected – that Israel would be great again.

But the glorious renewal never materialised. It rarely does.

The community Malachi is speaking to is one that had expected to be spared the ways of the arrogant and the evildoers.
Instead they found themselves small, struggling and disillusioned.
They are weary. They are disappointed. They’ve had enough.

And into that discouragement, Malachi tells them not to give up.

In my last parish we lived next door to a dairy farm.
The farmer knew how much we loved the moment when the cows were released into the fields after winter – those first few minutes when they leap and dance and frolic before settling down to graze away their days.
On our final day there, as a goodbye, he freed the cows (earlier than he normally would) just so we could watch them. A little gesture of joy and encouragement.

Watch the moment when these animals are released and leap into life.
This is the kind of hope we’re talking about — wild, earthy, triumphant (From the Funky Farmer)

That’s the image Malachi gives us: “You will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”
Imagine that, he implies.
Feel it.
Let that joy into your bones.

The day is coming,
the day to end all days,
the day we’ve prayed for,
the end of wrongdoing, the end of misery, the end of oppression,
the end of the arrogant, the end of the evildoer.

But between the promise and its fulfilment, they still had to live through some very tough times indeed.
They still lived between a rock and a hard place.

He’s speaking to a community who’ve given up waiting for times to change,
who’ve lost hope.
And he may as well be speaking to us.

Things haven’t changed that much. His times are still our times.
The arrogant and the evildoers still seem to carry the day,
and we too can feel like a struggling and disillusioned generation.
We get weary. We get disappointed.

This is one of the readings appointed for today.
And its words speak, with beautiful conciseness and clarity, of the day we all pray for –
the day when everything broken will finally be set right.

And what Malachi offers is not a vague or floaty hope.
Not a “pie in the sky when you die” kind of hope.
Not the sort of hope that shrugs and says,
“Well, it won’t happen in my lifetime—maybe someday, somewhere else.”

No.
Malachi’s hope is earthed.
It has muscle and movement.
It has sun-warmed skin and strong legs.
It leaps. It runs. It frolics.

Hope, in Malachi’s vision, is not an idea.
It’s an animal set free.

Hope has hooves.

And because hope has hooves, it doesn’t wait politely for the world to improve.
It doesn’t sit still until things get better.
It doesn’t retreat into a dream or escape into the clouds.

Hope is not about leaving this world behind;
it’s about this world being set right.

The freedom Malachi imagines does not happen “up there” or “somewhere else”
but here—in the fields of our own lives,
in the soil beneath our feet,
in the communities that have grown tired and heavy with disappointment.

Hope is grounded.
Hope is embodied.
Hope is movement.

And that is why those who have given up hope
so often spiritualise it, soften it, postpone it.
They make it so distant that it no longer touches the earth.
They reduce it to wishful thinking or to a future reward
instead of a promise that breaks into the present.

But real biblical hope always has dirt on its feet.
It always has skin in the game.
It always demands something of us.

It is a hope with hooves—
a hope that will not stand still
because God will not stand still.

And so we pray for that day.
Every time we say the Lord’s Prayer — “your kingdom come” — we are praying Malachi’s prayer.
We’re praying for the day when wrong is ended, when justice rises,
when the oppressed stand tall,
when the broken are made whole,
when healing breaks out like sunlight over a cold field.

But praying for that day is not passive.
It is not waiting-room spirituality.
It is preparation.
It is participation.
It is permission for God to rearrange our lives as well as the world.

Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, puts it plainly:
“Never tire of doing good.”

Never tire.
Not when we get weary.
Not when hope feels heavy.
Not when the world seems to resist every effort toward kindness, justice, truth.

Because if hope has hooves, we need to keep ours moving.

Doing good is not an extra.
It is not the garnish on Christian faith.
It is the shape of hope lived out.
It is the daily, steady work of aligning our lives with the world God is bringing into being.

And Jesus, in the Gospel reading, speaks of upheaval—
nations in uproar,
wars and rumours of wars,
the ground trembling beneath our certainties.

But then he says something deeply strengthening:
“Do not be afraid.”

Not because everything is fine — it isn’t.
Not because everything will suddenly get better — it may not.
But because God is with us in the meantime,
and it is precisely in these mean times
that our hope matters most.

The world being turned the right way up is bound to be unsettling.
Those who profit from cruelty won’t like it.
Those who cling to power will resist it.
Those who prefer darkness will fear the light.

But discipleship has always been lived with courage.
Courage to do good when others give up.
Courage to tell the truth when lying is easier.
Courage to protect the vulnerable when it costs something.
Courage to embody hope when cynicism is fashionable.

And that brings us to Safeguarding Sunday.

We haven’t mentioned it until now —
and that’s intentional —
because safeguarding isn’t a special theme for one Sunday,
or a box to tick,
or a duty we dust off once a year.

Safeguarding is simply hope in practice.
It is the grounded hope Malachi speaks of,
the persevering hope Paul commends,
the courageous hope Jesus prepares us for.

Safeguarding says:
in this community,
in this place,
every person matters.
The vulnerable are protected.
The wounded are listened to.
The frightened are safe.
This is a place where harm is named, not hidden,
and where healing is made possible.

Safeguarding is part of the way we pray “your kingdom come.”
It is part of the way we “never tire of doing good.”
It is part of the way we “do not be afraid.”

It is hope with hooves —
hope that moves,
hope that watches over,
hope that makes room,
hope that keeps all God’s people safe
until that promised day dawns
and we go out and frolic like well-fed calves.

So today we keep our hope alive,
we keep our feet moving,
and we keep one another safe.

Hope doesn’t just have feathers,
as Emily Dickinson writes in her poetry.
Hope has hooves.

The calling of God’s people in every generation
is to keep faith in these mean times,
to never give up hope in these mean times,
to never stop loving in these mean times.
These are the things we need to keep going forever,
faith, hope and love,
until the day comes which sees the end of the arrogant and the evildoer,
the day the sun of righteousness will rise
with healing in its wings.

Until then, we keep faith.
We keep hope.
We keep love.

Our call is to live for that day.

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 Herbert1 Comment

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.

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?

Crossing the Lines of Division

David Herbert2 Comments

Sermon for Proper 7C – Trinity 1
Readings: Galatians 3:23–end and Luke 8:26–39

Every generation lives with conflict. Sometimes it shocks us; other times, it simply exhausts us. We ask, again and again, “Why can’t people just get on?” But our scriptures don’t hide the truth: division runs deep — in history, in systems, in souls. This sermon explores how Paul names those divisions, how Jesus crosses them, and what happens when grace refuses to stay on its side of the line. In a world chained by difference, Christ brings the freedom of unity — not by erasing our stories, but by re-membering us into something new.

Here we go again — at the risk of repeating myself…
I love preaching that brings scripture back to life, and I hope you do too.
I say this often, but it bears repeating: when we open scripture together, we are not just reading words,
we are bringing them back to life.
And we’re bringing them to life in a world of division.

There are times when the world feels more dangerous than ever.
This week has been one of them: Israel launches missiles at Iran, Iran retaliates, and then Donald Trump gets himself involved — in his customary statesmanlike manner.
And those of us on the fringes wonder, “Why can’t people just get on?”
It’s a question many of us have asked all our adult lives, as one conflict after another flashes across our screens.

It’s as if we’re surprised when conflict breaks out,
even though our scriptures describe human history as full of it.
From the moment Adam and Eve grew up enough to blame each other,
and as for their children; Cain grew jealous of Abel and killed him.

This is the backdrop of scripture: a history full of conflict, grievance and wrong.
And that shouldn’t surprise us.
Human nature leans toward grievance and defence.
We feel a moral obligation to address what’s been done to us.
We shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t get along.
The real surprise is that we ever do.
In spite of our differences, it’s astonishing how often we manage peace.

This is the human reality Paul addresses when he writes to the Galatians.
We often skip to the famous bit: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female…”
And we instinctively expand it: neither young nor old, gay nor straight, rich nor poor.

But we often miss the phrase just before: “We were held in custody under the law… we were locked up.”

We were locked into divisions. Bound by binaries.
And those divisions still exist — even in the church.
There has been one law for the gay and another for the straight.
One law for men (they could be ordained), and another for women (they could not).
There was a time when it mattered whether you were married or divorced.
These divisions weren’t just opinions — they were rules.
“This is the law,” people said. “These are the boundaries.”

But Paul names these laws for what they are: temporary, partial, and not the final word.
These binaries are unequal — and unequal binaries breed resentment, not reconciliation.
The good news is that in Christ, those old structures no longer define us.
The new reality is that all who are baptised into Christ are clothed with Christ. We are one.

So what does that actually look like?
What does it look like when someone, long bound by division, is finally set free?

That’s the power of the story in Luke’s Gospel.

Here is someone completely undone by division — fragmented and chained, living among the tombs.
They call him “Legion,” which isn’t his real name.
It’s a name that suggests occupation: a Roman military unit.
Empire has invaded his soul.
He is not just possessed — he is colonised.
He has become the embodiment of a fractured, binary-riddled world.

He’s been locked up — like those Paul was writing to.
Chained hand and foot by the law of empire.
He had broken the chains, yes — but the people still kept him out.
They feared him. He had to be driven away, kept apart.

And that’s where Jesus meets him.

Jesus crosses over — not just a lake, but boundaries of culture, class, purity, power.
He goes where the pigs are, among the tombs — all unclean territory for a devout Jew.
But this is how far Jesus is willing to go to restore a life.
To say: no one is beyond healing.
He crosses all the boundary lines, the enemy lines.
No one is so divided that they can’t be made whole.

And when the man is healed,
when he is clothed and in his right mind,
sitting at Jesus’ feet,
the people are afraid.
They’re afraid by the healing.
They’re afraid of what it might mean if the old boundaries don’t hold.
If he is restored, what does that mean for the system we’ve built?

They send Jesus away.

But before he goes, Jesus sends the man home.
And notice — he is no longer called Legion.
He is “the man”. A person. A human being.
He’s been re-membered — brought back into the body, into community.
He’s been clothed not only with literal garments, but in the language of Paul, clothed in Christ.

And this rehumanised man becomes a witness.
His life, restored, is a sign that another world is possible,
a world in which division doesn’t get the last word.

Because this is what the kingdom of God looks like.
Not just healing wounds, but undoing the whole system that caused them.
Not just restoring one man, but revealing that the lines we’ve drawn,
between the first and the last, the worthy and the broken,
don’t stand in the light of Christ.

In God’s kingdom, the last become first.
The one known as Legion, the one cast out,
becomes the first to preach the good news of Jesus to his people.
The law that once divided is replaced by a love that restores.

So today, let’s stop being surprised by conflict.
Conflict and division is the rule, the law, the norm (these days)
as it always has been. That’s what we’re locked in to
and what we’re locked in by.
So let’s stop being surprised by conflict
And instead start being amazed by grace
and the freedom that is made possible in Christ
who crosses the boundaries that divide us
to help us find our peace.
No longer divided, we are made one.
That changes everything.

I’d love to hear your thoughts — how do you see these lines being crossed in your own life or community?