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Conversion isn’t a momentary experience, begun and ended at our baptism, started and completed in one life-changing prayer or moment of spiritual epiphany.  

So be kind to yourself; the human mind is wired to think we are the centre of the universe, and it is oh-so-easy to misinterpret the data all around us in order to reach that conclusion.  Thanks be to God, however, that we are not the centre of the Universe.

As we gather today to celebrate the good things of God’s green earth, Jesus calls to set us free from anxiety so that we are free to worry about justice.

Francis always held a reverence for church buildings. Being places where the saving mystery of Christ death and resurrection was celebrated, they were to be kept clean. He told his brothers to sweep a church if they found it to be neglected and unkempt; both the scriptures and the sacrament were to be carefully reverenced; the sanctuary was to be honoured.

There are angels all about us, messengers beyond our mortal ken, ascending and descending, as busy and invisible and implausibly constructed in the divine plan as muons and quarks are in the material realm of this creation, as the silent owls are wonders in the night-time world of nature

A sign to say this church is where all can come for safety; where all are not merely welcome, but vitally part of our common life, our common ministry, a nurturing church where we serve one another that we might serve Christ.

Take up your cross and follow me, he asks us, and the journey we are invited on is a journey to life --not to death, but to life. You need both your hands to carry this journey with me, he teaches us.

The primary call to Christian ministers, and all Christian people, is to be formed in the likeness of Christ-crucified. This entails a daily living under the shadow of the cross, which, for all its sweet blessings, is inescapably rough and biting too. Christ and his cross provoke us as much as they console us.

We know it is costly to enter into, tempting to avoid yet another account of what is being suffered in so many parts of the world; tempting to enlist the triumph within Christ’s suffering and so avoid ‘walking in another’s moccasins’.

Jesus’s mission, then, was to bring the love of God to the poor, the sick, the maimed, the downtrodden. To reassure the orphan and the widow, the excluded and the vulnerable, that no one was outside God’s love, and that the laws of religion were a human construct obscuring God in favour of maintaining the institution.

How many indeed have received Holy Communion week in and week out for the past year and a half, one of the most difficult periods this parish has gone through? A great many of you. And after eating and drinking, you prayed together Sunday by Sunday: ‘Almighty God, we thank you feeding us with the body and blood of your Son Jesus Christ. Through him, we offer you our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice. Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory.’

In 2007, when I was just retired and luxuriously church-shopping, I walked into St. Benet’s and saw our very rare if not unique central window: was there ever a pull, a message for someone just retired?

So this bread, this simple nourishing meal, this transformation of grain and yeast, this proved and risen and baked food – this is more than a metaphor. The bread of the Eucharist is more than bread, for it conveys Jesus. 

When I joined St Bene’t’s, a priest friend came up to me and asked what it was like to be responsible for the most prayed for congregation in England. 

We find ourselves in the position of those 12 disciples sent out by Jesus, with authority over evil spirits, to teach the good news of the kingdom of God. 

Giving thanks, on the other hand, is a positive action which we do, and we do over and over again, because we have faith in our God from whom all blessings flow. 

Constantly and patiently Job responds to those who ask him to accept these answers. Job will not give up the two things he really knows. That God is good and loves him. 

So, what is the kingdom of God like? It is like a field with things growing. You think you are doing all the work, but God gives more that you can imagine. And, what is the kingdom of God like? It is like a mustard seed. Almost insignificant but can become great.

What was Jesus like? Imagine meeting him. Imagine his eyes, piercing yet full of love; Imagine his voice, strong and commanding, yet full of compassion; imagine his hands – full of gestures yet full of healing; imagine his stride, as he walked from village to village – a man in a hurry with work to do before the day is out – yet stopping when called by the needy crowd.

Today we are keeping Eco-Sunday. With the environment and the economy, we are enmeshed in a system we cannot get out of, but which is not working for human flourishing. From a human perspective, we all believe in the sustainable development and equitable sharing of the world’s resources with all God’s creatures.

Imagine you are asked to watch a short video in which six people-three in white shirts and three in black shirts-pass basketballs around. While you watch, you must keep a silent count of the number of passes made by the people in white shirts. At some point, a gorilla strolls into the middle of the action, faces the camera and thumps its chest, and then leaves, spending nine seconds on screen.

From the Council of Chalcedon: “it is salutary to recall that in ‘spinning out’ some of the most elaborate speculation on the doctrine of the Trinity, Augustine explained that “I have done this, not to presume to describe this mystery, as though I were speaking the mind of God, but so as not to be altogether silent; and I begged forgiveness when my speculation had gone too far!”

We are called to make our lives a translation, in our own time, of Christ. The process of making our lives a translation of Christ precisely is the presence of the Spirit of Christ within us. Not beside us – but as close to us as our own breath.

Today we are in the in between time, with Christ gone, and the Holy Spirit not yet arrived. This is reflected in the phrases from our Collect: we beseech you, leave us not comfortless, but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us.

On Easter Sunday just before Evensong, in my last Parish in Leicestershire, someone came into Church, whom I knew from one of our outlying villages - there were 16 in the area for which I had responsibility. He was a farmer. .

I wonder whether you ever have a sense of being torn between two places. Perhaps somewhere where you have been happy, where you have intense memories.

Love is the gateway to betrayal, grief, disappointment, just as much as it is the gateway to completion, personhood, eternity. It should not be a surprise that all these things are part of the experience of those who love, of those who are friends of Christ.

In today’s parable Jesus connects the image of the vine with the idea of abiding. (Meno – the same root word as remain). This is important. In John, over and over again Jesus talks about the abiding and mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son.

There was an empty tomb - this is not a metaphor for something else

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if ‘nothing had happened’ after Jesus’ cry of “My God my God why have you forsaken me?”