Saints yesterday and today - An All saints sermon based on Hebrews 12: 1-3

“When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist.” Words from the liberationist priest Dom Helder Camara which challenge us as to what a saint is!

A story is told of 2 brothers who were no better than they ought to be. They were gangsters who made money out of protection rackets and the likes. Most people feared them and kept a discreet distance whenever possible. Now there came a time when one of the brothers died. The grief stricken surviving brother had to make the funeral arrangements and he wanted the service to be taken by a clergy person who would say positive things about the dead brother. In fact he wanted the funeral to be told that the dead brother was a saint. One by one the clergy of the local churches found excuses as to why they could not host the funeral. That is all except the Methodist Church. You see the surviving brother knew they had a weakness. They had to replace the roof and money was short. So he offered £100,000 to the Methodist minister if he would use the funeral to declare the dead brother to be a saint. The Methodist minister agreed but with one proviso - that half of the money should be provided up front.

It came the day of the funeral and the church was packed. Present were a right collection of gangsters and gangsters’ molls but also present were members of the church wondering how on earth their minister would be able to declare the dead gangster a saint without losing all credibility. Come the moment of the address and the minister went for it. The dead man was he said, a thief, a drunkard, an adulterer and a total hypocrite. The surviving brother by now was mopping the sweat off his brow. This wasn’t what he had planned. His only hope was that somehow the minister would keep his promise if only to get the second half of his payment. Surely he would pronounce the dead man to be a saint.

And the minister did precisely that! As he brought his address to a loud crescendo declaring that the word would have been a better place had the dead man never lived, he concluded with the words;

“But compared with his brother he was an absolute saint!”

Mmmm. Perhaps you can find one of Nottingham’s gangsters who is coming to the end of his life and we can do a similar deal to finance the Back Door Project. I’m up for it but I suspect the Methodist Connexion would need to move me on swiftly for my protection!

So where are the saints? Let’s for a moment look at 2 heroic individuals from the past cent who show us saintly qualities and who challenge us today.

The first of these is Oscar Romero, a pastor, prophet and mystic. Romero came from El Salvador and probably would be seen as a good Christian yet not one who stands out in the popular memory were it not for the last 3 years of his life. He lived in a land that was going through a tempestuous time for sure. But there was little tempestuous about the cautious Romero - well not at first!

You see El Salvador was a land of injustice. A mere 14 families controlled 60% of the arable land. And history shows that this elite was prepared to kill big time to keep its position and to keep indigenous people in their place. By the time Romero became archbishop, some 60% of the peasants were landless. And their conditions were atrocious with even today 25% of Salvadoran children dying before the age of 5 from curable diseases. And this injustice was backed up through repression, torture and killings carried out by a military funded by the United States and with soldiers trained by the notorious US Army School of the Americas.

But now priests were among the victims. Many influenced by liberation theology and the option for the poor proclaimed at Medellin’s council of Bishops were activists on behalf of the poor and dispossessed. Romero himself was socially concerned but at the same time suspicious of liberation theology which he saw as divisive. More than that he tended to see the killings as aberrations rather than as the deliberate policy they were. So when in 1977 he was installed as archbishop of San Salvador there was relief among the elite. The bookish cleric would surely be a restraining force on his clergy - no radical politics here!

But a few weeks later a Jesuit friend of Romero named Rutilio Grande was assassinated. Grande had worked building base communities in which role he had very publicly denounced injustices. Romero demanded an investigation before he went to see the body. That night transformed Romero from a cautious man who sought to make compromises into becoming a man who saw the evil unleashed on his country for what it was. Now like the friend whose radicalism had once troubled him he would stand alongside the poor in their quest for justice. Publicly he held a mass outside the cathedral to replace all other masses, in memory of the dead priest. There he made clear his solidarity with his priests in their work pf solidarity with the poor. And now came a message that he would boycott all government affairs until the repression ended. Indeed as archbishop he was never to attend a single official event. The man of books had become a prophet!

In the three years that followed the repression increased and many priests were among those killed - indeed soon after his own death the murder of American nuns would awaken the United States to just what it had been complicit in. In all 75,000 would die by the time this dirty war came to an end. But as archbishop Romero fearlessly denounced the violence and injustices even as hatred against him increased and the loyalty of many of his bishops became suspect. In a way he had become the good shepherd who seeks to shield his flock by putting his own life on the line - all in the conviction that an order that treated people as disposables was contrary to the gospel of Christ.

A week before his death in one of his radio broadcasts that had offended the elite but brought hope to so many of the suffering, Romero turned to address the military now deeply soaked in the blood of the innocents;

“Brothers, you are from the same peoples: you kill your brother peasants… No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God. Now it is time to recover your consciences so that you first obey your conscience rather than a sinful order… In the name of God, then, in the name of this suffering people, whose cries rise to the heavens, every day more tumultuously, I ask you, I beg. I order you in the name of God; stop the repression.”

A week later came their response when celebrating the Mass, Romero was shot dead!

But days before his death Romero had told a journalist in an interview;

“You can tell people, if they succeed in killing me, then I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully they will realise that they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God which is the people will never perish.”

And when the war came to an end the people waved banners remembering that Romero had said he would rise amid the Salvadoran people, banners that proclaimed;

“Archbishop Romero, you have risen in your people.!"

The second heroic individual was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a Lutheran pastor and academic. Like Romero he lived in tumultuous times. His life was dominated by the rising of the evil of Nazism. And yet he could have escaped the worst of it. You see in the Summer of 1939 he was teaching at a university in New York. Yet to the consternation of his friends who had encouraged him to go there, Bonhoeffer who was already a marked man in the eyes of the Nazis gave up his security to return to Germany. In a letter he explained his decision;

“ I have made a mistake in coming to america. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share in the trials at this time with my people….. Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilisation may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilisation. I know which of these alternatives I must choose; but I cannot make that choice in security.”

With this fateful decision Bonhoeffer came to embody the title of his most famous book, “ The Cost of Discipleship.”

His biggest contribution came in the German Church Struggle. At a time when the nationalistic perversion of Christianity known as the German Christians became dominant within the churches, Bonhoeffer was one of those who waged a theological onslaught against the heresy that so often comes when people confuse to loyalty to God with loyalty to state. Bonhoeffer nurtured communities within what became known as the Confessing Church in which to keep the gospel of Christ’s being for all. Despite in his younger days having refused to conduct the funeral of his sister’s Jewish father in law he became a vociferous voice against anti Judaism likening the expulsion of Jews to the expulsion of Christ from Germany.

Like Romero Bonheoffer paid the ultimate price. He had been a double agent in Abwehr through which he had been involved in smuggling Jews to safety in Switzerland. Ultimately a minor role in the plot to assassinate Hitler, in itself a difficult issue for a man who was and remained a pacifist, led to his being hanged a mere week before Hitler’s own death.

Bonhoeffer’s left a theological treasury which raises issues such as whether a church which puts Christ at its centre inevitably has to live on the margins of society. But most of all he leaves us with an example of a man who seeks to act rightly in an age in which both society and church have gone rotten.

Heroic figures like Romero and Bonhoeffer are inspirational. But they are unique rather than being the norm. Most of us can never be like them. And they are so few that they hardly constitute “a cloud of witnesses.” For that we need to see that the cloud of witnesses also contains a host of unknown saints who in various ways point us to the love of Christ and to our calling to remain faithful.

So that Saints aren’t just the super heroes of faith but also everyday followers of Jesus. They include gruff ladies such a Nellie whom I knew when she lived in a small flat in peel on the Isle of Man, a lady whose latest fall was a sign that her days were numbered yet who when I started to pray for her at the end of a visit, thinking rightly that my prayer would be about her, interrupted to tell me to thank God. Thank God - the last thing I felt like doing on what for me was a sad day. Think to of Bob a retired farmer from North Devon who with his with his wife Jean had brought up a terrific family and who whilst spending the last months of his life in considerable pain in a hospital in Bideford, time and again after I had prayed for him, insisted on praying for me. Yes Nellie Ridgeway and Bob Bellew are for me an important part of the cloud of witnesses that is the saints. And you will have their equivalents whom you have had the joy of knowing.

Lesbia Scott was a vicar’s wife who lived for many years on Dartmoor. She wrote hymns for her children. One which appears as far as I know in no British hymn book is to be found in the hymnal of the United Methodist Church in the US. It’s probably a bit too twee for the Brits. And it goes like this;

I sing a song of the saints of God,
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green;
They were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
And his love made them strong;
And they followed the right for Jesus' sake
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
And there's not any reason, no, not the least,
Why I shouldn't be one too.

They lived not only in ages past;
There are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, on the street, in the store,
In church, by the sea, in the house next door;
They are saints of God, whether rich or poor,
And I mean to be one too

And in that resolve we find what All Saints is about. We look back and then seeks God’s help to be his saints in our time and place.

visualtheology: The Christian Church in an age of protest: no signals no hope?

visualtheology: The Christian Church in an age of protest: no signals no hope?

A story of love - A non lectionary sermon based on Luke15:11-32

It’s a story that could fill an entire Jeremy Kyle Show - this story told by Jesus that is so often called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Each of the characters has a different take and indeed both sons are just a little bit dysfunctional. One cannot be sure that Kyle’s genius Graham would be able to sort this one out.

After all each of the characters has a story even if they do not match with each other. Let’s first look at the younger son. At the beginning of the story he sees his father as something of a cash cow. And he can’t bring himself to wait for the cash cow to die. He wants his inheritance and he wants it now. So he demands it - an act tantamount to telling his father to drop down dead! And when he gets it he goes binge spending = a bit like Vivian Nicholson who having won the then princely sum of £152,000 on the football pools in 1961, announced to the world that she was going to “Spend! Spend! Spend!” And like Nicholson he ends up well and truly spent out!

Confronted with the desperation and humiliation of his poverty which coincides with a time of famine, the son begins to realise that life back home was not so bad after all. And so he makes his journey back home not to sonship but to the relative insecurity and lack of status of a hired worker. After all his actions have brought shame on himself and by implication his father. So back he goes rehearsing his “I am no longer worthy to be called your son” speech.

That is his story, a story of unworthiness. But what is the father’s story. He has been hurt by the son’s actions towards him. Yet he has given him freedom despite knowing the risks. And in the time since he has not stopped loving this son. Indeed he has kept a look out for him. And when he sees him, he runs to him in what would have been seen as most unmanly behaviour in his culture. And when he gets him there is not the much deserved slap across the face but an embrace and a kiss. There is no allowing a “not worthy” speech but there is the robe, ring and sandals that signify sonship. There is no journey into servants quarters but instead a right royal party in the son’s honour.

Now see the contrast in the two stories. Now the son needs to decide whether he is to live in his story of making up for the past without expectation for the future or the father’s story that rejoices in his being alive as a fully dignified robe ring and sandal wearing son. His future quality of life and his relationship with his father depends on which story he chooses to believe.

Now let’s look to the other son, the older son. He has been working for his father whilst the young scamp has been gallivanting around - and doesn’t he know it! He comes over as having a chip on both shoulders. He clearly is not impressed by his brother. Indeed his reference to the use of prostitutes suggests that he is only too willing to think the worst of his brother. In fact he cannot speak his brother’s name. But when we meet him it seems that his prime anger is directed at his father.

This son is not going to the party. He’d rather be miserable on the outside. And he is full of gripes and by the time he speaks to his father his complaints come out with bucket loads of venom. As far as he is concerned he has worked for his father like a slave. And what has he got for it? Not even a scrawny goat to eat with his friends. And now the same father who has been a cheap skate with him is going overboard with that waster of a younger brother. We can almost hear him wanting to yell out those words so beloved of young immature children - “It’s not fair!”

And that is his story. He sees himself as the one who does the right thing and gets scant gratitude. But it is only his story. The father’s story is very different. It is a story summed up in the words;

“Son, you are always with me and everything I have is yours.”

This is a story that suggests that the Son has been the author of his own unhappiness. He hasn’t had to work all hours. He hasn’t had to do without. His father has been only to willing to let him all he wanted and that includes not just scrawny goats but fattened calves. By denying the reality of his father’s generosity he is the reason for his own embitteredness. It has all been there for him but he has chosen to believe the worst he can believe about the father. Indeed perhaps we might think that he could do with the thrashing that Jesus’ audience would expect a father to give him so as to defend his honour, in the hope of beating some sense into him.

But there is one more point in the father’s story that deserves mention. This point is that he blots out fairness. It doesn’t interest him. He is in the generosity business - the business in which fairness matters not one iota. The younger son does not deserve a party. But that doesn’t matter. It is profoundly unfair but this is how grace works - even parties for sons who Spend! Spend! Spend! But because one receives generosity and grace does not mean that there is less for others.

“Son you are always with me and everything I have is yours.!

So two very different stories. A Son who sees the father as cheap and unfair to him set against a father who is purposefully unfair yet who speaks in terms of generosity without limit. We do not get told which choice this older son eventually makes as to which story he chooses to believe. But as with the younger son that choice will determine his future quality of life and his relationship with his father.

We do well to be careful about suggesting that characters in parables represent God. In some cases carelessness can lead to a skewed picture of God. But the context in which this parable is set in Luke’s Gospel as well as the story itself, make clear that the father is a depiction of God.

So do we believe in this father as telling us God’s story?

If so we find that Hell is not believing in God’s story. For it when the sons do not believe in God’s story that they are essentially experiencing Hell. When they do not see that the Father is love unlimited then they reject the possibilities of love and celebration within their own lives. They cut themselves off from all that can make their lives whole.

But the story never ends. The father’s love just is not going away. It is the very nature of the father to love even when the sons are a right pain in the arse. And that is the truth of God’s story. When we are at our most impossible God loves us to the max. And when we give our time, our labours and our moneys God loves us to the max but no more for there is no greater love. For here is a love that has no limits, is not arbitrary but which in generosity and grace goes on and on. It can not be driven away ! Neither can it be earned. It is simply the natural yet purposeful way of God.

Too often in the Christian church we put limits on that love. Sometimes we portray a harsh understanding of God. And yet to take the title of a book written by a local preacher from Cornwall who was dying from motor neurone disease, “ Love never ends.” More than that God’s love is the great transformative presence in our world today greater than sin or any means of destruction. In it we can put our hope and listen to this story. For this love of God is victorious!

A new type of King - A sermon for Pentecost 17 based on Matthew 22: 1-14

Let me start with a confession. I think the way we often interpret parables is offensive and verging on blasphemous. What I mean by that is the tendency to strictly allegorise in a way that everything must neatly match up.

Look at the parable of the wedding banquet if you want an example. You know the sort of interpretation I’m getting at, the sort that sees the King as standing for God. What do you end up with? A psychopathic monster who deals in revenge and slaughter assumed to represent God followed by intellectual gymnastics to say that it’s ok.

Rubbish! Stuff of nonsense! There is absolutely no way that we could possibly justify a God who is like this King. Let’s go further. I’d rather give up on faith than follow such a malign being.

But wait! The choice need not arise! God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot possibly be like this King. The differences are all too apparent. After all to borrow a creed used by David Jenkins the former Bishop of Durham;

“God is.

God is as he is in Jesus.

Therefore there is hope.”

You see it is the translation differences that are at the heart of this parable. The NIV translation may say;

“The kingdom of God is like a King who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.”

But a much more helpful translation is that offered by the New Revised Standard Version;

“ The Kingdom of God may be compared to a King who gave a wedding banquet for his son.”

It’s quite a difference isn’t it? On the one hand we have a likeness whilst on the other hand we have a comparison. And in this case only the comparison makes sense. So please ignore the NIV on this one. For then we are liberated to see the difference between a King whose savagery is rooted in the honour culture with which Jesus was familiar and the very different perspective of the kingdom of heaven which Jesus heralds and embodies.

Our story is located around a wedding banquet. Such an event would be of great political significance. Sure not turning up would fail to demonstrate the honour owed to the King. But things run deeper. The marriage of a son would carry with it dynastic complications. Failure to attend would seem to represent a withholding of loyalty to the legitimate succession to the throne. Political allegiance would be at stake and failure to comply would be seen as insurrection. And the price for insurrection would be high! After all the kingdoms that existed in Palestine and surrounding territories were hardly liberal democracies. The only question was the level of violence to be directed at those who were or were thought to be dissidents. Real politique had no time for anything so namby pamby as human rights.

Still in our story when called for, the people resist the invitation. More than that they carry out acts of violence against the King’s representatives. And this begins a cycle of violence. The King kills his enemies and destroys their city. Is this not a picture of what we see in many conflicts today. One act of violence leads to greater acts of violence and the outcome is that the crime that is collective punishment becomes not just an injustice but that which draws more and more people into conflict creating ever greater circles of hatred, violence and destruction. “Love your enemies,” those words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is so removed from this orgy of death. No wonder Martin Luther King looking at the realities around him and centuries of grisly centuries summed up the choices that even more confront us today with the words;

“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

In the story Jesus tells, it does not end with a scene of massacre. Now the King sends his slaves to compel those who previously had not been deemed suitable to attend the wedding, to now attend. Think for a moment of situations around the globe where those intoxicated by power in moments of need all too often find reason to call on the loyalty of those whom they had previously given little thought, that they might bolster the apparatuses of power. Pawns on a chessboard after all can defend even the most endangered of Kings.

But now comes another twist. It comes in the form of a man not wearing wedding clothes. The King deems this to be an insult. After all this can be seen as an expression of a willingness to enjoy the goodies but fail to enter into the joy of the occasion -as much an act of disloyalty as those who reject an invitation. But let’s hold on a moment! Given that some have been brought from the streets this might be a man without the means to be appropriately attired. Certainly he seems to be inarticulate for he offers no defence whatsoever. Might it not be that this man represents the many victims of arbitrary power, those who if not deemed to be non persons are treated as non persons in the world today as well as then.

Oh this King is a nasty piece of work. And we see it furthermore in the condemnation of the man to be tortured. Sure the line about the weeping and gnashing of teeth reminds me of the apocryphal story concerning Ian Paisley in which having read this line, he is confronted by a lady who protests that she has no teeth, only for him to give the reply;

“Teeth will be provided!”

But torture is a serious business. I remember as a student meeting Chileans who had electric shocks applied to the part of their bodies they would least like to be treated in such a way. And more recently we have seen the debate regarding rendition through which terror suspects were handed over to regimes such as Libya, Egypt and Syria to be tortured. And we heard of how a US government many of whose leaders professed to be Christians used weasel words to deny that waterboarding was torture. This is why careful exegesis of this parable is essential for if you are prepared to see your God as a tyrant then you will use his name to justify wicked deeds - even a bloodstained tyrant who having done his worst grimly says t himself in satisfaction;

“Many are invited, but few are chosen!”

This afternoon, I invite you to compare this gruesome King with the storyteller. For here is a massive difference. Yes the storyteller invites us to his banquet but does so with graciousness rather than for the promotion of his own honour. He spreads the invite far and wide not to demonstrate his power but because his generosity is for all. When we turn away he does not give up on us - indeed not even death itself marks the end of his loving intentions towards us. To use the title of a recent book, with him Love wins. For the storyteller Jesus reaches out through seemingly powerlesss love rather than as with this King through love of power. When our response is faltering and we approach him with all our imperfections the storyteller Jesus still dines with us and moves us forward with his presence rather than to respond with offended pique as does this King. And whilst the King at the end snarls words of condemnation the storyteller Jesus goes on loving and redeeming.

Indeed the point of this parable is that God is nothing like this King. The comparison shows how very different they are. And in this we are reminded of how the Kingdom of God is so different than the Kingdoms of Caesars and Empires. Here we see the clash that will be played out in Holy week as it begins with Jesus and his followers entering one gate into Jerusalem whilst on the same day Pontius Pilate would have entered in full imperial regalia through the other gate. And the clash that begins then goes on even today.

This parable asks the big question, “What is your God like?” The opposite to those whose power is used to dominate is the answer. But it speaks also to our world today indicting every example of arbitrary power that coerces, slaughters and demeans. Yes this is precisely the sort of parable that convinced the powers that Jesus was a trouble maker. So I invite you to be today’s trouble makers for the causes of justice and peace. Let’s get to it!

The gratitude that changes the world - A Harvest Thanksgiving sermon based on Ruth 2

“Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves so thanks for nothing!”

With those words the great theologian Bart Simpson doubtless speaks for many! Yet this morning we gaze on a Harvest display and link our pleasure with a sense of gratitude. Gratitude to God and gratitude to those whose labours provide a bounty. For this is a season when we know that far from being independent we live in a state of dependence.

We are in a state of dependence on God. It is not that God personally hands us the goodies. Rather it is that God is the reason that lies behind scientific processes that bequeath us a world of great possibilities. Our responsibility becomes that of using those possibilities in life enhancing rather than life destroying manners. And so God is worthy of gratitude! Indeed in thanking God we find a sense of unity with the one to whom we owe our being. We who are recipients of gifts and possibilities have a need to express gratitude. No wonder G.K. Chesterton once observed;

“The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.”

And yet if we stop at this point something is missing. You see this is a time to contemplate the links that exist within humanity. Farmers, fishermen, process workers, transport workers and retail workers locally and globally make this celebration possible. Those whom we may never meet or know much of are part the story of the abundance we observe on a day like this. It makes me think, albeit probably in a way that is different than he intended, of those words of John Donne;

“No man is an island.”

We depend on each other and need to develop our community and global relationships in a spirit of gratitude for in our world of diversity we are enriched by one another.

Different communities celebrate Harvest Thanksgiving in different ways. The revival of Harvest festivals in the 19th Century is said to owe much to an eccentric Anglican clergyman named Robert Hawker who served as a priest for a number of decades in Morwenstow, who begun the tradition of church harvest Festivals in 1843. There the outcome of the harvest was crucial to the wellbeing of the local community. A bad year and people went hungry – that is if they did not engage in those activities so beloved by his parishoners of smuggling and wrecking! And whilst some city communities emphasise in the words of a hymn “God of concrete, God of steel” for most of us Harvest is about food – that which so defines our living!

Today from the scriptures we have listened to the Book of Ruth. Incidentally if any of you are wondering after the past month how on earth they let “him” in, the book of Ruth is part of my story. At Ministerial Candidate's Selection committee part of the process is an interview by two people concerning studying done thus far. I remember little of this as my mind felt quite blank. Anyhow I ended up be asked about an essay I had written on the Book of Ruth and mission. I spluttered out a few words before agreeing with my questioner that really the book of Ruth wasn't primarily about mission. Asked what it was about I apparently replied, “Sex of course!” Anyhow my questioner who was the Principal of the place where I was to train, on his return told a student who became a good friend of mine that at that moment he decided I was in and I was coming to his college.

Well I am as you will have gathered a little bit shy so I have spared my blushes if not your by missing Chapter 3 with the threshing floor and all of that. But the second chapter of Ruth which we have just listened to is an ancient picture of the process of harvesting. Ruth is an outsider. She comes from Moab. The people of Moab get a bad press in the Hebrew Bible. They had opposed the conquest of Canaan and as a result been excluded from the “congregation.” The 2nd Book of Kings suggests a tendency towards human sacrifices. More than that Ruth is a widow, a vulnerable position at that time. And so by the time of our reading, her mother in law Naomi in response to the loyalty of her daughter in law is encourages Ruth to win the heart of Boaz, a good man, so that she might have the security she needs. The earliest encounter arises through following the harvesters. Indeed she goes out to be one of those who would follow the harvesters picking up that left behind. In this we find the practice decreed in the law given to Israel as recorded by Leviticus;

“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God.”

This law shows the heart of God for the poor and the outsider. Always the needs of the vulnerable are to be addressed. And as you read deeper into the Book of Ruth, you find that Boaz goes beyond the law as he demonstrates that “hesed” which means loving kindness.

Today is a day to say thank you. It is also a day to consider those whose needs may be greater than ours whilst their value to God is equal to ours. Each of us can today rejoice in the loving kindness of God whilst exercising the thanksgiving that is expressed not just in cries of thanks and hymns of thanksgiving but by a renewal of commitment to the poor in this land and the poor globally. This is a day when we must protest against that trend which seems to have moved world concern away from the globally poor at a time when other economic concerns have taken central stage. Extreme poverty is as sharp a wound today as it was before the banking collapse – indeed its prevalence may well be increased. In a time such as this the cries of the needy must be heard as never before.

So let's rejoice today at the bounty. Let's show our gratitude to God and to the humanity with which we are bound up. But let our thanksgiving be the thanksgiving which leads to a real concern for the needy. Let it be the thanksgiving which demands economic, political and environmental justice for the poor of this land and for the poor across the world. Let this be the day when we take seriously the motive for which Jesus came – life with abundance! Life to the full! The time when God's creatures might experience life to the very max!