“… when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
[Luke 21:28.]      

The four Gospels in our New Testament were selected by the early Church as fundamentally reliable descriptions of inspiring examples from Jesus’ life.  They were written for Christian communities facing pressures which made their faith in living like Jesus seem foolish.  Today, Advent Sunday, we change our normal weekly Gospel readings from St. Mark to St. Luke.

Luke was an educated Gentile, familiar with the Old Testament, who was not an eye-witness of Jesus’ life, but was soon acknowledged as “an expert of the [Jesus]way” of living [1st century Muratorian Canon].  As 21st century Christians, we must take him seriously.          

By putting the four approved Gospels together, the church’s New Testament separated the two linked parts of Luke’s Gospel [Acts 1: 1-2].  Part 1 presents significant Jesus stories and Part 2, “The Acts of the Apostles”, then describes how Jesus’ ‘risen’ spirit continued in Christian communities after the Crucifixion.  During the year’s Lucan readings notice how Jesus prepares for this by re-defining who were God’s people.  Archbishop Williams has recently written: “The Christian Church began as a reconstructed version of the notion of God’s people – a community called by God to make God known … in and through the model of action and suffering revealed in Jesus Christ.” [“Faith in the Public Square”, Bloomsbury (2012) 28].  That is exactly what Luke describes. 

Luke emphasises the costly change of mind-set this involves, recording how Jesus taught that our cross has to be taken up daily [9:23]; that we shouldn’t start what we are not prepared to finish [14:25-34]; and how an affluent ruler couldn’t cope with the challenge [18:18-30].  Today’s reading is part of Luke’s description of Jesus’ final week, summarising the practice and teaching which led inevitably to his Crucifixion.  Throughout his ministry, Jesus had antagonised the religious traditionalists, exposed the hollow security of money and offered no support to violent rebellion. 

In the immediately previous verses Jesus has dismissed the text-chopping logic of religious teachers [20:45-47], criticised the formal Temple-based ritual [21:5-6,], favourably compared the poor widow’s mite with ungenerous offerings by the wealthy [21:1-4], and condemned selfish concentration on oppressive money-making [21:20-24].  He correctly forecast that such practices would lead to terrible warfare [21:9-11]; and persecution [21:12-17].  It is an all-too-familiar, miserable pattern for which Jesus declared an alternative.     

Then comes today’s rather puzzling reading, forecasting chaos before “the Son of Man” appears “in a cloud with great power and glory” [21:27].  It has recently been in the news that an ancient Mayan calendar predicts the world will end two weeks next Friday, but on Wikipedia the Mayan calendar for 2013 is still being advertised!  In several Gospel accounts Jesus dismissed ‘end of the world’ forecasts [eg Mark [13:4], Matthew [24:32], Luke 17:20-21], but this teaching survives in three of the Gospels.  We must try to understand it. 

First, recognise that Jesus is citing the prophet Isaiah [13:10 and 34:4].  In today’s Old Testament reading [Jeremiah 33:14–16] the prophet Jeremiah forecast that God would fulfil his promise that “… Jerusalem will live in safety.”  Yet, in a worldly sense, Jerusalem had not lived in safety; Luke and his hearers knew the Romans had utterly destroyed it.  The imaginative vocabulary of Isaiah and Jeremiah to describe God’s deliverance is not ours. Jesus was using such vocabulary to describe what his followers’ adoption of his realism would provoke in a world obsessed with ritual, greed and violence.         

Peter and Paul had been killed by the Romans not long before Luke wrote, and soon afterwards Christians were again bitterly persecuted by the Emperor.  Christians were being expelled from Jewish synagogues and there were tensions between Jewish and Gentile Christians.  The social structure Jesus had antagonised continued its opposition to those who were faithful to the spirit of Jesus.  So Jesus states: “… when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” [21:28.]   Luke’s Gospel shows Jesus’ radical redefinition of the people who would be able to “stand up and raise [their] heads”. 

Soon we will be hearing Luke’s introductory stories about the birth of Jesus. They were deliberately written in the old-fashioned language of the Greek Old Testament in use in Luke’s day, in contrast to the up-to-date Greek of the rest of the Gospel.  Like the Isaiah and Jeremiah quotations, they are not journalism.  Luke’s genealogy of Jesus [3:23-38] goes back to Adam, the representative of all people.  The “angel of the Lord” proclaims “good tidings of great joy” for “all people” to outcaste shepherds, who are the first to hear of the birth.  Mary and Joseph were of humble status, and Bethlehem was a most insignificant place [chs. 1 and 2].  Joseph and Mary’s offering at the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple was specifically prescribed for poor people [2:7, 24].    

Luke constantly describes contests between Jesus and self-satisfied religious leaders [5:21-26, 29-39; 6:1-11; 7:36-50; 10:21; 11:37-54; 12:1; 13:10-17; 14:1-24; 15; 16:14-15; 19:47; 18:9-14; 19:47-48; 20], who dismissed these marginalised people from God’s kingdom, and from their minds, as ‘sinners’ – a rabble who did not strictly observe, or even know, the Law.   

The poor were considered worthless.  1% of the population were excessively rich, including the hereditary high priests.  Their comfortably-off dependants and supporters – Temple officials, servants, taxgatherers – and landowners and international traders were the next 10%.  But the other 80+% were subsistence farmers at best, or beggars at worst.  And this was supposed to be the community of God’s people!   

Luke insists that the poor are the beneficiaries of Jesus’ values because they are not side-tracked by the false security of wealth and status, and the rich would flourish by experiencing generosity - a ‘win-win’ result.  Think of the revolutionary nature of Mary’s ‘Magnificat’ [1:46-55].  Luke’s first beatitude is not “Blessed are the poor in spirit” [Matthew 5:3], but “Blessed are the poor” - full stop [6:20].  In Luke’s Gospel Jesus many times teaches the dangers of wealth [eg 6:20-21, 24-25, 34; 9:3, 25; 12:15-34; 14:12-14; 16:14-15, 19-31; 18:18-30; 19:1-10; 21:1-4; 21:34-35].  When considering Gospel stories we usually concentrate on named individuals, and so we miss Luke’s emphasis on the anonymous, ordinary, people whom Jesus supported.  Jesus offered a reconstituted Israel to: the poor, the blind, the lame, the crippled, the lepers, the hungry, the naked, those in prison, those who weep, the mentally ill, the persecuted, the downtrodden, the overburdened, the crowd, the multitudes, the little ones, the least. 

In my newspaper recently I read about an Afro-Caribbean Church in North London which has had to end its youth and other activities to provide bedding space for the increasing number of homeless people.  In 2010 they provided for two people; now they prepare for 90.  Today, some economists have calculated that extreme poverty could be eradicated if the income of the world’s poorest 50% could be raised from 3% to 5% of total available income.  Perhaps the example of Archdeacon Bonney recorded in this month’s Gazette can inspire us to work out what we here should do in this Lucan year.  Jesus wasn’t daft!

I must mention, without further comment, one other important Lucan emphasis which seems especially relevant - Luke pointedly describes Jesus’ positive indifference to gender, despite women being marginalised in their world. 

Luke alone includes the important contributions of: John the Baptist’s mother, Elizabeth [ch. 1]; Anna the prophetess [2:36-38]; the widow of Nain whose son had died [7:11-17]; the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet [7:37-50]; Mary, Joanna, Suzanna and several other women who accompanied Jesus [8:2-3]; Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus [10:38-42]; the bent woman whom Jesus cured on the Sabbath [13:10-17]; the distraught housewife searching for her lost coin [15:8-10]; and a very emphatic account of the women at the Cross and the Resurrection [chs. 23-24].  If it wasn’t for Luke, we would be almost totally ignorant of Mary, Jesus’ remarkable mother.     

The Roman Imperial religion was that the Gods’ approval of Roman superiority was demonstrated by the Empire’s military and commercial expansion, and so the Emperor’s authority was ‘divine’.  Jesus was – in those false, Roman values – so low.  Yet Luke used exactly the same words to praise Jesus as the Romans used for the emperor – “Son of God” [eg 3:22; 9:35].  So much of our tradition of Christ in Majesty flows into our liturgy from this ironic contrast, yet Jesus’ divinity – his authority - belongs to an apparent nonentity who was concerned for those whose lives did not flourish.   

Baroness Susan Greenfield is a leading neuroscientist for whom God “is playing hide-and-seek”, searching for ‘spiritual understanding’ whilst rejecting atheism and agnosticism.  After visiting Lourdes with a very sick friend she said: “… it was the world turned upside down; the sickness being normal, no one working for money, people being kind to each other, rather than witty or hostile or defensive …”  [Tablet 24:11:2012, 6-7].

Luke’s world is also our world.  Advent is about committing to the deep, generous values of Jesus and rejecting the false values which dominate our world so that, together, we can realise our full potential and flourish. 

Nineteenth After Trinity Year B Hebrews 4.12-16, Mark 10.17-31

John Barratt recently talked to us about an earlier passage in Mark`s gospel and he left us with a list of questions, big questions about faith and belief, about the world, about life and death and he ended the talk by suggesting we need to think about them very urgently;

“If any want to become my followers let them deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

Today our gospel passage ends with the phrase “But many who are last will be first and the first will be last.”

So how did we hear the whole of today`s gospel passage; could we identify particularly with the rich man and his question about eternal life and how did we feel about Jesus` response to him about his needing to radically redistribute his wealth and the way the man responds by walking away from it all because of his wealth. This is one of the few encounters that Jesus has with a person and the person is not transformed or changed even though he is a good and law abiding person. Wealth, especially great wealth, more than anything else seems to prevent a person from following the way of Jesus.

Jose Pegola, Spanish theologian “The man arises and leaves Jesus. He forgets the love in the eyes of Jesus and goes away sad. Now he knows he will never be able to experience the joy and freedom of those who follow Jesus. Mark explains the man`s predicament. He was very rich. Aren`t we as affluent Christians from rich countries equally prisoners of our own material well being? Isn`t our religion lacking in practical love for the poor? Don`t we lack the joy and freedom of being followers of Jesus?”

Silence and then Jesus breaks it with some ironic humour, about a camel seeking enlightenment by attempting to pass through the eye of a needle. All this, including the joke, are too much for Peter and the disciples. “We have left everything and followed you!” Can we in some way identify with this, some in our churches would, and how do we feel about Jesus` response about the last being first in God`s new world?

No wonder John Barratt tried to up the game by asking us to think about his questions with urgency.

The Letter to the Hebrews, a unique and wonderfully crafted work, is a good place to turn to as we think about how we respond to the words of Jesus and the questions they raise. I think that Hebrews opens up the concept or the image of the mercy of God in a way that goes deeper than any other part of the New Testament. Before our passage today the writer has been looking back to Abraham and Moses and finds that in their relationship with God; God was perceived as tender and merciful through his dealings with humanity. We know also that he or she is probably writing as part of the community living with the loss of Stephen the martyr. In our passage today the writer goes on to explore this concept of the tenderness and mercy of God as shown more clearly and fully in the life and particularly the suffering and death of Jesus. In the human heart of Jesus we find profound compassion and in the way he faces suffering and death we see a way of response that makes clear the mediation and mercy of God. God before whom no-one; and nothing we are or nothing we do is hidden, the one to whom we ourselves are responsible. Our only hope, the writer states, is Jesus, the pioneer, the one who has gone first, Jesus the very reflection of God`s nature, the one of whom the writer can say “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weakness but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. So let us then approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and grace to help in time of need.”

Jesus` living amongst ordinary people, living as they lived and facing all of life`s ups and downs, joys and sorrows, the very depths of humanity and facing suffering and death himself. His suffering brought about by people including religious people acting at their very worst, with their hardness of heart, meanness of spirit and narrowness of aspiration.

Our passage today talks of Jesus facing all this in his betrayal, trial, suffering and death, tested as we are or as fully as we could possibly be but that he was without sin. The aspect of this that I think is of most significance is the way Jesus in extremes affliction does not find fault or blame others. He is put on trial out of the fear, jealousy and selfishness of others, because others seek power and what he does and what he says completely undermines the sort of power they wish to have. When we are younger, growing up we think of sin probably as being about when we turn off or turn around from our moral compass but as we grow older we recognise that we need to look and think more deeply especially about the things, people, issues we can feel resentful about or resentful towards. Why do we feel this, what does it relate back to? Sometimes we are surprised that something flares up from the past and we need to stop and think about what it was. When faced with constant bullying or harassment or worse or facing great suffering or following a great tragedy we need to talk with another person, to be helped to recognise the feelings we have, and also be given the friendship, the time and the love and wisdom of someone who truly wants the best for us.

Put starkly “rendering an account of ourselves” may sound very harsh but really it is about opening ourselves to those feelings that lie beneath and of having a trusted other to share them with. What we are also reminded of by the writer of the letter to the Hebrews is how we can find in Jesus himself a heart that was open to the love of God and who found that love to be merciful, compassionate and accepting of him as unique, gifted and all that God could possibly have want him to be.

Gerald Manly Hopkins Poem “My Own Heart.”

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.

Second Sermon on the Eucharist: The Miracle

For a few years in my youth, the primary reason I was in church was a boy called Kyle Helvy. Each Sunday, I trotted off to church expectantly, hoping for a miracle.

But I don’t see Kyle here today, and I wonder what it is you want from Church this morning.  It’s a fine Sunday in August, there are other things you could be doing… what are you hoping for and why are you here?

In the various Methodist and Presbyterian churches of my youth, people were in church for the sermon. It was long, sometimes up to 45 minutes – so there was incentive to shop around for a decent preacher. Communion was added on to the service about once a month, and we children dreaded it, because it made a long service seem endless.

It was solemn, as I recall. The emphasis was on remembering Christ’s death on the cross as we ate the little squares of bread and drank grape juice from a little individual cups. These were passed along the pews on trays by ushers. The Pastor would tell the story of the last supper and at the words ‘do this in remembrance of me’ we would simultaneously eat our little square of bread, or drink our shot glass of juice.

The churches of my youth were pretty literal in their reading of the scriptures. There was one notable exception however. Jesus’ words at the last supper: “this bread is my body’ – well that of course was metaphor.

And the whole history of controversy over the meaning of the Eucharist – the reason why, even today, you have to be Catholic to take communion in a Catholic church, comes down to how literally we interpret the words Jesus spoke about his body and his blood.

There were problems with taking them too literally.

In the ninth century stories the story of St Gregory’s Mass went ‘viral’ as we say today. Apparently Pope Gregory was saying mass when a woman present started to laugh, saying to a companion that she could not believe the bread was Christ, as she herself had baked it. Gregory prayed for a sign, and the bread turned into a bleeding finger.You’ll find versions of this story in many medieval paintings.

The great 13^th philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas developed the doctrine of transubstantiation to counteract stories like Pope Greg’s. Transubstantiation leans on the philosophy of Aristotle who believed that each thing in the world had a substance which it shared with other like things, but also had an outward appearance which varied. Thus each chair shares in the substance of ‘chair’ but each chair appears different.  

For Thomas, the bread does literally become the body in its substance, but its outward characteristics remain bread. So it looks and tastes and smells of bread, not flesh, and it cannot bleed. Transubstantiation is how modern Roman Catholics understand the Eucharist; however, it was perhaps too philosophical for the medieval church, and very literal understandings about the special powers of consecrated bread, and a vision of the priest as a worker of magic who sort of pulls a bit of divine body out of the bread, prevailed.

If I were addressing the Kings Cliffe congregation of the 14^th Century, asking why are you here on this August Sunday? They would probably have said something like, ‘I’m here to get the body and blood of Christ’. Unless of course, I was asking a teenage girl, in which case she might have said ‘I’m here because of Kyle’.

Still today in some traditional Catholic and Orthodox churches, people will mill around, hang around on the porch smoking, or pop off to check on lunch during the preamble to the Mass. After all, in the Catholic Church at least until Vatican II, all these words were in Latin and the ordinary person probably had trouble keeping up.

Therefore they were given visual and audible clues so that they’d know when to pay attention. If you open your communion books to page 15 you will see these words towards the top of the page. ‘Grant that by the power of your Holy Spirit, these gifts of bread and wine may be to us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ’. This is followed by a retelling of the Last Supper in which the priest acts out the part of Christ. At the words ‘do this in remembrance of me’ we in this church ring a bell and elevate the bread and wine, to signal that the elements have now changed into something different, something holy. This tradition of bell ringing and elevation comes down to us from the catholic tradition which predates the Church of England. Sometimes we even ring a tower bell – which once would have reminded everyone at home, or in the fields, that the miracle had happened. That they’d missed it!

The Protestant Reformation, which began in the 16^th Century, attacked this narrow focus on the eating and drinking. They didn’t like to privilege this bell ringing moment above all others in the service. I’m simplifying the story of course, but the Reformers wanted to redefine the miracle of what happens in church. No longer was it the moment of taking God into our stomachs. Instead the real miracle occurred when hearts and lives were changed through the reading, singing, and preaching of the words of Scripture.

Their first step was to translate the Bible and the liturgy into languages people actually spoke. Since this threatened, of course, the interpretive monopoly of the Catholic Church, translators like the English William Tyndale ended up at the stake. The second Protestant strategy was to beef up the sermon: the whole shape of the service was changed to highlight that sermon, rather than the moment of transubstantiation. Preaching pulpits became more prominent than altars. When communion did happen (and it happened much less frequently) it was stripped of much of its ritual. No bells and no elevation of the elements stipulated the English reformer Thomas Cranmer, who was largely responsible for the Book of Common Prayer service which some of you know very well.

Did the Reformers stop believing in the miracle of the Eucharist? Well they differed.  Luther remained close to the idea of transubstantiation but thought that the bread was both/and. It was both fully bread and fully the body. Calvin thought that the bread and wine were only spiritual food, not physical, but that the spiritual was so intense that it might as well be physical. Calvin’s followers pushed even further than that, some saying that the bread and wine were only signs, but ‘effective signs’ which meant they had some special power. Others said that the bread and wine were simply ‘aides memoire – means by which we could remember the story of Christ’s sacrifice for us on the cross.

The Church of England, after some initial upset, in which people on both extremes were hung drawn and quartered, settled down into accommodating most of these views under its broad umbrella. In this it was surely the forerunner of the famous Boris Johnson policy on cake. He is both pro having it, and pro eating it. Insofar as we can speak of an official Church of England doctrine of the Eucharist it is one of ‘real presence’ – that Christ is really present in the Eucharist. And what that really means, you are free to decide.

In the second half of the 20^th Century, as the ecumenical movement, whereby different branches of the Christian church talked to one another, took hold, most of the major denominations began to converge. Many churches now have a pattern of Eucharistic service which has gone back to the older Catholic model, whilst retaining the Protestant emphasis on the reading and preaching of the Word.

Our current communion service not only brings us back into line with Catholicism, but also reflects our enlarged understanding of the history of Christian Eucharistic worship, which began, as I explained last week, with Christians gathering in someone’s house for a real meal.

If you open to page 2 of your red books, you’ll see that the first part of the service is called ‘The Gathering’. In this section we literally come together and do things analogous to what you might do when you gather the extended family for Christmas dinner. We greet each other, there are words of welcome, we prepare ourselves to meet each other and the host. We clear up any misunderstandings which may have cropped up since the last time we met. We apologize for being late, or having forgotten a birthday, or for drinking too much last Christmas. A time of confession. We might sing the praises of the host, as we do in the Gloria on page 5. What a lovely turkey, what great wine, you’re so marvelous. The everyday miracle of people assembling to feast together, and the kinds of social rituals necessary to the establishment of harmony and grace around a table, are writ large in this opening section of our Communion service.

Then on page 6, we begin the ‘Liturgy of the Word’. This is where we tell the stories of our faith, and chew them over. The conversation about God often flows over us, like the chatter of people at a dinner party. We don’t really hear every word – but it does change us over time. And sometimes a word, a phrase, a story, a sermon might grip us and change us and we are different when we stand up from the table. A miracle.

Finally we arrive at the meal itself. At the American Thanksgiving feast I host annually, a weird and wonderful collection of Yanks I’ve gathered will be asked just before we eat, to take turns talking about something they’re thankful for. They often end up telling the highlights of their past year. We sing a verse of the hymn ‘come ye thankful people come’ and then we eat. In a few moments Lloyd will rehearse the highlights of the God story – you’ll see this on page 14 of your red book in the middle. If you flick through the various Eucharistic prayers you’ll see that each version of the God story is a bit different. Turn the page over to Prayer E and you’ll see that it’s just as couple of lines in the middle of page 17. But every prayer ends with the congregation saying or singing ‘Holy holy holy’ the song Isaiah tells us is sung by all the heavenly hosts. In this miraculous part of the service, we transcend time and space by uniting with all who worship God.

The Eucharistic prayer continues by retelling the story of the Last Supper, and by asking the Holy Spirit to bless both the bread and wine, that they might become the body and blood of Christ, but also to bless the people of God, us, that we might become ourselves the body of Christ. You can see this bit at the top of page 16 towards the end of Prayer B. Thus the miracle of the Eucharist is expanded – we’re here not only to connect with God, but to connect with each other as we form the body of Christ – the ongoing life of Christ in this world.

And at the end of each Eucharistic prayer, we look forward to a vision of the kingdom of God, where we will join with those past, present and future, at the heavenly banquet table, in an eternal song of praise. Finally we are sent out in the words of the Dismissal (pg 31), to live out our daily lives in the light of all these miracles.

This is the miracle of the Eucharist. At its core is the bread and wine which become infused with the real presence of Christ. Radiating out from those tiny elements are shafts of light which penetrate through time and space, through layers of holy words which dance all around us, some of them we catch with our minds, others with our instincts. There is ritual, there are things to look at, hear, sing, touch and taste. And we are here together, all of us, as we take in the body of Christ, we are being formed, mysteriously into the very body of Christ in our world. Worth ringing the bells for – it’s a miracle at so many levels.

To think that for several years I thought church was just about Kyle Helvy.

We had tickets on Friday morning to watch the athletics competition in the Olympic stadium and so saw some great performances as shot, hammer, sprints, hurdles, steeplechase and heptathlon all got underway. Arriving early we could also see the careful final preparations for each area and event taking place, the equipment being put in place, the television cameras finely focused, the judges and officials coming to their places and then the competitors ready for their events to begin. Within minutes of the start there was activity everywhere across the stadium.

Earlier when we had come out of West Ham tube we were guided and cheered by the many volunteers, who seemed to make every individual feel welcomed. It was a busy day at the Olympic Park with athletics, swimming, cycling, basketball, water polo and hockey all taking place. However everyone moved around very easily and the design of the site means there are big open spaces. The queue for the Biggest MacDonalds in the world was too long but there were plenty of large picnic tables for people to gather around and to enjoy their picnics. MacDonalds could not feed the whole crowd but thought and planning had been given to how all could eat together.

Last Sunday the lectionary gospel reading was the passage in John`s gospel about the feeding of the large crowd. John does not give us the initiation of the communion in his Gospel so when he writes about the breaking and sharing of bread and Jesus` prayer of thanksgiving with the large crowd, we need to think about its meaning in the early church. The large crowd was hungry, unprepared for sharing their food with others and the disciples were questioning Jesus about how they could all be fed. In the early church communities described in Acts, we find the Christians sharing all that they had with each other and making a priority of giving to the most in need, including the elderly, widows, people affected by famine. Mutuality of support and giving that was inclusive of all. At the heart of this also was the regular sharing of the Eucharist giving meaning to what the communities were really about.

The church that I grew up in Bromley in the 1960s had come to a similar conclusion about the regular holding of a Parish Communion at the heart of its life. Rather than morning and evening prayer being the main Sunday service pattern with an afternoon Sunday school, Sunday worship would focus on communion with children in groups returning to join the congregation at the distribution. It must have been a big task to get everyone on board because this was a huge change and people on the whole were not so familiar then with communion. Servers and Eucharist assistants would be needed. My main memory is of the people who would provide the welcome at the church doors. They must have been trained to know what was now happening and especially to make everyone feel comfortable. The team of sidespeople along with church wardens were at the forefront of helping people including those with children feel at ease and welcomed.

Over the coming weeks we have further passages from John`s Gospel that give us an opportunity to think about the centrality of holy communion and about its meaning for us at the heart of our church communities. Today the Gospel really gets this going and within it we find Jesus communicating the need to trust God and to be able to rely on God, “my father who gives you the true bread.” He wants his disciples to show God`s great love to others but first he wants them to grow in confidence in using the talents they have and to be aware of their own and each other`s strengths and weaknesses. And so he focuses their attention on God who gives the true bread. So if they are to flourish in showing God`s love, they must themselves have faith in the goodness of God. And be able to trust in God in their daily lives, recognising the goodness of God in creation, recognising that God seeks the best for all people and that all humanity is interdependent with people knowing and feeling that they are connected to each other, and able to relate to one another as my brother and my sisters keeper. And Jesus said “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me (the lonely, the anxious, the tired, the poor) will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” In coming together for communion this is how we come and when bread is broken and wine is shared, we open ourselves to God`s transforming love for each of us and for all who hunger and thirst.

It was something of this connectedness that I saw at the Olympics, in and around the stadium on Friday. The simple but creative thinking about placing large picnic tables for people to eat, share and gather around; that people of many ethnic backgrounds and religions were there to welcome people to the big event and to make everyone fell special and then as the events in the stadium began, to watch a scene of careful planning, of so many people working together in such a variety of ways and then the athletes who after years of dedication and commitment now had the opportunity to flourish, to truly be the best they could be and for all of us who watched to admire, celebrate and joyfully cheer.