Οn the road to Emmaus

 19/4/26                          1 Peter 1:17-23                             Luke 24:13-35                             Easter 3

Normally when I read this passage the question that niggles at me is how did Cleopas and Mrs Cleopas (perhaps) not realise it was Jesus they were talking to? It’s a mystery and a lot of the substance of the passage is about grappling with mystery - the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of the crucifixion, the mystery of the resurrection - and looking forward to the mystery of the ascension - the mystery of God’s nature.

At the beginning of his confessions St Augustine is overwhelmed as he tries to describe God

Then what are you, my God? What are you, I ask, except God, the Master? Who is a master except - the Master? Or who is a god except our God? The highest, the most excellent, the most powerful, all-powerful beyond all-powerful, most merciful and most just, most remote and most present, most beautiful and most powerful, unmoving but ungraspable, unchangeable but changing everything, never new, never old but making all things new...You are always active and always at rest, gathering in but not in need, carrying and filling and protecting, creating and nurturing and bringing to fulfilment, searching though you lack nothing….he continues. In the hierarchy of things beyond our understanding the Cleopas problem is quite small beer.

So let’s look at what is happening in the reading. We’re going to follow the Cleopases on the way  to Emmaus on the first Easter Day - a seven mile journey - about as far as St Peter’s is from Burscough - and eavesdrop as much as we can. All we know about them is what we’ve just heard - they’re followers of Jesus, probably not of his inner circle - but nonetheless they are people who had heard him preach and have seen him deal with pressing crowds, with intractable illnesses, with aggressive questioning and because of what they know of him  they have trusted themselves to him. So despite the crucifixion they still hold he ‘was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.’ but how then has it gone so badly wrong. 

From the passage it sounds as though after Good Friday a core of those who loved Jesus had gathered together to give each other support - what do we do now? - They couldn’t unknow what Jesus had taught them but neither could they make sense of it without him. 

So Saturday had been dreadful, but on that Sunday morning into that confused grief-stricken company news had come. ‘Some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’  

Of course, we know what comes next in the story but none of Jesus’s followers did. For them everything was still up for grabs. The Cleopas’s haven’t seen Jesus, if Jesus has somehow survived - hooray - but what does it mean. ‘People we trust have told us something extraordinary,  something hard to believe something impossible to understand.’

 They have no idea what is going on. Which is why even though this is the the first Easter day and you might have expected them to be cheerful they’re not. It’s why ‘when Jesus asks them ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad.’

Now we can eavesdrop “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. I have always thought it would be wonderful to have heard this. Jesus taking the Old testament prophecies, and explaining them.

It only occurred to me as I prepared this sermon that perhaps we do have hints. Luke’s gospel begins by telling his readers he has taken a great deal of trouble to check with eyewitnesses, and the most reliable people he could find that his account was as accurate as possible and in his first few chapters there are explanations of how OT prophecies point to Jesus.

Mary’s magnificat, Zechariah’s prophecy, Simeon’s  Nunc dimittis ‘for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles   and for glory to your people Israel.’Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

Jesus took words and ideas they knew intimately and reworked them. From now on they wouldn’t go to scripture to work out what the Messiah would look like they would go to Jesus and then see what the scripture looked like when lived out in flesh and blood. 

If we had been just a little behind them on the Emmaus road we would have seen  Mr and Mrs Cleopas transformed from the gloomy ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ to renewed hope as the stranger spoke to them, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ We would have seen the spring come back into their step. 

But the penny didn’t finally drop till at the meal table he took the bread and blessed it. Then their eyes were opened ‘and they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight.  The unhappy confusion they had been left with that morning had been blown away. 

Jesus showed them that what happened to him had been the only way to bring about not just Israel’s redemption but ours too. Resurrection is the.  introduction of a Kingdom that starts by changing our hearts. Confusion became wonder. God in Jesus had gone far beyond anything they expected so That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

The important mystery this passage addresses is not why they they didn’t recognise him, it’s what Jesus resurrection means for us.

It isn’t just about one man miraculously cheating death. Jesus’s appearances aren’t just the demonstration of a successful escape act ‘Look the grave couldn’t hold me.’ Jesus had to explain God’s plan to to them before the Cleopases could know him 

The resurrected Jesus is our first sight of God’s pattern for all his people. The Jesus the Cleopases meet on the Emmaus road is God’s new order in flesh and blood - this new resurrection life is his promise to us. 

Resurrection and Ascension are the other side of the Nativity coin. At Christmas Jesus is born and all of God inhabits human form - now Jesus is raised and will ascend to God, and when he goes back to the father he doesn’t shrug off his humanity like an old set of clothes, he takes his full human identity with him ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.’  Jesus ascended is our man in heaven.

There is no escaping the mystery of our faith - God must be beyond our understanding, but in Jesus, his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection we discover that though God is beyond our understanding, he is not beyond our knowing and we are not beyond his loving and in that is our comfort, consolation and hope.   

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, ‘For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.’ We don’t need to understand the hows of God’s actions to receive his grace.

Fruitfulness at work

 18/1/26                  St Peter’s                                    Epiphany 2     

 Colossians 3:12-17                                                 John 1:29-42

The section of the Fruitfulness course we’ve come to this morning is ‘Making Good Work’. The author reminds us that work is part of creation, it’s part of who we are, and  although we live in a frustrating and fallen world and this affects everything we are involved in, we still can work in a way that brings glory to God.

That is true even for those of us who are no longer in paid employment. In our Gospel reading we see Jesus beginning to call his disciples - follow me - get to know me - learn from me - there’s no sense here or anywhere in scripture that this is a call that comes with a retirement age.

But what is our work - how are we to bring glory to God? In John’s gospel glory often means seeing the truth about who Jesus is. Our work then is to show as much of the truth about Jesus as we can by the way we live, it is to point to Jesus - it’s to show something of what the kingdom on earth looks like. 

This is not an easy work - Dorothy Sayers wrote ‘God underwent three great humiliations in his efforts to rescue the human race. The first was the incarnation, when he took on the confines of a human body. The second was the Cross, when he suffered the ignominy of public execution. The third humiliation is the church. In an awesome act of self-denial, God entrusted his reputation to ordinary people.’

And of course sometimes the church, made up of ordinary people, gets things disastrously wrong.

One of my first clergy jobs was as Chaplain to Birmingham Markets - based at St. Martin’s in the Bullring. Every year the Trader’s had a conference in Blackpool - and because it was quite unusual for a market to have a chaplain they used to take me along as a kind of mascot. One year I was chatting to someone who was very friendly who said he could never contemplate believing in God - he’d been to a church school - and had been regularly severely beaten - he wasn’t alone in this, it was what the priests running the place did. And of course he was right not to believe in a Jesus of brutality - for Jesus to be portrayed in this way is identity theft - if he had believed in that Jesus he would have been believing in a false God. What he had seen was the opposite of grace and compassion.

People look at the church and what they see there shapes their understanding of the nature of God.

I’m sure that what that trader went through would now be illegal, but that’s no help to him recovering a true sense of God’s love and care for him

The Greek myth of Procrustes is about an inn keeper who insisted that his guests fitted into his bed exactly - if someone was too short he stretched them on the rack till they fitted, if they were too tall he lopped off the extra bits and so he acquired their belongings. It didn’t end well for Procrustes, the hero Theseus was too much for him. 

None of us think the intentions we set out with are bad or unreasonable, nobody intends to be the villain. I imagine that the school the trader went to thought it was doing the best for its pupils  - they had an idea of the proper shape for a good christian child and believed if they weren’t quite right they could be beaten until they were a better fit. A version of Procrustes bed.

Of course their methods were wrong but so was the end they had in view. Beware of the idea that our faith is one size fits all. God meets us all differently and the response of each of us to God will differ. How could it be otherwise? No friendships are exactly the same, no marriages are exactly the same, each of the disciples had an individual relationship with Jesus - this variety is part of the glory of our faith. God has made each of us as individuals with potential to grow into a unique element in the mosaic which is the people of God.   

When I was at university the Christian Union had a network of prayer groups for different Missionary Societies which all tended to be rather niche and rather small. The one I went to was for Wycliffe Bible translators and there were three of us - one cold, wet evening - it was in Manchester - I hadn’t had a particularly good day and I was late for the start and arrived feeling particularly flat. The other two had started but when I got in they stopped for a moment to welcome me in and for some reason, that evening it was transformative for me. A trivial incident but fifty years later - though I have forgotten some details and I bet my friends don’t remember it at all, for me it is still  a moment of grace. God’s grace meets us at our particular point of need and enables us to see him more clearly. It nourishes our growth into the people he intends us to be - and the more we become those people the greater  the possibility that those outside the church will see something of the actual truth about who Jesus is.    

 Making good work Our job description then is to live and work in such a way that God is glorified, that the truth of what he is like, his grace, can be seen and known.

How do we fulfil this as individuals and as a church.  We aren’t just given a job description, In Colossians we also get a dress code Of course, God’s clothing is bespoke so not only is the way we clothe ourselves in the virtues tailor made to us, so too it will fit the person on the receiving end. 

Paul writes ‘As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, we have a high calling how can we live in a way appropriate to it

clothe yourselves with compassion, Compassion is a love that takes the initiative. It seeks to meet the need of another so they will thrive. How can we as a church put on compassion? 

kindness, what I received from my friends - how kind are we?

humility, does not mean  pretending to be rubbish, it means having a proper estimate of our own strengths and weaknesses. It means meeting others knowing they are as much the beloved creation of our Heavenly Father as we are.  

meekness, does not mean being a push over, it does mean listening to others and easing off on the assertiveness 

and patience. To quote the Psalm ‘Our times are in your hand’

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience

But we are not perfect and it is difficult - we are all equally important but uniquely made. If the church is to show God’s glory each of the facets that we all bring needs to have its place. Easy to say hard to do. Difference makes makes occasional misunderstanding inevitable

Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 

When the church is a community of forgiveness and reconciliation it is a powerful witness to what God is like. How can we make that an active part of church life.

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. 

And be thankful. 

 If we take these things seriously it won’t guarantee those moments of grace when we know God has touched us, but they will mean that they happen more often - that understanding that so much more has gone on in a conversation, or a casual meeting that we can only account for it by God’s active presence.

The course calls us to live and work in a way that brings glory to God.And that is 

as much about the relationships we build as the projects we accomplish.

It won’t always feel like work; often living a godly life - enjoying what God has given us, exercising the gifts we have in a way that is constructive will mean doing what we find most satisfying. And so His glory is seen.

Paul's Farewell

 12/10/25                       2 Tim 2:8-15.      St Peter’s.  Luke 17:11-19

This morning we are going to spend most of our time with Timothy, and then have a brief look at the gospel.

This letter of Paul’s is particularly poignant. It’s the last of his writings that we have and we see him in it at his most human. He’s in prison and knows his time is short ‘As for me I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time for my departure is near. I have finished the race.’ It’s not unusual for Paul to mentions the people he knows in his letters, but this comes across as writing to a family friend - he knew Timothy’s mother and grandmother - he’s seen Timothy growing up - and above everything  now he wants to encourage Timothy in his faith, and give him the best possible advice he can for a future that he knows he will not see. In many ways what he says is very simple - he doesn’t give Timothy a new teaching but points him back to the basics.  ‘Timothy always remember what you know and rejoice in it.’

And that is what we are going to do this morning. We’re going to spend some time remembering so that we can give thanks. 

I’m going to introduce three areas Paul suggested to Timothy then we’ll keep a short silence for us to recall memories of our own and then give thanks for them

Timothy - Paul says - remember what you have seen in me - remember how I have lived, how I have given myself to Jesus’s service - I was brought up as a Quaker and at a Friend’s funeral  the suggestion is made to the mourners that we give thanks for the grace of God we have seen in the life of our departed friend. Now it’s very possible that there will be people we are grateful to - for how they have shown us something of Jesus in the way that they live, something they have said to us, that something of God in them has also drawn us closer to God. But we don’t need to wait till someone has died to give thanks for what we have seen of God’s grace  in their lives. Give thanks for the person. 

Remember Timothy the hope you have in Jesus, - For us too - remember Jesus living and dying for us, his companionship when things have been difficult - the moments of grace that have sometimes come when we have felt flat or hopeless or trapped - we may have let him down, but still he is there - ‘if we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot disown himself’ - the grace of knowing God walks with us his gift, but it doesn’t always come in a spiritual package- it can be a cup of tea when you’re at your wit’s end, an unexpected warmth of welcome.  Give thanks for the graces you have noticed 

Remember Timothy who you follow and the task you have been given - this we too need to remember - each of us are different, each of us is a different part of the body of Christ with a different role to play. What is our role? How do we play it? 

Jesus is our example - what does that practically mean for we who are not perfect. Rowan Williams suggests a guide, ‘What is in tune with the life of Christ? What opens, rather than closes, doors for God's healing, reconciling, forgiving, and creating work to go on? Even if we go on to make a mistake, we have not done it by shutting the door on God. We have done our best to leave room for God.’

 Give thanks for the task you have been given and the part you can play in the body of Christ.  

The people who have inspired us, the graces we have experienced, the tasks we have been given, the way we are Christian will be as individual as we are - this is what we are to remember - we are not called to be anybody else. The path Paul is pointing Timothy - and us  towards will lead him to the fulness of life that is our Christian hope

Now the the briefest of looks at Luke. Ten lepers all are healed, all are cleansed, but only one returns to give praise to God and it is this one - the outsider, the Samaritan - who is made well. What does this mean? All were all healed, all were cleansed but only this one was made well.

Sometimes I think we short change the gospel/good news when we simply focus on forgiveness, on cleansing - as though all that Jesus had come to do was to give us a get out of Jail free card. He came for  much more than that - Jesus came so that we would not simply be forgiven by God, he came that we might be reconciled to him, he came so that our relationship with his Father which was broken by our sin could be made good. Jesus doesn’t just want us forgiven - he wants our company;  he doesn’t just want that we should no longer be his enemy, he wants us as friends. 

This I think is what is happening in our gospel to the leper who came back - imagine the scene - he’s not coming back quietly - ‘Look look what God has done for me’ and he throws himself at Jesus feet. He is made well - perhaps this is what reconciliation looks like, perhaps this is what Paul wants Timothy to remember and perhaps this reconciliation, this making well, this loving companionship is what Jesus wants for us too

Approaching Advent

 16/11/25                         St. Peter’s               2nd before Advent 

Malachi 4:1-2a              2 Thess 3:6-13                  Luke 21:5-19

Spend too long looking at the news at the moment and you’ll come away depressed by the way the world works - where’s the integrity, where’s the compassion, where’s the justice. It can all be  rather gloom making so we ask the question - ‘In a world like this how can we live as followers of Jesus, Where do we start?’ 

The evidence of our readings is that what we see now is nothing new - there’s corruption in the OT, persecution in the gospel and even Paul’s injunction to make sure everyone did an honest day’s work isn’t particularly light hearted - our era isn’t unique; it’s an old story being retold with modern characters. 

This may not seem a very enticing start to a sermon but it wasn’t the intention of any of the writers to leave us feeling hopeless. Rather they are realists. It has always been difficult to live a life of faith but all our writers want us to make as good a fist of it as we can. The path through our three lessons is designed to restore our souls. Malachi diagnoses, Paul points people to what makes for health and Jesus urges us to hold firm to what is true. 

1) Malachi is a painful book to read and so it should be. It talks of the failure of those who should be upholders of God’s truth. Malachi is a book of God’s displeasure, of his weariness with those who should be the shepherds of his flock. The priesthood are short changing God in the worship sacrifices, people are feathering their own nests rather than bringing the tithes in, the worshipping community feel they are doing God a favour by turning up. Malachi  throws his hands up when he sees what is going on and concludes that Israel’s problems are down to a turning away from God and turning towards self interest. More than 2000 years later we know church people and leaders getting it wrong was not just a problem of his time - it’s been a continuing thread through history. 

There is a sickness of the soul in Judah because the people who should be helping people to God are pointing them in the wrong direction, they are proving false friends. Malachi focusses on the religious wrongs of his own time; what we need to discern are the things we get wrong, what for us - you and me - gets in the way of the forgiveness and reconciliation that are properly at the heart of church life. 

Cutting though he was even Malachi has a note of hope Two verses of Malachi - the first is of judgement -  See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. His diagnosis was pride and self interest have overtaken those whose concern should be the  kingdom of God; but the second verse is of hope - to God no problems need be terminal But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.

2) There are problems too in the second lesson but here we see Paul getting a handle on them.

There is a generally held supposition - not certain but plausible -  that amongst the church in Thessaloniki were a group of people who had an unhealthy interest in the return of Jesus - unhealthy because it so dominated their lives to the exclusion of anything else  that they ended up exploiting the rest of the church.

Jesus is coming back soon they thought - so what is the point in working? After all the church we are part of is a community of love - our brothers and sisters will look after us. Whilst we are waiting for the Lord’s return we will talk and philosophise and put the world to rights. It won’t be long before Jesus is here and we want to be prepared for that moment. Their particular theology suited living their best life, and it turned them into parasites.

Paul recognised people were using their claims of devotion to set aside their proper responsibilities and would have none of it. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

It is easy for us to to see where the Thessalonians were getting it wrong and we’re unlikely to face the exact same problem but there are lots of examples within church life, historically and today  where other sincerely held beliefs  have got out of balance and led to a church life with little connection to Jesus and the life he called us to. 

In terms of living a godly life it is not only theology that gives us scope for own goals. We can get so attached to our own feelings and prejudices they dominate our inner life and spill into the way we live. Paul would say, ‘See how unbalanced, bitter thinking can curdle your soul - it doesn’t have to be like that. Do what makes for health.’

Diagnosis from Malachi - putting our own interests before God corrodes the soul

Paul gives a route to health ‘ Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.’

3) In the gospel Jesus tells his followers that they will have to face persecution, betrayals and breaches of trust - our situation may not be as extreme as that of the early disciples - though in some parts of the world it certainly is - but it is worth noting that in the gospel passage there is a reminder that ultimately our faith makes sense because though it starts in this world it carries us through to the next - when things are going well this can stay in the back of our mind, but at times of loss , at times of difficulty, this hope in God’s future can be the  rock to which we cling - we may not face the persecutions of Jesus time but all of us have to cope with what life throws at us - not the church’s fault, not our fault just life as it is. Following Jesus gives us a pattern of living that will sustain us and honour God whatever our circumstances.. 

The 1st verse of Malachi talked of arrogance and evil but, there is another OT passage which is the antidote. It’s from Micah ‘what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?’

Such simple things, who could possibly argue with them - do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God - Micah’s not legalistic - he isn’t giving laws, he’s saying adopt this attitude - open ended - there’s no limit to where it can take you. do justice, love kindness, and  walk humbly with your God This is the way of health we are called to

Malachi’s people needed to hear it - it would lead them from folly into God’s hope. For us too it is a reminder of our direction of travel. We’ll never finish doing them, we’ll never exhaust them, we’ll always be able to think of ways we could have done them better but how can we revere God’s name? by making them the pole that our compass points to.

For Paul, the Thessalonians doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God meant buckling down as a constructive member of the community.

For those people Jesus was talking to facing persecution and turmoil - what should they do, what does God require of them - justice,  kindness and a humble walking with God - humble does not mean feeble, or doormat - it is how we walk with our friends - at ease and guileless, true to the person God has made us to be. Here is hope and comfort. But it won’t just happen - we have to choose and go on choosing this way or our bias to self interest will scupper our best intentions   

We started with sombre readings because a mixture of false friends, own goals and the vicissitudes of life will always present a challenge to living well but the answer to that challenge is remarkably simple - not always easy to do, but as moral compasses go it is pretty straight forward

 what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness,  and to walk humbly with your God?

 17/8/25                          St. Peter’s                                Trinity 9  

Gal. 3:26-28        Communion and Baptism        Luke 14:1,7-14

The Welcome  

There’s always a mix of people at a Baptism service - some will feel comfortable in these surroundings, whilst for others it might be a bit peculiar; some people will know what they think about God - whether it’s yes or no - others won’t have made up their mind yet. 

 Whichever camp you fall into we want you to know you are very welcome, we are delighted you could be here to witness the baptisms of Kiera and Nylah. We want you to feel at home - now and whenever you might drop in.   

If you’re not quite sure about God it’s very easy to think that - if he is there I’m probably not his type so probably best if we just ignore each other.

If that is roughly where you are, you’ll have to take my word for it because I can’t prove it - but God doesn’t have a type - in fact, as our reading will show up it was often religious people Jesus found it hardest to get on with - so God doesn’t have a type - he welcomes everybody. 

Take Kiera and Nylah - I guess that even before they were born they were loved, even before they knew how to smile at you, they were loved - because that is what love is like, it really doesn’t need reasons. 

And this is how God thinks of each of us - in the service we’ll be concentrating on Kiera and Nylah, but I want you to know it’s true for all of us - before we could do anything God loved us - and He could no more stop loving us than you could stop loving the two of them.

This has been an extended welcome - because welcome is what this service is about - the welcome we at St Peter’s want to give to you the baptism party, but more importantly it’s about God’s welcome to Kiera and Nylah. 

The Sermon

When I welcomed you I touched on the indisputable truth that it’s very hard to get our minds round who or what God is - we can’t see him, we can’t touch him, and any idea of communication with him we have to take on trust. 

This makes a pretty dispiriting start to a sermon. But all is not lost..

In one of his letters Paul said about Jesus ‘In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.' What that means for us today is that everything we need to know about God we can get by looking at Jesus. 

Take welcome itself.  Welcome and hospitality are at the heart of the way of life Jesus came to bring in. For him they weren’t just the trappings of a polite society they were the thread that if you followed created a different kind of society, one that looks to include rather than exclude.

His life showed us something about the breadth of God’s welcome.  

Look at the people who gathered round him - there were fishermen, tax collectors, the poor, the wealthy, lepers, outcasts, Roman soldiers, people to whom many religious people wouldn’t have given the time of day. But they all got a welcome. 

Why did people want to meet him? He always seems to have treated the person he was talking to properly, he took them seriously, he was trustworthy. He was interesting to listen to - crowds gathered whenever he started to teach, he was good company we often read of him being invited to someone’s house for a meal. As a guest he must have been fun, his conversation would have been unexpected. challenging, exhilarating. This is what God in human form looks like - this is the life we are offered, this is the hope into which Keira and Nylah have been baptised.

Welcome doesn’t sound very controversial, but some hospitality isn’t so generous. It comes with strings attached.

I don’t know if you picked up the tensions in the gospel reading. Jesus had been invited to a party - it sounds to be more like a formal dinner party than asking somebody over for Sunday lunch - and it wasn’t a friendly invitation - the hosts were religious leaders who felt threatened by Jesus - he was undermining their role and they had invited him in order to catch him out, hoping he would put his foot in it, so that they could rubbish him, so they could ignore what he was showing them about God. Their hospitality had been weaponised

Jesus recognised what was going on and he brought them up short. 

‘Your parties are all show, they’re about getting the best seats and prestige. It’s you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’

This wasn’t his kind of hospitality, it was self interested not generous. It reflected personal ambition rather than love of neighbour, so he says, ‘You should be looking out for everyone. Don’t forget the vulnerable, the needy, the lonely - they shouldn’t be pushed out to the margins, they should be included too.’ 

This is what Jesus’s hospitality is like, this is what God’s is like too, because in Jesus the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.

Now we might well say ‘what a lovely idea’,  but a moment’s thought and we realise it’s much easier to say than to do - it’s not easy to get on with everybody, there are people we don’t feel at home with - but this picture of how broad and far reaching the welcome and hospitality of God are gives us a direction of travel. It gives us a task  - we are to create a community where all are welcome, where differences are a strength rather than a weakness, where the joy that Jesus brought to his followers is visible.

This is the hope into which Keira and Nylah have been baptised. They will find there is a lot to learn - that’s true for all of us -  but  they are being welcomed to a faith where there is room to grow. 

To take part in God’s welcome we have to accept it ourselves and Keira and Nylah’s baptism is  God saying welcome to them. It’s him saying I enjoy your company, let’s get to know one another - and whatever else they grow out of they need never grow out of this.