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The Love that Restores

22/6/2025

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​The Love that Restores - Luke 8:26–39 

This morning we hear one of the more haunting and mysterious stories in the Gospels, but as with many of the stories in Mark’s Gospel we need to look beneath the literal to explore the symbolic value of the story: Jesus steps out of a boat, into a foreign land, the country of the Gerasenes. It is a place on the “other side,” both literally and symbolically. This is Gentile territory, Roman territory, empire territory. And no sooner has Jesus arrived than he is met by a man in torment.

This man is naked. He lives not in a house, but among the tombs, the place of the dead. He is unclean, chained, howling, torn apart from himself and his community. Luke tells us he has been this way for a long time. When Jesus asks him his name, he replies: “Legion”, “for we are many.”

The first thing to note is that “Legion” is a loaded word. A Roman legion was a military unit of several thousand armed soldiers, the very symbol of imperial occupation and power. So here is a man, in a Roman-occupied land, whose very self has been occupied. And when Jesus heals him, the demons — the “Legion” — are cast into a herd of pigs. The pigs run into the lake and drown. The local economy takes a hit. And the people, instead of rejoicing, are terrified. They ask Jesus to leave.

It’s a strange story. But under the surface, it is full of wisdom for our time — and full of hope for our hearts.

Some Biblical scholars suggest that when Luke uses the word Legion, it’s no accident. It’s a political word. Luke wants us to hear Roman boots marching through the text. 

Judith Jones makes some very interesting observations about the story of the Gerasene demoniac, especially when we remember that Luke’s Gospel was probably written around 80–90 AD.

She notes that when the man confronts Jesus, Luke uses a Greek verb that he also uses elsewhere to describe armies meeting in battle (Luke 14:31). When the demon “seizes” the man, Luke uses a word that appears elsewhere in Acts when Christians are arrested and brought to trial (see Acts 6:12 and 19:29). In addition, the words Luke uses for chains, binding, and guarding are the same as those he later uses in Acts to describe how the disciples are imprisoned. In other words, the language Luke chooses here paints a vivid picture of what it feels like to live under the control of a brutal occupying power.

There’s also a further disturbing historical backdrop to this story. The region of the Gerasenes was the site of a terrible massacre. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, around the year 68 CE, during the Jewish revolt, the Roman general Vespasian sent his soldiers to recapture the city of Gerasa. They killed a thousand young men, imprisoned their families, burned the city, and then attacked villages throughout the area. Many of the people buried in the Gerasene tombs would have been victims of this Roman violence.

Jones also points out a striking symbolic detail: one of the emblems of the Tenth Roman Legion (Legio X Fretensis) was a pig. This was the same legion that helped destroy Jerusalem, led the reconquest of Palestine, and was later stationed in Jerusalem. So when the demons in the story name themselves “Legion” and then enter a herd of pigs, it would have felt like a powerful image to people in that region — it’s message clear – that the way and the spirit of Jesus comes to cast out the systems of domination and to create a different kind of society. 

And so some scholars suggest that the man’s suffering isn’t just personal, it’s symbolic of what happens when people are crushed under systems of power. When their identity is stripped. When they are robbed of voice and dignity. This man becomes a symbol of what occupation does to the soul, whether it’s Roman military occupation in the first century, or military occupation in the 21st century, or the soul-numbing forces of meaningless secular consumerism, systemic racism, war and poverty.

And yet in the story, Jesus does not turn away from the demon possessed man who comes to meet him as many of us would be inclined to do today. He steps ashore. He sees the man and asks his name. And in that moment, Jesus does what the forces of empire never does: he seeks to restore the human being. Not control him. Not manage him. Not exile him. But heal him.

In the story this healing has consequences. The demons are sent into pigs, unclean animals to Jewish ears, but also valuable assets in Gentile commerce. And when the pigs drown, the town suffers economic loss. David D. M. King, a Lukan scholar, draws our attention to this. He says that throughout Luke’s Gospel, the message of Jesus consistently challenges and disrupts economic systems, not to punish people, but to declare that people are more important than profit.

In today’s passage, the healing of a human being comes at a cost — and the town doesn’t want to pay it. They ask Jesus to leave. I wonder if that’s still true today? Healing, whether of people, communities, or the planet often requires us to let go of what we’ve grown comfortable with. And it can feel costly. But the story of Jesus healing this fragmented deranged man tells us that the value of a human life is greater than any system’s bottom line.

Now let’s look at this story not just politically, but psychologically too. In the field of Voice Dialogue Therapy, we learn that every one of us has a crowd of inner voices, parts of ourselves that speak with different needs, different wounds, different energies. It is why often we can feel divided within ourselves, feeling ourselves being pulled in more than one direction. Some of our inner voices we embrace, the helper, the achiever, the good one. Other voices we exile or hide — anger, grief, fear, shame. And like the man in the story, those exiled voices don’t just disappear. They cry out from the tombs of our subconscious. They may sabotage us, at times possess us and overwhelm us, not because they are evil, but because they have been hidden, denied and left unacknowledged.

When Jesus says, “What is your name?” he is doing what healing always begins with: naming,  facing, listening and integrating.

The man’s name is Legion, but that’s not who he really is. That’s the crowd of forces that have swallowed his true self. After the healing, we see him again: clothed, in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus. He is himself again.

The demons in this story are not just moral failings. They are what happens when a soul is disconnected, from itself, from others, from love. And that disconnection, left untreated, can become destructive, to self, to others and to society. But the work of Jesus, and perhaps our work too, is to reconnect, to help reweave the torn fabric of the human soul. 

And so the story ends on a beautiful note. The man, now healed, begs to go with Jesus. But Jesus sends him back home reconnecting him with his own community -  “Return and tell how much God has done for you.”  

Writing on this passage in 2019 Judith Jones asks - “How many people in our world are haunted by a traumatic past and tortured by memories? How many live unsheltered and inadequately clothed because of social and economic forces that they cannot overcome, no matter how hard they struggle? How many are imprisoned, regarded as barely human, excluded, cast out? How many are enslaved by addictions no longer knowing where the addiction ends, and their own selves begin? Where do the governing authorities separate people from their families, denying them the opportunity to seek better lives? Where do occupying armies still brutalize entire communities and hold them captive to fear?”

In closing, the story of the Gerasene demoniac is not just about demons. It’s about the many ways we become divided and broken, by systems, by trauma, by the voices within. It’s about the courage it takes to face what we’ve hidden. And it’s about the sacred power of presence, the healing that comes when someone sees us, names our truth, and calls us back to ourselves. It is about the reminder that the Way of Jesus comes to challenge and cast out every power whether internal or external, spiritual, social or political that prevents people from living fully and freely as human beings created in God’s image.  

But, as Judith Jones writes, like the townsfolk in the story, many among us resist that news, finding deliverance from Legion too frightening, too demanding, too costly. 
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Abba - Heart of Love

15/6/2025

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Abba - Heart of Love
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Across the 4 Gospels, Jesus is recorded as using a number of different titles to refer to God, including: The Great King, my God and your God, The One who sent me, The Most High, Lord of Heaven and Earth, The Lord, The Vinegrower, The Lord of the Harvest, The One Who is Good. And today, on this Father’s Day, I invite us to pause and reflect on the most loving and intimate word that Jesus used to refer to God, a word that speaks to the heart of love, trust, and relationship. That word is Abba.

We find Abba in a few key places in Scripture. One is in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before Jesus is arrested. In Mark 14:36, he prays, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you; take this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.” It’s also found in Paul’s letters (in Romans 8 and Galatians 4) where Paul tells us that the Spirit within us cries out Abba, Father as a sign of our deep connection with the Divine.

But what does Abba mean?

In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, Abba was the word young children used for their father. It’s close in feeling to Papa or Dada, not childish, but deeply tender. Over time, adults also used it to address their fathers with love and respect. It held both intimacy and reverence. So when Jesus called God Abba, he was not using a distant, formal word. He was speaking as a child might speak to someone they trust completely, someone who knows them fully and loves them unconditionally.

In many traditions, God has been seen as all-powerful, distant, or even fearsome. But Abba invites a different relationship, one rooted in nearness, vulnerability, and love.

The word Abba also represents the first sounds that a baby makes.  There is something primal or primordial about the sound… pointing us to the sense that God as Abba is the primordial reality or primordial source of all existence, the intimate source and origin of every soul, the nameless one within all names. 

And so the title Abba  doesn’t erase the mystery of the Divine but it tells us that beyond all mystery is relationship. We are not meant to approach life alone. We are invited to trust, to lean into something greater, something kind, something that knows our name.

And perhaps this word, Abba, can also help us heal some of the images of fatherhood that have been distorted by human failing. Not everyone has had a father they could trust. But the word Abba, as Jesus uses it, invites us to imagine what true fathering might be, not about power or control, but about compassion, guidance, and presence.

For us today, whether we believe in a personal God or understand the Divine in broader terms, Abba can be a symbol, a doorway — into relationship. It reminds us that the spiritual life is not a rulebook or a ladder, but a living connection to the sacred heart of life itself.

And so today, as we remember and honour those who have fathered us, in body or in spirit, may we also open our hearts to the Abba presence — that deep well of love that holds us, guides us, and calls each of us beloved.
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The Spirit of Togetherness, The Spirit of Love

8/6/2025

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Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21

All ancient cultures have myths and legends that came about to explain certain things about the world. 

You can see it at the Giants Causeway. When my brother and sister-in-law came to visit us in October 2018 we went with them to see the Giants Causeway and learnt 2 explanations about the origin of the Giants Causeway. 

The scientific version: Around 50 to 60 million years ago, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity. During that time highly fluid molten basalt came up through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled, if left pillar-like structures.

Then there is the mythic or folk explanation: in which the causeway is said to be the remains of a great bridge created by a giant Finn Mcool that stretched from Ireland to Scotland when he was challenged to a fight by the Scottish Giant Bennadonner.  As with many ancient myths and legends, there is embedded within it a deeper reflection and commentary on life: a reflection on both the ancient connection between Scotland and Ireland, but also something of the ancient rivalry that has existed as well. 

In the Bible, you see a parallel phenomenon, especially in some of the old Testament stories. For example in the story of the Tower of Babel, you can almost hear the voice of a child asking a grandparent: “Why do different people speak different languages?”

And in response we hear an attentive grand-parent begin to tell the story of the tower of Babel trying to put into words something that would satisfy the child#s curiosity while teaching some wide life lessons. .  The story itself is what we would call a myth or a legend. On the surface of the story, it is not historically true, but when you begin to explore something of the inner meaning of the story, one discovers that there is a hidden wisdom in the story... a little bit like the parables of Jesus. 

The parables of Jesus are fictional stories. None of them are historically true, but as parables they contain a wisdom that invites the listener to think more deeply about the nature of the Kingdom of God, which is the theme of most of Jesus parables. 

Marcus Borg, a contemporary Biblical scholar who died about 10 years ago tells the story of a Native American Indian story-teller. Whenever he would tell his tribes creation story or creation myth, he would begin with the words: “I don’t know if it happened exactly like this, but I know this story is true”. 

When one comes to the story of the Tower of Babel, I believe that it would be appropriate to preface it with the same words:  “I don’t know if it happened exactly like this, but I know this story is true”.  In other words, I don’t believe that this story is historically true, but if we have ears to hear, we will hear a wisdom and a spiritual truth embedded within it.  Rob Bell puts it another way. A story like this is true not because it happened but because it happens. It is reflective of our human experience. 

In the story itself, we read that the whole world had one language and a common speech.  As people moved eastward they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. The plain of Shinar is in fact a reference to Babylonia, and thus the origin of this story is probably again the time of the Jewish exile in Babylonia.  Having settled in Shinar or Babylonia, we read that the people learnt how to make bricks and began to build themselves a city.  Next they desired to build a tower that would reach towards the heavens, because we read they wanted to make a name for themselves. 

The story continues saying that that the Lord caught wind of their plans and so came down to see what they were up to and was clearly rather disturbed by it.  Maybe if the people built a tower to the heavens, they might try and take heaven by force and usurp the power of God himself. This is implied in verse 6 where the God voice suggests that nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.   And so in the story, God decides to intervene before it is too late, confusing their language and scattering them all over the earth.  

The actual tower of Babel in the story is probably a reference to the Ziguarats or pyramids of the Babylonian empire.  The word Babel is therefore a play on words. On the one hand it carrys overtones of the word Babylon but also carries overtones of the Hebrew word Balel which means “to be confused”.  For the Hebrews, listening to the Babylonian language it would have been a little bit like saying “It’s all Greek to me”, its all Babel or Balel to me. 

At one level, the story of the Tower of Babel reveals something of the Jewish prejudice against the Babylonians, and perhaps that is understandable when it was the Babylonians who had invaded Jerusalem and then taken them off into exile. Underlying this story is the accusation that the Babylonians with their impressive Ziggaurats are in fact a people in rebellion towards God. 

But if one reads beneath the prejudice, there is a commentary on human beings as a whole. We all in our own way want to make a name for ourselves. Sometimes that is not a bad thing, but often the rush of pride goes to our heads, we begin to think we are God, in the sense of being all-powerful and in the process our pride brings division.  The message of Jesus is in fact that we can become like God... we can share in God’s nature as we grow in love, humility, service. But many human beings are not interested in becoming like God in that way... for many human beings they want to become God by seizing power, through dominance and control and not through humble love and service.  The moral of the story is that humanity’s pride and tendency towards domination and control leads to a division between people, a fragmentation between communities.  Communities and peoples are no longer able to live in harmony with one-another. 

And perhaps that is where we switch over and begin to reflect on our other passage today, the passage from Acts where we read of the Story of Pentecost.  Did the Pentecost story happen exactly like that “tongues of fire”, a violent wind, people speaking in different languages and tongues?  I cant be sure? Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. 

But at the very least I would repeat the words of the Native American Story teller. I don’t know if the story happened exactly like this, but I know this story is true.  In other words, in the symbolism of the story there is a spiritual truth for us if we are open to hearing it. 

And so what, we might ask, is the truth that the Pentecost story seeking to communicate? 

For a long time, theologians have suggested that in the Pentecost story what we see happening is a reversal of the Tower of Babel story. 

In the Tower of Babel story, the arrogance and the pride of humanity has brought to division to the world and division between people. People are unable to communicate with one-another and  are scattered over the earth. But in the Pentecost Story you have a movement in the opposite direction. People from all over the known world have come together in Jerusalem, and through the gift of the Spirit the former divisions caused by language are overcome.  The apostles, those who have been anointed with the gift of the Spirit of God, are able to communicate across the language barrier or divide as they begin to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to do. 

The message of the two stories when read together I believe is this: Human Sin, pride, arrogance, unbridled ambition and domination brings division, but the Spirit of God which is also described in other passages in the book of Acts as the Spirit of Jesus, heals divisions and brings people together. Sin divides, but love unites. 

When people truly begin to be moved by the Spirit of Jesus... when people begin to speak the language of Christ’s self-emptying love, the divisions of this world begin to heal.  But the more we act out of distorted, unbalanced self-interest, the more the world begins to fragment and become divided.  But when people are moved by the spirit of Christ’s self-emptying love, putting others needs on a par with our own, then we become God’s partners in the undoing of the story tower of Babel story.

In Ephesians Paul speaks of the division between Jews and Gentiles (in other words ‘the nations’ – with most ancient Jews seeing themselves as God’s chosen people, superior to the Nations and in opposition to the nations who were their enemies because of the many times they had been a conquered by various neighbouring empires. But in Ephesians chapter 2 Paul says that Christ himself has now become our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility in his own body on the cross. His purpose -  to make a new humanity out of the two thus making peace and to reconcile them through the cross by which he put to death their hostility. 

I have always wondered how the cross of Jesus can heal our divisions. What exactly does it mean?  The more I have reflected on it, the more I have come to believe that the cross heals our divisions by teaching us the way of self-emptying love. 

On Pentecost Sunday, we celebrate the gift of the Spirit of God which is none other than the Spirit of the crucified Christ, that teaches us to speak the language of Christ-like love.   The Pentecost story inspires us to believe that the healing of this world is possible. The story of the Tower of Babel can be reversed, but it is costly (as the cross of Christ shows us), and will only come when people’s lives are touched and moved by the same spirit of self-emptying love that was at work in Jesus. 
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God - The Greater Consciousness

1/6/2025

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SERMON RECORDING

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SUNDAY SERVICE RECORDING
The Greater Consciousness – John 17:20-26; Ephesians 4:1-13

Recently Wendy and I have been catching up on the BBC documentaries in which groups of celebrities go on pilgrimage through Wales, Ireland/Scotland, and through the Swiss Alps. 

For those who haven’t seen these, one gets a privileged insight into the spiritual journey’s of different people, from different faiths, and some of no faith who either consider themselves agnostic or atheist. 

One of the questions that pilgrims often battle with is the question of “Is there a God or isn’t there a God?”. What interests me though is that for most people this question is framed around a conception of God as a separate Personality located outside of themselves somewhere else in the universe, imagining God to be like an invisible super-sized human being.  God is over there and I am over here and God is much bigger than me.  Most often this understanding of God is spoken of as the ‘Man Above’ of ‘the Big Man in the Sky who looks over us’. 

While in some places in Scripture, there are highly personified and anthropomorphised images of God that give this impression, there are also many other far more sophisticated notions of God?  What if this notion of God as a supersized Man in the Sky is an oversimplification of who or what God really is? 

I was having a conversation with someone recently who was expressing their deep struggles with the notion of God. Again the notion of God that this person was struggling with was perhaps a simplified Sunday School notion of God: God as a separate person located somewhere else in the universe who controlled all the events on the earth from a distance, sometimes seeming to show up, but most of the time seemingly silent and missing in action.  This person said the they weren’t sure if they could believe in such a God?  But then went on to say that if God was spoken of in different terms, perhaps as the Greater Consciousness in which we all participate and which in fact dwells within each and every person, then that was a conception of God that could make more sense to them.  But the person was worried that this wasn’t what he had been taught growing up as a ‘Christian’ understanding of God and so had always been nervous to raise the question with previous ministers. 

But this view of God as the Greater Consciousness, Higher Wisdom or Greater Intelligence is actually one that I believe resonates very deeply with some important parts of the Biblical Tradition.  It is in fact a view of the Divine that makes more sense to me. 

It is a view that very much connects with our passage today:  In it Jesus speaks in very mysterious ways about himself and about God.  He speaks of God being in him, and he being in God as well as the possibility that we too can share in this experience of God and Jesus being in us and us being in God and in Christ? “...As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…” John 17:21

This is language that is hard to make sense of in terms of our simplistic nations of God as being a  separate living outside of us somewhere else.  How can two or even three separate objects or beings be inside each other at the same time?  How can Christ be in God and God in Christ at the same time…not to mention us being in them and they being in us? 

But if God is the Greater Consciousness, the High Wisdom or Greater Intelligence, then this language begins to make more sense - describing Christ as being in the Greater Consciousness and simultaneously the Greater Consciousness being in Christ. 

And what if we are all expressions of this Greater Consciousness? What if all beings participate in the Greater Consciousness and the Greater Consciousness lives in the depths of all beings?

The language of John’s Gospel from beginning to end supports this conception of God or the Divine.  

The opening of John’s Gospel introduces the Divine Logos—often translated as the Word—that was with God in the beginning and was God. In ancient Greek philosophy, particularly in the thought of the Stoics and later thinkers like Philo of Alexandria, the Logos was understood as the rational principle or divine reason that permeates and orders the cosmos—a kind of intelligent blueprint through which all things come into being.  The Logos is thus the inherent Intelligence and animating Wisdom of Life itself with all of life unfolding from its Source in diverse forms and expressions according to this Intelligent Blue-print of life. In the philosophical traditions influenced by Plato and Pythagoras, mathematics was seen as a key to understanding the underlying harmony and structure of the universe. For them, to study mathematics was, in a sense, to study the Logos, this divine order woven into creation. Thus, students of the Divine were often also students of mathematics, seeking to glimpse the patterns and proportions that reflect the order of the cosmos. 

John draws on this idea but transforms it. The Logos is not only a cosmic principle but becomes especially visible in the flesh, in the person of Jesus.  This language should probably be taken poetically rather than purely literally, suggesting in other words, that Jesus shows us what a human being looks like when we lived in unhindered harmony with the Eternal Logos. When lived according to the deep inherent Sacred Law of Life, the Intelligent Blue-print of Life, then humanity begins to look like Jesus, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). 

John’s Gospel also uses another Jewish religious idea to express this, the ‘I Am’, the name of God revealed to Moses at the Burning Bush.  John’s Gospel contains seven ‘I Am’ sayings of Jesus, I am the Bread of Life, I am the Gate for the Sheep, I Am the Way the Truth and the Life.  What is perhaps more important that the sayings themselves is the idea that the Divine ‘I Am’ is now seen to be located and revealed in Jesus as well.  The Divine I AM – the Nameless and Formless Source of All Existence -  is disclosed in the life of Jesus. 

But John’s Gospel does not suggest that this Divine status of Jesus is exclusive to Jesus only. When the religious authorities in John’s Gospel begin to complain that Jesus is blaspheming by claiming to the Son of God, he refers them to their own scriptures. Quoting from the psalms he asks them… “Does not your own scriptures tell you you are gods (or divine)” (John 10:34). Psalm 82:6 puts it like this “ ‘You are gods; you are all children of the Most High”. In other words it could be said “...your primordial or essential nature is Divine… you are expressions of the Divine.” But the religious leaders in Jesus day, like most of humanity, live in ignorance of this truth about themselves and about Jesus. 

Another clue in John’s Gospel is that in describing God to the woman at the well, Jesus explicitly tells her that God is not an object, not even the supreme object, that can be located in a specific place in the universe or in the world.  “God is Spirit” Jesus says in John 4:24. ‘Spirit’ in Hebrew means breathe, it is what gives life to physical bodies. What I believe that Jesus is suggesting is that God is the life-giving breathe of the whole cosmos, the whole created order. This is not far off from saying that God is the Greater Consciousness. It suggests that God is the Greater Life that lives and breathes and moves through all creation and all creatures.  As the Scottish Presbyterian hymn writer Walter Chalmers Smith puts it, “To all life thou givest—to both great and small; In all life thou livest, the true life of all;”.  God is the Greater Life, the Greater Consciousness that lives over, in and through all creation, ‘Over all, in all and through all’ as the writer Ephesians puts it (4:6).  And so it turns out that creation is not separate from God after all. All of creation is in God and God is in all of creation, for as Paul puts in in Acts, in Him we live and move and exist (or have our being) Acts 17:28.  According to these verses, creation and nature are woven through with the Divine Presence, both as the Intelligent Blueprint of Life (the Logos), and as the Spirit or Breathe of Life that lives in and through all.  And so to live in openness and harmony to the Greater Consciousness or Greater Life of God, should also bring us into greater harmony with nature and the created order itself not further away from nature as our modern life is doing. 

When we understand God as the Greater Consciousness that lives in and through all, then the possibility of psychic phenomenon, mental telepathy is not so far fetched.  If there is One Divine Consciousness living and breathing through all of us then it is not so far fetched that we might be able to communicate in ways that our ancestors were aware of but which science is unable to account at this point.   150 years ago science had no idea of radio waves.  It would have seemed like magic to some of our ancestors.  I wonder if in future other ways of communicating between people might be considered natural ways that more ancient people were aware of? 
If the Gospels are to be trusted, then it appears that Jesus possessed these abilities. 

But I feel like I am straying from the passage now… as we get back to the passage in John 17 and we consider this language of Christ in God, God in Christ, Christ in us and us in Christ, what it also points to is that God or the Divine is deeply relational. God is the stuff that connects us together deeply as persons. God or the Divine is not just an impersonal cosmic law, the rational blue-print of creation, God is also the mystery of love. For this is what the language of Jesus implies when he says in verse 22 & 23 “...may they be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”  

When two people love each other deeply, they live inside of each other. They may have separate bodies, but at the level of heart and spirit there is a deep connection.  The language of our passage is deeply intimate. This is the language of Love.  God as the Greater Consciousness ‘of all’ and ‘in all’ is none other than the mystery of love. 

Though outwardly and physically we may seem like separate beings, when we begin to awaken to the deeper spiritual reality in which all of us share, that Divine Consciousness within all, we begin to perceive an underlying inner Oneness. It is this perception of a shared one-ness that gives rise to love.  I in God, God in me, You in God and God in you, you in me and I in you… That is the greater mystery that I believe this passage is pointing us to. 

A few weeks ago I shared a quote on Facebook that expresses this beautifully.  Is is from the Hindu teacher and mystic Shankarananda – “Holy Communion is to feel at one with the One in all beings and all creation.” It is an interesting quote because that is pretty much how the writer of Ephesians describes the Ascension of Christ -  (Ascension Day was on Thursday) –  when it says: “He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.” Eph 4:10). The writer suggests that the ascended Christ lives in a state of Holy Communion at one with the One in all beings and all creation… and if we are attentive enough through prayer and meditation we might discover this Presence of Christ, the Christ Consciousness (The Mind and Heart of Christ) dwelling within us also.  And that is what prayer is… it is the opening of our hearts and minds to the Greater Consciousness which we refer to by the word God that has been disclosed to us in Jesus. 

Just some more food for thought on the journey… 
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At Home in Love - John 14:23-29

24/5/2025

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“At Home in Love” -  John 14:23–29 

Our passage today is part of Jesus farewell discourse to his disciples in John’s Gospel that runs from chapter 13-17. In these verses, Jesus is preparing his disciples for his immanent departure and he is preparing the way for them to enter into a new kind of relationship with him, a relationship in the Spirit rather than in the flesh.  And in this context, in  verse 23 of our passage today Jesus says the following -  ‘If anyone loves me, they will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’” John 14:23

There’s something beautifully tender and domestic in this verse.  “We will come and make our home with them.”

This is not the language of fear or judgment but rather it is the language of relationship, of love, intimacy, and hospitality. It is the language of belonging.  And that word “home” is where I’d like us to dwell this morning.

But firstly we might ask:  What Does It Mean to Keep His Word?

Jesus says, “If anyone loves me, they will keep my word.” At first, we might hear this as a call to obedience, obeying specific rules or ethical commandments.  But in John’s Gospel, “keeping”  doesn’t mean simply obeying or following rules. It means holding close. Guarding. Treasuring.

It’s the same word used of Mary who kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.

So when Jesus says, “keep my word,” he isn’t just saying “Do as I say.” He’s saying, “Hold on to the purpose I came for. Live by it. Let it live in you.” 

To understand this verse a little better it is helpful to consider a very similar verse a little earlier in the chapter. In John 14:15, the English translation of the original Greek is often translated - “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Again, this sounds like instruction, but it is helpful to look a little deeper.  The Greek word for commandment, entolē, doesn’t just mean rule. It means objectives, purpose, goal, or even mission. Jesus is saying to his disciples: If you love me, you will hold close, guard, and treasure my objectives, my purpose, my goal and my mission. 

And what is that mission? We hear it echo all through John’s Gospel:
“I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32)
“A new Commandment (a new objective) I give unto you… that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34)

The purpose, the entolē, of Jesus is to draw us into divine love, to awaken us to the life of God within us, and to invite us to become fully alive, fully human, fully divine. And so when Jesus says “keep my word,” he is inviting us to live by this larger vision:

To be people who draw others in with love, not push them away with judgment.  To give life, not to control it.  To help people become more of who they are in God, not less.  And to become a home where the Spirit of God finds rest.

That’s what it means to keep his word: To align our lives with his purpose, to love, to give life, to draw others toward wholeness.

And then we hear the great promise, perhaps the heart of it: “My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” This is no longer about us climbing up to God.  It is about God coming home to us. Making God’s home within us, making us alive to the Divine Presence within us that we have perhaps ignored and neglected. 

And so Jesus is saying: “When you live by this love, when you let it shape your words, your actions, your spirit, then God’s very presence will rest in you.” He doesn’t say: “If you are perfect…” Or “If you believe the right things…”

“If you love me, and keep my purpose close, we will make our home in you.”

And this is the promise of Pentecost which is coming up in two weeks time... It is the promise of presence, peace, and power, of God’s Spirit within. We at home in God, and God at home in us. Interestingly, in this verse, Jesus is offering us not a mansion in the sky, but a home in the heart.

When we make room for Christ’s ‘word’, his life-giving purpose and loving objectives, then we find ourselves already dwelling in God, and astonishingly, God dwelling within us.

And so in closing, what does it mean to follow Jesus? It is not just to believe something about him.
But to embody his vision: To draw others in with love. To bring life where there is despair. To be a safe, welcoming place, for others, and for God. And as we do, we discover that we are not alone. We are not abandoned or left as orphans. We are at home, at home in God, and more wonderfully still, God at home in us.
Amen.
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Loving as we are loved - John 13:31-35

18/5/2025

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SUNDAY SERVICE - AUDIO RECORDING...
TODAY'S SERMON...
John 13:31-35 – “Love One Another as I Have Loved You”

In our lectionary passage today (John 13:31-35) we hear very familiar words of Jesus: 

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

They are familiar, but we seldom read them in context.

In John 13 we find ourselves in the Upper Room. Jesus has washed his disciples feet, Judas has just left to betray Jesus, and the final hours of Jesus’ earthly life are unfolding. John’s Gospel is deliberately and often explicitly symbolic and so when John tells us in verse 30 that it was night we can read this both literally and symbolically. Darkness is falling around Jesus. 

In the shadow of farewell, with the weight of betrayal in the air, Jesus speaks not of fear, but of love. Not of escape, but of glory. “Love one another,” he says, “as I have loved you.” Reminding us that love is only truly love when it continues in times of darkness and difficulty.  

But this commandment to love is also a new commandment – it is not just a commandment to love in a polite and distant kind of way, it is a new commandment because it is a command to love as Jesus himself has loved them.  “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

As we see across all the Gospels, this is a love that transcends ego, clinging, and condition. It is not based on the worthiness of the other, nor on shared beliefs, nor even on affection. It flows from a different source, the wellspring of a deeper divine awareness. It is the space in which Jesus lives and breathes – he lives constantly in the Divine Awareness at the centre of his being. 

And so the love Jesus commands is not so much a striving, but a recognition.  It is to see the Eternal Divine I Am in all things and in all people. It is also to see this same Eternal Divine I Am dwelling in the depths of our own hearts.  As Jesus says to the Jewish leaders who are interrogating him a few chapters before in John 10:34 “Do your own scriptures not say that you are gods” (in other words, you are Divine, Divinity dwells within you).  Like Jesus, we too have been made to be expressions of the Divine Logos, the Divine Wisdom and Love that we see in the opening verses of John’s Gospel.

Jesus commandment to love one another as he has loved us is to to discover the Divine I Am dwelling within us, that flows up like a spring of water - welling up with eternal life love (John 4:14). 

And so to love like Jesus is to see the world and other people with the eyes of Christ, the eyes of Divine Love, to see everything as an expression of the Divine Logos through which all things are created and come into being, that Divine Logos which is a light that enlightens every person coming into the world, shining upon and shining within every person even thought they may live in ignorance of it. 

To love as Jesus has loved in John’s Gospel is also to be willing to take on the role of a servant, to be willing to identify with the least and the lowest, as Jesus does at the beginning of the chapter 13,when, even though he is the host of the meal, he takes off his outer garment and bends down to wash his disciples feet, even the feet of the enemy, Judas, the one he already knows is going to betray him. 

To love as Jesus has loved in John’s Gospel is also ultimately also to be willing to suffer in the cause of love as Jesus was willing to do in his crucifixion.  In John’s Gospel the Glory of Jesus is that even in his darkest hour he does not let himself be overcome by evil, but steadfastly continues to live in the awareness of Divine Love. 

And that connects us with verse 32 which comes just before Jesus gives the disciples his new commandment when Jesus says: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him”

What exactly does he mean when he says “Now the Son of Man has been glorified,”? 

As we have mentioned, Judas has just left. Betrayal has been set in motion. And yet, for Jesus, this is the hour of glory—not because suffering is good in itself, but because his love remains steadfast and unmoved and begins to shine brighter even in the face of betrayal. Glory, in John’s Gospel, is not splendour in the worldly sense, it is the shining forth of Divine Light through human vulnerability. It is the shining forth of Divine Love even as the depth of human darkness seems to be growing. This is the whole focus of John’s gospel: the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it – we know how this story is going to end. 

In a world where it sometimes feels like darkness is growing again, where battle-lines are being drawn, where enemies are being more clearly defined we face a choice: Do we get drawn into the darkness, allowing ourselves to be overcome by it, allowing fear, darkness and hatred to creep into our own hearts and minds, narrowing our hearts and narrowing our love, or, do we hold onto the glory of Divine Love that shines unrelenting in the face of darkness and evil. 

When darkness descends this is the time for true Divine Love to begin to shine within them. 

Note how in our passage today in verse 33 Jesus addresses his disciples as “Little children.” It is a tender phrase. Not patronising, or condescending but intimate. On the one hand it might reminds us that the spiritual journey, is a return to childlike seeing, not childishness, but the openness of one who trusts the presence of God in all things. It is perhaps also an indication that the disciples still have some spiritual growing to do. 

Jesus is leaving them, at least in physical form, but not in truth or in spirit. The whole of the Farewell Discourse of John’s Gospel from chapter 13-17 is an invitation to move into a new kind of relationship with Jesus. “I will not leave you orphaned,” he will later say. “Abide in me as I abide in you.” The spiritual path is to realise that Christ is not elsewhere, but can be discovered here and now, in the heart of the one who abides in Christ-like love. 

But what is one to make of the words that follow on in verse 33 “Where I am going, you cannot come”? It sounds a little exclusionary.  But in verse 36 we see that Jesus is speaking of a lack of readiness. “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.” (John 13:36). Where Jesus is going, is not so much a place, but rather a state of being. They may not be ready to enter fully into that state of being now, but one day they will.  They are still like children on the spiritual path. They are only just beginning to learn the path of Christ-like love.  

They may not be ready yet to truly love as Jesus loves, but the path of transformation will open to them, as they abide in Christ, as they practice his way, and as the Spirit awakens them to the Christ within.  For such love is not ours to produce. It is already present. It is the very energy of God at the heart of being. To “love as I have loved you” is to awaken to the truth that there is only One Love, and it lives in and through all.  

The Sufi poet Rumi once wrote: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

And so this commandment should comes to us, not as a burden, but as an invitation to live from the centre, from that place where Christ and the soul are not two, but one. As Jesus will say later in John’s Gospel – “On that day you will know that I am in you and you are in me.”  (John 14:20)

But for now, like little children who are still learning and who falter, fail and fall, like the disciples, we practice this way of Christ-like Love – and above all things we practice the art of abiding or resting in Christ for it is in abiding or resting in Christ that the fruit of Divine Love will begin to grow in our lives.  Amen.

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Dedication of the Inner Temple

11/5/2025

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John 10:22–30 – Dedication of the Inner Temple (Oneness with the Source/Father)

Today’s Gospel reading brings us into a moment of tension and revelation. Jesus is walking in the temple during the festival of Dedication (Hanukkah),when some Jewish religious leaders surround him and ask, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

They want a clear, black-and-white answer. But Jesus, as he so often does in John’s Gospel, doesn’t give them what they expect. Instead, he points to something deeper, something that goes beyond words or titles. He says, “I have told you, and you do not believe... My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”

In other words, those who are truly listening, those who are open-hearted and ‘attuned’, alert or aware, already know. They’ve seen it in his actions, they’ve felt it in his presence, they’ve recognized it in their hearts. It’s not about figuring it out in your head, it’s about hearing and responding from the heart.

And then Jesus says something truly profound: “I and the Father are one.” John 10 is not merely a debate about messiahship; it is a deeper unveiling of union, between Jesus and the Father, and ultimately, between the Divine and those who “hear his voice.”

And so this statement is not just a theological statement about who Jesus is. It comes as an invitation to see the deeper reality of all things. John’s Gospel is full of this kind of language from the very beginning, when we’re told that the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and that Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

John isn’t just telling us stories about Jesus. In the writing of his gospel, he’s trying to open our eyes to something bigger, that God is not far away, but right here, right now. That divine presence is woven into the fabric of life. Yes, Jesus shows us the face of God, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father” (14:9). but he also shows us the true face of humanity: “Don’t your own scriptures tell you ‘You are gods’” he says to them just a few verses later in vs 34. His unity with the Father is meant to draw us into that same unity – As Jesus says in John 14:20 “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”

The mystics across many traditions, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, have spoken of this same deep truth: that underneath all our differences, there is a single divine reality, and we are all part of it. Some call it the perennial wisdom, the understanding that the heart of all spiritual paths leads to the same place: to love, to union, to the realization that we are never truly separate from God.

When Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice,” he’s not just talking about a chosen few. He’s speaking of anyone, who is willing to listen with the ears of the heart. And when he says, “No one will snatch them out of my hand,” it’s a promise of deep spiritual safety. That whatever storms we go through, whatever doubts we wrestle with, we are held. We belong. But we will not truly know these things until we listen deeply with the ears of the heart.

In verse 26 when he says to his questioners “you do not believe because you are not my sheep”. It is important to note that this is not exclusionary; rather it is descriptive of interior disposition. To “belong” is to be attuned, to be receptive to the voice of the Shepherd, which calls from beyond our egoic thinking into presence. At this point they are unable to respond to the One who is their true shepherd because they are not listening deeply enough with the ears of their hearts. They are still listening to and being defined by the voice of the ego in their heads. They do not yet know their Oneness with God. They have not yet been able to intuit this deeper truth.

The Feast of Dedication, or Hanukkah, is not an insignificant detail in the story. It commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem around 164 BCE after it was defiled by foreign rule during the time of the Maccabean Revolt. The temple, once desecrated, was purified and rededicated to the worship of the God of Israel. In our passage today, the listeners are being invited into the deeper meaning of Hannukkah, the cleansing of the heart and the rededication of the heart as the true inner Temple where the Divine dwells within each of us.

So perhaps the question for us today is not, “Do we understand it all?” or “Can we explain who Jesus is?” Maybe the better question is, ‘Are we listening deeply’? Are we attuned to that still, small voice, the voice of the Good Shepherd, that calls us beyond fear and division and into deeper trust?

At the end of our passage Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.” And in a very real way, so are we. And not just us but every human being even if this deeper truth has been obscured and hidden. We are not alone. We are part of something greater than ours small egoic selves tell us. We are held in love, grounded in being, and if we are listening deeply, guided by the voice of the Shepherd.

In verse 28 we read these words of reassurance: “No one will snatch them out of my hand...” Here we glimpse the security of our spiritual belonging. For those who have awakened to the Divine within and beyond, there is a deep knowing that cannot be undone by external circumstance. It is the deep realisation of the divinity within us that is never separate from its Source.

And so to reflect on John 10:22–30, then, is to be invited into the heart of the Christian mystical tradition, which proclaims, that the goal of spiritual life is not belief with our heads alone, but rather a deeper union of the heart, a deeper inner knowing of the Divine from within that transforms how we see God, ourselves, and the world.

As we meditate on this Gospel passage, perhaps we can hear the voice of the Shepherd not as a voice from outside, but as the inner voice of love and truth, calling us beyond fear, beyond separation, and into the freedom and security of the One in whom we live and move and have our being. 
Amen.

Prayer: 

O Holy One, over all, in all and through all, Whom we have encountered in the face of Jesus, may we listen deeply to hear the voice of the Shepherd within, as the inner voice of love and truth, inviting us to rededicate our hearts as Temples of the Divine, calling us beyond fear, and beyond separation into a deeper knowledge of our own Oneness with you in whom we live and move and have our being and the deep inner knowing that nothing can ever snatch us away from Your hands. Amen.
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A Non-Subscribing view on Communion

4/5/2025

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"What is a Non-Subscribing Presbyterian approach to Communion?"

Friends, today as we gather around the communion table, I would like to explore a Non-Subscribing Presbyterian approach to Holy Communion, in light of our Ethos and Constitution.

Now it’s important to say from the outset that it is not easy to give a single definitive view on communion from a Non-Subscribing Presbyterian perspective. That’s not due to uncertainty or a lack of reverence, but because one of the core convictions of our church is this: the right of private judgement and individual conscience in matters of faith.

Within the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, there is room for different understandings, personal interpretations, and diverse experiences of this sacred meal. There is no single dogmatic statement that defines how each one of us must understand or approach communion. 

To help us each discern for ourselves our own understandings of communion it is perhaps helpful to briefly consider how other Christian traditions view communion.

In Roman Catholicism, for instance, communion—or the Holy Mass—is seen as a literal transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ (called transubstantiation). The sacrifice of christ 2000 years ago is said to be made present in the here and now under the guise of bread and wine.   Outwardly the elements may look like Bread and Wine but in truth they are now the body and blood of Christ. They would say that when Jesus instituted communion at the last supper he didn’t say: “this is a symbol of my body… this is a symbol of my blood”, but rather “this is my body” “this is my blood”. Some High Anglicans hold the same view. 

But for Lutherans and some other Anglicans, there is slightly different understanding - a belief in a real spiritual presence of Christ in the elements of Bread and Wine.  However, the bread remains bread and the wine remains wine but they have now been infused or energised with the Real Presence of Christ.

But still other Anglicans would hold the view of the Reformer John Calvin who believed that Christ is truly present in Communion but not connected specifically to the Bread and the Wine. 

Other Reformed traditions emphasize communion simply as a memorial; a remembering—a powerful reminder of Christ's death and resurrection, a symbol of grace rather than a mystical event, an act of sacred remembering. 

This would also be the view of most Unitarians. A sacred remembering. But while most traditions would emphasize the atoning death of Christ, a sacrifice for sin, Unitarians would emphasize communion as a remembering of Christ’s shared love around a table and the supreme example of his life of sacrificial love. 

And then the question arises: Who can receive communion? 

In the Roman Catholic Church, only those who are baptised members of the Roman Catholic Church in good standing are permitted to receive Communion – only those who have been taught to recognise that the Bread and Wine are no longer just bread and wine, but are now the actual Body and Blood of Christ under the outward form of Bread and Wine. This is in part to ensure that due reverence is paid. That is why preparing for first communion is so important in the Roman Catholic Church – to ensure that children show due reverence and have a correct understanding that the bread is no longer bread and the wine is no longer wine but rather, the actual body and blood of Christ.  

Up until the ecumenical movement of the 1960’s most denominations would have had some kind of exclusionary approach to communion. Only baptised members in good standing in the denomination could receive communion.  So for example only baptised Anglicans in good standing could receive communion in an Anglican Church. Only baptised Lutherans in good standing could receive in a Lutheran church. Etc...  But in more recent decades that has loosened up – now many mainline Protestant churches would say you can receive communion as a visitor if you are a baptised member in good standing in your own denomination. 

In many evangelical traditions there are also further restrictions; communion in Evangelical traditions also often serve as a test of worthiness, with a strong exclusionary tone—those who are not "right with God" are encouraged not to partake until they have repented or conformed to particular beliefs.

Having considered briefly how other Christian traditions might understand communion, what might a Non-Subscribing Presbyterian approach to communion be that is grounded in our ethos as enshrined in our Constitution? 

Firstly, Non-Subscribers tend to focus on the teachings of Jesus over and above the teachings about Jesus. Whatever else Communion is about it should over and above everything else connect us with the teachings and the way of Jesus.  If there is a conflict or discrepancy for example between the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of St Paul, our obligation is to follow Jesus. 

Secondly Non-Subscribers focus on the inalienable right of private judgement—the right of each person to interpret Scripture and respond according to their own conscience.  There is room for differences of opinion in understanding exactly what is happening is communion… of how Christ is present – or even not present if that is what one believes.  Most non-subscribers have probably over the centuries understood Communion more along the lines of a simple memorial, but there is room in the NSPCI for those who might have a more mystical view of communion.  If in Ephesians, the writer speaks Christ’s presence now filling the whole universe there is room for those who might affirm and believe that Christ is truly present in the bread and the wine.  There is room for each of us to come to our own conclusions on these things.  At the very least it might be said that Christ is present where two or three gather in his name and break bread to remember him.  But some Unitarians who emphasize the humanity of Jesus over his divinity might question that interpretation… For unitarains it is the shared experience of love around the table that reminds us of the spirit in which Jesus lived and loved… and there is room for all of these perspectives in the NSPCI. 

Thirdly Non-Subscribers have tended to emphasize the supremacy of love—both as a key attribute of God and as the mark of true discipleship (John 13:35). In this regard Non-Subscribers have tended to emphasize the boundless grace of God, as shown in the parable of the Prodigal Son – where the wayward prodigal was welcomed in and included in the celebratory meal of his return home. The older brother however has excluded himself from the celebratory meal of his brothers return and in response  the Father leaves the celebratory meal to invite to urge and to encourage the older brother to join them. 

Fourthly Non-Subscribers have tended to emphasize the call to do the will of God, not merely to profess faith with our lips (Matthew 7:21)… ‘You will know they are Christians, not by what they profess to believe, not by how well they know their Bible’s or how many verses they have memorised. Rather, you will know them by their love. Jesus said, “By this shall all know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35)

And so these broad principles form a kind of spiritual compass for how we might approach communion—not with fear or obligation, but with love, reflection, and a deep reverence for the teachings of Christ.

We remember that Jesus welcomed all to his table: the faithful and the faltering, the confused and the confident. He broke bread with those who would soon deny him, betray him, and abandon him – Luke’s Gospel emphasizes that the hand of the betrayer was with Jesus at the table at the Last Supper. His invitation was an act of radical grace extended to all.

It is for this reason that Non-Subscribing Presbyterians as well as Methodists together with Unitarains are among the few traditions who practice what is called an Open Table. All are invited to partake without restriction whether baptised or un-baptised, whether worthy or unworthy – for both Communion is an expression of unearned grace, of God’s love freely extended to all without exceptions.

And so we believe that communion is not a reward for the righteous, but a reminder of grace for the seeking. It is not a test of doctrinal agreement, but a shared experience of Christ’s love, and a moment of spiritual nourishment. It is not a sacrament fenced off by dogma, but a shared meal open to all who seek to walk in the spirit and love of Jesus.

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, we see the heart of the God whom Jesus reveals: a God who runs to meet the lost, who rejoices over their return, who throws a feast not as a prize for perfection but as a celebration of reconciliation. The lost son has come home. 

At this table, no matter who we are or whatever our understanding, we too are invited to come home. To come home to love.  It is here, in bread and wine, that in remembering Jesus we enact a simple truth: we are loved, we are welcome, we belong. Amen.
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