Soft robes and patient faith

Text:  James 5.7-10 and Matthew 11.2-11

In the name of the God who is patient with prophets and doubters alike.  Amen.

In today’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist is in prison.  That matters.  We tend to picture him as permanently wild and indestructible — hair uncut, voice booming, locusts crunching obligingly between his teeth.  But here he is, locked away and silenced, hemmed in by bars and chains.  And from that place comes a question that feels almost shocking in its honesty:  “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

This is not the question of a cynic.  It is the question of a faithful person whose expectations have collided with reality.  John had proclaimed judgement.  He had spoken of axes at roots and fire in hands.  And now the one he pointed to is healing the sick, eating with sinners, and leaving Herod and the Romans very much alive and very much in charge.  The kingdom does not look how John expected.

Jesus’ reply is not a lecture.  It is a list.  The blind see.  The lame walk.  The lepers are cleansed.  The poor hear good news.  In other words:  look carefully.  The kingdom is not arriving with the drama you imagined, but it is arriving all the same.  And then Jesus turns to the crowd and offers that curious reflection about John himself.  First, he says, ‘John is not a reed shaken by the wind’ — he’s someone who sticks solidly to his beliefs.  And John is not someone dressed in soft robes.

Soft robes.  It’s an arresting phrase.  John, after all, is raw.  Uncomfortable.  Scruffy.  He lives on the margins, speaks inconvenient truths, and pays for it with his freedom, first, and then ultimately his life.  Soft robes belong elsewhere — in royal palaces, among those insulated from consequence, buffered from hunger, fear, and uncertainty.  In Jesus’ world, they belong to those who benefit from the system as it is.

It is not hard to draw a line from there to here.  We live in a world where a very small number of people wear metaphorical soft robes indeed — hoovering up wealth, land, influence, and resources, while others are told to tighten their belts, be patient, and wait their turn.  Did you hear President Trump, last week, advising people feeling the pinch of his tariffs to stop buying boxes of pencils, and more than a couple of dolls for their children? 

The gospel has never been particularly impressed by soft robes, or by those who wear them.  Not because comfort is evil in itself, but because insulation from reality so easily dulls compassion.  When you are wrapped in enough layers… of wealth… of security guards… of bullet‑proof windscreens… you can so easily forget how sharp the wind is for everyone else.

There’s something else we should not miss — something that I spoke about in more detail on Thursday, should you want to go deeper.  It’s this:  John is great, Jesus says — the greatest, even — and yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.  That is not a dismissal of John, but a redefinition of greatness.  John stands on the threshold, pointing forward.  Those who step into the kingdom — however haltingly, however imperfectly — participate in something John could only glimpse.

Which brings us to James.  “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.”  James is writing to people who genuinely believed that Christ’s return was imminent.  Soon.  Any moment now.  History, as we know, had other ideas.  And that raises an awkward question we are sometimes tempted to dodge:  what do we do with the fact that Jesus did not return on the timetable the early Christians expected?

One option is embarrassment — quietly downplaying the urgency of those early hopes.  (“Let’s not draw too much attention to the naiveté of those early Christians… isn’t it sweet that they thought Jesus was coming back imminently!”).  Another reaction is denial — constantly resetting the clock and insisting the end is just around the corner.  How many times in the last 200 years have prophets claimed to know when Jesus will return?

James offers neither option.  Instead, he offers patience — not passive waiting, but active endurance.  James offers the patience of farmers:  farmers are those who know that growth cannot be forced, only tended.  James offers the patience of people who refuse to grumble against one another while the world remains unresolved.

So, the early Christians were wrong about the timing, but not about the posture.  They were wrong to think the story would be wrapped up quickly.  They were right to live as though it mattered now.  Faithful living was never meant to be a temporary holding pattern until escape.  Rather, it was always meant to be the shape of life itself.

John’s question from prison and James’ call to patience meet us exactly where we are.  We know more than they did — we know that history has continued, that injustice persists, that the kingdom has not arrived in fullness.  And yet we are asked the same question in reverse:  will we live as though God is still at work, even when outcomes disappoint us?

Jesus does not invite us into soft robes.  He invites us into attentiveness — to healing (wherever it happens), to good news (wherever it is spoken), to justice wherever it stirs.  He blesses those who are not scandalised by a kingdom that arrives quietly, stubbornly, and without regard for our preferred schedules.

So we wait — not with folded arms, but with open eyes.  We wait by refusing to grumble, by standing alongside the hurting and the marginal rather than retreating into comfort, by trusting that patient faithfulness is not wasted time.  John waited in prison.  Farmers wait for rain.  We wait in a world that is unfinished.  And blessed are those, says Jesus, who do not take offence at that.  Amen.

Are you greater than John the Baptist?

 

Text:  Matthew 11.11-15

It’s a scene somewhat reminiscent of President Trump being given the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize! Jesus says, “Among those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist”. High praise indeed. If Jesus were handing out awards, John would get “Prophet of the Year,” if not lifetime achievement.

And yet—Jesus immediately adds— “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” And you can almost picture poor John—wild hair, camel-hair coat, organic locust in hand—turning round as someone reads that aloud and saying “Well, thanks a lot Jesus!”

John is the greatest—and simultaneously outranked by everyone. What a marvellous Advent paradox.

John is, in many ways, the official Advent mascot. Not the soft one—there are no cuddly John the Baptist toys with removable camel-hair tunics. He’s not the beautiful one—no one puts him on a Christmas card and says “Season’s Greetings from the Judean wilderness, you brood of vipers.” He’s not particularly marketable. No child has ever put “bag of locusts” on their stocking list.

Instead, John stands like the hinge of a great door. All the weight of prophecy and history leans on him; yet he swings open for someone else. That’s the essential thing about John: he isn’t the door—he’s the movement of the door. His entire identity is transition. And that’s Advent.

Advent is movement. It’s also about waiting, yes—but not the waiting of a bored traffic queue on the A27 with Radio 2 on low. Advent is waiting like the pause before the overture begins. It’s the kind of waiting that happens on a cliffhanger at the end of Eastenders.  It’s waiting like smelling the mince pies before they reach the table. It’s that kind of waiting.

But Jesus adds something today which could ruin the mince pies. “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” That’s not very cosy, is it?. Not very ‘Little Donkey.’ Not mulled wine and fairy lights. Because the truth is: when light breaks into darkness, darkness does not applaud. We see it across the world. Conflict grinding on like a rusty millwheel. Truth handled like wet soap—slipping through fingers just when you think you’ve caught it. People harassed, displaced, forgotten. Violence done not just with guns, but with lies, with systems that crush the smallest shoulders.

And into that landscape comes… not a warrior. Not a conqueror. But a child. God’s strategy is so utterly absurd, so completely nuts to human systems, that it simply has to be divine. John looked like a revolutionary. Jesus looked like a baby. Yet Jesus says even the least who belong to him are part of something greater than John ever glimpsed.

But why?  Because John knew that God was coming. But Christians know that God has come.  And is coming still.  Both are true, because the kingdom is stubborn.

It keeps arriving—like a persistent delivery man who knocks again, even though you were in the shower the first time and missed him.  The kingdom never leaves a “sorry we missed you” card—it waits at the door and knocks again.  

That’s why Jesus ends today’s reading with the line: “Let anyone with ears listen.” Anyone with ears. Advent is the annual reminder to check whether our ears have batteries in.  Because we are good at listening to other things, aren’t we?

We listen to the news, loudly.

We listen to our own anxieties, loudly.

We listen to the loud, easy promises of politicians.

We listen to the rumour that Christmas must look perfect to count.

But Advent offers a different frequency.

John cries out, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

Jesus whispers, “Be not afraid.”

Angels sing, “Peace on earth.”

Mary hums lullabies into straw.

And if you listen closely—in the hush before a service starts, in the quiet when the kettle finishes boiling, in the gentle sigh of someone lighting advent candles—you can hear the sound of something Divine arriving. Something greater than John. Something greater than fear. Something greater than the violent forces that claw at the edges of the world.

Now, I confess: most of us don’t feel like we are “greater” than John the Baptist. We feel more like the understudies who were called up because the star of the show had flu. We look at our worn out faces in the mirror and think… really? This? Me? 

But greatness in the kingdom is not measured like greatness in the wilderness. Out there, greatness was camel hair and wild proclamations of mountains being laid low.  In here, greatness is small things: generosity without applause, forgiveness without conditions, courage in fragile places.

The least in the kingdom is greater than John because the least belong not just to the promise, but to the fulfilment. John prepared the way. We walk in it. And we walk through car parks full of Christmas shoppers. Through hospitals with quiet wards and uncertain futures. Through homes where people long for someone no longer here. Through the noise and glitter and worry and excitement.  And still, the door is swinging open. Still, the kingdom insists on arriving. Still the child waits to be received. Let anyone with ears listen.

And may we, this Advent, learn not merely to wait— but to welcome.

Not merely to wonder— but to receive.

Not merely to admire John— but to walk past him, through the doorway that he opened. And find Christ, waiting on the other side. Amen.

We live among blossoms. (Advent 2)

Readings:  Isaiah 11.1-10, Romans 15.4-13 and Matthew 3.1-12

In the name of the God who coaxes green shoots out of stumps, and makes prophets shout in the wilderness. Amen.

A few years ago, I met a man who was restoring an old orchard.  His walled garden was really just a rectangle of mossy brick—and, to be honest, it looked a bit forlorn. Huge, old apple trees, twisted by time; stumps where others had once stood; patches of earth that seemed exhausted. But the man had vision. He could see what would grow.

He showed me one of the stumps—one so dead that it really needed digging out. “Look at this,” he said. And there, right on the tip of the stump, was a single green shoot—absurdly fragile, but alive. “Give that a season,” he said, “and we’ll have apples again.”

I thought of him this week as Isaiah spoke:  “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse.”.  That stump is human history. And that stump is our habits, our stuck thinking. That stump is the part of us we’ve long since written off—“nothing good will grow here.” And Isaiah says, “Watch.”

Now, picture a wilderness—hot, dry, unpromising. People trudging down to the river, not for a picnic, not for sightseeing, but because someone is shouting a message that will not let them stay asleep.  John the Baptiser.  John—the spiritual equivalent of a cold shower.  John, who appears without backstory, without pleasantries, wearing camel hair and smelling faintly of barbecued locusts.  “Repent!” he cries.

But he doesn’t mean “feel guilty.”  He uses a specific Greek word - ‘metanoia’; change direction; adjust the compass; turn around.  Adjust your thinking away from ego, away from prejudice, away from self-service, and turn your thinking towards the mind and the heart of God.  It’s the moment in the orchard when you stop assuming nothing will grow and you start tending the tiny shoot.  Repentance is when the gardener decides:  “I’ll water this patch again. I’ll prune. I’ll try.”   That’s metanoia.  

People mistakenly assume that repentance is the dramatic moment, the lightning bolt, the conviction of sin.  You walk down to the Jordan, get dipped, shake off the water – and the sin - like a confused Labrador, and go back home...job done.  But John says no. He says, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance; worthy of metanoia.”  Fruit takes time.  Fruit takes tending.  Fruit is patience in edible form.  Nobody eats fruit from a stump. Fruit comes only when the shoot grows.

And now Paul enters the discussion, writing to the Romans; city-dwelling Christians who probably didn’t have an orchard between them. They understood concrete better than compost. And to them, Paul says, “Everything written in Scripture was given for hope.” 

Hope is not optimism.  Hope is not “things might be better by Friday.”  Hope is the refusal to believe that the stump is the final word.  Perhaps Paul would have planted that tiny shoot from Isaiah right in the middle of the Roman Forum—between the Senate and the sausage stall. And watched it confound everyone.

Now let’s bring this closer to home.  Years ago—before anyone referred to St Francis as the Cathedral of Leigh Park—this was a field of possibility. A congregation gathered together, reached out, and planted something. Perhaps some of you were part of that first congregation. And it grew—not perfectly, not always vigorously, but unmistakably alive.  And yes, over time, some branches have been pruned. Some ideas have dried. Some initiatives have produced bruised fruit. But when I walk into this place, I do not see the stump. I see shoots.  A community that still gathers, even when the heating is broken;  Lives touched by pastoral care and school ministry;  community bursting into life at pantomime time; The kindness exchanged in quiet, ordinary ways; prayers unceasing, Christmas joy.  All of that is hope – the green shoots.

And repentance today might look like deciding: “This corner of the orchard still deserves tending.  That neighbour deserves a fresh conversation.  That ministry deserves pruning instead of abandonment.”

Let me tell you another orchard moment.  A year after seeing that abandoned stump, I went back—and the gardener had staked it upright. He had shielded it from wind and frost. And now it had leaves—small, waxy, defiant leaves. I asked him why he bothered.  He answered with something Isaiah would have loved: “Because someone before me planted this. And someone after me will taste the fruit.”  That is metanoia.  A change of direction not just for ourselves, but for the next generation.

Ultimately, that’s Advent thinking.  And now, John’s preaching suddenly sounds less harsh, less condemning, doesn’t it?  “Repent, because someone after you will taste the fruit.  Prepare the way, because someone after you needs that road.  Make straight paths, because the Messiah walks behind you as well as toward you.”

Then Matthew offers the final contrast:  John baptises with water for cleansing—symbolic, temporary, refreshing.  But Jesus baptises with Spirit and fire—not destructive fire, but refining fire, orchard fire: the fire that clears brush, stimulates seeds, prepares soil. 

John clears the weeds; Jesus plants the Kingdom. John wakes us up; Jesus carries hope into the bloodstream of the world. John points; Jesus arrives.

So what do we do with this?  We look for stumps.  Inside ourselves. Inside our community.

Inside our church.  And we listen for Isaiah saying: “Watch.” We turn—metanoia—and tend what grows. We water with kindness.  We stake with prayer.  We protect with courage.  And we wait—not passively, but actively.  Because someone after us will taste the fruit.

Let me tell you what I saw the third year. Blossom.  Ridiculously pink, all fluff and fragrance. And that’s when orchard keepers know the future. Blossom is fruit foretold.  No apples yet—but absolutely inevitable.  Isaiah saw a shoot.  John cleared space.  Jesus planted the orchard.   Welcome to Advent:  we live among blossoms.  Amen.

Looking for Jesus in All the Wrong Places (Advent 1)

A sermon for the first Sunday of Advent.

Readings:  Isaiah 2.1-5 and Matthew 24.36-44

It’s Advent again.  The first day of the new liturgical year, and yet, unlike conventional new years, it’s the season of waiting.  The season of expectation.  The season in which clergy across the land dust off their annual sermon about being “awake and alert,” while secretly praying the congregation won’t notice they preached exactly the same thing last year.  

But Advent does matter.  Today Isaiah lifts our eyes to the mountain of the Lord, where all nations stream together in peace, hammering swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.  A beautiful picture — perhaps modern nations might hammer their nuclear submarines into garden sheds and their attack drones into slightly disappointing air-fryers.  The point is the same: God imagines a world in which humanity finally grows up.  A world beyond fear and competition.  

And then, on to Matthew’s Gospel, in which Jesus gives us a thunderous reminder that no one knows the hour or the day — not the angels, not even the Son.  Only the Father knows when the great unveiling of God’s purposes will take place.  Which of course is rather at odds with those people on the internet who think they’ve cracked the Bible’s numerological codes about the second coming.  Sitting there with a biro, a calculator and a YouTube prophecy channel — they are, let’s put it kindly… enthusiastic, but incorrect.  

And then there’s the elephant in the room: the Rapture.  Those passages about “one taken, one left”.  Entire theologies have been constructed from these few verses, usually involving helicopters, flaming swords, and unfortunate sinners left behind to work in what remains of the civil service.  I’m afraid it’s nonsense.  Jesus is using a classic prophetic image: suddenness.  Unpredictability.  He’s not suggesting that God is planning some kind of cosmic vacuum-cleaner to hoover up the good and leave the rest on the factory floor.  If anything gets raptured, let it be our bad theologies.  

Let’s put it simply: Jesus is not trying to frighten us.  He is trying to wake us.  “Keep awake,” he says.  Not “keep terrified.”  Not “keep speculating.”  Not “keep checking the Book of Revelation against the Daily Mail” (or the ‘Daily Fail’ as we call it in my house).  Keep awake.  Because God’s future isn’t something that crashes through the clouds like a divine meteor.  God’s future is something that breaks in, again and again, every time something true and beautiful and just is done.  

That is Isaiah’s vision.  Not a heavenly evacuation plan, but a future so compelling that all peoples will actually want to walk in its light.  And here’s the outrageous claim of Advent: that future has already started.  The light has already dawned.  The mountain of the Lord is already visible to us – even if still through a veil, darkly.  Which means the “coming of the Son of Man” is not restricted to some far-off cosmic firework display — it is something that happens whenever God’s way becomes real in the world.  

You want to know when Jesus returns?  I’ll tell you exactly when.  

He returns every time a homeless person gets housed, because that is where Jesus said he would be found.  He returns every time a wrong is righted, because Jesus is the one who binds up the broken and sets prisoners free.  He returns every time someone gives their life — their time, their money, their energy — for the sake of another.  You can’t miss him.  He keeps turning up.  He’s practically under our noses.  

So here are three Advent take-aways — three little spiritual sandwiches to put in your pocket for the week ahead.  

First, don’t look up — look around.  Searching the skies for signs of Jesus is like scanning the horizon for the Isle of Wight when you’re already standing in Ryde.  Jesus is not hiding in the atmosphere, sitting on a cloud.  He is hiding in your neighbour.  

Second, don’t wait — participate.  Isaiah’s great vision of peace is not a screensaver.  It requires hammering and welding and building.  It requires showing up for the kingdom, peering through the veil, not day-dreaming about it.  Advent is not an intermission.  It’s a call-up.  The Kingdom is a ‘not yet’ idea – it hasn’t arrived in all its fullness.  But it is also a ‘now’ idea.  It’s already here.  Fragile, under constant threat from the World, from apathy, from faithlessness.  It is a ‘now and not yet’ phenomenon.  

And third, don’t fear the future — create it.  Jesus warns us that the future comes suddenly, yes — but he also shows us that the future can be shaped.  The Kingdom is not a spectator sport – in which we sit back and clap while God does all the work.  Oh, it’s so easy to think ‘everything will be sorted out when Jesus comes to reign’.  But actually, every act of mercy and charity – by you and by me - is a brick in the new Jerusalem.  

So on this first Sunday of Advent, keep awake — not anxiously, but expectantly.  Wake up to the fact that Christ comes to us every day – quite often disguised as the people who need us.  Wake up to the fact that the world God dreams of is not far away but already breaking through the mist around the mountain.  And wake up to the glorious truth that the return of Jesus is not an event we wait for, but a reality we can join in with — here, now, this very day.  

And if by some chance Jesus does decide to return in the clouds this afternoon, then at least we’ll be busy doing something useful when he arrives.  Not staring at the sky with a calculator and a biro.  But hammering swords into ploughshares.  Hammering our fears into compassion.  Hammering our lives into something resembling the love of God — until even we, too, learn war no more.  

So — keep awake.  And keep building.  For the Lord is already on the way.

A sermon for the Feast of Christ the King

Readings: Jeremiah 23.1-6,  Psalm 46, Colossians 1.11-20 & Luke 23.33-43

There’s something ever so slightly awkward about the title “Christ the King.”  It arrives at the end of the liturgical year like a royal trumpeter in full regalia, blowing a fanfare across a church full of people who’ve lived through another year of political pantomime.  Kingship is not an uncomplicated idea for us.  We know too much about human rulers—how their crowns tilt, how their tempers flare, how quickly the pomp becomes pomposity.  By the time we’ve read the headlines, the idea of Christ the King sounds almost like a category error.  Why would Jesus want to be associated with all that?

And yet here it is, this feast that dares to reclaim the language of monarchy and plant it firmly on the head of the one who was crucified between criminals.  Jeremiah gives us the hint of what sort of king we’re dealing with.  He rails against shepherds who scatter instead of gathering, who fatten themselves while the flock starves.  “Woe to them,” he thunders.  It’s one of those passages in which the prophet looks suspiciously like he’s been reading this morning’s news.  Corrupt leaders?  Misused authority?  A sense that the ones in charge are not, in fact, looking after the people they’re meant to serve?  Remarkable how these ancient texts keep accidentally being contemporary.

But Jeremiah doesn’t stop at “Woe.”  He looks forward to a shepherd-king to come… one who will “execute justice and righteousness.”  Not execute dissenters.  Not execute a five-year plan.  Execute justice.  Righteousness.  Compassion.  That’s the picture Jeremiah sketches of God’s king: a leader who puts things right because he is right.

Psalm 46 picks up the same thread with its own kind of thunder.  “God is our refuge and strength.”  Not the markets.  Not the courts.  Not the increasingly optimistic promises of political manifestos.  The psalmist imagines a world where mountains wobble, nations roar, and the waters rage—yet God remains in the middle of it all, an unshakeable presence.  It’s not a hymn to stability for its own sake.  It’s a hymn to God’s stability, which is not the same thing at all.  Human stability usually means “don’t rock the boat.”  Divine stability says, “When the boat does rock—and it will—I’ll be with you.”

And then, on this day of kingship, we reach the Gospel… and find Jesus nailed to a cross, labelled “King of the Jews” by someone who wanted to weaponise irony.  Luke’s account is almost painfully gentle in places.  The leaders scoff.  The soldiers mock.  One criminal jeers.  And yet it’s the other criminal—the man with absolutely no theological training, no baptism certificate, no well-thumbed Bible—who sees what’s really going on.  “Jesus, remember me,” he says.  Not “If you are the Christ.”  Not “Prove yourself.”  Just “Remember me.”  And Jesus, with the kind of authority that no human crown can bestow, simply replies, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”  No caveats.  No conditions.  No doctrinal exam.  Just grace.

If this is kingship, it is nothing like the kingship we are used to.  It is vulnerable.  It is self-giving.  It is powerful, yes, but only in the way love is powerful—soft enough to be ignored, strong enough to change the world.

Paul’s hymn in Colossians takes that crucified king and places him at the centre of the cosmos.  It’s a dizzying vision.  “He is the image of the invisible God… the firstborn of all creation… in him all things hold together.”  All things.  Not just the religious bits.  Not just the Sunday-morning emotions.  All things: politics, economies, broken families, depleted foodbanks, climate anxieties, those late-night moments when we wonder whether the world has gone completely mad.  Colossians dares to say that Christ is not merely a comforting presence near these things; he is the one in whom they cohere.  The glue of reality, hiding behind the curtain of everything.

Which makes Christ the King a deeply subversive feast.  It overturns all our usual assumptions about power.  When worldly rulers falter or fail—when leadership becomes self-preservation, when truth bends under the weight of expediency, when compassion is dismissed as weakness—this feast whispers, “This is not the final story.  This is not the true template.”  The true template is a crucified man speaking forgiveness; a righteous shepherd gathering the scattered; a cosmic Christ holding all things together even as nails hold him to the wood.

But if we dare to honour Christ as king, it isn’t merely a theological statement.  It’s also a personal challenge—sometimes an uncomfortable one.  Because the moment we say “Christ is King,” we’ve made a claim about every other king, ruler, influencer, political project, and personal ambition.  The claim is: none of them—not a single one—is ultimate.  Not even the ones we like.  Not even the ones we vote for.  Their power is on loan.  Their authority is at best provisional.  Their wisdom is always partial.  Christ the King relativises all other rulers, which is perhaps why rulers have so often hated the Gospel.

And if his kingship is the measure of all leadership, then it is also the measure of ours.  We are, after all, citizens of that kingdom.  Called to the same work.  Called to feed the flock, not scatter it.  Called to be places of refuge like the river in Psalm 46.  Called to ordinary, everyday acts of justice in a culture that’s rather fond of “woe to them” but not always so keen on doing better.

Christ the King is not an invitation to worship power.  It’s an invitation to follow a king who redefines power by giving it away.  A king who reigns from a cross, rules through forgiveness, remembers the forgotten, and gathers the lost.  A king who dismantles fear, resists cruelty, and builds a kingdom marked by justice and righteousness.

And that—thanks be to God—is the king we follow.  Amen.

Safeguarding Sunday

Texts: Malachi 4.1-2a and Luke 21.5-19

There’s a moment in Luke’s Gospel where Jesus’ disciples stand gawping at the Temple.  “Look, Teacher—what big stones!  What lovely gifts!”  You can hear the pride.  You can see the wide eyes.  But Jesus, with that maddening ability to say the one thing no-one expects, replies: “Not one stone will be left upon another.”  In other words, “Don’t be dazzled by the façade.  Don’t trust the building.  Look at what’s going on beneath the surface.”

On Safeguarding Sunday, that’s a word we need to hear.  The Church—our buildings, our liturgies, our vestments—has often looked very beautiful from the outside.  But behind those big stones, there have been stories.  Stories we once whispered, or ignored, or minimised.  Stories of people harmed by those who should have protected them.  Stories of power misused.  Stories of wounds carried in silence for decades.  

And just as Malachi warns of a day that burns “like an oven”, we, too, have felt the scorching heat of truth when it finally comes to light.  The truth does burn—but Malachi also says that for those who seek healing, “the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.”  And that is where we must position ourselves: not hiding from the truth, but letting the light in, trusting that God’s justice and mercy can heal what we have not yet known how to heal.

One of the great gifts of recent years—painful though it has been—is that the survivors of abuse have begun to be heard.  Their courage has brought long-hidden hurts into the light.  Not because they want revenge, but because they want truth, healing, recognition… and the assurance that what happened to them will not be allowed to happen again.  

And that takes us right into the heart of the hymn we’re about to sing at the Offertory (see below).  “From our negligence and failures you have called us to repent.”  There is no fudging there.  No excuses.  The line does not read, “From the negligence and failures of other people.”  It says our.  Because safeguarding isn’t about scapegoating institutions or individuals in the past.  It’s about acknowledging that whole systems sometimes fail.  And that every one of us has a part to play in changing them.

But—and this matters greatly—most abuse does not happen in churches.  Statistically, it happens in homes.  Behind closed doors.  Within families.  Among people known intimately to the victim.  Schools, sports clubs, youth groups—these can also be places where people are harmed.  So when the Church talks about safeguarding, we are not clutching pearls about our own reputation.  We are responding to a much bigger, more painful truth about human vulnerability.

Which means the Church now has a sacred responsibility: not simply to avoid becoming a place of harm, but to be a place of refuge.  A place where stories can be told safely.  A place where tears are not brushed aside.  A place where the broken-hearted really are held until they “learn to live again”, as the hymn says.  A place where every child, every adult, every person is valued.  A place where the strong empower the weak—not the other way around.

For that to happen, we can’t retreat into the comfortable idea that “we’re a nice parish, none of that happens here.”  Safeguarding isn’t an optional bolt-on for suspicious churches or badly behaved vicars.  It is holy work.  It is the ministry of Christ himself—the one who listened to the voiceless, who gave dignity to those ignored, who lifted up the ones everyone else preferred not to see.

So when the Diocese asks us to do safeguarding training, it is not a bureaucratic hoop to jump through.  It is discipleship.  It is part of what it means to “build your kingdom full of truth and light and grace.”  It equips us to notice when something is wrong.  To recognise the signs of distress or coercion.  To know what to do when a child seems withdrawn… or an adult is afraid to speak… or someone quietly hints that home is not a safe place.

This is not glamorous work.  It is not the sort of ministry that gets your name on a plaque.  But it will make this community a place of “life in all its fullness”—not because we say so, but because we live so.

Jesus told his disciples that when everything felt shaky—when the stones were falling, when the world was in uproar, when conflict threatened to tear them apart—they were not to be afraid.  “By your endurance,” he said, “you will gain your souls.”

Safeguarding requires endurance.  It asks us to stay vigilant.  To stay compassionate.  To keep learning, keep listening, keep improving.  It asks us to look beyond the surface—beyond the pretty building—into the real lives of the people God has placed among us.  

And so, as we prepare to sing the safeguarding hymn, in a few minutes time, we lift to God “all the people you are calling to this ministry of care”—which is every one of us.  We ask for wisdom, grace and courage.  And we pray that, in this place, the unheard will find a voice… the wounded will find healing… and Christ will be seen in how we love and protect one another.  

Amen.

The Safeguarding hymn,,,

Offertory Hymn 

Words: Ally Barrett (b.1975)

Music: CORVEDALE, Maurice Bevan (1921-2006)

1 May this place be one of nurture

where we all may come to know

how your endless love sustains us

as we live and move and grow.

May we work to build your kingdom

full of truth and light and grace,

living life in all its fullness

held in one divine embrace.

2 From our negligence and failures

you have called us to repent,

drawing energy for action

from the voices of lament.

As the secret hurts long hidden

may at last be brought to light,

may the truth unlock the freedom

that is every person’s right.

3 For you hold the broken-hearted

till they learn to live again,

and your justice stands like mountains,

while your mercy falls like rain

when the smallest child is valued,

and the strong empower the weak,

when each human life is hallowed

and the unheard voices speak:

4 So with humble thanks we praise you

and we lift to you in prayer

all the people you are calling

to this ministry of care.

Give us wisdom, grace and courage,

holding fast to all that’s good,

seeing Christ in one another

we will love and serve our Lord.

Where is the Kingdom?

TEXTS
Philemon 7–20 

I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.  For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.  I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment.  

Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me.  I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.  I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced.  

Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.  So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.  

If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.  I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it.  I say nothing about your owing me even your own self.  Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord!  Refresh my heart in Christ.

Luke 17.20–25 

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’  

Then he said to the disciples, ‘The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.  They will say to you, “Look there!” or “Look here!” Do not go, do not set off in pursuit.  For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day.  But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation.’

SERMON

Paul’s letter to Philemon is one of those curious little treasures that hides in plain sight.  It’s only one chapter long, tucked away like a note slipped between the pages of a much bigger book.  And that’s what it is — a personal note, handwritten by Paul to his friend Philemon.  It isn’t a theological treatise, or a call to arms, or a grand defence of the faith.  It’s a plea.  A plea on behalf of one man — Onesimus — a runaway slave.

We’re not told the details, but it seems that Onesimus has wronged Philemon in some way — perhaps by stealing from him, or simply by running away.  In the normal order of the Roman world, a runaway slave could expect a beating, branding, or even crucifixion.  But Paul, ever the meddler in social conventions, writes to his wealthy friend with a gentle but devastating subversion: “Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for ever — no longer as a slave, but more than a slave — a beloved brother.”

And there it is — the Gospel in miniature.  A relationship of power and ownership is transfigured into one of brotherhood and love.  Paul never shouts, “Abolish slavery!” — that would have sounded ridiculous to a first-century ear.  Instead, he plants a time-bomb of grace under the whole structure of oppression.  He quietly suggests that Philemon should see Onesimus not as property but as family.  He even adds, with a wink, “If he’s wronged you in any way, charge it to my account.”  It’s the most elegant guilt-trip in Christian history — and it worked.  Because once you’ve looked your slave in the eye and called him “brother,” the old world cannot go on.

Fast-forward to Luke’s Gospel, and we find Jesus facing his own crowd of Philemons — religious people desperate to know when God’s Kingdom will finally arrive.  “When will it come, Lord?  When will the great day dawn?  When will the Romans be sent packing and righteousness restored?”  Jesus sighs.  “The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed.  You won’t say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’  For the Kingdom of God is among you.”

Among you.  Not in the sky, not over the horizon, not in some golden age of church attendance — but here, now, in the messy business of how we treat one another.  The Kingdom begins the moment Philemon decides to welcome Onesimus not with punishment but with a hug.  It begins when someone with power lays that power down.  It begins in a thousand small acts of release.

And that’s a problem for us, of course.  We would prefer a Kingdom we can see — a proper revolution, with banners and a clear plan.  We’d like God to ride in on a cloud and sort out the mess — preferably before the next election.  But Jesus says no.  The Son of Man, he warns, will be rejected by his own generation.  The Kingdom will not come with fanfare.  It will come like lightning — sudden, illuminating, but only for a moment.  You’ll see flashes of it: in kindness, in courage, in forgiveness.  But blink, and it’s gone.

I think of the long, tragic history of the church and slavery.  How centuries passed before anyone noticed the small spark Paul lit in Philemon’s heart.  For most of Christian history, bishops blessed slave ships, theologians argued about whether Africans had souls, and Christians quoted Paul’s own words — “slaves, obey your masters” — to defend the indefensible.  The Kingdom was among them, but they couldn’t see it.  Their eyes were fixed on the world as it was, not the world as it might be.

And yet — slowly, painfully — the spark grew.  Quakers began to speak out.  Wilberforce thundered in Parliament.  Abolitionists preached that no man can own another because all are one in Christ.  The old world cracked.  It took two thousand years for the Church to catch up with Paul’s little letter — but that’s how the Kingdom works.  It’s less a revolution than an infection — a holy contagion that spreads through hearts until it changes everything.

So, what does that mean for us — sitting comfortably in Havant, or Leigh Park, or wherever our pew happens to be?  Well, perhaps Paul is still writing letters — still whispering from the past: “If there’s anyone you hold in bondage — through resentment, or prejudice, or fear — receive them as you would receive me.”  Who is your Onesimus?  Who have you written off as useless, or unworthy, or just too awkward to love?  The Kingdom begins there — in the decision to see another person as brother or sister rather than threat or burden.

And when will this Kingdom come?  When will it finally arrive in all its glory?  Well — says Jesus — you won’t spot it by reading the headlines or the church statistics.  You’ll find it breaking out in ordinary places: at the foodbank, in a hospice, in a refugee hostel, in the quiet grace of reconciliation between two people who thought they’d never speak again.  The lightning flashes, and for an instant, you see the world as God intends it to be.

So, let’s keep watching for those flashes.  Let’s keep planting those time-bombs of grace.  And when someone asks us, “Where is the Kingdom of God?” — let’s smile, and answer, “It’s among us.  It’s here.  If only we dare to see it.”