wasps and dolphins

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St AIDAN’S, ALEXANDRA and ST JAMES’, ROXBURGH

SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

(May 10^th) 2026

READINGS 

 Acts 17:22-31                                               

Ps 66:7-19                                                     

1 Pet 3:13-22

John 14:15-21

Eternal God, light of the minds that know you,

joy of the hearts that love you, strength of the wills that serve you;

grant us so to know you that we may truly love you,

and so to love you that we may gladly serve you,

now and always. 

 

In the collect we prayed a few minutes ago, both the representative words I spoke and the scattered, uncollected thoughts of all our hearts, we sought a deeper journey into the heart of the Creator. In the psalm we found the psalmist bursting out with joy at the experience of seeing God’s footprints, fingerprints, love prints in the visible world.

The psalmist or psalmists often found those prints in the natural world, and, somewhat less palatable to us now, in the great movements of history. In military success, for example, though before we feel too horrified at that, we might remember that it’s not so long since our forebears emblazoned praise to God on plinths of statues rejoicing in military victories.

We simply have to acknowledge that this has been a part of the human story, that we are flawed, that we live together uneasily, that we shed blood either literally or through the exploitation of our planet and its species. Not you and I specifically, not very often. That's why our confession is plural. We have. I may have, but that’s not the point. 

Few of us have sinned extraordinarily badly. Unless we take to heart the animal liberationists’ heartfelt cry, “meat is murder”?

Despite having a few vegetarian offspring, I for one have never quite mastered the dissonance between my love for animals and … well, you know? Perhaps C. S. Lewis was right when he made Aslan differentiate between the dumb animals and the talking beasts – trees included?

I don’t know.

Part of me wants to be a Jain, sweeping the streets so I don’t kill living beings with my footsteps. Part of me will stop off at Jimmy’s Pies after the service and see if they have a venison or a steak and pepper left over. I’m worse – I apologize to inanimate objects, hoping desperately that a tree that I chop down or even a stone that I move doesn’t mind too much.

I drew the line at apologizing to a colony of wasps that I had destroyed a couple of weeks ago – they attacked me first! Nature is red in tooth and claw after all, and perhaps even the psalmists knew that.

Definitely even the psalmists knew that, though the words are Tennyson’s.

Though I was reminded, as I muttered about the wasps that attacked me, of the words of a pest destructor who destroyed a nest for me in Napier. “Wasp stings only last a few days,” he said. “Human stings last for ever.”

Do I digress? St Paul, as he stood in the Areopagus, knew only too well the brute forces of nature. While possibly the shape of this speech that Luke recalls reflect Luke’s style as much as Paul’s, we can be very sure that it was consistent with the latter.

We know that Paul knew the ups and downs of nature – human nature and the mysteries of what I’ll  have to call “natural nature.”  In a remarkable and powerful passage in second Corinthians he even boasts of all he has endured in the service of the gospel. It’s an ugly list, far worse than a few wasp stings gained not in the service of the gospel but in a random moment on a dog walk.

I have been writing this week of the suffering of a group of missionaries, some from this diocese, who sought to bring Christ love to China in the 1930s. They weren’t bible-bashers, they were bearers of compassion. Some of them died for their attempts. Or – if we look at the honours board at St James Roxburgh, we will see the name of Nurse Esther Tubman. I was writing of her, too, recently. Like the missionaries ten years later she, in the best way she knew, was seeking to bring hope and healing to those in dire need.

Paul looked at the plinth in the Areopagus and saw the good in divinity and humanity alike. He spent the last couple of decades of his life seeking to demonstrate that goodness and justice and love was embodied not in po-faced religiosity, in laws and regulations and trying to look good, but in the life and teachings and actions and death and above all resurrection of the man Jesus of Nazareth.

He was executed for his troubles of course, because he poked the bear of civic and religious hypocrisy.

While most of us are living more sedate lives it’s worth remembering that not so long ago Alex Pretti and Renee Good poked the bears of brutality and injustice in the Unites States. So too did Martin Luther King, in a manner much more programmatic and direct. So too is Pope Leo, and Bishop of Washington Mariann Budde.  It is only the mysteries of time and space that prevent you and me from the dangerous underbellies of existence in Trump’s USA or Chiang Kai-shek’s China or the Kaiser’s war.

We are called to be who and where we are. That too is mystery, unfathomable. Our task is to respond to the God who has called us by worshipping, and by allowing our lives to be a waling advertisement of Gospel hope.

By proclaiming with our mainly quiet lives, that this same God who casts universes across heavens and inexplicably creates wasps and dolphins, mountains and mudslides alike, is the God revealed in the life, teachings, death and the craziness of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

That’s what Paul dared to proclaim, respectfully, as he stood amongst the people of Athens.

 

Easter, 1989: Follow

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (April 8^th) 1989

  

READINGS

 

Acts 5:27-32
Psalm 118:14-29
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31

 

One of the advantages in having pew bibles in a church is that there are occasions when we can turn from the individual text that we are considering on the day to the broader context of that text’s place in the complete gospel, epistle, or whatever it might come from. It is also possible to compare texts with other passages.

I am going to ask you to turn in your pew bibles to the end of John’s account of the gospel (incidentally I won't refer to it as John’s gospel because each gospel account is not the author’s but Christ’s good news). And we will read the verses immediately preceding today’s gospel account – don’t close the bibles after Jan has read the passage!

Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look  into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew,“Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.

 

What you have heard there is the original ending of the fourth gospel account. If you glance down the text to John 21: 24-25 you will find a second ending.

Most scholars will tell us that the hand that wrote most of the fourth gospel is not the same as the hand that wrote today’s reading. So we must ask the essential question that we must ask of every scripture reading: why? Why is there a second ending?

Each of our four gospel accounts was written for a different community. With a little bit of educated guesswork, scholars are able to identify the location or make up of each community involved. John’s gospel account, for example, is fairly anti-Jewish, and was almost certainly written for a Gentile Christian community.

It would seem that soon after the original author of John finished writing or narrating his memories of the Jesus event, something changed dramatically within his community. The most likely thing is that he died, and that following his death disputes broke out over his importance. Wether he or Peter was the “right” evangelist to follow. By the end of the third letter of John, for example, we find a writer expressing quite different attitudes to those expressed in the gospel account.

So we find the author concerned to portray Peter and the “beloved disciple” alongside one another. To compare their strengths and weaknesses, and to emphasise that it is not they, but the Christ they preach, who is the focus of attention.

The reading draws the attention – our attention – to Jesus’ central command.

Follow me.

It is this, not the command to Peter to feed lambs and or sheep, or the various questions as to the quality of Peter’s love, that lies at the heart of this reading.

Follow me.

It is this message that lies at the heart of the gospel. If we turn to the opening of John’s gospel account we will find the same command being obeyed.

The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.

 

In Mark’s gospel account we find this again.

As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

 

So the desired response to the gospel message – to an encounter with the risen Lord – is as Jesus here commands: “follow.” At the end of Mark’s gospel accounts he simply tells the women that he has gone ahead of them, that he will always go ahead of us.

The response that Jesus seeks from us is to follow. To follow him out into the community with the message “Christ is risen.” Squabbles over whether we prefer Peter or John – or Rome or Canterbury – pale into insignificance as we learn to obey the greater command: follow.

Are we following Christ?

Heraclitian Fire

 

EASTER MEDITATION AT HOLY TRINITY, 

RINGWOOD EAST
March 26^th, 1989

 

It was but a few days ago that I attempted to grapple with the tragedy of Good Friday. At the heart of all the agony and despair of Good Friday there is Good News. There is the news that God is not impartial or uncaring. There is the news that God is not “out there,” neither merely a “Higher Power” nor a “Grand Architect.”

Much, much more. He is the God who is lonely with the lonely and who dies with the dying. He is the God of darkness. And that is Good News.

Where is God when it hurts? God is hurting, suffering, dying too.

But there is more, much more. God is not merely a God who identifies with and enters into the suffering of creation. God is the God who breathes hope into human despair. God is the God of Easter.

When we were baptised into Christ Jesus, we were baptised into his death. So by our baptism into his death we were buried with him, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glorious power, we too should begin a new life. If we have been joined to him by dying a death like his, so we shall be by a resurrection like his … we believe that, if we died with Christ, then we shall live with him too.

 

It is normal in the church for baptisms to take place on Easter day. As it is we today could find no candidates for baptism, but we shall all renew our baptismal vows. Baptism is the sign and seal of faith in Christ. Today is the birthday of faith and hope in Christ.

Death, where is your victory?

Death where is your sting?

                           (1 Cor. 15:55).

 

Today we all burst forth out of the waters of baptism, we all burst out of the tomb – we all burst forth out of the womb of death and proclaim,

“Jesus is Lord”

King of kings and Lord of Lords.

And he shall reign forever and ever.

Hallelujah!

 

This does not mean that we shall not die. It does not mean we shall not suffer. It does not mean that we shall not at times doubt the very existence of God. It does not mean we shall not catch colds, or cancer. We are human. We may even fear death: our fears make no difference to the great Christian belief,

Christ is risen, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

 

So shall we all, in the twinkling of an eye, in the passing of our life, be transformed and resurrected into his resurrection life.

And the scientific world seeks proof. I ask for proof of love. For proof of beauty.

There is no proof. Christ is risen. The testimony of the church is our proof, the faith of the saints our proof. Christ is risen, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

The waters of the sea will vanish,

      The rivers stop flowing and run dry:

a human being, once laid to rest,

      will never rise again,

the heavens will wear out

      before he wakes up

or before he is roused from his sleep.

                                    (Job 14:11-12)

 

Such is the wisdom of Job. Even the wisest and most pious human being cannot logically make the leap to belief in the resurrection – that is the realm of faith. “I believe, Lord, helpest thou my unbelief.”

So what is this resurrection that the Easter faith asks us to believe in? I guess the answer is that we do not know. The gospels seemed to be asking us to believe in more than merely the immortality of the soul, and certainly more than reincarnation. They seem to be telling us that we will again be flesh and blood. “We shall be raised,” says Paul, “incorruptible.” The hows and whats, too, belong to the realm of faith and mystery.

                           Faith fade, and mortal trash

            Fall to the residuary worm; world’s wildfire, leave but ash:

                           in a flash, at a trumpet crash,

            I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and

            This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond

                          is immortal diamond.

 

The Easter faith is that you and I are immortal diamond. We shall die, but as Christ rose from the tomb, as one baptised rises from the waters, so shall we mortals be raised immortal from the grave, and dine with the risen Christ at the Great Banquet. You are immortal diamond.

Christ is risen, Hallelujah.

huddling upstairs

 

my first sermon since June 29th

SERMON PREACHED AT St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN
and St PETER’S QUEENSTOWN
SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (April 12^th) 2026

 

READINGS 

Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31 

Eternal Father, through the resurrection of your Son, help us to face the future with courage and assurance, knowing that nothing in death or life can ever separate us from your love. This we ask through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen.

 

A few moments ago I prayed a “collect,” a prayer gathering together in one voice the many prayers, the many angles and nuances that we could whisper in our minds in the guided silence a few seconds before I spoke. There is a reason for praying a collect in that way rather than all “reading” it together – in fact there are a number of reasons, but one in particular I want us to hold in mind as we journey into John’s telling of the resurrection stories. 

And that is that no one person, not, sadly to say even me, has a copyright on the truth of those events on and following the first Easter day. As I will say over and over again we are now into the language of that which is beyond words. So the stuttered whispers in our silence are every bit as valid an expression of our hopes and fears in Christ as are the stuttered whispers of the person next to us. 

A week ago in the Dunston parish I did what I may or may not have done when I was with you, and that was simply to read CS Lewis’ great vision of the end of time from the Chronicles of Narnia. For the doctrines of resurrection, ascension, second coming and eternity take us into realms which our mere words, even the mere words of the gospel writers, can never grasp.

But those words can create a space in which we can dare to believe. The writer of our collect, the writers of all out collects, I hope, knew that. He or she pulled together words that express something of the hope that is brought to us in that unfathomable mystery of resurrection, and with it the unfathomable mystery of Second Coming, the belief that one day our Messiah our Christ will return and wrap up all human and celestial history, and bring us into the inexplicable reign of God.

To turn to John’s resurrection story that we just read, as he tries to narrate these beyond-words events, we find some important navigation aids for the somewhat crazy world in which we are currently living – even in far-from-it-all Aotearoa - New Zealand. Let me confess that I am very conservative in my reading of the resurrection appearances. They seen to me to carry deep truths that operate at both a literal and symbolic level.

The disciples were afraid. Having just lost, in horrific circumstances, their friend and leader, this is unsurprising. It is far worse than waking up each day to find out that a war that we are surprised to find existing, exists. That a war engaged by a man who promised no more wars, is being fought with massive loss of life on one side, by a man who wants a Nobel Peace Prize. That escalating fuel costs and the cost of living are rising almost exponentially, despite promises that were the opposite of what said man said he would implement. 

Of knowing that, despite learning over a 10 year period now that truth and falsehood are slippery concepts, and that the one claiming to be the sole arbiter of truth is the father of lies, knowing that despite all this, our weird 2026 world is not nearly as disturbing as that experienced by those who gathered in the upper room, terrified.

We need to pause for a moment with that phrase “for fear of the Jews.” That phrase  has caused so much aggression towards one racial group on earth. It will hardly be surprising to know that I am no fan of the current state of Israel; neither would I defend the indefensible of singling out any one religion or ethnic group for persecution or genocide. This applies whether the perpetrators are Aryan supremacists, Nationalists of any form, or leaders of any wing of politics. 

If we take time to understand the context in which John was writing we might err on the side of translating “for fear of the Jews” as “for fear of oppressive authorities,” no matter their ethnic or political alignment.

That said we know the disciples were huddled in terror and into that terror broke, despite locked doors, the bodily presence, unrecognisable at first, of the one who had inspired hope in this motley group for somewhere between 12 and 36 months. 

This unrecognisable figure spoke to the frightened few with reality transforming calm and spoke the word “peace.”

Peace in any language is never merely the absence of war, though that would be a wonderful thing, but the presence of justice, the presence of hope on macro and micro scales. Hope in the presence of horrendous international geopolitics, hope in the presence of ecological and economic vulnerability, hope in the presence of our own illnesses, or other aspects of our daily lives that have been wracked by unsettlement, even despair.

So powerful was the transformation that took place in that other upper room, that we hear about it still. Sometimes we too experience our lives touched and transformed by peace and hope that transcends all that we are experiencing personally or globally.

“Peace be with you” is no trivial “chin up mate, but an invitation to open ourselves up to the life and world-transforming hope that was embodied in the very tangible, if not at first recognisable man. This man who incomprehensibly entered the room and the lives of the huddled few who were gathered there, who equally incomprehensively still carried in his hands, his torso, his feet, the scars that human hatred had drilled into his body just hours before.

We are invited. no matter how inevitably inadequate we are, simply to be a people, and individual persons, who allow that hope, that love, that death- and despair-transforming life to infiltrate and direct our lives, individually and collectively.

Those huddling in the upper room, however imperfectly, did just that. So we hear and we are challenged to live their story today.

I finish as I began …

Eternal Father, through the resurrection of your Son, help us to face the future with courage and assurance, knowing that nothing in death or life can ever separate us from your love. This we ask through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

let the dark come upon you

 

GOOD FRIDAY MEDITATION AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST

March 24^th, 1989

 

 

Carrying his own cross he went out to the Place of the Skull.

 

It was a brutal sight. Flayed almost to death, bruised and bloodied, staggering under the weight of a heavy wooden beam, staggering out the main road of the city to crucified just beyond the city walls, in the sight of all passers-by.

The Romans must have believed in the death sentence as a deterrent. Not merely death, but up to four or five days of sheer uncontrollable agony: dehydration, cramp, stung by insects and by human tormentors, shifting weight from torn feet to buttocks to torn feet again in an effort to stop the body from slumping down and cutting off all air supply, and yet longing to die. Naked, defecating and urinating without control, to the mirth of the gathered crowd below.

Where is God in this? Where is the God who created the heavens and the earth? Where is the God who slew the Egyptian oppressors and delivered his people Israel through the Red Sea?

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour 

darkness came over all the land

says Matthew. Where is God when the lights have gone out, when all is darkness, and when the one longed for as Messiah is choking to death on a harsh wooden cross?

Christianity is a religion fraught with contradiction. A king who serves.  A saviour who will not save himself. A God who dies. The light that comes into the world but who is executed in darkness. The sinless one who dies a criminal’s death between two thieves.

Where is God in this?

Where is God when it hurts?

Where is God when I am lonely?

Why is this Friday Good?

There is nothing romantic about the cross. popular jewellery though it is, it is a ghastly symbol. Superstitious save-all though it has become it has of itself only the power to destroy, and to destroy torturously. What place has a nice God like you doing in a scene like this?

That of course is the good news. A nice saviour on a white horse saves only the nice people. A powerful saviour heading a vast army saves only the powerful. But a poor, lonely and detested saviour has something to offer to us all.

For the message that Christianity has to offer to the world is now clear. God identifies utterly with the pain and suffering and shame experienced by humanity. God is not a God “out there.”  He is a God who enters the darkness.

The light shines in the darkness.

 

He is not a god of magic tricks. He is the God who suffers death, “even death on a cross,” and does so not because he has sinned but because we, his wayward people, have sinned.

Where is God when it hurts?

God too is hurting.

God is dying with the dying.

God is lonely with the lonely.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you,
which shall be the darkness of God.

 

It is in the darkness of Good Friday that we find the mystery of a God who experiences all of the suffering experienced by humanity.

The light shines in the darkness 

and the darkness has not overcome it.

 

As we await Easter we shall discover that God is more, more even than the God of the raw and bloody cross.

 Amen

and it was dark

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST

MAUNDY THURSDAY

March 23^rd, 1989

 

It must have been a strange night, that night of our Lord’s last supper. It had been a strange week. First, his glorious entry into Jerusalem, and then he's going on and on about glory and about the coming of his “hour,” at the very same time that the crowds were becoming impatient with him and he was beginning to lose popularity.

Judas in particular was getting cross. He had waited for years for this wonderful hour, and now it seemed to be slipping away from him. For years he had been telling the people that the Messiah was coming, and in these past three years had swung all his support behind Jesus. He would relate to stories about the magnificent liberation of Israel in the old days and how now once more the state of Israel would be established, freed from the tyranny of Rome. He even talked of a racially pure state – expelling from the Jewish lands all who were not the chosen people of God.

And now this Jesus that Judas trusted and expected so much of seemed to be letting the side down. Early in the week it had been great. He had the crowd eating out of his hand, and the word was that Pilate was getting quite nervous about an uprising. A man named Barabbas had been arrested when he became over-excited, speaking of glorious revolution, and had killed some Roman citizens.

But then it had started to go wrong. Jesus was losing his popularity. He was shilly shallying around, speaking of being “a servant” and even of dying. He seemed to be losing his nerve, and Judas wanted none of it.

It was all a bit beyond the disciples, the events of this week. Judas was not alone in expecting decisive political events to take place following the entry into Jerusalem. Even Peter, ever faithful to Jesus, has been polishing his sword, ready for God’s decisive victory about to be worked through this Messiah, Jesus.

But Jesus now was behaving most strangely. Rather than using this Passover meal as an opportunity to rally the disciples and to regain the popularity of the previous Sunday, Jesus was now wandering around washing feet. Peter wasn’t too pleased about that at all, and Judas was looking very sour at it all.

Washing feet? No self-respecting Messiah would do that. The public must never hear of this bizarre behaviour. Jesus would lose all credibility. Could it be that the glorious chosen one of God was cracking under the strain? Was this the beginning of a nervous breakdown?

Yes, the disciples were very confused that night. What kind of a hero grovels at the feet of his followers? What kind of hero takes upon himself the task even the servants sought to rise above?

                              I think you’ve made your point now.  
                              Perhaps even gone a little bit too far.

 
It was only later, months and years later, that they realise that it is in precisely the shameful and disparaged things of the world that God reveals his nature. And that realisation came only after Jesus had sunk even lower than washing feet. It came after he died, alone, naked, and fly-blown, on a cross.

Only then did he become bread and wine to a hungry and thirsty world.

Only in the stupidity, the stupidness of the Cross does Jesus become Saviour of the World. Only in the shame, the scandal of the Cross does Jesus become revealed as the Messiah.

But Judas never realised that.

Judas went out into the night.

And it was dark.

finding the way

SERMON PREACHED AT SHELFORD GIRLS’ GRAMMAR

March 21^st, 1989

 

Some years ago in New Zealand a geography teacher from my school became lost in dense bush on the mountain ranges off the central North Island. You may or may not be aware of the geography of New Zealand, but there are many mountain ranges which are rugged and all but impassable. Steep razor back ridges and deep V-shaped valleys make travel exhausting, and the thick bush ensures that landmarks are almost impossible to see. The teacher had a map, but had lost his compass in a fall, and navigation to safety was proving difficult. As in any context where a person is lost, it is too easy to begin to go around in circles.

Are there any fans of David Bowie left these days? In one of his earliest and strangest hits he sings these words:

Though I’m past one hundred thousand miles

          I’m feeling very still,

and I think my spaceship knows

         which way to go.

 

The irony is that his spaceship is in fact drawing him out into endless space, breaking free of its orbit around earth, and carrying him to a phenomenally lonely death.

Tell my wife I love her very much. 

             She knows.

 

My geography teacher, and the character in Bowie’s song, Major Tom, was each faced with a big problem. Which way to go? Each faced the probability of a lonely death if the right decision was not made. Each was utterly alone, with no one else to guide their decision. One had a spaceship claiming to know the way, but leading him deathwards. The other had a map, but a map is useless without a compass.

We too are faced with serious decisions about the way to go. On a global scale we are faced with the problems of nuclear weapons – not only in the now cooling tensions between the Soviets and the USA, but elsewhere – and ecological disaster, the greenhouse effect. Five years ago the average person dismissed such concerns as being the foolish cries of greenies. Now even governments are taking notice.

And we are faced with personal questions about the way that we will go. What will be way? Do we make a god of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll? Of money? Of power? Do we want to be a Debbie Flintoff-King? Or an Annie Lennox? Or will we be content to be ourselves instead?

My geography teacher discovered something in the bush. He discovered that in that part of New Zealand a certain kind of moss grows only on the seaward or west side of the forest trees. By that discovery he was able to set his path for the coast, keeping a straight course, and he walked out of the bush near a main road, after two days, tired, but alive.

Debbie Flintoff-King and Annie Lennox too have their compasses. Their compass may turn out to be fulfilling and life saving, like my geography teacher’s moss. Or it may be self-seeking and destructive, like that of David Bowie’s Major Tom, or rather, of his spaceship.

It is up to you now, to find the way. It is up to you to choose your compass and your gods. You may, like Major Tom, make a God out of something that ultimately destroys you. Or you may find something that guides you into life.

Thomas said, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus said, “I am the way, I am truth, and life.”

                                                (John 14: 6)

 

During this Holy Week and Easter it should become clear to us all that there is nothing either soft or easy about the way of Christ. There is however the unexpected message that somehow the horror of Good Friday is changed into the hope of Easter. Just what your horrors and hopes are is your own concern. But it is my belief that, like the moss on the trees, the way of Christ is a good and ultimately rewarding choice.