Physiologus, perhaps

 

In the second century Physiologus the pelican was an icon of Christ

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
TRINITY SUNDAY (May 21^st) 1989

 

READINGS

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

 

I can do no more on Trinity Sunday than offer to you a few questions, a few thoughts, and a “so what.” The Trinity is perhaps the only Christian doctrine that is utterly distinctive. The doctrines of Creator, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Incarnation: all of these we share with one or more other religions.

As any good Jehovah’s Witness will tell you, the word “trinity” is never mentioned in the Bible. Yet, as our reading from Romans demonstrates, the notion is clearly there. In embryonic form, certainly, but there. Paul is beginning to speak of a one in three, of a mysterious relationship between the Creator, the Son, and the Spirit who enflamed the disciples with her strength,

We are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ …

God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit

which has been given to us.

Yet if God is one, how can this be so?

Hear, oh Israel the Lord your God is One.

This is, in Jewish thought, the first of the ten Commandments. It is small wonder that Jewish people accuse us of worshipping three gods, and Muslims accuse us of claiming that God – as Spirit – slept with Mary.

We are speaking in the midst of a mystery, and speaking of a mystery. Now I see as through a dark glass. Are we speaking merely of three faces of God? God in a kind of a Fatherly mood, God in a kind of a Sonly mood, God in a kind of a Spiritly mood?

Not so.

Such a view was centuries ago dismissed as heresy, though most of us, if not all, would embrace it from time to time.

Why indeed have a Trinity?

The reason is simple. If we believe, with John and Paul and all the New Testament, that Jesus is the way in which God’s nature – God’s face on which no person could look – is revealed to the world, that Jesus must be of the same make up, the same substance as the Father.

I cannot reveal to you what it is like to be a cat because I am a human. And if, since the Ascension, it is the Spirit’s task to make known to us the nature of the Son and of the Father, then she too must be of the same makeup or substance or stuff as Father and Son. All must be one.

So for centuries, the ancient Church Fathers deliberated until they eventually came up with a formula that best maintained unity of God, as revealed in the Old Testament, while accommodating the Father, Son and Spirit language of the New Testament. We say it each time we say the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed. Shortly we shall say it again, in another form [the Creed of Athanasius was used].

Nevertheless, in the end it remains a mystery. Three is not normally one, and one is not normally three.

So why not throw it out? Why not join the Jehovah’s Witnesses who dismissed the Trinity, or the Jews or the Muslims or the Unitarians?

I believe there is one very good reason. It is the same reason as explored in my Lenten sermons. As I travelled with you through Lent, I sought to emphasise the miracle that the God of Christianity is not merely the God “out there,” the God who makes and then exits from the heavens and the earth. God, who created humanity, enters utterly into the grot and experience of human beings. God takes into his own being[1] the experience of pain, of loneliness, of death. God cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

And God rises.

The fact is this: that each person’s experience of the triune God is the experience of the whole triune God. The only God we know is the God who self-reveals in Jesus Christ. We can only grasp so much, but Father, Son and Spirit, our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Comforter, are one.  God in trinity experience all of our human suffering, enter into our suffering, and offer from within us the hope that Easter, the Resurrection, is for us. For us, and for the starving, homeless, angry and bereaved people of the world. For us and for all who, like us, are flawed, tainted, imperfect.

For us.

So the Spirit now enters us to strengthen us in our knowledge of the Son who suffers for us, and to remind us of the Father who creates us.

That is the mystery. Unable to be made simple – like water, ice and steam – for God is not simple. Unable to be understood, only to be explored, believed, celebrated.

God, Father, Son, and Spirit.
God, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.
God, who suffers as we suffer.
God, who rejoices as we rejoice.

 

All shall one day be made clear, when we see no longer through a dark glass, but see God face to face.

---

[1] In 1989 I was still wrestling with adequate forms for inclusive language, including of the Trinity. I would put this differently in 2026.

that they may be one

 

If I leave my desk too long

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION (May 5^th) 1989

 

READINGS

Acts 16:16-34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 14:23-29

 

“I have given them the glory you gave to me,
that they may be one as we are one”

What is it, this mysterious and elusive unity that Jesus prayed for before his glorification and agony on the Cross? Where is the answer to his prayer? Why are we not one?

One of my few basic understandings of things scientific is that there is a law that basically says, “if you don’t put energy into a system then it degenerates or decomposes or fragments or generally becomes a mess.”

It often seems to me to be true. If I leave a sausage in the fridge too long it becomes green and furry. If I leave an apple on my desk too long it does likewise. If I leave my desk too long without an input of energy it becomes like it is at present: an atrocious mess.

Indeed, since today is the beginning of Marriage and Family Week, one might say that the same is true of home life. Without an input of energy a marriage decomposes to a waste land, and family life degenerates to frustration, boredom, disillusionment.

It certainly appears to be true of the Church. Since our Lord made his plea for the unity of the Church it has continually splintered into fragments. The Jews and the Greeks fought bitterly within Christianity in early decades. The East and the West formalised their split in the eleventh century, but it went back centuries before that. The Reformers and the Catholics, the Anglicans and the Presbyterians, Methodists, and other Protestant groups – even today we see new division between Anglicans and so-called Continuing Anglicans. In the Pentecostal churches I witnessed bitter divisions between pre-millennialists, post-millennialists, mid-millennialists, even a-millennialists (I’ll tell you one day what they all are!).

“I have given them the glory you gave to me ,
that they may be one as we are one”

Yet it is true also that there have been signs of improvement. No longer does the Catholic school kid cross the road sneering “protty pig” as a Protestant kid walks to school. No longer does the sensible Protestant presume that all Catholics are condemned to eternal fire unless they convert.

The fruits of seventy years of ecumenical labour are easily visible. Liturgies in Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist churches are becoming increasingly similar. Our scriptures readings each Sunday around this block of East Ringwood are almost certainly the same. We are being spoken to by the same God and at last hearing the same voice.

“I have given them the glory you gave to me ,
that they may be one as we are one”

But there is so far to go. Inter-communion is as yet far off, though many of us long for the day when we may legitimately eat our Lord’s flesh and drink his blood regardless of whether the Eucharistic rite is Roman, Anglican, or Uniting. That day will come.

But we must continue to expend energy, to place our energy into the system we call the Church. I believe that now, at Ascensiontide, the message is abundantly clear. Our Lord has expended his energy in bringing us salvation. It is up to us to continue the expenditure of energy to bring about the unity for which he longs, and to bring about the proclamation of the gospel to which he has called us.

Next Sunday we shall celebrate the coming of the empowering Spirit. There is, in other words, an input of energy into the Church since the Ascension of Christ. But there is also a responsibility on our shoulders to use our energy in the service of the evangel, the gospel. Or the gospel, too, may become green and furry. Or cluttered and disorgan
ised.  Or introverted and self-serving.

“Father, I want those that you have given me
to be with me where I am
so that they may always see my glory.”

 

The Lord be with you.

Shalom, I give you

 

The former Holy Trinity, Ringwood East

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (April 30^th) 1989

 

READINGS

Acts16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22:1-5
John 14:23-29

 

“Peace I bequeath to you: my own peace I give you”

One of my pet hates is commercial broadcasting. That is not to say that from time to time I don’t watch the dreaded 7, 9 and 10, oh listen to the vast range of commercial stations across the FM and AM bands. But it is to say that I feel insulted and tortured by those stations, television and radio, as they incessantly bombard me with their message, their message of noise and money.

As a child at boarding school, where transistors were highly illegal, we used to snuggle them up to our dormitories at night, and listen to the request programme through the earphone until close down. For stations did close down then – and at the early hour of 11:00 PM. I remember clearly the depths of silence that used to descend on me as the station, 2ZW,[1] went off air, and then the deeper, more mysterious silence as the station transmitters were turned off altogether.

Then I would remove my earphone to hear only the silence of the night. Perhaps another boy in the dorm coughing on settling down after turning his illicit radio off, or tossing in his sleep. Or perhaps the engine brake of a truck, some distance away, grinding its way down the hill into the city. Then silence would descend again.

Until the silence became the silence of my own sleep.

And the silence was a taste of peace.

Of Shalom.

To make such a claim is not to debase the mystery of Christ’s teaching, “peace I bequeath to you.” It is often only the child who can really perceive the awesome simplicities of Christ’s teachings. “Peace I bequeath to you.” The peace of God that transcends all understanding may be like the peace of a winter’s night after the noise of a radio, or the peace of a baby feeding after a frenzy of frustrated screams. We may all have our memories of peace.

But where is it now? We may have moments of it – not, ironically, at the passing of the peace in church, which is a symbol of God’s peace – but perhaps during or after the Communion. But where is peace in the life and teaching of a church that like Chanel 7, or Eon FM[2] constantly bombards us with action and information? Where in a church that seems to equate faith with work and the spirituality with being constantly and aggressively active, is there the Shalom of Christ?

“Peace I bequeath to you.”

When were you last still, deep within the stillness of God?

I am hoping that late this year or early next year we might be able to offer a parish quiet day. I am hoping and praying that stillness and silence – signs of God’s peace with us – may become a part of our communal experience of faith in Christ and of our liturgy. For it is when we begin to explore the depths of the stillness and the peace – the Shalom – of God that we begin to find the strength-in-faith that can lead us through the turmoil of everyday existence.

It is to offer that peace to the world that our Lord bequeathed to us his Spirit. As we prepare for the coming of that Spirit at Pentecost I pray that we may begin – or begin again – to discover that Spirit who empowers us and who strengthens us, but whose signature is peace beyond comprehension

---

[1] Later,  River City Radio, Whanganui.

[2] Later, Triple M.

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.