Song of Solomon 2: 8-13
Psalm 45: 1,2, 6-9
James 1: 17-27
Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

When I was in university, which was long before cheap long-distance plans, personal computers and the internet, the most popular place at the end of the third class (that is about 11:30) was the basement of the library (otherwise known as the mail-room). I would make a beeline to Box M-288 and see if I had any mail. I was looking for letters or packages; ANYTHING personal. This was long before most of my mail was composed of bills, as I had no credit cards nor telephone or cable nor car and lived in residence so the bills from the University came only once a year (and were actually sent to our parents’).

If we were lucky we would leave the mail-room and wander off to lunch or the next class munching on some goodies sent from home or with our eyes glued to the letter from our family or from a friend at another university. If we weren’t though, we tossed the junk mail we did get, in the garbage and found friends to talk to while leaning on the balcony railing on one of the top two floors of the library, what we called “hanging the rail”, all in order to avoid hitting the books of course <

You may remember that a week or so before I left on study leave and vacation I was talking to the children about what it is that we ALL have in common. We don’t have a common place of origin, or residence, nor school from which we graduated, or the same heritage, or the same kinds of employment, but we do have one thing in common: the desire to express our faith in the God we have met in Jesus of Nazareth. The Epistle of James specifically addresses this issue as he writes to those who have committed themselves to Jesus, the Christ.

We are not sure who was its intended initial audience, but it seems certain that it was a “general letter” and not one sent to a “specific community”. Even though it was written over 1900 years ago, the epistle of James is as relevant today as it was back then. It is a letter which is, in a sense, addressed to each one of us as the church today is concerned with the same issues.

We are far removed in time and culture from its initial context, but this letter proves the saying, “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” In a very real sense this letter is written to each and every generation of those who seek to follow in the way of Jesus.

What does it mean to say” “I am a Christian”? Does it mean that one has certain beliefs, such as “God created the world”? Does it mean ascribing to certain creeds, such as the Apostles’ Creed. without crossing your fingers as you say them? Does it mean going to church every week, serving on every committee and giving ten percent of everything you make to the church? Does it mean helping the poor. OR is your faith a personal thing which doesn’t much affect your life, as long as you follow all of the rules and don’t break any of the ten commandments?

Or does it mean that your whole life is oriented by the gospel?

What does the word “faith” really mean? What part do “works” have in the life of the Christian? Over the centuries there have been great debates between those who study the writings of Paul and those who study the Epistle of James. While they seem to be in direct contradiction, the real issue is whether or not they are. The apostle Paul writes of “salvation by faith alone” while James emphasized the importance of works, almost as more important.

This should not distress us that much as Jesus himself was involved in great disputes over what was important in the life of faith, as our Gospel reading shows as well. What Jesus was upset with was a life of faith that only ‘scratched the surface” and did not afect the whole person. He was interested in “heart” as well as “hands and feet”.

Indeed what we often call the “Old Testament” is full of these arguments.

For example there are passages where the people of Israel are told to have nothing to do with foreigners, as they seek to keep their religion pure, while other passages such as the books of Ruth and Jonah seem to contradict this as they talk about God’s love for foreigners or show them in a very positive light.

In our passage for today from the gospel, and in similar passages, Jesus argued that hand washing and rituals, a large part of religious observance in his day, were not nearly as important as what came from one’s body or actions. If someone was cheating his neighbour in business or lying to his or her spouse, it did not really matter if they washed your hands before you ate or kept a kosher kitchen (to use a term from later Judaism). It was, as I said, the heart and not just the hands and feet.

I think that James and Jesus would agree and not be disputing with one another. I also think that both would agree with Paul as neither would set aside the law, or the importance of faith, but would seek to see it fulfilled in principle rather than mere practice.

We must remember that the active love of neighbour is enshrined in the law as found in the Old Testament. Love of neighbour is not just an idea but a whole way of life. Paul would have agreed. In addition the prophets were continually talking about faith as a covenant relationship. The care of the widows and orphans was an important aspect of their culture long before the time of Jesus or the early church.

So what can we distill from these passages.

FIRST: that faith is much more than just believing things with our heads or even our hearts. We may believe that Jesus is the Son of God and we may believe this with our entire being - from the top of our head to the soles of our feet, but if it does not affect what we do with our feet and hands and our speech, then perhaps we do not believe it as deeply as we think we do.

If you look at the quote from former US President, Jimmy Carter, that I placed at the beginning of the bulletin we see one man’s perspective on the integration of beliefs and actions.

SECOND: We can become tied up in so-called “moral codes” such as those which used to prohibit drinking and card playing and doing anything on Sunday and decide in the particular situation in which we find ourselves, what is the thing which our faith demands of us.

There is no “one size fits all” handbook for this kind of faith. It requires prayer and reflection and the reading of scripture. It requires struggle with issues of faith and action within community. It requires listening to the needs of others.

Yesterday I went to the POW-WOW at Elsipogtog. A large “First Nations” community nearby One of the people who took part in our orientation was a spiritual leader who talked about the importance of not just “practising” his faith but of “living” it, especially when it was difficult. I think that one of the things that we need to really challenge in the Church is the idea that being a follower of Jesus makes our life ‘easier” or “free from worries and problems”. We need to realize that true followers of Jesus take on the problems of the world and of others, voluntarily and intentionally. It’s not about what we can receive, it is about what we can, by God’s grace, give.

A major international conference on AIDS has just wrapped up in Toronto. Stephen Lewis, a Canadian and UN envoy on AIDS delivered a scathing speech on the lack of real action in regard to this pandemic that is devastating the continent. The money can be found but it seem that the will is not there.

This week marked the anniversary of hurricane Katrina and if we were watching the anniversary specials we would have seen countless stories of how little has been done to help the people rebuild their lives and we wonder where all the caring has gone. Ewe wonder if those in the Lower ninth ward of New Orleans were white and better off, would they still be in temporary trailers. Would the preparedness for the disaster have been better. Does the world really care about the poor, I mean does it care enough to really do something meaningful and lasting.

The issue is not that we can live and keep our lives free from sin and temptation but that we can live out the Gospel message of complete love of God and love of neighbour as self.

Let us go forward committed to walking the walk as well as talking the talk.

Amen!

Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2: 1-17
Mark 7: 24-37

There has been a great deal of attention paid to “accessibility” lately. In the last few weeks I have been seeing news stories on renovating existing houses so that older people with decreasing mobility can live in their own homes and not have to make a move. They were talking about things such as wider doorways and accessible washrooms and main floor bedrooms.

Over the past thirty years or so the people who design and build public buildings have been constructing accessible buildings because, not all people in wheelchairs are elderly, some are in the midst of their careers or are children. This mind-set has applied to church construction for many years. I don’t think the United Church would approve the building plans for a new church building if it did not include full accessibility.

It’s easy enough to do in a new building: things such as wider doors, graded entrances, wider stalls in the bathroom, pews designed to accommodate wheelchairs without having to place the wheelchairs in the aisles. Carefully designed audio systems help the hard of hearing and large print bulletins help the visually challenged. In many older buildings though even partial accessibility can seem to be an overwhelming challenge.

When I was serving the Malagash- Wallace Charge Now, Three Harbours,. It is in Nova Scotia, on the “Sunrise Trail”. the children in the Malagash Sunday School asked why we had no ramp; the otehr churches on the Charge had ramps. The Sunday School Superintendent brought it up at the Annual Meeting one January.

Well, it wasn’t as easy as it looked and the people that knew about these things in the congregation talked and measured and figured and then hemmed and hawed and measured and figured some more. Even though it came up at every annual meeting after that they put off making a decision until after I had moved here. No matter how they looked at it, it seemed just too difficult. They eventually saw the wisdom of the children and found a way to made the necessary renovations. They had to remove the pew the choir sat in while waiting for the service to begin, install a side door and a ramp which has the recommended length for the number of feet it rises off the ground to get to the door. The ramp looks like it’s always been there. The building can be welcoming of those who have problems climbing stair as well as anyone using a wheelchair. Wheelchairs still can’t get to the basement but the ramp is a big start.

The residence of Atlantic School of Theology is a building that is about 50 years old or more. It has a few wheelchair ramps and an old freight elevator that you “can” get permission to use. There is one problem though: the last time I checked it only went to the second floor. When the building was put up the third floor was just attic space for storage and clothes lines! Now, its full of rooms for students but the elevator still only goes to the second floor. However, the washrooms on THE THIRD at floor have been renovated to make them accessible TO PEOPLE IN WHEELCHAIRS.

It is really hard to remove all of the barriers that keep people from achieving their full potential. The most difficult barriers though, by far, to overcome are the barriers that exist in people’s minds.

We might look at someone and make assumptions about what they would be good at, or what they would not be any good at based on a “first glance”. We assume that since no one “like that” has ever done that job or come to this church, that such a person could not do it or would not want to come. If we didn’t have a ramp, it would mean that no one in a wheelchair could come, without a great deal of difficulty.

On one episode of Cold Case the suspect in a murder had successfully hidden the facts about his background so that he could belong to the “right clubs” to achieve success in life and business - for in that town in that era, people of his ethnic heritage were not allowed in those clubs. In fact He killed someone to keep this fact from becoming known in order to ensure his future success.

In Jesus day there were strong barriers between people, especially between Jewish people and Gentiles and between men and women. Today’s gospel passage is a disturbing story about an encounter between Jesus and a foreign woman. All that we are told is that her daughter was sick and that she was from the Phoenician province of Syria. In other words she was “from away”. And that’s all we really need to know is that she was a woman and a foreigner.

The first disturbing thing to me in this story is Jesus’ reaction. This is not the ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild”, to whom we have become accustomed. This seems to be a rude and callous Jesus. Essentially, he tells her that she is a dog and she isn’t getting any of the children’s bread. What an insult! However, the people who followed Jesus around probably would not have batted an eye. They would have expected this. He would have “put her in her place” and she would have gone away. She should have gone away! After all the Messiah was to come and make the Jewish people great again; what good were Jewish promises for non-Jews?

This woman is on the ball though. She makes use of the same image that Jesus does and beats Jesus at his own argument. She tells him that even dogs can eat crumbs. By saying this she shows Jesus that she believes that even a crumb of grace and power will heal her child and she is not leaving without it.

She receives this and so much more. Perhaps the later church looked back at this incident as one in which Jesus taught his disciples that the good news of the kingdom was for everyone, BUT perhaps the gospel writer ALSO is telling us that Jesus also learned a lesson this day.

We sometimes like to think that Jesus was perfect from the “get go”, but I prefer a Jesus who was a little more like us, with prejudices and blind spots like the rest of us, but unlike some of us, prepared to change when he realized that his old arguments didn’t work anymore. Jesus grew and developed in his faith, even after he started his ministry.

I know lots of people who will argue something till they are blue in the face, and the argument gets even more vicious when \ they realize they are wrong, but the problem is that can’t admit to anyone, perhaps even themselves.

It IS hard to get our heads around the kinds of barriers with which Jesus lived day to day. Yet we have many similar barriers. There is a commercial on tv which starts with a girl asking if she can sit at a certain table in the school cafeteria. The two at the table get up to leave saying, “Is she serious”, using only the tone that a teenage girl can use. Another girl sees this and deliberately goes over to sit with the one who has just been shunned by the “popular girls”. Why was she not “someone to sit with”? Who knows? It does not matter, for we all know that such exclusion happens and not just in high school. As grownups we are just more adept at hiding it!

The message from today’s gospel is that such actions are not gospel actions. Gospel actions are the feeding of the thousands on the hillside. Gospel actions are the healing of the blind and lame. Gospel words are “welcome” and “you are loved” and “go, your faith has made you well”.

To use Jesus’ metaphor, we have no right to restrict access to the table at which the bread of God’s love and healing is served.

The question for us is: who would find a welcome in this community of faith, or perhaps more importantly, who would not? What is standing in the way? Are we like the disciples sending away the children or are we like who I could call “the old Jesus” and feel that they, whoever they are, are not worthy of what we have to offer.

The reality is also that we are the Syrophoenician woman. We have to recognize in ourselves the hidden hurts and faults and shortcomings that we are afraid to show, even to ourselves, especially to ourselves. Perhaps, deep down, we feel that we would not be welcome if they knew, or if God knew.

God does know and God does welcome us anyway.

That’s gospel. That’s mission.

God welcomes us. Let us welcome others.

Amen.

Proverbs 1: 20-33
Psalm 19
James 3: 1-12
Mark 8: 27-38

A few months ago I watched a TV movie about the first person of colour to become a Navy Diver in the US Navy. It seemed that he had to work harder than everyone else to pass the skill and endurance tests, but finally he did. After an accident which took his leg, he became the first disabled diver in the US Navy. His superiors and his fellow enlisted men looked at him and they did not see what they considered to be a “navy diver”. Not only did they not see him doing that job, many did everything they could, ethically or otherwise, to stand in his way.

Qualifying as a navy diver involved an extremely demanding training program and his success was all the more astounding given all the prejudices that he had to battle. The people around him needed to rethink their ideas of what and who a ‘navy diver’ was in order for him to begin to be accepted. Indeed , many people who have been the “first” in a certain profession have had a harder row to hoe and had to work extra hard to gain acceptance.

You could say that Jesus of Nazareth was in a similar position. It is generally agreed among biblical scholars that Jesus had relatively little education and came from a very poor family. He didn’t meet anyone’s expectations as a prophet or a religious leader and he knew it all too well. He drank and enjoyed good food, and that displeased those who wanted the messiah to be someone who gave up the “pleasures of life” but on the other hand he did not seek to curry favour with the rich and powerful which displeased them greatly. He seemed to prefer to spend his time with outcasts and sinners and a large part of his ministry was spent criticizing the forces in society that kept them poor and on the fringes. He was supposed to be a religious and political leader but from many peoples’ points of view, he certainly did not seem to know how to be one.

Yet even as they dismissed him, he would not go away. He would not take “no” for a answer and neither the common people nor the people of power knew what to make of him. He was popular but still very much misunderstood.

It was common in those days to look for the return of great figures from the past. So to claim that he was the return of John the Baptizer, or Elijah or some other great figure from their past, would not have raised as many eyebrows as it does toay.

There were lots of rumours going around town. There were all sorts of theories about who he was. I’ve already mentioned several: Elijah or John, returned from the dead.

He asks his disciples what is going around town about him. “What is the ‘word on the street?’ “ Yet, that wasn’t what he was really interested in. He was interested not only in what the disciples thought, but also in what they were prepared to commit their lives to.

You see, the Christian life is not so much about abstract theology as it is about our interactions with the day to day world in which we live. When it comes right down to it, the Christian faith is not really about “believing” certain theological propositions, or reciting creeds containing ancient and obscure language. The Christian faith is not about the past, nor is it really about the heavenly future; the Christian faith is about making a total commitment to the One with the power and authority to change our lives completely and totally. It’s not really about following “the right” and avoiding “the wrong”; its about a commitment to the “way of the cross”.

You see, the disciples, and I would suspect, the vast majority of those who followed him saw the messiah as someone to bring health, wealth and happiness to those who followed. The promises of the Messiah and his glory were for their benefit. It was a sort of “believe and prosper’ theology.

I think that this is why Jesus asked Peter to be silent. He had it right that Jesus was the Messiah but he had to learn that really meant.

Some people believe that iur faith teaches us that Christians are supposed to seek out suffering, or that suffering is good. I don’t agree. It’s not that Christians are called to suffer for the sake of suffering, but that Christians are to willingly adopt a way of living and being in the world that more often than not involves some kind of suffering. We don’t choose to suffer, we choose to follow Christ and we may well suffer because of it.

I think that the image of the cross in this, and similar, passages is also misunderstood. People may refer to a calamity in life such as an illness, tragedy or disability and sigh, “I guess this is the cross I must bear”. NO. That’s NOT what Jesus is talking about. It may be a lot of other things but that kind of situation is not a “cross”. A cross is always something willingly, or at least deliberately, taken up, as a choice.

Yet, these unavoidable circumstances can result in cross bearing. I believe that these things to which I refer are NEVER God’s will but as a people of faith we believe that God gives us the strength to cope with them in faith. And while they are not crosses, as such, how we choose to respond to them can become a cross. Let me explain.

I was surfing the net yesterday afternoon, reading newspapers articles and I came across the story of a Cancer survivor who met Terry Fox in 1980 while he was making his run across PEI. His run was barely on the Canadian radar and he was making appearances at schools on the Island to receive donations from schoolchildren. This young woman remembers the lasting impression he made on her as she presented him with a cheque for the money she and her classmates had raised. The other day, she herself, now a cancer survivor, spoke to students in her former school about the importance of cancer research.

In the case of Terry Fox and many others such as this young woman, it isn’t the cancer itself that was the cross, it was what happened when he took on a mission, willingly and in full realization of its potential cost. Ironically, last evening as I was finishing up this sermon I took a break, flipped on the TV and saw that the “Terry Fox Story” starring Shawn Ashmore as Terry was on. It brought back the memories from my own high school years of how this young man captured the heart of a nation one hop/skip at a time. No one will ever really know what it really took for Terry to run that Marathon of Hope, but we do know that many of those miles were run in pain. We know that he did not seek glory for himself but he ran for those diagnosed with cancer so that some day “the hurting would stop”.

In terms of today’s passage it was a kind of cross and even though he did die, the Marathon of Hope has meant a better quality of life for so many and his legacy lives on.

We can’t all be Terry Fox, but we don’t need to be. We all have opportunities presented to us, opportunities to make a statement about what we believe and to risk making a difference. A cross is a simply a decision to live for others but out of simple actions often come great results.

A cross will sometimes bring ridicule, rather than fame, or it will leave people scratching their heads and wondering “why” so much effort for so small a victory, but for the cross-bearer, it’s clearly worth. For the worth is not measured in the results, but in the doing. The doing us ours, the results are God’s.

Cross bearing is not a call to let the bullies of the world walk all over us. Internet colleague, Nathan Nettleson cautions us saying, “( these words) have far too often been used to ensure cowering compliance with oppression. Abused people have been told that denying yourself means putting up with the abuse and saying nothing. Just endure and pray. Be subservient and trust God to sort it out in the end. But if you think about it, Jesus is neither saying nor modeling any such thing. Those who are compliant and subservient do not need to be killed. It is those who are a threat to the status quo that must be killed. What Jesus is doing is constantly and openly exposing the violence and corruption of the system.” from the PRCL-L preaching list

My internet colleague reminds us of how change happened in India in 1930 under the leadership of the spiritual leader, Mahatma Gandhi. He was a prophet of non-violence. In their quest for justice they met the violence of the army with peace. Many died but their non-violent resistance was the biggest catalyst for real change that could ever be imagined. If they had fougnt back the world might well have said, “the strongest force wins, good for them, “but when the British Army mowed down unarmed civilians the violence of that oppressive system was laid bare for all to see.

We are called to believe in a new kind of world and put our actions where our heart is. What is this new world. This new world is one where there is no poverty caused by human action because neighbour will be loved as self. In the paradox of the gospel those who lose their lives will find them.

Amen!

Proverbs 31: 10-31
Psalm 1
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8
Mark 9: 30-37

STOP!

I was reading some old sermon preparation resources as I was preparing for this sermon. The ‘sample sermon’ offered for our reflection talked about a group of clergy gathering for lunch one day when the topic came round to computers and ended up in a “mine’s bigger than yours” - kind of competition. At the one end of the scale, an elderly member of the group used an old typewriter to write his sermons, while at the other end of the scale sat the member with a 486 with 6 megs of RAM. WOW!

It may help you to know that this meeting took place sometime in the early 1990's, eons ago, in computer terms! Such a computer could handle little more than word processing these days, but as for the information highway; it would still be in the garage. Computers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and even if you buy a “state of the art” system it’s practically obsolete as soon as you have it up and running.

I’m not sure what exactly is driving this particular change but competition to be bigger and better than the next person is part of it. Another part of course, is the competition between designers to see what can be built into a ‘standard personal computer’. And of course once the majority of programs are designed for faster and more powerful machines you have to bite the bullet and upgrade. Even if you don’t feel the need to upgrade, many components are not designed to last and your computer just wears out, like so much else we buy these days. For good or for ill, that’s the way the world is and that’s what keeps our economy going.

Today’s gospel reading relates an incident in which Jesus makes an comparison between welcoming a child and welcoming him. That would have been a startling statement to those who first heard it. In that time and place children were nothing, nobodies, and certainly not worth the attention of a busy and important teacher.

It’s very different today! Children are a very important part of our society. We spend a great deal of money on children these days. As soon as a child is born she costs money. Cribs and car seats must meet the latest standards; and if you are expecting a second child, the stuff you bought for the first one may be deemed “unsafe” by current standards. I learned this just a few weeks ago from the parents of one of those “second” children. As a child grows we make sure he has proper clothing and shoes. We make sure she is involved in sports and that he has enough good books to read and educational video games to play and we monitor their television to make sure the programs are appropriate for children, AND WE SHOULD be doing these things.

One of the most fascinating seminars I have ever attended made reference to a book with a title something like “The History of the Child”. It argued that childhood was a relatively modern invention. At first that sounds absurd because, after all, society has always had children! Without children in every generation the human race would die out!

With the move from agricultural based economies where the labour of children was essential, through to an age which saw children working in dangerous conditions in factories, to an age where only grownups work and contribute to the economy, unless you are in farming or run a small business, there have been many changes.

In Jesus’ era, childhood was another thing altogether. It wasn’t just that children were ‘seen and not heard’, or that ‘sparing the rod would spoil the child’. It wasn’t just that the children should have been with the women and not bothering an important rabbi. It wasn’t just that.

We might think that it was children’s innocence or naivete to which Jesus refers, but given his time and place, it was their complete lack of status. Except within the family to which they belonged, children had little value or worth to the society in general. It’s not in welcoming a person with power and money that you welcome me, it’s in welcoming those with no status and little, if any value.

Wow!

I’m sure this set the disciples back a bit. Remember, they had been arguing over who was the greatest. But before we are too critical, we need to admit that disciples in 2006 do that too. We ministers may compare computers, or the number of bible studies we conduct or the increase in church attendance. Friends and acquaintances may argue over who had the most exotic vacation, or boast about how much we made on the stock market before that ‘hot stock’ went cold, or how much money we have in mutual funds for retirement or how well our kids are doing in hockey, or a host of things over which we try and convince others that we are better than they are.

Or maybe we are just surrounding ourselves with things and achievements to try and convince ourselves that we are people of worth.

In 2006 we grow tired of those things very quickly and it tends to take more and more to satisfy us. Three bedrooms may be enough but then we want a bigger kitchen with fancy new appliances, a bigger family room and a bigger television to go in it, a bigger vehicle with more horsepower and more and more toys for big boys (and girls) clogging the driveway and garage at the more impressive address in the better part of town. We want and we buy and then we want more and the buying starts all over again.

Then there is the whole sector of our society that does not have enough money to live on. The rent on their inadequate housing is keeping them poor and it’s sometimes a choice between paying rent and buying groceries. The rich manage to get taxes cut and the social assistance rates and the minimum wage can’t be raised to a level that makes any real difference. And the lack of possessions is translated by society into a ‘lack of worth’.

I think that what the gospel is trying to say is not that being well off and having ‘nice things’ is intrinsically evil, but that focussing on these things and these priorities is misplacing and crowding out what should be our most important priorities. But, we throw up our hands and say, “That’s how our culture is. How can we be any different?”

We need to realize that the Good News of the Gospel has always been counter cultural. At it’s heart, the Gospel is not about competing with the goal of being the strongest, or having the most, or the biggest, or the most expensive. The Gospel is not about people who have the most, being worth more; or who are the best at something being worth the most. The gospel is about the fundamental equality of all people before God AND about our call to welcome all people as children of God equal in value to us.

It’s not about wanting to be a ‘loser’ it’s about having different priorities. It’s about having priorities that allow for compassion instead of competition, giving instead of receiving and acquiring. Its about owning some stuff being perfectly ok, it’s about not being owned by our stuff.

It’s a way of life calling us to give our best to something far bigger and greater and longer lasting than the world can offer.

It’s not an easy calling because many of ourselves find ourselves in professions or careers that demand success, that demand competition, that mark success only by growth.

I know lawyers who feel trapped by a profession that measures success by working more hours each and every year; by sales people who have to increase sales, every year, by colleagues who think something is wrong if they don’t have a new car every other year, or have another promotion by now. A parishioner said to her husband once day, “we have enough money dear, you need to choose: are you married to your job or to me?”

As a culture we have worked ourselves into a corner of progress and growth being the only way to value success. It’s like we are on a treadmill and can’t slow it down or stop for a breath. We need to find ways to get off the treadmill at some point and take a look at what it is that we truly value and what we spend out lives doing.

The gospel lesson may give us some clues about getting off this treadmill and once again focussing on what is important. We can get off the treadmill by acting as if there are indeed other things in life that really count. We are told to welcome those who have no social worth. Welcome those who cannot contribute in any way to your material success, or prestige, or popularity. Find small ways to change your need to have more by spending time and resources on those who cannot give but only receive.

As families and as communities and as a society we need to look at the intrinsic worth of the individual when we set our priorities, not just at what we can ‘receive back’. As a people of faith we follow the one who spoke of that life of faith as a paradox: we find our life by losing it and we receive best by giving. It’s not what we have or what we do; it’s who are and whose we are.

We are children of the living God, seeking to follow in the way of Life abundant. What else can be as important?

Amen!