We do not live by bread alone: A Meditation before the Blessed Sacrament

Meditation before the Blessed Sacrament at Sung Compline & Benediction, 3rd March, first Thursday in Lent

‘We do not live by bread alone’

 

Jesus, bread of life, in the gospel of St Luke we read that you, ‘full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and were led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days you were tempted by the devil. You ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, you were famished. The devil said to you, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ You answered him, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.” (Luke 4.1-4)

 

Lord, we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from your mouth.

 

May we savour your words as the bread of life.

 

‘How sweet are your words on my tongue,

They are sweeter than honey to my mouth.’ (Psalm 119.103)

 

We consume you in the sacrament of the altar, may you consume our lives and fill them with your light, glory and presence.

 

May we taste and see that you are gracious;

trusting in you, may we be blessed (cf Psalm 34.8).

 

Lord Jesus Christ, Bread of Life, feed us, your people, in our earthly pilgrimage.

 

We do not live by bread alone, but many go hungry in our world.

 

We pray tonight for all who hunger for bread.

We pray this night for the people who are beginning to go hungry in Ukraine, the starving of Afghanistan, of Tigray and Ethiopia and all in food poverty in this country.

 

Jesus, in your body we find healing of our bodies, our minds, our spirits. Be to us the food for our journey.

 

May all your people find their souls satisfied and may we be led to the banquet of heaven.

 

‘We do not live by bread alone’

 

Silence

 

Blessed be God.

Blessed be his holy name.

Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

Blessed be the name of Jesus.

Blessed be his most Sacred Heart.

Blessed be his most Precious Blood.

Blessed be Jesus in the most holy Sacrament of the altar.

Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.

Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most Holy.

Blessed be her holy and immaculate Conception.

Blessed be her glorious assumption.

Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.

Blessed be St Joseph, her spouse most chaste.

Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

 

 

The Movement of the Heart: An Ash Wednesday sermon

 Ash Wednesday 2022. Readings: 2 Corinthians 5.20b-6.10; Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21

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The gospel of Ash Wednesday really sets our bearings for this coming season of Lent.

 

It does so in setting out the priorities of our demeanour in public worship, our almsgiving, prayer, fasting and orientation of heart.

 

The movement of the heart towards God is the essence of Lent. The practices of worship, almsgiving, prayer and fasting are the points on the compass that sets the direction for our hearts to turn afresh to the Lord.

 

So these practices are significant. They embody our intention; literally put our intentions into practice, expressed by our bodies.

 

This is not about what we say we will do, but about what we do, do.

 

Jesus condemns the hypocrites for shouting about, trumpeting, what they will do and never doing it or just making a show of their piety. As such there can be no movement of their hearts. They’ve had their reward. The reward they sought was to make showy displays; and they got it.

 

The mystery is that the reward is not measurable or eye-catching, such that we can say with St Paul, ‘I have nothing, yet possess everything’.

 

The ‘reward’ - if reward is even the right word - the reward of Lent is a changed heart, in Ezekiel’s words, ‘a heart of flesh and not a heart of stone’.

 

The season of Lent has a penitential character, in other words, it is about a change of heart through a thoroughgoing and honest acknowledgment of who we are and how we are. It reminds us that we have nothing yet possess everything, and it does so in a blunt way at the Imposition of Ash:

 

‘Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ’.

 

Lent, though, is not a time to be beaten up, but a time to be built up. And that is what penance is about, what it is for.

That's why to make personal confession in Lent is of deepest value.

 

Built up not beaten up. There’s a motto for Lent.

 

But if you’re still of the miserabilist approach to Lent, be reminded that, in Jesus’ own words:

 

‘God did not send the Son to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’ (John 3.17)

 

Lent, then, is a time to allow the deep movement of God in our lives, where we find deep reward.

 

Re-read tonight's Gospel reading. Essentially it asks, ‘where do you find your reward... truly?’

 

If adulation is the reward you seek, or the approval of others then you need spiritually to reassess, big time.

 

If the reward you seek is having nothing yet possessing everything then there is plenty to work with.

 

Either way, use this Lent as the compass to set the direction in your Christian life, that God make create and make in us new and contrite hearts.

 

 

'Seek ye my face' A sermon on the Sunday before Lent

Preached at Croydon Minster on the Sunday before Lent. Readings: Exodus 34.29-end; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2; Luke 9.28-36

My heart hath talked of thee, Seek ye my face : Thy face, Lord, will I seek.

O hide not thou thy face from me : nor cast thy servant away in displeasure. (Psalm 27.9-10)

 

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The human face tells many a story.

 

The face of the baby speaks of openness, wonder and delight.

 

The face of the older person, with wrinkles and lines, tells the story of times of trial, of highs and lows, of experience.

 

In recent days we have seen faces that testify to deep suffering and pain. Those are the faces of the people of Ukraine. They’re faces we recognise from Syria, Afghanistan and countless places around the world.

 

And on the other side we see in the face of Vladimir Putin calculated rage, grievance and an abusive sense of power that unleashes violence in the selfish pursuit of gain.

 

The countenance of the human face can tell us many things.

 

Something we have learnt from the pandemic is that a covered face impedes those subtle ways of communication, when we see that the words we are hearing don’t quite tally with the look on the face of the other.  We say we can read someone’s face.

 

So we talk about someone having a poker face: a face that disconnects internal feelings – excitement, nervousness and such like - from what everyone sees in their face.

 

The most beautiful person is the one whose external countenance reflects the inner life. It’s transparency of life. In other words, when you see their face you see their soul. That is beauty.

 

And that takes us to this morning’s readings and in particular the gospel account of the Transfiguration of Jesus, which are captured in the verse of Psalm 27 that I quoted a few moments ago:

 

My heart hath talked of thee, Seek ye my face : Thy face, Lord, will I seek.

O hide not thou thy face from me : nor cast thy servant away in displeasure. (Psalm 27.9-10)

 

The Christian life is about seeking the face of Christ, and having the face of Christ, so that what is seen in our face is who we are, without dissembling or cloaking. For in seeing the face of Christ, we see the face of the Living God.

 

Of course, we are often fearful of ‘showing our faces’. We mistake physical appearance for true beauty and attractiveness.

 

Truly showing our faces is about our spiritual beauty and that is what our readings are pointing us to.

 

In Exodus Moses encounters God in the holy place. The holiness of God so fills Moses’ life that his face shines. As it said,

 

whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him. Exodus 34.34-35

 

Moses’ encounters with God so filled him with God’s presence, that his face quite literally shone. It begs a question. In church, in personal prayer, in serving your neighbour – does your face shine? Does your face shine from a deep encounter with the Living God, or is there actually no encounter, and therefore no shining face? Does your face shine after receiving Christ in Holy Communion: do you allow your face to shine with his presence in your life?

 

St Paul writing to the Corinthians, as we heard in our second reading, develops the theme of the veiling of faces, suggesting that to be veiled is to distort our chance of seeing God face to face. The veil does not just stop others seeing us, but us seeing others, and more particularly the face of the Lord. The reading ended before the climax that comes a few verses later, where St Paul writes, beautifully:

 

For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor 4.6)

 

And that’s the point! We seek the face of Christ. Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of humanity and his face reveals who he is.

 

We see this most clearly in his Transfiguration, this wondrous revelation of his divinity shining through his face, and actually infusing his whole body.

 

The face of Christ is utterly authentic as human and divine: True God and True Man. Who he is shines forth from his face, and this is revealed on that Holy Mountain: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him’ (Luke 9.35)

 

The Transfiguration is represented in the East Window of this Minster Church, centrally below the crucifixion. The mystery of Christianity is that in the face of the Crucified One we see the glory and beauty of God who empties himself of his love poured upon us that we might have the capacity to live his life and ourselves shine out with the divine presence.

 

This is Christian spirituality at its deepest. And that is seeking the face of the Lord and seeing his face incarnate, crucified and risen, and seeing him and recognising him in the breaking of bread.

 

This is where we seek and find the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

 

My heart hath talked of thee, Seek ye my face : Thy face, Lord, will I seek.

 

 

A Future of Abundance or Culture of Scarcity?

GUEST POST by Fr John Ackland, preached at Croydon Minster Sunday 6th February 2022

Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

 

In this sermon I would like us to explore what could be called Theological Psychology -  but then I thought far too pompous and I might have some of us rushing for the door! But the intention is to consider how we ‘think as Christian people’ and how we respond to those thoughts?

Our Gospel repeatedly makes us look at the  church, each other and ourselves from our Lord’s perspective.

 

We are called to reimagine the church through the eyes of God.

 

Often at  our Ministry Team Meetings held every Tuesday we have explored the concept of what it means to have a Culture of Abundance or a Culture of Scarcity. It has been truly fascinating! Personally, I love this sort of inquiry because it really makes me think! 

 

"Is the glass half empty or half full?" is a proverbial phrase, used rhetorically to indicate that a particular situation could be a cause for pessimism (glass half-empty) or optimism (glass half full), So if we replaced the word pessimism for scarcity and optimism for abundance, well, we can ask ourselves- does our Minster church have a Culture of Scarcity or Culture of Abundance? Half empty? Half full? And why does it matter?

 

Well, this scarcity/abundance dynamic is at the heart of so many human encounters with Jesus.

 

Do you know that there is only one miracle that is found in all four gospels, only one that we find in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? What is it? It’s not the calming of the sea or raising Lazarus from the dead or changing water in to wine: it’s the Isaiahfeeding of the five thousand. It starts with ‘scarcity’ -so many miracles and parables begin from a perspective of scarcity.

 

Just five loaves two fish and five thousand people. Quite clearly there is not enough food. In the moment the disciples reflect that culture of scarcity! “we haven’t got enough, we cant do it” And rightly so in one sense. There is’nt enough food amongst so many. Scarcity.

 

But Jesus reflects that culture of abundance and miraculous things can happen when we have a culture of abundance.

 

So let’s briefly explore today’s Gospel reading.

You have probably heard this reading many times.

 

The scene is set; it is morning. Crowds have gathered to listen to Jesus on the shores of the lake.We see two fishing boats. The fisherman have been fishing all night without success.

 

So, they are washing the nets before returning home to eat and rest.

 

As more and more people gather to listen to Jesus, he decides

to climb into one of the two fishing boats asking Simon to put out into the water so he can speak from there to the crowd. Sound over water is amplified and he is now facing all the people and he speaks- but we don’t know what he says!

 

When he is finished he tells Simon to put out into deep water and let down the nets. Bearing in mind they had been working all night they are exhausted and the nets have already been washed, it was a big ask.

 

But he does it anyway and, as we know, miraculously, the nets are overwhelmed with fish. The nets threatened to snap so he calls for the other boat to help and they both came back to shore weighed down with the weight of the catch.

 

Simon Peter says to Jesus to “Go away! ….I am a sinful man”

Jesus says “ Do not be afraid, you will be catching people”

Then they all left there boats and everything else in there lives and followed Jesus. 

 

What does that mean?

Did you spot the culture of scarcity at play? We find it twice-  once because they fished all night and caught nothing, what’s the point of doing it all again- a scarcity mindset.

Second- Simon tells Jesus to “go away” he feels he is not good enough nor ever will be-a scarcity mindset!

Abundance is expressed in the catch of the fish. Abundance is expressed in the faith Jesus has in the imperfect Simon and the fisherman. 

 

In today's Old Testament reading, the magnificent Isaiah is in the presence of God and is being called by God to take a message to God's people. How does Isaiah react? He protests and says "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”. A statement of scarcity.

 

Both Isaiah and Simon Peter feel the magnitude of their unworthiness, there ‘feeling not good enough-ness.

 A seraph cleanses Isaiah lips with a burning coal  and’God asks Who shall I send and who shall; go for us?” and Isaiah says “Here I am, send me!” and Jesus has words of abundance for the fisherman “be not afraid I’ll make you catchers of people!”

 

Whatever troubled their hearts was let go as God set them on a new course and empowered them for new work in the kingdom.

 

That half full or half empty observation is linked to our ‘mindset’.
Our mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how we make sense of the world and ourself.

 

A very recent national Church report speaks of a church “captivated by scarcity”. That’s an interesting phrase- “to be captivated?”  The Cambridge Dictionary tells us that Captivated means

 

to hold the attention of someone by being extremely interesting, exciting, pleasant, or attractive:

 

 

Oh- so how does that work with being Captivated by Scarcity? Now I don’t know for sure yet because I am following up with that report to find out exactly what they mean.

But could it be, could it possibly be, that actually, a culture of scarcity is attractive and seductive because it is easier.

 

After all, ‘the church is struggling’, ‘we’ve done that or this before, didn’t work’, and ‘we don’t have the funds’… ‘Whats a church to do?’ You see how menacing it is. Scarcity can become a captivating interpretation because it makes no new demands, no need to change, you see?

 

Remember,  a Culture of Scarcity is a culture without hope!

 

Whereas abundance speaks of endless possibilities, yes, but it also speaks of risk! The safest, easiest way, is to do nothing- but God does not call us to do nothing- his call is abundant!

 

Research shows that mindsets play a significant role in determining life's outcomes. By understanding, adapting and shifting our mindset, we are told, we can improve our health, decrease our stress and become more resilient to life's challenges.

 

We are all imperfect Christian people and we are called to create that mindset, that culture of abundance that we find everywhere in our Christian Gospel- God wants this for us …. for our Minster church, for our faith and in our hearts and lives.

A culture of Abundance.

 

We have had two grim years of restrictions and prohibitions of previously unimaginable struggles.

But something happened in our Minster church this Christmas, an event that was the clearest example of what can happen when we are guided by a culture of abundance instead of scarcity and it was at no small risk!

 

 We had Carols of the Green- ‘Abundance?’  Yes, this event was to be as professional and generous as we could make it.

Those transforming Christmas lights in the trees, the quality of the food prepared with hired professional catering equipment and hot drinks, the wonderful Salvation Army Band. a log bonfire burning brightly and chocolates for all……if we had welcomed 150 people-we would have been delighted, whereas we had over double that amount. Most of those three hundred people were strangers to us.

 

People of all ages all backgrounds it was, truly, 

‘joyful and triumphant’

 

Risk? Yes. Of course. One cloudburst and it would have been a washout. Where there is culture of abundance there is always risk.

But the Minster church did it anyway.

 

There was great fear and risk for those lakeside fisherman who dared to follow Jesus

But they did it anyway.

 

There was fear and risk for the great prophet Isaiah.

But he did it anyway.

 

Of course, we must always be careful and act with wisdom and discernment in the decisions we make…to be prudent-of course- we must always be good stewards.

But our gospel calls us to be bold and brave.

 

Again, we are reminded that where there is a Culture of Scarcity there is no hope.

Where there is abundance there is hope-filled ambition where we reimagine the church through the eyes of God.

 

I’ll close by recalling our Pre Pandemic Minster Awayday- it seems an age ago. On that day the Minster people said wonderful things about what they wanted for the Minster church, words like ‘alive’ ‘a place of belonging’, ‘welcoming’ and ‘joyful’, ‘a church reaching out to the people of Croydon’.

 

That is the ambition of abundance!

 

And, in God’s name,

In God’s name…..….we can do this………AMEN

 

Service, loyalty, duty: An Accession Day Sermon

Preached in Croydon Minster at Choral Evensong on Sunday 6th February 2022, Accession Day.

Today we mark the Accession of Her Majesty the Queen. The Accession of the Sovereign is the moment when the previous king or queen dies and the new one is proclaimed as the new Sovereign. So, we say the monarch accedes to the throne.

 

For the Queen today must be very poignant, for it is, of course, the anniversary of her own father’s death, King George VI. It is also the day when her life was no longer her own and a heavy duty laid upon her, in which she had no choice.

 

You don’t have to be the most ardent royalist to acknowledge the Queen’s personal qualities. Throughout her reign the Queen has been a model of a Christian monarch. She is exemplary in service, loyalty and duty. Those are three virtues that are widely degraded today.

 

The Queen, one of whose titles is Defender of the Faith, shows the Christian understanding of service modelled on Christ, the King, who took the place of a servant and washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. The ceremonies of the Royal Maundy derive from that.

 

Admittedly monarchs no longer, as they once did, actually wash the feet of their subjects, that lapsed in the seventeenth century, but the monetary offering recognises the service older men and women have offered to their communities in their lives.

 

The Queen’s loyalty to her nation, and the Commonwealth, is revealed in her tireless commitment to her work, even as she reaches a great age and length of reign. Her loyalty to her people and nation is shown in the way she understands her place within the constitution of this country, where she has, as the constitutional historian Walter Bagehot put it in the nineteenth century, ‘the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn’. Loyalty is about fidelity, faithfulness, sticking with what you have committed to. That’s undergirds being a baptised and confirmed Christian, it’s at the heart of Christian marriage: ‘til death us do part’.

 

The Queen’s sense of duty is legendary. Repeatedly she has put her own preferences to one side to undertake her role. There is something deeply Christian in this. It is a reminder for Christian disciples: my life is not just about me, and yours is not just about you. In an age where self is put first, duty says ‘my preference is not as important as seeking your wellbeing’ and I will stick at that.

 

Why does she do all this? Couldn’t she just take off her crown, slip off her royal slippers, stick her feet up and lounge around palaces all day?

 

I suspect the Queen knows all too well the words of Jesus Christ, the servant king, who was speaking about John the Baptist when he said ‘what did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses.’ (Matthew 11.8).

 

 

True Christian service doesn’t just get exercised in your home, whether that’s a royal palace or a flat in Croydon, or amongst people you like: true Christian service looks out beyond the comfort zone and is out and about, meeting and serving ‘all sorts and conditions of men’, as did Jesus.

 

A Christian sovereign has a high calling to be the ruler, the focus of national unity, the receiver of tribute, but also not to behave as the rulers of the Gentiles who, as Jesus says, ‘lord it over[the people]…it shall not be so among you’. (Matthew 20.25b)

 

What I am saying is that in being the Queen, the Head of State, which she has been for 70 years today, we see in Elizabeth, our Sovereign Lady, a fellow Christian working out what it means to be a follower of Jesus in her life and context. And she has done that in the glare of publicity. May we all be encouraged by the example of our sister-in-Christ.

 

Tonight, how might you reflect on what service, loyalty and duty looks like in your life: amongst people you relate to and work with; people you spend time with and people you love. How do you serve them? How are you loyal to them? How are you dutiful to them?

 

I hope we can all join tonight in praying for our Queen, giving thanks for her service, loyalty and duty these past 70 years, and commit ourselves to the loyal, dutiful service of those around us.

 

Let us pray:

 

O LORD our God, who upholdest and governest all things by the word of thy power: Receive our humble prayers for our Sovereign Lady ELIZABETH, as on this day, set over us by thy grace and providence to be our Queen; and, together with her, bless, we beseech thee, Charles Prince of Wales, and all the Royal Family; that they, ever trusting in thy goodness, protected by thy power, and crowned with thy gracious and endless favour, may long continue before thee in peace and safety, joy and honour, and after death may obtain everlasting life and glory, by the merits and mediation of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth ever one God, world without end. Amen.

 

ALMIGHTY God, who rulest over all the kingdoms of the world, and dost order them according to thy good pleasure: We yield thee unfeigned thanks, for that thou wast pleased, as on this day, to set thy Servant our Sovereign Lady, Queen ELIZABETH, upon the Throne of this Realm. Let thy wisdom be her guide, and let thine arm strengthen her; let truth and justice, holiness and righteousness, peace and charity, abound in her days; direct all her counsels and endeavours to thy glory, and the welfare of her subjects; give us grace to obey her cheerfully for conscience sake, and let her always possess the hearts of her people; let her reign be long and prosperous, and crown her with everlasting life in the world to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

O GOD the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Saviour, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions. Take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and concord: that, as there is but one Body, and one Spirit, and one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all; so we may henceforth be all of one heart, and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Joining our prayers with Our Blessed Lady, Mary, Queen of Heaven, with St John the Baptist, St George the Martyr, St Edward the Confessor, St Edmund, king and martyr, we say the Grace.

 

The grace…

 

 

Receiving Jesus: A Candlemas Homily

 

Readings: Malachi 3.1-5; Psalm 24; Hebrews 2.14-end; Luke 2.22-40

 

‘Simeon took the child in his arms and praised God’

 

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It is a very precious thing to be able to cradle a baby in one’s arms.

 

That is true when it’s your own child, but also true when someone else presents and entrusts their baby into your arms.

 

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Lord, and Joseph, her husband and Jesus’ guardian, presented Jesus in the Temple into the arms of Simeon.

 

We don’t know if Simeon had cradled children before as a father or grandfather, but, as a priest in the Temple, he will have received many children into his arms as their parents presented their firstborn sons, according to the Law of Moses, forty days after their birth accompanied by the offering of two pigeons or turtledoves.

 

By placing Jesus into the arms of the priest, Mary and Joseph were entrusting Jesus to his heavenly Father.

 

The priestly task is to receive sacrificial gifts, to offer them to God, such that they are transformed and then offered back to the people. We see this in the Eucharist, bread and wine is received and then offered to the Father, at the priest’s hands, and transformed by the Holy Spirit such that it becomes the body and blood of Christ, which we receive back into our lives.

 

But the child cradled in the priest Simeon’s arms was himself the Great High Priest, the embodiment of the Temple: the one transformed was not the offering, Jesus, but the receiver, Simeon, as in the Eucharist. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever; we are the ones transformed in receiving him.

 

Receiving Jesus in his arms opened Simeon’s eyes and his heart. As he received Jesus his life was fulfilled and he was now ready to embrace his mortality. Simeon could now die in peace: he had seen the Lord’s Messiah with his own eyes; a bright and burning light.

 

The same is true of Anna, the prophetess, who literally lived in the Temple looking with her eyes; opening her heart night and day to receive the Lord.

 

Oh how the church will be renewed when, like Simeon and Anna, we all – young and old - look longingly to see the fulfilment of God’s promises and then see his light to enlighten the nations; when we stretch out our hands to receive Jesus and cradle him in our hearts.

 

Mary cradled her child in her arms on many occasions, no doubt. Like most mothers, she will have cradled her Son in her arms to tell him stories; Mary surely telling the stories of Israel, of God’s saving love for his people. She will have cradled him in her arms to sing lullabies, quite probably the psalms which he came to know so well.

 

But when receiving the child into his arms Simeon also speaks disturbing words to Mary: ‘and a sword will pierce your own soul too’ (Luke 2.35b).

 

Traditionally Mary has Seven Sorrows, the first of which are Simeon’s words that a sword will pierce her heart. That’s why a title of Mary is Mother of Sorrows (Mater Dolorosa). That sword pierces her heart as she stands at the foot of the Cross (Stabat Mater). That sword pierces her heart as she cradles her Son, not now the bouncing baby but the Crucified. We call that scene of Mary cradling the dead body of her Son, the Pietà.

 

The child held in Simeon’s arms was his life and salvation and also a sign that he could die content. The prospect of death now held no fear for Simeon. Having seen and cradled Jesus Christ he could now embrace his own death, for Christ is life, he is salvation.

 

We have cradled candles in our hands today. That candle is a token to represent ‘the light to enlighten the nations and for glory for God’s people Israel’ (Luke 2.32).

 

‘The Lord is my light and my salvation’ says the Psalm, ‘whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the light of my life of whom then shall I be afraid?’ (Psalm 27.1-2).

 

‘Perfect love casts out fear’ says the First Letter of John. In the light, life and love of Jesus Christ we have nothing left to fear: not in life; not in death.

 

May we embrace Jesus Christ, cradle his message and meaning in our arms, in our hearts, in our minds, for, in so doing, we are embracing our present salvation and our future hope of the life of the world to come.