The exciting life of St Luke the Evangelist

An image of St Luke in the C6th Augustine Gospels,
held in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

An address given at Templederry Church on Saturday 18th October 2025, the Feast Day of Luke the Evangelist, and at St Mary's Nenagh the following Sunday 19th October 2025

Today we are celebrating the feast of St Luke the Evangelist.

‘Evangelist’ is the title the church gives to the four Gospel writers, of which Luke is one of course.

When I first sat down to write this sermon, I decided to explore who this man Luke was, and who he wasn’t. I looked up scholarly resources, and many less reliable resources, such as Google. And I began to write a sermon filled with references and quotes. I realised I was just showing off my own less than scholarly erudition. Those of you in this family service who are older would have found it dry as dust, and those who are younger, dull as ditch water.

So I started again, trying to paint a vivid picture of Luke as a vibrant and interesting person, who lived a truly exciting life in the service of his God, of Jesus who rose from the dead, and of the rapidly developing and growing fellowship of believers of which he was a part.

So here goes…

Luke grew up in a Greek-speaking family, probably in the city of Antioch in ancient Syria.

Antioch was a big and important city, the capital of the Roman province of Syria, which grew rich on the spice trade with the East. Before then it had been the capital of the Seleucid Empire, founded by Seleucus, one of Alexander the Great’s generals, for some 300 years.

Antioch must have been an exciting place to grow up in. As a Greek-speaking capital city, it was full of arenas and theatres, schools and libraries. And it was a multi-cultural melting pot, the streets filled with visiting traders in foreign clothes, speaking strange languages. A bit like London, or New York today, perhaps.

In Luke’s time, Antioch was a centre for Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora. We do not know for sure whether he was a Jew or a gentile, but we do know Luke was highly educated. No doubt he attended one of the many schools, where he learned to write excellent Greek, better than the other Gospel writers. His books show he was familiar with Greek literary texts. We also believe he studied to be a medical doctor, because St Paul calls him ‘Luke, the beloved physician’.

Luke wrote two books of our New Testament, his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.

We know this because the language used in both, and the underlying theology, are so similar that they must have come from the same hand. Both are addressed to the same person, perhaps his patron, Theophilus, meaning lover of God. And all the early church writers agree Luke wrote both.

These books are works of history, in the style of the time, and Luke was no mean historian. There is little reason to believe he was ever an eyewitness to Jesus’s life. But in his Gospel he carefully collected and set down the story of Jesus’s life, drawing on different sources, including the earlier Gospel of Mark, a lost collection of the sayings of Jesus shared with the Gospel of Matthew, and some other eyewitness accounts unique to himself.

The Acts of the Apostles traces the story of how the primitive church grew and developed after Jesus’s resurrection up to the time of Paul’s imprisonment in Rome. The first part deals with the life of the church in Jerusalem, and the second part with St Paul’s ministry journeys. It reads like an exciting, adventure story, as the new church rapidly spreads, starting from a small group of frightened disciples in an upper room in Jerusalem, right across the Roman empire, to Rome itself. Do take down your bible at home and read it from start to finish to experience that excitement.

In Acts, Luke draws on many sources of evidence for his story, but for some of it, Luke himself is clearly an eyewitness.

Luke travelled with St Paul on some of his missionary journeys.

We know this because some of the later parts of Acts are written in the 3^rd person plural as ‘We’. For instance, Luke writes, ‘After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia’, and ‘We put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace’.

So it is not surprising, that Paul refers to Luke by name in some of his epistles. In Philemon (1:24), Paul describes Luke as ‘a fellow worker’. In 2 Timothy (4:11), as we heard in today’s 1^st reading, Paul, awaiting death in prison in Rome, says, ‘Only Luke is with me’. In Colossians (4:14), Paul speaks of ‘Luke, the beloved physician’.

Here a word of caution is due - many modern scholars believe 2 Timothy and Colossians were not written by Paul himself, though Philemon is universally recognised as Paul’s.

Today’s 2^nd reading, from Luke’s Gospel, tells the story of 70 disciples Jesus sent ahead of him in pairs to prepare his way in places he planned to visit.

It is the pious belief of the Eastern Orthodox Church that Luke was one of these 70 disciples, all of whom they name. They celebrate Luke not just as an Evangelist, but also as an Apostle of the Seventy.

Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus in the late 4^th century, is the first recorded to say he was. I am doubtful. If Luke really was one of the 70, why does he not signal his presence, as he does in the Acts of the Apostles? But the fact is, we really don’t know one way or the other. We should be slow to criticise the pious beliefs of other brothers and sisters in Christ.

We know little else for sure about Luke’s life.

A much later 8^th century tradition maintains that Luke was the first person to paint icons. This is doubtful, but Luke is widely recognised as the patron saint of artists. He is said to have painted a picture of the Virgin Mary and child, known as the Madonna of Constantinople. Although it is now lost, many copies exist and are venerated by the Orthodox churches. The art critic A I Uspensky says that other icons attributed to Luke himself display a Byzantine style not seen before the 5-6^th centuries, so could not have been painted by him.

What did Luke do after his time in Rome with St Paul? We know nothing at all about it. 

However, a later tradition says that he died aged 84 in Boeotia in Greece, crucified by pagans on an olive tree. We may make of that what we will.

What an exciting life Luke had!

He played a prominent role in the rapidly growing Jesus movement, the primitive church spreading like wildfire across the Roman Empire. We do well to celebrate him on his feast day!

I finish in prayer with a Collect from the Episcopal Church.

Almighty God, who inspired your servant Luke the physician
to set forth in his Gospel the love and healing power of your Son:
Graciously continue in your Church this love and power to heal,
to the praise and glory of your Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, 

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever. Amen.

 

The Last Supper was a Jewish Seder meal

The Last Supper, c. 1520, Andrea Solari (after Leonardo da Vinci)

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator streamed on Tuesday 14th October 2025

The reading we have just heard is Mark’s short account of the Last Supper (Mark 14:12-25), at which Jesus instituted the Eucharist. It is clearly a Jewish Seder meal, presided over by Jesus in the company of his disciples. The Seder meal is an annual ceremony at which Jews, both then and now, remember the Passover, how God led them out of bondage in Egypt on a 40 year trek through the wilderness. The Seder is celebrated not in a Synagogue or Temple, but in the home, where the family is gathered. Through the ceremony, children are taught the story of how God saved the Children of Israel and led them to the Promised Land.

This reminds us that Jesus and his disciples were Jews. Antisemitism, hatred of Jews as a distinct people and religion, has been a stain on humanity for centuries. Jesus was a Jew, and anyone who hates Jews must hate Jesus too. As Christians we must be very clear that antisemitism is incompatible with our Christian faith. 

Antisemitism resulted in the Holocaust, the genocide of 6 million Jews during WW2. People of good will swore it would never happen again. But antisemitic views have been increasing again in recent years. This is largely due to the actions of the racist Zionist Israeli state, which expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians when it seized power in 1948, and has been denying rights to Palestinians ever since. This is the background to the foul attack on Israel by Hamas two years ago, followed by the equally foul genocide Israel has been perpetrating on Palestinians in Gaza. Zionist apologists attempt to equate any criticism of the Israeli state with antisemitism, but we must be careful to distinguish between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. It is not antisemitic to oppose the racist and genocidal actions of the Zionist Israeli state.

Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi, but he was unafraid to criticise the Jewish leaders of his day, and the encrusted traditions of their faith, when he saw that they were incompatible with the lovingkindness of the God he called his Father. So at his Last Supper, knowing full well what his fate would be at the hands of his enemies, he modifies the Seder liturgy.

In the Seder liturgy, the host breaks the unleavened bread in half and says, “This is the bread of affliction our fathers ate in the wilderness.” Instead, Jesus breaks it and says, “Take; this is my body.” Over the blessing of the third cup of wine, the host at the liturgy is supposed to say, “This is the cup of redemption from bondage in Egypt.” But Jesus makes another substitution and says, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many”.

By doing so, Jesus institutes our Christian Eucharist, which we still celebrate in his memory. He offers his whole being, his body and his blood, as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. He commands us to celebrate it in his memory. When we do so, we participate in an acted parable, that shows us how to confront evil, receive God’s forgiveness, and be united with him in the eternal life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Seder meal concludes with a beautiful blessing, said together by those who are present. It goes like this.

Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe,
who, in His goodness, feeds the whole world with grace,

with kindness and with mercy.

He gives food to all flesh, for His kindness is everlasting.

Through His great goodness to us continuously we do not lack food,

and may we never lack it, for the sake of His great Name.

For He is a God who feeds and sustains all, does good to all,

and prepares food for all His creatures whom He has created,

as it is said: You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

Blessed are You Lord, who provides food for all.

Foreigners and Exiles

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 12th October 2025, the 17th after Trinity

‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.’

These words from Shakespeare’s As You Like It came to mind when I read today’s NT reading (Luke 17:11-19).

Luke tells us that Jesus healed ten lepers, and only one came back to show his gratitude. ‘Were not ten made clean?’, says Jesus, ‘But the other nine, where are they?’

I fear I’m more like the nine ungrateful than the tenth grateful one – and I dare say you are too. How many of us do not owe an immense debt to someone else? Perhaps to a friend, a teacher, a doctor, who has done something for us that we could not possibly repay. Or to our parents - a week’s neglect on their part would have killed us when we were new born. Yet how often do we forget to express our gratitude, how often do we not even bother to say thank you?

And we are often ungrateful to God as well. He has blessed us with so much. He has given us a wonderful world so perfectly made to meet our needs for food, clothing, shelter and beauty. He has given us the capacity to form deep loving relationships as parents and children, as friends and lovers. And God has even given us his only Son to show us the way to his kingdom, the way of self-sacrifice which leads through the cross.

When times are bad we may pray to God with desparate intensity, but when times are good we are inclined to forget to be grateful. At Holy Communion we recite automatically the words ‘Almighty God, we thank you for feeding us’, but how many of us ever offer even a silent grace before meals, I wonder?

Jesus saw that the one who came back was a Samaritan. ‘Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’, he says.

As an ethnic group the Samaritans were heretics - they did not behave, or believe, or worship as the Jews did – they were ritually unclean. They were disliked and despised by their Jewish neighbours – somewhat as some Irish people dislike and despise immigrants and travellers today. But Jesus teaches his disciples a lesson by drawing their attention to this particular outsider. He was the only one to turn back, to praise God for his healing, and to thank Jesus. Jesus publicly blessed him, saying, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well’.

Jesus is never dismissive of people who are different in race, culture or faith, and as Christians we should not be either. We are enriched by the diverse people who are our neighbours, and Jesus commands us to love them as ourselves.

Jeremiah (29:1, 4-7) gives the exiles in Babylon some good advice in today’s OT reading.

Get on with your lives - build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have children. But also, seek the welfare of the city where you find yourself, and pray for it, because in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Others at the time were stirring up the Jewish people to rebel against the Babylonians. But history shows that Jeremiah was wise. It seems the Jews did as he advised, they prospered in Babylon.They retained their identity, so that some 70 years later, after Babylon in turn had been overthrown by the Persians, their descendents were able to return to Jerusalem and restore the Temple.

It is good advice for migrants everywhere. It is good advice for the New Irish who have made our country their home. And it is good advice for the many Irish emigrants overseas. If we love them, let us pray that they may build good lives in their new communities and work for them to flourish, because if their new communities flourish, so will they.

But what of those of us who remain at home?

The news media are filled with stories of war and suffering. But I suggest it is the carefully phrased reports from scientists which should be of most concern to us. It is clear that human actions are seriously damaging the web of life on this beautiful planet God has placed us on.

The linked emergencies of climate change and biodiversity loss will force lifestyle changes on us all very soon. We do not yet see clearly what those changes will be, nor how we must adapt to new conditions. But change and adapt we must. One thing we can be sure of, the future cannot be one of ever-growing material prosperity as we have been conditioned to expect. We have grown up in a world where endless economic growth and increasingly wasteful consumption seems natural. As the limits to growth become more and more apparent, we will start to feel like exiles in our own country. We will have to find ways to live good and happy lives with less.

Jeremiah’s advice is good for us as well:

Get on with your lives, Jeremiah says. We must not look back at what we feel we are losing, but instead we must look forward.

Build houses and live in them, Jeremiah says. It is shameful that as a society we allow so many to be homeless, and it is shameful that policies of austerity ruin the lives of the poor, the sick and the vulnerable, even as the rich grow richer and the crisis intensifies. We need to build a better, more equal and resilient society. Together, as communities, we need to build our capacity to cherish all our neighbours, and we must love them as we love ourselves.

Plant gardens and eat what they produce, Jeremiah says. We are blessed with bountiful renewable resources: our land and seas to feed us, energy from wind, ocean and geothermal heat, skilled people and vibrant culture. Let us use them productively – they are the gardens that will feed us.

Marry and have children, Jeremiah says. Ordinary human life will continue, and our children are signs of our hope for the future. Let us use our capacity for deep loving relationships as parents, children, friends and lovers, to support and care for them and for one another.

But also, says Jeremiah, seek the welfare of the city where you find yourself, and pray for it, because in its welfare you will find your welfare. Let us strive to protect our God-given planet and build a just and sustainable society for the future, because only in such a society can we flourish, alongside all God’s creatures.

And lastly, let us behave like the grateful Samaritan and remember to turn back, praising God, and giving thanks for all he has given us.

I shall finish in prayer with a Collect of the Word:

O God,
you have made heaven and earth and all that is good:
help us to delight in simple things
and to rejoice always in the richness of your bounty;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen

 

Forgiveness

Erica Kirk speaking at the memorial service of her husband Charlie Kirk

Article printed in the October 2025 issue of Grapevine, the news sheet of the Nenagh Union of Parishes

I suspect few if any of us had heard of Charlie Kirk before his foul murder in America on 10^th September. Aged 18, he set up Turning Point USA to advocate for conservative values on school and university campuses around the USA. He became deeply embedded in Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, cultivated friendship with many of its leaders, and is credited with encouraging many young people to vote for Trump in 2024. Since his assassination, MAGA is now trying to make him into a martyr for the MAGA cause, justifying persecution of their enemies.

Like most if not all of us, I detest Donald Trump. He claims to be a Christian, but his words and actions make a mockery of it. He is an avowed enemy of the liberal, democratic views I espouse. He is making our world a much more dangerous place, and blighting the lives of millions, not least in his own country. But Trump is an old man, two years older even than me. His confused and rambling speech, and erratic decision making, suggest he may be developing dementia. He will not last forever. What really concerns me is the MAGA movement he has created, which looks set on establishing an amoral autarchy to perpetuate a US government where might is right, and the purpose of the state is to punish opponents and enrich a coterie of billionaires.

I don’t seek to disparage Charlie Kirk’s evangelical Christian faith, but I am disgusted by his political views. He facilitated Trump, espousing Christian nationalism, young earth creationism, climate change denial, and islamophobia.

Charlie’s wife Erika, however, seems to be made of different stuff. In an emotional eulogy for her dead husband at a memorial service in Arizona before a crowd of more than 100,000, she bravely offered forgiveness to the shooter who killed Charlie, saying,

"My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life..."

"On the cross, our Saviour said: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' That man - that young man - I forgive him. I forgive him because it's what Christ did. And it's what Charlie would do."

"The answer to hate is not hate. The answer - we know from the gospel - is love. Always love. Love for our enemies. Love for those who persecute us.”

It is well worth watching or reading her speech, which you can find by googling ‘erica kirk full speech’.

I am deeply moved by her words. It would have been so easy for her to express her grief through words of hate, riling up the crowd to seek revenge. But she did not, she spoke of love and forgiveness, truly Christian values. Unlike Trump himself, who spoke of hating his opponents. I think her words in that febrile atmosphere may have prevented an orgy of revenge attacks on people the MAGA crowd see as enemies. We shall see, but as the new leader of Turning Point USA, I pray that she will continue to speak words of love, not hatred, and help to bring a bitterly divided USA back to sanity, back to Christian values, back from the brink. May God bless her, may God bless America, and God bless every one of us.

Life in the Spirit and Salvation

A testimony given to the Life in the Spirit seminar organised by the Nenagh Charismatic Prayer Group in St John's Church, Nenagh on Tuesday 23rd September 2025

Introduction

My name is Joc Sanders, and I am a sinner. I try to follow the example of my Saviour Jesus Christ, but all too often I fail, as we all do if we are honest. I am a baptised and practicing member of the Church of Ireland. I am a layman, authorised by my Bishop as a lay minister to lead worship and preach within his gigantic diocese of Tuam, Limerick and Killaloe. I am also a member of the Community of Brendan the Navigator.

This evening I’m going to give you a very personal testimony. I have agonised over it for many hours, trying to be as open and honest and clear as I can be.

I shall tell you about how I have experienced the Holy Spirit at work in my own life. And I shall offer you my own thoughts about the nature of Salvation, which is the theme of this second seminar. But first I shall tell you a little of my life story.

A little about myself

My mother Lucie was a Waller of Prior Park near Carney. My father, Rev Derick Sanders, was a priest ordained in the Church of England, part of the Anglican Communion, whose family came from Charleville, north Co Cork. I was born in Nenagh hospital on Easter Day in 1948. My mother told me that the nursing sisters attending her had to miss their Easter Mass because of me – and she joked that I had been a trouble ever since!

My childhood in England with my younger brother was idyllic, at first in a rural village near Cambridge, and later in a small town in North Dorset. We had pets. We had bantam hens and Muscovy ducks. We raised a baby rook, and tawny owlets. I attended the 2-teacher village school, and I ran wild around the village with the other children, raiding birds’ nests, pond-dipping, and scrumping fruit. I came to love the natural world all around me, learning the names of plants and the songs of birds, a love which has only grown over the years.  

I was just as naughty and bold as all the other children, and got into all sorts of scrapes. But I was blessed with a loving and thoroughly Christian upbringing. As a child I learned from my parents’ example that the most important thing in life is to be a ‘useful engine’. You may remember that the Fat Controller in the Rev W Awdry’s books used to praise Thomas the Tank Engine for being a ‘useful engine’, when he had been particularly good.

Every summer my mother brought us back to her home place, where I learned to milk a cow and teach calves to drink from a bucket. Later, as my grandparents aged, a friend lent us a one-up-one-down cottage on Lough Derg, which we could only reach by boat. We met cousins, we paddled, swam, rowed boats, sailed, and generally mucked about on the water. I am blessed that much later I was able to bring my own children to stay there, and they in turn did so with theirs – 4 generations of wonderful memories.

Later, as a young adult, I worked in IT, at first in London, and then in South Wales. I married in my early 20s, and with my first wife we raised 4 lovely children. Sadly, our marriage didn’t last. It was as if an evil spirit was spreading through our social circle, driving couples apart with untold damage to our children and our friends. I was terrified of the future. I fell into depression. I went through a very painful divorce, from which I like to think I emerged a more empathetic and kinder person. Happily, the mother of my children made sure they could come to stay with me one weekend a month and for a fortnight’s summer holiday. The divorce must have been equally painful for them, but I’m glad to say they remain close and loving, and I’m proud that they are all, in their different ways, ‘useful engines’.

Through these years I drifted away from the unthinking faith of my childhood. I could no longer see the Good News of the Gospel as anything more than myth. To declare a belief in ‘God the Father, creator of heaven and earth’ seemed to me just another way of saying ‘I do not know how ‘all that is, seen and unseen’, came to be’.

My professional life moved on. My focus changed to software quality assurance and standards. I took early retirement and returned to Ireland, where I worked at the Centre for Software Engineering on the DCU campus. This gave me opportunities to teach and mentor, to write a textbook, to work on European projects and meet software engineers across Europe. I became an Irish technical expert with the International Standards Organisation developing software engineering standards.

That is how I met my wife Marty, God bless her – she was a technical expert with the USA delegation. Raised a Methodist, she shares my Christian faith. We did our courting over the internet, with long weekly phone calls, and getting together at quarterly meetings. I am very blessed that she agreed to move to join me in Ireland. You have to move fast to sustain an intercontinental relationship, and we were married within a year of meeting, in her mother’s Presbyterian church in Florida.

We lived and worked in Dublin for several years, but we longed to settle back in North Tipp, where we had a weekend cottage, to be close to my parents, extended family and friends. Finally, we took the plunge, resigned from our jobs, and started a new life here. I got a teaching job with the Tipperary Institute. Marty continued standards work, and went back to study in UL for a PhD. Since then, we have both retired.

The Holy Spirit in My Life

Let me turn to some of the ways that I have experienced the Holy Spirit at work in my life.

One of my earliest memories as a toddler is of escaping from my mother’s side in a church pew, and throwing myself on the ground in front of the processional cross. Everything had to stop until I was picked up. I was upset and hollered, but I don’t remember being chastised for it. I wonder if this was an early prompting of the Holy Spirit. If so, I managed to evade the Spirit’s call for all too many years!

Prayer

I think that I most experience the Holy Spirit at work through prayer. It was my mother who taught me my first prayer, this simple bedtime prayer:

‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on.’

And my father taught me prayers I still use, among them this one, by St Richard of Chichester:

‘Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits you have given me, for all the pains and insults you have borne for me. O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother, may I know you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly, day by day.’

It is in stillness, contemplation, and quiet reflection, often without words, that I can feel God’s loving presence. Then the Holy Spirit can work with my God-given reason and my conscience to help me distinguish right from wrong, the Spirit can show me my need for the forgiveness Jesus promises through his life and ministry, death and resurrection, and the Spirit can gently guide me to know what God my loving Father wants of me.

I have come to realise that prayer is not about demanding what I want from God, like a petulant child. Instead, prayer is about aligning my wishes with God’s will, through the mediation of the Spirit. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t pray for what I wish for – if I can’t reveal my desires to God, who can I reveal them to? But I should model my prayers on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me – yet not my will but yours be done’.

Lay Ministry

I began to reconnect with church after I returned to Ireland. This was not a sudden, blinding conversion experience, such as St Paul had on the road to Damascus. It was more a slow, growing attraction to the essential psychological truth of the Good News.

When Marty and I left Dublin, we found our church home in the CofI Nenagh Union of Parishes. I was co-opted onto the lay committee responsible for managing parish affairs. There’s nothing like giving someone a job to engage them! Later our Rector retired, and without a resident priest, regular worship fell away. We are blessed in the CofI to have authorised services other than the Eucharist which can be led by laity. A few of us, with permission, began to lead services of Morning Prayer to fill the gaps.

The long and the short of it is this. I came to feel a ‘call’ to lay ministry, in the sense that leading worship was something that I could do for the church community. You might say I wanted to be a ‘useful engine’. After a period of training and discernment, I was commissioned as a Diocesan Reader. That is the somewhat misleading name the CofI uses for a lay minister authorised by a bishop to lead worship and preach within his or her diocese. I have been doing this for more than 18 years now, usually one Sunday a month in my own parish, and sometimes elsewhere to cover holidays and vacancies. I value this privilege, which has given me great joy. I enjoy the discipline of preparing a sermon on a text from the lectionary, as an opportunity to explore my own faith.

I do sometimes pity the poor souls who have to listen to me, but on the whole, I get encouraging feedback. Today I have no hesitation in saying that the Holy Spirit called me to this work.

From time to time, I have been asked would I consider seeking ordination as a priest. Early on I asked myself the same question. I worried I was being tempted to imitate my father. But over time I came to realise that his call was not mine. I am deeply introverted. Much of my life is lived in my own head, and I am not good at reading other people’s emotions. I realised I do not have the pastoral skills necessary for a priest.

I do have a vocation, but it is not to priesthood. My vocation is to be a witness, a witness pointing to the goodness of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a witness testifying to my Christian faith, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners like you and me. A witness is what I try to be, to the best of my ability.

Pilgrimage

I have also come to recognise the Spirit calling me to pilgrimage, as a model for a Christian’s life journey. The pilgrim journey goes like this, as I see it.

We leave our own home and friends to travel to a destination alongside others. As we travel, we talk. We enjoy each other’s company. We break bread together. We share our life stories. We explore each other’s beliefs. We receive gifts of faith and comradeship. We learn new ways of being in the world. And when we reach the destination, we return home to our friends, bringing back and sharing the gifts we received along the way.

I felt it would be good to be part of a community seeking to be pilgrims together. I shared my thoughts with others across the Church of Ireland, and found that they were feeling the same. So, I became a founder member of the Community of Brendan the Navigator. We are an evolving, dispersed religious community in the Church of Ireland, welcoming members of all Christian traditions across the island of Ireland. Pilgrimage is in our DNA, and we meet together as pilgrims several times a year. As part of my personal discipline, I lead monthly Morning Worship in Killodiernan Church, Puckane which is streamed on the Community’s Facebook page, and I lead Friends of the Community on pilgrimage to local places, sometimes just a walk around the graveyard to appreciate the glorious diversity of God’s creation.

I try to apply this model of pilgrimage when I meet ecumenically with Christians of other traditions, as I am doing here this evening. We owe a debt of gratitude to the leaders of the Holy Spirit Prayer Group, for bringing us together here, Christians from different traditions. I am sure that we all receive more of the Holy Spirit when we come together. We are better together than we are apart.

Salvation

I am an old man. I have experienced tribulations in my life. I have lived through divorce, and seen how it hurt those I love. I have felt helpless at times, filled with regrets for things I have done and not done. I have endured dark nights of depression. But I know, sinner though I am, that I have been blessed, very blessed. The Holy Spirit has been leading me to a place where I feel at peace, increasingly close to God my loving Father, walking alongside Jesus Christ, my redeemer, friend and brother. I know that when I fail to live up to God’s standards, as I surely will, I can return to him and find forgiveness.

The theme of this week’s seminar is Salvation. What is salvation? It is what God our loving Father does, by saving us from sin and its consequences – saving us from separation from his love – through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.

Sin is the name we give to our offences against God’s holiness and goodness when we break his commandments. You will remember Jesus summarised God’s commandments this way: ‘You shall love God, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself’.

It is part of our human nature to be tempted to sin, that is, to do what we want, not what God wants, even when we can see it is wrong. God has made us with free will. We often give in to temptation. We sin, and we suffer guilt as a result. But Jesus tells us that if we acknowledge our sins and repent – if we make a fresh start in our lives – his Father will forgive our sins. Through his compassion and self-giving on the cross, Jesus shows us how to resist sin. The burden of guilt is removed, and we find inner peace and joy.

Sin comes in many forms, both in doing what we ought not to do, and in not doing what we ought to do.

There is what I call ‘retail sin’ – petty cruelties that wound other people, insults, gossip intended to hurt, unfaithfulness to loved ones, through personal addictions, dishonesty and stealing, up to violence and murder.

And there is what I call ‘wholesale sin’ – unfair social and political structures that cause poverty and illness, criminal drug-dealing networks, group hatreds and racism that oppress outsiders, the evil killing and destruction of war, and the damage we do to the natural world on this good earth.

Sin does not just hurt God, it hurts each one of us. And it hurts every other person too.

We all bear the consequences of ‘retail sin’. We have all been hurt by what others have said or done to us, and if we are honest, we will recognise how we have hurt others, even those we profess to love. It makes us closed off, wary, anxious. It causes depression in many, and even drives some to suicide.

And we all bear the consequences of ‘wholesale sin’ too. We see so much wrong with the wider world around us, and it tears our hearts apart. We all see in the media pictures of violence at home and abroad. We see images of death and destruction in countries at war. We see images of droughts, floods, and wildfires.

And we all know people in our community struggling with poverty and ill health, struggling to pay the bills, put food on the table, clothe their children, afford doctor’s visits. Their lives are blighted by fear, stress, illness and depression. But for the grace of God, any one of us might be one of them. As I have been at times in my life.

But God does not wish upon us any of these awful consequences of sin. His nature is loving, and he wishes all his creatures to flourish in this wonderful world he has placed us in. It will meet our every need, if only we care for it and our neighbours as we should. God offers every one of us forgiveness for our sins, an end to guilt, when we respond to his Holy Spirit at work within us, when we follow his Son Jesus, when we model our lives on his life of compassion, and self-sacrifice upon the cross.

Salvation is not an end result, a finished state. It is a process, a process which leads us closer to our loving God. We can never say we have been saved, once and for all, because temptation is always biting at our heels. But we can say we are being saved, provided we allow the Holy Spirit to work within us, and do our best to follow Jesus’s example, drawing us closer to our loving Father. Our lives will remain poor and mean, lacking joy, unless we accept God’s gracious offer.

The Story of Salvation

In this Creation Time, it seems right to tell the Story of Salvation in the language of Harvest, both the earthly harvest of material things we enjoy, and the heavenly harvest of spiritual blessings, which Jesus offers us.

Think for a moment about the breadth and variety of the earthly harvest. We have the staples: wheat for bread, barley for beer, oats for porridge, hay for horses and silage for cattle. And there’s so much more than staples to enjoy. There are delicious fruits, grains, nuts, and vegetables, all sorts of dairy products, different kinds of meat and fish - all in amazing variety. There are gardens full of beautiful flowers. There are chicks, kittens, calves and lambs born this year, and there is the fruit of our own bodies, our children and grandchildren too. It is surely right for us to thank God for the earthly harvest. God has given it to us because he loves us!

Above all perhaps we should thank God for our health and our strength, and also for our intellects, our God-given cleverness. As every farmer knows, this bountiful harvest does not appear from heaven as if by magic: it takes intelligent planning and hard graft!

Yet for all our cleverness, the earthly harvest is perishable and uncertain. Our human plans do not always work out. We can all see how much is wrong in the world. Why has God not given everyone perpetually good harvests? Perhaps to remind us that we are not masters of the universe: God is. God’s laws don’t change: Nature is as God has made it, and what we sow, we shall reap. We remain as we have always been, totally dependent on God’s continuing fatherly goodness.

Jesus speaks to us about salvation in John’s Gospel (6.27-35). He says, ‘Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.’ ‘The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world’, he says. And he makes this great claim: ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whosoever believes in me shall never be thirsty’.

What is Jesus talking about? His words are difficult, at least I find them so. And so did those who first heard them, we are told. But one way to look at it, which I find helpful, is this.

Just as God has made us clever, able to till and keep the world of which we are part, so God has made us in his image to be moral beings, to be souls. Souls with the capacity we call conscience to distinguish right from wrong, truth from lies, love from hate - and to prefer good to evil, as he does. When the Spirit inspires us to use our conscience to make the right choices, we reap a heavenly harvest of good, which nourishes us for eternal life. As the old saw says: The good we do lives after us.

But we are not masters of our own souls, any more than we are masters of the universe: our souls are as God made them, with free will, vulnerable to temptation. So it’s hard to be good. We must work at it, just as we do for the earthly harvest. It is hard work resisting temptation, putting what is right above our own desires. All too often we fail. We name that sin. And when we fail and sin, the evil we do poisons our soul, and that evil too is eternal. A bad deed done can never be undone!

What a mess we are in! What a mess! How can we possibly be as good as God wants us to be? As good as God has made us want to be, in our best moments.

This is where Jesus speaks to me about Salvation. He promises us all the help we need to reap the heavenly harvest. All we need to do is come to him and listen to his words. When we do, our souls will never be hungry or thirsty. As the bread of life, he strengthens our souls. Through his life and ministry, and his self-sacrifice on the cross, he shows us how to resist temptation, how to do good, and how to defeat evil. And when we fail, as we surely will from time to time, when we come to him in penitence, he will suck out the evil that poisons the soul – in other words he will save us. The only cure for a bad deed is to repent and be forgiven!

It is in this sense that Jesus is the bread of life that nourishes us for eternal life. This eternal life is not everlasting life in a distant heavenly future. It is not pie in the sky when we die. It is here, it is now. As John (17:1-3) tells us, Jesus prays for his followers to his loving Father, asking him to give them eternal life, ‘And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent'.

This is the story of our salvation, told in a language we can all understand, the language of harvest. God our loving Father offers us salvation, a way out of the mess we are in, through his Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit at work within us. But it is up to you and me to respond to that offer. If we accept that offer, our souls will find peace, and we will be filled with joy.

So, let me finish by putting some questions to you.

Will you say ‘Yes’ to the Holy Spirit at work within you?

Will you join me in saying, ‘Yes!’ together? Altogether now: ‘Yes!’ Let us say it again, only louder, ‘Yes!’.

Will you say ‘Yes!’ to Jesus’s promise of salvation?

Will you join me in saying, ‘Yes!’ together? Altogether now: ‘Yes!’ Let us say it again, only louder, ‘Yes!’.

Do you want to feed on the bread of life? Do you want God your loving Father to forgive your sins, remove your guilt, give you eternal life in Jesus Christ?

Let us respond together, ‘Yes, I do’. Altogether now, ‘Yes, I do!’ Say it again, only louder, ‘Yes, I do!’

 

Human tradition and the commandment to love

Reflection for Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 9th September 2025

In that reading, Mark (7:1-13) recalls how some pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem came to listen to Jesus. They asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ – that is without washing their hands, as Jewish ritual purity laws demanded. I suspect they were trying to catch Jesus out, because they were offended by his and his disciples’ unconventional behaviour and growing popularity, which undermined their position as interpreters of the Jewish faith.

Jesus responds forcefully. He calls them hypocrites, and tells them, ‘You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition’. He does not directly answer their question about ritual handwashing. But he moves on to challenge Jewish religious tradition that conflicts with God’s commandments.

In the passage immediately following (Mark 7:14-23), he goes on to say publicly, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile’. And he explains privately to his disciples what he means, ‘Do you not see that whatever goes into a person cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? … It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’

Nowadays we know it is important to wash our hands regularly, to avoid spreading germs rather than to be ritually pure. I feel sure Jesus heartily approves of us washing our hands before we eat. But Jesus is not concerned here about human tradition and petty rules. What matters for him is that we resist evil intentions.

So what can we take away from this episode? As Jesus tells us, God’s greatest commandments are to love him, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. We must always test the traditions we have received, our rituals, our dogmas, our unspoken ways of being and behaving, against these commandments to love. If there is any conflict between them, we must abandon or reform our traditions.

One area in which we should do so, I suggest, is the Church of Ireland’s traditional doctrines of sexuality and marriage, that sexual relations are forbidden except in the context of marriage, and marriage is only possible between one man and one woman. This causes immense pain to our Lesbian and Gay brothers and sisters in Christ, who seek the blessing of the church on their permanent, faithful, loving relationships. And pain to their families and friends too. These doctrines fail the test of Christ’s commandment to love. It is high time our church started to rethink and reform them.

Faith without works is dead

A reflection given at morning worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 12th August 2025

In his Epistle, James urges Christians to break down the barriers of class and wealth in order to relieve the distress of the poor.

We can’t be certain who this James was, but an ancient tradition says it was James the brother of Jesus, a leader of the earliest church in Jerusalem. At the great council there, he and St Peter supported St Paul’s case that gentiles should be accepted into the Christian church alongside Jews without being circumcised.

Nor do we know what church or churches he is writing to, but in the verses immediately preceding today’s reading, it is clear they are riven by class divides – the wealthy are being treated better than the poor. He points out that God has ‘chosen the poor… to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him’. And he reminds them of the law proclaimed by Jesus, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’.

In today’s reading (James 2:14-26), James asks rhetorically, ‘What good is it, my brothers and sisters if you say you have faith but do not have works?’ By ‘works’ he clearly means good works, deeds of love and compassion toward those in need. He continues, ‘If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food… and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?’ ‘So’, he concludes, ‘faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’.

The message is clear. We have no right to call ourselves Christians – our faith is dead – unless we seek to relieve human distress when we see it.

For us in modern Ireland, this means that we should not evade the taxes which fund the social welfare system and the health service. We must also be generous in giving to the organisations which support those who slip through the cracks, to the extent we are blessed to be able to do so - organisations such as St Vincent de Paul, Protestant Aid, the Simon Community, and Pieta House, to name a few.

And our Christian obligation extends beyond our own community and country to all those in trouble, need, sickness and other adversities, wherever that may be. We rightly pray for them, and we must also give generously from the riches God has given us to the aid agencies working on our behalf with the poor and hungry in all too many places around our shamefully broken world. 

Among them is Church of Ireland Bishops’ Appeal. Set up by our church to bring good news to the poor and relief to the suffering around the world, it has an excellent reputation for working with partners with the local knowledge and resources to ensure that funds reach the people who most need support.