Love your enemies

 A reflection a morning worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 12th May 2026

Donald Trump deleted this image after many criticised him for posting it.
He may see himself as a Messiah, but he is the opposite.

‘Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you.’ How easy it is for us to say these words, but how hard it is for us to abide by them!

The reading we’ve just heard (Luke 6:27-38), is part of the ‘Sermon on the Plain’. It comes just after the Beatitudes which we said at the start of our service. In the reading, Jesus commands his disciples – then and now – both you and me - to respond to hatred with love, something which runs contrary to our natural human instincts.

Yet there is great psychological wisdom here. The key is the ethical principle of nonviolence. If we respond to hatred and violence with our own hatred and violence, we escalate conflict. We damage both our enemy and ourselves. Our mental health suffers.

There is nothing specifically Christian in this. Jains in India consider the highest ethical value of all to be nonviolence towards all living beings, in action, word and thought. Gandhi, a Hindu, drew on the long history of nonviolence in Indian religious thought in his successful campaign to force the British out of India.

But there is something much deeper in this for us as Christians. We believe that all human beings are created in the image of our loving God. Our God loves our enemies, just as much as he loves us. To hate our enemy is to reject God’s love for us. To take the speck of sawdust out of our enemy’s eye, we must first take the log out of our own eye.

What are the practical implications of this? Consider the President of the United States, Donald Trump. His cruel domestic policies are tearing families apart in his own country. His policy of using tariffs to bend other countries to do his bidding threatens livelihoods around the world. His boosting of fossil fuels puts at risk Earth’s natural systems upon which all life depends. And his reckless use of military force has brought only death and destruction. I can only see Trump as my enemy, and the enemy of all that is good in the world.

How should I as a Christian respond to Trump? Pope Leo IV shows us the way, I think. He has not bowed to Trump’s bullying. He has called him out, saying, ‘Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them. And Sarah Mullaly, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has expressed solidarity with Pope Leo, calling Christians to work and pray for peace, and to urge political leaders to pursue every possible peaceful and just means of resolving conflict.

In a spirit of nonviolence, I can speak truth to Trump and his supporters – by doing so I show my love for him. I can support those who reject Trump’s evil regime, even if it costs me – by doing so I do good to him. I can ask God to bless Trump by awakening his conscience to do good, not evil – by doing so I bless him. And I can pray that God will soften Trump’s hard heart - by doing so I pray for his immortal soul, that he may not be cut off from God’s love forever.

Only the people of the United States can remove Trump and his hate filled MAGA gang, of course. Mid-term elections are due in the autumn, and Americans increasingly reject him, according to opinion polls. We may hope that his capacity to do harm may soon be limited.

God’s love will surely defeat Trump’s hate in the end.

Anticipating Ascension and Pentecost

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan church on Sunday 10th May 2026, the 6th Sunday of Easter

Jesus' Farewell Discourse, Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255–1319)

On this 6^th and last Sunday of Easter, we continue to celebrate the central event of our faith, the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

But today’s reading from John’s Gospel (John 14:15-21) leads us to look forward, to peek over the horizon so to speak, toward the great events of the Ascension next Thursday, and Pentecost in 2 weeks’ time, when we celebrate the coming of the Spirit which Jesus promised us.

The reading is just a small part of Jesus’s farewell discourse to his disciples. John sets the scene as after the last supper. Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet to teach them his example of service. He knows how things will play out. Judas Iscariot has already left to betray him to the authorities, who will arrest and execute him. Time is short for Jesus to prepare his followers for what must come, so his words are dense with meaning. Let me reflect on what they mean to me.

‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you’, says Jesus.

Even as Jesus endures Judas’s betrayal and waits to be taken to his death, he puts aside his own distress to comfort his disciples. He loves them. He will not desert them. And he promises he will continue to be present for them, whatever befalls.

 ‘In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me’, he says. The Gospels tell us the risen Christ appeared to the disciples between the Resurrection and his Ascension, when he returned to his Father - they experienced his presence physically. But I do not think this is what Jesus means here. Jesus is looking beyond the day of Ascension, through the millennia to our own time and into the distant future. Throughout the ages Christians continue to experience Jesus’s reassuring presence, as friend, brother, and redeemer. As Matthew (28:20) tells us, Jesus said, ‘Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’. Jesus continues to be alive for us.

‘Because I live, you also will live’, says Jesus. We live – we can be fully human as God wants us to be – because we know, as Jesus tells us, ‘I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you’.

‘I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever.

Jesus promises his disciples they will receive the gift of another Advocate - ‘the Spirit of truth’, the Holy Spirit - to teach and support them as a mentor. As we read in Acts, they did indeed receive the Spirit, on the day of Pentecost. The Spirit led them to go out boldly, declaring their belief in Christ, to make disciples of others. The disciples they made in turn received the Spirit and did the same, and so on - down through the years, the centuries, the millennia. Christians continue to be inspired by the Spirit to this day. The result is the Church we know, in all the glorious variety of our traditions. The Spirit will be with us for ever, Jesus promises, helping us to discern the truth.

Notice, Jesus asks the Father to send the Spirit. He does not ask him to send scripture – not the Gospels, nor the letters of Paul, nor any other scripture. The primary gift Jesus asks for us from the Father is the Spirit, the Spirit of truth. Scripture is secondary – while we believe it is divinely inspired, we must also believe that we need the Spirit of truth to help us interpret it and discern the truth.

The disciples recognised the Spirit when they felt it working in them and saw its effects in others. So can we. ‘You know (the Spirit)’, says Jesus, ‘because he abides with you, and he will be in you’.

‘If you love me’, says Jesus, ‘you will keep my commandments’.

We need to take these words very seriously, I think. Jesus loves his disciples, but not in any soppy, sentimental way. His love demands obedience from his disciples. Just as loving parents demand obedience of small children, so that they do not run in front of cars, or burn or electrocute themselves.

‘Those who love me will be loved by my Father’, continues Jesus, ‘and I will love and reveal myself to them’. We cannot expect to feel the loving presence of Jesus, nor the love of God the Father, unless we are obedient.

But just what are these commandments of Jesus? We surely need the continuing help of the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, to enlighten us. But scripture is pretty clear on the bones of it, I think.

·         Matthew (22:36-40) tells us that when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, he answers, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’”

·         And John (13:34) tells us that Jesus says shortly before today’s reading, ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another’.

If we follow these 3 commandments, I don’t think we can go too far wrong. But we need the help of the Spirit to do so. And when we fail, as we surely will from time to time, we need to seek the forgiveness that God freely offers to those who are truly penitent.

I hope you will take 3 things away from my words today:

1^st, as we celebrate Ascension Day next Thursday, let us give thanks for the continuing reassuring presence of Jesus, our friend, our brother, and our redeemer.

2^nd, as we look forward to Pentecost in 2 weeks time, let us give thanks that the Spirit, which the Father gave us at Jesus’s request, will continue to lead us to discern his truth.

And 3^rd, let us pray that the Spirit may guide us to keep Jesus’s commandments: to love God, to love our neighbours as ourselves, and to love one another as he loves us, so that we may know the loving presence of Jesus and the love of his Father.

I finish with the Collect of the Word set for today:

O God,
you have prepared for those who love you,
joys beyond our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love for you,
that, loving you above all else,
we may obtain your promises
that exceed all we can desire:
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen

 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Part 1

 A reflection in the May 2026 issue of Grapevine, the parishmagazine of the Nenagh Union of Parishes

The Doxology, a much loved hymn of praise,
was written in 1674 by Thomas Ken,
Bishop of Bath & Wells

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

I am starting to write this on Earth Day, 22^nd April, marked around the world as an annual opportunity to celebrate our wonderful, living planet. On this warm, sunny spring day, flowers are blooming, birds are singing, trees are leafing, and bees are buzzing. How can we not express our joy through praise to the Creator?

Genesis chapter 1 tells us how God made Earth and the heavens, and living creatures, including people like you and me. It is a myth, but like the best myths, within it we find important nuggets of timeless truth. Two are central to our faith, I think. First, God sees all he has made to be very good. And second, we human beings are made in the image of God our Creator.

Today, modern science compels us to tell the story of creation in a new way, perhaps even more glorious in its breadth and depth. The story is still being written, and there is much we do not understand yet. But it does not, I believe, conflict in any essential way with these timeless truths. Here is a precis of the story.

The Universe came into being from nothing around 13,000 million years ago in a hot burst of energy. After inflating rapidly, it started to cool, and the simplest elements, hydrogen and helium, began to clump together into the first galaxies and stars. The stars shone brightly through thermonuclear reactions, making ever heavier elements. They lived and died, and many exploded as super-novae, spewing heavy elements into clouds of cosmic dust. From this dust new generations of stars were born, and are still being born, many with planetary systems. About 4,000 million years ago our Earth formed, a small planet circling the star we call the Sun, on the outer edge of the Milky Way, one of innumerable galaxies in the observable universe.

If fundamental physical constants were not much the same as they are, none of this would have happened – there would be no galaxies, no stars, no planets, and no Earth on which biochemical processes could generate living beings. What an extraordinary fact. The God-given laws of nature have been fine-tuned to make our living world possible!

Praise him all creatures here below!

Life began to appear on Earth thousands of millions of years ago. At first simple single-celled organisms, like bacteria, using DNA as an instruction template, evolved to feed, grow, and reproduce. They competed against each other. They ate each other. But some evolved to cooperate, to form relationships with other cells where both benefited. Some even became engulfed in the cells of others. This is the origin of cellular structures called organelles, such as mitochondria, which power respiration, and chloroplasts, which make sugars from light, water and CO2. Both were once free-living single cells, and still retain their own DNA.

Complex, multi-cellular organisms, plants, fungi and animals, evolved as cells divided and differentiated into specialised organs. Bacteria and viruses evolved to live inside these creatures, forming communities such as our gut microbiome, so important to health. Later, fungi began to cooperate with higher plants to form the mycorrhizal root systems, which are essential for most plants to grow well.

The Creator fine-tuned the laws of nature to make the process of evolution possible. Evolution is the way he has made the bewildering diversity of life on Earth today, all descended from a single common ancestor. He will continue to use evolution into the distant future to create new worlds and communities we cannot even imagine.

Until recently, people have thought of evolution as driven by competition to eat and reproduce – ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. But more important than competition is cooperation, the selection of cooperative behaviour. By cooperating in different ways, different creatures flourish better together than they can apart. Looking back over the history of life on Earth, I see our Creator at work building relationships between his creatures, and communities in which all may flourish. It would be a blasphemy not to cherish these relational communities.

Next month I shall examine what God has created human beings like you and me to be. We are souls, with the capacity we call conscience to tell right from wrong, distinguish truth from lies, and prefer good to evil. And I shall peer into the distant future to speculate what we may become.

Joc Sanders, 24^th April 2026

The Good Shepherd

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on the 4th Sunday of Easter, 26th April 2026.

Christ the Good Shepherd, attributed to Josep Vergara

‘The sheep follow (the shepherd) because they know his voice’.

So says Jesus, in today’s reading from St John’s Gospel (John 10:1-10). These words always used to puzzle me. It just didn’t chime with my own experience.

I remember helping to move my Grandfather’s sheep as a child. Those sheep certainly didn’t recognise anyone’s voice, let alone mine aged 12! You couldn’t lead them. In fact it was the divil’s own job to stop them charging off the wrong way. We stood in gaps, we waved our hands and we hunted them as best we could to their new field of fresh grass - but they just wouldn’t follow! Surely, I thought, shepherds in Jesus’s time must have had a very different relationship with their sheep to us.

But then some years ago a farmer explained it to me. He was amused by my difficulty moving sheep. ‘I never have any difficulty getting sheep to follow me’, he said. ‘I just carry a bag of sheep nuts with me, and they come running.’ There’s more than one way to move sheep - the sheep follow the shepherd who shows them the way to food!

‘The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing’.

So begins the 23^rd Psalm we read earlier. We all love it, don’t we? It is such a favourite because it is so filled with comforting images of God caring for us and keeping us safe.

This metaphor of the shepherd runs right through Hebrew scripture. That’s hardly surprising because the Israelites were a pastoral people.

God is often likened to a shepherd, as in Psalm 23, or as Isaiah writes (Isaiah 40:11): “(The Lord God) will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”

But Ezekiel 34:2 applies the metaphor to the leaders of Israel, in a great indictment for their bad leadership and corruption: “Ah you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?” The same indictment might be made of some of the great and powerful in the world today. I do not need to name them, do I?

Jesus chooses to use this metaphor of the shepherd in today’s reading (John 10:1-10).

It is the first part of a longer parable about his relationship with his disciples. In the very next verse, which the lectionary keeps for another day, Jesus continues “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

The image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is both familiar and lovely. We have all seen pictures of him as the strong, self-reliant, country man keeping his little flock safe from harm, carrying the lost sheep back to the flock on his shoulders.

In the rugged Judean countryside sheep had to be kept in a sheepfold at night, to prevent them straying into the crops, and to protect them from wild animals and rustlers. In the two halves of the passage we have just heard, Jesus is probably talking about two different kinds of sheepfolds.

The first kind is a large communal fold near a village, surrounded by fences with a gate. The village would employ a gatekeeper to protect the sheep in the communal fold. In the morning the gatekeeper would open the gate to the shepherd who would call his own flock out. The other flocks wouldn’t recognise his call and would stay behind until their own shepherd came.

The second kind of sheepfold would be up in the hills, far from the village, and much smaller. It would be used in summer when a single shepherd would stay out with the sheep for days or weeks on end. To protect the flock at night, the shepherd would lead them into a small enclosure, perhaps just a dry-stone wall he had built. Instead of a gate, he would lie down to sleep in the entrance, where any movement in or out would wake him up. I’ve found similar structures up in the Burren hills. When Jesus said “I am the gate”, everyone would understand what he meant.

In this passage I think Jesus is deliberately doing two things:

Firstly, he is promising his disciples – sheep who recognise his voice - that he will care for them. He will keep them safe and feed them. “Whoever enters by me will be saved”, he says.  They “will come in and go out and find pasture”. It is also his promise to us, today.

But secondly, Jesus is implicitly accusing the leaders of his own day for being bad shepherds, just as Ezekiel had done centuries before. “All who came before me are thieves and bandits;” he says, “but the sheep did not listen to them”. The thieves and bandits are surely those who mislead and oppress the people, whether in the time of Jesus or in our own day. As his disciples we must not listen to them, but rather we must listen to the gentle, loving voice of Jesus, our Good Shepherd, who leads us to green pastures beside still waters.

Jesus will always be our Good Shepherd.

We should hold on to that comforting, familiar image, and listen to his words. After all he has told us “Remember, I am with you always.”

But Jesus has handed on his shepherd’s mantle to others too, starting with the apostles. John (21:15-17) tells us that Jesus said to Peter “Feed my lambs … tend my sheep … feed my sheep”. Bishops from that day to this have inherited a shepherd’s mantle, as Bishop Michael has.

We give thanks for Bishop Michael’s wise and loving Christian leadership which it is his job as a bishop to give us. We give thanks too for the shepherding of our Rector Keith. They both need our prayers as they lead us to face many challenges. The thieves and bandits have not gone away, you know!

But shepherding is not just a job for those who are ordained. Jesus has commissioned every one of us - disciples who follow him - to continue his mission. We are all called to be shepherds in our different ways. Let us be attentive to the Holy Spirit prompting us to tend to the needs of our families, our friends, and the communities of which we are part.

So I finish in prayer with the Collect of the Word appointed for today:

God of all power,
you called from death our Lord Jesus,
the great shepherd of the sheep;
send us as shepherds to rescue the lost,

to heal the injured,

and to feed one another with understanding;

through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever. Amen

 

Living in Community

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 14th April 2026

St Barnabas

‘Everything (the first Christian congregation in Jerusalem) owned was held in common’, we are told.

Does this mean that Christians today should practice some kind of primitive communism? I think not, because most Christians have never done so.

The first Christians in Jerusalem decided among themselves to live as a religious community, surrounding the apostles, and sharing all personal possessions. Their community must have been much like the monasteries that grew up in Ireland in the early days of the Irish church. Or much like the monasteries that developed in the high Middle Ages, following a ‘rule of life’ bound by vows of poverty, obedience and stability. Some few Christians today still decide to live together, sharing everything in community. While we may admire their lives of prayer and service, we are not all called to it.

In today’s reading (Acts 4:32-37), we heard the first mention of a Levite, Joseph, nicknamed Barnabas.

‘He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet’, we are told.

Later, the Christian community in Jerusalem sends Barnabas to oversee the growing church in Antioch. He seeks out St Paul to help him. After a year, the church in Antioch sends them back to Jerusalem with money for the relief of the poor Christians in Judea. Barnabas then travels with Paul on his first missionary journey. Together they visit the Jerusalem community again for discussions with the Christian community there, which we know as the Council of Jerusalem. The question they seek to answer is whether Gentiles who do not follow Jewish practices, such as circumcision, can be included in the church. The Council confirmed that Gentiles need not follow the Jewish law to be included, authorised Barnabas and Paul to continue their mission to Gentiles, and asked them to maintain contact with the Community at Jerusalem.

What a life Barnabas had, and how much we owe him! We celebrate him as a saint and example, a true hero of our faith! Sent out by the Community in Jerusalem, with Paul he founded churches across the Eastern Roman Empire. At first these were probably what we would call ‘house churches’, meeting to worship in each other’s homes, without holding possessions in common. They kept in touch with each other, and with the community in Jerusalem by exchanging letters in the hands of messengers.

We who are members of the Community of Brendan the Navigator are part of a dispersed religious community.

We are rooted in the Church of Ireland but with an ecumenical outlook. We welcome as members any who are interested in walking with us.

We do not ask members to live together or hold their personal possessions in common, but we do expect them to follow a simple rule of life: to be regular in prayer and contemplation, to support Community events, and to commit to a personal spiritual practice, which members must work out and apply for themselves.

Through the Community, we experience fellowship on our Christian life’s journey. We come together and walk together in the spirit of pilgrimage, sharing our personal faith and experience with others, and bringing back the gifts of faith we receive from them to our home places.

On Saturday this week the Community of Brendan will hold a 16km pilgrimage walk between the Cathedral of the Assumption in Carlow and St Lazerian’s Cathedral, Old Leighlin. I plan to attend a shortened walk of about 6km – my old legs would not carry me any further. I would be glad to give a lift to anyone who would like to join me.

 

We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses

Reflection at Compline in Killodiernan Church on the Wednesday in Holy Week, 1st April 2026

‘We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.’

So says the anonymous author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the reading (Hebrews 12:1-3). But who are these witnesses?

For the author of Hebrews, it was all the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets who held to their faith in Yahweh, the God of Israel, as the one true God. He gives a long list of them in the previous chapter. As Christians, we still hold them in honour today as our ancestors in faith.

But to them we add all the named Christian apostles, saints, and martyrs. They are examples to us of people who held firm in their faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and his teaching, despite every discouragement. They are heroes of our faith.

But our cloud of witnesses is even bigger than that. It includes all those Christians whose names we have never heard of, but who died in the faith of Christ. 

And it also includes all those, living or dead, who have formed our own faith. We remember them with gratitude for their examples – may their names be a blessing to us!

How wonderful it is to be surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses!

We are not alone on our personal journeys of faith. Others have gone before us. Let us take inspiration from them. As Hebrews urges us, let us ‘lay aside every weight’ that holds us back. Let us lay aside ‘the sin that clings so closely’ to us. And ‘Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us’, the race to the kingdom of God, our promised land.

And in this Holy Week, let us focus our minds on Jesus, ‘the pioneer and perfecter of our faith’.

He endured the pain of the cross, and the mocking of hostile crowds, ‘so that (we) may not grow weary or lose heart’, as the author of Hebrews puts it.

It is Jesus who has inspired the cloud of witnesses who in turn inspire us. Jesus showed them, as he shows us, the way to defeat evil, the Way of the cross. He also promises us forgiveness when we fall out of the race, as we surely shall sometimes. Though we fall all too often, when we seek God’s forgiveness, Jesus gives us the strength to pick ourselves up, and continue the race. With his help we will win the ultimate prize, we will abide with our triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in his eternal kingdom.

 

Deep despair and triumphant joy

An Orthodox Icon of the Parousia, Christ's 2nd Coming

A reflection in the April 2026 issue of Grapevine, the newsletter for the Nenagh Union of Parishes

I am writing this in the run up to Palm Sunday and Holy Week, with Good Friday and Easter almost upon us. The moods of the season, expressed in liturgy, swing wildly from triumphant joy to deep despair and back again. You may find it a bit unsettling, as I do.

We begin with Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Jesus rides into town on a donkey. Cheering crowds, lay their cloaks and palm branches in front of him. We sing joyful hosannas. Though we also listen to the long Passion Gospel, and hold up crosses made from palm leaves.

The mood darkens as Good Friday approaches. The Gospel readings intimate what is to come. In the Maundy Thursday Gospel, Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, setting them an example of servant leadership. And we act out the Last Supper in his memory, through which Jesus offers the bread and wine as his body and his blood.

On Good Friday, we mourn as we reflect on the enormity of Jesus’s death. We hear his anguished cry of desolation, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ And we re-enact his last earthly journey to Golgotha and his agonising crucifixion.

Then on Easter Sunday we greet his resurrection with abounding joy and shouts of ‘Christ has risen!’.

It is as if the very weather at this time of year echoes these wild swings between joy and despair, in what the literary critic John Ruskin called ‘pathetic fallacy’. One moment we suffer an arctic blast with freezing rain and frosty nights, and the next we rejoice in balmy sunshine. One moment our spirits are lifted by the spring flowers, and the next they are dashed by the sight of frosted shoots.

And this year, as bystanders, we see and hear the frightful news of wars and destruction in Ukraine, the Middle East, and other places in our broken world. Cruel national leaders stride across the world as if they were Gods, spouting venom and launching brutal attacks, then pivoting to words of peace, as markets gyrate and rich men profit. We dread what is to come, as we hope and pray for peace.

But listen and absorb the Easter message, which is this. The kingdom of God has come near. Jesus’s Good Friday death and Easter resurrection promise us that evil cannot win. Our sins will be forgiven if we only repent, and we shall enter God’s eternal kingdom of peace and justice. Spring’s wild swings will turn to summer’s steady, fruitful days. Wars will end and tyrants will be overthrown. Let us face the future filled with Easter hope.

Resurrection

Address given at Killodiernan Church on Sunday 22nd March 2026, the 5th of Lent 

The vision of the valley of the dry bones. Ezekiel 37:4-5. Illustration by Gustave Doré

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Ezekiel connected dem dry bones.
Oh hear the word of the Lord!

Forgive me for my poor singing, but after hearing the words of Ezekiel’s stirring vision in our OT reading, I couldn’t resist it!

Both readings today are about resurrection: the renewal of life in someone or something that to all appearances is dead. Ezekiel (37:1-14) prophesies the resurrection of the House of Israel, at a time of desolation and exile. And John (11:1-45) tells us the story of the raising of Lazarus.

So today I’m going to examine these readings more closely and ponder the meaning of resurrection. What a fine subject resurrection is for a fine spring day, when all about us seeds and plants and trees and lambs and calves are bounding into new life in our gardens and fields!

So firstly, what about Ezekiel’s dry bones?

Ezekiel is writing in Babylon around 580BC, shortly after Nebuchadnezzar’s armies had laid waste to Jerusalem and the Temple. The Israelite leaders and many of the people had been deported into exile by the banks of the Euphrates, close to Babylon in what is now modern Iraq.

Ezekiel conjures up such a vivid picture, doesn’t he? The unburied corpses of the Israelites killed in the Babylonian invasions have weathered to parched, dislocated and scattered bones. We are told they represent the whole people of Israel, the exiles crushed by despair, and the dislocated and disoriented Israelites left behind, not just the dead. And Ezekiel tells this devastated people that their God YHWH will not let them down; he will open their graves, he will give them life, and he will restore them to their land.

Ezekiel’s prophesy is, of course, a metaphor, a metaphor carefully crafted to give a devastated nation hope, hope that one day they will be restored to their land. His words resonated with the people of Israel, and helped to hold them together, until eventually the exiles were able to return to Jerusalem 50 years later, when Babylon in turn was captured by Cyrus the Persian. The ancient people of Israel did indeed experience a resurrection to new life!

These words resonated once again with the devastated Jewish people of Europe, emerging from the Nazi extermination camps after the Holocaust, the Shoah in Hebrew, as they created their modern state of Israel in Ezekiel’s ancient homeland. A heart-breaking consequence has been the devastation of the Palestinian people they displaced, which they call the Nakba, or Catastrophe in Arabic. As we walk with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and the cross this Lent, let us pray for an end to the evil cycle of hatred and bloodshed there, for reconciliation with peace and justice, for a resurrection to new life for all in the Holy Land.

The black slaves transported to America were another devastated people. The plight of the Israelites in exile and Ezekiel’s message of hope resonated with them too, inspiring Gospel songs like ‘Dem bones’, which are now part of our common inheritance.

Now let’s turn to John’s Gospel and the raising of Lazarus.

It’s a rather long passage, and it’s a puzzling story, but the Evangelist fills it with so much incidental detail that the scenes really come to life. It is easy to imagine being there,

One lovely thing that shines out is how much Jesus loved Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus.

Luke also tells us about Martha and Mary, but not Lazarus. If you remember, Mary sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to him talk, leaving Martha to do all the housework. And when Martha complained, Jesus gently chided her for being so distracted by mundane tasks. How delightful it must have been for Jesus to visit these close friends, to relax, to be himself, and to drink in the warmth and love of their home. As a wandering teacher Jesus had no home of his own. I feel sure that he must have needed that sort of refreshment, just as much as we do.

But this visit was different. Lazarus was dead. Both Martha and Mary separately said to him ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died’. I think Jesus must have felt guilty for arriving late. When he saw Mary weeping, Jesus too broke down and wept. Our translation has it that he was ‘deeply moved’, but this really isn’t strong enough at all. The Greek word used by John is also used of a horse snorting. The meaning must be that Jesus’s heart was so wrung by anguish that he howled.

And then Jesus did what he had come to do: he called Lazarus out from the grave, back from the dead.

There are a number of things that puzzle me about John’s story:

Firstly, some of the words he puts in Jesus’s mouth seem rather out of character to me. Think for a moment about his declaration that Lazarus’s illness ‘is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it’. What a cold way to look at a friend’s suffering! Could Jesus really have said that? John's purpose in writing his Gospel was to convert Greek speaking Jews who were not believers. Did this lead him to put words in Jesus’s mouth?

Secondly, John makes it clear that the raising of Lazarus is the immediate reason why the Jewish authorities decided to do away with Jesus, leading directly to his crucifixion. Yet the other three Gospels say absolutely nothing about it, nothing at all! We know that at least one of the apostles was there, Thomas. So how could the other Gospel writers not have heard of and written about such an important miracle, with such momentous results, if John’s account is correct?

And then there’s the elephant in the room. How can we explain satisfactorily - scientifically - a four day old, stinking corpse rising up and walking? A person who has apparently just died might be woken from a coma. But one that has started to decompose?

There may be problems with John’s story. Some of us will believe that it all happened just as John sets down that it did. Others will be much less certain, or interpret it metaphorically. And we can never know for sure what exactly happened so long ago. But does it really matter whether or not Jesus literally brought a corpse to life in Bethany in AD30?

 

What really matters, I think, is the spiritual message.

That message is that that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Perhaps John has crafted the whole story around that message.

 

Jesus said to Martha ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die’.

 

One thing is clear – Jesus is not speaking of physical life. We all know that Christians experience physical death just like everyone else. We will all die.

 

But if we believe in Jesus Christ, if we accept what he teaches us about his loving Father God as true, if we stake our lives upon it, then we enter into a new relationship with God, and we enter into a new relationship with life. We become certain of God’s love. We become certain that above all he is a redeeming God – if sin is death, forgiveness is resurrection. And the fear of death vanishes, because death means nothing more than a merging with God, the great lover of souls.

 

With faith in Jesus Christ, our life becomes a new thing, a strong thing, such a lovely thing, that we cannot imagine it ending incomplete. ‘Do you believe this?’ said Jesus. ‘Yes, Lord’ said Martha, ‘I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world’.

 

I shall finish in prayer with a Collect of the Word

Life-giving God,

your Son came into the world

to free us all from sin and death:

breathe upon us with the power of your Spirit,

that we may be raised to new life in Christ,

and serve you in holiness and righteousness all our days;

through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit. Amen

How many times must I forgive?

The Unmerciful Servant, John Millais

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 10th March 2026

We have just heard Jesus tell us a story about forgiving debts (Matthew 18:21-35).

The king has lent 10,000 talents to a slave. It is an unimaginably large sum - in today’s money well over €1billion. The slave cannot repay it, so the king threatens to make him bankrupt – to sell him, his family and all his possessions to recover what he can. But when the slave appeals for mercy, the king responds mercifully. He forgives him the debt and lets him go free.

But slave #1 has lent 100 denarii to another slave - a more modest sum, equivalent to roughly 100 days wages, say €10,000. As slave #1 leaves the king’s presence, he sees slave #2, grabs him by the throat and demands to be repaid. He ignores slave #2’s pleas for time to pay and has him thrown into the debtors’ prison.

When the king hears about it, he is furious. He calls slave #1 to him and says, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?’

We can all see slave #1 is a nasty piece of work. How unjust it is for someone who has been forgiven such an unimaginably large debt to force another to pay a modest one!

But of course the story isn’t really about forgiving debts.

The context of is that Peter has come to Jesus to ask, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’  To which Jesus replies, ‘Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times’.

Now, the Rabbis believed that God would only forgive a sinner three times, based on an obscure text from the prophet Amos. So, as nobody could be more merciful than God, no one should be obliged to forgive another more than three times. ‘Three strikes and you’re out’, as it were.

Peter went beyond that to suggest seven. Perhaps he hoped that Jesus would commend his greater mercy. But in his response Jesus teaches Peter and the other disciples – and through them us – that there should be no limit to our mercy toward our neighbour.

Jesus tells the story to explain why this is so. He concludes it saying, ‘So my heavenly Father will also do to you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’ God’s mercy, Jesus is saying, is without limit. God forgives each one of us an unimaginably large amount of wrong. Therefore, God expects us to forgive whatever modest wrongs other people have done to us. And if we don’t, we will forfeit God’s forgiveness ourselves. After all, in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’.

The story is about the forgiveness of sins, not about the forgiveness of debts. Disciples of Jesus must forgive people who do them wrong. Otherwise they will not receive God’s forgiveness for the wrongs they themselves do.

It can be very difficult to forgive wrongs done to us by another, even if that person says they are sorry, and shows contrition. If we find ourselves in that situation, if we find ourselves unable to forgive someone who has wronged us, we should pray for the grace to be able to forgive from the heart, because followers of Jesus should imitate God’s mercy, which is without limit.

The Samaritan woman and Jesus at Jacob's well

The Water of Life Discourse, Angelika Kauffmann, 17th–18th century

Today’s Gospel reading (John 4:5-42), about the Samaritan woman at the well, is a beautifully vivid story, isn’t it? It could almost be a film script.

To begin to understand it we need to know something about the Samaritans and their relationship to Jews in the NT period, Jews like Jesus and his disciples.

Samaritans and Jews saw each other as outsiders, and they lived apart. These two peoples shared so much: the same land, the same God, and the same Torah – the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. But they saw each other as having different religions. To Jews the Samaritans were ritually unclean – they contaminated anything they touched. Samaritans, on the other hand, believed they had preserved the true Israelite religion, which the Jews who returned from exile in Babylon had perverted. The Jews worshipped God on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, but the Samaritans worshipped God on Mount Gerizim. As they still do, for a small Samaritan community has persisted through centuries of persecution in the land of Palestine.

But Jesus consistently tried to break down the barriers between Jews and Samaritans. For example, the Good Samaritan is not a stranger but is the very best example of a good neighbour (Luke 10: 29-37). And among the Ten Lepers who Jesus healed, only the Samaritan returns to give thanks, and Jesus praises this “foreigner” for his faith (Luke 17: 11-19).

In the story, the disciples do something surprising.

They go into the city of Sychar to buy food. But this is no ordinary city – this is a Samaritan city. Any food they might buy from Samaritans is going to be unclean according to Jewish ritual standards.

While the Disciples are in Sychar, Jesus sits down at nearby Jacob’s Well, and begins talking with a Samaritan woman who has come to the well for water. ‘Give me a drink’, he says. She is intrigued, ‘How is it’, she replies, ‘that you a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’. She is surprised Jesus would accept a drink from her, as she knew Jews would consider it unclean.

Their conversation is a model for how we should respond to outsiders in our midst, whether they are foreigners or people of a different religion or culture. It is a real dialogue, involving both speaking and listening – speaking with the expectation of being heard, and listening honestly to what the other is saying, rather than listening to what our prejudices tell us they ought to say. And it is tinged with humour.

They speak about water. Jesus says, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ And the woman replies with wit, ‘Sir, give me this water … so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

And they speak about their different faiths. The woman says, ‘I have no husband’, and Jesus laughingly replies, ‘You are right … for you have had five husbands’ – no doubt a reference to the five books of the Torah. The woman says, ‘Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain’ – Mount Gerizim – ‘but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem’. To which Jesus replies, ‘The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’

For Jesus it does not matter where or how you worship God, so long as you do so in spirit and in truth.

When the Disciples arrive back, they are shocked to find Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman.

They are filled with questions, but they cannot bring themselves to ask them. Their silence reflects their inability to reach out to the stranger.

But their failure and their prejudices are shown in another way: the woman gives Jesus water as she and Christ talk, but they fail to join in the conversation about faith and about life.

They are still unable to articulate their faith, but the woman recognises Christ as a Prophet. They made no contact with the people in Sychar, but she rushes back to tell the people there about Jesus. No one in the city was brought to Jesus by the disciples, but many Samaritans listened to what the woman had to say, and they came to believe that Jesus is truly the Saviour of the world.

Jesus was thirsty, he asked the Samaritan woman for water, and she gave it to him.

But in return she received much more from Jesus: he gave her the ‘living water’ which became in her ‘a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’. She believed in Jesus, and because of her many Samaritans came to believe in him.

‘I am thirsty’, is the fifth of the seven last words of Christ from the Cross on Good Friday, and in response he is given wine with bitter hyssop (John 19:28-30). Many people have compared the thirst of Christ on the Cross with his request to the Samaritan woman, ‘Give me a drink’, and the promise that follows, ‘Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty’.

In expressing his thirst out loud in that cry from the cross, Christ shows his humanity and his humility. In expressing such a basic need, he shows his solidarity with all those people who are in need, living or dying, healthy or sick, great or small, and who in humility are forced to ask for a cup of water.

In his thirst on the Cross, I think the dying Christ seeks something much more than water or vinegar. He thirsts for a new humanity to be formed and shaped through his incarnation, life and passion, death, resurrection and ascension. His thirst is for our salvation.

So, let us give thanks for the openness and trust of the Samaritan woman.

And let us pray that Christ will give us, as he gave her, ‘living water’ which will become in us ‘a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’:

O God, the fountain of life,
to a humanity parched with thirst
you offer the living water that springs from the Rock,
our Saviour Jesus Christ:
stir up within your people the gift of your Spirit,
that we may profess our faith with freshness
and announce with joy the wonder of your love.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen

‘How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!’

Reflection on Psalm 84 at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 10th February 2026

And it is lovely, isn’t it, to be here in Killodiernan church for Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator this morning.

This little rural church is very special for those of us who are part of its accustomed congregation. We come to it Sunday by Sunday – or at least on the 2^nd & 4^th Sundays a month when services are scheduled. It is special because here we find blessings.

Here we meet up with our friends and neighbours as we gather for the service, passing on the news. We sit in our accustomed pews, and remember those who have gone before us.

Here we listen to the Word in scripture, and hear it preached. And when words bore us, we look through the windows, contemplating the trees as they change, season by season.

Here we are led in prayer for our needs and the needs of the world, and we sing together.

Here we greet our neighbours in the Peace. We eat with them the bread which earth has given, and drink the wine - fruit of the vine - which human hands have made. In the great sacramental mystery, we do so in remembrance of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose body and blood it signifies.

Here, after the service, we stand and talk - and if the weather is clement, we linger outside to admire God’s handiwork in the everchanging sward of wildflowers in the graveyard.

‘Here (our) heart and (our) flesh rejoice in the living God’, as the psalmist says.

The psalmist declares: ‘The sparrow has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young: at your altars, O Lord of hosts.’

Bats use the roof space of Killodiernan Church as a maternity roost in summertime. If you are passing at dusk one evening, do stop and watch them as they start to emerge. It is a magical sight, even better if you have a bat-detector to listen to them.

We must not think that God can ever be constrained to a building, for all the delight we take in our churches, and for all the encounters we have with God in them. God is present everywhere, all the time.  God’s altars are to be found everywhere.

It is part of our identity as members and friends of the Community to travel on pilgrimage away from our home place, to discover different altars in the company of other people, to share the gifts of their stories, and then return home changed, as the Wise Men were.

Much of the time, in our busyness, we do not feel God’s presence, nor notice his altars. But God and his altars are all around us. All we need to do is to stop rushing and still our racing thoughts for a moment. Then we can feel God’s presence and see his altars.

It may be when we pause our work for a cuppa. It may be when we hear the Angelus bell. It may be when we look up to see a magnificent view, or look down to identify a tiny flower. It may be when we sit down to a meal prepared with care and love.

We ought to practice seeking out such moments, focus our attention on being a doorkeeper in God’s house, which is the universe all around us, spending time in the loving presence of our God.

Then with the Psalmist we can sing, ‘Blessed are (we) who dwell in your house: (we) will always be praising you’.

 

Care for Creation

The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo, Fresco in the Sistine Chapel

 Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 8th February 2026, the 2nd before Lent

It's lovely to hear the stately language of the Genesis Ch 1. But I doubt anyone here today truly believes that God created the universe in 6 days!

Through the patient work of scientists, studying the natural world and building on their predecessors’ discoveries, we now know so much more about creation than the authors of Genesis ever could.

The universe began in an explosion of energy some 13 billion years ago. Our planet Earth was formed from the dust of exploding stars some 4 billion years ago, and the first life appeared soon after. There are at least 10 million distinct life forms on earth today. All are related, descending from a common ancestor. And life on earth has been just as diverse for 100s of millions of years.

Today’s 1^st Reading from the first chapter of Genesis (1:1-2:3) is obsolete as a description of creation – it is a myth. To be taken seriously today Christians must engage with the language of science to talk about creation. Evolution is the way that God has created the diversity of life we see today. God has been at work creating it over geological aeons, he is doing so now, and he will continue to do so into the distant future.

But like all good myths the creation story in Genesis Ch1 encapsulates deep truths which we must not carelessly discard. 

One of these truths is that God loves biodiversity - why should he make it if he doesn’t love it? We are told that ‘God saw everything that he had made and … it was very good’. If we love God then we must seek to protect the diversity of his creation – anything we do to damage it is an offence against him.

Another of these truths is that human beings are special, made in the image of God: ‘God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them’, says Genesis.

We alone of all the creatures on earth are blessed with intelligence – we can imagine a future, plan how to bring it about, and act to make it happen. And we alone of all the creatures on earth possess a moral sense – we can tell right from wrong, distinguish truth from lies, prefer beauty to ugliness – as God does. We call this capacity conscience. If we follow our conscience we are able to do good, to be as good as God has created us to be, and in a sense we become co-creators with him. This is what it is to be truly human. Of course we know that all too often we fail at this – we sin – but we believe God will forgive us if we truly repent and mend our ways.

We must be careful as human beings not to misunderstand our place in creation.

Genesis Ch 1 tells us, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’.

Well, the human race has certainly been fruitful and multiplied - there are now more than 8 billion people on planet Earth, and still increasing, though the annual rate is slowing. As a species we have subdued the Earth – human beings consume more resources than Earth can provide. By some estimates we are using today the resources of 1.8 Earths. The result is the ecological crises we are facing now - climate change, the degradation of natural ecosystems, and species extinction.

Too often greedy people understand the command to ‘have dominion’ over Earth’s resources as a licence to exploit, to take as much as they can, more than they need, without thought for the future. But this is wrong. It is wrong and it is sinful.

Wise farmers know they hold their land on a repairing lease for their successors. They know not to take more from the land than its fertility allows, not to overstock their farm. Wise rulers protect their lands from over-exploitation so that they may continue to flourish.

Our dominion over the earth is subject to constraints whether we like it or not. The alternative creation myth in the 2^nd chapter of Genesis forbids over-exploitation of the Earth. God takes Adam, the archetypal human being, and places him in the Garden of Eden ‘to till it and keep it’, in other words, to care for it. So must we.

We human beings have a special responsibility to care for God’s creation.

The ecological crises we face have brought the importance of this into sharp focus. In response our different Christian traditions now recognise that care for creation is a Christian imperative.

Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew called out human destruction of the natural world as a sin. The late Pope Francis in his encyclical “Laudato ‘Si, on Care for Our Common Home”, appealed for ‘a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet … a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all’. And the Church of Ireland, along with the rest of the Anglican Communion, has committed itself ‘to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth’, as a mark of its mission.

The challenge has been laid down, and now it is up to Christians of all traditions to work together, with people of goodwill from other faiths and none, to care for and cherish the Earth, the Garden of Eden that God has given us. How are we going to respond to the challenge, both as individuals and as our Nenagh Union of Parishes?

This is the context in which Jesus’s words from the 2^nd reading (Matt 6:24-33) speak to me.

Jesus says, ‘No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.’

Our society’s single-minded pursuit of wealth in a consumer market economy is surely at the heart of the ecological crisis we face, which threatens our very civilisation. We have a choice to make: either we serve wealth – continue business as usual - and face destruction; or we serve God by changing our lifestyles to live simply without waste, protecting the environment, and generously supporting those in need.

Jesus understands very well that fear for the future is the greatest barrier to making lifestyle changes. In some of his most beautiful words, he tells his followers not to worry, because God looks after his creatures.

‘Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? … Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field … will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?’

Our heavenly Father knows what we need, and if we ‘strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness’, he will give us all that we need – just perhaps a little less than our greedy desires. Part of our striving must be to care for and cherish the good Earth God has given us, and at the same time to care for and cherish our fellow human beings.

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

God of the living,
with all your creatures great and small
we sing your bounty and your goodness,
for in the harvest of land and ocean,
in the cycles of the seasons,
and the wonders of each creature,
you reveal your generosity.
Teach us the gratitude that dispels envy,
that we may honour each gift,
cherish your creation,
and praise you in all times and places. Amen