Sermons – The Church of the Holy Ghost Genoa, Italy

Sermons for 2025

Sermon for 9th Sunday after Trinity

Last week we talked about what faith is; this week I want to talk about what faith can do. Last week, if you remember, we began chapter 11 of the Letter to the Hebrews with the idea that faith is much more about trust than about what we believe – trust in God, trust in Christ, trusting life, trusting others, and trust in ourselves; and we said that another aspect of faith has to do with us becoming trustworthy individuals. Hebrews 11 then presents the patriarchs of Israel as people who exemplify just such a kind of trusting faith, and holds up Abraham as the supreme example. This week the list continues, beginning with Moses and Joshua until – quite frankly, the author seems to get tired of the subject, because halfway through he interrupts himself with ‘What more should I say?’ and finishes with a rather jumbled list of names and goings on. Incidentally, he alludes to someone being stoned to death, and someone else being sawn in two: has anyone any idea which of the prophets are thought to have ended their lives in these grisly ways? [Answers]. Finally, as we begin chapter 12, he changes the subject and compares the journey of faith to running a race. But more of that in a minute; for now, let’s stick with the exemplars of trusting faith.

But why don’t we update the list a little bit? What if the writer of Hebrews were with us today? What modern figures might he add to the list of men and women of faith? Maybe he would mention Martin Luther, or John Wesley, or some of the saints. Or maybe he would come up with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or Rosa Parks. It was Rosa Parks, BTW whose individual act of faith and courage in 1955 – refusing to give up her bus seat – catalyzed an entire civil rights movement in the Untited States.

Indeed, I am quite sure you can think of your own examples. So what I want you to do is this: think of two public figures, women or men whose Christian faith has made an impression on you. And finally, to think of a person you know – someone in your family, or perhaps someone who influenced you as you were growing up, or a friend or colleague who you know now – that’s three people altogether – two public, one known to you – and I want you to spend the next 4 minutes sharing their names with the person next to you.

Now, I want to go back to Moses and Joshua. The writer of Hebrews says ‘By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land…’ and ‘By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days.’ But actually, if you look at the accounts of the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus 14 you will see that he is being very kind to the people of Israel. It says that the Israelites all expected to be slaughtered: Is it because there are no graves in Israel that you have taken us away to die… it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians; it was Moses who stretched out his arm and parted the waters. Similarly with regard to Jerico, have you ever stopped to consider what a bizarre way this is to capture a city? The people of Israel marched round it every day for a week, then on the last day they walked around it seven times, gave a loud shout, and the walls came tumbling down. By any outside estimation these instructions are ridiculous! Cities do not fall by mystics making bad music on rams’ horns! However, this time Israel, as a corporate body, believed. So , why their uncharacteristic faith? The real reason why Jerico fell, was the faith and character of Joshua. If you read the account the previous chapter (the Book of Joshua ch. 5), you discover that Joshua had gone out in the night to survey his enemy’s city and had this strange encounter with an angelic figure, someone who calls himself “the commander of the army of the LORD”; and it was this experience, Joshua’s theophany, his encounter with God, which created in him the unshakeable certainty that Jerico would fall.

In the case of both Moses and Joshua, it was their faith, one person’s faith, which inspired the people of Israel. God works through individuals to impact entire communities, and even entire societies. Remember that as you prepare to run your race of faith; because it could be you. God delights to work through individuals, and – a notion I personally take much solace from – God loves to use the foolish to confound the wise.

Let us finish, as our writer of today’s epistle does, with this metaphor of faith as a race. There are two things to note: firstly, that it is more of a marathon than a sprint: a sprint suggests competition – but faith is definitely not a competitive race. Moreover, it is a marathon that unfolds in different terrain for each of us: for some it is a bleak, uphill struggle; for others it meanders through a fertile plain; everyone has their own journey with God, their own route to Christ. And secondly, the writer of Hebrews directs our attention to the great cloud of witnesses who are watching over us: these are patriarchs of Israel, and they are the apostles, the saints and martyrs of two millennia of Christian history. They are also the heroes of faith we have just been sharing with our neighbour, our dear departed loved ones, and those who have inspired our own faith journey. We are never alone in our faith.

And let me end with a faith hero who I am sure many of you will know from the film Chariots of Fire: Eric Liddell. Liddell was a Scottish sprinter with wings on his feet. However, at the Paris Olympics in 1924 he debarred himself from running the 100 metre race for which he was favourite, because the preliminary heats were held on a Sunday and he refused to run on the Sabbath. Nonetheless, he took a bronze model in the 200 metres, and not only took the gold in the 400 metres but also set a new world record. What is less well known is how Eric Liddell finished the race of his life. After the Paris Olympics he went to China to work as a missionary, and died in 1945 in a prisoner of war camp. There, he became a beacon of hope and compassion; we have a description of how he organized games for children, taught science and Bible classes, and gave away his meagre rations to others in need. Like Jeremiah and Isaiah he came to a grisly end, but what a way to cross the finishing line!

Robert Morley (Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

Sermon for 8th Sunday after Trinity

[Two tea-lights are lit]

At home I have two little white candle holders, each with a NT quotation on the inside. One of them is from 1 John 4.16 and says ‘God is love, and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them.’ That’s a lovely sentiment, and relatively straight forward, and I always enjoy declaring it at the beginning of the wedding service. The other one says something I have to struggle to get my head around. It is the first verse of today’s epistle: ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’. But having lived with that verse, and struggled to understand what its message is, I am beginning to see why this verse means so much to so many people. And while I think about it, my experience with this verse is typical of the Letter to the Hebrews as a whole: it is not an easy read, but yet it contains riches which can be found nowhere else.

So let’s start there: what does it mean to live by faith? No – let’s not start there: because before we begin by saying what it means to live by faith, let’s say what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean agreeing with what is written in the Bible – it is not a matter of intellectual assent. I know that in a minute we are going to stand up and say the Creed, and we are all going to say ‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth of all that is, seen and unseen.‘ etc. But even if you believe that every statement in the creed is true, that is not faith. Another thing faith is not – unfortunately – is a belief in God’s goodness to me: because I have faith in God, no harm will ever come to me. I wish! Yes, it is true to claim that God wishes to bless his children, but this vision of faith comes crashing down on the rocks of reality. Certainly, God is the giver of good gifts, but those Gifts sometimes come wrapped in some very odd packages Nor is faith the opposite of reason, like a girl I once knew who said she that was an atheist and if you asked her why she would say ‘it’s just a leap of faith’. And come to that, having faith is not the same as being devout or being spiritual – at least not if that devotion or spirituality are pointing any old which way.
Faith, I repeat, is none those things. So what is it? What does it mean to live by faith? Well, in the ancient world the equivalent words – pistis in Greek, fides in Latin – had a wider meaning than does our English word, and we probably get closer to their meaning not with the word faith, but with the word trust and even trustworthiness. It was by trusting God that we learn to rely on his promises coming to pass, and it is by trusting God that we learn to see the spirituality reality underpinning our everyday lives.

There are two things that need to be said about this notion of trust: the first is that there is a triangle of trust between Christ and God and ourselves. God entrusts his Son with the mission of restoring humanity; Christ trusts God even unto death, but he also trusts humanity to respond; and humanity is invited to trust both God and Christ in return. The crucifixion is the ultimate act of trust by God and Christ, and the resurrection vindicates that trust.
Secondly, trust is a two-way street: not only must we learn to trust God, but we must become the kind of people whom God can trust. The whole of Christian discipleship lies in that: not only can we trust God, but can God trust us? Are we responsible, are we trustworthy?
Let me finish by asking how it might look to put this kind of trusting faith into practice. Firstly it is about not just believing in God, but being loyal to God – by showing up, by staying committed, and by walking with God even when the path is unclear. It also entails praying regularly and honestly: speak to God as someone you trust, even when you’re uncertain or struggling. Also, respond to God’s little nudges: when you come away from prayer with the idea you should do something – make a phone call, take the rubbish out, not buy that pair of shoes you had your eye on – obey. Secondly, it is about trust in our relationships: God calls us to be trustworthy people. So practise becoming someone other people can depend on: keep your word, become a good time-keeper; learn to repair relationships rather than to retreat from them. Also, we must learn to entrust others: give the people you live with, the people you work with responsibility and space to grow. And finally start small: begin with small acts of faithfulness. Trust can coexist with questions and with doubt: these are part of the journey. I’m sure even Abraham woke on many a morning and wondered, ‘What on earth am I doing? Why did I leave home, why am I living in a strange land?’ Yet deep in his heart he knew that this was all in accordance with God’s plan for his life.
This, I believe, is what the author of the Letter to the Hebrews is inviting us to do: to reimagine faith not as a rigid belief in doctrines, but as a living, breathing relationship of trust—trust with God, trust with others, and even trusting ourselves. Let us light a candle to that!

Robert Morley (Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

Sermon for 7th Sunday after Trinity

Forgive me if today I ignore this week’s readings, and again pick up the theme of last week’s Gospel: When the disciples asked Jesus ‘Lord, teach us to pray’ and he taught them the Lord’s prayer. I’m doing this because prayer is such an important part of what it means to be a Christian, and also because I have a specific suggestion I’d like to share with you. Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea: I doubt I have anything to say which will be as memorable as comparing the Lord’s Prayer to a hamburger, but I’ll do my best!

So let us talk about prayer – beginning, no doubt, if you are anything like me, with a sinking feeling that we do not do enough of it, and do not do it well.

Did you know that most people pray about the same six things, day after day? Well we do. First there are the three Fs: family (or family and friends: we pray for those closest to us); then we pray for some aspect of our future; and, often, we pray for our finances. Next, we probably pray for our work or – if we are still studying – we pray about our studies. Then – because we are, after all, Christians – we are going to pray for some area of Christian concern: perhaps it is for an element of current affairs, such as the horror that is unfolding in Gaza, or for Ukraine, or for some aspect of the environment. And finally there is our current crisis: most of us have one big issue going on in our lives, and which is on our minds at the present moment – it might be our child’s hopes of getting a place at university, or the prospects of a new job, or a parent’s forthcoming medical check-up – and actually, when we pray we probably start with that. So there you have it: the three Fs, our work or study, and the two Cs: a Christian concern, and our current crisis.
Now please note that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this list. Sure, we may often be a little bit self-absorbed – but God has said that he is going to make us saints, not that we should be saints already. The real problem is a different one: we not only tend to pray about pretty much the same things day after day – we tend to pray in pretty much the same way. Day after day we ask for God’s help with the same issues, using almost exactly the same words. And we get bored! And no doubt God is bored too.

So what’s the solution? How do you avoid the boring routine of saying the same old things in the same old way? It’s this: when you pray, try praying from, and through, a passage of Scripture; the psalms, BTW, are particularly useful for this.

Praying through a passage of Scripture is not just reading it, and it isn’t the same as studying it either: instead, you simply read through it line by line, talking to God about whatever thoughts come into your mind as you do so. If your mind wanders from the subject of the text, that’s fine. If you come to a verse that doesn’t speak to you or that you don’t understand, just skip it and go to the next verse. You may read twenty or thirty verses in this way, and yet on a given day have only four or five things come to mind. No problem. Nothing says you have to pray over every verse. This isn’t Bible study and it isn’t lectio divina.

Let me take Psalm 1 to use as an example. The first psalm begins:

Blessed are they who have not walked
      in the counsel of the wicked, ︎
   nor lingered in the way of sinners,
      nor sat in the assembly of the scornful.

Imagine that you read through that first verse and as you do so, two words jump out at you: lingered and scornful. “Oh Father, I didn’t get to bed till 1 clock again last night: as usual I ‘lingered’. I really need to be in bed by 11, but I never seem to manage. Help me not to ‘linger in the way of sinners’. And as for being scornful, I really was unkind to Margaret yesterday. I can’t help it: she’s just so…” – I’ll let you fill in the blank. After that you come to verse 3: ‘Like a tree planted by streams of water’: now that’s a lovely image; but it makes you think of deforestation in the Amazon, or of a documentary you caught recently about the Palm oil plantations in Borneo, and so you begin to pray through your concerns for the environment.

Why should you pray like this? I can think of three reasons. From my own experience I can tell you that it works; it brings prayer alive; and that instead of spending five minutes telling God the same old things in the same old way, you’ll soon find yourself praying for longer, and really engaging with it. Secondly, prayer becomes less of a monologue and more of a dialogue; there will even be days when you are aware of the Holy Spirit speaking to you, and of Scripture leading you to see situations in a new light. And thirdly, although I said that this isn’t Bible study, you will soon find that you begin to know the verses you pray in a new way, and that many passages of Scripture really come alive for you.
And one final question about this method: why the Psalms? The first reason, is that all human emotion can be found there: joy, delight, nostalgia, celebration, rage, despair. The second is that the Psalms were Jesus’s own prayer book: these were the words that Jesus used when he prayed. He prayed His last words from the Cross were a quotation from Psalm 22: Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani – ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’.

To come back to Our Lord’s advice about prayer in Luke chapter 11, [which was last week’s gospel]: it ends with the incredible promise ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you’. Indeed, for many people that line is quite literally incredible. We all know that God is not Santa Claus, and that prayer doesn’t work like that. But a few verses later we get to the small print: ‘If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’’ Ultimately, that is what we are being given in prayer – the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is all we need. Prayer is not a celestial slot machine; it is certainly not about our gaining riches or making ourselves prosperous, as today’s Gospel makes abundantly clear. Rather, prayer is the means for being strengthened – ‘comforted’ in its original meaning – and guided, and trained and sustained: for, as Jesus tells us in John 14:26, ‘the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you’. Because that is the purpose of prayer: it is not transactional, but transformational – it isn’t about getting what we want, but about our being transformed into Christlikeness.

Robert Morley (Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

Corpus Christi Sermon, Sunday – 22nd June 2025

On Thursday the Church celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi, so this morning I want to step back and ask about the bread we eat, and the wine we drink, Sunday after Sunday, as our Holy Communion.

The Feast of Corpus Christi has its roots in 13th-century Belgium and with a nun named St. Juliana of Liège. From a young age, Juliana experienced mystical visions during Eucharistic Adoration—most notably, a vision of a full moon with a dark stripe across it. Christ revealed to her that the moon symbolized the Church’s liturgical life, and the dark stripe represented the absence of a feast dedicated solely to the Eucharist. Juliana shared her vision with the bishop of Liège, Robert de Torote, who in 1246 instituted the feast in his diocese. The celebration gained momentum when one of its early supporters, Jacques Pantaléon, became Pope Urban IV. In 1264, he extended the feast to the entire Western Church. And so it has remained, celebrated on the Thursday following Trinity Sunday.

So now I’ve said something about the origins of Corpus Christi, let me return to my original questions: What does the Holy Eucharist mean for you? How ought we to understand it?
These are exactly the questions I was asked at an interview when I was first being considered for ordination. What do you understand by the Eucharist? My answer began something along the lines of ‘Gosh, I’ve never really thought about it – it’s just what Anglicans do when they go to church on Sunday morning.’ Not a very impressive answer!

Now many Roman Catholics will provide you with a far more cogent answer to such questions. They will begin by talking about Transubstantiation and the Real Presence: that the bread we eat at Communion really is the body, the flesh of Jesus, to be approached with the utmost reference and solemnity, and it is because members of other churches do not necessarily believe in transubstantiation that they are reluctant to share their Communion with outsiders. At the other end of the spectrum is memorialism: the idea that Holy Communion is just a reminder of the night when Jesus broke bread with his disciples, but that the bread and wine have no intrinsic properties and that their function is merely to act as a memory jogger.
Article 28 of the 39 Articles, the Church of England’s foundational document, provides the Anglican take on Communion, which is to reject both these extremes: on the one hand it states that the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ. On the other hand, it warns that Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy Writ… and hath given occasion to many superstitions. This, BTW, is typical of the way Anglican theology works: rather than setting out specific doctrines, it sets up goal posts – as long as you believe something between the two extremes, the Church of England is happy to have you with us, and won’t ask too many questions.
Now that’s admirable, but it isn’t necessarily very instructive. So let us move on from what theologians say to several ideas that might be useful to consider as we approach the communion rail. Firstly, our bodies need food. Our minds also need food, which is why we read books, listen to podcasts and, as a dessert, go to concerts or watch Netflix; however, our hearts, our souls, also need food. In taking Holy Communion Jesus is offering us soul food. He is feeding us with his life to nourish the best of life in ourselves; he wants to bring out the best version of ourselves. We don’t need to know how this works, any more than we need to know how our Sunday lunch is digested and turned into the body’s nutrients and energy. Eat, in faith, and God will see that it does what it has to. Secondly, Christ promised to sustain us in two ways: by giving us his Spirit and by giving us his Body – through both the spiritual and the material. Christianity is the most material of the world religions: it has inspired a civilisation that builds hospitals as well as churches. These first two points, however, show us that the Eucharist has much to do with our connection to God, and binds our own lives intimately to that of Christ .

But we can come at Holy Communion from quite a different direction. The third take on Holy Communion, is that it is a shared meal: by eating Christ’s bread together we become bound up with one another just as we are bound up with the life of Christ. Whenever John Wesley was asked about the church he would insist that it began not with the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor with the Pope, nor with the building, but with this group of people gathered here around this communion table. So when you receive communion, look around you – these are the people with whom you are called to be church, to be the body of Christ.

And finally, there is a fourth way of considering the bread and the cup at communion: we bring our lives to church on God on a Sunday morning, and He takes them, breaks them, and shares them. This is often symbolised by a custom you see in many churches, where the bread and the wine is brought from the back of the church during the offertory hymn: it is brought from the people and by the people, and placed on the altar. Indeed, that is why it is called the offertory hymn – I used to think it was because that’s when the collection is taken – but no, it is when the everyday materials of our lives – bread and wine – are offered up to God. The prayer which is sometimes said after the offertory hymn, and before the prayer of consecration begins, expresses this beautifully: “through your goodness we have this bread to set before you, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life” and “ through your goodness we have this wine to set before you, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become for us the cup of salvation”.
So there you have it, four ways to consider Holy Communion: God providing the nutrients for our soul; Christ inviting us to eat his flesh, so that we might take on his nature and it is incorporated into ours; as a shared meal which makes us church; and a bringing of our lives to God, offering up everything we do and are, so that God can bless us, make use of us, and share us with the world. Amen

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

Trinity Sunday – 15th June 2025

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have ordained, What is man, that you should be mindful of him; the son of man, that you should seek him out?

Psalm 8 is a lovely psalm, and one of my favourites. However, it asks a question, and suggests a way of thinking about the world, that is quite foreign to the modern world. Having considered the heavens, and realising that they are vast indeed, modernity has concluded that the human species is little more than a lucky accident in an insignificant corner of the universe. In other words, since the Enlightenment the answer to the question ‘What is man, that you should be mindful of him?’ has tended to be ‘Nothing much’. And as for a nimble-fingered God ordaining the moon and the stars, well, we can hardly believe in that any more, can we?

So what I hope to do this morning is offer ways of thinking about God and Man that encourage us to imagine that God is still very much in his heaven, and that we, Man – by which of course is meant Mankind, the human species both male and female – are very much at the centre of God’s concern.

Let’s start with Mankind, and this notion that we don’t count for much in the vast spaces of the universe. Don’t we? The truth is, that in terms of both space and time, human kind is indeed in a unique position. To start with, we are just the right size to have developed a brain gifted with both consciousness and intelligence. Also, we are half-way between the biggest things and the smallest things around us: and it is only because of that that we can see both galaxies and sub-atomic particles. Moreover, humanity has come along at just the right time: in another billion years the universe will have expanded so much, that a lot of it will have disappeared over the horizon of our perception; realisations such as these once again show how privileged and how precious humanity is – they will have us exclaim: What is man, that you should be mindful of him?’

None of these ideas are my own, BTW; for anyone interested, they are to be found in the work of the cosmologists Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams, particularly in their books The View from the Center of the Universe and The New Universe and the Human Future.

However, such considerations do put Mankind back at the centre of God’s creation, where he – and of course, she – has tended not to have been for much of the last three hundred years. Now let’s turn to the Creator himself. And let’s begin with the opening chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans, given that we have heard a passage from it this morning, which Kengiro has read as our epistle. Paul points out that there is plenty of evidence for God, both in nature, and in our own consciences – in other words, both in the world around us, and in the world inside us. In Romans 1:20 Paul writes: Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. But he also goes on to warn: So [human beings] are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking. I’m sure we all know this to be true, we have all done this: our first instincts – and this is what is meant by the doctrine of original sin – is to run away from God, and to deny Him, before we turn to him. Yet we who are Christians, we are the ones who have been brought to repentance, we are the ones who have turned around and turned to Him and who are here because we are seeking Him out.

However, even with the best intentions, getting a picture of where God is, and what he is, can be a bit of a blur, a bit out of focus. Once upon a time people used to think that God was up above us, sitting above the clouds. But we can’t picture him like that, can we? Well actually we can! One of the most amazing things in my life, a little piece of daily magic is this [MOBILE PHONE]: it offers instant communication with everyone; instant knowledge, instant maps and instant guidance. If you had told me as a boy that I would one day have a contraption like this I would have been stunned. I wouldn’t have believed you. Now has it occurred to you that being equipped by the Holy Spirit is a lot like being gifted with a mobile phone? He too offers us instant knowledge, instant maps and instant guidance. But what is the power that enables a mobile phone to work? Where is the power that enables a mobile phone to work? [POINT] It’s a above our head. It’s in the sky. All of our mobile phones are connected thanks to a satellite orbitting across the heavens. Surely that’s a good metaphor for God: like a satellite hidden in the heavens, but which allows everything down here on earth to connect and work together. So perhaps, after all, we can still imagine a world where God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.

We’ve said a word about God, a word about the Holy Spirit and – this being Trinity Sunday – let me share a word about Jesus. Something we’ve heard several times in our recent Gospel readings is that Jesus makes his disciples a new promise, even hours before his arrest, his trial, and crucifixion: ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.’ Jesus then gives the disciples the responsibility of carrying on his Messianic message, Shalom, be at peace. Indeed, Paul takes this up in the passage from Romans we have heard this morning: since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The word for peace in both Hebrew and Jesus’s own Aramaic, is wider than the English: it includes blessing and well-being as well as just the absence of disturbance and non-violence. ‘My peace I give you’ – there must have been something amazingly calm in Jesus’s presence, a peacefulness that was almost tangible. Indeed, there still is. However, as much as being a gift, we need to take understand these words as a command. Jesus is telling us to discover, and to remain in, a sense of peace, a state of well-being, whatever is going on around us. Some people find this very difficult. But especially if you find inner peace difficult, you need to hear these words as a command, a gentle command: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.’ Learn to obey Our Lord’s commandment: learn to live in peace: make peace with your neighbour, and be at peace with your current circumstances. In the name of God, the birther, in the name of the Lord Jesus, our brother, and the in name of the Holy Spirth, breathed into us and breathing through us – the name of birther, brother, and breather, peace be with you. Shalom!

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

Whit Sunday – 8th June 2025

I have a question: how seriously do we take the Holy Ghost? In our readings this morning we have heard the dramatic story of how the Holy Ghost came to the apostles gathered in Jerusalem and rested like tongues of fire on the heads of each of them, empowering them to preach, and later enabling to go out, to testify to Christ and to do miracles in Jesus’ name. Those first disciples were totally transformed by the coming of the Holy Ghost. And then we have heard Jesus’s own promise, in John’s gospel, of how he would ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit to be with us for ever and teach us all things. We will know him, says Jesus, because the Holy Ghost is in us, the Holy Spirit dwells within us.
Do we know the Holy Spirit? Can we say that he dwells within us? Down the centuries, Christians have given some very different answers to that question. I want to take the two extremes – let’s call them the weak answers and the strong answers.
The weak answer goes like this: the story we have just heard, how the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, that happened only once and for ever, and it cannot be repeated. Or another weak version is this: we all received a small dose of the Holy Spirit when we were baptised, or when we were converted– so we’ve all got some of that now, but it is unconscious, and we are not really aware of it. The coming of the Holy Ghost upon us is just that act of God that incorporates us into the Body of Christ, the church, and we shouldn’t expect or ask for any more of it. Viewed like that, the coming of the Holy Ghost at baptism is rather like the inoculation we receive as infants as a cure against measles or small pox: it happened at the beginning of our Christian life, and though we have no memory of, it does its job.
Let us turn to stronger accounts of the Holy Spirit. The first is the story of an old puritan who was walking over a mountainside. Suddenly the Lord Jesus came to him and gave him manifestations of himself; and this man said that he learnt more in that one brief experience than he had done in fifty years of study and church-going.
Secondly, here is an incident from the life of John Wesley, which took place on New Year’s Eve 1738, when Charles & John Wesley, along with George Whitfield, sat up after midnight singing and praying:
“About three o’clock in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, so that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we had recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke out with one voice, ‘We praise thee, O God! We acknowledge thee to be the Lord!’ “
Let these two incidents stand for the many, many accounts we have of revival movements, from the Great Awakening to the Welsh Revival, to Azusa Street and the birth of the Pentecostal churches. With such movements come manifestations of the gifts of the Holy Spirit – healings, and prophesy, and speaking in tongues. But, such high-octane forms of Christianity come at a cost: on the one hand, there is the inadequacy felt by those who do not manifest such supernatural gifts but are led to believe that they are supposed to; on the other, there is the risk of chicanery and manipulation, of church leaders exaggerating results and preying on the credulous, as well as the need to stir up levels of enthusiasm which at times border on hysteria.
So far, I have asked how seriously we take the Holy Spirit and I have drawn two pictures – almost two caricatures – of churches which do and which don’t have a high theology of the Holy Ghost.
Let me end by asking a different question: how do we increase the involvement of the Holy Ghost in our lives and in our church?
Before I answer that, you may have noticed that there is a problem with names: do we refer to the Third Person of the Trinity as the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost? The translation of the Bible we are using refers to him as the Advocate, a rather legalistic term. This is a translation of the Greek expression that John puts on Jesus’ lips, the Paraclete: now Paraclete, from the two Greek words para and kletos (para meaning alongside, and kletos to call) is a lovely term: He is the one who comes alongside us – the only trouble with it is that it extends the bird imagery we associate with the Holy Ghost from gentle doves to squawking parakeets! Other suggestions are the Helper, the Councillor, the Encourager; Luther translated para kletos as der Tröster – the Truster; the True Friend might be another possibility.
So, to return to my question: what should we do to have more of this True Friend in our lives and in our church? In a sense we don’t; that is, it is not up to us how much of the Holy Spirit we receive. It is up to God’s grace. ‘The Spirit blows where it wills.’
But if we were earnest about receiving this heavenly companion – what then?
It’s as simple as ABC: first we Ask: Ask Jesus to fill you with his Holy Spirit. The Book of James says, “You have not, because you ask not” (James 4:2). Second you Believe: Believe you receive the Holy Spirit the moment you ask. “Ask, and you shall receive that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). And finally, C, Confess: we confess with your lips. When you receive Jesus as Savior, you believe in our heart and we confess Him with our lips. This entails two things: for some it involves ‘speaking in tongues’; but it also means we do not shy away from telling others about the Lord
Jesus and what he has done and what he is doing in our lives.
It is my prayer that all of us, individually, and as a church may know the presence of the Holy Ghost, the True Friend, in our lives and in our community, in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

7th Sunday of Easter – 1st June 2025

For the last two Sundays, today, and for the next two Sundays, our readings are taken from that part of John’s Gospel known as the Farewell Discourses. This is the long conversation that Jesus has with his disciples on his last night, between the Last Supper and his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. So let me say a few things generally about the Farewell Discourses, and then say something about this particular passage.
John’s telling of the Last Supper makes no mention of the institution of the Eucharist; instead, he relates how, before eating, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, performing the task of the most menial of servants; during the meal the focus is
almost entirely on Judas who, in the verse immediately preceding today’s passage, goes off into the night to betray Jesus, still clutching a piece of bread in his hand.
What follows, the Farewell Discourses, are Jesus’s special teaching to the remaining eleven of his disciples. They run on from the end of chapter 13 all the way to the end of chapter 17, and form what is essentially Jesus’s discipleship course. In some
ways, John’s Farewell Discourses are his equivalent of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, or Luke’s parables: they contain the bulk of Jesus’s teaching as John has come to understand it. Unlike Matthew, with his arresting rhetoric, or Luke’s memorable parables like those of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, the Farewell Discourses are dense and abstract – they are hard work. They give up little on an initial hearing or on a casual read through: these are texts that have to be studied and prayed through. We might think of them as meditation texts. I don’t mean to put you off by saying this: I’m just offering a hint on how to
approach the Farewell Discourses; those who have got to grips with them claim that they are the very heart and glory of the New Testament. Personally, I still struggle with them: before climbing a mountain one has to be fit and one needs training.
The Farewell Discourses address essentially one question: how should the disciples relate to an invisible Lord. This, on the night before the Crucifixion, is about to become the disciples’ problem; it is also an issue for any and every disciple of Jesus who has lived in the days since Jesus walked the earth: how do we relate to a
Jesus who is no longer here, who is no longer with us?
So today’s passage comes right at the end of the Farewell Discourses, right at the end of chapter 17. Chapter 17 is one long prayer. Up until now Christ has been praying to the Father for his eleven faithful disciples, but now he prays ‘also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word’ – in other words, he is praying for us. And since Jesus’ prayers are so strong and effective, we can take comfort in this fact: Jesus has already prayed for us, too. Which should mean: We will make it.
But the verse I would particularly like you to look at is verse 22: ‘The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one’. This raises two questions: one is about Christian unity – Jesus is clearly praying that his followers should be one. How are we doing with that? I’ll come back to the matter of Christian unity in a minute.

The other question is about this ‘glory’: what does Jesus mean when he says ‘The glory that you have given me I have given them’ – what is this ‘glory’, what is it referring to? We could begin to notice that it is one of John’s gospel’s favourite words. The great patristic commentator, St John Chrysostom, believes that the glory is the gift that Jesus gave to the apostles of working miracles, of crafting doctrines, and of being one. He adds, however, that the gifts of peace and unity are much more
important than the gift of miracles.
Others have suggested that “the glory” means the gift of the Holy Spirit, about which Jesus has said so much throughout the Farewell Discourses. What I would say is that Christ’s glory, a glory he wants to share with us, is something we should think about, pray about. What do you understand by Christ’s glory? Is it his power, his love, his ability to perform miracles? Is it the power to live in peace with other people? Or is it the gift of the Holy Spirit? Whatever our hearts tell us is Christ’s glory, I believe that is the gift that Christ wants you to have. So please, in this week leading up to the feast of Pentecost, which is both a celebration of the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the patronal feast of this church and of our church community, take time to pray about this: ‘Lord Jesus, what is your glory? What is this glory you wish to share with us? With me?’
And finally, a word about church unity. I think we can look at church unity in two ways: formally and spiritually. Formally, yes, there are a number of church institutions, and there has been a tendency for the Protestant churches in particular to split into ever more denominations. But even on the institutional front, much progress has been made: for example, all of the mainline churches now recognise a common baptism; projects like the World Council of Churches and the introduction of the Revised Common Lectionary, where most the mainline churches now read the same Scriptures on any given Sunday are also evidence of this. Less well-known, but equally important, have been the Lutheran-Catholic joint declaration in 1999 and the Papal encyclical Ut Unum Sint [“That They Might Be One”] issued in 1995: the first essentially saw agreement on the issue that has divided Protestant from Catholic since the Reformation, the in second Pope John Paul II offered to explore the ways that Catholic doctrine about the Papacy might be reshaped to more readily achieve unity among the churches. In short, there is more dialogue, more understanding between the churches than there has ever been.
However, all that might sound rather remote and academic. Where can we play a part in promoting Christian unity. This is where the spiritual dimension of church unity comes into play. Many of us have grown up with prejudices in favour of our own church tradition, and prejudices against those of other church traditions. The first thing we must do is admit this. We must learn to think of ourselves as Christians first and Anglicans, Catholics, or Calvinists second. And perhaps most important of all, we must do what many of the churches have been doing for some time now – we must cooperate in common projects. The way that various churches in Britain have come together to run food banks in recent years is a fine example of this.

So that’s it, our take-aways from today’s Gospel – please think about, and pray about these two issues: what is your share of God’s glory, and is your heart open to contribute to the unity between his followers which Jesus prayed for?

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

2nd Sunday of Easter – 27th April 2025

Our first reading this morning was set some days even weeks after the Easter event and we were given a report of Peter and the apostles giving their testimony to the Resurrection. Let me read it again: “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him On a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Saviour that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him”. That is one of the earliest and most concise and complete summaries of the Christian faith. See how self—confident and clear—voiced the apostles were in their faith. How very different from the Sunday night of the resurrection and the following Sunday night when the disciples had locked themselves into a house for fear of the Jews. They were cringing in the house out of sheer terror when Jesus came among them. That is what we heard in our gospel reading, the first time on the evening of Easter Sunday and the second time a week later, which is one reason why that gospel is traditionally read a week after Easter Sunday. On the first occasion Thomas was not present, and on the second occasion a week later Thomas was present. Thomas is in a sense the hero of this morning’s gospel reading. Thomas is traditionally known as Doubting Thomas. One of the reasons for this is found in that gospel. When Thomas is given the Easter message he replies “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” . The gospel reading went on to tell us how Jesus took him at his word, and Jesus’s last words are addressed as much to us as to Thomas when Jesus says “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”. Doubting Thomas appears in John’s gospel three times. In two out of the three he is doubting. There was the episode we have just heard and there is another time when he interrupts Jesus’s discourse at the Last Supper with the impatient exclamation “Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” – And yet at Thomas’s third appearance, at about the same time, he is anything but a doubter, when he says “Let us also go to die with him”, Thomas comes over as a man of extremes. The Christian Church has always contained people of his temperament. I have heard newly converted Christians give their testimony about how before they became Christians they committed the most gross and startling sins. I have to say I am often made slightly uncomfortable by this, and I hope this isn’t envy, when I reflect that the sins I myself struggle with, have always struggled with, tend to be the grey, mean, dreary little sins. But I have also heard people of Thomas’s temperament violently denouncing

Christianity, and maybe you are likely to have heard more of them than I have, they are people who have broken away from Christianity in disillusion and disgust. Maybe Thomas fell into this category. Jesus’s disciples seem to have had some rather mixed up ideas about what was meant by being a disciple. Who knows how Thomas viewed discipleship at the time he said “Let us also go to die with him”? Almost certainly his view of discipleship did not involve cowering in fear in locked rooms after the Master had been crucified. It has been a sadness to me throughout my ministry how people do become disillusioned with Christianity. I am not thinking about people who have undergone terrible sufferings, I have known such people of whom I would easily understand if they had decided to give up on God. That may sound shocking but is meant in humility. However my experience of people in real and terrible sufferings, and it is not so small, is that their relationship with God is likely to be deepened, even if it is the deepening that comes out of anger and expresses itself in anger, as in some of the psalms. But one of the saddest things to me is when people fall away from Christianity because they become bored with it. During and after Covid some people we are told found their memory of religion to be boredom. Boredom is a very easy reaction on the Sunday after Easter. As I sat down to prepare this sermon, it was all too easy to think: well, we celebrated the resurrection last week, what more is there to say? And yet Eastertide in the western liturgy Lasts for six weeks, and what is infinitely more important, Easter joy is the continuing heartbeat of the Christian Church at all times and in all places. The whole thing about Christianity you may have heard me say is that it is a religion of “you ain’t seen nothing yet which to me sums up the Christian hope of even greater things ahead of us. This is, I suggest, something difficult for temperaments like Thomas’s to grasp. They want all the answers answered now. There may be temperaments like Thomas’s in this church this morning. I don’t necessarily mean the doubting but a temperament of extreme definiteness. Admittedly we only have three incidents from Thomas’s life on which to judge, but I reckon they all have this extre;ne definiteness as their hallmark. Listen to them again: Lord we do not know where you are going so how can we know the way? ; let us also go to die with him; unless I see in his hands the print of the nails… in that last statement he rea11y is going out of his way to be offensive in his choice of language. Of course there is a need for definiteness in the Church or we make Christianity a marshmallow consisting of nothing but sugar and air. And yet both so—called liberal and conservative Christians have to be open to the element of “you ain’t seen nothing yet”. We have to be open to see the Risen Christ. This is very unlikely in our cases to mean seeing him in the flesh or in a vision, even more unlikely in our cases to mean placing our hands in his wounded side. And yet there are all sorts of ways as we consider his creation, especially in the spring, as we allow ourselves to be open in prayer, that the Risen Christ can become more of a reality to us. Especially when we train ourselves to see Christ in other people (often not easy, although we all know that all human beings are created in the image of God), then we will rejoice in the Risen Christ more surely, albeit sometimes in ways we could never have expected. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Also I believe we are being told “you ain’t seen nothing yet ” .

Michael Bullock (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

Ash Wednesday – 5th March 2025

As we began our observation of Lent, in whatever way we have decided on, or been led to, I would like to make three brief points. The first is inspired by our Old Testament reading: at a moment of great national danger, what Joel calls the Day of the Lord, “even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart,with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning”. That is to say, there is a strong connection between our individual repentance and public outcome. What goes on in our hearts has an effect on what goes on in the world.

Secondly, self-improvement, pulling ourselves up by our own boot strings, is not easy. We need the help of the Holy Spirit – we need God’s grace. However, one of the desert fathers, Evagrius, gives us some useful advice: rather than trying to be perfect, try replacing a bad habit with a slightly better one. He taught that each of the 8 common vices or negative behaviours could be replaced, could be converted into their matching virtue (yes, Evragius came up with a list of eight deadly sins and eight saving virtues, rather than the traditional seven): hence, over time, and with God’s grace, he can learn to replace gluttony with abstinence, anger with blessing, avarice with generosity, self-pity with praise, lust with compassion; accidie or slackness with a focus on God’s will in each moment; vanity with honesty; and pride with humble service. I would like to suggest that we think of our own recurring vice and work on cultivating it’s opposite.

Finally, I would like to end on a note of hope. The word Lent is related to length and lengthening. It is the old English word for Spring, the time of the year when the days are getting longer. So although Lent is a period of penance, of prayer and fasting, it is also our springtime, a time when the light gets in. Our Lenten observations lead us on, eventually, to Eastertide.

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

The Transfiguration Luke 9.28-36 – Sunday 2nd March 2025

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration. Now here is a
curious fact: the Transfiguration – the day when Jesus climbed a
mountain with Peter, James, and John (his inner circle disciples) and
they saw him shining with God’s glory and conversing with Moses and
Elijah – this Feast is the only event in our Lord’s life that gets celebrated
twice a year in the Anglican liturgical calendar. And though I am sure
there are far more urgent things to say about the Transfiguration than to
explain away this Anglican muddle, that’s where I want to start and finish
my talk this morning.
The first time we celebrate it is today, the Sunday before Lent, and
the second time is at the height of summer, on August 6th. The August
date is easy to account for: the Feast of the Transfiguration was moved
to this day by Pope Callixtus III to commemorate the Battle of Serbia in
1456 – a battle in which the Christian forces of Europe defeated the
advancing Ottoman Empire. Whereas today’s date for the celebration
reflects a much older tradition that the Transfiguration occurred 40 days
before the Passion, a tradition that was revived in the Lutheran church.
But, regardless of the date, what are the urgent, the important things
that we need to know about the Transfiguration? I would like to suggest
three. First, that what Peter, James, and John saw that day, and what
we should be looking to see this day, is what Jesus looks like after the
resurrection: this is a foretaste of the Lord Jesus in all his glory, in all his
divinity: it is a vision of Jesus as the Christ, the annointed one, the light
of the world. Secondly, that as Christians, we belief that our future too is
to shine in glory; as St Athanasius famously put it, ‘God became
man so that man might become god.’ In the Transfiguration we see
God’s glory not only as it shines in Christ, but as it radiates out from the
saints, and as it will one day shine out from every redeemed Christian.
But how on earth do we get there? How do we become the shining, perfect versions of ourselves that God intends us to be? Or perhaps how
I should say, how in heaven – how in heaven do we become transfigured
human beings, shining with glory and with light? I want to say more
about that in a minute, but first, let me mention the third point:
Transfiguration is not the same as transformation. IOW, when he went
up to the top of Mount Tabor that day, our Lord didn’t turn into something
different, he didn’t change, it wasn’t that the three disciples were
suddenly confronted with a Jesus on steroids. What changed was all in
the disciples; it was their vision, their understanding that changed – not
Jesus.
Afterwards, the disciples had to leave the mountain top, and follow
Jesus to Jerusalem and to the foot of the Cross. We, too, have to leave
our mountain top with its wonderful vistas, and trudge back down into
the Valley – dare I name it? – down into the valley of the Shadow of
Death.
There is one sense in which we stand here every Sunday, about to go
back down into the trenches of the workaday week. But today, as we
stand on the mountaintop of the Transfiguration, we look ahead to the
next glorious mountain peak, which is Easter, which is the Resurrection,
when we are to meet Jesus again, and again shining with the Light of
God’s glory, but by then he will have wounds in his hands, and in his
feet, and in his side. To get from here to there we have to cross a
wilderness. We have to walk for forty days through the valley of Lent; so
before we leave this place, I urge you to give that journey some thought.
What was it that Jesus did immediately after he came down from
Mount Tabor? He cured an epileptic boy whom his disciples were unable
to cure. And when these disciples asked our Lord why they hadn’t been
able to cure the boy – Jesus replied that this kind of evil spirit can come
out by nothing but prayer and fasting. Prayer and fasting – these are the very disciplines that Christians are called to undertake in Lent.
Now there are many ways to pray and many forms of fasting: you
might pray by sitting quietly with a passage of scripture every day, or by
saying the Jesus prayer, or just by sitting quietly; you may fast by giving
up meat, or by giving up wine, or by going without solid food one day a
week. If you reflect on this today, while you are surveying the view from
the mountaintop of the Transfiguration, I am sure you will know what rule
of prayer, and what rule of fasting, God is calling you to this Lent. And if
you are not sure, by all means ask for advice. What I would urge you to
do, though, is to make a decision today about how you are going to fast,
and how you are going to pray during Lent – which starts next
Wednesday.
Mountain tops are wonderful places, both real and metaphorical,
whether we are thinking of peak experiences, or of actual mountains we
have climbed. And of course, living in Liguria, in this beautiful city of
Genoa, we are lucky enough to have very real, very beautiful mountains
nearby to climb. So my suggestion to you as Anglicans in Italy is to use
this first celebration of the Transfiguration to climb a spiritual mountain:
to take stock, to look at yourself, to imagine yourself as the saint God
intends you to be; more especially, to peer into the shadows of the valley
of Lent, and to ask what it is – what specific forms of fasting and praying

God is calling you to undertake between now and Easter. Then, on or
around August the 6th go out and celebrate the Feast of the
Transfiguration a second time by walking up a real mountain. And in
both these of celebrations, inward and outward, physical and
metaphysical, may God bless us all and begin to bring on that Glory with
which he has promised to clothe us through his Beloved Son. Amen

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

Sermons from Autumn 2024

24th November 2024

Christ the King Sunday

Jesus proclaimed his kingdom on the Mount of Beatitudes overlooking the Sea of Galilee. It is a place of great beauty and calm but sadly not peace in today’s Holy Land. In this place He spoke of those who would inherit the kingdom of God: the poor in spirit, the humble, the meek, people who work for justice, the peacemakers, those who suffer for their faith and do good. They seem an unlikely group of people who will triumph over time and become a strong and powerful kingdom in contrast to those whose power is violent and harsh.

In the Gospel Jesus tells Pontius Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world but is a kingdom that bears witness to the truthfulness of who people are, the goodness of relationships, and is a place where people show mercy to those in need. In this kingdom people look after one another and care for one another. They are generous to those who are poor and share their goods with others. Jesus speaks of bearing witness to the truth that each person is created good by God, given the gift of human freedom, and called to love others in rich and strong relationships. Jesus witnesses to this kingdom in forgiving those who have sinned. He washes the feet of his friends to show them the example of love. His kingdom is of service in which the power of love shines out. We call him our servant king and may think of the words of a well-known hymn, “This is our God, the Servant King.”

On this feast of Christ the King, we are called to examine our hearts in the light of the attitudes and action of Christ.

The invitation of the servant king is to become a person who serves and reaches out to others. When we examine our emotions, we may find some deeply hidden difficult attitudes towards other people, to groups of people whom we don’t like, to people of other religions. We are called to discover the truth about ourselves and offer this to the healing grace of God.

When we find these attitudes, then we can ask the Lord to show us his mercy and to heal our hearts. Advent, which begins next week, is a penitential season of preparation when we can become better followers of Jesus Christ and celebrate of our Lord’s birth at Christmas. We all need to ask for help in our endeavours to serve his kingdom better and to His glory.

Praised be Jesus Christ – now and for ever. Amen.

Gordon Bond (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

17th November 2024

2nd Sunday Before Advent

“When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed.” (Mark 13:7)

Illustration

“It’s not fair!” Lottie was bright pink as she stamped her foot. She might only be five years old, but she knew what was fair and what was not, and she was the victim of a massive injustice. Her big brother Tom was going to a party, and she had not been invited. Dad said he would take her to the swings instead, but that was not the same. Tom would get to play games, there would be crisps and cake, and presents to bring home, and Lottie was missing out. She was very cross. She had been a good girl all week, even when Tom had been nasty to her, and she was the one who deserved to go to the party.

Children develop a sense of fairness at quite a young age. They protest when they think they are being treated unfairly, and they soon begin also to protest on behalf of others unjustly treated. It seems that the principle of fairness is a fundamental part of our human nature. Even as adults we continue to protest when justice is not done.

Gospel Teaching

That is what gives an edge to what Jesus tells his disciples in today’s Gospel reading. The Messiah has come. The disciples have left everything to follow him. It is the dawn of a new age, with God’s representative finally on earth. This time has been prophesied and dreamt of for many centuries, a time when God would rescue his people from all oppression and reign over them in Jerusalem.

So what Jesus says seems really unfair. They have waited so long and so patiently. They have committed themselves to the vision. They have taken the chance of believing that Jesus is indeed the promised one. They have good reason to expect that the fulfilment of all their hopes is imminent.

“Do not be alarmed,” Jesus tells the disciples. But how could they not be? What could be more alarming than “rumours of wars”? The prospect of enemy armies turning up, who knows when. They have endured enough of that. It is really not fair. And so it has been, down the centuries since the days of Jesus. We are approaching the season of Advent, when we think about Jesus’ final coming. Jesus talks of “the beginnings of the birth pangs”, and we cannot help thinking that it has been a very long beginning. Jesus’ coming was meant to herald a new age, when God’s justice and peace would spread over all the earth. So where is it?

We have our own “wars and rumours of wars”, brought into even sharper relief when we contemplate the situation in the Holy Land today and we feel that there is no escape from conflict and terror anywhere in the world. We have our own earthquakes and famines, and the threat of the effects of climate change. The world can feel a dangerous place. God’s world should be better than this, we might well think. It isn’t fair.

Soon we will be faced with the Advent themes: heaven, hell, death and judgement,. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. However long it takes, we have faith that, in the end, love and justice WILL triumph, the Lord WILL reign and the world WILL be fair.

Praised be Jesus Christ – now and for ever. Amen.

Gordon Bond (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

10th November 2024

In today’s reading we have gone back to the beginning of Mark’s gospel, back to the opening chapter: we have just heard Jesus picking up on John the Baptist’s call to repent as he recruits his first disciples.

Mark’s gospel kicks off with John the baptist: John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins – that’s verse 4.

There is important to notice here: our walk with Christ, our journey back towards God, begins with repentance, not with faith. Repentance, in Greek metanoia, is a turn around, it is a change of heart; it is setting our life in a new direction. And why would anyone do that? Because they’ve run out of road, they’ve come to a dead end. Until you get to that point, until you get down on your knees and say ‘I’ve messed up, Lord, I’ve tried to do it my way and it just hasn’t worked out’, you aren’t ready to hear the gospel.

Faith comes later. You will sometimes hear people say, ‘I’m not really a Christian, because I don’t have faith’ – well you don’t need faith – not to begin with. Faith comes later, when you start following the Lord. It’s not part of the starter kit. But repentance, that desperation for a new start, to become a new person, that’s the starting line.

John the Baptist’s message of repentance struck a cord with the people of Israel, yet now he’s gone; he’s in prison. Now it’s Jesus’s turn: After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. But notice how this message is subtly different: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news. We still have the emphasis on repentance, but there’s a note of optimism too: this is good news! Jesus dangles a carrot of hope. So often John the Baptist comes across as the stern waver of a stick – he was, after all, the last in a long line of OT prophets. John the Baptist makes threats such as every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. But Jesus’s message is more gentle, and sweeter: Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus offers us the embrace of a loving friend, rather than the warnings of an angry teacher.

And there’s something else that’s different too: this talk of a new Kingdom: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.

To understand the Kingdom of God we have to go back to Moses, and to the Prophet Samuel. Moses led Israel out of slavery in Egypt and he gave them the Law. The Law wasn’t just a moral code, the ten commandments: it was also a new way of organising society, unlike anything that had ever been seen before, where widows and orphans and the stranger in their midst were cared for – the stranger in their midst (that’s us, BTW, us immigrants). This new society was designed to prevent any Israelite from falling into economic slavery: every 50 years there would be a redistribution of wealth known as the Jubilee: you can find all of this in the Book of Leviticus, especially ch.25. Whether this new society was put into practice or not we don’t really know, but we do know that after some 200 years the people of Israel came to the Prophet Samuel and demanded that they give them a king. In other words, they wanted to be just like everyone else. ‘What?’, said Samuel, ‘You want a king? Do you even know what that means? Do you know what you’re asking for? For you sons to go and serve in the king’s army, your daughters to work in his kitchens – or worse?’ ‘Yes, they said, we would rather have all that and be a powerful nation among powerful nations, than be God’s special kingdom.’

That was Israel’s great tragedy back then and it is humanity’s tragedy now: the dream of belonging to a great and prosperous nation, led by a strong king – whether it’s King Putin, King Netanyahu, King Trump, or King Xi Jinping. This is the tragedy of believing that our nation, our tribe, our faction is more than human – that it is divine, or at least has God’s special blessing – while every other nation, tribe, or faction is less than human. Such beliefs lead to conflict, and to slaughter. These kingdoms of the world, these powers, lead to the countless dead whom we are honouring here this morning.

It is right that we should honour them: all those whose lives have been cut short by war. But at the same time let us not forget that we have been called to another, higher kingdom, a kingdom of peace, service, love, and reconciliation. This is the Kingdom of God that Moses proposed, and which Jesus proclaimed. Just as Jesus called those humble fishermen to leave their nets and go after the Big Fish, so he is calling us to become subjects of the kingdom that is above every earthly kingdom. Follow me, Jesus calls, for the Kingdom of God has come near.

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

3rd November 2024

Today we celebrate the feast of All Saints, when we remember the lives of exemplary Christians, both living and dead. And I want to take this opportunity to talk about the place where I grew up – and you will see why in a minute.

I come from Cornwall, in the South-West of England. It is one of the Celtic regions of Britain, and like Wales, Scotland and Ireland, it is reknowned for its Celtic saints. Indeed there are 140 saints known in Cornwall alone, and there is a saying that there are more saints in Cornwall than there are in heaven. Some of them were historically validated Christian missionaries who founded churches and monasteries: St Petroc is an example of one of these. He came from Wales, reputedly crossing the sea by riding on a dolphin, and founded religious houses in Padstow and Bodmin; others, however, were legendary figures, having much more to do with Celtic myths than with genuine Christianity. For example there were 24 brothers and sisters (12 men and 12 women), the children of the Welsh King Brychan and all of them became saints. For the vast majority of the Cornish we have only a name, but nothing has been recorded about their lives.

All that remains of most of them is a handful of pious and often fanciful legends. I would like to tell you one which will give the flavour of all the rest: St Sithney was supposed to be the most holy of all the saints of Cornwall; but he was also extremely bad-tempered. One day God sent an angel to Sithney with a proposal. Landing next to where Sitheny lived on the bank of a river, the angel said ‘Listen Sithney, our Almighty Father has noticed that you are the holiest of all the saints of Cornwall, so he would like to make you the patron saints of young women, as they more than anyone, need a protector. What do you think of that?’ ‘Young maidens,’ said Sithney, ‘they’re more trouble than they’re worth! No one can be expected to keep them under control.’ and the saint picked up a stone from the river bed and threw it at the angel. As she flew off, Sithney said, ‘There, you can tell God that’s what I think of that!’ The next day the angel came back. ‘God has sent me with another proposal,’ she said. ‘How would you like to be the patron saint of stray dogs?’ ‘Stray dogs?, said Sithney. ‘Aye, that’ll do nicely’ And so it is that in Cornwall if you lose a dog, it would be to St Sithney that you pray. Incidently, the Australian city of Sydney is named after him.

But to get back to the feast of All Saints, which was actually on Friday, the 1^st November: it is one of the church calendar’s great ironies that the day before that, 31^st October, is celebrated as Reformation Day, as it it was on 31^stOctober 1517 that Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg. That was the event that sparked the Reformation. Ultimately, the Reformation also swept away many of the shrines, and much of the memory of the saints in my native Cornwall.

But make no mistake, the Reformation was a necessary corrective to the superstition and priest-craft of the late medieval church; it was the Protestant reforms that brought back a Gospel-based faith. There is a danger in too much saint worship: even this city of Genova, because of its role in carrying knights to the Crusades, has amassed an almost embarrassing collection of saintly relics. Just to give one example of how exaggerated the cult of the saints had become in late medieval times, St Apollonia was one of the virgin martyrs murdered by the Romans for her faith, and she was tortured by having all her teeth pulled out. Consequently she became the patron of all those suffering from tooth-ache and also of dentists. Christendom boasted many relics of St Apollonia; it is said that King Philip II of Spain, an avid collector of such things, alone managed ‘to amass all 290 holy teeth from the mouth of Saint Apollonia’.

It is a double irony, BTW, that 31^st October is now celebrated in secular Europe, as it is is in North America, not as Reformation Day, but as Halloween – the Evening of All Hallows, or All Saints, although the day when we traditonally commemorate the dead is All Souls, the day following All Saints, on 2^nd November.

Forgive me, this morning I have meandered, and I have told quaint stories of dogs and teeth and talked about the calenday instead of preaching the Gospel. What is my justification for this? Especially when our gospel reading has been the story of the Lord Jesus calling Lazarus out from the tomb. Many of us come to faith by meandering routes: childhood ritual and chance encounters affect us long before we reach any real understand of the Gospel. In my own case the names, and then the legends of the Celtic saints, planted a seed in my imagination long before I encountered the Jesus of the New Testament. We are a fallen race, half-blind, and ignorant of God’s heaven, God’s righteousness and God’s light. So any means that God uses to draw us back to himself we should be grateful for.

Should we worship the saints? Certainly not. We retain our worship for God alone; for God the Father, for God the Son, and for God the Holy Ghost. Should we remember the saints and commemorate their lives? Absolutely yes: we Christians must never forget our history, because we are children of a God who works in history and through history. [He will even be working through the American election later this week.]

The saints are like stained glass windows, and in their exemplary lives we can see the refracted glory of God shining through, in a myriad wonderful colours. As we sang at the beginning of this act of worship:
For all the saints, who from their labours rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest: Alleluia!

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

27th October 2024

‘All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness’, Paul tells us in his letter to Timothy.

As today is Bible Sunday, his morning I want to talk about the importance of reading scripture, of getting to know your Bible; I also want to suggest some practical ways we can this.

But first a quiz, a few questions for you. (I actually wrote a much longer quiz, printed out 30 copies, but then left them on my desk in Pavia; sometimes God is merciful). So here goes; just a few question; put your hand up if you know the answer.

How many books are there in the Bible? A), 2 B) 66, C) 93
How many kings came to visit the infant Jesus? (Three, though a trick question: the Bible doesn’t give a number, doesn’t call them kings)
Which OT book was set to music? (the Psalms)
Now some questions about the four gospels – remind me, who wrote them?

Which one:

Is short & was written first?
contains the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son?
contains the Sermon on the Mount?
Is different from the rest?

Which two:

tell us the story of Jesus’ birth?
wrote other books in the NT?
How many laws did Moses bring down from the mountain?
How many wives did King Solomon have: 30, 300, or 700?
How many rules/laws did the Pharisees have to follow: 66, 99, or 613?
And the last question: which two rules/ laws does Jesus tell us to follow?

Now, let me ask you a different kind of question: if we have Jesus, and if he has promised to send us his Holy Spirit, why do we still need to study our Bibles?

Firstly, because Jesus himself submitted to the Scriptures as his rule and guide for life: his teachings, his prophecies, and his prayers are saturated with the words of the Old Testament. We never here him dismissing the Scriptures but, as he says in the Sermon on the Mount, I came not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it.

Secondly, because although it is true that we can know the Lord Jesus in our hearts, and though we have been promised the Holy Ghost – it has been given to each of us in baptism – we can very easily follow an imaginary Jesus, and an imaginary God, ones suited to our own likings. We have to read our Bibles to keep us grounded in truth.

And thirdly, God will speak to you through his Word. By reading the Bible you will be inspired to love Jesus, you will receive God’s peace, and you will receive the guidance of the Holy Ghost.
And lastly, let me quote from the introduction to the Gideons Bible, because they they describe the Bible in a memorable way (if you don’t know it, Gideons International is an organisation that has placed over a billion Bibles in hotel rooms and other places, all around the world). They say;

It is supernatural in origin, eternal in duration, divine in authorship, infallible in authority, inexhaustible in meaning, universal in readership, unique in revelation, personal in applications and powerful in effect.

I would like to finish with some practical advice on how to get the know your Bible better. Indeed, this was all written down on the quiz I was supposed to bring in today – so please pick up a copy next Sunday, and you can have a record of these suggestions:

Read whole books of the Bible, not just isolated passages
Find out which books are being read on Sundays and read them
Download a version of the Bible to your phone
Sign up for free daily Bible readings: (https://www.christianweb.org.uk/free-online-daily-bible-reading-notes-resources/)
Listen to the Bible (try David Suchet’s recording)
Get a lively modern translation like The Message by Eugene Peterson
If you are learning a foreign language, read short passages in the language, comparing them with a familiar version.

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

20th October 2024

The reading from the letter to the Hebrews which we have just heard talks about priesthood and that’s what I want to talk about this morning. The epistle compares the high priest of the Jerusalem Temple with the priestly role of Jesus, bringing out some of the similarities and some of the differences. The role of priests is to form a bridge between the people and God; they are to bring gifts and offer sacrifices; another point to notice is that they do not choose themselves but they are chosen by God. Among the differences are the sinfulness and weakness of the high priest, which meant that he had to offer sacrifices again and again, compared to the sinlessness of Christ, who made his one sacrifice – giving his own life for us upon the cross – just once.

So what about Christian priests? Where do they fit in? Indeed, what do we even call them: priest, pastor, Minister, or just ‘hey you’, the guy in the funny clothes?

Actually, I think I’m going to begin with the clothes. The first thing to notice is that some of the things that are priest wears are deeply symbolic: others are accidental – they just happen to be what a well-dressed gentleman would have worn in the late Roman Empire or in Victorian times. Let’s begin with this [DOG COLLAR]: who can tell us what it’s called?PAUSE Dog collars, in themselves, have no particular religious significance: it’s just a fashion from the 19th-century which we have come to associate with the clergy. According to Canon Law a clergyman, or clergy woman, should always be recognisable as such when in public, and this dog collar serves that purpose. It has another purpose too: look at the shape – it’s a smiley face; that should remind its wearer what people want most in their priest is that they should be good-humoured.

To celebrate the Eucharist, the first thing a priest puts on is this – PICK UP AMICE. I don’t know how many of you know what this is, or what it is supposed to represent. Until I was ordained a deacon I had never seen anything like it before. This is known as an amice PUT IT ON. Originally, you’ll never guess what it was: it was an executioner’s hood. It’s purpose is to remind whoever wears it, as they celebrate the Eucharist, that they too are responsible for Christ’s death. The priest as Our Lord’s executioner: now there’s a thought! Certainly it reminds me that there is a touch of the hypocrite, the Pharisee who wants the best seat in the synagogue, in me whenever I dare to assume this role.

Next is this long white garment, called an alb. It is similar to the long white garments worn by choristers. In general the symbolism of long white garments goes back to the long white robes which newly baptised Christians would put on when they came out of the water. So it is a symbol of baptism and of the new man, the freshly transformed person, which our baptism confers on us and who we are called upon to become.

Then there’s this – HOLD UP STOLE – which is called a stole. Again, it is highly symbolic. St John tells us how, on the night before he died, Jesus washed his disciples feet, and then he dried them with a towel. This represents that towel: it is supposed to remind us of Christ’s humble service, and of the humble service we Christians are called upon to render to one another and to the world.
Finally, there’s this, the highly decorated over-garment known as a chasuble. It’s origins, however, were far more humble: it began as shepherd’s cape, a simple woolen blanket that could be put on over the head, similar to the poncho. The symbolism of the celebrant dressing up as a shepherd should be self-explanatory.

The next question is what do you call your clergyman – or perhaps I should say clergyperson. The answer to that rather depends on which end of the protestant/catholic spectrum you come from. The Roman church has no problem with the the title ‘priest’, and addressing him as ‘father’, and the more catholic end of the Anglican communion follows suit. The protestant Reformation, however, reminded us that there are no Christian priests in the NT, only deacons and bishops, and that Matthew ch.23:9 specifically forbids us to call any man ‘father’, except our father in heaven. Hence Protestants prefer terms like pastor and minister. Furthermore, Martin Luther pointed out that while we only have one High Priest in heaven, all baptised Christians are called to perform various aspects of the priestly role: to proclaim the gospel, to respond to those in need, and to guide and shepherd our neighbours.

If you ask me how I like to be addressed as a clergyperson, I’d probably encourage you to use whatever comes naturally, thought I often say ‘just call me Robert’. If I’m honest, however, I do have a preference. I like the term parson: the parson is a Middle English title, and form of address, for a priest, and it just means ‘a person’ – a rather anonymous, general sort of anybody. So calling your clergy person the parson, is a bit like saying they are one of the guys: ‘morning, dude’, ‘morning bro’, ‘morning parson’ – it’s all pretty much the same thing. And very useful if you can’t remember the vicar’s name.

So here I am, your parson – at least for now – hiding inside the hood of my own shortcoming and sinfulness, with this towel around my neck as a sign that I am willing to serve you, and clad in a shepherd’s cloak. It is indeed to privilege to be dressed like this, and to preside over our Lord’s Supper. But when you look at a priest strutting around in such a fancy outfit, I hope that each of you will be reminded of your own failings, of Christ’s call to all of us to serve, and that we are all also called to shepherd and guide our neighbours. After all, each one of us is called to ‘the priesthood of all believers’.

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

13th October 2024

The young man who comes and kneels before Jesus, to ask what he needs to do to inherit eternal life, seems like a thoroughly decent young man. He is deferential, earnest, and well-intentioned. Like many of us, he has been doing his utmost to be a good person. Yet Jesus rejects him. Indeed, he is the only would-be disciple whom Jesus rejects in the whole of the NT. Why? Because he is rich – that’s the obvious answer. And because, as Jesus goes on to say, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. Ouch! So nobody with money can be a follower of Jesus? Do you have to give away all your money to have a chance of entering the kingdom of heaven? The church has been struggling with this question for the last two thousand years. To start with, it has come up with excuses for why we don’t have to take Jesus’s words at face value. For example, it is sometimes said that the eye of the needle was the name of one of the gates in the old Jerusalem city wall: a gate so narrow that a camel could hardly squeeze through, especially if it was heavy-laden. But Mark’s remark is meant to be taken seriously, even if it is both humorous and sarcastic; as someone said more recently, it is like getting “Nelson Rockefeller through the night deposit slot of the First National City Bank”!

Other arguments I’ve heard are that attachment to his wealth may have been this particular young man’s defect, and that greed and an obsession with money was this particular man’s vice, but that just because it applied to this young man, it needn’t necessarily be taken as a general rule. Yet another argument is that neither Jesus nor the disciples were particularly poor. Jesus was a carpenter, a builder, so he had a trade; Simon Peter and his brother Andrew owned their own fishing boat… then there was Joseph of Arimathea, who gave his prime-site tomb for Jesus’s body to be laid in, and Nicodemus, the rabbi who comes to Jesus by night, both of whom were clearly wealthy and well-connected followers of the Lord, as were some of his women followers. So wealth, in and of itself, doesn’t seem to be the problem.

But let me come at this question from a different angle and say a few words about my own education in Christian finances.

When I started coming to church for the first time, this was fifteen years ago – this was after several decades of giving my childhood Christianity a wide berth – I ran into a somewhat eccentric, and rather bad-tempered clergyman. That first Sunday when I went to church, he was angry with his congregation for not putting their hands in their pockets, and not putting their money in the collection plate. After the service, for some reason, he took me aside, perhaps because I was a complete stranger, and treated me to private sermon – more of a harangue – about the relationship between a person’s faith and their wallet. I don’t think I ever saw him again. However, that brief encounter had a profound effect on me: I realised that as a mature Christian I had to set aside a small, fixed percentage of my income every month for tithing & donations.

Now, what I am not going to say is what the hucksters say: hand over 10% of your income to the church and God will shower down financial blessings on you; what I am saying is that, yes, in my opinion – and experience – God does makes a pretty good accountant. With hindsight, I can see that the conversation that Sunday morning led me to a more responsible attitude to money generally, and laid the foundations of future financial stability. Indeed, the path of Christian discipleship is to trust God enough to hand over more and more areas of our lives to Him: our wallets, our career, our love life, our marriage, even, eventually, our identity and sense of who we are – and ultimately our life itself.

Anyway, to return to our rich young man. Financial justice is part of the Biblical vision: it is there in the Jubilee practice of the Old Testament, where wealth would be redistributed every 50 years, and it is to be found in the early church – just look at Acts 2:44-45: All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. By the way, sometimes religion has called for financial justice, and at other times it has been in cahoots with oppressive economic systems that concentrate wealth in the hands of the few; at other times it has opposed them.

However, in Palestine, in Jesus’s time there was great financial injustice: many of the poorer farmers had been forced to sell their land and were reduced to poverty, while others were able to buy up this land cheaply and profit from other people’s misery. Quite possibly, the rich young man who came to Jesus was just such a person; we are told that he had many properties. In other words, it wasn’t the fact he was rich that was the problem: – it was where his wealth came from.

So what have we learned from our meeting with the rich young man? Firstly, following Jesus involves our wallets: we are called on to be generous to those in need, and we are called upon to use a part of our finances for the common good. Secondly, the call for a fair economic system is built into the Christian Gospel: as Pope Francis himself has said “Without the preferential option for the poor, the proclamation of the Gospel … risks being misunderstood or submerged.” And thirdly, despite all our efforts and all our wishes, the chances of building a globally just distribution of the world’s resources may look very bleak indeed; and yet we must have hope, because, as our Lord Jesus reminded his disciples, For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)

Harvest Festival 2024

Good morning, in my day job I am a teacher, which is why I want
to begin my words to you this morning with a test. I am going to give
you four statistics and then I am going to ask you what they have in
common. Are you ready?

3 million Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa
On average, women say 20,000 words a day, whereas men
say only 7,000 words
Only 1 in 10 Americans have passports
The most common phrase in the Bible is ‘Do not be afraid’; in
fact, it occurs 365 times – once for each day of the year.
What do those “facts” have in common? PAUSE They are not
true! Each of them is an exaggeration, and the numbers have been
invented to make the claim sound more plausible.
However, it is true that some variation of ‘Do not be afraid’ is
very common in Holy Scripture: in the NIV the expression “Do not
be afraid” can be found 70 times, while in the KJV it says “fear not”
71 times. My favourite is from Isaiah 41: 10 Do not be afraid, for I
am with you. Do not be anxious, for I am your God. I will fortify you,
yes, I will help you, I will hold on to you with my right hand of
righteousness.’
What Jesus is saying to us this morning is slightly different: ‘do
not worry’ – do not worry about the food on your table, or about the
clothes on your back. Yet worry, anxiety, fear they merge into one
another…
So why is Christ telling us not to worry? I think for three reasons:
the first is that the Gospel, his good news, has come to set us free –
we must trust that both life and death are the gifts of a loving God –
ultimately, as St Paul says in Romans, chapter 8, nothing can ever
separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels
nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about
tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s
love. At the end of the day, God has got our backs, But, and this is
the second reason: not many of us have cultivated that level of
trust, we don’t even have even the faith of a mustard seed. So
here’s the thing: our anxieties, our consistent preoccupations over
the little things, are the devil’s chief strategy in keeping us enslaved.

Keep your head down, keep your hands in your pockets, worry if
there’re enough coins in there, or a hole… No, says Jesus, that is
what the Gentiles do. He calls us to be a new people, his people,
the ones who strive first for his Kingdom, and for his righteousness.
Instead of worrying about ourselves, He calls us to be
concerned for others. Instead of worrying if we have got enough, he
tells us to celebrate what we have. But here’s the real secret: if you
have a habit of worrying, as so many people have, you must
replace it with a better habit: the habit of giving thanks.
Today we celebrate our harvest thanksgiving. Once upon a
time, the harvest was a crucial moment in the year: to start with,
nearly everybody worked on the land and harvest meant the end of
weeks of back-breaking toil; and if the harvest was good, you knew
you would have enough food to get through the coming winter.
Perhaps it is only people who come that close to survival who can
know immense elation – perhaps that includes some of you. Look at
the ecstatic words of relief and joy in our psalm: When the Lord
restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with songs
of joy.’ This was written when the Israelites were released from their
captivity in Babylon.
In a few minutes we are going to share our thanksgiving lunch.
And although our harvest is largely symbolic – few of us, I imagine,
have spent the last week toiling in the fields, and we expect there to
be panettone in the shops this Christmas – I do hope it becomes a
moment of thanksgiving: a moment to share food and celebrate our
stories, just as the Eucharist – which means ‘thanksgiving’ by the
way – is a moment when we share in the story of our dear Lord
Jesus. May our mouths be filled with laughter and our tongues with
songs of joy! Amen.

Robert Morley (Locum Chaplain, Holy Ghost Genoa)