The Holy Spirit (Pentecost 2026)

 The Day of Pentecost 24th May 2026

Wolf Kirchmeir

The Holy Spirit

Numbers 11:24-30; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b; Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. The reading from the Acts is familiar. So is the Gospel. We’ve heard it all before. But familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes. 

Familiarity is always a danger when reading the Bible. We’ve heard the stories so  many times before that we think we know what they mean. We may feel no need to learn any more about them. So let’s try to look at today’s Gospel with fresh eyes, listen to it with new ears, think about it with naive questions. Because there are really quite a few puzzles in it.

The central puzzle is the Holy Spirit itself.

Who or what is the Holy Spirit? Why is Jesus breathing on the disciples when he says Receive the Holy Spirit? What does the Holy Spirit have to do with being sent? Sent where? To do what? 

Let me take a little side trip into language. A fundamental fact about language is that languages change. Even if we can still read the old texts, we may not understand them as their writers intended. I’ll start by comparing two translations of today’s Gospel.

First, the King James version: Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.

In the Revised Standard version, we read, Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Why does the newer version say spirit instead of ghost? The main reason is that nowadays the common meaning of ghost is something like an apparition presumed to be the left-over essence of a dead person. We think about haunted places. Things that go bump in the night, and rattling chains, and chilly breezes where there should be no breeze at all. Then there’s the Ghostbusters movies. Ghosts are spooky and mysterious.

None of this has anything to with the Holy Spirit, which is why we no longer say the Holy Ghost.

Translation is tricky. So is reading. Reading is really a kind of translation. When you read, you translate the writer’s words into your own meanings. This pretty well guarantees misunderstanding. In fact, language that sounds familiar increases misunderstanding. When we read familiar words, words we ourselves use many times, we think that the other person is using those words to mean the same as we do.

I think that’s a common effect of reading about the Holy Spirit. We use that phrase so often that we think we know what we mean by it. When we use Holy Ghost, we know that we were talking about something mysterious, simply because today’s common meaning of ghost doesn’t fit.

So who or what is the Holy Spirit? The regular answer is, The Third Person of the Trinity. That’s correct, but it’s not very helpful. All of today’s readings mention the Spirit, so let’s look at them together. I found several lessons when I did this, and I want to share them with you. I hope we will have a more complete idea of the Spirit. 

In Numbers we read that The Lord... took some of the spirit that was upon [Moses] and put it upon the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied (Num.11:25).

To prophesy is to speak truth. That’s the first lesson, that the Spirit reveals the truth, and gives us the understanding of it, so that we can speak it.

The Psalmist describes the Spirit as the breath of life: When thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created (Ps.104:30). This reminds us of God breathing life into Adam, into adamah, the dust of the ground. God is the arbiter of life and death. When he takes away our breath, we die, and return to dust. We become again the adamah, the dust of the ground from which God made us. But that same breath renews the face of the earth.

That’s the second lesson: The Spirit gives life, and the Spirit renews life.

In Acts, the Spirit enters into the Apostles and they speak so that all that heard them understood the Good News. The Apostles were able to tell of their experiences and beliefs to all who were willing to listen.

That’s the third lesson, that the Spirit gives us the words we need. If we listen to each other, we will know what to say. We will know the words that the other person needs to hear. Words of comfort. Words of understanding. Words of witness.

When Peter preaches, he quotes the words of Joel: And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.

That’s the first lesson again: the Spirit will reveal truth to those who accept him.

But that truth is not a simple, literal one. It’s visions, and dreams, and prophecies. It’s a truth that bears witness. It shows, it doesn’t tell. It’s not an explanation of spiritual experience, it is spiritual experience.

That’s the fourth lesson: The Spirit will reveal the truth The Spirit will empower us to speak of it, to share our visions and dreams, so that we will all know what each of us knows.

In the Gospel, Jesus gives his followers a commission: As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. Jesus was sent to bring life. So his followers, that’s us, will bring life, too. But we cannot do that alone. That’s why Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is necessary for our journey.

That’s lesson seven: The Spirit will accompany us on the journey we call life. He will guide us, he will strengthen us, he will comfort us.

This short contemplation of the readings has taught us a lot.

But learning new ideas is not enough.

Once we have caught some glimpse of the truth, once we have grasped some insight and made it ours, there’s a question: How shall we apply it in our lives? For the value of what we have learned isn’t that we have gained some understanding or insight. The value of what we’ve learned is how we change what we do, and how we do it. It’s no good knowing the correct words that summarise the faith. It’s not enough to pass the exam.

How have those words made us what we are? How they have defined our goals and purposes? How they have made a difference in our live and the lives of the people we meet?

Has our faith shaped how we live?

Well then, how should we live? The last sentence in today’s Gospel hints at the answer: If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; and if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. At first glance, this looks like Jesus is giving us enormous power. Forgiving is an exercise of power. When you say, I forgive you, you are labelling someone as an offender, someone who needs forgiveness, and you are claiming the power to supply that forgiveness.

But it’s a power to be wielded under the guidance of the Spirit. Jesus’s words are not a command.

The command that Jesus gave us is one we know well: Love God, and love your neighbour.

Looking at forgiveness from this angle, the puzzle changes. It is now How should I use the power of forgiveness? There’s a clue in the prayer that we will say in a few minutes: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.

Those words remind us that forgiveness works both ways. If we retain the sins of any, their sins are retained, but ours are retained, too. But to forgive one another is to be forgiven by one another, and thereby to be forgiven by God.

Let us apply this last bit of wisdom in our lives. Then the power of the Holy Spirit will be seen in our actions as well as in our words.

Let us pray.

O Holy Spirit, we give thanks for the gifts that you offer, that by using them we may glorify God in our lives. Give us wisdom that we may use these gifts in accordance with your will. Give us insight that we may follow your guidance. Breathe into our hearts and minds that we may joyfully do your work of love and forgiveness. We pray in the name of Him who sends us into the world to bring the Good News of life and renewal of life, Jesus Christ, who with you and the Father reigns now and forever. Amen

The Resurrection (5th of Lent, 2026-03-22)

 5th in Lent, 22nd March 2026

W Kirchmeir

The Resurrection

May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.

[Ezekiel 37:1-14; Ps.116:1-8; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:(1-66)17-45]

Dear Friends in Christ,

The Apostle’s creed ends with I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

That statement offends reason. The offense against reason has led the church, along with much of humankind, to believe in a continued life of some part of the self. They usually call this part the soul, and assert that the soul will survive the death of the physical body.

I’m at the age when I read lot of obituaries and death notices. I don’t think this is surprising. According to Statistics Canada, about 97% of Canadians are younger than I am.

Lately I’ve noticed that most obituaries refer to the deceased as reuniting with family and friends. Clearly, most people believe that there’s some kind of existence after death. That somehow the person survives, and will find eternal joy in the company of those that have gone before.

This is probably the most widespread belief about what happens after death.

But it’s not Christian.

Every Sunday we say that we believe in the resurrection of the body.

Just what do we mean when we say these words?

In two weeks we will celebrate what we claim to be the most significant event in the history of the universe: The death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

We claim further that this man was the Son of God.

And we claim that whoever believes this, and calls upon Jesus name, will rise from the dead and live with him forever.

Just what do we mean when we make these claims?

In our funeral service we quote the words of Jesus that we heard in the gospel today: I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. [John 11:25]

We all somehow claim to believe in Jesus, and by so doing, we claim that resurrection and that life.

Just what do we mean when we say we believe?

Belief is not the same as faith. The words of a creed are not the same as the faith that they express. We ought to look at this belief in the resurrection, in a renewed life of the self after death, even though we know we cannot fully explain what we mean when we say we believe in it. This season of Lent, we prepare to celebrate what we claim to be the most important event in the history of the world. It’s a good time to think about these things.

The ancient Israelites had difficulties with a belief in the resurrection, also. At the time of Jesus, many Jews did not believe in eternal life. They believed that life ended with death, and that your circumstances of this life depended on your righteousness, and the righteousness of your ancestors. Did not God say he visited the sins of the fathers upon the children even into the third and fourth generation? So your acts would reap rewards or punishments for you, and for those who came after you. 

Some Jews believed in a kind of half life after death, in another part of the world, much as the Greeks did. Your life in that place of shadows depended on your righteousness in this life. Jesus alluded to this belief in his parable of the rich man and the poor man at his gate.

But by the time of Christ, most Jews believed in the resurrection. They placed it at some distant future time, when this world would come to an end, and God would gather the righteous into the promised land. In the meantime, the dead would sleep. Martha clearly took this belief for granted. I know [Lazarus] will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. [John 11:24] And Jesus' reference to Lazarus being asleep also refers to this belief.

This belief arose in part by rethinking Ezekiel's vision of the valley of the dry bones. In this vision, Ezekiel saw a resurrection. God commanded him to prophesy over the bones, and God made the bones come together, and clothed them in sinew and flesh and skin. Then God commanded Ezekiel to prophesy again, and made the wind, the breath of life, enter into the bodies, and they became a mighty army.

Now we don't have to take these words literally: Ezekiel himself makes plain that what he saw was a vision. It was a vision that revealed to him the power of God. If God wanted, he could make the dry and dusty bones of long-dead people live again. How much more, then, can he do with the spiritual life!

In this vision, the desert represents the despair and hopelessness that the Israelites had wandered into, it represents a spiritual desert. Son of Man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off from our parts. [Ez.8:11]

Ezekiel saw the state of a people who have lost faith. Who have lost their sense of common purpose. Who have lost hope.

And Ezekiel also saw that if and when the people of Israel repented and turned toward the Lord, they would be resurrected from the grave of despair, and would once again become a hopeful people, mighty and unified under the Lord. He saw the regeneration, the resurrection of the whole nation of Israel.

And God promised that that would happen. Ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves. And I shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live." [Ez.8:13-14]

But there's more: God says he will lead the people of Israel into their own land. He promises that he will bring them home. The actual political facts of Jesus’s lifetime made this an unlikely event in the present universe. So Martha like most Jews of her time believed that this would happen on the last day.

Many modern Christians believe this, too. Some of them believe that can see signs of the end times right now, and that the Last Day, the Day of Judgement, will soon be upon us. They exhort us to join them, for only they will be saved, only they will inherit the earth and enjoy it forever. That seems to be what they mean when they say that they believe in the resurrection and the life.

Let’s look at what St. Paul says. He was the first interpreter of the faith, the apostle who began the difficult and ongoing work of devising a creed that truly expresses the faith. He had a more complex idea. In Romans 8:6 & 9, he writes, For to be carnally minded is death ... But ye are not of the flesh, but in the Spirit.

Paul clearly means that the resurrection of the body begins in this life, that by claiming the power of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross, we invite the Spirit to transform our lives here and now. Not that we receive a guarantee of a sinless existence until death transforms us once again, for temptations continue to vex us. But by the power of the Spirit we can recognise and withstand these temptations.

And when in our weakness we do yield, and sin again, by that same power of the Spirit we trust in God's forgiveness, which strengthens us. I think we can easily agree with Paul in this idea. To say that God transforms us does not offend reason.

But hear what else Paul says on this subject: But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. [Rom.8:11]

Our dead bodies will be brought to life, Paul says. This idea does offend reason.

Paul knew that. In 1. Corinthians 15 he spends a good deal of time trying to make the idea sound more reasonable. He points out that the seed must die before it becomes a new plant. What the sower sows in the ground is not what the reaper reaps at harvest time. Just so, our physical body must die before we can become a new person in the spirit.

Paul reminds us that by the power of the Spirit we live again. That the Spirit saves us from the death visited upon us through sin. He accepts the physical death of the body as the just and necessary effect of that sin. But in the Spirit there is life, in the Spirit we are saved from sin. So, when we rise again, we will exist in a spiritual body, says Paul.

These words of Paul's certainly help us give meaning to the statement in our creed, we believe in the resurrection of the body. Similes and metaphors and formulas add content to what would otherwise be mere mouthing of words and  phrases. They give us some idea, some image we can grasp, of that mystery we state so simply in so few words: The mystery that our dead bodies will live again.

But that's all they are, ideas, images. However much truth they contain, there remains something inexpressible and ungraspable. What will that spiritual body be like? How can we, who know that we live because time passes, exist in eternity, where the idea of time passing is meaningless? What will we do when we come into the presence of the one who said of himself, none can see his face and live?

And yet we will live. We will see his face!

The creed expresses the beliefs that we hold. The beliefs that we hold express the faith. The faith we have from God. Our faith enables us to trust that what we believe and what we say we believe is true. And that we will know that truth completely when we come face to face with the Person who is that Truth.

And now to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be all Dominion, Power and Glory, now and forever. Amen.

Temptation (1st of Lent, 2026-02-22)

 1st in Lent 22nd February 2026

Wolf Kirchmeir

Temptation

May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.

[Genesis 7:15-17, 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-15; Matthew 4:1-11]

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today's readings are about temptation, and about the saving grace of God's forgiveness. I will start by discussing the nature of temptation, and then the effects of knowing we have sinned, and end by talking about our response to God's forgiveness.

A week or so ago, many people celebrated Valentine's Day. One thing we do for this occasion is to give and receive chocolate. Chocolate is wonderful stuff, a food of pure enjoyment. That's why we give it to our valentines.

Chocolate is often advertised as something to tempt us, as something we ought not to enjoy too much. People who enjoy chocolate may be described as chocoholics, as if this sweet were a drug capable of causing addiction. And so on.

I like chocolate very much. I consider it to be the fifth food group, and believe you ought to have some chocolate every day. But is not a food, it's a confection. It's designed to give pleasure and nothing else. Besides, it makes you fat, it makes you break out in pimples, and it causes migraines. Bad stuff, chocolate. Don't eat it! Do not yield to temptation!

But some research supports my belief that chocolate is good for you. It reduces the bad cholesterol, it scavenges the chemicals that may cause cancer, and it lightens your mood.

What a relief! For now the temptation to eat chocolate has disappeared. You need no longer resist the desire to indulge in that delectable food, but can enjoy it with a clear conscience. It's good for you!

What is a temptation? Why should we resist temptation?

Temptation begins with desire. Desire can lead you astray. We want to enjoy the taste of chocolate, and we are likely to want to enjoy it too much, so that we overindulge, which can have bad consequences.

So the essence of the temptation seems to be desire.

Is it wrong to have desires? There are people who think so. In fact, some people choose the monastery or the convent because they believe it will remove them from objects of desire. Other people find Buddhism attractive because it promises to relieve them of desire. The Hindu belief in reincarnation attracts some people because it promises a release from desire after the soul has lived enough lives to learn how renounce desire. We may admire Sherlock Holmes because he is a man guided by cold logic, not by hot desire. 

The desire to get rid of desire comes from knowing that it is desire that leads us into temptations. For many people, desire is temptation, and temptation is desire, period.

 But that point of view is incomplete. The story of the three temptations of Christ shows us this.

Jesus suffered three temptations. First, the Tempter suggested that Jesus should turn the stones of the desert into bread, so as to prove he is the Son of God. Then the Tempter suggested that Jesus should demonstrate his faith by throwing himself off the temple tower. Finally, the Tempter showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and said he could make Jesus master of them all. In all three, the Tempter speaks to desires that are not necessarily bad.

In each case, the temptation was to yield to a desire for the wrong reasons. It's OK to make bread to feed yourself, but not to show that you are the Son of God. It's good to trust in the Lord when you are in danger, but it's wrong to expose yourself to unnecessary risks. It's fine to enjoy whatever wealth and influence you may achieve, but it's wrong to aim for wealth and power.

Desire, need, want – these are the motives of action. We cannot choose to do anything without them. Yet we may desire to do what is wrong. Or we may desire to do what is right for the wrong reasons.

We need some guide to direct our desires. We know that guide; it is the Law. Jesus quoted the summary of the Law found in the Old Testament: Love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength; and love our neighbour as yourself. Jesus's resistance to the temptations was founded on this law.

So the Law is the guide to action. 

But as Paul says, we will fail to meet the demands of the Law. Knowing the Law means knowing we cannot fulfill its demands. Failing to fulfill the Law is sin.

It looks like we’re trapped. We know what we ought to do, we know good and evil, and we know that we cannot avoid doing wrong.

The Law, which should guide us into the paths of righteousness instead condemns us to the knowledge that we will sin. And the knowledge of unavoidable failure could lead us into despair.

We need the assurance that if we fail, we can start over.

We have such assurance. Psalm 32 expresses the joy of the sinner  who knows that their sins are forgiven. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.... Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.

And Paul in his letter to the Romans repeats that same assurance: By one man, he says, sin came into the world. And by another man sin was conquered.

At this point, we will nod our heads and think, Yes, that's it. Blessed assurance, as the hymn says.

And it is a blessed assurance. But we may be so familiar with the message, we may have heard it so often, that we may have forgotten what an astonishing thing it is to have your sins forgiven. We may have become comfortable in our comfortable pews, so that the saving grace of God's death on the cross may have become something we take for granted and pay no real attention to. Like the music we don't notice anymore when we go to the store.

But listen to the psalm again. When he sinned, says the psalmist, and did not acknowledge his sin, the hand of the Lord was heavy upon him. It was like drought that kills all living things in the heat of summer. The knowledge of his sinfulness shrivelled up his soul within him, turned it into a little brittle leaf that threatened to crumble to dust. It made his bones old within him, he says; it took away his strength, his energy, his ability to do anything.

But now, says the psalmist, he is saved from the great waters; he will trust in God and the mercy of God will surround him. He invites all the righteous, all those who have confessed their sin and been forgiven, to be glad in the Lord and rejoice and shout for joy.

Well....

Do we shout for joy? We Anglicans don't like to make a spectacle of ourselves, so we don't wave our hands and dance in the aisles as we sing, as some other Christians do. And I don't think we really need to do that. There are many ways of rejoicing, and a shout of joy need not be heard three miles away.

But we do need to rejoice. In fact, if we have a lively sense of God's grace and mercy, we will rejoice.

We can't help it. The joy of knowing we are forgiven will appear in everything we do and say.

We will be glad when it snows and when the sun shines. We will be glad when we see our friends, and when we think of them in their absence. We will be glad when we can help or support the grieving and the sick, and when we can share in the laughter and the entertainments of the healthy. We will greet each other with pleasure.

We will have such a sense of abundance that we will give to those who help the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned, and we will hardly notice that we've done so. We will visit the sick, we will provide rides for those who can't drive, we will support the community's efforts to provide wholesome entertainment for our children.

We will comfort the lonely. We will sing our hymns with pleasure, and we will say our prayers with fervour, even if we have sung and prayed them a hundred times before.

We will do what is right even if it is unpopular.

We have all seen images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd carrying the lost lamb he has sought and found. Each of us is that lost lamb. Each of us has been found. Each of us is carried in his arms. Each of us will live with him forever. That is the assurance that we have by the grace of God, that is the reason for our joy.

We are at the beginning of Lent, which is often seen as a season of gloom and despair. Insofar as Lent helps us to reflect on our shortcomings, our failures, our sins, it will cause us something less than happiness.

But Lent looks forward to Easter, which is the central event in history according to our faith.

Easter assures us that our sins are forgiven. It lifts the burdens from our hearts, it lightens the darkness of our minds, it chases away the black dogs of despair. By looking forward to this time of great rejoicing, Lent too becomes a time of joy.

We have sinned, we have strayed like lost sheep, but the Good Shepherd has sought us out, he has found us, he has rescued us. His love and his mercy surround us like a mother's loving arms, they protect us like a fortress, they nourish us like a garden.

Let us give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, and his mercy endureth forever.

Amen.

Risk (3rd of Epiphany, 2026-01-25)

Epiphany 3, 25th January 2026

© W Kirchmeir

Risk

[Isaiah 9:1-4; Ps.27:1-6; 1 Corinthians 1:10-17; Matthew 4:12-23]

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Paul is worried about the church in Corinth. He worries about the quarrels that threaten to break up the congregation there. Each one, says Paul, is claiming some kind of special relationship, some kind of special truth. "I am Paul's man," says one. "I am for Apollos," says another. "I follow Cephas, I follow Christ," say others. And Paul scolds them for this division amongst them.

Somehow, this group of Christians has got hold of the wrong end of the stick. 

Somehow, they have fallen into the trap of believing that a particular formulation of the truth falsifies all other formulations of the same truth.

And so they quarrel.

These divisions run deep and dangerous, and Paul will have none of it. "Surely Christ has not been divided among you!" he says.

For there is only one Christ, one Saviour.  "Was it Paul who was crucified for you?" he asks. For only Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.

"Was it in the name of Paul that you were baptised?" Of course not, for we are baptised in the name of Jesus the Christ.

Paul even thanks God that he has baptised only a few of them, whom he names. For he does not wish any of them to claim that they follow him rather than Christ. Paul rejects any hint that he has looked for followers for himself. He has come to proclaim the Gospel. And that Gospel does not rest on some specific formula of words, but on a fact: The fact of Christ’s death on the cross.

We too have difficulties like the Corinthians. For example, we argue with other Christians about what we should understand when Jesus says the bread and the wine are his body and his blood. We hear those words in every Eucharist.

Paul's warning to the Corinthians holds true for us, too, and has held true for the whole church, and has been ignored by the church at different times and in different places.

Why does this happen?

Why do Christians quarrel amongst themselves?

Why do we argue and fight about the words that say what our faith means to us?

Many reasons account for this behaviour, certainly. We know that language can mislead us. We know that we cannot properly or fully express the mysteries of which we speak.

So we fear that what we say will make us imagine what is not so. We fear that what we say will mislead us into falsehood and damnation. I suppose we can condone such reasons for argument, because they arise from a genuine desire to know the faith as it should be known. For our faith seems to depend on what someone has said, on what someone has told us, which is the Good News. We must be sure we know what that Good News actually tells us.

We don’t want to risk being wrong.

But Paul hints at another reason: our natural gratitude to the person who has introduced us to the Gospel can become an excessive reliance on that person's words and opinions. It becomes not "Jesus says" but "This man says." Or "This woman says." We mistake the messenger for the message, and hold to the doctrine not because it is true, but because it comes from some specific person. So we too might have said, "I am Paul's man," or "I follow Cephas." And from such loyalty to the friend and teacher who told us of Jesus can arise quarrels and fighting.

 We could go on finding reasons for the quarrels and the disagreements among us. But I don't think such a search would serve much purpose. A deeper and more serious reason underlies them all.

We want certainty. We want a guarantee that what we commit ourselves to will work out exactly as we expect.

We don't like risks, especially real risks. A real risk is one that could result in great harm. And what harm could be greater than the risk of eternal damnation, of eternal separation from God?

For such separation is the closest the spirit can come to death, and because it lasts for eternity it is far worse than mere bodily death, which lasts but a moment.

Now at first glance this desire for certainty, this desire for a risk-free choice, this desire for guarantees looks reasonable. Why take chances? Certainly, we should not take foolish chances. Jesus called foolish risk-taking a sin. When he refused to throw himself from the temple roof as Satan suggested he should, he said, "You shall not tempt the Lord your God."

Trivial risks can easily be avoided; that's what makes them trivial.

The risk of damnation is not a trivial risk.

But here's a strange thing: This serious risk is precisely the kind that God expects us to take. God expects us to take him on faith, without proofs, without guarantees. He expects us to trust him even though we do not and cannot completely understand his promises. That's just what he did when he was on this earth, and it's what he continues to do.

 When Jesus went into Galilee and gathered his disciples, he invited them to take risks. He called on Peter and Andrew, and they left their boats and came. He called on James and John, and they put down their nets and followed him. He gave no guarantees – he just asked them. They required no guarantees – they just up and followed him.

 What it comes down to is this: That to live a life of faith means to take risks. Later in their ministry, when the riskiness of everyday life on the road got a little too much for the disciples, they complained about it. And Jesus said, "Take no thought for the morrow."

 Another time, Jesus told the story of the rich man who had stored treasures and provisions in his barn, and went to bed secure in the knowledge that he had a guaranteed future. Except that his future came to end that night, for the angel of death summoned him.

 There is no guaranteed future.

Even the Gospel doesn’t come with a guarantee. There's nothing that tells us we can return the product to its maker for repairs or replacement if it does not work as expected. All we get is a statement of facts, and a claim that they hold an astonishing meaning. A meaning we could not possibly see for ourselves or by ourselves.

Paul says these are the facts:

Christ was crucified.

Christ died.

Christ rose from the dead.

And he says that these facts mean that God himself died and rose again.

And that in doing these things God has redeemed us from the consequences of our sin and disobedience to his will.

And that he did this so that we might share with him that eternal mode of being that we call heaven.

Now the facts that Paul refers to are attested only in the Bible. Until the Christians become a nuisance a generation or two after Jesus' death, we have no other historical source for their existence than the Bible. So these facts are not very well supported.

But the degree of proof doesn't matter.

Even if the whole world accepted these facts, even if we had all the documentary proof we wanted and more than we needed, we would still have to take the meaning of these facts on faith.

Because all that the histories, any history, could prove is that a religious personage caused some trouble and was put to death before he could start a revolution.

The histories could not record that this was the Son of God.

That is a truth revealed to us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

That is a truth we must take on faith.

That is a truth we must risk believing.

We must risk building our whole lives around that truth.

But here’s another strange thing.

Through faith this gamble becomes a certainty.

But when we don't have that certainty, then we need to guarantee the truth of the faith by guaranteeing the truth of what we say. Then we cannot  tolerate other people's ways of talking about the faith because they might be talking nonsense. Or worse, we cannot tolerate how other people express the faith because the differences might mean that we are talking nonsense.

Divisions about what we mean when we claim to believe this or that form of words are evidence that we lack faith. That we are unwilling to take the risk of affirming a truth we cannot express clearly, nor fully, and certainly not certainly.

When we refuse to take that risk, when we demand certainty, we lack faith.

That fact explains Paul's anxious anger at the divisions amongst the Corinthians. He feared that they lacked faith. He saw the consequences of that lack of faith in the quarrels and the fighting. Only a group of people desperate for guarantees of truth, and terrified of the consequences of falsehood, will fight amongst themselves as the Corinthians did.

So Paul says he came to proclaim the Gospel, that the fact of Christ crucified might have its full weight.

That weight we know. We glory in that knowledge.

The psalmist sings that the Lord is the refuge of his life. We sing that same song.

He prays that he will be constant in the house of the Lord, that he will seek him in his temple. We pray the same prayer, and worship together here today because God has answered that prayer.

The psalmist says he will acclaim God with sacrifices before his tent; we make the same acclamation in our offerings of treasure and time.

We too will sing a psalm of praises before the Lord, every Sunday in our common worship, and every day as the sureness of the promises of God sounds like music in the background of our lives.

And when Jesus calls us to follow him, we will drop whatever we are doing, we will abandon whatever the false wisdom of this world has told us is worth pursuing, and with Peter and Andrew, and James and John we will follow Jesus.

And Jesus will transform our lives.

Outwardly, the world may see little difference. But because all that we do we do in praise of the Lord and to fulfil his commandments, to the eye of faith all that we do will signify the power of the Spirit working in our lives.

 Let us pray.

 Lord Jesus Christ, you revealed yourself to be the Son of God that we might know the salvation promised to us in your death on the cross and your resurrection from the dead. Grant now that we may believe what you have revealed to us, so that we may fulfil your will in this earthly life, and in the end enter with you and all believers into the eternal presence of the Father. We pray by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Holy Innocents (First after Christmas, 28th December 2025)

1st after Christmas, 28th December 2025

The Holy Innocents

Wolf Kirchmeir

Isaiah 63:7-9; Psalm 148; Hebrews 2:10-18; Matthew 2:13-23

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today, December 28th, we remember the Holy Innocents.

Today’s Gospel is grim. This will be a grim meditation.

Herod had asked the three Magi to report back when they found the boy born to be King. But they were warned in a dream, and left by another way. Joseph was also warned in a dream, and took his family to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath. After some years, after Herod died, an angel told Joseph to return to Israel. Herod’s sons were in power, so Joseph did not return to Bethlehem, which was too close to Jerusalem. Instead he took his family to Nazareth.

When the Magi did not report back to Herod, he was furious because he didn’t have the name of the child. He ordered the murder of all male children two years and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding country. He figured that way he would eliminate the one that was a threat to his throne.

What are we to make of this story?

Let’s look again Matthew’s Gospel:

He says that the flight into Egypt was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”

He also says Joseph’s decision to settle in Nazareth was made so that what was spoken by the prophet was fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

Herod was unable to find the infant Jesus, so he ordered the murder of hundreds of children expecting that one of them would be the rival that he feared. And that was prophesied too: A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.

So according to Matthew, young children were killed so that an ancient prophecy could be fulfilled. That conclusion about what the story means is fairly common.

It prompts the question of how a loving God could have allowed the murder of innocent children.

Or how a loving God can allow this and all the other evils that infest our world.

There is no good answer to that question. The logic of the question is that God knows the evil that will happen, and so he could stop it. And a loving God should stop it. But to say that God should stop the evils of the world is to demand that God should act according to our wishes. That God should act to calm our pain. That God should act to soothe our sense of outrage.

It’s a demand that God should do what we want him to do.

That’s not how it works.

The underlying question is about evil. Why is there evil in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do people get away with doing bad things? Why do bad people enjoy the same rewards as good people do, and sometimes even more? Why are evil acts often rewarded while good ones are punished?

In other words, why is the world not perfect?

I don’t know of any simple answer to these questions. I have however come across many ways of dealing with them. In the rest of this meditation I will talk about some of the things I’ve learned.

I’ll do this be telling three stories.

The first story is about how the world became imperfect. Genesis tells us about Adam and Eve living in the Garden of Eden. God told them they could have anything they wanted, except the fruit of the two trees in the centre of the Garden, the Tree of Knowledge, and the Tree of Life.

The Tempter in the form of a snake persuaded Eve that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was good to eat, and would give her the knowledge of good and evil.

So she ate some.

And then Adam ate some too.

And when God came to the Garden for his evening walk, Adam and Eve hid themselves, because now they knew they were naked. When God demanded how come Adam and Eve knew they were naked, Adam admitted he’d eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and he blamed Eve. Eve also admitted she’d eaten the fruit, and she blamed the serpent.

Neither Adam nor Eve accepted blame. It was all someone else’s fault. That began the habit of blaming someone else, of refusing to accept responsibility. That refusal causes a lot of evil, both directly and indirectly. Directly when we manage to get someone else blamed and punished for what we did. And indirectly when we refuse to accept the chain of cause and effect that leads from our actions to some evil down the line.

Herod was a tyrant. That makes this part of Matthew’s Gospel an comment on tyranny.

All tyrants know that nobody loves them. Most people obey because they fear the tyrant. Some may envy him. Some may enjoy the power they wield as his minions. Some simply put up with him. Some want to take his place. But most want him gone.

So tyrants look for signs of disloyalty or of plots against them. They want to eliminate any and all competition. The result is murder. And the tyrant will claim that it’s not his fault. He was just protecting himself from all those who want to remove him.

That’s what we see in the murder of the Holy Innocents.

You might think that by this action Herod stepped over some line, and there was an attempt to remove him. There wasn’t.

Then there’s the Holocaust, the systematic murder of more than 6 million people, mostly Jews, by the Nazis during the 2nd World War. When the trains of cattle cars loaded with Jews ran through towns and villages, most people averted their eyes. After the war, the people who lived near the death camps claimed they didn’t know what was happening there.

So another cause of evil is our unwillingness to see it. We’d rather look away. We’d rather feel that all’s right with the world. We want to believe that there’s nothing for us to worry about. Because if we did pay attention, we would have to do something. We would have to accept responsibility.

I’ve mentioned three stories: Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, blaming the serpent for their choice to eat the fruit on the Tree of Knowledge.

Herod on the throne in Jerusalem, a puppet king desperate to hold onto the little power that the Romans allowed him.

The death camps of World War Two, where millions of people were killed while ordinary folk refused to see what was happening.

Three examples of what I called the blame game. The unwillingness to do the right thing. The avoidance of responsibility.

I think you may see a theme here.

Let me tell you another story. 

Some years ago, I listened to a discussion of the death camps. The panel included historians, camp survivors, and clergy of several faiths. They finally came to the big question: How could a loving God allow the deliberately organised murder of six million people? Why did he not stop it?

One of the panel members was a rabbi. He held up his hands and said, “These hands are God’s hands. If I do not use them to do God’s work, the evil will not stop.”

These hands are God’s hands. If I do not use them to do God’s work, the evil will not stop.

Those words are an indictment.

They are also words of hope.

The indictment is obvious. Evil happens because we don’t do enough to stop it. Not that stopping it easy. At best, you will annoy people. At worst, you may lose your life.

But asking why God did nothing to stop the evil is a version of the blame game: We’re blaming God for not doing what we ought to do.

These hands are God’s hands. If I do not use them to do God’s work, the evil will not stop.

These are also words of hope. Even of comfort. Because they remind us that we are here to do God’s work. They remind us that God’s work will be successful.

When we pray that God will relieve suffering and bring justice, we are praying that we will do that work. When we pray that God will heal sickness and comfort the bereaved, we are praying that we will do that work. When we pray that God will bring peace to our world, we are praying that we will do that work.

And God will answer those prayers.

What’s more, God will be with us. The work will often be hard or dangerous. He will give us the will and the strength and the courage and the skill we need. He will comfort us when we come close to giving up hope. He will give us tasks within our strength or ability. He will surround us with a community that supports us. And our support of that community in return will give us the joy of knowing we are loved.

That love is God’s love. It will sustain us to our life’s end, and we will know that what we have done with his help is better than what we could have done on our own. It will be the best that we could do because God will push us to our limits. That is the ultimate success in this life.

May God give us the grace to do his work as witness to his love, which redeemed us and all humankind. We pray in the name of that Love Incarnate, that lives with the Creator and the Guide, now and forever. Amen.

Creation (18th After Pentecost, 4 October 2020)

18th after Pentecost

October 4, 2020 Wolf Kirchmeir

Creation

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46 

May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today I want to talk about both the psalm and the gospel. The psalm is about the heavens, and some very interesting things have happened in astronomy this past month. The gospel is the parable about the vineyard. I think what links them is the idea of God the Creator, and I’ll offer a few thoughts about what that means for us.

The psalmist says, 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, 5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. 6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.

Psalm 19 is one of my favourites, because of this wonderful opening passage. It expresses the awe we feel when we look at the night sky and see the stars. It expresses the comfort of seeing the sun rise and set day after day.

Our history as humans begins not with writing, which is a mere 6,000 or so years old. It begins with the stone circles and stone tombs set up to capture the rising and setting sun at the spring and winter solstices. We don’t know how people kept track of the sun, and figured out this astonishing regularity. But somehow they devised a calendar. Calendars are older than writing.

We still look at the skies with awe and wonder. We know more about the universe than even our parents knew, and we want to know more. We want to know what knowledge the heavens display. We pay astronomers to record and interpret the data that their telescopes deliver.

About three weeks ago, a team led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University announced that they had probably found phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. Phosphine is a gas. They had not expected to find traces of it. Phosphine, as far as we know, is made only by living organisms. That includes us humans, who make it and use it for some industrial processes. But phosphine is made naturally only by certain bacteria, who produce it when they eat dead things.

The astronomers who found the phosphine traces are scientists, so they are cautious. Very cautious. Perhaps there is no phosphine after all. Perhaps there is some unknown inorganic process that’s making phosphine. That would make this discovery an interesting addition to our knowledge of chemistry. [Update Dec 2020: there’s likely no phosphine]

But if there is no other way to make phosphine on Venus, it would be a totally unexpected discovery. We may have found ET, and it’s a microbe.

The psalmist of course knew nothing of this. He didn’t know how huge the universe is. His description of the sun’s passage across the sky probably means he didn’t know that the Earth moves round the Sun.

But when he looked at the sky, he felt awe and wonder. What’s up there testifies to the creative energy that brought the universe into being, a creative energy that we believe comes from God.

Our indigenous brothers and sisters refer to God as the Creator. I think the Psalmist would have felt total sympathy and agreement with this emphasis on God’s creative power. One reason I think so is that in the second half of the psalm we read, The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul.

The psalmist connects the knowledge of the heavens with the knowledge of God’s law. For the heavens show regularity and order. The sun rises and sets every day. The moon grows from nothing to a bright disk and then shrinks to nothing again. The seasons follow a cycle marked by the Sun and the Moon and the stars. It looks like the heavenly realms obey God’s law. That obedience makes for order, for beauty, for certainty.

The obvious thought is that we too should obey God’s law.

Which raises the question: What is God’s law? We’ll come back to this question later.

The Gospel tells us of a man who bought a vineyard, dug a winepress in it, and rented it out for a share of the crop. When the grapes were ripe, he wanted his share, so he sent some servants to collect it. But the tenants beat the servants, and drove them away. So the owner sent more servants, but the tenants beat them too. So he sent his son, thinking that the tenants wouldn’t dare to lay a hand on him. But they did. In fact they killed him.

Then Jesus asked the chief priests and the Pharisees what will happen to the tenants. “They will be arrested, tried, and executed,” they said. Jesus then alludes to a passage in the Talmud that speaks of righteous punishment. The Pharisees know he means them: They are the tenants working in God’s vineyard, and they have not been faithful stewards of the crop entrusted to them.

It would be easy to point fingers at them, and interpret this parable as one more piece of evidence that the Pharisees were in the wrong. But it’s not just the Pharisees who are bad stewards of the vineyard. We are bad stewards, too.

The vineyard is a symbol. It’s been interpreted many ways. I think the key to understanding it is to pay attention to what the tenants want. They don’t want to pay the rent. They don’t want to share the crop. They want the whole crop for themselves.

This may remind us of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple, where he charged the priests with profiteering instead of serving the people by performing the sacrifices as required.

Or it may remind us of the televangelists who use their preaching skills to get money from their audience.

More generally, this parable may remind us of how people who have responsibilities of care and nurture instead exploit and abuse the people in their care.

More generally still, it may remind us that we are stewards of God’s creation, but instead of nurturing the Earth, we destroy it with our heedless greed and selfishness.

Most generally, it may remind us that to obey God’s law means to be faithful stewards of his vineyard.

It’s that last reminder that connects Psalm 19 to Jesus’s parable. The Psalmist sees the heavens, and they remind him of the Creator. They remind him also of the Creator’s Law, which he loves. And that in turn reminds him of his sin, his repeated disobedience. He pleads for help: Keep your servant also from wilful sins; may they not rule over me. 

The first reading this morning tells of how Moses brought the Law to the people. Try this experiment: Look at the commandments as reminders of what to do and what not to do in order to live together peaceably.

Start with the prohibitions. Don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t lie, don’t commit adultery, don’t covet – these are all reminders that selfishness and pride destroy our relationships with each other, for if we all did those things, our community would fall apart pretty quickly. If you can’t rely on each other to keep the peace, what’s the point of living together? Yet each of us alone is a naked wretch, with very little chance of living a long and happy life.

Then there are the exhortations. Keep the Sabbath, for our communal life depends on communal celebrations. Honour your father and mother, for they brought you into this world, nurtured you, and taught you their hard-learned wisdom. Respect those who built our community.

Then consider the commandments relating to our spiritual life, that part of us that yearns for meaning and purpose. Don’t make idols because focusing on the wrong things will lead us astray. Don’t swear reminds us that there is no magic formula to make things happen the way we want.

Make God the centre of your life, and everything else will fall into place. Even when you don’t fully understand, God’s presence will comfort you with the assurance that your life has meaning and purpose. When you gaze at the night sky and wonder at the stars, when you feel the warmth of the sun, you will know that there is order and harmony in the universe, and that you are part of it.

Like the Pharisees, we too often focus on the customs and traditions of our religion as if they were what it’s all about. In doing this, we neglect to tend God’s vineyard. We don’t nurture and care for his people. But his people is all humankind. For Jesus came into the world save us all.

Nor do we nurture and care for his creation, instead arguing about how to balance the needs of the environment against our own whims and desires. As if nature were some theme park that we are obliged to maintain. As if we could exist without nature. For we too are creatures, and like all creatures, we depend on each other and on an intricate web of connections with the rest of creation.

That creation includes the heavens. We now know that when a star explodes into a nova, that explosion creates the elements of which we are made. Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, iron, phosphorus, and the rest. Our very existence as living beings on this planet depends on the heavens above us. 

The heavens that declare the glory of the Creator.

The Creator whom we recognise not only as the source of our being, but the source of the love that sustains us.

Let us pray.

Lord God, Creator, when we look upon your creation, give us the grace of knowing its order and harmony, that we may perceive in it the love that you bear for us and all your creatures. Give us the grace to know how to nurture it, and how to take our proper place in it, that we may be good and faithful stewards of the bounty you have granted us. We pray in Jesus’s name, the firstborn of all creation, whose life and death and resurrection assure us of your love. Amen.

Moses and the Prophets (16th after Pentecost, 28 September 2025)

 16th Sunday after Pentecost

September 28, 2025

Wolf Kirchmeir 

Moses and the Prophets

 Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16;  1 Timothy 6:6-19;  Luke 16:19-31

O Holy Spirit, assist us we contemplate your word, that we may be enlightened by your truth. Amen.

Dear Friends in Christ,

When I read the Gospel for today, I realised I had a rather hazy memory of the parable about the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar at his gate. This time, I noticed the last part of the dialogue. I paid attention, and my thinking took a sideways jump, and I thought, Who do you trust? That’s what this is about.

I suspect that many of us, perhaps most of us, focus on the rich man with his fine clothes and his good food. And then Lazarus, the beggar at his gate, covered in sores, grateful for the scraps from the rich man’s table. The dogs came and licked Lazarus’s sores.

I think that this vivid image of self-centred indifference and undeserved suffering makes a strong impression us. Such a strong impression that when we hear of the rich man’s suffering in Hades, we may well feel, Yes, that guy deserves his suffering. And we may think that the lesson is simple: Help whomever is there for you to help, or you’ll be sorry when you burn in hell. Abraham’s words reinforce that idea:

“Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.”

And if the parable ended there, that would be all the lesson we would take from it.

But it doesn’t end there. The story continues. The rich man wants to warn his brothers, so that they may escape the punishment.

“Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.”

Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.”

“No, father Abraham,” he said, “but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.”

He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:27-31)

“If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” That got me thinking about trust. I’ll share some of my thoughts with you.

What does it take to convince you of something you didn’t believe? Whom do you trust to tell you the truth? Especially a hard truth? How do you know whether to trust advice? What rules do you use to separate nonsense from wisdom? Or useful knowledge from balderdash?

And so on.

I went online to find jokes about trust. Most of them were puns, like this one:

Trust me, you should never punch rocks. I found out the hard way.

Well, OK, that’s not exactly a prize winner, and the few stories weren’t much better. Here’s one that I think may amuse and perhaps instruct:

Last night at the pub my friend told me he doesn't trust doctors.

When I asked why, he said, "About ten years ago I developed a limp and a pain in my leg. I went to the doctor and he told me that the problem was that one of my legs was shorter than the other, and that I would need to wear special shoe inserts to even them out."

I replied, "That doesn't sound crazy. Why would that make you distrust doctors?"

He said, "Well, I wanted a second opinion, so I went to another doctor and wouldn't you know it, he told me I had the exact opposite problem! That proves that you can't trust 'em, they're just making wild stabs in the dark."

"So what did the second doctor tell you the problem was?"

"He said that one of my legs was *longer* than the other!"

Well, so maybe that one wouldn’t win a prize either, but it does illustrate something about why we may not trust what people say. It depends on how well we understand them. If they say something that doesn’t make sense to us, how likely are we to trust them?

I think it’s fairly obvious that when it comes to knowledge and understanding, we are expert in a very, very small part of all there is to know and understand. Most of what we think we know we don’t actually know at all. We just know that someone else knows, and we trust them, and take their word for it.

And anyhow, do we really need to know all the details of how something works? For example, how many of us could explain how a thermostat senses the temperature so that it can turn the furnace on or off?

Fact is, we don’t need to know all the details of how something works so that we can use it as intended. However, we do need a fair measure of trust in the people that make the gizmos we rely on.

Which brings us back to question, Who do you trust? Why do you trust them?

Abraham’s answer to the rich man implies that the rich man’s brothers think they know all they need to know. They weren’t ready to believe someone who came along and told them they did not know something that they should know. Especially if that something required a change in how they lived their lives. In other words, their trust in the messenger in large part would depend on what the messenger told them.

I think it’s fairly clear that we all tend to behave that way. Why trust someone who comes along with some outlandish claim, especially if that claim means we should change the way we do things? Why change what works just because someone says it will end badly?

So who do you trust? Why do you trust them?

Most of us are on some social media platform. We use email and texting. Many of us still watch the news on TV or listen to it on the radio, but many of us also get our news online. The Millennials and Gen Z live on TikTok and Instagram. Then there’s X, which was once called Twitter, and a variety of other places where anyone can subscribe and post whatever they like.  You can find a website for anything that interests you.

How trustworthy are these sources?

The short answer is, not very. There’s a saying, We used to think that the cure for ignorance was easy access to the facts. Then we got the internet.

We are born trusting. When we were children, we believed just about anything that grown-ups told us. We did figure out fairly early what’s make-believe and what’s real, and we loved make-believe. We spent a lot of time figuring out how things work. That started pretty early too, when we put just everything in our mouths. If it tasted good, it must be food.

And so on. Around age two to three, we learned not only that we can make-believe, we learned that we can lie. I think that’s the beginning of mistrust. By the time we got to middle school, we had a healthy skepticism of outlandish claims, but we also had a fascination with the possibility that those outlandish claims were true. Maybe there really were ghosts in the graveyard. Better not get too close at night. Better to walk or run past it.

But all in all, we grew up trusting each other. And we still trust each other. Without that trust, we couldn’t live together. Trust is the foundation on which our common life rests. When trust erodes, when we start suspecting each other of lies or worse, that foundation begins to crumble.

So who do you trust? Why do you trust them?

It seems to me that trust is fundamentally personal. We trust those with whom we have a personal relationship. When we trust people we don’t know personally, we do so because they are part of a web of personal relationships that connect us to them. Somewhere along the line we learned to trust what they say, because people we know trust them. We trust them because they are part of the web of relationships that forms our community. 

Trust is personal in another sense. We trust our own personal experience of what works. What we’ve learned works is the centre of a web of knowledge which connects with what other people have learned. We will distrust any claim that doesn’t easily fit into that web. The stronger the mismatch between some claim and what we think we know, the more we resist accepting it. And the more we will distrust anyone who insists on its truth.

Finally, there’s how we feel. We don’t like feelings of uncertainty, or of risk. We don’t like feeling that we’re not taken seriously. We don’t like feeling that maybe we’re being fooled. We don’t like feeling that we’re wrong. We have trouble trusting people that arouse these feelings.

"If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Imagine you’re one of the rich man’s brothers. You’re well off. You enjoy good food and lots of it You enjoy the company of people like yourself. You have servants to do the grunge work. You’re well respected in the town. You have a reputation for canny but fair dealing among your fellow business people. You have more than enough. You feel secure.

And now this figure appears. He looks a lot like that beggar Lazarus that used to lie by your door and attracted dogs. But it can’t be him. Lazarus is dead! Besides, this person looks a lot better than Lazarus did. He wears clean clothes and has no sores. He has a good complexion, and moves easily as he walks towards you. Nothing like Lazarus!

He stops in front of you, and says, “I am Lazarus come back from the dead to bring you news of your brother!” You think, this can’t be true! Lazarus is dead! This is some kind of scam.

This figure goes on, “Your brother is in great torment as punishment for his idle ways.”  What’s this? News from my dead brother? Not possible!

Lazarus goes on, “Your brother says, Repent your idle ways! Share your good fortune with the poor!”

Really? Share what I’ve worked so hard for? As if those lazy layabouts deserved a share of what I’ve earned? No way. This is some kind of scam. He’s trying to scare me into giving away what’s rightfully mine. Nice try! I bet this scammer will be the first in line for a handout. And he’ll come back for more!

There’s no way you will trust this person who claims to be Lazarus returned from the dead.

So who do you trust? Why do you trust them?

At the core of trust there is faith. Basically, we just believe that the person can be trusted, that what they say can be trusted, that their promises can be trusted, that their testimony of personal experience can be trusted. Trust and faith are really the same attitude to life, the universe, and everything.

We too have Moses and the Prophets. We have the Gospels and the letters of Paul and others to the early church. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. We believe that 2000 years ago a man born in an obscure village was the Son of God, and that he died a cruel death on a cross, and three days later appeared to his followers, assuring them that their wrongdoings were forgiven, and that they too would taste eternal life. By the grace of the Holy Spirit we trust that these and many other claims are true, and we pray that the same Spirit will guide and strengthen us so that we may reshape our lives as a testimony to the truth of what we believe.

May all that we have contemplated today increase our trust in the God who made us, who redeemed us, and who guides us. Amen