There’s hopefully a moment in our lives, sometimes early, sometimes late, when we realise that God didn’t wait for us to be sorted out before loving us. He didn’t wait for us to be holy, or confident, or prayerful, or even particularly interested. He loved us while we were still… whatever we were. That’s the message of the part of Paul’s letter to the Romans that we heard (5:1-8): “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” It’s one of the most amazing sentences in the Bible. It tells us that God’s love is not a reward for good behaviour; it’s the starting point for a new life. That passage from Romans tells us what God has done for us, and then the reading from the gospel of Matthew (9:35-10:8) tells us what God now invites us to do with Him. Matthew paints a great picture of Jesus moving through towns and villages, teaching, healing, encouraging, sometimes challenging. But perhaps the most incredible line says, “He saw the crowds, and had compassion for them, because they...
Readings : 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 and John 6:51–58 There are moments in the Christian year when Jesus’ words seem to slow us down, draw us closer to him, and ask us to look again. Today we are thinking about the feast of Corpus Christi and that is one of those moments. It’s a feast that invites us to pause and remember the heart of our faith - Jesus giving himself for the life of the world. For some Christians, today is wrapped in rich tradition and deep sacramental theology. For others, it’s not a feast that is widely marked. But at its heart is something that every Christian treasures. That is the astonishing generosity of Jesus, who gives himself, fully, freely, lovingly, for us. In our reading from Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians he says that he is passing on what he himself received from the Lord. Not a theory or a symbol he invented, but a wonderful gift - a revelation. A moment Jesus wanted his people to remember until he comes again. “This is my body, which...