Author: Stephen Craven

Ready or Not – a Christmas message

This is the text of my sermon on Christmas Eve 2017.

10 … 9 … 8 … 7 … 6 … 5 … 4 .. 3 . 2. 1 … READY OR NOT, I’M COMING!!!

How many times as a child have you heard, or shouted, those words?  Ready or Not, I’m coming!   The game of Hide and Seek is common to most cultures.  It teaches children valuable skills – counting of course, plus looking and listening, planning (where to hide) and also keeping quiet and still when necessary!

We grow out of childhood games. But to be honest there are times in our adult lives when we seem to hear that call “Ready or not, I’m coming”.  Usually it’s when we are going to be inspected.  The Landlord is coming to inspect your flat.  OFSTED is coming to check out the school.  The Archdeacon is coming to check up on the Vicar and Churchwarden. The date was set long ago, and you can’t put them off because you haven’t finished preparation.

But sometimes the expected visitor is welcome.  You have invited friends for a meal and they turn up, even if the house isn’t spotlessly clean yet.  The party is about to start and you realise you forgot to get the food out of the freezer. Too late, guests are starting to arrive.  Will you turn them away?  Of course not. Ready or not, they are welcome.  I leave it to you to decide which of those categories – inspector or welcome guest – you put your mother-in-law in when she turns up for Christmas.

Today is the fourth and last Sunday of Advent.  We have looked, as we do each year, at the Patriarchs, at the Prophets, and particularly at John the Baptist.  In the last – and this time very short – week we look at Mary the mother of Jesus.  Our reading is the Annunciation when she is told that she would conceive Jesus.  That was her first “Ready or Not” experience – she was a young unmarried girl, not in the least thinking of pregnancy!  Neither was Elizabeth who had thought years ago she was past having children.

And now here is Mary on Christmas Eve, expecting her first baby to arrive.  Is she ready? I hope that Elizabeth, and Anna – Mary’s mother – had helped her to prepare by telling her what to expect and how to feed the newborn. She may have come equipped with blankets and swaddling clothes.  No painkillers in those days of course.  Joseph would have gone to call the Bethlehem midwife when she went into labour.  But is any woman really prepared for her first birth?  You who are mothers, did you have a sense of your baby saying “Ready or not, I’m coming”?

If “Ready or Not, I’m coming” is one message of the Christmas story, so is its equal, “Ready or Not, we’re going!”  That was what Joseph had said a few days earlier as he loaded up the donkey in Nazareth.  Mary may have begged for them to stay until the baby had been born, but Joseph knew he would be in trouble if he failed to turn up to register for the census.  The only question was, would he be registering two names or three?  Ready or Not, we’re going!

The Shepherds were quietly looking after their sheep – probably one on watch and the others sleeping – when the angelic host disturbed their night with the divine command that they run up the hill into the town to see this newborn baby.  They weren’t ready for that either – sleepy, no torches, no exact address to head for. But Ready or Not, we’re going!

Meanwhile further east, the magi thought it was not very wise to set off on a long journey across the desert with little time to prepare.  Quick trip to the bazaar to buy gold, frankincense and myrrh (no time to haggle, just give him what he wants!). Pack a bag with whatever food you have to hand, fill your water bottles, saddle the camels and off we go. No accommodation booked, no road map, only that blinking star to follow. But the ancient wisdom tells us that this star means a king is about to be born, and we want to be among the first to see him.  Ready or Not, we’re going!

At the end of the Christmas story we are told that another angel appeared to Joseph, as the magi were leaving, saying that Herod was seeking to kill Jesus.  So once again they had to be up and on the road, probably in the middle of the night. Never mind the regulations about child seats on donkeys, just hold him on your lap. No, I’ve never been to Egypt either, but it’s somewhere south of here. Ready or Not, we’re going!

I could say the same about the Spirit driving Jesus out into the desert at his baptism with no food or water. Or Jesus sending out the twelve disciples, then the seventy, with no equipment and minimal clothing.  Or Easter and Pentecost when the church exploded out into the world through unprepared apostles.  Again and again we see the same pattern –When God says go, Ready or Not, you go.

So, what about our own lives? There may have been one or more times in your life when circumstances changed dramatically, perhaps forcing you to give up your job, move house or end a relationship, with a sense of “Ready or not, I have to go”.  If it hasn’t happened yet, it might still happen, and you don’t know when.  Where is Jesus in those moments?

I suggest that at those moments, he is actually very close.  Merely a prayer away.  For what seems to the unprepared human eye to be unexpected and unplanned is known by the one who is before all time and above all things.

We have looked this morning at two aspects of really the same story, of knowing when to recognise Jesus, in his appearing or in his moving on. Jesus says, on this eve of Christmas, “Ready or Not, I am coming”. That is not a threat, it is a promise.  Those who recognise the signs of his coming, who receive him into their lives, have as John puts it, “the power to become children of God”. Nothing can surprise Jesus, who is with us at all times and in all places, and at all times, he says, “Ready or Not, I am here.”  The times when we find ourselves unprepared and beyond the limits of our own resources can be the times when we discover his strength.

As we look into the new year ahead, there may be times when he says, “Ready or Not, we’re going”.  Not “you are going” but “we.” For he is Immanuel – “God with us”.  When the unexpected happens, we can turn to Jesus in prayer, knowing that, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

Those who hear his call to go, to change their lives for his sake, are those who to outsiders may appear to be unprepared and in difficult circumstances.  But actually they are the blessed ones, the ones who stay close to Jesus, the ones who become the children of God.

If you see Jesus this Christmas, welcome him.  If you hear him call, follow him.  And may the coming year with him be a blessed one, wherever he calls you to go with him.

 

The Bible in a Year – 24 December

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24 December. John chapters 16-18

Chapters 17 and 18 are the conclusion of Jesus’ last speech to his disciples.  They are immediately followed by the betrayal in Gethsemane and the trial by the two high priests and Pontius Pilate.  These are the readings of Holy Week (the approach to Easter).  So what can they say to us at Christmas?

One word you hear a lot in church at this time of year is “glory”.   It occurs thirteen times in the Bible readings and liturgy for Christmas Eve.  The angels at Bethlehem called out “Glory to God on high, and on earth peace to men of goodwill”.  The opening of John’s gospel that will be read at midnight services around the world tells us that “The Word became flesh and lived among us; we have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

It is easy to talk about glory when we celebrate a miraculous birth. But what did Jesus say about glory as he was about to die? “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.” (17:1-5).

It may seem counter-intuitive, as does much of Christianity when you think about it carefully, that someone about to be crucified can talk about his death bringing glory.  ‘Glory’ as a concept is closely related to ‘honour’, which itself is something less important in our society than it often was in the past or still is in other cultures.  Someone may be honoured for having an important role in society, or for doing something brave or selfless, or for bringing about justice.  No-one is honoured by receiving a death sentence, are they?  But if you think about it, Jesus’ death was a brave and selfless one as he accepted an unjust death sentence in order to start bringing about God’s rule of justice over the whole earth; and far from being the unimportant radical preacher that the Romans imagined, he gained supreme importance when he was resurrected as the eternal Son of God.

So it is that Jesus could speak of God the Father glorifying (honouring) him in his death, as he had glorified (honoured) the Father in his work on earth.  Understanding that makes it easier to understand why the angels sang of glory at Jesus’ birth, for at that time only they knew what would come of it.

 

The Bible in a Year – 23 December

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23 December. John chapters 13-15

Here we have Jesus’ final speech to his disciples, in the course of which he washes their feet to demonstrate that his way of loving and saving people begins with serving their practical needs.    There is much that could be said about any small part of this important speech, but I will start with one verse – “Very truly, I tell you, whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (13:20).

It reminds me at this Christmas season of another verse from the beginning of John’s Gospel which is traditionally read on Christmas Eve – “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (1:12).  Put the logic of those verses together in the right order, and whoever “receives one whom I send” (any Christian proclaiming Jesus) can “become a child of God”.

What makes Christianity different from many other religions and philosophies is that it is not really about believing certain things about God and the world, and even less about how we behave (although neither of those is unimportant).  Principally, to be a Christian is to receive Jesus, who became flesh for us, in our bodies as well as our minds,  and this is never something done in isolation, it is equally about becoming part of the community of other believers, which started with the eleven faithful disciples at the Last Supper, and now numbers hundreds of millions around the world.

The act of receiving Jesus has variously been expressed in different ways – “inviting Jesus into your life”, “turning to Jesus”, “being born again” (see my blog for 18 December).  It is symbolised in the one-off act of being baptised, and is also part of the repeated symbolism of the Eucharist or Mass, in which some people will share at Christmas if at no other time of year. By eating a piece of the broken and shared bread that represents Jesus’ body offered in sacrifice for us, we become part of the “body” of Christians.  Even if, with most protestant/evangelical Christians, you don’t believe that the bread literally becomes Christ’s flesh, it is still a reminder of that holy and sinless body that first appeared on earth about 2020 years ago in Bethlehem.

This dual emphasis on both the physicality of Jesus’ incarnation and our relationship with him, and on the act of serving others as the proof of sharing in his love, is why at this time of year individual Christians and congregations often make more effort than usual to attend to the needs of those around them.  It might be inviting lonely people for a festive meal, singing carols in care homes, opening the church building as a shelter for homeless people on winter nights, or giving food and clothing through local foodbanks and charities that work with people living in poverty.  Of course people of other religions or none do the same – compassion is a human instinct. But where these acts of charity and compassion are motivated by the love of Jesus, there is also the offer to those being served of becoming part of the Body of Christ themselves.  “whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me”.

The Bible in a Year – 22 December

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22 December.  John chapters 11-12

Chapter 11 records possibly the greatest of Jesus’ miracles – raising Lazarus from the dead.  This, more than anything else, seems to have created an unbridgeable divide between the crowds who believed in him on the basis of the evidence they saw, and the Pharisees and others who stuck to the official line that Jesus could not be a prophet or Messiah because he did not keep all their rules.  Their only reaction is to threaten to kill both Jesus (11:53) and Lazarus  (12:10).

Jesus knows for certain by this time that he did not have long to live.  But had he achieved enough in his lifetime to ensure that his renewal of the Jewish faith would live on?  What persuaded him that he had, according to John, was the arrival of the unnamed Greeks who asked to see Jesus (12:21).  This seems insignificant when he was already very popular, but the point is that these were not Jews, and yet they had made a special trip to see him.  That meant that the message had started filtering out beyond the Jewish community to the wider population of the Roman/Greek empire.  And once the message was out, it could not be stopped by the authorities in Jerusalem. A fire had been lit, and spread to the point where no-one could put it out.

Therefore Jesus tells them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. … it is for this reason that I have come to this hour” (12:23-26).  It is one of the marks of a mature person that they do not rate themselves as irreplaceable, that they are willing at the appropriate time to step down and let someone else take over.  Jesus knew that time had come.  Time, in fact, for him to die in order that something different could appear – the Holy Spirit – to take the message onwards and outwards.

The Bible in a Year – 21 December

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21 December. John Chapters 9-10

It is clear from these chapters that Jesus was not worried about causing divisions. In fact he seems to have regarded it as inevitable that his ministry would cause division, attracting some people and making enemies of others.  Many (though not all) of the ordinary people believed in him, because they looked at his “works” (healing, teaching, feeding, showing love and compassion).  Many (though not all) of the religious and political leaders became his enemies because they looked at how his actions fitted into their “laws” – or rather, did not fit.  This is clear from the story of the blind man.  What mattered to him and his friends was that he had been healed, and not surprisingly, worshiped the man who had healed him.  What mattered to the Pharisees was that it had happened on a Sabbath. They would not have been surprised, for Jesus had healed on the Sabbath many times – they just could not get the point that healing should not be counted as “work”.

Laws, whether of religion or state (and in some societies, it amounts to the same thing), are a necessary construct for society to function.  We all need to know what is expected of us.  But no system of laws stays unchanged for ever – both religious and secular law changes in small ways all the time, and occasionally needs major reform.  Like an earthquake zone, frequent small movements cause less damage than rare large ones.  Jesus, when he was in Jerusalem, found himself in a fossilised religious environment that had not changed substantially for centuries – in fact, the layers of interpretation added to the original “laws of Moses” (intended originally for a desert people) had made them almost impossible to change.  Jesus was the earthquake that was about to hit the Jewish religion in a devastating way, and the warning tremors had been happening for some time.  Little wonder that on Good Friday, an earthquake was one of the signs that something very important was happening.

We see the same in the way people come to believe in Jesus today.  He turns no-one away, not even people whose lives are already generally well-adjusted and people-centred.  Such people may find faith in Jesus but their lives do not need to change very much.  On the other hand there are those whose lives are totally broken, whether by disease, stress, guilt,  addiction, or being victims of violence and persecution – or the cause of them.  Such people, if they find Jesus and his accepting love and transforming forgiveness, are (in a very positive way) the ones caught up in an earthquake, as the tension that has built up in their lives is suddenly released.  The metaphor of an earthquake may not be the best one – do tell me if you can think of a better one – but the point is, that whether your need is for another slight change in your life or a desperately overdue major one, Jesus will do it, if you let him.  If you only have eyes to see.

The Bible in a Year – 20 December

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20 December. John chapters 7-8

Finally Jesus returns to Jerusalem where he knows that the authorities are looking for a reason to have him killed.   He does not hide from them but confronts them, and the crowds who are present for a religious festival (presumably the Passover). It seems that he wants to make the maximum impact in the short time left to him, in the hope that a few at least of those who hear his teaching will accept it and continue to spread it after his death and resurrection.

Jesus makes much of his relationship with God (whom he never refers to directly, because of the Jewish taboo against using the name of God) but calls him “the Father” (or “my Father”) or “the one who sent me”.  But he comes pretty close to identifying himself as divine in some of the exchanges in chapter 8: “If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (19), “I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world” (23), “I declare what I have seen in the Father’s presence” (38), and finally “before Abraham was, I am” (58).  This last statement angers them enough to threaten him with stoning, for it amounted to blasphemy: not only did Jesus imply that he existed before the start of the Jewish religion (indeed, before all time), but the very phrase “I am” in a religious context was considered to be one of the unutterable names of God.

The thrust of his argument though, is not to set himself up as Lord over the people, rather to urge everyone to regard themselves as children of God, and to be open to the possibility of eternal life.  But it does not work.  When they claim to be children of Abraham and following the law of Moses, Jesus points out that neither Moses nor Abraham would condone killing someone for their beliefs.  When they criticise Jesus healing someone on a Sabbath (yet again), he makes the reasonable point that they themselves consider it acceptable to perform circumcision on a Sabbath – so if that, why not healing? When he offers “the truth that sets people free” (8:32) they simply say that they are not slaves so what would they need to be freed from?  As they say here in Yorkshire, “There’s none so deaf as those who won’t hear”.

To be fair to the Jews of Jesus’ time, though, it has always been the case that when someone comes along as a prophet, revolutionary or radical, the majority of people do not want to believe their message.  We all prefer to stick to the understanding of the world that we have either been taught as children, or discovered for ourselves in youth, or which keeps us in a comfortable stability as adults.   To be challenged about your religious heritage, or set of moral values, or to be told that you are suffering from some deficiency or addiction that you need to be freed from, is uncomfortable at best, maybe even threatening.

The call of Jesus is always to something better, though it may not seem like it at the time.  And the more we understand of it, the more challenging it may be.  Few people in his own time stuck with him through the events of Easter, and few will follow now.  But the call, and the challenge, are always there. In the words of a seasonal carol, “Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in”.

The Bible in a Year – 19 December

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19 December. John chapters 5-6

Understanding John’s gospel is not easy: he writes in an oriental style in which many themes are woven together in a way that does not work in English.  Resurrection, faith, the Last Day,  Heaven, eternal life – all these appear in this passage, and each deserves a book in itself.  So I have decided to focus on one verse “no-one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me” (6:44).

However brilliant Jesus’ teaching may have been, that alone would not have drawn crowds of followers or made committed disciples.  Indeed at the end of this passage, following his very difficult teaching about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him” (6:66).  Rather, it is a sense of spiritual hunger that draws people to Jesus, then as now.  And hunger is a personal experience. We all know what it is to be hungry in an ordinary sense, but some of us can only guess what it is for others to experience the hunger of strict dieting, lengthy fasting or starvation.

The contemporary Christian writer Tom Wright says that the Father’s drawing of those whom he has given to the Son “takes place in the silent, secret places of the human heart”.  How can one describe a silent experience in words? What does it mean to feel hungry for God, to be aware of being drawn to him?  St Augustine famously wrote of the heart that is restless until it finds its rest in God.  That resonates with my experience.  A continuing sense of “feeling restless for God” sometimes takes the form of being unable to relax, even though there is nothing I could name that is causing me any anxiety or pain.  Once I have spent time in prayer or praising God, then I can relax more easily.

Your own experience of spiritual hunger, of being drawn to God, of having a real need for him, may take a different form.  What matters is that we can feel this spiritual hunger when it comes, recognise it for what it is, and know that God will provide the spiritual food in Jesus to satisfy it.

 

The Bible in a Year -18 December

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18 December. John chapters 3-4

It is often claimed that John 3:16 is the best known verse in the whole Bible – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  I’m not so sure – in a largely secular world where many people only come across the Christian message through Nativity plays and Christmas carols, something like “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7) is probably better known.

Be that as it may, the message in John 3:16 is an important one.  At the core of the Bible story is God’s love for humanity. Love so strong that it endures any number of rejections.  Love so strong that it is willing to put up with pain, humiliation and rejection.  Love so strong that it could go through the apparent finality of death and come out triumphant the other side.  And where Jesus led, entering eternal life, those who follow him can also expect to go. Hence the bit about not perishing.  Yes, we will die physically, but spiritually we can gain this “eternal life” here and now, and know that it will survive death.

That is what Jesus also managed to convey, in a different way, to the Samaritan woman.  Here was someone probably rejected by her neighbours because of her multiple marriages (to have had five husbands and now be living with another man suggests that she was not the innocent party in the failure of all those marriages).   She knew what it was to be thirsty for a stable relationship, for someone to whom she could finally commit herself.  Jesus offered to satisfy that thirst – not with another sexual relationship but with one based on a deeper kind of love, that heavenly love of unquestioning acceptance, long-suffering and unending commitment. “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (4:14).

Jesus also tries to explain it to Nicodemus.  He should have known better – Jesus calls him a “teacher of Israel” who knew the scriptures far better than a Samaritan woman.  But Nicodemus does not understand about being “born again”, taking it too literally.  So Jesus puts it another way – “I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” (3:5).  Our physical life come from our earthly parents in the form of a baby’s body, as Nicodemus says, and as the Virgin Mary experienced when Jesus himself was born, but our spiritual life comes from our heavenly parent in the form of a spirit.  And the life of the spirit has to be fed to keep growing in us just as our physical bodies require regular food to grow to adulthood.

So we have different ways of looking at the gift of God’s love – in the physical form of his Son, in a lasting relationship with him that feels like an endless supply of fresh water, or in a spiritual rebirth. All of those came together for Mary as she laid her newborn, special bay in the manger.  She gazed on the very form of God, entering into a lifelong an unique relationship with him as mother, that would lead to the cross and empty tomb. Maybe it was only at that moment that she understood fully the angel’s message at the moment of conception: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.”

The Bible in a Year – 17 December

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17 December. John chapters 1-2

John, as is well known, orders the material in his Gospel differently from Mark, Matthew or Luke – he is not telling the story of Jesus necessarily in the order things happened, and pays no attention at all to the birth or parentage of Jesus. Instead he selects those scenes that he thinks most important and orders them in a symbolic way.  The first two chapters are like an overture or the brief scenes at the start of a movie before the credits, that give an idea of the plot that is to follow.

This evening, churches across England including my own will have a service of “lessons and carols” – Bible readings and hymns or other music selected to tell the story of Jesus, focusing on his birth.  By tradition the last reading is the beginning of this Gospel, with its mysterious description of Jesus as “the Word” who existed in the beginning, even before the creation of the world, but became flesh as a man.  Over the next two weeks, our readings in church will include other passages from these chapters – this morning, the third Sunday in Advent, the theme was John the Baptiser; and the story of the wedding at Cana where Jesus turned water into fine wine is read at Epiphany, usually the first Sunday of the new year.

All these are understood to be among the “signs” that John is presenting: events that point towards who Jesus really is, rather than stating it directly.  The nativity itself is the first and greatest of these signs. The angels and the mysterious star that Luke and Matthew tell us about, respectively, were also signs that led shepherds and magi to Bethlehem to see this greater sign – that God had appeared as an ordinary human being.

John’s ministry of baptism was, as he told anyone who would listen, also only a sign of something greater – baptism in water signifying repentance was only about preparing oneself to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus would offer (but only at Pentecost, after his resurrection). And the miracle at Cana was not so much about just keeping a party going, as an example of the abundance of life that Jesus came to bring.  The one who could draw water from a well and turn it into wine would, as we will see tomorrow, also draw water from another well and turn it into a means of forgiveness, reconciliation and healing.

As John tells us, “many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing” (2:21).  Are there enough signs here for you to believe?

 

The Bible in a Year – 16 December

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16 December. 2 Peter chapters 1-3 and Jude

Peter’s first letter (see 11 December) was about enduring persecution for the sake of Christ; his second letter is about holding on to the vision of faith while all around are focused on earthly pleasures.

Peter was one of the three disciples who witnessed the Transfiguration of Christ, when God spoke to him audibly and Moses and Elijah appeared to them (1:7,8).  He had also seen the risen Jesus for himself.   He held onto those very real experiences through the dark times of persecution that followed, never doubting that Jesus would, as he promised, return to complete his salvation of the world (3:8-10).

Therefore, writes Peter, the Christian should “lead a life of holiness and godliness” (3:11), resisting temptation and being distinct from those in the world around who are caught up in the pleasures of the flesh, which lead to addiction and becoming “slaves” to their own desires.  Peter particularly singles out lust, greed and drunkenness, but in our own day he would surely have included gambling, and what we call consumerism – accumulating goods for their own sake.  The message is similar to that of Jesus who said “it is impossible to serve both God and money”.  It is far better, in Peter’s view, to be ‘slaves’ to the discipline of following Christ, than to be ‘slaves’ to one of these forms of addiction.

At this time of year approaching Christmas, many Christian speakers try and draw people away from the futile ‘pleasures’ of consumerism and drunkenness, to remind us that Jesus came to set us free from such addictions in order to have the freedom to serve him, which in fact is the way to a full and satisfying life.

Jude’s concerns in his brief letter (to an unidentified readership) are similar to those of Peter in his second letter: the purity of the Christian witness, at a time when it was threatened by people who claimed to be part of the Christian church but actually brought the faith into disrepute by sexual immorality, grumbling, accusations against others, and so on.

Both these letters, with their references to the sins of Sodom, are used along with other texts from the Bible by those within the church who consider homosexuality to be a sin against those of us who identify as “liberal Christians” who accept it. The distinction that is often lost in arguments between these two parts of the Church is that what liberal Christians consider to be acceptable is a faithful relationship between two people of the same gender, or a celibate lifestyle irrespective of orientation.  We agree with the “conservatives” in the church, and with Peter and Jude, that “Licentiousness” (defined by Webster’s dictionary as “lacking legal or moral restraints, especially sexual restraints”) as expressed in a promiscuous lifestyle, is and always will be contrary to God’s intentions, because of the damage caused to individuals where sexual behaviour is separated from love.

But to get bogged down in arguments about where the limits of acceptable sexual behaviour lie, is to risk getting caught in the “wrangling over words and stupid and senseless controversies” against which Paul warned Timothy in yesterday’s reading.  At the end of his letter Jude calls us back to the true focus of Christianity: “Jesus Christ our Lord, [to whom] be glory, majesty, power, and authority”.