Questioning Thomas: Easter 2

 Easter 2 2026

There’s a great little feature in the Guardian each week called the Kids’ Quiz. It’s not a quiz for children, it’s a quiz by children. They set the quesitons – and very good questions they are too. 

Recently, Esther aged, 6, asked “how many lions are there in the world?”  Around 28000 is the answer, about a tenth of the number there were a century ago. Or Aariya, aged 7, asked why our little finger is sometimes called our pinkie finger. It turns out to be from an Old Dutch word, pink, which meant small. There is a complicated link between that and the colour pink – but you’ll have to ask me about that afterwards. 

I particularly loved a question from Rocco, aged 10, though. Why does water make clothes look darker, despite the fact that water has no colour? Good question, Rocco. The explanation, I learned from the quiz answers, is that the thin layer of water on top of wet clothes traps some of the light that would otherwise have bounced back to our eyes – it bounces around inside the layer of water instead. So, less light is reflected back to us which makes the clothes seem darker…

Children are great questioners. Of course they are, because the main job of a child is to learn and grow, and we can’t do that unless we are curious and prepared to ask questions. Perhaps I could have worked out why wet clothes are darker than dry ones, or googled it, or asked my husband – there’s no point in being married to a retired physics teacher if you don’t tap him for this sort of knowledge – but the truth is that I had never thought to wonder, never thought to ask the question. 

Every year, on this Sunday after Easter, we hear the story of Thomas. He’s often called Doubting Thomas, but really it would be far more accurate, and far fairer, to call him Questioning Thomas. A man who isn’t content simply to go along with the crowd but needs to know things for himself, to ask his own questions, and make his own decisions.

We only meet him a few times in the Gospels, but when we do, this is the thing that stands out about him. For example, at the Last Supper, Jesus speaks of his death and says he is going away “to prepare a place for you”, he tells the disciples that “you know the way to the place where I am going”. The rest of the disciples do that thing that we all do when we haven’t got a clue what someone is talking about but don’t want to look stupid. They nod politely, look blank, and keep quiet.

But not Thomas. He says, “Lord we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” It’s a perfectly sensible response. Your satnav won’t give you directions to Maidstone if you don’t tell it that Maidstone is where you want to go.  

And Jesus’ honours Thomas’ question – the only person who is honest enough to say “I don’t know!” . “I am the way, the truth and the life”, he says. That might not seem to make things much clearer, but it tells Thomas, and us, that it is Jesus himself who is the map. Following his way of life, a way of sacrificial, generous love, will take us where we need to go. 

And now, in today’s Gospel reading, here is Jesus honouring Thomas’ questioning nature again. Has Jesus really risen from the dead, Thomas wants to know? He isn’t simply going to believe it because the other disciples say so. That’s just groupthink.  He needs to know for himself. And Jesus honours that. He turns up for him, just for him. Thomas matters that much. His questions matter that much. 

Of course, as Jesus says, there will be others – including those for whom John is writing his Gospel, including us – who won’t get to see the risen Christ in the way that Thomas does, but this story tells us that it’s ok to question, in fact it’s vital to question. Otherwise our faith isn’t our faith, it’s just something we are borrowing from others, going along with because they do, or because it’s how we were brought up. 

I grew up going to church with my family, but my own Christian faith really came alive for the first time when a teacher at my school started a Christian club. I was about 10 or 11. One day the teacher read a passage from Isaiah – “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near”. And it hit me between the eyes – I was being called out on a great big God hunt – not in the sense that God was hiding, but in the sense that I was being called to discover him day by day, to open my eyes to his presence, to see him for myself.  Fifty-five years or so later, I’m still doing that, expecting God to surprise me. Where might I find God today, who might I see him in, what might I discover, how might I learn to love more and better? 

We thought about good questions earlier – why do wet clothes look darker than dry ones? – but I wonder what our questions about faith might be? They might be deeply personal, or they might be ones that we can share. They might be questions that can be answered in a sermon, or with a conversation with someone – I know all the clergy and lay ministry team here in our benefice would be happy to listen. Or they might be ones that lead us towards baptism, or confirmation, or some form of training or further study, or to join a home group where we can discuss faith with others. There are a number around the benefice, and more can be arranged!

Thomas’ story invites us to be aware of and honour our own questions, just as God honours them, to ask those questions – of ourselves, of others, of God - because each of us is called out on our own journey. And who knows where that journey might lead us? 

Thomas, according to legend, ended up travelling east with the Gospels, and is acclaimed by the people of South India as the one who brought the Good News to them.

We may not be called to make such a dramatic journey, but our journeys of faith are just as important, to us, to others, and to God, and they start with that gift of holy curiosity which Questioning Thomas shows us. 

Amen 

Earth-shattering news: Easter Sunday 2026

 

Easter Sunday 2026

Acts 10.34-43, Matthew 28.1-10

Acts 10.34-43

34 Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35 but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36 You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. 37 That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39 We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; 40 but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. 43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’

 

 

Matthew 28.1-10

28 After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’ 8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’

 

We’ve just heard Matthew’s version of the Resurrection story. It’s a dramatic tale, with an earthquake and an angel appearing, shining like lightning.

 Each of the Gospel writers tells the story of the Resurrection slightly differently. Different numbers of women come to the tomb, meeting different numbers of angels, or perhaps Jesus himself. Different things happen afterwards. All the Gospel writers agree on is that the tomb was empty, the women were witnesses of that, and that it changed everything…

 But back to Matthew’s account. He’s the only one who actually shows us  the tomb being opened, and the guards shaking “like dead men” when it happens. He’s the only one who tells us about the earthquake: his story is literally earth-shattering.  

 That’s all of a piece with the rest of his Gospel. From the outset he has painted his picture of Jesus’ life on a large scale. When Jesus was born a star appeared in the sky – the very cosmos was reordered. Wise men from the East turned up at the palace, the political heart of the nation. “King Herod was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him” we are told. Not for Matthew a bunch of humble shepherds who no one would have noticed or heeded. No, this is a very public event – so public that it unleashes a massacre of the children of Bethlehem and means the Holy Family have to run for their lives.

 Much later, when Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday, it’s not just his disciples who notice. Once again “The whole city was in turmoil”, Matthew says. And when Jesus dies on the cross there isn’t just darkness over the land – all the Gospels have that – but according to Matthew there’s another earthquake, prefiguring the one that will accompany Jesus’ resurrection.  “The earth shook, the rocks were split . The tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised….”

Sometimes Christians are told that they should keep their noses out of politics, or economics, or science or whatever else they’ve made some comment on that has annoyed someone, that they should restrict themselves to the spiritual, the personal, the private. But Matthew’s Gospel isn’t having any of that. Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection sends quite literal shockwaves through the world of his time, having an impact even on the earth itself. Everything is changed by this, says Matthew.

 And as I said earlier, the other Gospel writers agree with him, even if they tell the story in slightly different ways. The reason they are all so confident about this is that the resurrection had changed everything for them.

The Gospels were written in hindsight, looking back at the events they describe from several decades later. And they are written by and for people whose lives have been set on a different course because of the resurrection, people who have become part of new communities, with a new message for the world. We catch a glimpse of that radical change in our first reading.

St Peter is preaching to the household of a Roman centurion called Cornelius, a Gentile leader in the army that is oppressing Israel, someone who ought to be his enemy. But Cornelius has heard about Jesus and has asked Peter to come and tell him more. When Peter gets there, having struggled over whether to go or not, he finds that Cornelius and his household have had an experience of the Holy Spirit – God has got there before him. And he realises – and rejoices - that this is how it is going to be in God’s new creation, in the kingdom Jesus’ resurrection has ushered in. He sees new life, forgiveness, barriers broken down, resurrection happening all around him.

I have no idea what we would have seen if there had been a video camera livestreaming that first Easter Sunday at the tomb. I have no idea how the resurrection could have happened, but I am convinced that it did happen – even if I can’t understand or explain it - because the first followers of Jesus were so changed by their experience of it, filled with such hope and faith, that they were prepared to die for affirming it.  They had nothing to gain by lying about it – there was no power or glory on offer for them, only persecution. And yet they said that it was true, and went on saying it, and passed it on to the next generation and the next, and people continued to find hope in it, right down to us in our own time. The ultimate proof of the resurrection is us, the Church, Christians stubbornly insisting, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, that “Goodness is stronger than evil; Love is stronger than hate; Light is stronger than darkness; Life is stronger than death; Victory is ours through Him who loves us”

Another Bishop, Mervyn Stockwood, then the Bishop of Southwark, told a story of a time when he was in Moscow, before the fall of the Soviet Union, when Brezhnev was president. He had gone into the hairdresser’s salon in his hotel for a shave while on a visit to the USSR. It was around the time of Easter. As she shaved him the hairdresser noticed his episcopal cross and ring. “Was he a bishop?” she asked. He was, he said. Evidently she’d had an orthodox background, because she stopped shaving him, took his cross in her hands and kissed it, and did the same to his ring. And then, lifting up the razor blade she was shaving him with she called to the customers in the barber’s shop “Alleluia, Christ is risen” and with one voice they all replied “He is risen indeed, Alleluia!” Stockwood wrote in his memoirs that he thought to himself at that moment “Poor old Brezhnev: sixty years of atheism, and still the Galilean conquers!”

This Easter Sunday, I wonder where the Galilean needs to conquer in our lives and our world. Where are the tombs of despair and hatred that need to be broken open? Where are the place that seem godforsaken where we need to find the God who never forsakes us at work? He is there, if like those women at the tomb, we will only go and look for him. I wonder what the reality of the resurrection looks like in our lives? Matthew told his story in his way. Peter told his in another. Mark, Luke and John told it too, in their ways, but how would you tell it, this story of the empty tomb that changes everything…?

Amen

 

Mothering Sunday: Abundant Consolation

 2 Corinthians 1.3-7, Luke 2. 33-35

I was listening to someone last week who had come to talk to me – as part of my ministry in retirement I give support to others in lay or ordained roles in the church. Her husband has been living with cancer for quite a while, but now, although he is still fairly well in himself, the treatment options have been exhausted. After all the ups and downs, all the hoping that something might work, they know it is just a matter of time and, eventually, palliative care. And yet, she was remarkably calm. “We don’t know exactly what this journey will involve” she said, “but we do know that there are so many people praying for us, and that God is with us.” She and her husband had found great consolation through the prayers and support of those around her.

I reflected with her that her words had reminded me of one of the readings set for today’s services, and she gave me permission to quote her words. 

In the short passage we heard from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, again and again Paul uses the word “consolation” or consoled, or some variation on it. Ten times in the space of 4 verses. It’s a translation of the Greek word parakaleo, and in some ways it’s not a very good translation. The Greek word literally means to “come alongside when someone calls”. That’s the essence of the consolation Paul is talking about – someone who comes alongside us, who travels with us. The Holy Spirit is sometimes called the Paraclete – God beside us and within us day by day, but a paraclete, a consoler, can be human too. Not someone who fixes things for us, but someone who simply shares the journey.

Paul was much in need of consolation at this point. The verses around those we read tell us that he’d been in Asia – modern day Turkey – and had been through tough times there. “We were so utterly, unbearably crushed,” he says, “that we despaired of life itself”. 

And he knows things have been hard for the Corinthians too – they endure the same sufferings he does.

Paul often faced persecution, attack and arrest because of his preaching. The only way he could avoid it would be by abandoning his faith, but that’s not an option for him. It matters too much to him to give it up. He chose to walk a hard and dangerous road. The Corinthian Christians faced the same challenges as they tried to live out the Gospel message, facing “the same sufferings that we are also suffering”, Paul says.

How will Paul cope? How will the Corinthians cope? How will any of us cope with troubles that come upon us, the things that we have no way of avoiding? 

This Lent, as you know, we are following a theme of healing in our Sunday services – physical healing, healing of relationships and of the spirit, healing of our world. Today, Mothering Sunday, was, I think, meant to be a break from that theme, but it seems to me that the readings set for today do have a link with the question of healing, and it’s a very important link. What do we do, these readings ask us, about situations in which there’s no prospect of healing, in any physical sense? What do we do when there’s no way around suffering, when we have to go through it? That might be the suffering of persecution as it was for Paul. And, in our Gospel reading, Simeon warns Mary, that she will suffer because of her son’s ministry. He is only a baby at this point, but his ministry will bring the wrath of the powerful down on him and she will have to watch him be crucified. “A sword will pierce your own soul too.” Says Simeon. Or it might be the far more familiar suffering that the lady who was talking to me faced, of watching a loved one endure an illness that can’t be cured.

One of the hardest parts of mothering, or fathering, or caring for anyone we love is knowing that we can’t prevent their suffering, that we haven’t got the magic wand we long for. The price of love is grief, people sometimes say – we can’t love others without opening ourselves up to sorrow. But Paul’s words remind us that what we can do is to recognise that we, and they, don’t make the journey alone, that we are accompanied by a great crowd of paracletes, those who are alongside us. Suffering may be abundant, as Paul says, but consolation is abundant too if we are open to it.

Chief among these paracletes, of course, is God himself – the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation.” He is the one who comes alongside us in Jesus, who lived among us, died alongside two criminals, and who is present through the Spirit alongside us day by day. It is his consolation, his “alongsiding” which gives us the strength to be alongside others, and which helps us to see those who are alongside us and accept their help as we make those journeys that otherwise seem impossible. 

So on this Mothering Sunday we give thanks for all who have been alongside us through our lives, and we pray, as the words of our collect reminded us, “that in joy and in sorrow we may know the power of God’s presence,” which is alongside us always.

Amen

Lent 3

 Lent 3 2026

Psalm 42, John 3.1-15

I expect quite a few of you, like me, come from the generation that was expected at school to memorise all sorts of things – from mathematical formulae to large chunks of poetry. Most of the maths has evaporated from my mind, alas, but I can still, with a following wind, recite Portia’s speech from the Merchant of Venice – the quality of mercy is not strained etc.. Hymns and songs often etch themselves into our memories too. I have often found, when taking services in care homes, that residents who don’t remember much else can are word perfect on their favourite hymns.  

It’s not just words that we learn “by heart” though. How many skills have we picked up over the years which seemed hard when we first did them, but eventually became second nature to us? It may be plastering a wall, knitting, playing a musical instrument or operating a computer – it will be different for each of us – but there are some things we may not even have to think about anymore, which we do by muscle memory. We’ve learned them by heart. 

“By heart” is an interesting phrase. It implies that these things have, in a sense, become part of us. We can’t forget them, even if we try; they have become woven into our being.

In our readings today, we meet people who are thinking about what they have “learned by heart” and what they might still need to learn.

The Psalmist writes of his longing for God. We don’t know what has happened, but it’s clear that things aren’t going well for him. He feels oppressed by his enemy; and he feels as if God has forgotten him. And yet, at the same time, he can’t leave behind the habit of prayer, the memory of God’s love, the times when he has found hope and joy in God before. These are the things that are in his spiritual “muscle memory”. He may feel abandoned, but he has taken deep into himself over the years, learned by heart, the knowledge that God isn’t like that; he doesn’t abandon people. “My soul is cast down within me” he says, “therefore I remember you – that’s God… “Hope in God,” he tells himself, “for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” 

The Psalm doesn’t deny or soft-pedal the reality of tough times, which come to all of us. We feel how we feel, and we don’t need to pretend to be happy when we’re not. But it reminds us that the God who we felt close to in the good times is the same God now, and still loves us, even if we feel as if he’s far away. “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life”. 

The very fact that the Psalmist cries out to God, thirsts for him, reminds him – and us - that God is still real and still matters to him. He is the God of his life. The things he has learned “by heart” about God hold him when the events he is going through threaten to overwhelm him. 

In the Gospel reading, we meet a man who has also learned things “by heart”, but now he is having to re-evaluate them completely – sometimes we have learned by heart things that don’t turn out to be helpful, negative messages about ourselves, prejudices about others. He comes to Jesus “in the dark”. That doesn’t just tell us about the time of day, but that this is a man who doesn’t want to be seen, who feels confused and doesn’t want to admit it. The world he thought he knew, the assumptions he has made about life and about faith, don’t seem to make sense to him anymore and that is hard for him to acknowledge. 

He, Nicodemus, is a respected religious expert, someone who is supposed to know what’s what, and who thought he did. Jesus is a carpenter from the backwater village of Nazareth, with no qualifications to his name, no training, no background. And yet Nicodemus sees something in him that he can’t deny is of God. He calls Jesus “teacher”; he knows there is something he needs to learn from him, but perhaps doesn’t realise how radical that will be. Jesus tells him that he needs to start again, to be born “from above” or born anew, depending on your translation, to open himself to a new vision of the world, to learn “by heart” a new understanding of God. Unless he does that, says Jesus, he won’t be able to “see the kingdom of God”. Jesus isn’t talking about Nicodemus getting a ticket to heaven when he dies; seeing the kingdom of God is about being aware of what God is doing right there, right then in Jesus.

Nicodemus knows he is missing something, like the deer that thirsts for the flowing waters in the Psalm, but finding it will take time. There will be a journey to make. Being born takes time. Learning something by heart takes time. Getting to that point where something new is second nature isn’t an instant business. 

At the end of his encounter with Jesus, Nicodemus goes away without having made any commitment. But we will meet him again, first in chapter 7 of John’s Gospel when other Pharisees are plotting against Jesus. Nicodemus challenges them, saying that Jesus should at least be given a fair hearing. And then, after Jesus dies, Nicodemus finally comes out of the shadows, bringing spices and ointment to anoint Jesus’s body, assisting at his burial. It’s taken him several years, but Nicodemus has made his choice; he has let his heart be changed by the Spirit of God. The fact that the Gospel writer names him suggests that the change was permanent, that he did, in time “learn by heart” the way of Christ and become a member of the Christian community, valued by them, his story told, his name known. 

In our Lenten series of sermons on healing, today’s theme is the healing of the spirit. It’s a healing that starts when we acknowledge our thirst for God, like the deer that longs for the flowing streams, but it needs to continue from that point, allowing that thirst to take us on a journey, learning by heart a new way as we go, which will leads us to the water that never fails. 

Amen 

Lent 1: Healing at Bethesda

 

Lent 1 2026

2 Cor 12.1-10, John 5.1-15

 

Throughout the benefice during Lent the decision has been made to have a theme of healing running through sermons, readings and the various Lent groups that are meeting.

 

So, expect to hear healing explored from all sorts of angles, from whoever is standing here over the next five weeks or so. Healing is a very appropriate theme for Lent. This is a time when we are encouraged to reflect on ourselves and our world. We don’t get very far in doing that without seeing that there are all sorts of things in us and around us which need to be healed. It may be physical healing we long for, for ourselves or someone else, but it might equally be healing in our hearts or our spirits, in our relationships, in our society, in creation itself. All of these are places where we know things aren’t right, where we often see dis-ease of some sort or another.

 

But healing isn’t a straightforward issue – that’s pretty obvious too. We may pray earnestly for someone to be physically healed, and yet it doesn’t happen. Christian leaders or churches which promise miracles usually come to grief in the end. Some are exposed as cynical frauds. Others may be entirely sincere in their beliefs, but are so heavily invested in those miracles happening because their own worth, their own faith, their own ego depends on it that when people aren’t healed they blame the victim for not having enough faith, or not praying right, or they tell them that they must be sinful in some way or have deserved their illness, or are being punished. Or they simply increase the spiritual pressure- pray louder, pray longer -  until prayer itself becomes abusive. It sounds a bit strange to say that healing needs to come with a health warning, but sadly it does.

 

It seems to me that there are two factors that are often involved when healing ministry goes awry. The first is that we forget that we aren’t God. It ought to be obvious, but it isn’t. We like to think we are in control – life feels safer that way. Of course, there are things we can do to help ourselves and others to be healthy. Diet, exercise, sleep, access to health care, clean water, vaccinations, a pollution free environment. But even if we get all of that right, we can’t guarantee that we won’t fall ill, or be injured, and (spoiler alert) all of us will one day die. We’re not in control. We’re not God. And that means that when we pray for healing, we can’t make promises. All we can do is put ourselves and those we pray for into the hands of the one who is God. Our prayers for healing need to be rooted not in our own ego, or our anxious need to feel that we can pull the strings that will make God act, but in our trust that, whatever happens, we, and those we pray for are held in his hands and loved eternally. That’s a far more precious gift to receive, a far more vital lesson to learn.

 

The second factor that often leads to problems with healing ministry is that we don’t read the Bible enough – or rather that we don’t read enough of the Bible. We light upon one healing story, and we think that if healing came to that person that way, then all healing happens like that. All we have to do is follow the pattern it gives us. But the reality is that healing comes to people in the Bible in many different ways.   And the two readings we’ve heard today are a perfect example of that.

 

If all we had was today’s Gospel reading, what might we conclude about sickness and healing? The man who was lying by the pool at Bethzatha had been ill for 38 years, we are told. Do you only get healed if you have that much patience, if you wait that long? And yet in other stories people are healed quickly. Jesus asks this man by the poolside, “Do you want to be made well?” We might conclude that if someone isn’t healed it’s because they don’t want to be, not deep down, not really. And yet, in other stories, there’s no conversation at all. Jesus heals the unconscious, maybe even dead, daughter of a synagogue leader called Jairus. He heals a centurion’s servant who isn’t even present. Sometimes he heals with a touch, sometimes with a word, sometimes even with spit mixed with mud – I’d rather give that one a miss thanks! Sometimes he casts out demons, sometimes not.

 

A really problematic part of the story we heard today comes at the end, when Jesus tells the man not “to sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you”. Does that mean that disease is the result of sin? That can play into some really dark and damaging beliefs around healing – or might it just be that this particular man’s paralysis is the result of something he did that he shouldn’t have done. Just a few chapters later, Jesus explicitly challenges his disciples when they ask whether the blindness of a man he is about to heal is his fault or his parents – it’s no one’s fault, says Jesus.  We generalise at our peril.

 

And our first reading underlines that. St Paul writes to the Church in Corinth. He talks about the wonderful things that have happened to him, the visions he’s had, the calling he received from God on the road to Damascus, and the assurance that gave him of God’s love.  “I know a person in Christ” is just a roundabout way of referring to himself. And yet, he says, that doesn’t mean that everything in his life is easy. He has a “thorn in the flesh”. We don’t know whether that’s a physical ailment, a problematic relationship, or something spiritual, but whatever it is, despite his prayers, despite his faith, despite his close relationship with God, it hasn’t been taken away. Yet, he says, he’s come to see that through it he has learned to look for and to find God’s strength “made perfect in weakness” and that, in turn, has helped him face the “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities” that come to him as a result of his ministry.

 

So where does this all leave us as we start our Lenten exploration of healing? In one sense, we might be feeling that it’s all more complicated than we thought. But in another sense, perhaps it’s actually simpler. Healing, whether it’s physical, spiritual, relational, societal, cosmic, doesn’t depend on us following this ritual or that ritual, using these words or those words, or no words at all. It is found – in whatever form it takes - simply by realising that we are in the presence of God, who is closer to us than our own heartbeat, who doesn’t expect us to heal ourselves, or to heal others – because we can’t – but who invites us to find our rest in him as we pray, and place others for whom we pray into that rest as well, so that, as our collect today put it, “as you know our weakness, may  we know your power to save.”

Amen

Lent 2026

In the Kent Downs and Malling Benefice this year we are following a theme of healing through Lent *,  in sermons and in our various Lent study and reflection opportunities. 

I have put together a little booklet, as I did last year, which aims to help people engage with the Gospel reading (mostly - Mothering Sunday will look at the Epistle instead) for the coming Sunday. 

You can download the booklet here.

-----------------------------

*Because we are following a special theme we aren't using the standard set readings from the Church of England lectionary, in case you have wandered in from another benefice and are puzzled!

Candlemas

 Heb 2.14-end, Luke 2.22-40

Today is the feast of Candlemas. It marks the moment, forty days after the birth of Jesus, when Mary and Joseph bring him to the Temple to offer the sacrifice prescribed by the law after the birth of a baby. It was a completely normal thing for them to do, what everyone in their community would expect them to do. It would have been odd if they hadn’t, and they were probably among many other families in the Temple doing the same. 

Imagine the Temple, the hubbub, the coming and going in this vast complex of buildings, courtyards, and covered walkways. It was the focus of national life for the people of Israel, a place not only of sacrificial worship- think of the noise of all those animals, and the smell… but it was also a place to debate, full of heated discussion, maybe argument… If, when you think of the Temple, you imagine the hush of a great cathedral, forget it. This was a noisy, and sometimes smelly place, and it was full of people.

Every Jewish man was supposed to come to the Temple at least three times a year to offer sacrifice at major festivals, and often whole families came together. And then there were all the other times when you might need to make a sacrifice – if you had been ill, or had become ritually unclean somehow, or needed to make amends for something, and, as here, if you’d had a new baby. 

The sacrifice Mary and Joseph come to make was meant to be a reminder to parents that their children weren’t just theirs. Ultimately, they belonged to God. They were gifts of God, lent to parents for a time, but not theirs to own or control. God’s plans for them were bigger than theirs. That’s something that those of us who are parents still need to be reminded of sometimes. 

But it is true of all children, it was especially true of Jesus, who would grow up to change the course of human history, and do things that were way beyond anything Mary and Joseph could imagine. 

There was nothing that singled him out as different as they brought him into the Temple, though. Despite all those famous paintings we see reproduced on our Christmas cards, he didn’t glow in the dark…The only reason that Simeon and Anna knew who he was was that the Holy Spirit told them so, and their hearts were so attuned to God, shaped by decades of prayer, that they recognised God’s voice, and trusted what they heard, and acclaimed him as the Messiah, the chosen, anointed one of God, the one who would be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” and be the glory of Israel. 

That’s where the association with candles comes from, of course and the reason this feast day is commonly called Candlemas. Back in the Middle Ages it was the day on which the candles to be used in church through the year were blessed, and people brought candles from home for blessing too. This feast happens just at the point when we might start to notice the days getting a little bit longer, if we’re paying attention, and the snowdrops – not great , colourful showy flowers, but so welcome – starting to bloom, the promise that winter will end. An old name for them is Candlemas Bells. Candlemas is about that first glimmer of light, the almost imperceptible lengthening of days, of the light we see just before dawn that tells us that the night will come to an end- some nights, especially when we are anxious or lonely, can seem as if they never will. Or imagine you were lost on a dark mountain in the pitch black – Candlemas is that tiny glimmer of torchlight in the distance held by the rescuer coming to save you, or the far-off glow of a window, reorientating you and guide you towards the safety of a house you didn’t know was there. It’s the light that promises you that help is coming, that all is not lost, the light that lifts your spirits enough for you to keep going until dawn arrives. 

That’s what Simeon and Anna see in this little baby, a reminder of the faithfulness of God, the God who doesn’t give up on us, even if we give up on him. Who doesn’t stop believing in us, even if we stop believing in him, who doesn’t stop loving us, even if we stop loving him. That was the promise they had held onto during the long years that they had spent in the Temple, and now they see it coming to fruition. 

But of course, their recognition that something special is happening is only the beginning. Having recognised him, acclaimed him and blessed him, Simeon and Anna send Mary and Jospeh out, to carry Jesus all the way back to Nazareth, where they will care for him as he grows up and becomes strong and filled with wisdom, ready to start his ministry. 

And in a way, this story calls us to do the same. Yes, it calls us to look for Jesus, as Simeon and Anna did; he may come to us in all sorts of forms, inside and outside the church, maybe in the least likely people and circumstances. Our hearts need to be attuned to God through prayer, just as theirs were. And when we find him, yes, this story calls us treasure what he means to us. But it also calls us to carry him out into the world, to shine with his light, wherever we find ourselves, so that we can bring hope to those who feel as if the long, dark winter will never end. 

That’s why at the end of the service today we’re going to do two things.

The first thing is that, as you will have seen, we’re going to end the service with some responses, drawing our celebration of Christmastide to an end, and turning towards, Lent, Holy Week and Easter. During the last hymn we will light your candles, but the crucial part of this short bit of liturgy  is actually the moment when we blow those candles out, not because the light of Christ has gone out, but as an acknowledgement that, during this long season of pondering the significance of Jesus’ birth, the light, we hope, has gone in, become more deeply part of us. 

The second thing we’re going to do is to invite someone – could be anyone, young or old- to carry the Christ Child who has lain in the manger here in front of the altar out tin the procession that ends the service , as a reminder that, like Mary and Joseph , we are all called to carry Christ into the world, to let his light shine out to others. Amen