Think of a hundred concert pianos

Think of a hundred concert pianos. 

If you tune the second piano to the first, and the 3rd to the 2nd, and the 4th to the 3rd and so on until you have tuned all 100 pianos, you will by the end have discord and disharmony – but if you tune each piano to the same tuning fork, you will have harmony.

And that is true of the Church – when we tune ourselves to other people we will so often have discord and disharmony, but when we tune ourselves to Christ, and him alone, then we will have unity, unity of love and unity of purpose

#justsayin

Bible Sunday

 We are coming to the end of ordinary time in the church calendar. This week is the last Sunday after Pentecost.  Then it will be All Saints’ this Thursday, All Souls’, Kingdom season for a few weeks, and then the Feast of Christ the King, in Glory enthroned, then the new church year will begin on Advent Sunday, when we start again, with anticipation as we prepare for the birth of the child destined to be the king of kings.

It’s a tense moment – because today is also BIBLE SUNDAY

This annual Bible Sunday gives us a chance to step back and look at the Bible as a whole.

·    The Bible is great – it tells us important things, and gives us a clue about Biblical characters – for example, we know that Moses wore a wig.  It says that sometimes he was with Aaron and sometimes he wasn’t.

·    We know that God created Adam at teatime.  It tells us he was created a little before Eve.

·    The shortest man in the Bible?  Nehimiah (knee-high-miah)

Here are some facts about the Bible:

·    The Bible contains 66 different books – it’s like a collection.

·    They are divided into the Old and New Testaments – Testament means promise or agreement.

·    The Bible was written by over 40 different authors from all walks of life – shepherds, farmers, tent-makers, fishermen, priests, doctors, philosophers and kings.

·    Moses wrote more than anyone else in the Old Testament – the first 5 books

·    Paul wrote more than anyone else in the New Testament – over half – 14 books

·    It was written over 1,500 years from 1,450 years before Jesus was born, to about 100 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

·    It was written in three languges – Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek

·    The books in the Bible weren’t decided on until 375 AD – this is called the Canon of Scripture – Canon means Standard basically.

·    The Bible was first translated into English in 1382 AD

·    The Bible was translated into Welsh less than 200 years later.

·    The longest book is Psalms

·    The shortest is 2 John

·    The Book of Esther doesn’t mention God

·    The oldest man in the Bible lived to 969 (Methuselah)

·    The Bible originally had no verses or chapters, just one long text!  Imagine finding a reading on a Sunday morning!

·    There are over 500 verses on faith, 500 on prayer, and over 2,000 on our relationship to money and possessions

·    There are 49 different foods mentioned in the Bible

·    The Bible has been translated into 2,018 languages – in comparison, Shakespeare has been translated into 50 languages.

·    It is the best selling book in the world

It’s a massive topic for one sermon – so I’ll try to paint a picture of how fascinating the Bible is.  Understanding a bit more about the Bible can really help us with faith, it’s also really quite a good read.

Someone once said….

"Who is silly enough to believe that God, like a farmer, 'planted a paradise in the east at Eden'.  
Or put in it a visible, real 'tree of life' and if anyone eats the fruit with his teeth they gain life. …
And when God is said to 'walk in the paradise in the cool of the day' 
and Adam to hide himself behind a tree, 
I don't think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions.  
They indicate certain mysteries not actual events."

You may recognise these words.
 They're not mine.  
They sound very modern, but they come from the brilliant 3rd century Christian scholar called Origen. 

Origen believed that there are different ways of reading the Bible, 
that the Bible has different levels of meaning.  
He was not alone.  
In fact, his view shared by many Christians.  Origen spoke about 3 levels of meaning:

Literal, moral and spiritual.  


A good example is the exodus – the people of Israel leaving Egypt.  
On one level we can read it literally, as a story about Moses and the people leaving Egypt.

On the moral level, we can see it as a story about conversion from the slavery of sin to the freedom of grace.

On the spiritual level, it can be read thinking about our redemption in Jesus – we have this reading at Easter…being set free.

From the earliest days of Christianity, we have understood that the richness and diversity of the Bible needs to be explored.  It speaks to us in all chapters of our lives, it challenges us, it supports us, it comforts us and it tells us off!

The four Gospels even, are written for different audiences, giving people a chance to see the stories from different perspectives.  The Old Testament was the only Bible that Jesus had, he didn’t have the New Testament, it hadn’t been written.      

The origins of the New Testament as a bit of a mystery!  Our version has 27 books or letters, but why were they chosen?  This was towards the end of the 2nd century with characters like Bishop Irenaeus, But exactly how that happened we don't know. 

There is the Gospel of Thomas, building on the idea of Jesus being the Light of the world, and the Gospel of Mary, where the apostles question Mary about why Jesus should talk to her and not them.

But the Bible is what it is!  If you read the Bible in South America, you might be a liberation theologian, who believes that the Bible encourages revolution in the hearts and minds of people, so that the mighty might lose their thrones, and the poor might be lifted up. 

Wherever you read the Bible, it’s God talking to you, your family, your community, you’re nation!  And it speaks to us today, here in Cardiff, in the midst of our trouble and upset, but also in our celebration and our thankgiving.

I commend it to you!  The greatest library of books, with stories fascinating, frightening, fantastic and fabulous.

Finally,

·    Solomon is credited as being the wisest man in the Bible, Ann tells me this is because he had 700 wives to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

·     A father was reading Bible stories to his young son. He read, "The man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city, but his wife looked back and was turned to salt."  His son asked, "What happened to the flea?"

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio

21^st October 2012

Trinity 20 (Pentecost 21)

We are coming to the end of ordinary time in the church calendar. Next week we have Bible Sunday, the last Sunday after Pentecost.  Then it will be All Saints’, All Souls’, the Feast of Christ the King, Kingdom season for a few weeks, and then the new church year will begin.

It’s in four weeks time it’s Advent Sunday, when we start again, with anticipation we prepare for the birth of the child destined to be the king of kings.

As the end of each liturgical year approaches, we have a few weeks being asked what we’ve learned.  All those readings, all those sermons, all those questions! 

The first mistake we make is to think that we come to church to get answers!  Well we don’t.  To quote Hamlet;

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.  Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.

We are given clues about the direction in which we should be pointing.  A bit like the way in which plants turn towards the sun, to get a bit more of precious sunlight.  But answers don’t always just appear when we come to church!  We are more likely to be leaving with questions…about ourselves, our faith, our direction in life and what is really, really precious to us.

So here we are!  Waiting to find out what we’ve learned from coming to church and enduring…sorry listening…to the sermons about the readings we’ve had.

It’s a tense moment.

Throughout the Gospel according to Mark, we are given many examples of Jesus attempting to get the Disciples to understand power and true humility. 

·     He has sat a child on his lap and told them that they must become like the child. 

·     He has told them off when they judged someone for doing the work of Jesus, just because he wasn’t like them.

·     He has spoken about the personal cost of discipleship, and we hear of how his followers must become the servants of others, and expect persecution and hardship.

So, it’s quite shocking to hear that the disciples in the reading today are discussing power and who can sit at the left and right of Jesus in his Kingdom.

He had tried to settle the disputes about greatness with the child and the woman and after this event he talks about his coming death to the amazement of the disciples.

Matthew’s version of this story has the mother of James and John asking Jesus about their seats in glory, but here they are asking for themselves. 

And in answering, Jesus reverses all the normal things about greatness. 

The same happens with the servant song from Isaiah.  Written 400 years before, it foretells the coming messiah.

In the topsy-turvy world of Jesus, the innocent servant is suffering – and cut off from the world.  This is far from what the brothers were expecting!  But because of this Jesus becomes the one who sits alongside the grieving, the sad, the lonely, the poor, oppressed and destitute.

So why is it that we always search for glory?  Why is it that we always need to value what we have in human terms?  Why do we come to church for answers?

So why go to church if we are doomed to fail so badly in being a good Christian.

Now, at this point in thinking about my sermon, I made the mistake of typing a question into the Internet.  I typed Why go to church?

And do you know what?  My screen was filled with the most self-righteous nonsense I’ve seen for a very long time.  Mostly telling us that church attendance is required for us to declare we are right and somehow better than other people – set apart from the sinners for an hour or so.

It might be difficult for some to imagine but in the ordinary difficultness of now, we are here to turn a little bit more towards the light, and to try to learn a little more about ourselves and the God who loves us.  We are not here to instantly turn into modern day saints; we are not here to show the people out there how good we think we are.  We are here in the words of Sri Lankan Christian leader D.T. Niles:

‘As one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread’.

To be fed, to be recharged and to be sent out…to tell others where that bread may be found.

This isn’t about making ourselves great.  It isn’t about choosing our thrones for the world to come, it’s about true humility and honesty.  Someone once said that the church is;

A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

This is reflected perfectly in the post-communion prayer that is set for the day – we rarely use anything other than the ones that are in the book, but it goes like this.

God the Father, whose Son, the light unfailing, who has come from heaven that he may deliver the world from the darkness of ignorance: may the eyes of our understanding be opened through these holy mysteries that we, knowing the way of life, may walk in it without stumbling.

This isn’t a prayer for a throne, riches or knowledge.  It’s a prayer that the world may be freed from the darkness of ignorance and that we may walk without stumbling.

Should we ask for anything else?

Sermon - Trinity 16

We heard a wonderful part of the letter of James this morning, “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom”

The author of the book identifies himself as “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ”, from the third century some authors suggested he was “James the Just” first Bishop of Jerusalem.^[8] 

Paul describes him as "the brother of the Lord" in Galatians 1:19 and as one of the three "pillars of the Church".

He is traditionally considered the first of the Seventy Disciples.  If written by James the Just, the place and time of the writing of the epistle would be Jerusalem, where James was living before he was executed in 62AD.  

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the letter has been the subject of great controversy, the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther said it was “not the work of an apostle” because it contradicted his translation of St. Paul, who says that we can be justified by faith alone.

I don’t know why Martin Luther was all upset about the Letter of James though, I am sure if he had just chilled out a little and read it with a more open mind, then he would have seen some wisdom that was well worth leaving it in the Bible.

James writes;

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it”.

Then, on power he writes;

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”

And even though Luther wasn’t fussy on James, I for one am glad he wrote it – most importantly because all his talk about power in the church helps my sermon this morning.

In the Gospel this morning we catch up with the lads, they are walking though Galilee and Jesus was teaching them about how the Son of Man was going to be betrayed, and be killed, and then on the third day rise; but that the disciples did not

understand what he meant, after Peter being told off in last week’s Gospel I think they were a bit scared to ask.

Instead, they were arguing, and we hear that when they arrived at Capernaum

Jesus asked them about it, saying:

"What were you arguing about on the road"?

But the disciples were silent because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest among them.

A daft argument really

-  How on earth do you get into an argument about whose the greatest?

I mean imagine it - trying to decide who is more important...

What measuring stick would we use?

Those who farm - are they the greatest

     - because they produce the milk and food we need to eat?

Are the teachers among us the most important

     - because they train people in the various jobs they must do and provide them with the tools they need to learn new things with?

Or is it doctors

     - because without them we could live shorter and uncomfortable lives?

Or how about rugby players

     - for without them we have only have football to watch?

Or even inventors – because without them we would never have the toaster or the automatic pencil sharpener

It is an endless argument once you get into it, and one the disciples did well to remain silent about when confronted by Jesus.

Why the quest to determine who is the most important? 

Why this quest to be number one?

As soon as they started the argument, it was all going to end in tears.  They are walking and following the Son of God who loves all the ‘lifting up the lowly and bringing down the mighty’, it’s part of his manifesto.

Jesus speaks of a different way of living and of thinking when after asking his disciples about what they were arguing about, calls all twelve of them together and says to them:

          "If anyone  wants to be first, he must be the very

          last, and the servant of all."

And then taking a little child and having him stand among them,

he takes the child in his arms and says to  them:

          Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my

          name, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, does not

          welcome me, but the one who sent me.

I have always liked that image.

Jesus calls the twelve - and he calls us - away from our arguments about who is greatest, and who deserves more, and who should call the shots and turns our mind instead to the question of our attitude and how willing we are to humble ourselves and to serve one another.

Children then and now weren’t seen as the ‘greatest members of society’; in Jesus’ time they were expected to be obedient, work and earn a living for their family.

Jesus is saying that life in the Kingdom of God is not about being the greatest, or the first... but rather about seeing other people in a way that ignores all distinctions.

It’s so hard to have that attitude.

There is poem about the attitude that Jesus expects his followers to have.  It goes like this:

When I say..."I am a Christian"

 I'm not shouting "I am saved"

 I'm whispering "I was lost"

 That is why I chose this way.

     

When I say ..."I am a Christian"

I don't speak of this with pride.

 I'm confessing that I stumble

 and need someone to be my guide.

              

 When I say..."I am a Christian"

 I'm not trying to be strong

 I'm professing that I'm weak

 and pray for strength to carry on.

It continues like this for several more verses…

A friend recently said to me that he was surprised how much he had learned in his lifetime, however he said “it’s the important things I keep forgetting” he then went on to tell me that;

He would like to feel more at peace,

He would like to have more happiness,

He would like to think more clearly about the world's problems

He blames the world, and the way in which success is measured, for his forgetfulness, but that isn’t the problem.  We can be as kind as we like, but we won’t succeed until we give up the world's standards of success - measured by power, status, and money - and turn as humble children to our God and learn from him;

·    As long as we discriminate

·    As long as we judge some more important than others,

·    As long as we desire to be more important ourselves. 

·    As long as we, to use the words of James in today’s reading, envy others and have selfish ambitions, we block out what God has in store for us, and our world.

Jesus, after all, came among us not as a Lord, not as a boss, not as an important person but as servant.

He came to touch, to embrace, to heal, to forgive, to help, to love, and this even when he knew it would take him to the cross.

Our prayer should not be "make me someone important",

nor should it be "give me wealth and success".

Our prayer should be like that of St. Francis. That we sometimes set to music…..

Make me a channel of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let me bring your love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.  In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Sermon: Pentecost 14 (Trinity 13) Which side are you on?

 Which Side are you on?

Proper 17: Deuteronomy 4.1-2, 6-9; James 1.17-27; Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23

It is the job of the Gospels to disturb, but it’s almost tedious to indicate how political and theological presuppositions are continually turned upside-down in the topsy-turvy world of Christ’s Kingdom.

Today in the reading from Mark’s Gospel, we are thrown into a scene where Jesus is meeting his most persistent and regular antagonists, the Scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem.  If they were actors, they would be complaining that they were always setting up the jokes for Jesus to deliver the killer replies.

Jesus, also has the advantage here in the shape of Mark, who is an expert at setting the scene for his most famous verbal victories.  The reader even gets the cues about how they should respond too.

The antagonists appear and notice that some of the disciples are eating with ‘defiled hands’.  They speak their lines, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the traditions of the elders, but eat with defiled hands? And Jesus makes his response, all served up with a good helping of Markan gloss, which explains in a thoroughly stereotyped way, that the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands.  Jesus then goes onto suggest that they are all Obsessive compulsive with their cleanliness in the kitchen.

An unfortunate by-product of this is that devout Jewish practices are seen as quaint as best or pointless as worst.  Mark seems to completely ignore the fact that these practices were important for the Jewish people in the face of repeated invasion and subjugation.

He sometimes turns the words of Jesus into a cheap put-down, disconnecting Jesus from the issues.  In this, the twenty first century, we can forget that Jesus was himself a Jewish teacher, subject to the law, and closely associated to the 1^st century Jewish reform movements.  The early church eventually became disassociated from Judaism, Jesus never did.

And Jesus said ‘there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile’.

The question is though, who is doing the defiling?  On a day like today, as many clergy will be preaching on how we shouldn’t love tradition too much, and should embrace proper biblical teaching, whatever that may be, we seem to have lost direction somehow.  Today, people will use the readings to preach about how we shouldn’t have what are seen as ‘traditional’ practices, and order within the church because it is what the Pharisees would do.  Many others will preach about how the church needs to change to become more relevant, but relevant to whom?  That’s nice but it’s not even close.

I’ve been following the fortunes of the Russian Punk Band, ‘Pussy Riot’.  You may remember from the news that they performed a song a month ago.  They said it was a prayer, for Vladimir Putin’s downfall.  The only difficulty was that the performance took place in Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow.  They were duly arrested and eventually sentenced to two years imprisonment each for hooliganism.

Their concern was that there is an over-identification between the religious and the powers that be.

You might also remember that when the Occupy protests were taking, and a protesters camp was set up outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, Canon Giles Fraser made them welcome, but the church in general did not.  The Occupy movement was concerned with fairness and they have made their concerns known.

Their concern was that there is an over-identification between the religious and the powers that be.

And back to the Gospel reading, we have the Son of God, creating havoc and in a rather dramatic account from Mark, he is making his point to the assembled Pharisees and Scribes.

His concern was that there is an over-identification between the religious and the powers that be.

Moreover, he believed that the religious authorities had lost their direction, their prayers were empty and their tradition stale because it wasn’t giving them the strength they required to fire the people up.

Perhaps the words of Psalm 84 were called to mind?

For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.  I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.

The incarnation of Jesus, was not to make us all anti-Semites, it was not to allow evangelical preachers the luxury of telling us that liturgy, order and tradition is wrong, although many will.

The incarnation of Jesus, and his subsequent ministry on earth was to help us face the choices we and to do our best in the face of conflicting choices.  We may not like it, but Jesus is reminding us of a painfully simple truth, that it is from within, from the human heart, that all evil intentions come.

If the church is failing to clearly distinguish between right and wrong and call for justice, to distance itself from powers of oppression and intolerance, then it too is more concerned with rules, order, and kitchen hygiene, than doing the work left for it to accomplish by Christ.

In that sense, it doesn’t matter what we think we are; low church, high church, broad church, reformed church, catholic church, traditional church or modern church, because if we aren’t continually looking for opportunities to engage with real injustice then we aren’t church at all.

It’s not the shape of the tree that is important, it’s all about the fruit it bears.

The idea of the Incarnation is essential.  In Jesus Christ, God takes on human life and comes to us.  Jesus lives with all the ups and downs of everyday life.  His accusers said that he liked drinking and partying amongst the ordinary people, and why not?

Jesus wasn’t born to make us think the Jews are mad with their traditions, he wasn’t born to make us suspicious of tradition, he wasn’t even born to help us attain the sort of personal individualistic transformation much loved by conservative evangelicals.  The incarnation tells us that we need to understand that the human heart is corruptible, no matter what rituals and traditions we create for ourselves.

We have only one hope, and that to see ourselves in the right light.  When Jesus says, You abandon the commandment of God and hold onto human tradition, it’s easy to forget to apply that to ourselves, but apply it we must.

We must focus on God, who loves us faithfully, and try to make all we do mean something to those Jesus cared for.

Outward shows of religion are useless if our hearts are not in the right place.  Even though Martin Luther called the Epistle of James, and epistle of straw, because he felt that he had failed in the battle to understand that we are saved by grace and not by works, I think James is not as simplistic as Luther made out.

James emphasizes our actions in the theological context that every generous act of giving comes from God.  We behave in a godly way because we have been given such good gifts by God.  Our actions are a response to God’s grace and an expression of it, and not an attempt to win something from him.

St. Benedict agrees with James, and tells us that God waits every day to see if we will respond to his guidance by doing good.

The Pharisees weren’t doing things wrong, it was just that the fruit of the tree had gone bad because they had forgotten what the harvest was all about.

We are all called to be a reflective people, to see whether our actions are producing the right fruit, and stop looking at the shape of the tree, and judging others’ trees.

God is watching every day, to see if we have learned this lesson.  Let’s pray that we all will.

Sermon - Trinity 10 - Bread of Heaven, feed me 'til I want no more

Trinity 10 (Pentecost 11)  John 6.35,41-51

It’s the last minutes of the RugbyWorld Cup, Wales are one point behind the mighty South African team.  The Millennium Stadium was on its’ feeta few moments before when Wales scored a try.  Now there is silence as they wait to see if the try will beconverted, to all but seal the victory. 

There isn’t a sound coming from theWelsh supporters, and the Springboks are wondering how so many people can be ofone mind.  It is almost as if theyare quiet because they are going to ‘will’ the ball between the posts when itis kicked.

The kicker runs up and the ball isstruck, up..up..up..people wait to guess which way it might go, it looks good,down…down…down…the ball is still 20 yards from the posts as the crowd are ontheir feet again.

The try is converted, and the pointstake Wales ahead in the dying moments of the game.  Then, as the visiting team kick the ball back to play, thechorus starts….

“Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven – feed me‘til I want no more, want no more! Feed  me ‘til I want nomore!”

The final whistle is almost drownedout by the singing, and as the players leave the pitch an almighty cheer risesto heaven, fireworks explode, Katherine Jenkins comes back on to sing herversion of my favourite song….and then with a start I am woken up by Ann,telling me that the kids have drawn all over the walls again with crayon, andthe dog has done something awful on the lawn.

Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven – feed me‘til I want no more

I regularly hear the hymn “Guideme O thou Great Redeemer” as the last hymn and it got me thinking aboutthe sermon this week, because the last few weeks in the Gospel readings breadhas been somewhat of a theme.

 Jesus has been changing what people think of him.  The people have been understanding moreand more about his mission and purpose on Earth.

A fortnight ago, we heard about the‘multitude’ following Jesus, and the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 tookplace.  The people were fed, bothphysically and spiritually, and Jesus left to avoid being made king.  Last week, we heard Jesus say “I amthe bread of life”, and the people were thinking he was like a newMoses, bringing manna to the people.

This week however, in our reading,Jesus says “Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that Iwill give for the life of the world is my flesh”

Jesus is telling us ‘weare what we eat’.

The story of Jesus isn’t about miracles,feeding the multitude or healing people, it’s much more important thanthat. 

The people are all cheering forJESUS, they are all singing the song, they know the words, but do they reallyunderstand what the words mean?

It’s a bit like the MillenniumStadium and the rest of Wales singing….

Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven – feed me‘til I want no more.

At the beginning of his life onearth he is described at the ‘word made flesh (the word was made flesh and dwelt among us)’ in John’s Gospel.

Moving forward to the end of theearthly life of Jesus, he breaks the bread and says “this is my body”

We are fed by WORD and SACRAMENT…

Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven – feed me‘til I want no more

So today – we will be fed. Fed by the word (through thereadings and our reflections on them) then we will be fed by the bodyof Christ (through the HolySacrament later as we come to the altar).

A two-course meal?

Moving to the Letter to theEphesians, Paul is continuing to implore the people to not be foolish orself-serving.  Last week he gave alist of things we shouldn’t be doing. This week, he continues by adding the instruction do not get drunk with wine and carry on singing psalms, hymns andspiritual songs.

But, it’s so difficult to do theright thing.

Someone once said that;

Christianity helps us face the music even when wedon't like the tune.

It’s a challenge that we find difficult and is withus every day – but it hasn’t gone unnoticed….

Rabbi Lionel Blue, once wrote;

The real evidence for Jesus and Christianity isin how Jesus (and the Christianity based on him) manifest themselves in thelives of practicing Christians.

The real evidence for Christianityis found in the everyday lives of people like you and me, who try, andsometimes fail to live a life of love.

At morning prayer on the 14^thAugust, we remembered Maximillian Kolbe, who died aged 47 on that day in 1941.

Kolbe was a Franciscan friar whoprovided shelter to refugees from Poland, including 2,000 jews, whom he hidfrom persecution in his Friary.

He was arrested by the Gestapo andimprisioned in PAWIAK PRISON and then in May 1941, he was transferred toAuschwitz as prisoner number 16670.

At the end of July 1941, threeprisoners disappeared from the camp, prompting the commander to pick ten men tobe killed, by starvation, when one prisoner cried out, Kolbe took his place,after two weeks, he didn’t die by starvation, as the other nine did.  He was killed by lethal injection.

When he was later about to be made aSaint by the Catholic Church, there was a controversy, because he was martyred,not for the faith, but because of racial intolerance, and his act of humankindness.

The suggestion was that he would bea Martyr of Charity.  However Pope John Paul II decided tocanonize him and overrule the commission which he himself had established.

He then made one of the mostimportant statements of his office. He said that the Systematic hatredof whole categories of humanity is in itself an act of hatred.

The whole Nazi regime was inherentlyan act of religious hatred.

Kolbe has quotes for us today, whenwe think about the Bread of Life wereceive at the altar, he says;

"Goddwells in our midst, in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar."

And,when we think about the word made flesh, and how there isthat conflict to ‘do the right thing’,he says;

"No onein the world can change Truth. What we can do and and should do is to seektruth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the innerconflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hetacombs of extermination camps,there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil,sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we areourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?"

Kolbeunderstood that we need to be fed by the wordand sacrament, and be sent out in tothe world to do the word of GOD. That doesn’t stop us caring in certain places, or in certain ways, it isfor all our lives for all we do and for all we say.

Next time I’m down at the MilenniumStadium for the Autumn internationals and the people start singing, Breadof Heaven, Bread of Heaven – feed me ‘til I want no more, my prayerwill be that they will be FED, and we will be FED TOO, so that we can all bethe people God wants us to be, and live a life of love.