I remember once I was leading a school visit to church from a group of year 1 children. We did a treasure hunt, and listened to the organ, and talked about the stained glass windows, and the children asked lots of questions. When it was time to end, I said, OK there's time for just one last question. One little boy put up his hand and asked, "Why did Jesus have to die?"

I have great respect for this six year old's ability to zoom in on the heart of the Christian faith. Never mind all these peripheral bits about stained glass and organ music Let's just do the basics, shall we. If this kind man Jesus was the Son of God, why he had to submit to this nasty death-on-a-cross thing? And could you give me that in one sentence please, before we put on our coats and go back to school?

God is pictured not only as ruling Creation, but as sustaining it, providing for it and delighting in its diversity… donkeys, cattle, storks, goats, cedar, juniper, hyrax and lion… God has them all in mind and at heart, from greatest to least. Which leads us to the first part of God’s word to us in this psalm; which is the call to lament. We are living through the sixth mass extinction this planet has known, but the first one caused by humankind; within the last 70 years the population of wild animals has halved.

Today we going to carry on working through what we mean by the word “mission”. You’ll remember that ‘mission’ is a really important word for us in the church and people sometimes to come to it with preconceived ideas about what it means.

“To respond to human need in acts of loving service” – the third mark of mission

When I was fourteen year our family experienced a crisis. My clever and talented older sister became suddenly extremely mentally ill, her behaviour bizarre and unpredictable. There were police cars and ambulances coming and going in the middle of the night; my parents were distraught. This was the 1970s and mental illness was not spoken of, a source of huge shame and stigma. There was little understanding or care from anyone. Except for Sophie. Sophie was what I think was called a parish worker in the church, twenty years before women could be ordained.

“To baptise and nurture new believers”

I have a parable for you this morning. It is the parable of the running club and

the choir.

Some years ago I took up running and decided that the best way to improve was

to join a club. I arrived outside a gym one chilly evening, and discovered the was

a fast group, a medium group and a slow group. I joined the other beginners in

the slow group. The run leader led us off, and as I found my stride I noticed was

that every so often the runners at the front would peel off and run to the back

of the group. Matt the run leader came and ran alongside me for a while, and

we chatted. He explained that they always encouraged the strongest runners at

the front to peel off to the back, to give the runners at the back some

encouragement – and to make them run a longer distance! It was so good not

to feel on my own at the back of the group. A few days later I received a text

from Matt, congratulating me on finishing the run, and encouraging me to come

back the next week. I did.

What on earth is the church for? What are we doing here this morning when we could have rolled over and enjoyed another hour in bed? With lockdown three in its third week, it’s as good time as any to be asking these questions. The pandemic has rearranged our experience of church in all sorts of ways, We hear the phrase “the new normal” – and there’s widespread agreement that when life opens up again after the pandemic it will look different. For us and our neighbours in Whaley Bridge, patterns of work, leisure, education, even family life, are likely to be different from before. And let’s add to that patterns of church life. As society changes around us, we in the church need to adapt so that we live and speak the good news of God’s saving love in ways which make sense for people.

It is Advent Sunday, and the darkness is drawing in. The days are short. The light is failing. And this tumultuous year, in which all our expectations of normal life of been turned on their head, edges towards its close. And on Advent Sunday we do something very simple. We light a candle – and we wait. Advent is the season for waiting.

And waiting is something that we had increasingly forgotten how to do. In the eighties there was a slogan for a credit card - ” Access takes the waiting out of wanting.” No need to wait, we were told, you can shop your way to salvation right now. Leisure shopping, online shopping – why wait when you can have what you want at the click of a mouse? Around us the world became increasingly fast moving, impatient unable to tolerate waiting for anything.

I wonder what – or who – you remember on Remembrance Day?

Steve and I are old enough to be on the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation and our parents’ lives were profoundly shaped by the second world war. So on this day we remember Jim Eccleston, the gentle giant from Worksop, who went from mining community of Worksop to serving as a Military Policeman in Hong Kong, and then Singapore, where he was captured by the Japanese. Jim lived for several years in the terrible privations of a Japanese Prison of War camp, where many of his fellow prisoners died from starvation and exhaustion. After the Hiroshima Bomb fell, a confused situation arose in the camp. With some of the guards melting away into the jungle. Jim, a natural leader, was resolved that order should be maintained in the camp, and that the British prisoners of war should not take revenge on the Japanese Guards. Resuming his role as military policeman, he led a formal delegation to the officers hut, demanding they formally surrender, The officer in charge of the camp surrendered by handing his Samurai sword over to Jim – a trophy which remains in our family to this day.

Luke 17: 11 – 19

On Monday this week I phoned in my veg order and paid by card. “Don’t worry if we’re out, just leave it on the step” I said, and a lovely box duly appeared later in the day. On Wednesday my computer keyboard packed up, so I ordered another one online. The next day it arrived on my doorstep, I unwrapped it and started using it. As reflect on my week I realise that essential items that I’ve needed – in order to eat, in order to work – have arrived on my doorstep….and that’s happened without me saying thankyou to the person who delivered them. Well of course a doorstep delivery is covid safe. But there’s something missing. A few years ago, I would have gone into a shop, bought my goods and smiled and said thanks to the person on the till. As life moves more and more online, those opportunities for simple interactions with other people are becoming fewer. Does that means, I wonder, that the word thankyou is spoken less now? Is there generally less thanking going on? And then I wonder if we are saying thankyou to one another less, are we also feeling less of a sense of thankfulness?

I expect like me, you are finding you are using cash less since lockdown. It’s so much easier to social distance by waving a bank card at a scanner. And this is a significant change. A coin is passed between many hands, whereas no one holds my bank card except me. Looking at a pound coin with its image of Queen Elizabeth reminds me at some level that I am a citizen of the United kingdom and the image of the monarch on the coin is a symbol of national identity – of unity, maybe, and of belonging.

But of course if I lived in a country with tyrannical rule, where the freedoms of indigenous people were ruthlessly surpressed, that would all be different. If I was a Uigher person living in China, picking up a coin and looking at the image would just remind me of the tyranny that my people and I were living under.

This is the context for the conversation about money and taxes in our gospel passage today. For Jewish people, the coin with the image of Caesar on it – and with words blasphemously claiming that Caesar was a God, no less – would be one more bitter reminder of life under Roman occupation. Rome and its brutal overlords had an very effective system for taxing their colonial subjects, and failure to pay up on time would result in punishing fines that would drive people into destitution. And refusal to pay was effectively a refusal to bow to Roman rule – a very dangerous position to take.

Last month you will remember the massive public outcry following the publication of the “A” level results. The Department for Education had been concerned that this year’s results nationally should match up with the national spread of results over the last few years, and produced an algorithm – a computer programme – that would generate this spread. As you know, when the results came out they were regarded as being very unfair, and especially to bright children attending less successful schools. A furore followed, and the results were re-issued on the basis of teacher assessment. This meant many students did rather better than they would have done otherwise. Given the huge stress that the coronavirus has caused for our young people, we may well feel that this boost to their results is no bad thing.

I’m glad that’s the way it worked out. It seems to me a clear example of kindness and mercy being applied to the results process, instead of the cold and rigid application of rules based system.

Well here I am at the end of my first full week of ministry at Whaley Bridge, and I can honestly say it’s been a delightful week. We’ve had 41 people round for tea in the garden, and it was great to start getting to know you this way. There have been doorstep chats and phone calls and chats over email and texts with other people. It’s been great to hear your stories about this church community, about Whaley Bridge and area. I am especially grateful to Margot and Dave Graham for giving us the leaflet with the 20 mile walk around the parish boundary, and we hope to do that soon, though possibly in stages!

This week I watched a brief video by the Christian commentator Peter Graystone. He said he was once on a bus in Birmingham sitting behind two ladies of a certain age. One said.” What are you doing this weekend?” and the other said, “Well, I’ll probably go to church.” “Are you a Christian then?” the other responded. “How come you’re a Christian?” “Well, I couldn’t tell you, you’d have to ask the vicar.” Then came a pause, and she continued, “well, I like the hymns, and it makes me feel peaceful going to church.” Here friend replied, “Do you know I go to a Pilates class, and it’s the most peaceful moment of my week! You’d love it.” “Can you let me have the details then? “her friend asked. The conversation ended with the first lady scribbling down the details for the Pilates class. An opportunity for that first lady to hear something about the Christian faith – to receive an invitation to come along to church with a friend – that opportunity was missed. Earwigging on that conversation led Peter Graystone to write Faith Pictures, a course that recognises that many Christian people find it hard to talk about their faith in a natural and unembarrassed way, and helps them find their own words and images to start doing that.