St John

We walked everywhere with him during those three years. We walked the length and breadth of Israel,
From the Jordan to the sea.
We saw things that no man expects to see:
Water turned into the richest wine,
Crowds fed from five barley loaves and two small fish.
Sicknesses of all kinds cured,
The eyes of the blind opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped.
We saw cripples leap for joy, we saw lepers made whole.
And demons cast out.
And we heard teaching the like of which
Has not been heard before in Israel.
He told us that we were the salt of the earth, the light of the world.
He showed us God as our Father, merciful and loving.
He showed us that all men are made in the image of God,
That sinners can be brought to repentance,
That lost sheep can be found and brought home.
Who was this man who could do these things?
For he was a man, there was no doubt of that.
He ate and slept with us, he grew weary beyond weariness
As the crowds pressed around him demanding his compassion.
We saw him angry and we saw him grieving.
Yet he was more than a man.  No man alone could do
The things he did; no man alone could teach as he taught.
Peter got it right: when Jesus asked us
Who we thought he was,
Peter spoke for all of us when he said,
‘You are the Messiah, the Son of God’.
We had seen his work and heard his words
And pondered them in our hearts, discussed them over the fire
In the evening, when he had gone aside to pray.
Who were we, fishermen of Galilee, tax collectors, everyday folk
That we had been chosen to be his followers?
He could have walked with kings and princes.
Instead he walked to the cross
And we saw him die.               
Bur death could not hold this man
Who was God.  We saw him risen and knew
That the world would never be the same again.

Feeding the 5000

There were over five thousand there that day, And every one of them tired and hungry.

‘Feed them’, he said,

As if manna would fall from the sky

As it had done in the desert.

Even if we had had the money,

We could not have found enough bread in that remote place                                          

To feed so many.

Then a boy came up to me;

‘You can have my lunch, if it helps’, he said.

I looked and there in his basket

Were five barley loaves and two small fish.

I couldn’t hurt him by refusing his gift but how far would it go                                

Among so many?

But we had learned never to say ‘Impossible’ when we were with Jesus.                  

So I took the boy and his gift over to the Teacher.

He looked with such love at the boy
As he took the small basket.
He blessed the food, thanked his Father for the provision                                     

And began handing it to us to give to the crowd,

Seated now around the mountainside.

And, believe it or not,

I saw it with my own eyes,

Those five loaves and two small fish

Fed the whole crowd with twelve baskets of scraps

Left over.

That gift, freely given by a loving heart, was taken by God      

And made more than sufficient for the need.

Fishers of Men

Fishing in the deep lake takes courage and trust in God
To battle the elements;
It takes wits as the fish try to evade capture.
It’s not an easy thing
To make your living by fishing in Galilee.
You can be out all night without a single catch
Or come home with the nets straining
And more fish than the market can take.
All or nothing, that’s the fisherman’s life.         

On a sunny afternoon

The young men sat on the shore
Mending their nets,
Not thinking of anything very much.
A shadow fell across the stony beach:
‘Follow me; and I will make you
Fishers of men’.
Was it a command or a promise?
Such was his authority that they rose,
Left their nets and their boat,
And followed him.
They followed him around the lake,
Listening to his preaching,
Marshalling the crowds,
Carrying the tired children;
They marvelled at the healings,
The exorcisms,
The loving care he showed to all.
They followed him on the dusty roads
To Jericho and Jerusalem.
But they couldn’t follow him to the cross –
Not yet, anyway –
That was something he had to do by himself.
They had learned more than they knew
During the three years when he had led them
And the Holy Spirit inspired a new boldness in them.
Now they followed his ways,
Preaching and teaching,
Healing and freeing,
Setting out the kingdom before the people
To draw them to Christ.

It took courage and trust in God to battle the Pharisees

And wit to frustrate those who would obstruct them.
It was not an easy life,
Being fishers of men.
But the early training on the lake
Had accustomed them to hard work and disappointment
As well as to the joy of a good catch.
The new call had come
Both as a command and as a promise
And they followed him to glory.

Wedding at Cana

It was one of the biggest weddings of the season.

The bride’s father was rich and invited all the community.

We were hired from all around to come and work.
It was really busy –
All the preparations, and then the guests arriving:
Hundreds of them, it seemed, far more than expected.
Probably they all invited their sisters and cousins from the neighbouring villages!
There was dancing, there was eating, and a lot of drinking –
Toasts to the happy couple, toasts to the parents,
Then toasts to each other and to anyone else they could think of.
I was kept on my toes, I can tell you,
Running hither and yon to get the bottles
And pour the wine into the outheld glasses.
I couldn’t believe it when the steward told us
There was no more wine!
It was a disaster, the Master would be shamed in front of all his friends!
The steward was clearly troubled
And Mary came to ask what the problem was.
Mary always has an eye on what’s going on,
She makes everything run smoothly wherever she is,
Born to care, my mother always says.
The steward wasn’t embarrassed telling her,
She always seems to understand everything.
She told him not to worry, she would find a way.
I saw her go over to her son and say something to him.
He didn’t look too pleased at first,
Then smiled ruefully as a son will to his mother.
She said to us, ‘Do exactly as he tells you’.
He told us to fill the big purification jars with water
And we obeyed, though we couldn’t see how that would help.

It took us a few minutes – they are big, those jars,

And impossible to lift when full.
Then he said, ‘Draw the wine and give it to the guests’.
Wine? It was water we put in those jars.
But, sure enough, it was wine we drew out.
Clear as water, slightly green in colour
But with a scent of flowers and fruit and summer like you’ve never known.
It made you feel good just to smell it.
We were sent quickly to fill up the empty glasses –
People were beginning to look around for us,
Wondering where we were.

I overheard one guest say to the Master
That he had saved the best wine till last
And it was better than any he had tasted.
No-one but us waiters and the steward
Knew what had happened: I don’t know if the Master ever knew.
So how do you get good wine from jars of water?
Mary’s son had always been special but this?
I wouldn’t believe you if you had told me:
This was impossible, yet I had seen it with my own eyes.
A man who could do this could do anything.                                  

The Leper

No-one would touch a leper:

‘Unclean! Unclean!’ and

Horrifyingly contagious.

But he came among them,

Breaking the law,

Braving the crowd

Which parted before him like

The walls of water in the Red Sea,

Opening the road to Salvation.

‘If you are willing, you can make me clean’.

The women drew back their skirts in horror,

The men shrank away lest their sleeve

Come into contact with his rags.

And Jesus?

As if it were the most natural thing in the world

He reached out and placed his hand on the other’s shoulder,

Man to man,

Made in the image of God.

The crowd looked on in appalled fascination

At their beloved Teacher

Touching the living dead.

And Jesus only said:

‘I am willing: be clean’.

And the man stood there, restored, made whole,

A new man, a man recalled to the fullness of life.

Nothing is so terrible that Christ won’t touch;

Nothing so loathsome that Christ will turn away;

Nothing so unforgivable that it has not already

Been forgiven on the Cross.

Darkness and Light

When God first formed the earth, when it was ‘without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep’ it must have been such a thick impenetrable darkness, where you would be able to see absolutely nothing at all. The human eye requires an input of light, however tiny: when we say that our eyes adapt to the dark, they actually simply adapt to a lesser light. Those creatures who live in the very depths of the oceans, where the darkness must be as it was in the first days, are almost always, perhaps always (I don’t know enough about it) blind. There is no point in their having sight when there is no light. They use sonar and radar and other ways of experiencing their surroundings.


Then God spoke: ‘Let there be light’ – and light was. What is interesting, though, is that for a brief moment light and darkness must have co-existed, because we are told that God separated the darkness from the light: so initially they were together, as good and evil can co-exist in one person. God did not banish darkness; it has a part to play in the creation. He gave it a separate existence and a dedicated time. We are so used to associating darkness with evil that perhaps we have to readjust our thinking to some extent. Darkness is beneficial, restful, peaceful. Some people find it almost impossible to sleep unless the room is very dark; some animals only come out at night. Sleep, which our bodies expect to do in the dark hours, is vital for our physical and psychological wellbeing: non-stop light is used as a torture and a disorienting device; our body clocks are attuned to a rhythm of darkness and light. It is a strange thing that we call the combination of night-time and daylight ‘a day’ using the more positive word for the two: in the same way, we who are both sinner and saint are known as ‘saints’: the darkness and the sin are outweighed by the light and the holiness. We are told, too, that ‘the evening and the morning were the first day’ etc: it would make more sense to say ‘the morning and the evening’ but with the phrase as it is in the bible, we have the morning, the light, the grace of God, as the final word. There is no evening to the seventh day; God’s grace has won out.


Yet the contrast between darkness and light runs right through the bible and is also used metaphorically, as I said, to indicate the play of good and evil. Light is entirely necessary for most life forms and with light usually comes warmth. The sun was venerated as a god throughout the ages as the cold, dark winter days gave way to the life-giving, crop-growing warmth of spring and summer. Yet in some places, where to us in Britain the sun comes as a friend, there are parts of the world where it is almost an enemy, to be hidden from, to be endured as it beats down unmercifully.

 We use phrases all the time that equate light with knowledge: ‘that puts a new light on it’, ‘casting light upon a subject’, ‘seeing something in a new light’: and the opposite: ‘I’m completely in the dark about that’.


So, imagine the total darkness of the pre-light world and the coming of God’s light. To me, the most poetic verse in the entire bible is in Isaiah where it says, ‘the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light’. If you are in the light, you think how wonderful it is that the light should come into the darkness and illuminate the people: but if you are used to that total blackness, where you might as well be blind for all you can see, the light would come surely as something of a mixed blessing: perhaps something to be feared at first as your eyes shut automatically to protect themselves, as your mind assimilates this new thing, as you suddenly have to take in a whole new landscape that was hidden from you before. And as you become more and more used to the light, you will take in more and more detail of what you can see, you will perhaps understand things that you did not understand before. It sounds so amazing that the light should come, but when you stop and think, how would it really feel? If you are expecting it, a sunrise for example, and you are prepared, it is completely wonderful; but if it comes from nowhere, wouldn’t it be a little scary? In the same way, it seems to me, when the light that is God and telling of God first comes to people, it can be frightening as new things so often are; but as you become accustomed to it, you will see it in more detail and understand things hidden from you before.


Most of the verses that came instinctively to my mind when preparing this were from the New Testament, when the Light of the World became man. In some ways, it can be compared to a sunrise in that the Jews were expecting a Messiah who would deliver them – not this Messiah, mostly, but they were expecting something wonderful to happen. But there were those who recognised him straightaway, notably Simeon in the temple (Luke 2:29-32): ‘For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.’ Simeon could see in this tiny baby what others could not see in the grown man: he could see God’s hand bringing light into the world; not the light of initial Creation but a new light. In Dickens’ story of a Christmas Carol, can you remember what Christmas Present hid under his robe and what he said? He said beware of these two, the girl is ignorance and the boy is want. Ignorance and want are the enemies of humanity and part of the light that Christ brings is knowledge and God’s promises.


Perhaps the best known quotations of all come from John: ‘In him was life; and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it’ ‘.The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world’. Also, from his first letter: ‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not tell the truth’. ‘And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil’. Light is that which enables us to see clearly; darkness is equated here with ignorance, with untruth, with deception.

 In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about our eyes: ‘The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!’ (Matthew 6:22-23) Our eyes are the only way we can see; if we shut our eyes, light cannot enter. If we have cataracts or glaucoma or some other disease of the eyes, or the optic nerve, we will not see clearly. If we refuse to look and recognise Jesus, the light of salvation cannot reach our hearts. If we refuse to learn, to listen, to look properly at what is around us, we will live in a state of internal darkness. We may call it light, but it is doubly dark because intentional. Part of our responsibility as human beings is to look for the truth – the immortal truths, as we have said before, not an expedient ‘truth for me’ which is variable and subjective.

 As you probably know by now, I have a great affection for the King James: partly because I feel that the modern translations are too explanatory and cut off a lot of possible associations and meanings. I feel this about the famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13: the NIV says: Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face’. In the authorised Version it says: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known’. To me, the mirror reflection suggests that you are looking at yourself and your own world and not seeing clearly; but ‘through a glass, darkly’ implies a wide-ranging lack of knowledge, which flows into the following phrases. The glass is more like a window than a mirror: you are looking outwards. It may not be the image that is unclear, as in the NIV, it is the looker who is unable to make sense of what he sees because he does not have the information to decode it.


We talked previously about the equation between blindness and not-knowing. As I have tried to show earlier, blindness and darkness carry the same message of not seeing, not knowing. When Saul had his vision on the road to Damascus, he was blind as he was led into the city. The overwhelming light was too much, his eyes were not used to it, his heart and brain were not ready for it: so he was given a short period of blindness to come to terms with a whole new way of seeing. The blindness marked an end to his Pharisaic terms of thought and behaviour and his restored sight was the beginning of a new life, clarified by a new light. We talked about Bartimeus and the other blind men who came to Jesus for healing: he asked each of them what they wanted and their answer was, ‘I want to see.’ We have to want to see the new truth before it will be given to us.



There is a poem by Robert Frost about mending a stone wall between his property and his neighbour’s. He says he doesn’t really understand why there should be a wall there as he has apple orchards and his neighbour has pine trees and they cannot hurt each other. The poet waxes a little fanciful about why the wall should fall: ‘I could say ‘elves’ to him but it’s not elves exactly, and besides, I’d rather he said it for himself.’ He then says of the neighbour ‘he moves in darkness as it seems to me, not of woods only and the shade of trees.’ His father had told him that ‘good fences make good neighbours’ and, the poet says, he liked this phrase so much that he could not reason around it. The neighbour is closed to anything he cannot see or touch, he lives by habit and his mind cannot escape and seek truth outside. Such people will never be able to understand Jesus’ message, will shut their eyes against the light, will turn their backs and go back into the warm, welcoming, comfortable and unthreatening darkness. The darkness demands nothing of you, as ignorance demands nothing of you: to look at the world in the light of day and to appreciate its beauty and its intricacy requires a modicum of effort: to try to understand your own place in the creation, to learn about God and Jesus and to understand about obedience and freedom requires a great deal. People have the impression that ‘freedom’ is an absolute good available to everyone: but true freedom is very difficult to handle, it comes with great responsibility and makes great demands, otherwise it simply turns into anarchy and chaos. Being free in the kingdom of God still demands an effort on our part, obedience and acceptance of God’s law.

Candle Time

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.


And God said: ‘Let there be light’ and there was light. (Light match and candle). God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.’


The first words spoken in this universe were to establish light for us. light and darkness, good and evil, knowledge of God and ignorance of him: these are the great themes of the bible. (read John 1:1-14)


When Jesus came, he said: ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ (John 8:12)



God has placed his light within each of us, a tiny flame like the flame of this candle but a flame that will grow in each of us as we draw nearer to God: and as we spread the Word of God the light in the world grows and the darkness cannot stand against it.

Light the candle of each person in turn, with a short text to go with it e.g.
 God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)



The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. (Matthew 4:16)



My eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. (Luke 2:30-32)



The Lord is my light and my salvation. (Psalm 27:1)


Let us walk in the light of the Lord. (Isaiah 2:5)

‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.’ (Isaiah 49:6)
You are the light of the world. ..Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 5:14)
You were once darkness but now you are light in the Lord. (Eph 5:8)
‘The fruit of light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth’ (Eph 5:9)
As we light our candles to reflect the light of the world and as we pray, the burning flame symbolises our prayer reaching up to God.


Pray silently now for the sister on your right and on your left and then for the whole group.


Remember that you are not alone: the Holy Spirit always prays within you and you are one of millions of Christians throughout the world, part of a prayer chain longer than you can imagine; but you are also an individual, known and loved by God for who you are. You are unique and your prayer is unique and special to God.
 Let us place each candle in the garden to continue burning and to make one great light as we move into a time for private prayer and meditation.