Romans 12.1-8 and Matthew 5.13-16 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What a wonderful gathering this is. Welcome to you all, from near and from far, and a very special laskavo prosymo to members of the Ukrainian Community and (welcome in sign language) to members of the Deaf Community who are with us this evening.

A special thankyou too to everyone who has worked so hard to sustain church life during the vacancy. Bishop Richard and all the diocesan team are very grateful indeed. Thankyou again.

A big thankyou as well to Andy for being here tonight. We couldn’t be doing this without you, … and we hope you and your family will be very happy here, and have a long and fruitful ministry too.

No pressure then… But I have absolute confidence in your godlike abilities. Godlike? Hang on a moment. He’s good, but … Before you get too excited or too worried, though, I just mean that I could just about claim that Andy is, during the course of this service, a 3 in 1: Chaplain, Rural Dean, and now the Vicar here.

Actually I prefer to think of him, sorry,  as a condiment set.Salt – pepper – vinegar. Salt to season us. Pepper to give us pep, vinegar to – well I’m struggling, but to give us an edge. Really though I’m just interested in the salt; because Andy, you’ve been a great support for me and added savour to our whole office …  and of course because salt was in the Gospel you chose for tonight.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

It’s one of Jesus’ great sayings. And a distinctly witty and memorable one if we consider how it would have sounded when he said it in Aramaic. I’m no expert, but my understanding is that he would have called 
salt TABEL, earth TEBEL, and tasteless drivel TAPEL.

So “You are the TABEL of the TEBEL, but if you lose your TABELness you will turn into TAPEL.”

Cool, memorable, and somewhat disconcerting. Especially when we realise that he’s looking at us. Tapel? Worthless? Us?

So why is gentle Jesus meek and mild giving us such a sharp dig? Paul was probably doing the same in the passage we heard from the letter to the folk in Rome. He wouldn’t have appealed to them to  

not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

 unless he had a shrewd suspicion that they had got well and truly set in their worldly ways.

Now I happen to know that Andy has a high opinion of the church folk here. But he and I would I think agree that in a world where the world around us seems to be going to hell in a handcart, and things are looking dark indeed, it’s really important to turn resolutely to the light, and to shed and share that light in our localities.

You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Then, to quote from a passage from Isaiah 58 that Andy would have chosen as well if I’d let him:

Then your light will rise in the darkness,
    and your night will become like the noonday.
¹¹ The Lord will guide you always;
    he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
    and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
    like a spring whose waters never fail.
¹² Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
    and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
    Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

So – a simple question. Is that what you want? Or are you happy to settle for the throwaway stuff that the world tries to sell you that is here today and gone tomorrow, and is actually designed to do just that so that you’ll go out and buy some more?

Now I need to be honest. Don’t be misled by all the impressive robes: they disguise a much less impressive individual inside them. When it comes to being a disciplined disciple, I tend to come way down the class. I’m full of awe at the heroes of the faith who stride their way to heaven, but I muddle on behind. Do I pray every morning? Do I trust God all the time? Do I stay free from sin each day? Well – you can guess the answer.

Let me be personal for a moment if I may. I’m going to start by lighting a candle and then telling you just a little more of my own story.

So, why a candle? As you know I am called David, and I was meant to be born on St David’s Day, March 1^st. He’s a great hero of mine, but in the event my mother was very poorly during the pregnancy and I arrived on February 2^nd instead: Candlemas. Well – at least you weren’t called Candle quipped a friend later. But a pre-term birth with both I and my mother in isolation had consequences, and one is significant anxiety, which can be really annoying for me and everyone around me. 

So just as I am no six-footer and will disappear from view shortly when I sit to give Andy his licence, I am no hero like St David of Wales or indeed King David in the Old Testament. We’ll come back to them in a moment because they do have good news for us, but there’s even better good news hiding in Jesus’ words that we perhaps thought were setting the bar too high for us to reach. In fact they tell us that Small is Beautiful, as we might put it today.

Just a few grains of salt are enough to season a dish. Trust me; ask my wife Jean: I tend to overdo the seasoning, and it doesn’t work out well if I do. 

And the light of one candle can be seen 3km away on a decently dark night. 

Let’s turn down the lights in church and see how our candle, which hardly seemed to show when surrounded by lighting technology of today, can nevertheless transform the darkness with the majesty and mystery of its one small flame.

Light a candle in the darkness. Set your lamp on the top of a hill and you can shed your light too, and make a difference, even if you’re a flickering light like me.

There’s good news too in the passage from Romans. No matter what shape or size we are, what country we come from, or what characteristics we have or don’t have in human terms: we are all gifted by God.

We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith;⁷ if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; ⁸ if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead,^[b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

It sounds rather spiritual, but ‘serving’ can be cups of tea; ‘teaching’ can be a youth event, ‘giving’ covers widows’ mites as well as banks transfers (though they’re very welcome too, thanks) and so on. We need the whole range. And however small your part may be, let me take you back to the two Davids for a moment. The Old Testament one is recorded there as being “faithful in his generation”, and the Welsh one’s last words were that we should do the little things that he had done. They’ve been mottoes for me, not least as a bishop, and perhaps they can be mottoes for you too.

Then many a muckle can start to make a mickle, because we are in this together, meant to play as a team not solo stars:

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, ⁵ so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

Let’s look round church for a moment and see just how many people and sorts of people have played their part. … But they’re only just the start: now there’s YOU.

So we’re all in this together. In a moment, after I have licensed Andy, and all the focus is on him, the Archdeacon will invite some of you to assist in actions which speak of your common life as the Body of Christ here, using your gifts together and bearing one others’ burdens as you do. 

I’d really like to invite you all forward, but it would be chaos. So in spirit if not in body, join in, let me invite you  to take your place in God’s good plan for the future of his people here as the others take the lead, and say a prayer in your heart for Andy and for all of you, in all that is to come. Amen.

Sermon preached in Hereford Cathedral on Ash Wednesday 2025

Did you know that in 1653, four years after the execution of Charles I, one Samuel Hering suggested to Parliament that the walls of churches should not be whitewashed but ‘be coullered black to putt men in minde of that blacknesse and darkenesse that is within them.’ Those were indeed dark and dangerous days, and we may think that these days are not so different, as sovereignty and truth alike are contested not only with words but with war.

The Protestants of those days were gutsier about gloom than we are. It’s there in the Prayer Book too. “Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men: We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.” “We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done, And there is no health in us.” We are “miserable offenders.” 

My late mother, who was an English teacher and loved the language could not abide the sentiment; and during my lifetime the trope has grown that talk of our innate sin and wickedness is a travesty of our innate goodness, and that turning to God for forgiveness is a juvenile dependency. We can save the world, and will.

That sounds like pure hubris now. Macmillan’s “you never had it so good” evokes a hollow laugh. Wilson’s white heat of the technological revolution has burnt itself out as the downside of its gains has become all too clear. Nuclear energy so cheap it would even be unmetered has given way once more to nuclear threats and anxiety. So it was in the time of Joel:

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
   for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—
² a day of darkness and gloom,
   a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
   a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
   nor will be again after them
   in ages to come.

So perhaps we are let off lightly when we come to church on Ash Wednesday and receive a small ashen cross on our foreheads, with a reminder that the Bible tells us not to show it off afterwards. And perhaps I am glad of that, because there are real limits to the amount of darkness we can bear – certainly that I can bear, and are meant to bear.

We need to confront the darkness, because to do anything else is to call the darkness light and deny God, but we name the darkness only to turn away from it, in repentance, in conversion, in choosing to turn to Christ the light. 

Return to the Lord, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

So back in the Barebones Parliament wiser wisdom prevailed and our churches were painted white not black, and in due course the antagonisms of the Civil War gave way to priests like George Herbert and our own Thomas Traherne who helped their flocks turn to the light and live in the light, seeking both holiness and happiness.

In our service too tonight we name the darkness we dare not deny, both inside us and outside us – substantial prayers of penitence will follow shortly – but when the black ashes are imposed on us they are in the sign of the cross, the sign of Christ in whom all darkness is defeated, and in whose light we dwell; and we receive his presence in the eucharist firmly resolved as our blessing will put it to grow in holiness, deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him, remembering that Lent is the time of the lengthening of the days – that is what the word actually means; a journey that yes begins with the darkeness but ends in glorious light. 

Sermon preached by the the Right Reverend Dr David Thomson, Acting Bishop of Hereford, Sunday 9 February 2025

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,

bow down before him, his glory proclaim;

with gold of obedience and incense of lowliness,

kneel and adore him the Lord is his name.

The strains of that magnificent Epiphany hymn were still echoing through my mind when I turned to the Scriptures set for today, and came face to face with Isaiah as he so dramatically encountered the holiness of God in the Temple. “Holiness”, and that resonant phrase “the beauty of holiness” leapt out at me as they did perhaps for you; and I started to wonder what they might mean for me as a believer and bishop, and for us as a congregation and cathedral nearly 3000 years later. I had my breath taken away for a moment, too, as I thought how amazing it was too that our religious heritage and records of it like this should stretch back so far – going deeper in every sense than even the excavations on most of the annual “Digging for Britain” series on the television that Jean and so enjoy.

Uzziah, who was the King then in the middle of the 8^th century BC, was also according to rabbinic tradition Isaiah’s cousin, so the prophet will have been no stranger to either royal splendour or the awesome aura of the Temple. But this time, something was different. It was as if we of this cathedral today had come in as we had done so often before, and sensed the beauty of holiness of the architecture and windows and furnishings, or that of the strains of the choir’s song, but then something quite different had broken in on us, a beauty of holiness of a different dimension, not just echoing that of God but confronting us with it, not just speaking of God but revealing his presence: a real Epiphany.

So Isaiah is brought to his knees in a train crash between God’s holiness and his lowliness, proclaiming, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips;” just as St Peter in our Gospel reading is brought to his knees, despite having gone around with Jesus so many times before, and now demands that Jesus “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”. 

What’s going on? Why, awesome though the beauty of holiness of this cathedral and its worship is, is that not normally our experience? And does that matter?

Where to start? The phrase “Holy holy holy” with its triple formula of emphasis stands out. The Hebrew word being used is kodesh which shares its root with the Kiddush meal held as the Sabbath begins and the Kaddish sung at a funeral. All three words patrol a boundary between the secular and sacred, and derive like sacred in Latin and hagiography in Greek from ancient roots that speak of setting things apart and sacrificing them, making them sacred and devoted to a god or gods.

You’ll remember how the Holy of Holies in the Temple was an immensely separated space, with access limited to only chosen priests on special days, and how the Ark of the Covenant had a deadly effect on those around it who were not properly authorised, and how Moses had to cover his face after being in the presence of the Almighty lest its radiance caused harm. We are being taken back to the earliest days of human culture in which the other, the divine was dangerous, and rituals and taboos were put in place to ensure our safety, some of which survive as superstitions to this day.

But by the time of Isaiah, that raw approach to the dangerously divine had gone through a remarkable transformation, beginning the long and fascinating journey of the development of religion that is still going on. Out of elemental spirits had grown a panoply of deities – still far from good or safe – and from them in turn the Israelite understanding of a single Godhead, increasingly seen as the one Maker and Ruler of all, and defined not just in terms of power but righteousness, justice, mercy, compassion: an earth-shaking ethical transformation.

So when God is revealed to Isaiah, the prophet’s reaction is one of suddenly realising the massive quantitative difference in scale and power between him and the Almighty, but also the massive qualitative difference in terms of holiness, an ethical and moral deficit that poses an unbridgeable separation between them, and calls out the well-intentioned but in the end inappropriate way in which Isaiah has entered the house of the Lord. He suddenly realises that he is like the wedding guest without a wedding garment, or in a lighter vein, like a nightmare when we suddenly realise we have come to church in our pyjamas – or worse. (In case anyone’s worried, you all seem to be perfectly properly dressed this morning …)

So the word “sin” creeps into the text: the sin or not-like-God-ness that defines our separation from God, that is both the cause and the result of our inability to be with God and be of use to him in his world. The sin that could be the end of the story, as in a way it was for Adam and Eve: there was no way back, at least as things stood at the time.

But things did not stay as they stood at that time. As understanding of God and his nature grew, especially during the time of the prophets, so also did the realisation that his justice was always tempered with mercy; that God’s relationship with humanity could be described as one of love, and on his part a faithfulness that transcended our unfaithfulness and could offer restoration and redemption. So out of the blue, as it seems to me, Isaiah is granted a vision of a massive liturgical innovation, that even the inventiveness of our own day would balk at: one of the hot stones from the altar on which incense was being burnt is used by a seraph, no less, to touch Isaiah’s lips, forgive his sin and make him clean. Needless to say, there is no evidence that I know of for this liturgical practice in ordinary reality: we are in the visionary world, but for Isaiah this was totally real, and set him free to be able to accept his new commission from God: “Here am I; send me.”

Only with the coming of Christ, though, would it start to become clear that redemption and restoration were not the perquisite of prophets or kings, but were an essential part of God’s purpose, intended for all, and so essential that the cost of them would be born by God himself; and in the Gospel for today we see that realisation starting to dawn on the first disciples, though they still had a lot to learn, as do we. 

That brings me back to our own situation, and what if anything the record of these exceptional occasions has to say to us now, as we in our turn come into the Temple, and seek to be with and follow Christ.

Let’s go back to that phrase “the beauty of holiness”, which seems to me to very much resonate with the cathedral here, whether I am thinking of the wonders of the Norman architecture, or the introductions of recent years. It’s a very special space to come into – and there is much that if our eyes are open should stop us in our tracks and make us wonder. The well-known stonemason Andrew Ziminksi tells us in has latest book that he was once in Sherborne Abbey being blown over by the superbly fan vaulting that is perhaps their greatest treasure, and asking some visitors whether they were moved by it. When the answer came in the negative, he rather less than politely suggested that they should see a doctor.

Those of you who are cathedral guides will, I hope, not have had any encounters as awkward as that one, but you will have faced the challenge of introducing our visitors to the building and while recounting its history also perhaps wondered how you can help them see through the windows, as it were, and glimpse the spiritual realities that underlie everything we see around us, and even perhaps sense the spiritual presence that is at the heart of what we are doing here this morning, which is, one has to say, the point of it all.  

That challenge in fact, and to state the obvious, in fact begins with us ourselves, not those we welcome. Moments of epiphany are considerably more widespread than we might imagine in our secular society. One of the privileges of a pastoral ministry is that we sometimes hear about them, often prefaced with a phrase like “I’m not religious but…”. Our job is then often to dispel the shadows of fear that come with such an experience and let the light within it shine and bring comfort and inspiration. But moments they are, and though a few people seem be to called by God to live with the curtains drawn back, as we might say, and, we sense them to be a mystic or prophet amongst us, most of our own religious experience is quite mundane by contrast.

So the challenge, I think, looks like this. First, like Isaiah, we must try not to let the ordinary lack of such experience, and our sheer familiarity with the trappings of the temple close our hearts and minds to the possibility, I think I want to say probability, that there will be moments when we do feel the awesome presence of God or his angels, and the air thickens, and silence deepens, and time itself stands still. To stand behind the altar and celebrate the presence of Christ in the eucharist is to invite such a moment when the veil is drawn back between heaven and earth; one I am privileged to feel nearly every time I celebrate and which can transform routine into rapture. And to kneel before the altar and receive Christ into your hands and heart is another, as barely noticeably to those around us we may feel with John Wesley that our heart is strangely warmed, or with Mother Julian that all shall be well, and that we and the whole world are cradled in the hands of Christ.

Secondly, we are asked to hold and treasure the privilege of such a gift, knowing it to be out of all proportion to our deserts, and to pray that God through his gift will cleanse our sin with the fire of his love and make us worthy of our calling. There is no gig economy in the Kingdom of God: a bit of work and a bit of money to be done, taken and then off we go, with no further obligations. We are re-called into membership of a family business, and – bearing the family likeness – are to carry that likeness wherever we go.

So thirdly, like Isaiah again, we are emboldened to say yes, to say “Here am I: send me”, and take up the business of the family, which is no more and no less to help it all happen again, to do what we can to help another person whose light has not yet shone out or gone dim with time glimpse again the glory of God, know that they are loved, and know that they have work to do. 

And here in this place, or wherever the Spirit takes us, that may well mean helping the beauty of its holiness speak into hearts that are full of the burden of carefulness, comforting their sorrows and answering their prayerfulness as, perhaps for the first time for a long time, they allow the beauty of truth and the tenderness of love to touch them, and see evenings of tearfulness give way to mornings of joy.

The latest edition of the Faraday Institute newsletter is now live at https://mailchi.mp/e5794f252fc0/faraday-institute-for-science-and-religion-e-newsletter-february-2023?e=bb77eb2959. It carries the advert above for Nick Spencer’s new book “Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion” which comes out on 3rd March. The blurb is very enticing:

Most things you ‘know’ about science and religion are myths or half-truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century and remain widespread today.

The true history of science and religion is a human one. It’s about the role of religion in inspiring, and strangling, science before the scientific revolution. It’s about the sincere but eccentric faith and the quiet, creeping doubts of the most brilliant scientists in history – Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein. Above all it’s about the question of what it means to be human and who gets to say – a question that is more urgent in the twenty-first century than ever before.

From eighth-century Baghdad to the frontiers of AI today, via medieval Europe, nineteenth-century India and Soviet Russia, Magisteria sheds new light on this complex historical landscape. Rejecting the thesis that science and religion are inevitably at war, Nicholas Spencer illuminates a compelling and troubled relationship that has definitively shaped human history.

I can’t get to Cambridge for the talk but the book is definitely on pre-order.

St Mary’s Tretire is another tiny gem in the Garway Hill area between Hereford and Ross, a nove 19th century rebuild of a medaeval predecessors. The far from populous parish even boasts a second church at Michaelchurch, even more remote – which was a good thing as when I took the Candlemas service there recently on a superb early spring day with an equally super congregation, the safe lock failed and the churchwarden had to shoot off at high speed to fetch the silver from the other church. I was naughtily reminded of the comment of a Dean of Ely, when the Dioceses Commission were contemplating merging that diocese with Peterborough, that a second cathedral would be very useful for spares …

St Dubricius brought the Gospel to these parts even before the Saxons, and some earlier Roman folk of the faith may have preceded even him. The light still shines.

Back in November we visited the newly open and rather wonderfully restored castle at Hay on Wye, and after coffee and Welsh cakes (of course) had to pop into the gallery to pay our respects to The King. A purchase did of course also have to be made at his bookshop. We are told that some still think the Decision Maker does a better job than those in charge of several countries today …

One of the perks of being an FSA (Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London – alongside a fine library at Burlington House that will actually post books out to us in the sticks!) is free entry to Kelmscott Manor, which the SAL look after (https://www.sal.org.uk/kelmscott-manor/). That was of course home to William Morris, and it was his influence, perpetuated by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, universally known as SPAB (https://svbb.org.uk/kelmscott/) that has meant that the 12th/13th century church of St George in the village is wonderfully preserved: a good solution for such a church in a village of 100 souls, where this side of Revival and even beyond there is never going to be much of a congregation or demand for all-singing all-dancing parish church activity.

Star of the show for me were the wall paintings of c.1280 and the one showing Cain’s murder of Abel (above) is the most dramatic. Cain’s hairstyle says it all.

The manor, church and village make a splendid destination if you’re in the Cotswolds and Oxford area: do call in.

Regular readers may remember that Jean and I went to look at the rather special church at Garway not long ago, founded by the Templars (originally with a circular nave) then taken over by the Hospitallers, before they too were dissolved, after which it continued to serve such local community as there was – and still does.

Since then I’ve been to take a service there too, and also been recruited to talk to the local Heritage Group (https://www.garwayheritagegroup.co.uk/historic-garway/early-middle-ages) later in the year. As they know their local history far better than any outsider like me, that’s quite a call. I can probably chip in with a little more about the Hospitallers because of my St John connections, but one of their number has actually written a small book on their acitivity in Herefordshire…

So I’m mining what I know about education in those times, and the manuscripts surviving from Pencoyd just down the road will be a great help. In one of those there is a list of folk owing money to the curate, and interestingly many of the names are in the Welsh style. That’s not so surprising when you remember that these villages are in the old British/Welsh territory of Erging/Archenfield, but the very late fifteenth century (which is when the MSS date from) is a sharp reminder that Welsh was still being spoken there as late as that.

We know it was the local lingo a century before in 1397 because in the Hereford Cathedral Archives the manuscript notes survive (as HCA 1779) from the Bishop’s Visitation of that date, recently published with a translation by Ian Forrest and Christopher Whittick (https://boydellandbrewer.com/9780907239840/the-visitation-of-hereford-diocese-in-1397/). You can look that up as a crib, but I’ve given you the real thing above, and as well as the usual shenanigans, the passage boxed in red tells us that “Item, the same Sir [ie the parochial chaplain Richard, not a knight] is not able to manage the cure of souls there because he doesn’t know the Welsh language and most of the parishioners don’t know the English language” – and indeed several of the parishioners cited from parishes in that area have Welsh names.

My photo taken with kind permission at Hereford Cathedral Library: not for further reproduction.

DALL·E 2 is a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language (https://openai.com/dall-e-2/). I typed in something like “Paint a picture of a choir singing carols in church on Christmas Eve in the style of David Hockney” and got this. Obviously it’s highly derivative from other artwork and information it has acquired in general from the web, but it’s still a big step beyond the application of a filter or algorithm

Then look at gpt-3, the engine that’s driving the AI chatbot revolution (https://chat.openai.com/chat). Type in something in plain langauge, like “Create a sermon for the feast of the circumcision of Christ” and you might get this (it’s different every time because it’s created on the fly):

Dear friends, Today we celebrate the feast of the circumcision of Christ, also known as the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. This is a day when we reflect on the great mystery of the Incarnation, and the tremendous love that God has for each and every one of us. On this feast day, we remember that Jesus, the Son of God, was born into this world as a human being, subject to the same trials and challenges that we all face. He was circumcised according to Jewish law, just as every male child was at the time.

But this simple act of obedience took on a much deeper meaning when it was performed on Jesus. For through his circumcision, Jesus was fully and truly made one of us, taking on our humanity in all its fullness. He became fully human, fully God, and through his death and resurrection, he reconciled us to the Father and opened the way for us to share in his life and love.

As we celebrate the circumcision of Christ, let us remember the great love that God has for us. Let us give thanks for the gift of the Incarnation and for the gift of Jesus, who willingly took on our humanity and suffered and died for us. Let us also remember that through our own baptism, we are called to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and to share in his mission of love and reconciliation. May the feast of the circumcision of Christ fill our hearts with joy and gratitude, and may it inspire us to live our lives in a way that reflects the love and self-sacrifice of Jesus. Amen.

Now that’s clever. But also, typically of the AI, it is not correct. The incarnation not the circumcision establishes Christ’s identity with us (or goodbye half of humanity – which means it also dangerous in the wrong hands). The programs are very explicit that they way they create means that they are plausible not accurate. That is SO typical of the world we are starting to inhabit.

So I decided to have a pop at it in a magazine article for St Weonard’s this February(https://www.stw.org.uk) and stick up for real humanity. We had a rather good attendance by the way!

Hello fellow churchgoers!

I hope this magazine finds you well and that you had a wonderful Christmas season. Can you believe it’s already February and Candlemas is upon us? Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?

It’s all right: don’t have a heart attack! That wasn’t really me speaking but an Artificial Intelligence program following my instructions to write a chatty magazine article for Candlemas… It’s scary how much these programs can do now. An average student essay is within their grasp for instance. But the truth is, they often don’t pass the “sniff test”. They just aren’t really human, however clever they are at feeding the internet back to us.

Which takes me back to Candlemas, because Candlemas – the Feasts of the Presentation of Jesus Christ in the Temple and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary – is our yearly celebration of a very real baby and a very real mother going to a very real Temple to perform the rituals their religion required: presenting sacrifices to God and praying for purification for Mary (as recorded in Luke chapter 2), 33 days after the equally physical circumcision and 40 days after the birth.

This is no escapist world of twinkling candles and chatty platitudes, but the real world full of joys and sorrows that we know today. And it celebrates, as you well know, not a mythical God but a God who has become fully one with us, blood and gore included. God with us in both our joys and sorrows. God with us a New Year unfolds.

Ritual sacrifices and cleansings are no longer part of our religion. Nor do we bring our stock of candles to church for blessing (made from the tallow of the slaughtered pigs …). What the Feast does offer is the opportunity to take a deep breath of God’s Spirit and turn bravely from the cosiness of Christmas to face the more challenging days of Good Friday and Easter and all they represent, taking with us not a just a candle in our hands but the light of Christ in our hearts. That’s what we’ll be doing at Tretire on Sunday 5th February at 10am if you’re free to join us.

Coming south from a visit to Durham in early autumn we revisited the Locomotion museum at Shilsdon https://www.locomotion.org.uk/home. I’m collecting information and models for a railway layout based on the very early years of railways with scenes representing the pre-loco wagonways at Throckley which one of Jean’s ancestors built, the cottage down the road where George Stephenson lived (with an imagined workshop attached), with tracks running into Newcastle where we time travel to the opening of the High Level Bridge by Queen Victoria, and on to North Shields where another of Jean’s ancestors is waving her husband off on a collier ship en route to London. A few locos and wagons from this period are now starting to be available ready-to-run but surprisingly Locomotion itself is not one of them. Someone at the museum did say though that some folk perhaps from a modelling company had been taking measurements… Meanwhile a 3D printed kit to help a really hardy modelmaker have a go themselves is on the market, but may be beyond my skills (especialy if an RTTR is just round the corner). I had great fun working out what all the bits of mechanism on the real thing were actually doing: not actually that complicated but still quite a puzzle. Fascinating.