Becoming Rich Toward God: Reflections for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost

 

Becoming Rich Toward God

Reflections for the 8^th Sunday after Pentecost

 

RCL Proper 18C [i]

3 August 2025

 

Saint Michael’s Multicultural Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

 

Introduction

            As a child I was fed with many stories, including those from a collection of fables known as ‘Aesop’s Fables’.  Aesop was a Greek storyteller who lived more than five hundred years before the birth of Jesus.  Perhaps because Aesop was held as a slave by another person, most of his stories supported the status quothat valued knowing your place in society and staying within it.

 

            One of his fables is the fable of the grasshopper and the ant.  During a wonderful warm and productive summer, the grasshopper and its friends are busy eating, drinking and making merry, while the ant and its friends are collecting food for the long winter they know is coming.  When that winter comes, the grasshopper comes begging for food, but the ant turns the grasshopper away with harsh words and no food.  The moral of the story:  Work hard.  Save all you can.  No one will take care of you if you don’t.  Compassion and care for others is not as important as taking care of yourself and your immediate community and family.  Bad planning on your part does not create an emergency or an obligation on my part.

 

            It’s not too difficult to hear echoes of Aesop’s story in today’s reading from the Gospel according to Luke.  The rich farmer is indeed an ‘ant’ who has had a good year and is now storing up all that his land has produced.  He even quotes a verse from the prophet Isaiah, when the farmer talks about resting, eating, drinking and being merry, but forgets that the verse ends with ‘for tomorrow we die’. [ii]  And the farmer of Jesus’ parable does indeed die despite having barns that are full to overflowing.

 

            Both the ant of Aesop’s fable and the farmer of Jesus’ parable can be praised for their hard work and their careful planning for the future.  But what they both lack is compassion and a recognition of their obligations to those who have not planned well or who have not benefitted from a successful harvest.  Neither the ant nor the farmer have been ‘rich toward God’ as the evangelist Luke exhorts us to be.

 

            Archbishop John is fond of saying that the church is not dying but changing.  It is no secret that fewer people choose to commit themselves to being part of a community of faith.  Every congregation in this Diocese faces difficult decisions about how we use the treasure of our lands and our buildings in such a time as this.  We can be grateful that the generations of Christians who have come before us in this place have bequeathed to us the valuable resource of this building and this property.  How we tend this gift is perhaps the most important question facing us.

 

We are a people with a mission.

            God is at work in the world and we, as baptized disciples of Jesus, are co-workers with God in this urgent work of re-creation, reconciliation and renewal.  This Parish and the many others throughout the Diocese who are discerning how best to be faithful stewards of their resources begin by asking important questions:

 

·      What is the most urgent work God is doing in the world today?

·      What is our role, both as individuals and as a community, in that urgent work?

·      What resources do we bring to this work?

·      What resourced do we need for this work?

·      Who are our partners in this urgent work? [iii]

 

            We do not ask these questions in an abstract or theoretical way.  You may know the saying, ‘Think globally, then act locally.’  The great American theologian and writer, Frederick Buechner, put it this way:  “(When) you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet.  Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.” [iv]  

 

            You have been called by God to serve this neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant where many roads come together, and many people dwell.  How does this Parish take care of this neighbourhood and make God’s re-creating, reconciling and renewing love present?

 

We need to be clear-headed.

            There is nothing wrong about and much to say about dreaming.  As Bishop Gordon Light writes in his hymn ‘Draw the Circle Wide’:  “Let the dreams we dream be larger, than we’ve ever dreamed before; let the dream of Christ be in us, open every door.” [v]  Dreams show us possibilities that excite us and give us hope.

 

            But we also need to be clear-headed about our ability to make our dreams come true.  A few chapters later from today’s parable, Jesus will remind those who want to be his disciples that they need to make sure that they can both lay the foundation and finish the work:  “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?” [vi]

 

            Because we love this community and desire its well-being, we would not be faithful to our role in God’s mission if we cannot finish the work we have begun.

 

We are in this for the long-haul.

            I think that one of the strengths of the Anglican way of discipleship is that we have a long-term vision of what we believe God is doing and how we participate in that work.  Sharing God’s dream is important; finishing what we start is important; but perhaps even more important, committing to the on-going, sometimes difficult and unexciting work that follows the realization of our plans.  

 

            The Fifth Mark of Mission of the Anglican Communion is the commitment “to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth”. [vii]  Remember what I mentioned earlier – ‘Think globally, then act locally.’  We are here to sustain the integrity of this local embodiment of creation we call Mount Pleasant.  That is not a one-year commitment or a five-year commitment.  That is a commitment that extends beyond the life-times of many of us who are here this morning.

 

Conclusion

            By the time that my wife Paula and I were both moving towards retirement, we were uncertain what the future held for us.  But our uncertainty was relieved by the careful stewardship Paula’s father had exercised of her family’s resources.  With the guidance of some wise advisors, Paula and I have been able to map out the coming years with hopefulness for a new and creative time in our lives and in gratitude for the care that Paula’s father took for so many years.  Even more importantly, we’ve been able to see how we might benefit not only our children but the wider community when our time on this earth comes to an end.

 

            Friends, we are not like the ant with no compassion for the grasshopper.  We are not like the farmer who thinks only of himself.  We have another world in view.  So, let us be a people who give thanks daily for the stewardship of the resources that help us dream larger dreams than we’ve ever had before.  Let us be a people who plan well to make those dreams become reality.  Let us be a people who are committed to a care for this neighbourhood and its people that reaches beyond our own times and into the future.

 

            May it be so.  

 

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[i] Hosea 11.1-11; Psalm 107.1-9, 43 (BAS); Colossians 3.1-11; Luke 12.13-21.

 

[ii] Isaiah 22.13b (NRSVue).

 

[iii] Adapted from Kathleen Henderson Staudt, “Annunciations in Daily Life”, Sewanee Theological Review (Easter 2001).

 

[iv] https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2019/4/1/where-your-feet-take-you accessed on 1 August 2025.

 

[v] Hymn #418 in Common Praise (1998).

 

[vi] Luke 14.28 (NRSVue).

 

[vii] https://www.anglican.ca/ask/faq/marks-of-mission accessed on 1 August 2025.

 

'Lord, Teach Us to Pray': Reflections for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost

 

RCL Proper 17C [i]

27 July 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

Introduction

            About the year 150, a Christian scribe in Alexandria found himself in possession of two older Christian documents.  One was a catechism or a collection of teachings about how a person should live their life.  This collection of teachings probably began its life as a Jewish document that a later Christian edited to suit a Christian audience.  The second part was longer and was a guidebook to how the Christian community should conduct its communal affairs:  baptism, eucharist, church organization and prayer.  This second part likely began its life in the rural areas of western Syria.  Our Christian friend in Alexandria put the two documents together and called it, “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles”. [ii]

            

            In the second part the original writer responds to a question from their community:  “How and how often shall we pray?’  The writer’s answer is wonderfully simple:  Pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day – when you rise, when you are in the middle of your working day, when you bring the day to an end. [iii]  Pray as our Lord taught us in the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke.

 

“Father, . . . “ [iv]

            With this one word the evangelist Luke reminds us that prayer is a conversation that is based on our relationship with a living and personal God – not a set of rules, not an abstract philosophy – but a relationship with the One who created all that is, seen and unseen, the One who knows the hairs on our heads and the needs of our life.

 

            Now, it is no secret that calling God ‘Father’ is not easy for everyone.  Because this is about a relationship with God, how we talk about God is important.  For some, ‘Father’ conjures up memories of safety, nurture and compassion.  For others, ‘Father’ brings up past traumas, disappointments and pain.  For more than thirty years I have been involved in our church’s efforts to find language that is faithful and fair, life-giving and hope-creating, so that we can all join in prayer and thanksgiving.  This is a task that will never cease.

 

            But I will say this.  As important as it is to find words that help us talk to the One who made us, who redeems us, who sanctifies and sustains us, there is something that is even more important.  What is more important is that we do talk to God.  If we are uncertain about what words to use, then pray with the words we have.  God, who knows the secrets of our hearts, will sort things out.

 

“ . . . may your name be revered as holy . . . “ [v]

            One of the words used frequently these days is ‘whatever’.  When my children were younger and I was trying to make a point about something, one or other of them would dismiss the point I was trying to make by saying, ‘whatever’.  I quickly and firmly banished that word from their conversations with me.  ‘Whatever’ means ‘I don’t care’ or ‘Your words don’t matter’ or ‘It’s all irrelevant’ or something to this effect.

 

            Just as words matter, names matter as well.  A name brings a host of associations that we make when we hear it.  Speak the name of a national or provincial politician and watch the reactions around us.  Speak the name of a loved one who has died, whether recently or in the past, and we can quickly be overwhelmed with memories of what they looked like, what they loved to do, what they said to us at important moments in our lives.

 

            When we speak about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses and Jesus, the God of Peter and Paul, we are releasing into this moment all the stories, all the memories, all the hopes that are bound up in this name.  To speak of God as ‘creator’ is to remember that all that exists is holy and loved by the One who created it.  To speak of God as ‘saviour’ is to remember that we have ‘erred and strayed’ from the paths of life and that the One who saves us brings us back on track.  To speak of God as ‘Spirit’ is to remember that in every moment of every day the One who breathed life into Adam is breathing life and new possibilities into the world.

 

“Give us each day our daily bread.” [vi]

            We live in a world filled with anxiety.  For many people in this world, it is an anxiety about food and shelter and safety from violence, oppression and conflict.  For those of us who live in place of relative safety and prosperity, we worry about whether we will have adequate retirement income, about whether the traditions and communities we have loved for so long have a future, about whether our children and grandchildren will enjoy good lives.

 

            God knows the depth of our anxiety as well as how some of it is generated by the choices we make or do not make.  To pray for ‘our daily bread’ is a prayer that we grow in trust and in confidence.  It is only when we have trust in God and confidence in the gifts God has given us that we are able to transform anxiety into hope and hope into action.

 

“And forgive us our sins, as we forgive everyone indebted to us.” [vii]

            When I look at the world around us, I see people and societies that are unable to forgive.  It is as if the only treasure some people and some societies hold is the wrongs that have been done to them.  By holding on to these ancient wrongs, they are actually preventing genuine healing and reconciliation.  They are caught in a web spun by the spider of resentment and revenge.  In that web they shall soon be consumed from within.

 

            Forgiveness is not forgetting.  Forgiveness is choosing to create a future that is not defined only by our past.  Forgiveness means acknowledging both our sins and the sins of others, but then taking the risk to build new relationships that are not simply repeating old patterns.  Forgiveness means that we will not allow ourselves to be held hostage by what has gone on before.

 

“And do not bring us to the time to trial.” [viii]

            It is not always easy to believe in a living God who is actively at work in the world to bring about a new heaven and a new earth.  I do not doubt for a moment that almost every Christian, if not every Christian, has had a moment of trial, a moment of doubt, perhaps even a moment of despair.  But those moments come, and we must face them with hope and in the confidence that God is at work in us, through us and even despite us.

 

Conclusion

            Almost fifty years ago, my teacher, Bishop Michael Ramsey, spent a whole day pondering two words:  “Our Father”.  He knew what the writer of “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” knew:  In these few words we find all we need to nurture our relationship with the Creator, with the Christ, with the Spirit.  So pray them three times a day.  Pray them slowly, phrase by phrase.  In the silence after each phrase let our hearts, our minds, our souls reach out to talk with the One to whom we are praying.  And we will find the faith, the hope and the love we all seek.

 

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[i] Hosea 1.2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2.6-15; Luke 11.1-13.

 

[ii] “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, Commonly Called the Didache”, edited and translated by Cyril C. Richardson in Early Christian Fathers, The Library of Christian Classics, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, PA:  The Westminster Press, 1953), 161-179.

 

[iii] Didache 8.2-3.

 

[iv] Luke 11.2b (NRSVue).

 

[v] Luke 11.2c (NRSVue).

 

[vi] Luke 11.3 (NRSVue).

 

[vii] Luke 11.4a (NRSVue).

 

[viii] Luke 11.4b (NRSVue).

 

Measuring Up in the Mean Time: Reflections for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost

 

 

RCL Proper 15C [i]

13 July 2025

 

Saint Anselm’s Anglican Church

University Endowment Lands

 

         Throughout my career as a pastor, priest and teacher, I have always been interested in what words have meant in the past and what they mean in the present.  Just recently I finished reading a short book re-visiting the question of whether Christians in the first three hundred years of our history owned or modified or built buildings for worship and prayer. [ii]  One of the ways the author re-visited the evidence was by tracing how the word ekklēsia or ‘the assembly’ changed from referring to the Christian people gathered for worship to meaning the building in which Christians worshipped.  I remember well teaching David, our oldest, who first worshipped in this building, to say ‘We are going to where the church worships’ rather than ‘we’re going to church.’

 

            Over the past few years I’ve been pondering the different ways we can interpret the word ‘meantime’.  Most if not all of us hear this word and think, ‘the time in between’ or ‘a time of waiting’.  But lately I’ve been hearing this word differently.  I’ve taken to putting an intentional pause between the first and second syllables – ‘in the mean-time’.

 

            I don’t think that it’s very difficult to explain why I’ve been doing this lately.  All any of us need to do is to read whatever news source we tend to read, and what will jump out at us is how ‘mean’ our times seem to be.  Whether we understand ourselves to be on the left or on the right or caught in the middle of contemporary partisanship and social issues, it’s very hard to find people speaking well of those with whom they disagree.  We seem very skilled these days at finding scapegoats for all our ills – political leaders, scientists, radicals of one form or another, immigrants, refugees – the list goes on and on.  So it’s quite apt to hear this familiar parable from the Gospel according to Luke during this ‘mean-time’.

 

            For example, we can quickly criticize the expert in the law.  He should have stopped asking questions after Jesus praised him for knowing the right answer to his own question:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbour as yourself.” [iii]  Then he asks that fateful question:  “And who is my neighbour?’ [iv]  Yet, how often do we want to know the precise meaning of a commitment we’re making?  Perhaps the legal expert would have fared better if he’d asked, ‘How shall I love my neighbour?’.

 

We can also quickly condemn the priest and the Levite.  That’s what Luke, a non-Jewish believer in Jesus, wants us to do.  But it becomes a little more difficult to be critical when we realize that they’re doing what all of us do from time to time – they don’t want to get involved.  Robbers along the Jerusalem to Jericho road often had one of their members play ‘possum’ at the side of the road to lure travellers into an ambush.  Why should either man take the risk? Both men have religious duties to perform that require them to avoid any contact with blood or with the dead.  If they stop to take care of this man, will they be abandoning their traditional obligations to God?

 

            Then comes the Samaritan.  It is very hard for contemporary Christians to understand the visceral dislike, even hatred, that existed between Samaritans and Judeans.  Both are descendants of the tribes that God brought into the land of promise.  Both suffered at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians and the destruction of their holy sanctuaries at Bethel and Jerusalem.  Both accused the other of failing to be faithful to the law that God gave them through Moses at Mount Sinai.  To Judeans the Samaritans were non-Jews pretending to be Jews.  To the Samaritans the Judeans were Roman collaborators willing to bend the knee to non-Jewish rulers.  Yet Jesus dares to tell a predominantly Judean audience a story with a Samaritan hero.

 

            Knowing something about the context in which this parable was originally told can help us understand what it may be saying to us – non-Jewish followers of Jesus who live at a time when the ekklēsia, the people called to follow Jesus, are an institution more than a movement, a cultural phenomenon more than a revolutionary challenge to the status quo.  We are living in the ‘mean-time’.

 

            When we are living in the ‘mean-time’, do we dare to take risks?  When we are living in the ‘mean-time’, do we dare to lay aside our long-standing traditions to respond to an unexpected need?  When we are living the ‘mean-time’, do we dare stop demonizing the ‘other’, whomever the ‘other’ might be, and see only a neighbour?  These are the questions that confront us and trouble us, but that cannot be ignored.

 

            We cannot ignore them because God expects us to measure up to the challenges of our times and places.  That’s what’s behind the enigmatic reading from the prophet Amos this morning.  We use plumb lines to make a straight, vertical line, essential information if you want to make sure your walls and foundations are properly built.  God is telling the people of the northern kingdom of Israel that they need to measure up; otherwise they are doomed to destruction at the hands of the Assyrians.  We have to be ready and willing for transformation.

 

            During my second year in theological college, I went through a very ‘mean-time’.  Most of my friends and all of the faculty either did not see the crisis or crossed to the other side of the road.  The only two people who didn’t were two women who were studying at the college.  My theological college was not a friendly-place for women; Barbara and Anne faced subtle discrimination within the college and not so subtle hostility from some of the alumni.  They both knew that I had more than ambivalent feelings about the ordination of women.  But they stopped.  They bound up my wounds.  They stayed with me, both in times of silence and in times of conversation.  My ‘mean-time’ was turned into a season of grace in which the loving compassion of these two ‘Samaritans’ transformed me and set me on a path that I could not have imagined.

 

            This is a ‘mean-time’ for Christians such as we who are committed to doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God.  In such a time as this we find ourselves playing many roles – a legal expert seeking precision, a priest or a Levite focused on our traditional roles and duties, a Samaritan travelling on the road – sometimes we are even the traveller on the side of the road, fallen among thieves and ruffians, wounded by the times in which we live and dependent upon the care of others to recover.

 

            But the good news is this – we are not imprisoned by this ‘mean-time’.  As the writer to the Christians in Colossae says, “God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” [v]  We have hope in a world that is coming into being through us, in us and even despite us, a world for which we wait with endurance and patience and even joy. [vi]  We live in both the ‘mean-time’ and in the ‘meantime’, the ‘meantime’ between the world as it is and the world as God is loving into existence.

 

Glory to God,

whose power, working in us,

can do infinitely more

than we can ask or imagine.

Glory to God from generation to generation,

in the Church and in Christ Jesus,

for ever and ever.  Amen. [vii]

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[i] Amos 7.7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1.1-14; Luke 10.25-37.

 

[ii] Alexander Turpin, Did the Early Christians Build Churches?  Revisiting the Evidence, Joint Liturgical Studies 100 (Norwich, England:  Hymns Ancient and Modern, 2025).

 

[iii] Luke 10.27 (NRSVue).

 

[iv] Luke 10.28b (NRSVue).

 

[v] Colossians 1.13-14 (NRSVue).

 

[vi] Colossians 1.5, 11 (NRSVue).

 

[vii] The Book of Alternative Services (1985), p. 214.

 

Perfection is the Enemy of the Good: Reflections on the Feast of Peter and Paul

 

Saint Peter and Paul (BAS) [i]

29 June 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            In the late autumn of 1981 I sat in the basement of my parents’ home in Colorado Springs sending out invitations to my ordination to the priesthood scheduled for the 21^st of December 1981.  I had spent more money than I could really afford on having the invitations printed by a local printer. After I had sealed and addressed about fifty out of two hundred invitations, I realized that I had printed the date and the place of the ordination but not the time.

 

            It was too late to have new invitations printed and I did not the money to pay for re-printing.  So I pulled out my trusty fountain pen and wrote ‘7.00 p.m.’ in black ink on two hundred and fifty invitations.  About ten days after I had mailed them, I received a telephone call from a classmate of mine from theological college.  ‘Congratulations!’ he said, ‘You’ve learned some humility!’

 

            In theological college I was known to be a bit of a perfectionist.  As one of the school’s six paid sacristans, it had been my job to care for the vestments and the chapel, to prepare for daily services, to train the students for their liturgical duties and to plan major festivals.  Some ten years after I graduated, I visited my college.  When I was introduced to some of the current students, one of them said, ‘Oh, you’re Richard Leggett, the last of hard-nosed sacristans!’

 

            My hand-written correction to the invitation to my ordination was a gift to my friends and colleagues.  They were pleased to see that I could be public about an omission and that I had been wise enough to take a simple way of remedying that omission.  I did not hide my failure to proof-read before printing.  And it was okay!

 

            There is a saying in English:  Perfection is the enemy of the good.  Aidan Kavanagh, a Roman Catholic scholar and teacher of worship, puts it this way:  The fear of making a mistake is the biggest mistake of all.  Some of us, perhaps every one of us from time to time, can be paralysed by our fear of making a mistake.  There is no denying that our mistakes can have serious consequences for ourselves and for others.  Throughout our lives we have to think before we act.  But we can never know everything.  We can never guarantee that what we do will be successful or that there are no risks or that we may discover we’ve made a mistake.  But not acting can be more costly than acting.

 

            One of the mysteries of the story of the Christian movement is this:  God uses imperfect human beings as the messengers and agents of the good news that in Christ Jesus we are shown how to be fully alive and fully ourselves as creatures made in God’s image and called to live into God’s likeness.

 

            Today we celebrate the feast of Peter and Paul.  It is because of these two men and all the other women and men who were among the first apostles and disciples of Jesus that we owe our presence here today.  But none of them were perfect.  All of them made mistakes.  But their imperfections did not prevent them from helping to create a movement and communities that have the power to transform ourselves, our friends, families and neighbours, and even the world itself.

 

            Let’s look at Peter for a moment.  How many times in the Gospels do we see Peter getting things wrong?  How many times does he ask the wrong question only to be corrected by Jesus?  Who in all four Gospels is described as abandoning Jesus on that long Thursday night that stretched into Friday morning?  Who hides himself away as Jesus is hanging on the cross?

 

            And yet in today’s reading from the Gospel according to John, it is Peter to whom Jesus comes and drags him away from finding safety in his boat and his nets.  It is Peter to whom Jesus, knowing all Peter’s faults and failures, confides the care of the community of disciples.  It is Peter who risks social exclusion and accusations of consorting with the enemy who goes to Caesarea Philippi to preach to the household of Cornelius, a non-Jewish officer in the Roman army of occupation.  It is Peter who convinces the Jewish-Christian leadership in Jerusalem that God was reaching out to the non-Jews as well as Jews.  And we are here.

 

            Then there’s our old friend Paul.  Who is the man who guards the outer garments of those who stone Stephen, the first Christian martyr, to death?  Who travels to Antioch in order to arrest and illegally extradite the followers of Jesus for trial and possible execution in Jerusalem?

 

            And yet it is Paul to whom Jesus appears and leads him on a new and unimagined path that will end in Rome and martyrdom.  It is Paul who will challenge the prejudices of Jewish Christians towards Gentile Christians and the prejudices of Gentile Christians towards Jewish Christians throughout all of his correspondence with the first Christian communities.  It is Paul who will welcome the many Gentile women who find freedom in following Jesus and who become the benefactors of the Christian communities in the Roman Empire.

 

            In Japan there is a tradition known as kintsugi or ‘golden repair’.  Broken pottery is repaired by mending the areas material using gold, silver or platinum.  Kintsugi treats ‘breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise’. [ii]  From the very beginning of the human race, from the very beginning of the revelation of God to Moses, from the very first days of the Christian movement, God has treated our failures, our betrayals, our incompetence, our misunderstandings of the good news, our mistakes as part of our history and not as something to disguise.  

 

The Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen in his song, ‘Anthem’, writes:  ‘Ring the bells that still can ring.  Forget your perfect offering.  There is a crack, a crack in everything.  That’s how the light gets in.’ [iii]  Friends, we will not be perfect, but we can be good.  We all have a few cracks, but that’s how the light of God’s grace has come into us and how the light shines out from us into our world.

 

Will the Search Committee choose the ‘perfect’ Rector?  Probably not, but they’ll choose a good one.  Will the Property Development Committee identify a ‘perfect’ re-development plan?  Probably not, but they’ll choose a good one.  And God will repair any cracks with silver, gold and platinum, so that the world will see and know that God raises up what has fallen, makes new what has grown old and is at work bringing about the world as God imagines and loves it to be. 

 

 

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[i] Ezekiel 34.11-16; Psalm 87; 2 Timothy 4.1-8; John 21.15-19.

 

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi accessed on 28 June 2025.

 

[iii] https://genius.com/Leonard-cohen-anthem-lyrics accessed on 28 June 2025.