Over the years I have grown to love this time of the Christian Year when we remember the departed; those we love but see no longer and miss terribly; those we never knew but whom we respect the memory of and those called ‘saints’ by the Church. When we sing; ‘For all the saints ...’ saints for me means not just those ‘official’ saints but those hidden saints as well.

In the ‘official’ lists of saints we have those remembered for their pious lives our courage in the face of adversity and they are listed as; saints, martyrs, teachers and writers, doctors of the faith, virgins and holy women, apostles and evangelists, religious (nuns and monks), bishops and pastors, missionaries, Christian rulers and workers with the poor. You can then also divide them into Celtic saints, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and English saints, saints of the Roman Church and saints of the Orthodox Church. Quite how many ‘official’ saints there are is hard to discover and probably as many as we might know today a similar number will

have been forgotten or demoted as perhaps never existing! And, their memorial days can change as well for example St.Thomas the apostle is remembered on 3rd July in the revised calendar and on 21st December in the Scottish Prayer Book! You can take your pick! Others like St.Christopher, beloved of many motorists and travellers now officially don’t have memorial days. That’s where All Saints Day comes into play as a day when all saints remembered and forgotten are celebrated if not by specific name but in spirit.

Coming on close to All Saints Day is All Souls Day as this day I love more than All Saints because it is the day we remember and pray for, with love and thanksgiving, our own particular saints who may not be called such but to us as saints anyway. Our loved ones departed are as precious to us in death as they were in life and having a celebratory day to remember them by name I think is very important. It is important as we can feel them close to us as we call them to mind and speak their names. Reading the names on the list of the departed always moves me to tears of both sadness and joy. Joy in that

I may have known them and sadness in that I can no longer speak face to face with them, at least not in this world. For me this year is particularly poignant as I remember both my sister Jane and father David. As I read their names I am assured that they may be gone but in no way are they forgotten. Although they may now be part of that ‘great cloud of witnesses’ they are still close to me and no more so as we gather around the altar to celebrate the Eucharist.

In our Eucharistic liturgy, and remember it is in liturgy that we express the beliefs of our church we pray:

Help us, who are baptised into the fellowship of Christ’s Body to live and work to your (God’s) praise and glory; may we grow together in unity and love until at last, in your new creation, we enter into our heritage in the company of the Virgin Mary, the apostles and prophets (the saints) and OF ALL OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS LIVING AND DEPARTED.

What those final few words mean is that as we gather around the altar and pray the Eucharistic prayer we do as a truly corporate and encompassing act with those around us in church this morning and all those who have died and gone before us and who now stand and worship in the presence of God. The boundary between Heaven and Earth at this point in the Eucharist is very minimal and we living and departed can almost ‘touch each other’. I reflect on this very often as I stand at the altar as under it are the ashes of many of our departed members, who I believe are still worshipping with us but in Heaven.

‘Eucharist’ - means ‘thanksgiving’ and it is what Christ instructed us to do in his memory and in gifting us this Sacrament not only do we give thanks to God for Christ but we do it with all who have shared in the Eucharist at anytime both the departed and the living. The Eucharist is continual and everlasting, there is never a minute of the day or year when somewhere in the world the Eucharist is not being prayed. It is on that continuum that our departed loved

ones still pray with us as we celebrate together Christ’s wonderful gift and instruction.

For all the saints ... days to celebrate with joy and thanks for all the departed known and unknown to us now and always.

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the first thinkers to make the point that words are living and dynamic. He put it like this:

“The written word is not only the vehicle of thought, it is the wheels.”

The wheels of thought. Wheels enable things and people to move. Words, Coleridge was suggesting, can move us in the sense that they can inspire us to change and to grow. He shocked his contemporaries by urging them to read their Bibles as they would read any other book. They were shocked because they didn’t understand that Coleridge was a man who read everything with a deeply thoughtful and critical attentiveness.

He was not, of course, saying that the Bible is just any other book, for he was a person who had a deep reverence for Scripture. His point was that if, when we open our Bibles, we switch off our powers of imagination, our intelligence, our openness to new meanings, we limit the Bible’s ability to speak to us, to move us and to change us. To use his own metaphor, we put the brakes on the Bible’s wheels.

Turning to today’s Gospel, it sounds as the congregation in the synagogue at Nazareth that morning was being attentive. Luke tells us that when Jesus finished reading, “the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him”. Perhaps they had noticed that Jesus had edited and rearranged the words of Isaiah as he read them. He combined two separate passages in order to include those words about proclaiming the release of the captives, and he left out a phrase about “the day of vengeance of our God.”  It’s interesting to reflect on Bible Sunday that Jesus was selective in his use of Scripture.

Christianity has in common with the other two great Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Islam, that it is a religion of the book, and on Bible Sunday we celebrate the way in which God speaks to us through Holy Scripture. What sets Christianity apart from Judaism and Islam is the fact that when we use the phrase “the word of God” we may be referring to the Bible, or we may be referring to the person of Christ – the Word of God incarnate. God speaks to us not only through the fragile and ambiguous medium of words but also the loving vulnerability of a human life, the life of Jesus.

We need to hold on to those two meanings of the phrase “the word of God”, for they remind us that the Word of God is not primarily the written word, but the Living Word. If we read and interpret the Bible apart from Christ, we run the risk of looking for and finding the comforting certainties about morality and doctrine that, from time to time, we all crave. And that, as Coleridge would say, puts the brakes on the Bible.

That’s clearly the mistake that the congregation in the synagogue at Nazareth made. At first, they were impressed.

“All spoke well of him and they were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”

They were impressed even though he had said something very startling:

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”

By saying that, he was claiming to be the Messiah, God’s anointed, the one about whom Isaiah prophesied that he would “bring good news to the poor” and “proclaim the release to the captives”.

Yet as his sermon continued – and for this you need to read on in chapter 4 of Luke’s Gospel – he said challenging things which so angered them that they turned into a lynch mob intent upon killing him. The change of mood happened because Jesus went on to challenge their ideas about what the Messiah would accomplish.

That’s a powerful reminder that any of us can fall into the trap of finding what we would like to find in the Bible, rather than letting its words challenge and question us. If the Bible is the word of God, then it isn’t a receptacle for our thoughts and prejudices. It is the wheels of thought and wheels are for movement.

Coleridge believed that absolute truth is not to be found in the written word, not even in the written word of God, but only in God and in what we know of God in Jesus Christ. He urged people to read the Bible thoughtfully, critically and prayerfully – to read the word of God as lovers of Jesus the incarnate Word – and in so doing to draw closer to God.

It’s a curious fact about the Russian language that the word for “word” – slovo - is very similar to the word for “glory” - slava. And the resemblance is a family likeness, for they share the same ancestor, and they are also closely related to the verb slyshat, which means “to hear”. To read the Bible thoughtfully, open-mindedly and prayerfully is to have the humility of the hearer and it is in hearing the word in this way that we may draw closer to the glory of God and be moved and changed by our encounter with it.

What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management. (Luke 16: 2)

How many times have we listened to rumours about someone or something without checking the facts or speaking to the person themselves?  In some strange way there is something attractive about a rumour. We can elaborate on it or embellish it particularly if we do not like the person anyway or they have hurt us in some way in the past.  After all, will anyone actually believe that the rumour is true? We have only to look from time to time at the headlines of our newspapers to see which famous celebrity might be having a public dispute with another. Do we really need to know the intimate details?

The parable of the Unjust Steward is one about which no less a biblical authority than Augustine is said to have remarked “I can’t believe this story came from the lips of our Lord”. This story appears only in Luke; even Luke appears to be troubled by it.  Some scholars believe that Luke added a few clarifying verses at the end.  Luke has Jesus say that we cannot love God and money. This may be true but how does this really relate to the parable?

Here we come to what may be the theological heart of this story. The unjust steward forgives. He forgives things he has no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons; for personal gain and to compensate for past behaviour. This is the message in this strange parable; go ahead, forgive it all, forgive it now, and forgive for good and for selfish reasons, or for no reason whatsoever.

This uniquely Lukan parable is generally considered one of the most difficult passages in the Gospel. The difficulty pertains primarily to the endorsement of the actions of the “unjust” household manager by his master and seemingly even by Jesus.

Some of the key motifs that occur in the parable of “the Prodigal Son” re-appear here. The unjust manager in this parable is somewhat similar to the prodigal son. The same Greek word that is employed to describe the prodigal son’s squandering of his wealth (diaskorpizo) is used to describe the charges against the manager. The term has the connotation of careless or irresponsible spending. Both the son and the manager are responsible for (or have been charged with) actions that result in huge financial loss. The respective responses to their squandering distinguish the two parables. The father forgives the son and welcomes him back to the household joyfully, but the master dismisses the manager without verifying that the charges against him are true, or even giving him an opportunity to offer an explanation.

Given the unforgiving nature of the master’s response, the story should have been called the parable of the “Unforgiving Master”. In short, the parable of the Prodigal Son emphasises forgiveness and love for the lost. It sheds light on the nature of relationships in a context where God plays a central role. In contrast, our parable today is more about some of the defining characteristics of human relationships and how they work themselves out.

We are called to be faithful, to act with integrity, to be honest. Above all, to love one another and to forgive. May God give us the strength to do this.

Oh God, from whom all good proceeds; Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It’s surprising how much religious controversy there is on social media. Reading today’s Epistle, it sounds almost as though St Paul anticipated this, for he tells Timothy to warn the members of his congregation

…that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.

And it’s true that too much theological argument never gets above the level of wrangling over words. Yet the corner of cyberspace that you might call Anglican Twitter can be quite rewarding. At the moment, there is a passionate but well-informed debate about the rights and wrongs of the idea that theologians call Universalism, the idea that in the end everyone will, having undergone the judgement of God, accept God’s mercy and forgiveness. To put it another way, the idea that Hell will be empty. It’s a minority view and that’s hardly surprising. Forgiveness for Hitler? For Stalin? For Vladimir Putin? That would be a very tall order and it shocks our instinctive belief that bad behaviour should be punished, and that punishments should, as W.S. Gilbert famously put it, “fit the crime”.

The Mikado’s aim in that song was, of course, innocent merriment, and those familiar with the lyrics will remember that he proposed sending one category of offenders to church:

All prosy dull society sinners

Who chatter and bleat and bore

Are sent to hear sermons

From mystical Germans

Who preach from ten till four.

Many lengthy sermons have been preached on this issue, but this isn’t going to be one of them. The simple answer is that we don’t know how the judgement and the mercy of God operate, and what the relationship between them is. We shall have to wait and see. And it’s important to remember that our theological preferences probably tell us much more about ourselves than they do about the Almighty. My inclination towards universalism may be rooted in the fact that no-one has ever done anything really cruel or terrible either to me or to those whom I love. Another person’s insistence that there has to be everlasting punishment for heinous wrongdoing may well be rooted in unimaginably appalling experiences.

That said, we need to ask whether our human instinct to want punishment and retribution is necessarily a good instinct. We all have a tendency to draw boundaries, to think in terms of “us” and “them” and to project that kind of thinking into our religious beliefs.

As Scotland’s national bard memorably put it:

O ye wha are sae guid yoursel',

Sae pious and sae holy,

Ye've nought to do but mark and tell

Your neibours' fauts and folly!

You won’t find easy answers to the debate about universalism in the New Testament.           At times, Jesus speaks of a judgement in which people will be divided into sheep and goats, and he also speaks vividly of the punishment that God will mete out to the selfish – think, for example, of the parable of Dives and Lazarus. At other times, he speaks of a God who is lovingly forgiving of folly and wickedness – remember the parable of the Prodigal Son. It might be helpful also to consider Jesus’ actions as well as his words, and today’s Gospel offers an opportunity to do that. It’s a healing miracle and it suggests that the love of God is unquestioning and indiscriminate and reaches across human boundaries.

We find Jesus and his disciples in the frontier region between Galilee (which was definitely their home territory) and Samaria (which was definitely not). They are journeying in an in-between place, on the margin between two cultures and two ways of believing. In that marginal place, Jesus and his disciples encounter a group of lepers – people rendered homeless and helpless by disease, people who are themselves marginalised. The lepers even feel the need to keep their distance from Jesus when they ask for his help.

Jesus’ response to them is interesting. He asks no questions of them. He is indifferent to the lives that they led before they fell ill. He doesn’t attempt to assess whether they deserve to be healed. He is also clearly aware that not all of them are Jewish. The instruction that he gives them is “Go and show yourselves to the priests” – plural – in other words the Samaritan leper is being encouraged to seek out a Samaritan priest. So boundaries have been crossed – Jesus reaching out to heal marginalized people, regardless of their behaviour, their race or indeed their religious beliefs. The Samaritan praises God and gives thanks for the healing he has experienced. And that is a double healing – for he has not only been cured of leprosy, but he – the foreigner, the religious outsider - has been accepted, praised and affirmed by Jesus.

So our Gospel is a reminder that the frontiers, borders and boundaries that we humans are so good at creating mean nothing to God. We are also reminded that we are called to be thankful together. The togetherness part of that is hugely important, because we aren’t in church to secure our individual salvation. We are here to commit to a process in which God will bring the whole of creation to perfection. The whole of creation – and that might just turn out to include people whom we regard as appalling, unforgiveable villains.

We are called to be thankful together, and today’s Gospel is a useful reminder of that, for when we read that the leper thanked Jesus, the Greek word that Luke uses is Euchariston – and the early Christians who listened to the Gospel in Greek would have made that connection to the Eucharist when they heard this passage. Out of our Eucharist, out of our thankfulness that we are included in God’s love, there should arise an awareness that, at least potentially, everyone else is too. How that works in individual cases remains a mystery and judgement is not our job.

Robert Burns put that well in the final stanza of Address to the Unco Guid

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone

Decidedly can try us;

He knows each chord, its various tone,

Each spring, its various bias:

Then at the balance let's be mute,

We never can adjust it;

What's done we partly may compute,

But know not what's resisted.

All good gifts around us
are sent from heaven above; then thank the Lord,
O thank the Lord for all his love.

Familiar words, and words that we will sing this morning as we metaphorically; ‘Plough the fields and scatter’.

When was the last time you saw a field being ploughed? For some of us I suspect it was a while ago and the closest we are likely to get to scattering seed are the seeds we sow in the hope they will germinate and find a home in our gardens.

Decades ago as a society we lived closer to the land. We might have known farmers and we would have certainly been more in tune with the cycle of the seasons in relation to what we could eat. As a teenager I used to look forward to the late Spring arrival of asparagus and trying to make the most of it as I knew its

presence in the shops would be brief. Today, I can buy asparagus at anytime of the year, flown in from over half way around the world and lacking in taste. Just because we can do something does not mean that we should do it. Think of the carbon footprint that asparagus has before it reaches our mouths. Is that taste worth the price our planet has to pay?

I follow on ‘instagram’ a friend of a friend of a friend who is an organic farmer in Herefordshire. It is fascinating to see his farm over the 12 months of the year and how this year he has struggled with flooding, too cold a spring for germination and the recent over hot weather. As a result his Winter planting of wheat has done well but the Spring planting was as he said; ‘Not worth harvesting!’.

The changes in our climate are playing havoc with our harvests, not only at home but around the world. A recent book published suggests that we have 60 harvests left if we don’t address the climate crisis NOW. But, also suggests that there is great hope for the future if we do change our ways. (Perhaps some of the

obscene profits made by our energy companies at our cost, could be ploughed into new eco- friendly alternatives to carbon based fuels, hopefully bringing energy costs down and substation ally reducing our carbon foot print every time we cook a meal of turn a light on.)

I find it sobering to think that, if we do nothing or not enough then within my life-time there will be very few opportunities to give thanks to God for the Harvest left.

Giving thanks or rather NOT giving thanks is, I feel, part of the problem. The food we eat and the fuel we use, we take for granted. What we are doing this morning might appear bizarre to many people outside these walls. Giving thanks to God for our food? Don’t be daft? God doesn’t exist and even if God does then its not God who gives us the harvest its ourselves who do so. And, there is the problem! We are all too self-obsessed as a society and think ourselves to be ‘God’ rather than be thankful to God.

The Harvest should not be taken for granted, even atheist farmers would agree with that

statement and I believe if we were more truly thankful to God or Nature or simply planet Earth itself we might as the human race respect the planet more and be truly thankful that we are fed and watered as we are.

Those of us here today, obviously value the Harvest and are thankful to God for the gift of food that he provides for us. We are no doubt also grateful to those who farm the land and those who produce the eventual products we consume. We have so many and so much to be thankful for at Harvest but let us never forget God from whom it all comes:

“9 And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. 10God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11Then God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.”  Genesis 1:9-13

God it is who created the Earth and all that we enjoy upon in and in it. If nothing else the Book of Genesis makes it plain that all we have is finely balanced in the being of God and our rôle as God’s chosen ones is to care for the Earth and to be good stewards of its resources. Not to take and take and take without any regard to others or the future. We need to be more thankful as a society and as the human race. Thankful for what we have and what we can share, even if some of us are not thankful to the God we believe creates it all.

Thankfulness engenders respect for those who give things to us and respect engenders care and so on. In this Harvest season try to take time to truly give thanks to God for the Harvest and to encourage others to do so as well. If nothing else say the grace at your dinner table today and pause to allow those sitting with you a cane to be thankful as well. If

not today then try this coming month to say the grace when you do eat with others - you never know what effect it might have on them and if nothing else it might make them thankful for what they are about to receive and acknowledge the debt we owe to those who ensure we are fed.