Day Twenty Seven — Friday

Hebrews 13

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

9 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings; for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food, which have not benefited those who observe them.

10 We have an altar from which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat.

11 For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.

12 Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood.

13 Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured.

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from Jeannette's 2004 Epiphany sermon

"…Just as Jesus in his life on earth, gives us an embodied experience of how we should live in relationship to God and to those a round us, so the Tolkien stories and the story of the magi give us embodied experiences of how to live and how to act and how to be.

They also save us from the great and awesome loneliness of living with the truth that we are each a separate person, alone, and different to everyone else. They link us to each other.

They make us part of the whole world. They help us to stay sane in the midst of all the uncertainties of our present existence.

They link us to the past, and give us confidence to step out into the unknown future.

Because:We have not even to risk the adventure of the unknown future alone for the heroes of all time have gone before us.

We need the stories of our faith to keep our faith alive and relevant. We mustn't apologise for them, rather we must glory in them, tell them with zest, and seek in them true knowledge and wisdom.

We need them, and outsiders and our young people or who don't go to Sunday School anymore and therefore do not know the rudiments of our faith, they need them even more as an embodiment of Christianity and what it has to offer to the world…"