Dear Parishioner,  

       It’s that time of year. The not anything much moment. It’s not even the slightly dreary bit just after Christmas. It’s not really winter (though don’t try telling that to our heating system, which is sublimely indifferent to the outside world) but not yet really spring. The fish in the pond have stirred, but not a lot, though the Blue tits are rather manic and the cat (not that it’s the monastery’s cat, although it’s definitely the cat’s monastery) has been keeping the Robin population under control.

So, it’s all a bit like us; sometimes hot, sometimes cold but mostly neither here nor there, somewhere in between. Which may be a good thing, although we complain often enough about being lukewarm. What’s to be done? St Luke has an idea, we have been listening to it for the past few weeks although it’s not one we like, since it asks far too much of us. We have been listening to St Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, his version of the  more familiar Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. But in contrast to Matthew’s more distanced, abstract way of talking (Blessed are the poor in spirit). Luke is punchier, more direct, Blessed are you poor, you, not the, us not them. Now, we can accommodate our selfies to the idea of that being poor might, in the long run, but to be poor now, at this moment? No one wants that.

But yet, these are the words of Jesus that Luke gives us, so what can we hear, what goes on in our hearts as we listen or read by ourselves? Because we should be shaken, we should be surprised, we should be puzzled, and we should wonder what we can say once we’ve heard the end of this sermon, this Sunday, for the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart. What wealth have we got inside us to make even our small world a better place?

Happy Not-Quite-Lent

Abbot Martin