It's you, dear

This is substantially the same as the sermon I preached three years ago!  And yet again, the recording didn't work - I think I need a new app.   However, it is not the end of the world, as something set me off coughing and I couldn't really stop, so perhaps just as well....


I want to talk about our Gospel reading in a minute,
but first of all, we need to look at the Old Testament reading,
the story of David and Bathsheba.
This is, in fact, the second week of this story –
you may or may not have heard the first part last week,
but just in case you didn't, I'll recapitulate.

David is now King of Israel and Judah, a united kingdom.
He has built a very splendid palace in Jerusalem,
and is one of the richest and most powerful men in the region.
And, like many rich and powerful men, he has a high sex drive, and, of course, many women find riches and power very aphrodisiac.

So David can more-or-less have any woman he wants,
and, quite probably, the reverse is also true –
any woman who wants the King can have him!
And there is Bathsheba, Uriah's wife,
who allows herself to be seen while having her ritual bath –
and responds to the King's summons.

Unfortunately, what neither Bathsheba nor David had any way of knowing, given the state of medical knowledge back then,
was that when you have just finished your monthly purification rituals is when you are likely to be at your most fertile.
And so it comes about that Bathsheba finds herself pregnant,
and there's no way it can be anybody other than David's.

And they panic.
David could arguably have got away with it,
but he wasn't going to abandon Bathsheba like that, and, it's probable that it was she who panicked.
Uriah, from what we read about him, strikes me as very much the kind of person who always does the right thing,
no matter what the personal cost to himself,
and in this case, the right thing to have done was to have had Bathsheba,
who had obviously committed adultery,
stoned to death.
Yes, killed.
Even if he hadn't wanted to do that.
He was far too prim and proper to sleep with his wife while on active service, no matter how hard David tried to make him do that –
if he had, he would have accepted the coming child as his own, and their problems would have been solved.
But he refused, because his country was at war and he was a soldier on active service,
and wouldn't even go and see Bathsheba, even when David got him drunk, but just slept on his blanket in the guard room.

So David feels he has no option but to get rid of Uriah,
which he does by causing him to be sent into the front line of battle,
and get killed.
And as soon as it is decently possible, he marries Bathsheba.

End of story?
No, not quite.
You see, it might seem to have all been tidied up and nobody any the wiser, but they had forgotten God.
And God was not one bit pleased with what David had done.

So he sends Nathan the Prophet –
brave man, Nathan, wasn't he? –
to say to David that there is a man who only had one sheep, just one, and a rich bully had taken that sheep away from him.
So David said, well, who is this bully, I'll deal with him –
he can't get away with that sort of thing in my kingdom, so he can't!
And Nathan looks him in the eye and says, “It's you, dear!”

And, then David sees exactly what he has done.
The lust, the adultery, the deception, the murder.
He looks at himself and does not like what he sees, not one tiny little bit.
He doesn't know what God must think of him,
but he knows what he thinks of himself –
and he knows, too, that he needs to repent.
Which he does, and some of the words he is said to have used have come down to us:
Have mercy on me, O God, in your great goodness;
   according to the abundance of your compassion
      blot out my offences.
  Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness
   and cleanse me from my sin.
  For I acknowledge my faults
   and my sin is ever before me.
 Behold, you desire truth deep within me
   and shall make me understand wisdom
      in the depths of my heart.

Turn your face from my sins
   and blot out all my misdeeds.
  Make me a clean heart, O God,
   and renew a right spirit within me.
  Cast me not away from your presence
   and take not your holy spirit from me.
  Give me again the joy of your salvation
   and sustain me with your gracious spirit;

And so on.
There's a bit more, but I've not quoted it all –
it's Psalm 51, if you want to have a read of it.

Anyway, the point is, his repentance is genuine, and he will be reinstated.
The child will not live, though.
And there is that lovely scene where the child is born,
and David is told that it cannot live –
it hasn't “come to stay”, as they used to say –
and he prostrates himself before the Lord in prayer.
And the baby duly dies,
and the servants are at a loss to know how to tell him,
thinking that if he's in that sort of mood, he might well shoot the messenger, but when they have stood outside the door for ten minutes going “You tell him,”
“No, you tell him!” he realises what's going on –
and when he finds out that the baby has died,
he astonishes them all by going and washing his face and going to comfort Bathsheba,
and when asked, he points out that while the baby was still alive, there was hope that God might yet be persuaded to let it live,
but now that it's dead, there's no hope;
and yes of course he minds,
but it won't help anybody to lie on the floor rolling about in grief.

And as we know, just to round off the story, Bathsheba and David do eventually have another child, who becomes King Solomon, arguably the greatest King of the combined kingdoms.

David's main fault, I think, that started the whole sorry saga, was greed.
He was greedy for life, and for women, and for pleasure.
He wanted to have it all, and had to learn the hard way that it wasn't all his.

Jesus says much the same to the followers in the Gospel reading, doesn't he?
It takes place almost immediately after Jesus has fed five thousand or more people with a small boy’s packed lunch.

He then sends the disciples on ahead of him, so he can spend some time in prayer and being quiet for a bit –
in some of the gospels, we’re told that he’s just heard about his cousin John’s execution and needs a bit of space to grieve.
Anyway, he then walks across the lake to join the disciples,
and next day the crowd finds him on the other side of the lake than they’d expected.

But Jesus reckons they’re not following him because of his teachings,
but because they want another free lunch.
“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs,
but because you ate your fill of the loaves."

And this is not what he plans for them.
“Do not work for the food that perishes,
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.”

Jesus points out that in the wilderness, it wasn’t Moses who provided manna for the children of Israel to eat, but God.
And it is God who gives the true Bread from Heaven.
“I,” said Jesus, “am the Bread of Life”.

You know what I’m reminded of here?
The story of woman at the well, a little earlier on in John’s Gospel.
She asks Jesus to work the pump for her, which he duly does, but he tells her that he is the Living Water, and any who drink of that water will never be thirsty again.
Same sort of principle.

Many –
not all, but many –
of those who followed Jesus did so because they wanted the spectacular.
They wanted a free lunch from a small boy's packed lunch.
They wanted to see the healings, the deliverances, the people collapsing on the floor as evil spirits left them, and so on.
They weren't interested in the teachings,
in the way your faith has to manifest itself in actions or it isn't really part of you,
in loving their neighbour, in feeding the hungry....
they were wanting to believe in Jesus without having to become Jesus' person.
I don't want to pre-empt what you'll doubtless hear about next week,
but many of them walked away when the teachings got too hard for them to cope with.

And what about us?
What about you and me?
Are we just interested in the next thrill,
the next sensation,
the next fashion?
Are we willing to be Jesus' disciples,
and pay the price that the Bread of Life requires –
all of us.
Even the dreadful bits, even the bits that we'd rather keep hidden.
David had to surrender all of himself before he could receive God's forgiveness.
Can we do that?
It's very far from easy,
and I don't pretend to be able to, at least, not all the time.
It has to be a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment surrender.
And when you find you've taken yourself back again, as it were,
then it's all to be done again.
What it needs, of course, is the will on our part to be Jesus' person,
even if we don't succeed all the time.

King David was not a wicked man.
He did a very evil thing when he allowed his lust for Bathsheba to overtake his common sense, but normally he was God's person –
and when it was pointed out to him where he'd gone wrong, he came back.

My friends, let's be like David.
When we go wrong,
when we take ourselves back and live our own lives again,
and when we realise we're doing that,
then let's recommit ourselves into God's hands.
He will be there to welcome us back with loving arms.
“There you are, there you are at last!
Welcome home!”
Amen.

Feeding the Five Thousand

Unfortunately the recording didn't "take" - don't quite know what I did wrong, but I went to turn it off at the end of the sermon and there it wasn't!  So no audio on this one, I'm afraid.  I did change one or two bits of the text, but nothing to affect the meaning.

Introduction

The story of how Jesus fed the five thousand is an old friend, isn't it?

But it is a very important story indeed.
It's the only story that occurs in all four Gospels, apart from the Passion narratives!

So it must be pretty central if all four Gospel-writers thought it worth recording,

particularly John, whose Gospel is rather different from the other three.

I think it deserves a closer look this morning.

It is one of the central episodes in Jesus' ministry

It happens just after Jesus hears that his cousin, John the Baptist, has been murdered.

Jesus is naturally very upset by this;

he respected John as a prophet of God,

as well as the fact that he was a relation.

Jesus wants to go off by himself to talk to God about it and grieve, but the crowds follow him.

In fact, he does get a chance to go off later,

but then it is very late indeed,

and the disciples go on home without him, according to instructions,

and he catches them up by walking on the water.

But at this stage, that hasn't happened.
Jesus hasn't had a chance to get away by himself,

and the crowds are there, tired and hungry.
John says it was about 5,000 people,

but Matthew says that was only the men –

it was about 5,000 families,

so anything up to 20,000 people.
The disciples know that Jesus ought to eat,

and they could use a break themselves,

so they try to get him to make everyone go away.
But they've all followed Jesus further away from town than they meant, and it would be rather a long way to go back without a breather first, and some food.
But there is no food –

and nowhere to buy any,

even if they could have afforded it.
Just one small boy,

who shyly goes up to Andrew and offers his packed lunch,

if that's any good to Jesus.

Of course, I don't suppose the small boy was the only one with food.
After all, there were mothers in the crowd,

mothers with small children.
They would have made sure they were well-provisioned for the day.
Probably many of the men had lunchboxes

or whatever they carried their food in;

certainly the children would have.
Mothers do tend to see to it that their families are provisioned,

and few people would go out for the day without some sort of arrangements for lunch!

But it was, so we are told, a small boy who was the catalyst,

who offers his lunch.
And Jesus takes it,

and blesses it,

and breaks it,

and shares it.

And everyone has enough food, and there are twelve basketsful left over.

So what are we to make of this story?

I think there are three points I want to make this morning.
Firstly, the story tells us something about Jesus;

secondly, it tells us something about God;

and thirdly, it tells us something about ourselves.

Something About Jesus

So what does the story tell us about Jesus?

This sort of food-stretching isn't unique to him, you know!

It happens in the Old Testament, too.
Elijah goes to stay with the Widow of Zarephath during a famine and promises that her oil and flour won't run out if she will feed him, too.
Which she does,

and it doesn't.

Elisha, Elijah's successor,

performs a miracle very like Jesus',

making 20 barley loaves stretch to feed 100 people, with some left over.
Which mightn't sound too bad to us, but those loaves were only about the size of our baps –
and if you were only given 1/5 of a bap,

you might well want to complain that it wasn't quite enough!

So this kind of miracle was something that prophets did.
You might have noticed that John doesn't tend to record Jesus' miracles unless they teach us something about who Jesus is.
So on one level, in John’s gospel, the story shows that Jesus was not only a prophet like Elisha, but something greater.

And did you notice something else?
Jesus took the food,

blessed it,

broke it

and shared it.
Doesn't that sound awfully familiar?
Doesn't that sound like something we do some Sundays,

those Sundays we have a Communion service?
In John's gospel, the story leads straight in to that famous speech about "I am the Bread of Life",

and, in fact, John doesn't bother to record the "Do this in remembrance of me" that the other evangelists have –
for him, the symbolism of this story and the Bread of Life speech are sufficient.

So the story is saying something about who Jesus is;
it is showing us that Jesus is a prophet,

and more than a prophet.

Something About God

Then secondly, the story tells us something about God.
You see, Jesus says elsewhere that he only does what he sees his Father doing.
And one of the things that always strikes me about this story,

when I read it,

is the amount left over.
Twelve basketfuls.

It isn't that there was just enough food to keep everyone going until they got home.
It isn't that there was enough for everyone to have a decent meal.
There was enough for everyone to have a decent meal and still have masses left over!

That seems to be so typical of Jesus, though.
When he turned the water into wine at the wedding at Cana,

he made enough wine to stock a young off-licence,

never mind be enough for a few guests at the tag-end of a party.
And when people were healed,

they were healed!
He made a proper job of it,

even if it took him two goes.

It's typical of Jesus, and it's typical of God.
I mean, look at the sort of extravagance we see in the natural world –
all those desert flowers, for instance,

and nobody knew they were there.
All those stars,

all those universes.....

This story, with the twelve basketsful left over,

reminds us that God is generous to the point of extravagance.
And also, it was Jesus who broke the bread and shared it out.
He did the serving.
It was Jesus,

elsewhere in John's gospel,

who kneels with towel and basin,

washing the disciples' feet.
It was Jesus who said of himself,

"The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve."

So this story helps to remind us that God longs

and longs

and longs

to give us, his children,

more good things than we can possibly handle.
God wants to serve us,

to heal us,

to make us whole,

to give us what we need –
not just grudgingly,

barely enough,

but pressed down, shaken together and running over!

Something About Us

But the third thing that this story tells us is something about us.
And I'm afraid that it isn't very flattering.
All those thousands of people –
five thousand men,

and maybe up to four times that number when you include the women and children –
all those people, and one, just one, was willing to share what he had!
One little boy who came up to Andrew and whispered, shyly,

"Jesus can share my lunch if he'd like".
Nobody else was willing to share.

Yet most people probably had more than they needed that day.
We tend to take along more food than we'll need, just in case.
And if we make a packed lunch for our family,

if they're going on an outing,

there's usually enough that we could share it,

if we wanted to,

without going hungry ourselves.

But the people in the crowd weren't willing to risk going hungry.
They weren't willing to share their food,

not even with Jesus and his disciples.
That was too great a risk.
Perhaps they wouldn't have minded missing lunch, for once,

but what about their children?

Incidentally, I'm aware that I'm sounding as though the sole source of food was from the crowd,

rather than from Jesus.
I rather suspect it was a case of "both, and" –
I'm perfectly certain that if the small boy's five loaves and two fishes were really all the food there was,

Jesus both could have and would have produced

a delicious meal for everyone from just that.
However, I find it almost impossible to believe that nobody else at all had brought any supplies with them!
Like so much of Christianity,

the truth is probably somewhere in between;
a case of "both, and", rather than "either, or".

And, in fact, the mechanics of the thing don't matter all that much.
After all, someone even commented once in my hearing

that the real miracle was that the boy still had five loaves and two fishes left by lunchtime,

knowing how boys so often eat their packed lunches before the coach has left the school gates!

Seriously, though, the crowd was selfish.
Either they had come out without any food, or,

if they had brought food,

they weren't willing to share it.
Either way,

they expected Jesus to do something about it.
They weren't going to do anything.
They were going to hedge their bets,

to wait and see,

to look out for Number One.

And are we like that?
Well, yes, we are, some of the time, aren't we.
We can be extraordinarily selfish.
I have known people, Christian people,

who will quite happily spend a pound on a Lottery ticket,

but try asking them to give a pound to a missionary society

and see how far you get!
Usually they can't possibly spare more than 10p, if that!

And we can be extraordinarily faithless.
We can't offer more than ourselves to Jesus,

but how often do we offer even that?
The small boy offered what he had –
five loaves, and two fishes.
It wasn't much, but he had the courage to offer it.
Nobody else seems to have had the nerve.
But why not?

Partly, of course, it was selfishness and fear –
if I give my lunch to Jesus,

maybe I won't get any.
Maybe my kids won't get any.
I'm not going to offer;
I need what I have for myself.

But partly it was a different sort of fear.
Fear of rejection.
And that is one of the most difficult of all fears to overcome.
Been there,

done that,

read the book

bought the T-shirt

You don't go to Jesus with your five loaves and two fish because you're afraid he'll shriek with laughter and say

"Who on earth do you think you are!"

You don't go to Jesus and say

"Use me as you will",

because you're afraid he'll either send you off to work somewhere highly disagreeable,

like somewhere with a seriously nasty climate

far away from all your friends and family –
Lewisham, for instance.
Or else we're afraid that he won't!
That he will say "I couldn't possibly use you!”

and sort of throw you aside like a used tissue.

But, you know, that's not God!
We've just seen how God longs and longs to be far more generous to us than we can possibly imagine.
And when we say "Use me as you will", he says "Great!
Now, here's this present,

and do take some of that,

and are you sure you won't have any more of the other,

and you really need some of this, and...."

until you practically have to say,

"Hey, hang on, give me a chance to breathe!"

Oh, but, you are saying,

I've offered and offered and nothing has happened.
God doesn't want me!
Well, I have to ask two questions, then.
The first is, did you really mean your offering,

or did you pull it back as soon as you'd made it.
And the second question is,

are you sure God isn't helping you do exactly what you're meant to be doing right now?
Not all of us are called to spectacular tasks, or to go and work somewhere with a disagreeable climate, and so on.
Not even Lewisham!
Some of us are asked to stay right where we are, and be salt and light in our own families and communities.

Students are probably meant to be studying hard and waiting to see where the road leads to next.
Parents are probably meant to be making a safe home for their children.
The elderly are often such enormous lights to the rest of us –
we need you so much in our churches,

just for who you are and

what you have learnt about our dear Lord as you have followed him!

In fact, it's always safest to assume that God will want you to stay where you are, doing what you're doing.
If that should change, you can be quite sure you will know about it totally unmistakeably!
But God can't use you unless you offer yourself to him,

and he will use you if you do!
And if you hold back, whether from fear, or from selfishness, or from any other motive,

then not only do you prevent the Kingdom of God from going forward in the way God would like,

but you also cut yourself off from all the good things God wanted to give you!

Conclusion

I've gone on quite long enough for one morning!

But this story,

this central story,

of how Jesus fed a huge crowd,

does teach us that Jesus is greater even than Elijah and Elisha,

and does foreshadow the taking, blessing, breaking and sharing of bread that is so important to us.

It reminds us of how extravagantly generous God can be,

and how much he longs and longs to share that generosity with you and with me.
And it reminds us that all too often we can be selfish and afraid,

and hold back from offering what we have and who we are to Jesus.

So lets make an effort this morning to conquer our fear and selfishness, and to offer ourselves anew to the God whose response is always so infinitely greater than our terrified offerings. Amen.

Be careful what you wish for

Our Old Testament reading seems to me to be a prime example of the Law of Unintended Consequences! Or, indeed, the necessity to be careful what you wish for!

Up until now, Israel has been a theocracy; in other words, it has been governed by God, as ministered by the various judges and prophets, most recently Samuel. It hasn’t always gone well – there have been wars; the Ark of the Covenant had been captured and taken away by the Philistines, but then it was returned with all honour. At the time of which we speak, there was peace in the land – for one of the only times in history, it would seem.

But this peace was precarious. Samuel was getting old now, and his sons, who were his obvious successors, weren’t doing a good job. Unlike their father, who was as upright as – well, as an upright thing, they were susceptible to taking bribes, and justice was not always served as it might have been.

Also, the people of Israel had been looking round at how things were done in other countries. They didn’t have dreary prophets interpreting God’s will at them all the time. They weren’t led into battle by priests guiding an ox-cart with the Ark on it. They had a King! They were led into battle by a King on a beautiful horse, wearing armour glittering in the sun. They didn’t have to spend hours in prayer before they could get on with it….. Anyway, everybody had kings. Why couldn’t they have a king?

So, as we heard in our first reading, they went to Samuel and said, “look here, you’re getting old, and your sons aren’t anything like you – we want a King, please, now.”

Samuel is very hurt by this, and does what he always does in time of trial – he goes and prays about it. And God says to him, more or less, “Well, now you know what I feel all the time, the way people reject Me. And really, it’s not you they are rejecting, it’s Me.” And, at God’s instruction, Samuel goes and asks the people if they are sure they want a king. Sure, there is the grandeur and the pomp and circumstance – but there is also the tithes; the conscription; the droit de seigneur where the king thinks he can, and will, have any pretty girl he chooses….. there are a lot of bad things that might and will happen along with the good.

But the people are convinced. Prophets and judges are old-fashioned; they want a King. Monarchy is definitely the way to go.

And, as we know, they got permission to have a King, and Saul was appointed – and anointed – King. But as we know, he wasn’t altogether satisfactory, and there was war again, and, eventually, David became king, and then his son Solomon, but after that it all went rather pear-shaped, and the Kingdom was divided into two. And after a series of rather ineffectual, weak kings, the majority – the Ten Tribes – were taken into captivity and absorbed; the two tribes of Judah were also captured, but managed to retain a distinct identity. Mind you, we are not told what would have happened had they remained a theocracy….

So what is this all about, and what does it say to us today? I’m certainly not advocating a return to theocracy – one only has to look at so-called Islamic State or Boko Harum to see that it can and does stifle people’s freedom of choice. And monarchy itself is nearly obsolete. Our own Queen reigns, but she does not rule.

The King may well have done all the dreadful things Samuel warned against: “He will make soldiers of your sons; some of them will serve in his war chariots, others in his cavalry, and others will run before his chariots. He will make some of them officers in charge of a thousand men, and others in charge of fifty men. Your sons will have to plough his fields, harvest his crops, and make his weapons and the equipment for his chariots. Your daughters will have to make perfumes for him and work as his cooks and his bakers. He will take your best fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his officials. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your grapes for his court officers and other officials.”

But a good King – and there have been many throughout history – a good King protects his people, as well as exploits them. And a good King leads by example. C S Lewis, in his novel “The Horse and his Boy”, expressed it thus:

“For this is what it means to be a king:

to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years)

to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”

Being a King is not just about privilege and luxury – but for a bad King – and probably for every good King there has been a bad one – for a bad King, it is all about privilege and luxury. The people needed to be careful what they wished for.

But one of the main problems of a Kingdom, mostly, is that it is up against others. Kings have to fight because other people want their Kingdoms. Sometimes these are kings from other sovereign states, and other times they are internal contenders for the throne; people who think that the king really isn’t doing as good a job as he might and they would do a better one. Civil War. Satan’s Kingdom divided against itself – as Jesus points out in our Gospel reading – is always going to fail and spiral down into chaos and darkness.

So let’s contrast this with God’s kingdom, that Jesus tells us so much about.

He told us lots of stories to illustrate what the kingdom was going to be like, how it starts off very small, like a mustard seed, but grows to be a huge tree.

How it is worth giving up everything for.

How “the blind receive their sight,

the lame walk,

the lepers are cleansed,

the deaf hear,

the dead are raised,

and the poor have good news brought to them.”

And some of the stories were very unsettling to his hearers. Imagine, if you will, that there is a place you’ve always wanted to visit.

It sounds as though it’s really wonderful –

permanently great weather, fantastic scenery,

lots of great places to visit,

lots of walking, or swimming,

great bars and restaurants,

you name it, this place has it!

And you long and long to go there,

but you don’t know how to get there,

and what’s more, you don’t know anybody else who has been there.

All the things you’ve heard about it are rumour or hearsay.

And then one day someone comes along who very obviously has been there, and he starts to tell you all about it.

But –

oh dear –

it’s not at all what you thought!

Weeds everywhere, attracting masses of birds which could and did eat all the crops!

And the food, far from gourmet, is rotten bread made by women!

And then, he goes on to tell his special friends in private –

but you hear about it later –

the place is so infinitely desirable that people sell all they have to get tickets there!

That’s the Kingdom of God for you. The mustard seed that Jesus spoke of – well, mustard was a terrific weed, back in the day – grows like the clappers, and still does – and nobody in their right mind would have planted it. Besides which, it would have attracted birds, which would then have eaten the other the crops. And the yeast that leavens the whole of the dough? Well, for Jews, what was really holy and proper to eat was unleavened bread, which you had at Passover.

You threw out all your old leaven –

we’d call it a sourdough starter, today, which is basically what it is –

and started again.

I remember being told in primary school that this was a Good Idea because you need fresh starter occasionally.

But the thing is, leavened bread was considered slightly inferior –

and the leaven itself, the starter –

yuck!

It isn’t even the bread that is likened to God’s country, it is the leaven itself!

And did you notice –

it was a woman who took that leaven.

A woman!

That won’t do at all!

Again, for male Jews, women were slightly improper –

and who knew that she wouldn’t be on her period and therefore unclean?

And she hid the starter in enough flour to make bread for 100 people!

She hid it.

It was concealed, hidden.

Not what people would expect from the Kingdom of God, is it?

Be careful what you wish for! You wanted a King, instead of God; a King who would introduce conscription, would confiscate your bit of land and give it to one of his favourites. A King whose country would be manifestly unfair and unequal. But that was what you thought you wanted.

And then you got God’s Kingdom. A place that was totally not what you expected. A place of justice and mercy and love and forgiveness; but also a place where your most entrenched ideas are turned upside-down; where what you thought you knew about God turned out to be all wrong…. And yet, a place so worthwhile, so wonderful, that you would sell all your possessions to get there.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it was worth wishing for a King so that we could know Christ as King of the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.