Articles - From the Vicar

It's a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It's a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.

R.S. Thomas' poem The Kingdom offers us a succinct vision of God's Kingdom. This Kingdom is paradoxically far from us yet (if we have the will) quickly reached; it is a world turned upside down and inside out; a world in which healing and plenty and peace become possible for the dis-eased, the impoverished and the victims of violence; a world in which the many distortions of God's will, created and sustained by human sinfulness, can be healed by means of a faith that is refreshed and renewed, a faith that is 'green as a leaf'.
I like to think of Christmas as a process rather than an event. We celebrate the birth of Christ not as an isolated incident in Palestine 2000 years ago but as a decisive moment in God's continuing journey with his people. We are called to make this journey with God and with each other, building the Kingdom as we do so with our offering of faith. May it be so.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay