Word of Life

This May Sanctuary First takes up the theme for Heart & Soul 2017: Word of Life.

In the readings this month we encounter and re-encounter the life giving presence of the Word. There can be no ‘Word’ without the ‘Thought’ and there can be no Word spoken without the ‘Breath’. It is when the Thought is spoken out on the Breath that the Word is heard and understood.

In the same way, there can be no Son without the Father, and there can be no Father without the Son. Furthermore, our knowledge and understanding of the Father and Son comes to us through the revelation of the Spirit. Thus we have the mystery of the Trinity. The three in one and one in three God revealed to us in the Son.

As well as looking at the lectionary, key passages this month are John 1 and Ezekiel 37: 1-14 and we will be returning to them throughout.

Jesus’s presence walks and talks with us today, like the encounter the disciples had on the road to Emmaus (see Luke 24.13-35). As we think about the Word of Life we begin to understand the significance of the breath of God, the Spirit of God at work in our hearts and lives voicing that Word. Jesus informed his disciples that it would be the Spirit, his Spirit, that would lead them into all truth. We must go to the scriptures and interpret and understand them through the eyes and ears of Jesus and wait for the breath of the Spirit to bring words to life, turning bones into life and life into all its fullness.