大象传媒

Good morning,

They tell me that John Wesley who was born on this day in 1703 preached some 40,000 sermons in his lifetime. I don鈥檛 know how many sermons I have listened to but I can remember very few which I鈥檓 inclined to identify with the writer who once said that listening to sermons is a bit like regular washing - it has its effect at the time even if you forget the details afterwards.

Indeed I would have to say, that of all the preachers I have ever listened to only two remain in my memory and each more by what they were than what they said. One was the diminutive Mother Theresa of Calcutta speaking in Great St Mary鈥檚 in Cambridge about taking babies out of dustbins and the other, in the same venue some time later was the Russian Orthodox leader and writer of devotional classics Metropolitan Anthony Bloom born 100 years ago this week. You couldn鈥檛 possibly listen to two more different people - the tiny nun dressed in white, with her earnest walnut face telling us that giving wasn鈥檛 giving unless it hurt and the tall, stately black robed bearded figure speaking quietly and with authority about the inner life of the spirit.

Yet each one spoke with clear integrity and with an authority expressed in their very eyes. One spoke with energy and zeal, the other with quiet calm. Neither would have had what was called the enthusiasm of Wesley yet all three, I suspect, had one thing in common despite their different backgrounds and denominations and points of emphasis, something of that Holy Spirit which refuses to be defined as to its methods of expression sounding one day like a rushing mighty wind and the next a still small voice, a breath of life, which is why we pray today:

鈥淏reathe on me Breath of God Fill me with life anew.鈥�