Monday 5 February 2024

Amen. In the beginning...

Proverbs 8.1,22-31 Does not wisdom call, the first of his acts of old?

Colossians 1.15-20 Christ is the image of the invisible God

John 1.1-14 In the beginning was the Word

 

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‘Let’s start at the very beginning, that a very good place to start’ That’s the wisdom of the Sound of Music, and points us to where our readings appear to take us.

 

But I want to begin with a word that is usually though of as an ending not a beginning: Amen.

 

The word ‘Amen’ is a word that seals and affirms all the words we have said just before.

 

‘Amen’ is the last word of the Bible itself (Revelation 22.21) and it is the word we use to seal, affirm and sign off, as it were, all our prayers and what we believe.

 

Amen. So be it. Yes.

 

When we say ‘Amen’ it’s more than just agreeing with something, it is using a word to say, with all my heart and soul and mind and strength: ‘so be it’; ‘yes’; ‘Amen’.

 

The word ‘Amen’ shows the power of one little word that says so much more than the sum of its parts.

 

It’s also a word that connects us to Jesus himself, for it is a word he uses in prayer and, sometimes, when he begins to speak, because the ‘Amen’ of Jesus is not just an ending but a beginning too.

 

We find this in the Book of Revelation.

 

When speaking to one of the ancient churches Jesus says, ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation’ (Revelation 3.14).

 

It’s a key verse. Jesus calls himself the ‘Amen’, the ‘so be it’ to all that God is, and that he is the origin of God’s creation; inseparable from the Creator.

 

Jesus is the ‘Amen’ the beginning and the end of all things, Alpha and Omega.

 

‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation’.

 

This verse holds together all three of our readings this morning: when we speak of Jesus Christ we are not speaking about an add-on or extension to God’s original creative purpose; Jesus is not like an upgrade on some redundant software.

 

Jesus Christ is from the beginning and is God.

 

St John magisterially puts it like this, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word  was God’. (John 1.1)

 

So what is this ‘Word’?

 

The Greek word for… Word, is ‘logos’.

 

‘In the beginning was the ‘logos’, and the ‘logos’ was with God and the ‘logos’ was God…’

 

This Greek word ‘logos’, gives us in English the word 'logical'.

 

‘Logos’ is embedded in our language of reasoning and logic so that we can be rational creatures.

 

Subjects with 'ology' at the end are another example: it means a topic about which there is reasoned dialogue – there’s the word again dia-logos – it means rational, reasoned thought about a subject.

 

Theology is a reasoned consideration of the nature of Theos - God.

 

Sociology is the reasoned consideration of societal things; musicology the things of music and so on.

 

‘Logos’ in ancient Greek thought was the rational component of creation and of the sacred order of things.

 

So the ‘logos’ is rather remote and dry and stuck in our heads if it’s just about the academic world and lectures.

 

But here’s the thing!

 

And this is why what St John says is so amazing, wonderful and startling.

 

The ‘logos’, he says, is not dry and remote. ; the ‘logos’ has become flesh, has a body, can be heard and seen and touched and felt.

 

Yes, the ‘logos’ is all the things the Greeks thought it was, but it is more.

 

For St John the ‘logos’ moves from being an ‘it’ to being a ‘he’; from a concept to be a person: ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1.14): ‘the ‘logos’ was made flesh and dwelt among us’.

 

Shortly we’ll say the Nicene Creed, as we do Sunday by Sunday. And we will express this understanding of who God is.

 

We will speak of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 

And when it comes to the Son, the logos, Jesus Christ, we will say this:

 

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one Being with the Father;

through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,

was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary

and was made man.

 

This is the heart of orthodox Christian belief about who Jesus is, proclaimed in the Nicene Creed.

 

We’re proclaiming that the Word - who we know to be Jesus Christ - is God before all time; he is not an element of creation; he is God, very God, he is of one substance - consubstantial – with the Father.

 

Then the hinge on which everything swings: ‘And the Word was made flesh’, or as the Creed puts it ‘He was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary’.

 

There it is.

 

The creator of time is born in time: the Word becomes flesh. And in becoming one of us St Paul writes, ‘[God] has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. ‘’  (Colossians 1.13,14).

 

This is because, Paul continues, in our second lesson,  ‘[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.’ (Colossians 1.15,16)

 

So Jesus Christ is God’s first Word: Amen, and God’s last Word, and God’s continuing Word.

 

This is the Word who, made present by the Spirit, speaks to us of salvation, hope, love, peace and joy.

 

This Word comes to us as the Bread of Life and the living Word broken open in the scriptures.

 

To Christ our life and salvation may we join in the Great Amen.

Jesus, I know who you are!

 Deuteronomy 18.15-20 The Lord your God will raise up a new prophet like Moses

Revelation 12.1-5a A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun

Mark 1.21-28 Unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority

 

 

‘I know who you are [Jesus of Nazareth] – the Holy One of God’ (Mark 1.24)

 

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In this morning’s gospel passage we learn something of who Jesus Christ is and we are challenged to consider how we respond to him and to what he can do in our lives.

 

That’s what a gospel is there to do: present us with who Jesus Christ is and was and ever shall be, and to invite our response.

 

Today’s gospel is doing just that as we hear of Jesus entering the synagogue in Capernaum.

 

In the synagogue on that day are plenty of good respectable people who have gathered to read the scriptures and reflect on them, much as we do now.

 

It was normal for attendees who studied the scriptures to offer interpretations to those gathered, which is precisely what Jesus does.

 

As Jesus teaches – and we have no idea what he actually taught and said that day –something made them prick up their ears.

 

They were ‘astonished’ as our translation puts it.

 

The original Greek is more emphatic conveying the sense that the people ‘are astonished to the point of being completely overwhelmed’.

 

We might translate the Greek term ekplesso as ‘they were completely blown away’. (Ian Paul).

 

Someone, something remarkable, astonishing, overwhelming, mind-blowing is here in our midst.

 

What blew them away was that Jesus spoke in a way that the supposed authorities never spoke.

 

Jesus speaks with authority.

 

The word authority relates to the word ‘author’: you could say ‘author-ority’.

 

The author is the originator or source of what is being spoken.

 

When it comes to the scriptures Jesus is the Word made Flesh, only he is the one who can interpret the scriptures with authority because he is the author; he is the only one who can interpret God’s purposes in creation because, in the beginning was the Word: he is the author, the originator, the Word.

 

So he speaks with authority because what he says is entirely consistent with who he is: the author speaks with author-ority.

 

Had nothing more happened that day you can imagine the chat at the end of the synagogue gathering: ‘Gosh, that bloke from Nazareth was really impressive and authoritative’. ‘Oh yes, I’ve heard about him before, he’s been calling fishermen to join him: lot of talk about the kingdom of God’. ‘Tell you what, he’s better than our scribes, they just miss the mark all the time’.

 

Perhaps some would go away and feel different with their hearts warmed; perhaps others forgot all about him.

 

That gives us pause for thought. Do you leave church with a deeper appetite for Jesus Christ, to go away and chew over more deeply what you have encountered with your life changed, deepened, transformed? Do you leave church and really not give it all much thought, and the cares of life and the world distract you?

 

So Jesus speaks with authority, inviting us to recognise it.

 

Then the mood changes in the narrative.

 

What happens next in that synagogue is one of those moments that, if it happened here in the Minster, might cause us to feel uncomfortable, disrupted, even unsafe.

 

A man in the synagogue has clearly heard the teaching and reacts, in a raw visceral way.

 

‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ (Mark 1.24)

 

That outburst will have ripped through the gathered assembly, as it would for us today.

 

This man is not in his right mind; indeed the text makes clear it is not even him speaking, it is an unclean spirit.

 

Sometimes it is thought that the language of unclean spirit is a first century way of talking about someone who is ill, and that our insights into modern medicine and psychology explain what’s going on: he’s clearly mentally ill we might say.

 

And yet in our society today there are very blurred lines between what we consider wicked and wrong and the actions of someone who is sick.

 

If someone is spared a murder conviction on the grounds of diminished responsibility, some think that’s a good understanding thing, others find it a bad thing: does that person need punishment or help?

 

The gospel carefully differentiates between people who are unwell and those who are possessed, and we would need a lot more time to go into that.

 

So what we have here is evil being exposed: it’s not the man it’s what is in him: he is being possessed by something outside himself and it is cast out of him: something Jesus, with authority, can do.

 

We might more readily recognise today what’s going on through the language of addiction and dependency.

 

Alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling are all things that can take possession of a person and become an obsession to the point of destruction.

 

In addiction and dependency, the authority in a person’s life has passed to that which corrodes the soul and destroys them: so the unclean spirit asks, ‘have you come to destroy me?’

 

Oh yes! Jesus comes to destroy evil to give life to the children of God.

 

Jesus is revealed as the one who comes to bring salvation: salvation a word that, at its root, is about healing and saving.

 

We see, on countless occasions in St Mark’s Gospel, the healing salve of Jesus’ touch that brings salvation to individual lives: an invitation, make no mistake, that is on offer today.

 

I know people who can give testimony to how they have rejected the power of alcohol, for example, through the sense of the higher power, the authority in life experienced in Christ.

 

Examination of ourselves will reveal what we are in thrall to, what possesses us, what corrodes our souls: and we should present that before Christ, the true authority of human experience.

 

No wonder the people in that synagogue say, ‘what is this?’

 

They are full of wonder, to the point of being overwhelmed.

 

No wonder his fame spread everywhere first in Galilee and then to the ends of the earth.

 

Can you now say, ‘I know who you are, Jesus Christ – the Holy One of God’?

Monday 15 January 2024

Come and See

 1 Samuel 3.1-10 Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

John 1.43-51 Come and see, we have found the Messiah

 

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‘I have found something. I have found something so amazing, so life changing, so wonderful, that I just can’t keep it to myself. Come with me and see what it is.’

 

If I said that to you I wonder how would you respond?

 

If I said it was gold I had found, would you come with me?

 

If I said it was the most beautiful landscape or view in the world, would you come with me?

 

If I said it was the most amazing person, would you come with me?

 

And the other way round, if you had found something amazing, life changing, wonderful, would you be the one saying, ‘come with me and see what it is’?

 

It’s precisely what happened to Philip and Nathanael, not the most prominent of the disciples, by the Sea of Galilee.

 

Philip was called by Jesus Christ, and the first thing he felt compelled to do was to tell Nathanael who was, perhaps, his friend or colleague or brother: it doesn’t matter really, Philip just wanted to tell him.

 

And Philip’s invitation is ‘come and see’.

 

And the great thing is that Nathanael went and saw.

 

What Nathanael went to see was the fulfilment of all their hopes, the fulfilment of the deepest desires and dreams of their hearts: they had found the One who was utterly amazing, wonderful and life changing.

 

They’d found the promised Messiah of God.

 

The evangelical life, that is to say the life of living out and sharing the Good News (the evangelion, in Greek), is exactly this process of discovering something wonderful and of sharing the invitation.

 

That’s the Philip bit: ‘I’ve found it, come and see’.

 

The success of the evangelical life, if success is the word, is for the response to be for the other person to go and see: that’s the Nathanael bit.

 

The word ‘evangelical’ can be attached to a party or group in the Church, and you might say, ‘I’m not one of those’, but actually we are all called to be evangelical: our Christian life is incomplete if we do not say to others ‘come and see’.

 

Does that make you uncomfortable?

 

Does that excite you?

 

It certainly should make you re-examine the fundamentals of what faith is about: after all, Jesus’ Great Commission at the end of St Matthew’s Gospel is ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…’

 

Going and telling, sharing and inviting is at the heart of what Christian disciples do.

 

I wonder, when did you last invite your ‘Nathanael’ – a friend, a colleague, brother, sister, son, daughter, spouse – to church, to ‘come and see’ Jesus Christ?

 

And why wouldn’t you?

 

Each of us baptised as a Christian has been commissioned to be a Philip, someone who knows Jesus Christ as amazing, wonderful and life-changing.

 

Similarly, my task as a priest is to be a ‘Philip’ to you and to wider society.

 

The priest, the baptised Christian, who does not do this - looking out for Christ, inviting others to Christ - is an Eli, as in our first reading.

 

It said that Eli’s eyesight ‘had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, [and he] was lying down in his room’ (1 Samuel 3.2).

 

This is not a moment for Specsavers. It is talking about his spiritual eyesight, his capacity to get up and see the presence of God.

 

Eli is the person for whom the light had shone but now is dimmed, flickering and dull. He is the grain of wheat that shot up and is now wilting (cf The Parable of the Sower).

 

An Eli is the person who came to church but has lost his sense of what it’s about, who has got cosy, who can’t see and can’t respond to the word and will of God. That becomes spiritually corrosive to the individual - they become grumpy, gripey, obstructive and joyless, always suspicious and jaded – and that is spiritually corrosive to the church community too.

 

Yet, when we read on, in the book of Samuel it says, ‘the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was (1 Samuel 3.3).

 

That means that ‘the light still shines in the darkness’ and Samuel’s eyes and ears are open, ready to see the light and hear God’s gracious call, even if the Elis of this world can’t, won’t or don’t.

 

Samuel has placed himself in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was: he is nestled in God’s presence, incubating his faith ready for God to call, and when God calls, Samuel, in the example of all the great saints and believers down the ages says, ‘Here am I. I am listening (1 Samuel 3.9). Let it be unto me according to thy word’ (Luke 1.38).

 

Samuel saw - his eyes were open to God - as were Philip’s, as were Nathanael’s, as weren’t Eli’s.

 

Speaking for my own life as a Christian with you and priest for you, I have to speak and live the words I began with, ‘I have found something. I have found something so amazing, so life changing, so wonderful, that I just can’t keep it to myself. Come with me and see what it is.’

 

This happens in preaching: preaching should always be an invitation to come and see.

 

This happens in the Eucharist: the Eucharist is always an invitation to the hospitality of God, to come and taste and see.

 

For when people come and see their eyes are opened, their hearts are warmed, their souls are saved.

 

So let’s all be Philips and Philippas, inviting others to come and see what we have seen in Christ.

 

Let’s all be Nathanaels, and whatever the female equivalent of that name is, let’s come and see and encounter Jesus Christ.

 

That gets us to him and, you know, the even more wonderful thing is when we meet him he says, ‘you’ve seen nothing yet! This is but the beginning: ‘truly, truly I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ (John 1.51)

 

Now that’s something to come and see!

Monday 8 January 2024

The Spirit moves over the waters

Genesis 1.1-5 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Acts 19.1-7 They were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus

Mark 1.4-11 ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased’.

 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth… And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

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‘In the beginning…’

These words opened our Christmas gospel, as St John unfolded the mystery of the Incarnation and asserted that, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, is the fullness of the presence of God, the Creator of all that is.

These words also open the very Bible itself, the Book of Genesis, which we heard in our first reading.

The phrase ‘in the beginning’ is the golden thread that links the Gospel to the Creation: after all, the Gospel unfolds the New Creation in Christ.

‘In the beginning’, as related by Genesis, the primordial waters of the Creation swirl and swell: ‘The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep’. (Genesis 1.2a)

In scripture such waters speak of chaos and danger.

The Hebrew word is ‘Tohu Va-Vohu’ (תהו ובהו)

Lashing rain, the present flooding, the storms along our coastline, and such like, remind us that water unleashed is not benign, but is, as in the flood of Noah, powerful and destructive.

The Great Flood ends with the dove over the waters, with an olive branch in its beak and a rainbow in the sky: hence the prayer that God would ‘drown sin in the waters of judgement’.

And recall, the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, descended on Jesus in the waters of the Jordan: connect that with Genesis, ‘the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters’. (Genesis 1.2b)

The Creator God, in Christ, steps into the chaos and danger, into situations of darkness, turmoil and doubt and the Creator Spirit descends to bring purpose, creativity, beauty and life.

The Spirit brings order to the chaos so that the Creation unfolds with purpose.

So we can say God’s Creation is not a meaningless soup of random happenings, not a ‘Tohu Va-Vohu’, but a gift of life, in which is revealed the face of God: the formless void is given form and is filled by the Creator Spirit.

In the spiritual life - our life committed to Christ - we should invoke the Holy Spirit to guide us through the turbulent waters of life, as we whisper in prayer: ‘Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and lighten with celestial fire…’

This takes us, then, to the River Jordan.

In that river John had been baptising and using its waters to wash away sin for those who came to repent, those who wished to redirect mind, body and spirit away from the formless void of life without God, and find their lives healed, forgiven and restored.

Into that water steps the creator and true redeemer.

Jesus Christ plunges into the waters, signifying the New Creation to be inaugurated in human lives when joined with the life of the Holy Trinity.

This is the root of our forgiveness; the depths of his love.

As the Spirit moved over the face of the waters so the same Spirit descends upon Christ in the Jordan and the Father speaks - again.

In the beginning he spoke the words ‘let there be light’ now he declares to Jesus, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

The Baptism of the Lord inaugurates the New Creation.

And we are drawn into this New Creation through Christ, in the power of the Spirit.

By our own baptism we are plunged into the destructive-creative waters: waters that destroy sin and grant life.

So baptism is a gift and challenge.

It is open to all, yet it is also disruptive and purging.

It is a free gift, but not to be treated cheaply;.

This is the warning to us of what we heard from the Acts of the Apostles: don’t cheapen your baptism, but inhabit it, fulfil it, embrace it.

If we think baptism is a splash in some water and a nice symbol - as clearly some concluded, even from the baptism of John - then we find that the Holy Spirit of God demands more of us, drives us and confirms us in our faith.

When we leave the Holy Spirit out of our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ we make a mockery of the faith entrusted to us by the saints and we are destined to be tossed around in the ‘Tohu Va-Vohu’, the dark, swirling waters.

The Baptism of the Lord tells us that our own baptism is at the confluence of two mighty rivers: of repentance and of the strengthening Spirit.

It is where the nature of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity is revealed - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - and where we are incorporated into God’s life.

To be a Christian is to overcome, with Christ, the swirling waters of the ‘Tohu Va-Vohu’: anticipated by Jonah whose three days in the belly of the great fish prefigure Christ’s resurrection; like the disciples when the storm is stilled (Mark 4.39); like Peter who is commanded to ‘put out into the deep and let down your nets’ (Luke 5.4) so that the waters of creation are not a terror but fill the nets of our lives like the nets teeming with fish; revealed by Christ himself who walks on the waters and is not consumed by them (Matthew 14.25).

Let us pray, as we seek to be faithful to the implications of our own baptism, that the Holy Spirit would descend on us as we struggle in the swirling waters of life with our fragile grasp of faith, so that in the Name of Jesus we may hear the call of the Father, as did the Sinless One at Jordan’s River.

 

Tuesday 26 December 2023

In this child is the fullness of God: A Christmas Day sermon

Isaiah 52.7-10 Rejoice, for the Lord is consoling his people

Hebrews 1.1-6 God has spoken to us through his Son

John 1.1-18 The Word was made flesh, and lived among us.

 

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I was on a train the other day and saw two new parents with their clearly very newborn child.

 

The sight was deeply moving and compelling and, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ today, it struck me as an icon of what we see in the scene of the birth of Jesus, what we call the nativity.

 

The mother of that newborn was holding her child in her arms and gazing adoringly, gently rocking him, and then, very discreetly, placed him on her breast to feed him.

 

All the while the child’s father gazed at him too and ensured that his wife was comfortable and undisturbed.

 

What I saw on the train will have been what the shepherds and Magi saw too in the stable of Bethlehem, parents nurturing and protecting their new-born child.

 

In the scene at Bethlehem we see something profoundly human, just as I saw on the train.

 

We have to see the birth of Jesus Christ through the lens of a human birth, because that shows us his humanity, all that he shares in common with us.

 

And yet the Gospel reading proclaimed this morning did not reference Bethlehem or the adoration of Mary and Joseph.

 

It’s St Luke who gives us the details of shepherds and angels, of the inn and manger.

 

St Matthew gives us Bethlehem, the star and the Magi.

 

And those gospels speak powerfully of who Jesus Christ is, and from them we can see the intimacy and warmth of the parental love of Mary and Joseph for their divine son as ox and ass worship him and the heavens realign to signal their maker.

 

Yet we domesticate the birth of Jesus, and disenchant it, when we think of the nativity of the Saviour simply as a touching human scene or declare that Christmas is all about children.

 

We strip out the fact that the gospels consistently proclaim the reality underlying the birth of the Saviour,  which is something of profound significance, that holds together both a human birth and the fullness of the presence of God the Most High.

 

As our second reading put it, ‘[This Son] is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being…’ (Hebrews 1.2).

 

This is what we call the incarnation, which literally means the ‘taking of flesh’, the taking of flesh by God himself.

 

That is why we say that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man; Son of God and Son of Mary.

 

So:

 

Jesus Christ didn’t look like a human being; he was one.

 

His humanity did not diminish his divinity; it was his glorification.

 

Jesus Christ is God, uncompromised by his human body and mind or his birth in time and history.

 

Jesus Christ has a human start, but is the divine Word from the beginning.

 

All the statements I have just made come straight from the earliest and enduring understanding of the Church about who Jesus Christ is: we speak of it in our Creed to be proclaimed shortly.

 

And this is what our Gospel this morning proclaims, speaking so powerfully of the mystery that lies behind the humanity of the reality of the nativity.

 

The Gospel affirms both the fleshly reality of Jesus Christ, and his divine origin.

 

We’ll sing of this shortly in the hymn ‘Of the Father’s heart begotten’.

 

The hymn affirms who Jesus is, born of God the Father out of the Father’s love for his creation that began, is sustained and will ever be through his Word.

 

All time and eternity belongs to him, he is the beginning and the end, and yet he deigned to be born as a human being locked in time:

 

Of the Father’s heart begotten,

ere the worlds from chaos rose,

He is Alpha: from that Fountain

All that is and hath been flows;

He is Omega, of all things

yet to come the mystic Close:

evermore and evermore.

 

The magnificence and wonder of the Incarnation is that through Christ being born as one of us, born of the pure Virgin Mary, we ourselves have the potential, capacity and means to become God’s children by adoption and by grace.

 

Go back to that image of the parents and baby on the train; go to the image of Mary and Joseph with their child who is the Promised Messiah and Saviour; and then picture yourself embraced in the loving arms of God who beholds you as his precious child.

 

Jesus Christ comes to make us more human not less; more what God created us to be at the Creation, before falling away from him by our sin.

 

God stretches out his arms of love towards you at Christmas, and every day, and delights to see your arms stretched out before him to receive his Son, the Bread of Life, the child of Bethlehem; the Saviour of the World.