TRINITY SUNDAY 2016 PSALM 90:1-7, 10, 12 It's your funeral. All of us – your friends and family, are gathered here, we've taken our seats, sung your best loved hymn, read your favorite Bible passage, and now the priest is about to preach. And by the way, the priest isn't me – it's my successor or even his or her successor, because I will have retired long before you die. And being a person of the Gospel the priest wants to preach about the hope of the resurrection. But, being a pastorally sensitive person he or she also wants to make it personal to your life. So, what do you want them to say about you? Three people were looking back over their long and eventful lives, and discussing exactly that question. One of them said, "At my funeral I want the priest to say, 'Here lies a woman who was a good wife, a loving mother, and a loyal friend.'" The next one said, "Well, at my funeral I want the pastor to say, 'The man we see before us today was a skilled worker, a respected professional, and an accomplished leader.'" And the third friend said, "At my funeral I want the preacher to say, 'Look! She's moving!'"

Today we are a week after Pentecost. Last Sunday's festival is the final church holiday until the start of Advent on the 27th of November. We now enter what is called Ordinary Time – six months of ordinariness. Next week the vestments and hangings will go green for the summer and autumn. Pentecost is over, the wind has died down, the tongues are stilled, the fire is out. What now? Six months of ordinariness? What is left when the fire has consumed its fuel? What remains when the flame has devoured its prey? What is there to cling onto when the house of our lives is gutted and smoldering. "O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear, and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing. Oh let it freely burn, till earthly passions turn to dust and ashes in its heat consuming." Dust and ashes. Is that our post-Pentecost legacy? The cremains of our pride, our sin, our lusts; our securities, our ambitions, our dreams?

Today is one of the very rare occasions when I (Read the full Sermon here: The Potato Salad Moment )