Opening To Love – Matthew 1:18-25 

After last week’s sermon on the 'Reign of Christ, the Reign of Love', I was asked a question that has stayed with me: “What is love?” It’s a deceptively simple question. We think we know love, and yet when we try to define it, words falter. Is love a feeling, a decision, a virtue, a way of life? And how do we measure ourselves against its call?

The first place Scripture takes us is 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul describes love as patient and kind, not boastful, rude, self-seeking, or easily angered. And Jesus deepens the challenge by calling us to love even those who do not return our love. These teachings can feel like a tall order. But Paul also reminds us in Galatians that love is “fruit”, something that grows naturally when our hearts are open to the Breath of God. When the Spirit moves in and through us, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control begin to take shape almost as naturally as fruit growing on a tree.

Alongside these biblical insights, two reflections help clarify the question: What is Love?

M. Scott Peck famously wrote that love is extending oneself for the spiritual growth of oneself or another. Sometimes that involves encouragement; sometimes it involves boundaries or “tough love,” but always it is aimed at growth.

And Thomas Merton adds yet another layer, saying, “Love is like a spring coming up out of the ground of our own depths.”

Love is not something we manufacture; it is something already present within us, waiting to be released. The work is often to remove the obstacles, fear, anxiety, trauma, so that the inner spring of love can rise and flow.

With these insights in mind, On this first Sunday of Advent, I want to consider the theme “Opening to Love,” and I want to do so through two stories: the contemporary story of Dr. Lisa Miller, and the ancient story of Joseph in Matthew 1. Both stories speak of how love calls us beyond fear, beyond hesitation, into a larger, more spacious way of being.

Dr. Lisa Miller is a leading psychologist, professor at Columbia University, and one of the foremost researchers on the science of spirituality. Her work bridges neuroscience, psychology, and contemplative insight, and she argues that human beings are born with an innate spiritual capacity, an inner awareness that can be cultivated and trusted.

In a podcast interview with Martha Beck, she tells her own remarkable journey through infertility, adoption, and conception. She describes the early years of infertility as a cycle of grief: “Every month felt like attending a funeral,” she said. Each new fertility treatment brought a flicker of hope, and each failure felt like that flicker dying all over again.

Being a scientist, she tackled infertility like a researcher. She sought the best clinics, the best success rates, the most cutting-edge procedures. She sat in prestigious medical offices, yet something inside her felt out of place. Despite her determination, she sensed she was not on the right path. There was an inner knowing, a deeper wisdom, that she tried to ignore.

Then came what she later described as synchronicities. One day her mother phoned, almost casually, to say: “Our neighbours adopted the most adorable little boy… from Russia. I’m just letting you know.” A simple comment—but it lingered.

Shortly afterward, after yet another failed IVF cycle, she sat on a nearly empty bus on Broadway, feeling despondent. A stranger boarded, walked the full length of the bus, sat right next to her, and said: “Lady, you look like just the kind of awfully nice lady who would go all around the world adopting kids.” And at the very next stop he got off. She later called him a “trail angel”… one of those mysterious figures who appear just when a message needs to be delivered.

Still she wrestled. Part of her remained committed to medical procedures; another part sensed a spiritual child waiting elsewhere. Then came a moment she describes as “beyond time.” One night she awoke to a powerful, sacred Presence filling the room; a numinous, holy awareness. She described it as “an opening into a divine space.” And the Presence asked: “If you were pregnant now, would you adopt?”

Honesty was the only response. “No,” she said.

The Presence withdrew. But months later, as she and her husband slowly inched toward adoption, it returned. Again the question came: “If you were pregnant now, would you adopt?” And she answered, “I’m getting closer… but no, not yet.” Something within her was softening, but not fully ready.

Then her cousin invited her to a Lakota healing ceremony in South Dakota. “It’s been five years,” her cousin said gently. “Maybe you need to look in another direction.” Lisa cancelled her university meetings and flew to the reservation. In the women’s prayer lodge - the inipi - something shifted. Each woman spoke in turn, and when her cousin introduced her, she said: “This is my cousin. She has been looking for her child, and I am wondering if we can help her.” All the women looked at Lisa, and for the first time she felt: “I am in the right place to find my child.” They prayed for her, “praying her child into life,” as she put it, sending their prayer upward through the opening in the lodge.

That very night, while she was still in South Dakota, the phone call came: a little boy in an orphanage near St. Petersburg needed parents.

Lisa and her husband had requested a girl. But she rushed back to her accommodation, opened the video link, and saw him. And in the very instant of seeing him, she loved him. “It was a soaring, euphoric love,” she said. “I loved in a way I’d never loved before. And [in that moment] I became a parent because that’s how a parent loves. I knew his soul and my soul were meant to be mother and child.”

That night, the night she first saw her son, the Presence returned. Again the question: “If you were pregnant now, would you adopt?” And this time she answered without hesitation: “Absolutely. This is my spiritual child.”

And on that very same night, she and her husband conceived naturally.

It is a story full of mystery, courage, surrender, and the widening of love, almost biblical in its scale and yet showing also how God is at work outside of a Christian framework. And yet it resonates profoundly with the ancient story of Joseph.

Joseph also faces an unexpected and deeply emotional crossroads. He discovers Mary is pregnant, and he knows the child is not his. In his world, this was not only a personal crisis but a public moral scandal. Matthew tells us Joseph was a “righteous man.” But now righteousness becomes something he must wrestle with. According to convention, righteousness meant maintaining purity and honour. And so Joseph resolves to “dismiss her quietly.” It is the least harmful option available, and it protects his reputation. But it will still leave Mary vulnerable for the rest of her life.

Then the angel comes, that same kind of numinous Presence Lisa Miller describes, interrupting Joseph’s fear and social conditioning. In his dream a deeper voice rises within him, a voice from beyond calculation and reputation. It is what Merton called “the spring of love rising from the depths,” the place where divine compassion and human courage meet.

The angel calls Joseph into a new kind of righteousness: not the righteousness of protecting his reputation, but the righteousness of love. Love that, as M. Scott Peck puts it, seeks the growth of oneself or another. And perhaps in this instance it is Joseph who does the most growing.

Suddenly Joseph sees Mary not as a threat but as someone whose well-being has been entrusted to his care. Something in him shifts. His heart opens wider than he imagined possible. He takes Mary into his home. He accepts the whispers, the raised eyebrows, the judgments. And in doing so he he steps into a story larger than his own, a story of God’s unfolding love in the world.

Thomas Merton wrote: “Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.” Joseph does exactly this. He does not demand proof or explanation. He trusts the deeper knowing that has risen within him. He acts for Mary’s good. And in doing so, he becomes part of the birth of Christ into the world.

Opening to love stretches us. It invites us beyond fear, beyond hesitation, beyond the small, self-protective versions of ourselves. And like Joseph, and like Lisa Miller, we rarely open up all at once. Often there is struggle, questions, uncertainty. But somewhere deep inside, the spring of love begins to rise and the way opens up. Something nudges us into a larger story, one in which love is not manufactured, but received. Not forced, but allowed. Not earned, but given.

And this is the invitation of Advent: to open again to the flow of God’s love already rising within us; to trust the quiet promptings, the inner angels, the synchronicities, the springs rising from our depths; to let love bear fruit in our lives.

Lisa Miller opened to love and found herself both adopting her spiritual son and, to her astonishment, falling pregnant as well. Joseph opened to love, and made space for Christ to be born into the world.

This Advent and Christmas season, may we open our hearts too, to love’s depths, love’s courage, love’s surprising invitations, so that Christ may be born again in us and through us, for the healing of our world. Amen.

​ Luke 23:33–43  “Christ the King: The Reign of Love”

I recently came across a story told by the Italian physicist and inventor Federico Faggin. He is famous for creating the world’s first microprocessor, the foundational chip that launched the digital age. A hugely person in the world of computers and technology.

Faggin spent his life convinced that only matter was real, that consciousness was nothing more than electrical activity in the brain. A brilliant engineer, deeply logical, he had no time for spirituality.

But despite achieving everything the world says you need for happiness, he confessed that inside he felt stressed, disconnected, and empty. He said:

“I wasn’t happy… I realized that I was faking being happy because I needed to, because I was running a company. I had to be enthusiastic and everything else, but I was dying inside.”

It was in this inner suffering that his attention turned inward. For the first time, he focused his attention on trying to understand consciousness itself, not to monetise it, not to build a new technology, but simply to understand what was happening in the depths of his own being.

And then during the Christmas holidays of 1990, while staying at his home near Lake Tahoe, he had a transformative experience. He recalls the following:

 “One night I woke up… and all of a sudden I felt an energy was coming out of my chest. But it was love. And it was love that I had never felt before. It was coming from me. How can love come from me?” he asked himself. “It was 10,000 times more powerful than any love I had felt before… unconditional love.”

Alongside the love, he perceived a brilliant, shimmering white light which seemed to explode and than expanded outward and seemed to fill everything around him. He realised:

“I am that… I am the observer and the observed simultaneously… everything comes from this stuff. My body was hot, vibrating, like the cells were resonating… and the emotion, the feeling, was love, joy, and peace. This is home.” he said, “This is me.”

He understood, in that moment, that consciousness is the very substance of everything. And this consciousness is fundamentally love. Not ego, not thought, but this radiant, selfless presence.

“I’m everything,” he said, “but also the observer of everything… a point of view with which one knows itself.”

For a person who had been a committed materialist, someone who only believed that physical matter was truly real, this was a revelation: consciousness was not produced by matter; consciousness itself, and love within it, is the foundation of reality.

Whether we understand his experience as mystical, psychological, or neurological, what strikes me about his story is how it resonates with something Christianity has been saying all along:
That beneath all our brokenness, beneath the anxious ego and the scattered mind, there is a deeper reality, a presence of love, a radiance that as Christians we describe with the word God, who St Paul in Ephesians speaks of as being over all in all and through all. What Jesus described as the Kingdom of God which dwells within us.  The Apostle Paul also used the language of ‘the Christ within’ or the Holy Spirit. Buddhists would describe what Faggin experienced as Buddha Nature.
Now today is the last Sunday of the Christian Liturgical Year. (Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of the New Liturgical Year.  And on the last Sunday of the Christian calender it has become customary to celebrate what some call the Feast of Christ the King. More low church Protestant traditions that follow the lectionary would speak of the theme of the day being “Christ the King” or “The Reign of Christ.” – which today I would like also to call “The Reign of Love,” not a kingdom or a reign imposed from above, but a kingdom arising from within.

And so we turn to the Gospel reading set for today, Luke 23:33-43. It is strange, unsettling, and utterly countercultural that on the last Sunday of the Christian year, when we celebrate Christ the King, the Church gives us not a triumphant king, but a crucified one.

There is no throne, only a cross. No crown, only thorns. No royal decree, only forgiveness offered to those who harm him. The leaders mock him. The soldiers sneer at him. One of the criminals reviles him. But the other criminal, seeing something deeper, says:

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

And Jesus responds with words of grace:  “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Here is the paradox of the Christian faith: Christ reigns as King not through force, but through self-giving love.

His kingdom is the kingdom of the heart, what Paul calls in Romans, the kingdom of righteousness, joy and peace in the holy spirit, the kingdom of consciousness awakened to love.

This reign of Christ is not external. It is inner. As Jesus himself said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Purity of heart is not so much about moral perfection that somehow needs to be achieved with struggle and determination, rather it has everything to do with clarity of consciousness, with returning to our truest, deepest self, where the love of God dwells – The Kingdom of God within.

St Paul says the same thing in different language:  “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2).   The “mind” that Paul speaks of is not mere thinking. It is the open spaciousness of consciousness itself, the inner orientation of the heart.  To renew the mind is to awaken to the divine presence within us, to the “mind of Christ” that longs to express itself in our lives.

This is why Jesus’ kingship is not a political kingdom but a spiritual reality, a reign of love that begins within and yet which radiates outward touching every facet of life. And so it is not disconnected from the outer world.

And this is where the ancient Chinese wisdom of the Tao Te Ching speaks with surprising harmony. The Tao Te Ching often describes the ideal leader, not the domineering one, who leads with outward power, dominance and force, but the one who leads from the strength of a deep inner stillness, a stillness that sounds very much like the Mind, or the Consciousness of Christ.

Lao Tzu says in Chapter 17:

“The best rulers are those whose presence is barely known. When their work is done, the people say, “We did it ourselves.”

This is the reign of Christ.  The divine presence is not noisy, forceful, or dramatic. It guides with strength from within, it empowers, it awakens, it heals in gentle ways.

And in Chapter 49, the Tao Te Ching again speaking of the true leader says:

“To the good, he is good.
To the not-good, he is also good
for his nature is goodness.”

And this is exactly what we see in Jesus on the cross. He embodies goodness towards all,
towards the thief on the cross beside him, toward the soldiers who hurt him, toward the leaders who mock him. Because his nature is love. Even on the cross, Jesus is fully awake to the living experience of Frederico Faggin, to an unconditional love that flows from him and which is his true nature. Because the love of God is who he is, and, mysteriously, the love of God is who we truly are. Which is why, whenever we act in ways that are not loving, not in alighnment with our true nature, we suffer.

Today, on the last Sunday of the Christian year, we are invited to reflect on what it means to proclaim that “Christ is King.” Not king as the world understands kings, but king as the light at the centre of our consciousness, king as the truth of our being, king as the Loving-Goodness from which we came
and to which we return. 

The Reign of Christ as we see in this passage is the reign of forgiveness, compassion, gentleness, courage, truthfulness, humility and spaciousness of heart. And it begins within us. It begins when the false self, the anxious, reactive, grasping ego, begins to dissolve in the presence of Divine love. It begins when we see others not with fear or judgment or even hatred, but when we see others with the eyes of Christ.

It begins when we allow the love that Christ embodied to rise from within us and flow outward into the world.

In closing Federico Faggins experience brought him to the conclude that love is the deepest reality of consciousness. The Gospel passage today reveals that this love is not an abstraction, but a life we see embodied in Jesus.  The question for today is not ‘Is Christ the King?’ But rather, is the radiant, healing love, joy and peace of Christ allowed to reign in and through us?

Amen.

The Temple Within - When the Outer Temples Fall (Luke 21:5-19; Isaiah 12:1-6)

In the Gospel passage set for today, the disciples look at the temple in Jerusalem and are awestruck. It is magnificent, gleaming marble and gold, towering above the city. It stands at the very heart of their faith, the meeting place between heaven and earth, the visible dwelling of God among the people.

And so when Jesus says, “The days will come when not one stone will be left upon another,” it is shocking, almost unthinkable. How could something so sacred, so enduring, ever be destroyed?

Yet Jesus is not simply speaking about a building. He is pointing to a deeper spiritual truth, one that continues to speak powerfully to us today.

Firstly the passage invites us to reflect on moments when our temples fall

Each of us, in our own way, has built “temples”, things we depend on for meaning and stability: our routines, our beliefs, our communities, even our self-image. And life, sooner or later, has a way of shaking these foundations: a job is lost, a relationship ends, a long-held belief no longer fits, something we thought would last forever begins to crumble.

When that happens, it can feel like the world itself is falling apart. But Jesus’ words invite us to see beyond the surface, to recognise that even in loss, something deeper is being revealed. For when the outer temple falls, the inner temple begins to be seen.

And so secondly the passage today points us towards the temple not made by hands

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus gradually shifts the idea of where God is found. No longer in stone buildings or sacred geography, but in the human heart, in love, in compassion, in awakened awareness to the Divine Presence all around us and within. He reveals what the mystics of every tradition have known: that the true temple of God is within.

St Paul would later write in 1 Cor 3:16, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” And in the Isaiah passage set for today the prophet proclaims:  “Great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.” (12:6).  The Holy One is not distant or confined. The Holy One is in our midst, and indeed, within our very being.

Thirdly, our Old Testament passage today from Isaiah 12 invites us to draw from the wells of salvation as he writes "With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation."

It’s an image of drawing life from a deep, hidden source, a reminder that the divine presence is not something we have to reach for in the sky, but something that wells up quietly within us. Even when the surface of life feels dry or barren, there is a spring beneath it all, the living water of Spirit that never runs dry.

And we draw from that well through stillness, through gratitude, through acts of kindness and compassion. We draw from it whenever we turn our attention inward and recognise that the Holy One is already here.

Fourthly, getting back to the Gospel passage, Jesus speaks of endurance. 

After speaking of trials to come, of turmoil, persecution, betrayal, and fear, he says, “ By your endurance you will gain your souls.” What exactly is he on about?

These are not easy words, but they carry a deep wisdom. “Endurance” here doesn’t have to mean grim survival – as we would normally understand it. In the context of the spiritual journey it means staying rooted in that inner temple, holding to the awareness of God’s indwelling presence, even when everything outside seems unstable.

To “gain your soul” is to awaken to that unshakable centre, the divine ground within you that no storm can touch.

Lastly, what does it mean to live from that inner temple?

When we live from the awareness of the inner Temple, something changes within. When we take time to be silent and still, and touch the living water within, we become less fearful, less reactive. We find a deeper peace that doesn’t depend on circumstances.  We begin to see the sacred everywhere, in the stranger, in the natural world, even in the moments of uncertainty themselves.

And this is the great paradox: when the outer temple falls, the inner temple begins to shine.
When we stop searching for God in things that pass away, we discover the Presence that never leaves us.

And so, in conclusion, if your life feels unsteady right now, if the “stones” of your world seem to be shifting, remember Jesus’ words not as a warning, but as an invitation.

Let what is passing fall away, and turn toward what abides, to what remains. Listen for that quiet voice within, what Isaiah refers to as the Holy One in your midst. Draw deeply from the wells of salvation, from the living water that flows within you and all things.  For the true temple was never made of stone. It is made of Spirit. And it is already here, alive, radiant, and dwelling within you. Amen. 

​Remembrance Sunday - All are Alive to God (Luke 20:27–38)

“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all are alive.”

On this Remembrance Sunday, we pause to remember the countless men and women who laid down their lives in times of war, those who endured unimaginable suffering, and those whose futures were lost so that others might live in peace.  We remember, too, those who continue to serve in places of conflict today, and we pray for the day when war shall be no more.

But today’s Gospel reading might, at first, seem far removed from the solemness of this occasion.
In Luke 20, Jesus is confronted by the Sadducees, a first century Jewish Religious a group that denied the resurrection. They pose a tricky, almost mocking question about a woman who, under ancient law, marries seven brothers in succession, each of whom dies. “In the resurrection,” they ask, “whose wife will she be?”

It’s not really a question about marriage at all. It’s a question about whether life continues beyond the grave. It’s an invitation to hope.  And that’s what makes it deeply fitting for today.

We begin firstly by looking at the question beneath the question: 

In the passage, the Sadducees were asking what many people still ask today: Is there really life after death?  After the horrors of war, the trenches, the concentration camps, the bombings—can we still believe that there is something beyond? Is it possible that death does not in fact have the final word?

It is precisely here that Jesus gives one of his most profound answers. He says, “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those in the age to come can no longer die, for they are like angels … for they are children of God, being children of the resurrection.”

And then he adds these words that cut through centuries of doubt:  “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

What does Jesus mean?  It seems that Jesus is suggesting is that that all life is held in God. even those we think of as gone are, in some mysterious way, alive in God’s presence.

When Moses stood before the burning bush, God identified himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Jesus draws a simple but astonishing conclusion: If God is their God, and if God’s relationship with them continues, then they are not gone, they live still, in God.

This is what gives meaning to our remembering today. We do not remember the dead merely as figures of the past. We remember them as souls still alive in the heart of God today, still part of the great communion of life that binds heaven and earth together.

This insight resonates with what we hear today from people who have had near-death experiences, accounts that invite us to rethink what it means to die. One of the most remarkable of these is the case of Pam Reynolds, who underwent a rare brain operation in which her body was cooled and her brain activity completely stopped. During the procedure her eyes were taped shut so that she couldn’t see with her eyes or even open them, and loud lawn-mower type noise was being played into her ears to monitor if she was showing any brain activity, to make sure that she was in fact brain dead during the procedure.  And despite all of these things, during that time, when she was for all practical purposes clinically dead, Pam later reported floating above her body, seeing the surgeons at work, and accurately describing surgical instruments and conversations that took place while she had no measurable brain function and while her eyes were taped shut.  And despite the loud noise in her ears that should have made physical hearing impossible to her, especially because there was no brain activity, she even remembered the song playing in the operating theatre (Hotel California). Her experience startled even the medical team and continues to be studied as powerful evidence that consciousness may continue beyond the body.

Stories like these (and there are many), though each must be approached with humility and discernment, nevertheless suggest that awareness and life extend beyond the body. They hint, as Jesus did, that God is indeed “the God of the living”, that consciousness is not extinguished at death, but continues in another form, another dimension of divine life.

Even St Paul seems to have come to this realisation more fully over time. In his early letters, Paul spoke of those who had died as “asleep” until the day of resurrection. But in his later writings, such as in Philippians, his tone changes: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.”  It is as though Paul had glimpsed a deeper truth: that beyond the veil of this life, there is not unconscious waiting, but immediate communion with the Divine Presence. 

Thirdly in light of this verse from Jesus, it would suggest that to remember is more than to recall names and dates from the past it is in fact an act of faith.  When we stand in silence on a day like today, we are standing in a sense between two worlds, between the seen and the unseen.

In that silence, we hold before God not only the tragedy of war, but also the mystery of love that endures beyond death, and the deep act of faith that in some mysterious way, those who we remember live on, not just in our memories, but in the wider life of God. 

As the poet Laurence Binyon wrote:

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.”

The power of those words lies not in the sadness they express, but in the faith they imply, that those who gave their lives are still known, still cherished, still alive to and in God.

Fourthly this passage invites us to  Live in the Light of Resurrection -

Jesus’ words in Luke 20 invite us not only to believe in life after death at some point in the future, but to live as people of resurrection here and now. If God is the God of the living, then life itself is sacred, all of life. We cannot honour the dead by perpetuating the hatreds that caused their deaths. We honour them by committing ourselves to peace, to working courageously, and counter to our natural inclinations, to breaking the cycles of vengeance and violence that still ensnare the world.

It is sometimes said that to err is human, to forgive is divine. I think it could also be said: to wish for revenge is human, to work for peace is divine. In the words of St Paul, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” And it is precisely because we believe that our life in God transcends this world that we are strengthened to do so, just as it was precisely because Jesus knew that his life had come from God and that he would be returning to God that he could give his life away in love for the world. 

The resurrection faith that Jesus speaks of is not an escape from the world’s suffering, it is the power to transform it.  It is the assurance that love is stronger than death, and that even amid war’s darkest shadows, the light of God is not extinguished.

And so on this Remembrance Sunday, may therefore remember not only the lives lost, but the hope that sustaines us. May we remember that even in the ruins of the world, faith declares: He is not the God of the dead, but of the living for all are alive to God.

​Quantum Communion  (Luke 19:1–10)

Over the past two weeks we have been exploring how science and faith might speak to one another, and whether science might even offer clues that point us toward a Greater Mind or Deeper Intelligence at the heart of the universe — what we call God.

Today as we come to the table of Holy Communion, I’d like to explore how quantum physics, can perhaps  help us glimpse something of what communion means. Might it be that this ancient Christian meal symbolises not only our faith in Jesus, but also a deep truth about the very fabric of reality?

But first, at the heart of today’s Gospel reading is a meal, one could even call it a moment of communion. Zacchaeus begins the story alone. He is perched in a tree, cut off from his community. But by the end of the story, he is sitting at a table with Jesus, sharing bread and wine, friendship and laughter and discovering a new sense of connection and belonging.

In a sense, the story of Zacchaeus is a picture of what Holy Communion is all about, the movement from separation into relationship, from fragmentation into wholeness from isolation into communion. 

And perhaps, if we listen closely, science itself may have something to say about this deep pattern of connection that Communion points us toward.

As we explored in last weeks sermon, for many centuries, we have lived under the spell of a materialist world-view, one that goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus. He imagined that the universe was made of tiny, solid atoms moving in empty space. In this worldview, everything real must be physical, measurable, tangible, quantifiable.

From that materialist perspective, consciousness, thought, and love are seen as mere by-products of the brain, beautiful illusions perhaps, but illusions nonetheless. A bit like exhaust fumes from a car. That’s how many scientists view human thought and consciousness. In this view, we are seen as separate individuals bumping into each other in a vast, impersonal universe.

But over the past hundred years, quantum physics has opened a window onto a world that looks very different, a world not of separation, but of mysterious interconnection.  And this is perhaps  illustrated most clearly in what Einstein called “Spooky Action at a Distance”.

In one famous experiment, physicists took two particles that had once interacted and then separated them by vast distances, one to London and the other to Cape Town. What they discovered is that when they changed the spin of the particle in London, the other particle in Cape Town instantly changed as well. Instantly. As though no space or time stood between them.

Einstein himself found this phenomenon so unsettling that he called it “spooky action at a distance.” Today scientists call it by the more respectable name, quantum entanglement. In this experiment, (which has been repeated over many times), it is as if these two particles remain mysteriously connected in a kind of quantum communion with one another, joined by an invisible thread that distance cannot break.

Now, we may never fully understand how quantum entanglement works at the subatomic level, but this so-called ‘spooky action at a distance’ seems to echo something that many people have felt in their own lives.

Think of a mother who suddenly senses that something is wrong with her child, and rushes out of the house at the exact moment that child is in danger. Wendy has been reading a book where true stories like this are shared. Or think of the experience that many people have had of  thinking of a friend we haven’t spoken to in years, and just then, suddenly, the phone rings, and it’s them. I have previously told the story of my aunt who was living in South Africa and my cousin who was pregnant living in the UK.  At the moment my cousin went into labour, my aunt knew it,  because she could feel it her own body.  When she got the message by phone or text, she already knew. 

Science may hesitate to explain such things, but many would recognise them as real, some from their own experience. They remind us that we are connected in ways that go beyond what we can measure, connected even at the level of consciousness.

Perhaps these experiences point to the same deep truth that quantum entanglement points toward — that the universe is, at its core, deeply interconnected, and relational at hidden levels that we know very little about.

In addition to the phenomenon of Quantum Entanglement, quantum physicists have also discovered that beneath all the particles, beneath every atom and molecule, lies a vast ocean or field of energy which they call the quantum field. And they suggest that all of reality, everything seen and unseen arises from this quantum field, stars and planets, trees and oceans, your body and mine.

Imagine for a moment that you are standing by a still pond. You toss a pebble into the pond, and the ripples move across the surface. The quantum field is something like that, an invisible sea of being, vibrating with energy and potential. Each of us is like a ripple on that great ocean of being or sea of energy that quantum physicists call the quantum field. Touch one part of the pond, and the whole surface feels it. Some people speak of the Butterfly Effect, the idea that even the smallest action, like a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world, can set in motion a chain of events that eventually affects something on the other side of the world.

And so at the deepest level of reality, quantum physics suggests that there is only one field, one living fabric of energy, one radiant web of life, one interconnected reality – a great Quantum Communion of being at the very heart of Reality, which is the foundation of existence itself. 

This is echoed in our own scriptures, as the Apostle Paul said long ago,

“In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)

And again, in using the language of communion, Paul once wrote, “Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in the one loaf.” 1 Corinthians 10:17 

Today we might express that mystery in a different language: Though we are many, we are one body, because at the deepest level we all arise from and share in the one great field of energy and being — what physicists call the quantum field.

And so, quantum physics and faith seem in fact to sing a similar song, that all things are interconnected; all of life participates in one communion. So what, then, is Holy Communion?

Is it perhaps, that when Jesus broke bread and poured wine at the Last Supper, he was not creating a new reality, he was revealing what has always been true. Is it possible that Communion is a window into the deeper pattern of reality: that nothing exists in isolation, that everything is held together in love?

When we share bread and wine, we practice seeing the world as it really is — a shimmering web of divine relationship. We train our souls to move from the illusion of separateness to the awareness of our deep connectedness in God and the quantum field of life.

What all of this suggests is that to live out of communion is to live out of harmony with the truth of things. By contrast, to live in communion is to live in tune with the divine field — the great sea of being in which all life is one.

And that perhaps brings us back to the story of Zacchaeus.

He begins the story alienated, not only from his neighbours, but from his own soul. As a tax collector collaborating with the occupying power, he is wealthy but despised. And deep down, he knows he is disconnected.  And so he climbs a tree, a symbol, perhaps, of his isolation, to see if he can catch a glimpse of something more. Maybe, without realising it, he is longing for communion.

Then Jesus stops beneath the tree, looks up, and says, “Zacchaeus, come down. I must stay at your house today.”  There is no demand for repentance, no moral lecture, only the offer of friendship, of communion. And it is that experience of connection that transforms him.

Over a meal, at a shared table, Zacchaeus’s heart  opens up. He begins to see that life is not about hoarding or isolating, but about sharing and belonging. And in response he gives away what he has taken; Through restitution he restores that which he has broken.  The web of connection that had been torn begins to mend.

And Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house.”  Salvation in this passage is nothing other than restored communion: communion with God, with neighbour, and with his own truest self.

And so when we gather around the communion table, we are invited into that same movement — from isolation to connection, from fragmentation to wholeness.

At communion, we remember that we are not separate particles drifting through empty space, but waves in one vast ocean of divine love. Here, bread and wine become signs of a deeper reality — that in Christ, all things hold together.

To share this meal is to say yes to the truth that runs through all creation:
that we we are deeply connected at the level of the quantum field.  Or as St Paul says, we live, move, and have our being in God; that though we are many, we are one body because we all share in one deeper reality; that ultimately, love is the energy that binds the universe together.

So come — not because you must, but because you are invited.
Come down from the tree of isolation.
Come to the table of communion.

And may we, like Zacchaeus, discover that in sharing bread and love,
we find ourselves caught up again in the great web of divine relationship --
the mystery of quantum communion --
and the oneness of all things in Christ,
in whom all things live, move, and have their being.