Worship - 23 August 2026

Summary Of This Week's Theme

Fifteen years ago, Kate and I left the English town where my sister lives and took the train towards Saint Jean Pied de Port, at the foot of the Pyrenees, to begin our 33-day walk along the Camino de Santiago.

If you had asked me then what I was doing, I might have said that I was going to walk and see what happened. At each stage of the Camino, I would probably have given you a different answer, as I learned more about pilgrimage and about myself as a pilgrim. I learned patience, acceptance and respect; I learned something about being touched deeply within my heart. I’m still learning.

That is one of the things about pilgrimage: you can never quite know where it will take you. The weather changes, companions appear and disappear, and even grapes offered by a passing farmer may contain unexpected lessons. People who walk the Camino more than once say that each journey is different. The path may be the same, but we are not.

Life seems to be like that. Our relationship with Christ is like that too. Every time we stop and look afresh, we see something different. Which brings us to Jesus’ question: ‘Who do you say that I am?’

It is a question about Jesus, but it inevitably becomes a question about us. To encounter Christ is to discover that our own identity cannot remain unchanged. We are called not simply to conform to the world, but to be transformed.

And the Apostle Paul reminds us that we do not make that journey alone. We are members of the body of Christ, dependent upon one another, with different gifts but equal value. The Christian life is not a contest of self-sufficiency. We need one another. Even accepting another person’s kindness can be an act of humility, because refusing help can deny someone else the opportunity to give.

In the food bank which our church in Canada helped establish, it was often impossible to tell who were the volunteers and who were the recipients. Those receiving help were often eager to contribute something themselves, not because they had to, but because contributing gave them dignity and value.

So perhaps one answer to Jesus’ question is: Jesus is the whole body of Christ, all of us together.

Peter Hawkins, a former professor at Yale Divinity School, once asked, in the most unlikely circumstances, ‘Who is Jesus Christ?’ The strange answer he received was: ‘He is the lens in the dark box.’ He came to understand Christ as the lens through which the unimaginable God becomes imaginable: the opening through which divine light enters our darkness.

For me, Christ is the inspiration, the journey and the destination of pilgrimage. That was true of the journey Kate and I began fifteen years ago, although I could not have said it then.

And it is true of the much longer pilgrimage on which I am still wandering. You are my companions on this particular stage of the journey. And through our relationships with one another, you are also part of the answer to the question: Who is Jesus Christ?