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This is a translation of the homily for the Paschal Vigil in the Church of Norway. The Homily was held in Husnes Church in Kvinnherad, Norway, Saturday 4th April, 2026. The readings are as follows: Genesis 1:1-5; 1:26-2,3; Exodus 14:1-4.10-31; 15,20-21; Romans 6:3-11; and Mark 16:1-8. As usual, unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.

“This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.”1 This is what we have sung today in Exsultet, the Paschal Proclamation. For the Easter night or the Paschal night is about victory. Through the resurrection of Christ we receive life. As St. Paul puts it, in 2 Timothy 1:9-10:

[God] saved us and called us with a holy calling, not in virtue of our works but in virtue of his own purpose and the grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus ages ago, and now has manifested through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

This is the gospel. But the word “gospel” was not invented by Christians. Yes, for us it has become “Christianese,” but for those who lived in the historical context of Jesus’s ministry, including St. Timothy, this was a central and universal political term. The word, which means “good news,” was used by kings, princes, and emperors to, amongst other things, mark their ascension. After the “chaos” which erupted when the previous ruled died or was overthrown (or both), the new ruler came to introduce peace and stability. At least that was the rhetoric. But for most people things remained the same.

But there is something special about Jesus’s gospel, which separates Him from other so-called kings and emperors. He, who claimed to be Christ, the Messiah, the representative of Israel and the king of the Jews, did not simply act like other so-called “Messiahs” or “kings” who saw themselves either as ruthless rulers or liberators from political oppression alone, be it Roman, Jewish, or otherwise. No, He did claim to be the Lord of lords, He did claim to be God, but He did not show Himself through force or violence, even though He has all authority in heaven and on earth. He showed Himself through love and humility. And paradoxically, this meant that He, and His followers, became a threat.

For the lordship of Christ relativises the lordship of secular kings, princes, and emperors. This was so threatening that Herod the Great ordered the killing of all male children in Bethlehem up to two years old just to get rid of Jesus, and his grandson, Herod Agrippa, killed James, the brother of Jesus, imprisoned Peter, and acted harshly against the early Christians, precisely because they preached the gospel of Christ, the lordship of Christ. They did not let themselves be pushed around, and they did not care about political threats. Because they had their eyes fixed on Jesus, on God, on that which is behind everything. As St. Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 4:7-10.16-18:

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. … So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

When we talk about the gospel of Jesus, we say, therefore, that it is Christ who is Lord, not Herod, not Caesar, not Napoleon, nor Haakon, Olav, or Harald. And not just king in Israel, in the Roman Empire, France, or Norway, but Lord and King of the universe, the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords. And this Lord died for us and rose again from the dead for us. That is the Paschal gospel message, that Christ has risen, and that this crucified and resurrected Saviour is Lord and King.

For when God became man, he assumed to Himself all that is ours, including our sin and guilt, and He gave us all that is His, including righteousness, life, and love. And He shares this with us through His gifts, especially in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

Christ overcame Adam’s sin and turned it around. Where Adam was disobedient, Christ was obedient. He “became obedient unto death, even death on a cross,” as it says in Philippians 2:8. And God responded by raising Christ from the dead to life, as we read in the next verse: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.” And through baptism and in faith, we share in this. As St. Paul has told us today, we are baptised into Jesus: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). So we must be in Christ. Because through him we can be renewed and stand before God, in thanksgiving, in worship, in praise.

We have died with Christ in baptism, we have had our sins washed away, and we have been raised from the waters of baptism to new life.

This is the night when Christ lifted man up to God. This is the night when He broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. This is the night when we are delivered from death and the harsh tyranny. For Christ is our Passover lamb and He gives Himself to us in bread and wine.

That is what Jesus did for you, both on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and at Easter. So go to communion. For there we will, in thanksgiving and worship, receive the holy body and precious blood of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, which He gave as atonement for all our sins. By that He can strengthen us and sustain us in a true faith, to eternal life.

Our thanks and our praise will never reach what God has done for us, but we must still continue, in the hope that death is not the end, that if we remain in Christ, we will one day be resurrected to a new heaven and a new earth. That is the gospel, that is good news.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.

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This Sunday I have had time off but I decided to still write some reflections. So this is a homily for what we call “Romjulssøndag” (year I) in the Church of Norway. Romjul (lit. “space Christmas”) refers to the days of Christmas between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. In the Church of England the day is usually called the first Sunday of Christmas. The readings are as follows: The readings are as follows: Psalm 1; 1 Timothy 3:16; and Matthew 2:13-15. Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.

Collect of the day (translated by yours truly)

Let us Pray:

Gracious God, you allowed your Son to become a vulnerable human being. We pray: Comfort us like a loving mother who cares for her own. Protect all who are fleeing and let us see the freedom and salvation in Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one true God, world without end. Amen.

In today’s gospel reading we read about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph who had to flee to Egypt, so that Jesus would not be killed, but also because one of the prophecies from the Old Testament, from the prophet Hosea, would be fulfilled: “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” And from St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy we read the very centre of our faith, what St. Paul calls “he mystery of our religion” or more correctly, “the mystery of godliness,” that Jesus was “manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.” Here we see an early creed. Here we see that the core of our faith is proclaimed; that God became man in Jesus Christ. This is the core not only of the gospel for Christmas, but of the gospel as such. We proclaim first and foremost a person; Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Lord, and not everything that we do or can do.

But today I would like to address the first reading, namely Psalm 1. It is often seen as a kind of heading for, or an introduction to, the Psalms of the Old Testament, and it sets the tone for the right relationship with God. The Psalm begins like this, after the version we read in the Church of Norway (vv.1-3):1

Blessed is the one who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water. It yields its fruit in season and its leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

In the Psalm we find the ideal God has set for us. We are not to follow the advice of the wicked, nor take the path that sinners tread, nor sit in the company of mockers, but to delight in the law of the Lord, and to meditate on it day and night. We are to be like a tree planted by streams of water, at tree that yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. The flowing stream is God, and our calling is to stay close to Him. In short, we can say that our calling, as creatures, is to follow the will of the Creator. He has created, and continues to create and uphold, the heavens and the earth, everything visible and invisible. He is “the Creator of heaven and earth,” as it says in the Creed. And God, the Bible says, is love, as the apostle John says in 1 John 4:7-8: “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.”

This is our calling, this is what we as creatures owe the Creator, and our fellow creatures. But we have not lived up to this. At least I know that I have not lived up to this. Yes, there is a lot of good out there in the world: new and old parents raising their children, young people helping the elderly, people fighting for the poor and oppressed, people who care. But there is also a lot of evil: people who kill, people who bully, people who start wars, people who speak of strangers and refugees with hatred. History has shown us that the world is not only good, and that ordinary people can do great harm. We all have the potential within us for great things, both good things and bad things, and none of us are innocent. I know at least that I am not innocent. And that is why I am struck by what we read further in the Psalm, about the lawless or wicked, who are seen in contrast to the blessed:

The wicked are not so. They are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, no sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Before God we have nothing. The Psalm points out the ideal, and points to the judgment on those who do not live up to this. They will be lost. The Greek word for sin is hamartía, and it means “to miss the mark.” It was a word from archery, and it was a sin to miss. To be lost does not mean that God or the devil or anyone else will torture you forever. To be lost means to be lost, to refuse to live in communion with God, with the Creator. But what can we do then? How can we hit the mark?

The solution is actually found in the Psalm itself. It is often interpreted primarily as an ethical text, a text that tells us something about what we should be and what we should do. This is true, but it is actually a secondary reading of the Psalm. As we see from the translation we use in the Church, it says: “Blessed is the one who do not follow the advice of the wicked.” But see what it says in the RSV: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked...” Here we see the word “man.” We find this in the Hebrew text, but with an important difference. In Hebrew it says ashrê hāish. And the difference lies in the fact that the Hebrew text is in the definite form. In Hebrew ha (the prefix in hāish) is a definite article, much like the in English. It does not say “blessed is the one” or “blessed is a man” (which can be interpreted both definite and indefinite), but “blessed is the man” in the definite form. But what does this tell us? It tells us that this Psalm is not primarily about us, or about people in general, but about a specific individual, a specific man. It is not about men in general being better, but about the One man who is the only person who has actually lived up to this. This man is the Messiah, Jesus Christ. He is the man. The Psalm is only secondarily about us, as his followers, regardless of whether we are men or women. The Psalm, then, becomes not just a picture of the general person who follows God’s will, and who has the right relationship with God, but a description of the only one who has truly lived that life to the fullest. When it says “blessed is the man,” it points to Jesus as the true man, as the true human being. He is not only human by nature, but He lives as a human being the way we are called to live. He is our representative before God, as He lives the life we ​​are called to, in obedience to God. And He sacrificed Himself for us. He let His life become a sacrifice for us, for our sins. He gave God the sacrifice that we could not make. He lived life as the perfect man, and as our representative, in our place. Jesus lived as a man, and lived in the obedience to which we are called. He fulfilled God’s law. For His sacrifice was that He gave himself, in obedience. The point was not death in itself, or that God punished Jesus for our sins, but that Jesus gave the right sacrifice.

He was obedient even unto death and on into eternity. He gave God the worship and thanksgiving that we are all called to give. He was with the wicked, but He did not follow their advice. He walked with sinners, but He did not take their path. He sat with mockers, but He was not part of their company. His delight was, and is, in the law of the Lord, and on it He meditates day and night. As the Psalm says: “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.”

The Psalm is thus primarily about Jesus, the Messiah (about “the man”), and secondarily about us, who share in Him through faith and through the Holy Spirit. And one is connected with the other. We cannot live up to this by our own strength. Nevertheless, we are called to a holy life. We are still called to be blessed; not to follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the company of mockers, but to have our delight in the law of the Lord and to meditate on it day and night.

This life is our calling, and we can be allowed to live it, albeit imperfectly in this life, if we are “in Christ,” if we are “conformed to [His] image” (Romans 8:29). The point of the Psalm is not that we can live up to this on our own, and that our relationship with God is merely a matter of ethics and morality. No, it is about Jesus, about the Messiah, and about the fact that we can only receive this by the grace of God. We cannot achieve this by our own strength. It is all grace. We can only be blessed if we accept this as a gift, completely free, and have fellowship with God in Christ.

The Psalm, therefore, is not first moralistic, but Christological. Christology is the study of Jesus, of Christ. The Psalm, together with the rest of the testimony in Scripture, points to the one who lived up to this, and who thereby gave us salvation, but also gave us the opportunity to live the new life, by God’s grace.

And we can receive this in God’s Word but also in the Eucharist. There you can step forward to receive the gift, completely free. There God meets you in something you can touch and feel, something you can taste, something you can eat, something you can drink. Go forward and receive.

Our salvation lies in Christ alone, and what He has done for us. Without Him we are lost, and it is He we must proclaim. So let us do it. Let us rise up and confess our faith.

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This is a translation of the homily for Judgment Sunday and Christ the King Day (year III), the last Sunday of Trinity, in Husnes Church, Kvinnherad, Norway, Sunday 23rd November, 2025.1 This day was also the date of my installation as the new vicar of Husnes and Holmedal parish in Kvinnherad, Norway. The readings are as follows: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; 1 Corinthians 15:22-28; and John 9:39-41. Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.

Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):

Let us Pray:

Holy God, you dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit. We pray: Make us awake so that we may recognise you again in all who suffer. Look upon us in mercy on the Day of Judgment, that we may enter into the feast and joy of your kingdom, through our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end. Amen.

I do not know what your relationship is to the Chronicles of Narnia. There, we meet the lion Aslan, who is a Jesus figure. And in the first book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children learn that he is a lion before they meet him. They ask if he is harmless, but then they are told that no, he is not harmless, but he is good and just. And later in the book, towards the end, it says that he is not a tame lion, he is wild.2 And this runs like a common thread throughout the book series. He is the rightful king – he who is good and just, and who does not exploit others. But being good, being just does not mean that you look between your fingers when evil continues. No, it means taking action against what is evil. And here we see that he is a Christ figure, because Christ is the true king and the true judge. And that is what we focus on today, on the last day of the church year.

The day has two names: Judgment Sunday and Christ the King Day. And these aspects belong together. Jesus is the King, the one who rules, but because He is the King, he is also the Judge, the one who judges. And then it is fitting that we are gathered in a church. The vast majority of churches in Norway, such as this one, have a basilica shape. It is the classic Western church shape. It is rectangular, where you focus forward towards the altar. But the Christians borrowed this shape from the Romans. Because the emperor sat in a basilica. The word dervives from the Greek words basilikē, meaning “royal,” and basileús, meaning “king.” So today we are gathered together in Christ’s throne room, where the throne has been replaced by the altar, because Jesus is first and foremost the King who comes with gifts and reconciliation. But He is also the heavenly king who brings judgment, as he says in today’s Gospel reading: “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” (John 9:39). This is about those who see injustice happening, but who do nothing, should be judged. And it is about those who see, or rather those who think they see, because they are high and exalted by the world’s standard, they will be blind, they will be judged, while those who do not see, i.e. those who recognise that they do not reach up, they will be seen, they will be lifted up. And then we have to try to find out who we are.

I believe that we are all guilty in one way or another, not just those who commit wrongdoing, but also those of us who silently allow it to happen. As the British philosopher John Stuart Mill put it, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”3 Jesus judges because we have offended him, but it is just as much about the fact that we have offended creation and our fellow creatures, and that we therefore do not live up to the ideal as human beings created in the image of God. And when we do not, Jesus reminds us that He has come to judge this world. It sounds awful. And it is awful. We sang about this a few weeks ago when we performed Mozart’s Requiem in Kvinnherad Church in Rosendal. There we sang Dies irae, which means “the Day of Wrath.” We can actually find a hymn by that name in our Church of Norway hymnal, Vreidedagen, han skal renna, roughly translated as “the Day of Wrath is coming” (or “will come”).4 And the message of the hymn is challenging. For it is about the judgment of a world, of a people, of individuals who have sinned against God, who have chosen genocide, war, rape and theft, who have treated other people as rubbish, who have stood face to face with God and said: “I will serve myself, I will not serve you or my fellow human beings.” Yes, this world responded to God’s love and grace by nailing Him to a cross. Such a world is condemned.

But the point is not to scare. The point is that God is good and just. We should not go around doubting that we are saved. No, the point is to make ourselves aware that God is just, that Jesus is just, and that He will come back one day to settle the score. And then we must be prepared. He who mistreats others will receive judgment. And then it is important that we remember to turn to God and accept His admonition. We must not harden our hearts.5

The Christian life is about proclaiming that Jesus is the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords, that He is God. But it is also about living out that faith, and to accept its consequences. Yes, Jesus is good, but being good does not mean that you turn a blind eye when evil happens. No, it is the opposite. Being good is settling accounts with evil. Jesus is the good judge, the righteous judge. But in His judgment we also find grace, because Jesus has also taken the judgment upon Himself, so that in faith in him we are set free, as St. Paul emphasises in Romans 8. He says that for those who are in Christ there is no condemnation because Christ took upon Himself all that is human, including sin, and held judgment over it in Himself. For, as Paul has told us today: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). But this happens precisely through settlement and judgment. For Jesus will destroy death, judge death. And whenHhe has done that, says St. Paul, all things will be right with God and God will be all in all. God is the one who makes all things new, through His judgment, and we share in that through baptism and faith.

In the Christian faith, we maintain that the great goal is to become one with God, that we become His children. And this happens by Jesus restoring what was lost, but this restoration happens precisely through judgment, that we actually die from our sins and are raised again to new life. This happened in baptism. In baptism, we are confirmed as born into a fallen, imperfect and perishable world where death reigns. Therefore, it is said that we are baptised into Jesus’s death. The old man, the old Adam, dies, so that we will no longer be slaves to the law or sin. Therefore, baptism involves both judgment and grace. For even though we are born into our fallen world, we became children of God in baptism, born again by the Holy Spirit. As St. Paul says in Romans 6, we are baptised into the death of Jesus, so that we are to be counted as dead to sin, but also into the resurrection of Jesus, so that we will be alive to God in Jesus.

Jesus died for our sins, He took on our guilt and judgment, He made amends for us. And every time we, through the covenant of baptism, go to communion, we are reminded of this. There, in bread and wine, in God’s gifts, given to us from creation, but also through the work of human hands, we find salvation and blessing. There we find grace, because Jesus, who hung on the cross, has lifted the world up to God, reconciled it, and because He gives us this in bread and wine. He is the sacrificial lamb of God, who takes away all the sins of the world. He comes with mercy and peace. The Eucharistic meal is not for those who think they are perfect. No, it is for those who know they are not, but who want to belong to Jesus. It is the meal we go to in order to share in Christ’s righteousness. For Christ gives Himself for us, for salvation, peace and blessedness.

So remember this today, that even though Jesus comes as a judge, it is precisely there, in the judgment, that He also comes with grace. He restores what was lost, for He has atoned for our sins. As we will sing in the hymn now after the sermon, all creation will be liberated and perfected in Him and we will see Him as He is.6 We will see that through baptism and faith we possess Jesus’s forgiveness and we share in His work of atonement and reconciliation. For those who are in Jesus there is no condemnation. For through faith He acquits us from judgment, so that God may be all in all.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.

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This is a translation of the homily for the Fourteenth Sunday of Trinity (year III), in Holmedal Church, Kvinnherad, Norway, Sunday 14th August, 2025. The readings are as follows: Jeremiah 9:23-24; Philippians 3:7-14; and Matthew 19:27-30. Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.

Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):

Let us Pray:

God of Life, Lord of the Church, you have called us to be workers in your vineyard We pray: Build your Church and strengthen us in our service, so that we work for you and for our neighbour with joy, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end. Amen.

In today’s Gospel, paradox is at the center. We see a conversation between Jesus and St. Peter, who represents the disciples. This comes in the wake of Jesus’ encounter with a rich young man, who asked Jesus: “Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” Jesus answered: “Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” And the commandments in question were the ones found in the Decalogue. The man answered: “All these I have observed; what do I still lack?” Jesus said: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” The evangelist then concludes his retelling of the encounter with these words: “When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.”

This man is often portrayed as the “villain,” but this was a man who had done pretty much everything he was supposed to do. He had been obedient to his parents, he had been a faithful husband, he had not been a violent man, he had not stolen or borne false witness, at least if we are to take his word for it. This was, by all accounts, a respectable man. A man who would certainly not have hesitated to trust. But he would not sell everything he owned, even if Jesus asked him to. And that is why he is the villain, right? Well, is he? Yes, but he is also you and me, he is all of us. We, who live in one of the richest countries in the world. After the conversation with the rich young man, Jesus turns to the disciples and says: “Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” The disciples then asked: “Who then can be saved?” Yes, that is an important question. For what is the gospel for the rich man? What is the gospel for us today, in one of the richest countries in the world? It is this simple sentence that Jesus gave in response to the disciples: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

But then we come to today’s gospel, where St. Peter speaks up: “Behold, we have left everything and followed you. What then shall we have?” Jesus then brings the promises we have heard about in today’s gospel. He presents everything that these people will be able to share in when they are lifted up. “But,” says Jesus, “many that are first will be last, and the last first.” That is the paradox here. Yes, those who have actually left everything and followed Jesus will receive their reward. One will not lose out by sacrificing everything for Jesus. And this is a current reality. Around the world, many Christians truly suffer for Christ. They are persecuted. They are chased and killed. But they endure. What about them? What will they receive? They “will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.” But this is not about self-assertion. It is about them, like Jesus, walking the way of the cross, that they paradoxically win by losing. For, as Jesus says: “many that are first will be last, and the last first.”

This began in baptism. There, we became partakers of Christ precisely by dying to evil and rising again with Christ to new life. Our goal, our perfection, is to receive every blessing from God and become one with Him. In Romans 6:3 St. Paul says that “all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death.” But there we find, paradoxically, life, as St. Paul continues in v. 4: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Through baptism we are made partakers of Christ’s death, so that all the evil in us is destroyed once and for all and given to Christ, and we are made partakers of Christ’s resurrection and receive a new life, an abundant life, but first and foremost Christ’s life, as St. Paul says in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

And this is a good fit today, because today Christians all over the world celebrate the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. It is always celebrated on the 14th of September or the nearest Sunday, and today is probably the closest we can get to a Sunday. The day is celebrated in both the East and the West, and the date was chosen because it is the day on which St. Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, is said to have found the cross of Christ in Jerusalem in the year 326. We do not know much about this historically, but that is not really the point. The point is that we point to the cross and see the power that lies there. In 1 Corinthians 1:17, St. Paul says that Christ sent him “to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” So the cross has power, and we should not try to surpass this with our own cleverness or wisdom. For, as he says further in v.18: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” This does not mean that the cross is foolish, but it means that we cannot understand it. For the death on the cross surpasses everything we can imagine. Here we see the paradox of all paradoxes. By dying on the cross, by losing, Jesus wins. And Jesus is a paradox in Himself, as St. Paul says in Colossians 2. In v.9-10 he writes that “in him [in Christ] the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fulness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” The divine and uncreated manifests itself in the created. And this, says St. Paul in vv.11-12, was given to us in baptism, which is a participation in the death and resurrection of Christ. And then he continues, in v.13-15:

And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.

Jesus showed himself victorious on the cross. It is as paradoxical as it can be. For at the top of the cosmos stands the symbol of power above all symbols of power – not the throne, not the scepter, not the crown, not the crown, not the fasces that were used by the fascists, and which can be found in the coat of arms of the Norwegian police, but the cross, that place where God showed His power by being humiliated and by dying as a human being, for our sake. God’s power is primarily manifested in what to us seems completely opposite. But that is actually how God reveals Himself to us. God is completely beyond being, completely beyond our categories, and He lies hidden under what appears to be the complete opposite. Paradoxically, God shows Himself in that which is hidden.1 He conceals Himself in a man, Jesus, in the waters of baptism, under the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in suffering and death. Where we would not believe that God would come to us, in the physical, the degrading, even in death, there He comes, in all his glory. And this is also how it is to share in salvation. Getting eternal life is about dying away from sins and what shuts us out from God. God’s power is not about what He can take out of us, but what He gives us. And then it is also, paradoxically, about God’s humility. You will never find an ancient text, in Greek, Latin or Norse, which says Zeus, Jupiter, or Odin are humble. That would be scandalous. But in the Bible, in Philippians 2:6-8, this is exactly how Christ is described:

Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

This is the very radical message that we are carrying forward today. We proclaim the God who reveals Himself to us in Jesus, revealed in the hidden and paradoxical, in a man who first came as a little poor child, who died on the cross as a criminal, but who precisely there revealed Himself as the Lord of all lords and the King of all kings. And when he who is above everything and everyone is humble, we should not be surprised if He call us to the same.

Raised in Christ, we can live for others, not just for ourselves, and that is the exact opposite of sin. Martin Luther followed St. Augustine and said that as sinners, we are curved inwards on ourselves. We look inward and always ask first what benefit we can get from each thing or situation. But in Christ, we are called to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. In Him, our calling is paradoxically to live for others, and from that we can find ourselves. The logic behind salvation and justification is that instead of being curved inwards on yourself, which is the definition of sin, you are directed outward, first towards the One, towards God, then towards the Other, towards creation and other people, in humility. As Jesus says in Mark 12:30-31, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and you “shall love your neighbour as yourself.” We must learn this every day, as we struggle with sin. Here and now we have a share in the life of Christ, in Him who united the divine and the human, but it is gradual.

In today’s second reading, from the Letter to the Philippians, St. Paul says that our goal is to know Christ Jesus our Lord. We shall “be found in him, not having a righteousness of [our] own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” And yes, he goes on to say that he does not think he has fully achieved this: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

That is what we are all called to, no matter how far or short we have come. As he says in v.16: “Only let us hold true to what we have attained.” It is gradual, then. We shall live out from the stage to which we have arrived, but the basis is not us but Christ, who sacrificed Himself for us, and who gives us union with Himself in baptism and by faith. And it was precisely by offering Himself that He conquered everything. That is the paradoxical message we proclaim today, that in Christ everything is turned upside down.

We do not preach abundant riches here, which is only emptiness, but abundant life there, which, nevertheless, can be manifested here, to a certain extent, when we live the life to which Jesus has called is, when we are straining forward to what lies ahead. But remember: this is God’s work, not ours. So follow Christ wherever He leads you, and know that in Him we win everything, even if it happens that we lose. Yes, as Jesus says, we will receive a reward according to how we follow Him, but then not based on how much we exert ourselves over others, but on how much focus we have on God, as our creator, and on our fellow human beings, as creatures we are called to love and show God’s love to.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.

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This is a translation of the homily for the Twelfth Sunday of Trinity (year III), in Valen Church, Kvinnherad, Norway, Sunday 31st August, 2025. The readings are as follows: Numbers 13:17-27; Romans 1:16-17; and John 4:27-30.39-43. Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.

Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):

Let us Pray:

Faithful God, you can never forget your children, and you know what we need. We pray: Free us from anxiety and worry, and teach us to live, trusting in your care, so that we may seek your kingdom, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end. Amen.

Today we have heard an excerpt about Jesus’ encounter with a woman who was going to get water from the well in John 4. But we have only heard a little bit of the story, only the end. To understand it, we must also learn more about what happened before. There we are presented with a fairly common scenario: A woman goes to get water from a well. The well was, so to speak, the social meeting point, where people would strike up a conversation. That is how it is today. For several years now, the Norwegian Church Aid (Act Alliance) has had a project where wells are installed, something for which the confirmation candidates have been raising money, and which we will be raising money for in the spring. These wells have not only given people better health, but they have largely become social meeting points. For us here in Norway, the closest we come is perhaps the shop or the coffee machine at work.

But the story in the Gospel reading contains three surprising moments that we may not particularly notice because we live in a completely different culture, at a completely different time. First, we see that the woman did not fetch water early in the morning, together with the other women in the city, but that she waited until the sun was highest in the sky, about 1200 PM (or “the sixth hour,” counted from 0600 AM). Imagine going out in 40-50 degree heat (C) to fetch water, toiling and working while others sit in the shade. She avoided the other women.

Secondly, we see Jesus, a Jew, talking to Samaritan. I do not really know what to compare it to, but I think the closest we get is whites and blacks in South Africa during Apartheid or the southern states of the United States before the 1960s. It was unthinkable that these two would talk to each other. And thirdly, we see Jesus, a man, talking to a woman He does not know or is related to. It was completely unheard of, it was inappropriate. Yes, it was simply a miracle that the conversation even took place. But Jesus is quite good at miracles. Maybe it was Jesus who had to be there for this to happen at all. For Him, it was completely irrelevant whom He talked to. He wants everyone to be included.

Throughout the conversation, we get closer to this woman, who had lived a turbulent life. She was shunned by the others in the city, because they looked down on her. What we do know is that she had a “disorderly life.” But Jesus still speaks to her. He does not say that her lifestyle is good, but He lifts her up. She realises that there is something special about this man, and says: “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet 19. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship” (John 4:19-20). And Jesus answered (vv.21-24):

Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

The woman connects this directly to the great saviour who was to come, the Messiah or Christ, and then Jesus says: “I who speak to you am he” (v.26).

Jesus reveals himself as the one who comes with the water that gives eternal life, as the true worshipper, and as the Messiah, the great deliverer God had promised. And then we come to what we have heard from the gospel reading. After meeting Jesus, the woman goes into the city to talk to the others. She no longer avoids them, but wants to tell them about the man she has met. She says: “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:29) The other Samaritans in the city then went out with her and met Jesus. He stayed there for two days, teaching them with His own words. And to the woman, the others in the city said: “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world” (John 4:42).

Here we see a central truth of the Christian faith: as Christians, we should not point to ourselves, we should point to Jesus. We must preach Him, and we must preach the salvation and the life He wants to give us. And what is this salvation? We find that in the words we have heard today, in the second reading, from Paul’s epistle to the church in Rome: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘He who is righteous will live by faith’” (Romans 1:16-17).1 But what is the gospel? And what is faith?

Like many other words we use in the church, the word “gospel” comes from Greek, and simply means “good news.” But it also means so much more. When St. Paul uses the word, we must imagine that he was using it as it was otherwise used in society. For in the Roman Empire, the word “gospel” was used by emperors and kings when describing their own accession day and even their birthday. The accession day is the day the king or emperor was inaugurated. The envoys were commissioned to proclaim a gospel: “Augustus is Lord!” Now there was to be peace and order. But this peace was often an illusion. It is true that the Roman Empire brought peace and order. But the way this happened was that all resistance was crushed. The Roman writer Tacitus put it this way: “They make a desert, and call it peace.”2 But then the Christians came and said: No, it is not Herod who is Lord and king, not Caesar, not Augustus, yes not Napoleon, Haakon, Olav or Harald. It is Jesus Christ. And He is not just king in Israel, the Roman Empire, France or Norway. He is Lord and King of the universe, the King of kings, the Lord of lords. The gospel is Jesus Christ Himself, that He is our Lord and brother. But in what way is this good news?

It is so because in Jesus we have a Lord who does not primarily come with a series of demands. He is not like the kings of old who mostly only cared about the people as long as they could pay taxes. Jesus is a Lord who takes responsibility for us, and who gives us new life. He is the righteous king who gives His life for His people, who is not like the other princes and kings, who oppress the people and rule them with a hard hand. He is the serving Lord. For as St. Paul says, the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith.” But what is salvation from?

Jesus says that He will save us from our sins. When I look around the world, I see a lot of good. I see new and old parents raising their children. I see young people helping the old. I see people fighting for the poor and oppressed. I see people who care. But I also see evil. I people who kill. I see people who bully. I see people who start wars and I see people who bomb others to pieces. And I also see that I myself am a sinner. History has shown us that the world is not only good, and that ordinary people can do great harm. We all have the potential within us for great things, both good things and bad things, and none of us are innocent. Jesus reveals this to us, in the Spirit, as He revealed it to the woman at the well. The Holy Spirit illuminates our lives and brings them to light, both the best in us and the worst in us. But He does not do it to have something to take from us. He is not like a journalist who wants to expose a scandal. No, the Spirit reveals to us what we have done wrong, and convinces us of sin. And He shows us that sins violate God’s will.

But then He reveals the gospel to us, which is “the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith.” God says, “I forgive you for Jesus Christ’s sake.” Imagine that! We are forgiven, only because Jesus sacrificed himself. Jesus gave God the sacrifice that we could not make. As I said, He does not come first and foremost comes with a series of demands. He comes with grace. To believe is to grasp this promise. It is like grabbing the hand that pulls you out of the water. It is to show trust, and it is to understand that Jesus is our Saviour. And through grabbing this, we gain a completely unique fellowship with Jesus. God communicates Himself to us through Jesus, and gives us a share in all his gifts.

This is what St. Paul calls justification. In both Romans and Galatians, he writes that we are not justified or saved by the works of the law. “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law,” he writes in Romans 3:28. And in Galatians 5:6 he writes: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love.” So we are justified by faith, without the works of the law. That is, the works that are written about in, among other things, the Old Testament. But they is simply all the works where we try to make ourselves better. It is the law. These works cannot justify us. But justifying faith, St. Paul says, is not a naked faith, a faith that is alone. It is “faith working through love.” This love is not our work; it is God’s love that is given to us as a gift, as St. Paul writes in the epistle to the Romans: “And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).

Love has been poured into our hearts, and that happened in baptism. The child who was baptised today is now fully and completely justified before God. She has been given the love of God and has received faith as a gift. But from the love that has been poured out into us, fruit will come, as it says at the end of today second reading from Romans: “He who is righteous will live by faith.” This is our calling as Christians; to live in the righteousness that has been given to us by grace, as a gift from God. But this is not our own work. In the epistle to the Philippians, St. Paul writes: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” before adding in the next verse: “for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:12-13).

We are not justified by the works we do, but these works are the fruit of the faith we have received. And that faith is not just that we believe what God has told us, and that we trust in Him. No, it is a faith that is active in love, “God’s love” which “has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” And then we see that Jesus is not only our saviour, but the One who also gives us new life, so that we, as righteous ones, can live by faith. Faith is actually a life that is given to us. It is a receptive life. As we sang in the baptismal hymn, through the work of God we are born again to life in Christ, to an open life in faith and trust.3 Because that is what our faith is about: life, new life with God. The practice we have as Christians is something we have received from God, as a gift. It is not some kind of appendix added to God’s work. It is not just our response, in thanksgiving to God, as if salvation is God’s work, and the Christian life is our work, but something that flows out of the gospel, that flows out of the love that God has given us. The gospel is thus put into practice. When we pray, praise God, celebrate communion, help widows and orphans, give offerings, etc., it is because we have communion with God through Christ, in the Holy Spirit, who was given to us in baptism, and because the Spirit is active in us, and in our practice. The practice is a gift given to us, which we can participate in, by the power of God. For the gospel is Christ himself, and our Christian practice is that we receive His (living) life in us. We are justified by faith, not by works of the law.

But this faith is active in love, in God’s love in us. Believing is neither a purely intellectual pursuit nor something only in the heart. No, faith is everywhere, also in our bodies. Faith is a new life that is given to us as a gift, which is not abstract, but anchored in, and linked to, specific practices. Today we have experienced two of them – baptism and preaching. Baptism only happens once, but we can go back to the word and preaching. We are not going to celebrate communion today, but the next time there is communion, go forward and receive. For we meet Jesus, very concretely, in something we can touch and feel, in something we can taste, eat and drink. Jesus communicates Himself to us in the concrete, because this is where we are. We are not spirits floating around. We are physical beings. There, in the communion, Jesus meets us as our saviour, and there He strengthens us with his gifts. So always accept Jesus where you meet Him, in the word, in the Eucharist, in the means of grace, in other people. Because it is completely free. It is the gospel.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.

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This Sunday is the last Sunday I am on annual leave, so this is a translation of the homily for the Eleventh Sunday of Trinity (year III), held at Eid Church and Valen Church, Kvinngerad, Norway, three years ago, on 14th August, 2022. The readings are as follows: Genesis 33:1-11; Ephesians 4:29-32; and Mark 11:25-26 (including the longer reading, v.26). Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.

Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):

Let us Pray:

God, our liberator, you free us from sin and from the power of death. We pray: Free us from our desire to rule ourselves, so that we may surrender ourselves to the freedom of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one true God, world without end. Amen.

In the one prayer we probably pray the most in Church – the Lord’s Prayer or Our Father – we pray an admittedly simple, yet profound prayer: “And forgive us our trespasses, And forgive us our trespasses.” Martin Luther says this about this prayer:

We ask in this prayer that our heavenly Father would not regard our sins nor deny these petitions on their account, for we are worthy of nothing for which we ask, nor have we earned it. Instead we ask that God would give us all things by grace, for we daily sin much and indeed deserve only punishment. So, on the other hand, we, too, truly want to forgive heartily and to do good gladly to those who sin against us.1

What Jesus teaches us is that we can ask God for forgiveness, but then He also says that we cannot expect forgiveness if we are not willing to forgive others. And that is, of course, quite natural. One cannot expect to receive something that one would not be willing to give in another, similar, situation. But yes, it is very, very difficult. I think it is important to say that forgiving does not necessarily mean forgetting or that you should suddenly become best friends with the person you forgive. It is rather to let go. But it is not easy. Nevertheless, we understand that it must be so.

None of us like hypocrisy, even though we all have had a lot of experience as hypocrites. I remember a friend who once said that his standard were much better than that of others, because he had double standards. But I think the best illustration of this is in one of the parables of Jesus, from Matthew 18:21-35. In the parable, there we meet a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. One of them owed ten thousand talents, but he had nothing to pay. So he begged to be released, and the king had compassion on him, and forgave him everything. But when this servant went out, he saw a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii, and a denarius was a day’s wages. The fellow servant had nothing to pay and begged for more time. He did not ask to be forgiven the debt, only to be given more time to pay it back. But the servant to whom he owed money did not agree and had him thrown in jail. The other fellow servants saw this and reported it to the king. Then the king went to that servant and said: “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me;  and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” So the king sent the servant to jail. Jesus concluded the story by saying: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

To put the scale here into perspective, a talent was the equivalent to about 6,000 denarii. If I denarii was a day’s wage for a common labourer (Matthew 20:2), 10,000 talents would be the equivalent of 60,000,000 days at work. Transferred to present-day United Kingdom, where the median worker works 5 days a week for roughly £677 in regular earnings and £722 in total earnings (numbers from May this year), a talent would be the equivalent of somewhere between £8,124,000,000 and £8,664,000,000. Over 8 billion pounds! In contrast, 100 denarii would be the equivalent of somewhere between £13,540 and £14,440. Yes, that is not an insignificant sum, but in light of the astronomical sum the first servant was forgiven, this is a drop in the ocean. But the first servant was not able to give what he himself had received. His attitude as a creditor stands in stark contrast to the king’s attitude, and we see that the servant had not taken in any of what the king had done for him. This is in contrast to the teaching of Christ. Grace shall beget grace; justice shall beget justice.

Yes, Jesus gives a clear warning: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” This can be seen as a comment on two parts of the Lord’s Prayer: “thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven” and “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” But also on the verses that follow the prayer, Matthew 6:14-15: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

But how should we actually understand this theologically or evangelically? It can be difficult to understand what this means because, on the one hand, we are admonished to act towards others in light of the grace that has been given to us, with warnings of punishment if we do not do so, and, on the other hand, we hear that salvation and justification are the work of God alone.

In our Christian tradition, we have always been concerned with the fact that we are justified by faith, and not by works. We have always been concerned with St. Paul’s words in Romans 3:21-27, and rightly so. He writes:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus,  whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus.

St. Paul thus emphasises that this is not our work, that we are not saved by striving as hard as possible. But how are we to understand the relationship between this perspective and the perspective from today’s gospel, that we must forgive if we ourselves want forgiveness?

To understand this, I think we need to look at our relationship to Christ. For St. Paul, the main point is that we share in Christ, and that He is not only active outside of us, on the cross, but also in us. He writes: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Take, for example, this well-known passage, Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast.” This is the foundation. We have not saved ourselves, we have not worked our way up to greater enlightenment. But this is only half the truth. For in the next verse (v.10) St. Paul adds: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

God also wants us to act in light of the grace that has been given to us, as we see from today’s Gospel, and from the words of St. Paul in today’s second reading, from the Epistle to the Ephesians, where he urges us: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” It is precisely our participation in Christ that is the key to understanding this. The very foundation lies, of course, outside of us, in Christ, in His work on the cross and in His eternal priestly ministry in the heavenly sanctuary. But this must take root in us, Christ must come into us, through faith. As the German Catholic mystic Angelus Silesius said, “Christ could be born a thousand times in Bethlehem – but all in vain until He is born in me.”

We are all sinners, we all need the grace that gives us a share in eternal life. But this grace does not make us passive. Through grace, God works in us. In his letter to the church in Philippi, St. Paul writes: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). But he does not stop there. In the next verse, v.13, he adds: “for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Christ works in us, for salvation, righteousness, and peace. And this should flow over to others.

When we ask for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer, and point out that we should do the same, we must not let this become empty rhetoric, a kind of empty gesture that we just repeat every Sunday. No, the perspective from today’s Gospel should characterise our entire life as Christians. It is God who works in us, but we have a free will to deny Him this. God admonishes us, all of us who are here today — yes, all of us — to let God have the right to rule. To constantly ask: What would Jesus do?

The Divine Service, the Divine Liturgy, is a place of grace; here we can unburden us of our sins, here we can receive in the gospel, here we can concretely share in the grace that Christ won for us on the cross, by receiving the Eucharist. But it must not stop there. In the Divine Service we are consecrated to live our calling as Christians in the world, but not of the world.

When God has forgiven us for our sins, can we refuse to forgive our neighbour? When we leave the Divine Service, we must not put God and faith in the back pocket until next Sunday. We must walk in peace, in the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, and we must serve the Lord with joy. That is today’s gospel in a nutshell.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.

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This is a translation of the homily for the Fifth Sunday of Trinity (year III), in the churches of Hatlestrand and Husnes, Norway, Sunday 13th July, 2025. The readings are as follows: Jeremiah 6:16-19; Galatians 1:6-9; and Matthew 18:12-18. Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.

Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):

Let us Pray:

Let us Pray: God, you sent the prophets to testify and proclaim your will. We pray: Let the Church be the voice of truth in the world. Protect us from false voices and seductive words, so that we can stand firm in the faith in your grace, through your Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end. Amen.

Today we have come to one of the more famous parables of Jesus, concerning the lost sheep. This is a parable that we may remember from Sunday school. At least I remember it from there and from various Christian children’s books. It is a story about a man who loves his sheep. “And if he finds it [the lost sheep],” says Jesus, “truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.” The parable of the lost sheep is perhaps the children’s version, the one we know from Sunday school, from children’s books, from family worship. But in today’s Gospel we also get the “grown up version.” Where the parable can be read from a distance, the rest is more confronting, perhaps a little uncomfortable. Because it refers to real life.

Jesus says that we should hold our Christian brothers and sisters accountable when they sin. Of course, that also means the other way around. We must also be prepared to be held accountable for what we have done. Perhaps it is more difficult, and to point out something else Jesus has told us, we must first remove the beam from our own eye. But here Jesus gives us a kind of recipe for how we should behave when we confront others. We should first take it up with them, then with a few others, and then to the congregation. So not like we usually do it now, when we go straight to social media to “expose” or even “cancel.” Because what if we are wrong? We also see that Jesus here is critical of the individualism of our time. Because when we sin, it is not just a private matter. We belong together and everything we do has an impact on those around us. The hundred sheep belong together in one flock and we belong together in one church.

If a Christian brother or sister strays, we must do what we can to bring him or her back into the fellowship. But it is not pleasant. Perhaps we will lose friends, perhaps we will become unpopular. Perhaps we will think the same thing when we are confronted with our own mistakes, our own sins. Therefore, we must always do this with love.

We must be like the good shepherd who goes out to find the sheep. Maybe he does not find it, maybe the sheep runs away. But he still goes out to search. But, and there is an important but: we cannot force anyone. As the Danish theologian and hymn writer Grundtvig said in one of his hymns: “Coercion to faith is the speech of fools.”1 The shepherd is an image of God, Jesus tells us. “And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”

We also see this elsewhere in the New Testament. Take John 10:11-15, where Jesus says that he is the good shepherd:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hireling and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hireling and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

Jesus has done everything He could for us. He went straight to death for us. But he does not force us. We might imagine that God, who is all-powerful, could just command that the sheep should return. He could just force him. And if we follow a strict Reformed or Calvinist teaching, the answer is yes. God has chosen those He wants to be saved and the rest to be lost. But we do not find this in the Bible. There we read, in 1 Timothy 2:4, that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” And in 1 John 2:2 we read about Jesus that “he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” Salvation is therefore something that God wants to give to everyone.

But why does anyone get lost, then? Well, that is a mystery, but it is because God does not force anyone, and He gives us the opportunity to say no. The parable of the lost sheep is not a parable about all lost sheep returning. It is an open question. “And if he finds it,” says Jesus. “If he finds it.” Maybe he will not find it. Maybe the sheep refuses to come back with him. Of course, all images will fall apart at one time or another. We are probably smarter than sheep and therefore we can say no. And we can do that because God does not force us. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, but He is not the compulsion. He wants everyone to be saved, but He is not a tyrant. He is love. We must always remind each other of this. We must encourage each other and always remind each other of the gospel, of the love that has been given to us in Jesus. Nothing but ourselves can separate us from this, as Paul tells us in Romans 8:38-39

For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We have much to thank Jesus for, He who is the good and faithful shepherd who seeks out all those who have gone astray. But He is the good shepherd, not the tyrannical shepherd. He forces no one, and when He finds and wins back His own, then we will be allowed to rejoice with Him, as we heard from today’s gospel. He is the source of our love, our joy, our song. In Him, we find all good, and from that we can pass on to others.

And that is what this Sunday is really about, passing this on, preaching the gospel, testifying to the truth in Jesus. In the second reading, from the prophet Jeremiah, it says:

Thus says the LORD: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

So it is about “that old time religion.” It was good enough for the disciples, and it is good enough for me. And the ancient paths lead us to the perfect, the real, the eternal, not the imperfect, the fallen and the transient. But often we would rather focus there. We probably will not always admit that we are lost sheep who need help. But we need it, and we get it in Christ, even if we lose some of the glory, power, and wealth here in this world. But that is like dust to be counted in comparison with what we receive in Christ, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” The central thing is therefore God, our eternally unseen Lord, whom we find when we ask for the ancient path, for the path to goodness and when we walk on it, so that we find rest for our souls.

The one necessary thing is the One necessary, God, our Creator, Lord and Saviour. The unseen is not something abstract or vague, it is that what lies behind everything, it is God. Our calling is to share in the fullness of God. If we all the money, power, and glory of the world, but lack the humility to realise that we are sinners in need of salvation, we lose everything. Because all this is just a shadow. We share in something much greater, in the wealth of Jesus, in the gospel. And that is what it is all about, as St. Paul says today. We must preach the one gospel. He writes about people turning away from Christ’s grace, and to another gospel. So we must point to the one true gospel: that Jesus gave Himself for us and that He will give us a share in His salvation, completely free, by grace, and that He shows us a way away from the transitory to the eternal, to Himself, He who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” The gospel is therefore Christ Himself, and what He has done.

In today’s collect, which I prayed just before the readings, we ask God:

Let the Church be the voice of truth in the world. Protect us from false voices and seductive words, so that we can stand firm in the faith in your grace, through your Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end.

This means that we must always tell the truth, that we must endure to be honest, not only with each other, but just as much with ourselves. We must tell the truth about our sins, both the bad things we have done and the good things we have failed to do. We must tell the truth about how serious it is, what sin can do to us. To use biblical language, we must preach the law, so that we are convinced of sin. But it can never stop there. That would be abuse. No, when we have preached the law, we must preach the gospel. We must preach how gracious Christ is. And that is precisely what this Sunday is about, that we should preach the one gospel, that there is grace, there is salvation, but it is found only in Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who took upon Himself our sins to atone for them, so that we could be reconciled to God. He is the good shepherd who goes out and seeks the sheep. But He does not force anyone. The gospel is that the eternal, unchanging, and actually incomprehensible God became man for you, for me, for all of us, so that He could make amends for us. And by what He has done, man is reconciled to God. And we can receive this by faith, through the means of grace that Jesus has given us, the word and the sacraments. And here we see something interesting. Yes, we have a calling to seek what is perfect, real, and eternal, but paradoxically we do not do this by leaving here. No, we do it by Christ using us to bless this world, in all its materiality, so that it can become a channel for God’s grace and be perfected in Him. As St. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4:4-5: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.”

The foremost expression of this is Christ himself, who is true God and true man. As it says in John 1:1-3.14:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten Son from the Father.

In Christ, the created and the uncreated are united completely and wholly. God became flesh, God became man. And He has given us gifts that we can sense and perceive, so that we can reach Him. But it is always with our eyes fixed on Him. The created is blessed because it shares in God, when “it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” It is not about the seen being prioritised, but that it is transformed into a channel for the eternal and unseen, for divine grace and love. We can see this in the collect for the day in the Church of England, where we ask God that we must always seek him, seek the eternal, through the creation that bears witness to him:

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that with you as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not our hold on things eternal; grant this, heavenly Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.2

Here we see that we can come to God through the seen, for God is not in competition with creation, but meets us through it, through creation and especially through the word and the sacraments. But the seen must always be understood as subject to the unseen and eternal, subject to God. As it says in 1 Timothy 6:16, God is te One “who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see.” But He nevertheless meets us through the seen, as long as we understand that He has priority. And then creation suddenly becomes a portal to God. In the celebration of the Eucharist, God is there, Christ is there, with all of Himself, with His divinity and His humanity, for He is all of this, always. And He is there, as He has promised, for our salvation, for our life. So when we celebrate the Eucharist, come forward and receive. The sacrament is neither our work nor a reward for piety, but the gift of Christ. It is salvation bestowed upon us under the species of bread and wine, in something we can sense, in something seen. But beneath the seen, Christ is truly present with His promises of forgiveness of sins, life, and blessedness. So we do not need to ponder, wonder, or stress. For the incarnate God, Jesus Christ, has promised us that there, in the Eucharistic elements, we will share in His salvation, on His promise. In Him we, like lost sheep, can find our way back to the flock. That is the gospel, that is good news. So just receive!

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.

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This is a translation of the homily for the Fourth Sunday of Trinity (year III), in Kvinnherad Church, Norway, Sunday 6th July, 2025. This was also held at a outdoor service on an island earlier this afternoon. The readings are as follows: Psalm 22:7-11 (8-12); 1 Thessalonians 2:5-13; Matthew 9:35-38. Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.

Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):

Let us Pray:

Humle Lord, Jesus Christ, you chose poverty and humiliation. We pray: Lead us into the ways of love, so that we do not seek wealth in the world, but take up our cross and follow you, you who with your Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end. Amen.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us of something very important; that the Church should engage in mission. Many people think of mission as being about imperialism, and perhaps especially cultural imperialism. And in many cases, unfortunately, that is true. Many mistakes have been made on the mission field, and many things have been removed because they were thought to be pagan, without considering that many of our own cultural traditions do not have their basis in Christian tradition either, but have been allowed to survive in the Church precisely because they are an expression of culture, of the identity of the individual people, and not something that necessarily contradicts the gospel, the good news of Jesus as Lord and Saviour. We must remember that mission is to preach the gospel, into a given culture. And that requires us to be humble. That is where any kind of mission must start. And that applies not only out there in the world, but also here at home. We must also preach the gospel here, into our own society, into our own culture. And that is why it is important that we understand our culture, that we try to understand where people are.

When I was on a study trip to London a little over ten years ago, a pastor told us that Christian preaching is incarnational, which may be difficult to understand. As Christians, we believe in the incarnation, that God became a man of flesh and blood in Jesus (from Lt. carne, “flesh”). It means that God took on human nature, that which is created, earthly. He entered into that which is ours and preached the gospel to us, as one of us. Transferred to us, it means that when the Christian preaching is incarnational, it is always concretised into a given culture. It must be incarnated or inculturated.

We hear in today’s Gospel that Jesus “went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity.” He had great compassion for the crowds when He saw them, “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” It was here that he emphasised how important mission is, and how important it is that we preach the gospel, the good news of Jesus as Lord and Saviour: “The harvest is plentiful,” He says, “but the labourers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.”

I myself believe that Jesus would have had many of the same experiences if he had walked around all the cities, towns, and villages here in Norway. Humans probably have not evolved much in the last 2,000 years. We have the same feelings, the same longing for something that gives meaning. But it is probably not easy to admit, that we are lost and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, just like it probably was at the time of Jesus – perhaps especially those with wealth and position, then and now. But it is true nonetheless. It is a message that is preached again and again in the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments. As St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18:

Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

The central thing is God, our eternal invisible Lord. The one thing necessary is the One, God, our Creator, Lord and Saviour. The invisible is not something diffuse, it is what lies behind everything, it is God. Our calling is to share in the fullness of God. If we have all the money, power or glory we can, but lack the humility to realise that we are sinners in need of salvation, we lose everything. For all this is but a shadow. We share in something much greater, in the riches of Jesus, in the gospel.

We need the gospel as much as everyone else, and people have no less questions than before. We probably also long for meaning as much as everyone else. Therefore, we must be aware of our calling. As the apostle Peter puts it in 1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” We must share the gospel. Mission is important, but mission should not be imperialism. Mission is meeting people where they are, and preaching the gospel to them, with the willingness to sacrifice everything. It is simply living from the perspective of eternity where it is not the wealth and honour here that are important, but everything we receive from God. And therefore, mission cannot be about manipulation or about the preacher himself, but about opening up to people a world where we encounter the love of God, the eternal, unchanging, invisible, given to us in the gifts of God, the word and the sacraments.

Being a missionary means that we take people seriously, without being relativistic, because we must always speak the truth, but we be “speaking the truth in love,” as St. Paul says in Ephesians 4:15. We must offer the love of God to everyone we meet, without asserting ourselves. As St. Paul says in today’s second reading: “For we never used either words of flattery, as you know, or a cloak for greed, as God is witness; nor did we seek glory from men, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ.”

The basis for mission is not primarily having a long education or having good knowledge of the Bible, faith, culture, language. Yes, all of those are important for us to reach people. But the most fundamental thing for our mission is that we ourselves are followers of Christ. In today’s second reading, St. Paul writes about the service he and the other Apostles did. They were engaged in missions, they helped people, and they worked so that they would not be a burden to those they served. They allowed themselves to be formed by Jesus, and lived with Him as an example. As we said when I was young, we must ask: “What would Jesus do?” And what is the answer? It is that we must have our eyes fixed on what the eyes of Christ were fixed on, namely God, and not on our wealth, our power, our glory. It is to love God and our neighbour as ourselves. And the way we can love God is first and foremost by going to Him in prayer and praise, and spreading His message to those we meet. But what is praise? It is not primarily about describing God, because that is actually not possible. We cannot capture God in our concepts or categories. Perhaps you have heard the song Indescribable by Laura Story, but which is perhaps best known through Chris Tomlin’s version. The chorus begins with two adjectives that are supposed to describe God, but which at the same time do not describe him at all: “Indescribable, uncontainable.” We can neither describe God nor contain him. He is beyond all thought, beyond being. As St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:16, God is the One “who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see.” But, St. Paul says, “to him be honour and eternal dominion.” It starts with praise. And that is why we do not first and foremost talk about God, as we see a tendency for in some praise songs and hymns, as if we can comprehend Him, but to God and with Him. The central thing about the Christian life is thanksgiving and praise, rooted in the works of God, for us. And when we do that, we have our eyes fixed on the right place, on the eternal and unchanging, on Christ. In Him we find the real, when we are conformed to His image. To be a Christian is to be “in Christ” and to become more and more like Him, something which began in baptism.

During the act of baptism, I emphasise that God has given us life and created us for fellowship with Himself, that he receives us in baptism and saves us from sin and death, that we are united with Jesus Christ to a new life and that we are incorporated into the Christian church. Through something concrete, something we can see and feel, God meets us and gives us part in the divine fellowship. Through baptism, we are united with Jesus, and share in his death and resurrection. We become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). And with this as a starting point, we can be more and more formed by and in Jesus, until we reach perfection.

But then we must never forget that this happens only by the grace of God. This is not something we do by our own strength, but something given to us by God, both salvation and new life, as St. Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-10: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

This is the gospel, that everything is grace, that we do not need to fear anything evil, that we only need to accept the love of God in joy. For then we will share in the eternal and unchanging. For we “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” And that is and must be the starting point of any mission, which is to invite all into the mystery of God in Christ.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.

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This Sunday I have my monthly Sunday off, so this is a very short homily for the Third Sunday of Trinity (year III), Sunday 29th June, 2025. This is a slightly expanded translation of a reflection I have written for the local newspapers in Kvinnherad, Norway. The readings are as follows: 1 Samuel 1:9-18; 1 John 3:1-3; and Mark 10:13-16. Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.

Today is also the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, which in the Church of Norway is always held (under the name “the Apostles' Day”) on the sixth Sunday of Trinity (which is on 20th July this year). In my expansion I will try to elaborate on this, as I will also not be preaching on that day, as I will have my annual leave.

Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):

Let us Pray:

Eternal God, fount of all joy, you have asked us to go out and invite to your great feast. We pray: Unite us at your Eucharistic table so that we may be strengthened on the way to the heavenly banquet, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one true God, world without end. Amen.

Last week the theme of the Divine Service was baptism as the gift of the Holy Spirit, that “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). Now, this week, we take a closer look at what that may entail. This week’s Gospel is the text we read every time we baptise infants and children, that Jesus was angry with the disciples who turned away those who brought children to him. “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). He says that children, just like adults, can enter into the kingdom of God, into where one cannot enter “unless one is born of water and the Spirit.” In fact, He puts it as radically as this: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:15).

In our time and in our culture, especially here in Norway, children have a privileged position. We see this particularly when we celebrate Christmas or our Constitution Day. We even say that they are children’s days. Perhaps this can cause us not to fully understand the gospel reading. Because at that time, children did not have such a privileged position. They were often seen as less important. But Jesus turns this upside down. For Him, the children set the standard. It is their natural trust that should inform our lives and our relationship with God. It is precisely when we come to God with childlike trust that Jesus takes us in His arms and blesses us, laying His hands upon us. I think that as many priests and deacons are being ordained this weekend, all over the world, at Petertide, it is essential that we reflect on this. We are not called to pride but to humility, to model the very image of trust that a child does, even though it is not easy, or particularly because it is not easy. Pride is a serious problem and a sin, and we must try to overcome it, not through our own efforts, which will either produce despair, as we fail, or more pride, when we delude ourselves into thinking that we have achieved it. No, we must humbly approach God, like a child, and say: “Help me, Father. Kyrie eleison.”

As priests and bishops, we are called to to baptise and to teach, to preach the gospel, the message that tells us that it is not when we perform the best we can or when we are most proud, but when we humbly and trustfully receive, that we can become like God, as the apostle John says in one of the readings this Sunday: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Note that we do not receive this because of some effort or strain on our behalf. We shall see God because He has already made us His children and because He appears to us. Like a good Father, he gives all His children, and He does so through the preaching of His gospel.

My own church, the Church of Norway, was founded over 1000 years ago because some people humbled themselves to go on a mission to this country in the far north. But they did not come to fill our heads with abstract knowledge but to emphasise the simple gospel, that we are sinners, that we cannot save ourselves, and that there is salvation for those who seek God with childlike trust.

I have been entrusted with this for just over 11 years now, since my ordination on 15th June 2014. When I was ordained, I was told to pray. And now I repeat that to you. Prayer is essential to the Christian life, and it is one of the things that really highlight what it entails to be like a child. Before God, our Father, we have nothing to offer that He has not already given us. But we can come to Him in trust. When we offer prayers, no matter how simple or complex they are, we are conformed to Christ. Prayer puts us in contact with Him, with the source of life.

What God is telling us today is that when we have received grace and salvation from Him, we must also spread it to those we meet, just as a child spreads his joy to everyone. We must keep the word of God alive. God is the Lord who came to us, as one of us, in Jesus Christ. And through Him we can find grace, so that we become one with God. We cannot create it ourselves, we can only accept it as a gift, when He appears to us. So receive the Lord’s blessing and be united to Him.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.