Can you picture this? It’s Saturday evening, there’s not too much traffic about, and you’re flying along the Westlink towards the M1 because you’re late, or at least you think you are going to be late. You come to the end of the Westlink, join the motorway and you’re away... until you suddenly see in your rear view mirror the distinctive blue lights and then the flash of headlights which tells you to pull over. You’re done.

“Excuse me, Sir, do you know why we pulled you over?”. “Yes, I do”. “You do? Through the Westlink, with all the major road works, there are 30 mile an hour speed signs every 100 metres. You saw those signs, Sir?” “Yes, I did”. “It’s been well recorded that you were travelling at over 60 miles an hour though those signs. If this went to court you would lose your licence”. (My lawyer passenger had other ideas, but she didn’t voice them, thankfully). “If it had been any other officer, they would’ve thrown the book at you. I want you to drive carefully and gather up speed before you pull back out onto the motorway...”

I couldn’t believe it! (There was slightly more to it, but that was the general gist of the conversation).

What would have gone through your mind if you might have seen those blue lights in your rear view mirror?

I don’t have to actually tell you what “spilt out” when I saw those flashing blue lights!

Paddy the Irishman was driving down the street in a sweat because he was late for an important meeting and couldn’t find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said, “Lord, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up the Whiskey”. Miraculously, just like that, a parking place appeared. Paddy looked up again and said, “Never mind, I found one.”

Do you think God actually doesn’t know what is in our hearts?

I remember an Auntie of mine, when I was quite young, saying a throw-away line once which has always stuck with me. She said, “I wish those daughters of mine would bring their children to Church”. And in my more cynical period I replied, “They’ll make up their own minds later on anyway.” “Yes,” she said, “But at least they would have a good foundation”.

The truth is that when parents decide that their children will not be Baptised or confirmed or whatever because they ‘will make up their own minds later on’, you and I know that those ‘children’ never do! Their minds are never ‘made up’ because they don’t know what to believe in, if anything, in the first place. There has been no guidance and no direction.

I am delighted that we have a very healthy number for Confirmation this year (and possibly with five adults as well!). Most of the gang have come up through the ranks of Sunday Club and all the rest, but some potential candidates for Confirmation hardly know the inside of this Church. It happens every time.

But I am sure that those parents who are sending their children to be confirmed, and yet who do not now attend Church, at least at one time had a ‘good foundation’. Why would they bother otherwise?

Whatever some might think of ‘Church’ or the institution of church, or the criticisms of ‘Church’ (which most of us share, anyway) at least, you could say that these parents hearts are in the right place.

That’s quite an important factor.

“For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks” our Gospel reading says this morning. God knows what is in our hearts.

That’s the idea behind the glass of water. When it is jolted, what comes out is what it is full of, “For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”

Do you remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned Jesus’ parable of Dives and Lazarus from Luke 16, and at one point Abraham cries out to Dives, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them”. It is an intriguing parable, and it has often occurred to me before that, if I could put it this way, “all things necessary for salvation” are already in what we now call the Old Testament. Jesus’ life death and resurrection puts the seal of approval on all that is in the Hebrew Scriptures.

The ‘head’ of the Prophets is Isaiah, and part of one of his most wonderful chapters we read this morning, Isaiah 55 (I read it at Deirdre Barber’s mother’s funeral and if I’m not mistaken, we had it Deidre’s funeral too).

It’s the wonderful Invitation. God pledges himself in tender, unswerving, enduring love to his people.

To commit to a person or to a people in such enduring tones is what some sociologists call the ‘principle of least interest’. In other words, whoever loves the most in any relationship exercises the least power, and whoever exercises the most power is exercising the least love.

Did you get that? It’s the kind of ‘James Bond’ effect; he doesn’t love at all, yet women, supposedly, fall at his feet, so he is the one in control – he’s the one with the power! No love and all the power, all the control.

The extraordinary thing is that God, of the ‘Old Testament’ loved us so much that he was willing to give up his power and take upon himself the form of a slave. He has relinquished any power, because he loves the most.

Constantly, God offers himself to us in tender, unswerving, enduring love to his people, ultimately expressed in Jesus his son.

He cannot and he will not reject any who come to him. He knows our hearts. He knows us intimately. If he has relinquished so much, he is due our complete thanks and our honour.