You know well by now that I receive lots of emails from all sorts of quarters, often funny, sad, serious and they often provide material for sermons; although the jokes often have to be ever so slightly tweaked!

One I received recently was entitled, “So what does it all mean?” When you think about most of it, it makes sense, but it is quite startling when you hear it first, so just take it at face value. The presentation began by asking, ‘Did you know?’...

If you’re one in a million in China, there are 1,300 people just like you! China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world. The 25% of India’s population with the highest IQ’s...is GREATER THAN the total population of the United States. That means that India has more Honours kids than America has kids! We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist...using technologies that haven’t been invented...in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet. We are living in exponential times. There are 31 billion searches on Google every month. (I presume, as is accepted these days that we’re talking about American billions!). In 2006 (only two years ago) this number was only 2.7 billion. The first commercial text message was sent in December of 1992. Today, the number of text messages sent and received everyday, exceeds the total population of the planet.

Years it took to reach a market audience of 50 million:

Radio: 38 years. TV 43 years. Internet 4 years. iPod 3 years. Facebook just 2 years.

There are about 540,000 words in the English language – about 5 times as many as during Shakespeare’s time.

The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years. For students starting a 4 year technical degree, this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

I’ve left out a lot, but the presentation ends by saying that in the time it took to listen to this, 67 babies were born in the USA, 274 were born in China, and 395 babies were born in India!...So (it asks) what does it all mean?

Are we meant to be worried by this rate of change? Are we concerned that there are no ‘constants’ any more? And from our Church point of view, are we just a crowd of nostalgic romantics, harking back to a time when life seemed to be more simple and straightforward and a lot less complicated?

If the rate of change is prompting people to ask questions, then that can only be a good thing. I like people asking questions and I don’t know why Christians sometime run scared at the great increase in knowledge and understanding and brain power of the human race. Are they afraid that ‘they’ may find out something and put all our Church endeavours and pursuits to no use? Have they no confidence in the Scriptures they believe in?

The witness of John the Baptist that we read about this morning and are thinking about especially on this Third Sunday in Advent will never change even if our world will last another 1000 years or more. The Gospel message of love and peace and forgiveness will never change. We have seen more changes in the last 100 years and particularly in the last handful of years than in all of human history. Our capabilities are extraordinary, but none of it compares to what we have found through knowing God through Christ. Now that is something extraordinary!

There is no doubt that ‘Church’ will change over time and it will try to be trendy and always keeping up with the times. But its essence can never change because the message is always the same – always.

You know, prophecy is often associated with talking about the future, and it’s often also associated with doom and gloom. Yet it is actually not about predicting the future, but more accurately prophecy is about interpreting scripture and the Word of God in the present day situation.

In a world of constant change and flux or, to use a great Sean O’Casey, phrase that ‘the whole world is in a state of chassis’, what we need more than ever, are modern day prophets to interpret Scripture for a modern day world. It takes bravery and guts to do this, because in a world of constant change and emphasis, we need true prophets and leaders to help us read scripture through modern day eyes. Do you think we can find them? What leaders do we have courageous enough?

This world can turn on its head with change, but love will always be love, forgiveness will always be forgiveness and the important things in life will always prevail,

even when we have robots doing everything else. And that’s why the message of the Gospel will always be relevant, and there is nothing to fear.

I’m sure I’ve told you before about the primary school class which was asked to write down what they thought were the modern day seven wonders of the world. And without hesitation most of the youngsters started scribbling like mad; they thought of their computers at home, internet, email and all the rest. Perhaps the Millau Bridge in France or the Empire State Building. The rockets that took men to the moon. The advances in medicine and science. How on earth could they pick the seven best?

The exercise seemed to be going well until the teacher noticed a little girl looking rather puzzled. And so she went down to her and looked at her piece of paper. There she had written her modern day seven wonders of the world:

Love, laughter, sight, hearing, touch, smell and, oh yes the fifth of the so-called ‘five senses’, taste. The teacher couldn’t believe it. In all our technological advances, the little girl was absolutely right.

We are ‘wonderfully made’, and the more capabilities we are to discover about ourselves and the more advances we are to make in science and medicine and philosophy, then the more we have to praise him and thank him this Christmas and in all the Christmases to come!