At our Evening service on the first Sunday of the month, I told you about an email that I had received, and I couldn’t resist using it! I warned you at the time that I might be using it soon again at a morning service, so if you were there, would you please forgive me if you’ve heard this before. It’s meant to be true and I’m using it now before the impact of it is lost in the passing of time!

It begins like this: “This explains everything!

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little over 600 employees and has the following employee statistics:

29 have been accused of spouse abuse

7 have been arrested for fraud

9 have been accused of writing bad cheques

17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

3 have done time for assault

71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit

14 have been arrested on drug-related charges

8 have been arrested for shoplifting

21 are currently defendants in lawsuits

84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year

And which organisation is this? It’s the 635 members of the House of Commons, the same group (the email says) that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line. Just to top all that, they probably have the best ‘corporate’ pension scheme in the country!!”

There are words on the email to describe the kind of ‘shower’ that are meant to be running the country, but I can’t repeat them here.

There’s no doubt that parliament is going through a bad time at the moment, and there’s not a great deal of sympathy out there for any of them. It’s hardly surprising! Perhaps, you could describe it as political storm; to make reference to our Gospel reading this morning! And amongst this list I have just given you, there is not even a mention of the expenses scandal. Revelations have been shocking, but I think the most astonishing piece of information about all of this was the fact that Tony Blair’s Expense Form was “accidentally” shredded before the forms were all published in the Newspapers.

I’m sure most people enter politics for noble reasons; perhaps believing, sincerely, that they can help create a better world and a better society. But is it something about power and influence that changes people? If they are ‘suddenly’ responsible for bringing about changes in law; do they think they are now above it? Power and influence can do extraordinary things to us.

‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. That’s one of those quotes that we all know so well, but do you know where it was first used? We often associate it with George Orwell’s ‘Animal farm’ published in 1945, which explores the major theme that ‘power corrupts’. But it was a phrase first written down in a letter by John Dalberg-Acton, or Lord Acton, in 1887.

And the issue was the crisis in Roman Catholicism in 1870 over the promulgation of Pope Pius 9^th concerning the dogma of papal infallibility.

So, it’s also Church! It’s not just politicians, but Church and Power is a very dangerous and precarious concoction. The recent horrendous revelations in the Roman Catholic Church should not make us think that we are in some way immune to this appalling set of circumstances. This affects us all. And it has come about because of the misuse, or abuse, of positions of power, influence and trust. How low could we ever descend before the world completely turns its back on all of us? How incredible it is that the Church still exists, and thrives, not because of us, but in spite of us. Don’t you think that there has to be something in this Christianity that makes us believe; despite everything?

Our Diocesan Synod is happening on Tuesday. General Synod was just last month. And I have to convince myself that the Church doesn’t exist for its own sake...or does it? Why do we spend our time doing all of this?

You know the story of the man being shown round an oil refinery. And the guide explains that this is where, whatever happens and so on, and at the end of the tour the man asks the guide, ‘Where is the shipping department?’ ‘Pardon?’ said the guide, ‘What do you mean the shipping department?’

‘I mean, where do you ship out all the energy that this refinery produces?’ ‘Oh sir,’ said the guide, ‘you don’t understand. All the energy that this refinery produces is used up in keeping the refinery going’... Is the Church like that?

You may remember, we were trying to explain the Doctrine of the Trinity to our youngsters a couple of Sundays ago – quite a task, and I think I ended up even more confused myself than when I started! At least we were brave to try!

But in its most basic form, the doctrine of the Trinity is explaining to the world the identity of Jesus Christ as the person whom we believe him to be; none other than God himself in human form. The divinity of Jesus is the single most important doctrine that separates main-stream Christianity from other ‘sects’ and ‘churches’.

Listen to what St. Paul says in that famous passage from Philippians, describing who Jesus is: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself... nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!”

Jesus, being in very nature God, became nothing. He had all the power and might and ‘influence’ he could ever want, but he relinquished it all, to become nothing, just to tell us his message of love.

He has done exactly the opposite of what we would do as humans. We exploit power and influence, because that’s our nature; we can’t help but succumb to the pleasures that power and influence can provide. God, on the other hand does exactly the opposite to what we do as humans. He relinquished power and might and influence in order to show us his message of love; it was the only way. What a lesson we can all learn from this and how truly humbling it is!

In a nutshell, that’s the wonder and majesty and meaning of God becoming man for our own sake.