Family Communion: celebrant the Rev. Cynthia Finnerty. First reading: Revelation 1. 4b–8
Gospel: John 18. 33–37

'“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come.' These are familiar words, but they set out a deeply challenging proposition: that there is a realm in which our human perception of past, present and future does not apply and in which beginning and end cohere in the same identity. We should not explain the language as solely an aspect of the poetry of religion, but consider the possibilities it raises of realities beyond our immediate grasp.

The Gospel is similarly disruptive of expectation. Jesus presents Pilate with an image of kingship that Pilate literally cannot understand; the structure of his thinking compels him to link kingship with oppression on the one hand and an existential threat to alternative authority on the other. When Jesus tells his followers to love God 'with all your mind' he reminds us that belief requires us to examine our own patterns of thought in ways that might not be easy.