Sunday reflection spot.

I was down to read the lesson this morning at  St James' church Whitehaven.

As I was in London all day yesterday, at the excellent Border dinner all evening on Friday, at the Whitehaven "success regime" public consultation meeting on Tuesday, and away at a variety of other meetings and events practically every day the past week, I had not had time to practice the reading I was doing. It turned out this was just as well, as I had been given the wrong set of chapter and verse (indeed, the verse numbers I'd been given do not exist).

So I was grabbed when I arrived at the church and hastily advised of the slightly different section of the Gospel of St Luke I was actually due to read.

Which reminded me of a story of a vicar who wanted to make a point to his congregation about honesty.

"Next week," he told them at the end of his sermon, "I shall be preaching about truthfulness, and in preparation I would be grateful if you could please find a few minutes to look at your bible and read the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to St Mark."

The following week he began his sermon as follows.

"As those of you who were in church last week may remember, I said then that today I would be preaching about truthfulness, and asked if in preparation you could read the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to St Mark. Could anyone who, for whatever reason, was unable to read that chapter of the bible please raise their hand?"

A very small number of hands went up.

"I'd like to thank those of you who just put your hands up. The rest of you particularly need to listen to this sermon. The Gospel according to St Mark only has sixteen chapters."

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