Bread of heaven from a rowing boat!

This weeks readings are about bread...the spiritual variety. I have written a sermon on this subject interspersed with shouting on the rowers as they got their medals!  Here is a small part of it.

 The metaphor of bread is used over and over again in the New Testament....feed my sheep! 

Spiritual food is of course to be found all around us.....music is particularly potent and is one of the reasons why we sing hymns in church as an addition to the liturgy of the word....Its a layering effect....words, music..scents in some churches, visual images  in most churches to enhance the whole act of praising and thanksgiving.....going to church in itself then is a way of being fed...Feed my sheep.  

Here on the Roseland and especially in St Just  we have enough to feed us for the rest of our lives.....to experience the beauty everywhere we look, to hear the music, to listen to the words, this is being fed with the bread of heaven for me....
If you are lucky enough to experience all the triggers of beauty  in one hit then you will have a glorious life enhancing experience which will last you for the rest of your lives. 
My own moment of sheer exuberant joy was after I’d climbed a  very small mountain in the Lake district...I’d broken a car journey from Scotland and needed exercise before driving on so I started up the mountain and kept going till I reached the top.....there below me was the glorious lake,  Ullswater and the hills and fields all around it.  
I stood quite alone for a long time, soaring with the birds, I could have been humming outloud, I certainly sang in my head....The whole moment was simply wonderful and I knew the glory of God on that day as certainly  as I had left my car a long way down....That particular moment has been with me ever since...but there are other moments, many right here on the Roseland..., all bringing me to a closer relationship with God and if you are lucky enough to find words, music, and beauty as you sit quietly looking out then that sort of experience can be yours too...you don’t have to climb every mountain. 

This morning watching the girls win their gold and then their faces as they realised what they had done and then the men who had slogged away and felt that they had let us down by ONLY getting silver....I now also think to be bread of heaven in its own way!  As a family of friends...we rejoiced and wept together.....the entire nation......

We shall sing Cum Rhonda tomorrow and really mean the chorus.

Bread of Heaven, feed me till I want no more!    Amen..