It turns out that Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation of Christ has come top of the league of TV complaints! I have yet to work out what the complaints about this were actually about. The usual repot is that Jesus has sexual fantasies about Mary Magdalene, but this is misleading. The crucial temptation that Jesus faces is to give up his mission and settle down to raise a family with Mary. But if he wasn't tempted by this, if he felt no attachment to life as an ordinary human being, then in what sense was the incarnation anything more than a fantasy itself? Still, you can always trust certain parts of the Christian community to complain noisily about something that they don't actually understand.
Prayers for Evensong
The BBC were at the Cathedral yesterday, recording our Choral Evensong . I wrote some new prayers for the occasion, which I share here: In the evening of the day, we come to you, O God, bringing those we have met, for your blessing, our hurts for your healing, our sins for your forgiveness, our labours as our offering and our lives as our worship; we come to you through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who became like us, that we might become like him. Amen. Lord Jesus, you call us into your church; help us to leave behind the things we cling to, coax us with the treasure of heaven, and in the age to come, when the first will be last and the last will be first, allow us simply to be found within your Kingdom, and to feast at your table, where there is abundant life for all your world, for with you all things are possible, and in your name we pray. Amen. God of all hope, may the light of your justice search out the darkness of our world; may the power of your love banish al...
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