Glow, grow, and go.

What is this? It's a box of Ready brek. Will anybody here admit to liking Ready brek? Does anybody remember the Ready brek ads on the telly?

In those ads, what happens to the boys and girls when they eat Ready brek? They start glowing with this wierd orange glow, like a lightbulb has been switched on inside them.

Now how would you feel if one morning you ate some Ready brek and you actually starting glowing? How do you think that the rest of your family would react? I think that I’d be pretty freaked out, I’d probably call the doctor.

So, you can imagine how freaked out the people in the bits of the Bible that we’ve just heard read were when people started glowing.

God’s people, the Israelites, were camped in the desert between Egypt and Palestine, at the bottom of a mountain. Moses, whom God had sent to rescue them from slavery in Egypt, had disappeared up the mountain. They had seen thunder and lightening and all sorts, and now Moses reappears, carrying two big bits of stone and he’s glowing. They are completely freaked out and run away. He didn’t know why, he didn’t have a mirror with him on the mountain, and didn’t know that his face has glowing.

But eventually they sort out what is going on. Moses face wasn’t glowing because he’d had Ready brek for breakfast, it was because he had been close to God, speaking with God.

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Say no to cynicism.

Cynicism. Ezekiel faced cynics, Jesus faced cynics, and Paul faced cynics.

Those of little faith. Those who could not see past the ordinary. Past the slightly odd priest who was prone to have visions and dreams that were hard to understand. Past the man who we grew up with, whose brothers and sisters we know. Past the man who built our house. Past the funny little ugly tent maker. There is a lack of imagination, a lack of openness to something new, a lack of vision to see what is here now and what is coming soon, because of the limited experience of the past.

It seems to me that cynicism is one of the hall marks of our culture in this country right now. Throughout public debate and news stories is a deep current of mistrust. There appears to be an underlying assumption and idea that most people lie most of the time, and that we are being misled.

I believe that this is so corrosive to the human soul that it is heart breaking. How can we live in community if we don’t trust people? It seems to me that down this road lies isolation and loneliness. Cut off from each other, with no common ground on which to meet, we end up alone.

And this is not to say that there is not, in some cases, grounds for mistrust and dismay. It is almost as if over the last fifteen years there has been a vicious circle in place in our society. Repeated episodes of deceit and lack of openness by public figures in authority, political and church leaders, have led to a reduction in trust in our leaders, and this in turn has led to a reluctance on the part of leaders to be open about failings and mistakes.

It is one huge mess that is characterised by a lack of truth, a lack of forgiveness, a lack of openness, a lack of generosity and a lack of trust. Our country is in a mess.

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