Fr Luke Miller

S Andrew by the Wardrobe is host to an Indian Orthodox congregation. They cast petals on the ground on their Palm Sunday procession. Seeing them there as I came home yesterday put me in mind of a poem of S Therese of Lisieux, An Unpetalled Rose The text is here . The poem meditates on the first trembling steps of the child Jesus, beginning with what seems the sentimental desire to unpetal a rose 'So that your little foot might rest ever so softly on a flower.' The wobbling attempts of the toddler are but the first steps on the way of the Cross. The poet realises this as she suggests that her life should be unpetalled; not standing proud like the flowers in the vase, but unpetalled and cast on the processional path: 'The rose in its splendor can adorn your feast... but the unpetalled rose is just flung out to blow away... like it, with joy I abandon myself to you." So often we want to be heroes of the faith, obvious in our devotion, strangely selfish in our ver...

As I came back from meeting on March 21, 2017 I was called by a colleague who told me that I should look at the news. Almost the same time my phone buzzed with a message from the police chaplain. I lead for the Faith Sector across Greater London for what is known as "resilience". That means that I chair the group that tries to make sure that people of faith respond well in the face of major incidents. That afternoon I was in touch with the police chaplain was with his colleagues providing support for officers, and with the chaplain to Parliament who was locked down with MPs and peers, staff and all those others who had been in the Palace of Westminster at the time of the attack. Every incident leaves us with a lot to learn. A few days after the attack I had a conversation with the lead chaplain at St Thomas's Hospital about a vigil they were holding. Thousands of patients and staff had seen the incident and that community needed hel...

Sermon Preached at S Martin of Tours Ruislip Lent 3 2018 John 2:19 Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up Exodus 20:1-17 1 Corinthians 1:22-25 John 2:13-25 The events of today’s Gospel are set on a building site . The original Temple of Solomon  was destroyed by the Babylonians; the rebuilt Second Temple had been destroyed by the Greeks; now Herod was building a new one. But there were insecurities. In Scripture there were hints that the Temple would not last forever. Jeremiah for example predicted the destruction of the temple. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that around A.D. 62 one Jesus bar Ananias warned of a coming destruction, and there was tension in the air, a sense of fragility and impending failure. The Future of the Church I spent quite a lot of time last week in the same kind of atmosphere of concern, tension and worry about the future of the church. You are 80 times more likely to find an 80-year-old in church then yo...