Remarks before worship at St Martin-in-the-Fields on February 27, 2022 by Revd Dr Sam Wells
There are three impossibilities right now. The first is that none of us seriously imagined that in our lifetimes, for the first time for 83 years, one European country would invade another. We just thought it couldn’t happen, and we’re still speechless with shock and disbelief. The second is the impossibility that Ukraine, which surrendered its nuclear weapons in return for guarantees of security, can hold out for long now those guarantees have been abrogated. The third is that anything we can do from 1500 miles away can do any good.
In response to those three impossibilities, we gather to worship the God of Jesus Christ. We confess our sin, and so realise that humans are capable of terrible perfidy, violence, greed and destruction. We worship a child laid in a manger and a man nailed to a cross, and recall that powerlessness doesn’t work the same way in the kingdom of God. We intercede and share food, and so connect with the whole church, living and departed, in bunkers in Kiev and protest groups in Moscow, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is impossible with God.
God will turn even our worst sins into part of a story of grace. God will lift up the downtrodden and uphold the oppressed. And God will take our prayers and make them the threshold of the kingdom. These are things we constantly forget, so we need the gospel to remind us, we need one another to restore us, we need worship to inspire us that nothing is impossible with God. That’s why we’re here today.
