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In the first of our Autumn Lecture Series last Monday Rowan Williams spoke about what it means to encounter the other. He spoke with a simplicity that made one feel that he was articulating a truth you had always known, but I am still unpacking some of the things he said for like all real wisdom what seems at first simple has a huge resonance and depth of truth for the whole of one’s life.

Last week in the US Open tennis championship, the Australian Nick Kyrgios, at that point a set and 0-3 down, let a couple of serves pass him without attempting to play them. The hugely experienced and respected umpire Mohamed Lahyani, wondering whether the player was having a physical spasm or a mental meltdown, got down from his chair and said to him, ‘You’re great for tennis. But this isn’t good. It’s not you.’

Today’s Gospel reading seems, almost eerily, like a text specifically written for our troubled world. A text about outward virtue and inward corruption.  A text that shows it’s not what’s on the outside and goes in that is sinful; but what’s inside us that comes out. 

I returned to St Martin’s yesterday from a holiday during which I visited in Chennai in India. Absence they say makes the heart grow fonder. There is truth in this. Yesterday I came into this church in the morning hungry not only for the quiet and beauty of this place but, disorientated and tired after my long flight and the experience I had been through