Jesus + Nothing = Everything

This Sunday Christ's Church (Anglican) was blessed to have a guest priest, Fr. Richard Menees, officiate and preach a wonderful sermon about the Samaritan woman at the well from the gospel of John, chapter 4. The high point of Fr. Menees' sermon for me was his statement that "Jesus is the gospel" is the most important message to be gleaned from this passage of Scripture. I think this teaching fits with the idea of "Autobasileia," that is, that the Kingdom of Heaven is a Person, Jesus Christ.

Fr. Menees also cited a great quote from Malcolm Muggeridge during the sermon which I reproduce here for you:

I may, I suppose, regard myself, or pass for being, a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets – that's fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Inland Revenue – that's success. Furnished with money and a little fame, even the elderly, if they care to, may partake of trendy diversions – that's pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time – that's fulfillment. Yet I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing – less than nothing, a positive impediment – measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.

- Malcolm Muggeridge