Guilsborough: St. Bartholemew’s Day, 24th August, 2008. 
“ Oh, make thy word a swift word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the life and conversation: that as the rain returns not empty, so neither may they word, but accomplish that for which it is given. Oh Lord, hear, Oh Lord, forgive! Oh Lord, hearken, and do so for thy blessed Son’s sake, in whose sweet name we pray. — George Herbert, 1593-1633
Does anyone have a birthday to-day?   Even if we didn’t much like history at school, I suspect that most of us have at least some interest in one part of  it – anniversaries of one kind or another.  I am aomg the many who take an interest birthday announcements in the newspaper, though I often wonder  how many of the selected celebrities I will have heard of and how they got on the list.   To-day, as my contribution the anniversaries department, I notice that it is the 475th anniversary of the birth of Elizabeth I, Grandma Moses, who began painting at the age of 67 and lived to 101, and assorted actors.
In our Christian calendar we celebrate the birth of the Virgin Mary on the Sunday nearest to 8th September. 
The Church usually celebrates the passing of a person, that is, the person's entry into eternal life. Besides the birth of Christ, the Christian liturgy celebrates only two birthdays: that of St. John the Baptist and of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. It is not the individual greatness of these saints that the Church celebrates, but their role in salvation history, a role directly connected to the Redeemer's own coming into the world. 
Mary's birth lies at the confluence of the two Testaments--bringing to an end the stage of expectation and the promises and inaugurating the new times of grace and salvation in Jesus Christ. Mary, the Daughter of Zion and ideal personification of Israel, is the last and most worthy representative of the People of the Old Covenant but at the same time she is "the hope and the dawn of the whole world." With her, the elevated Daughter of Zion, after a long expectation of the promises, the times are fulfilled and a new economy is established. (Lumen Gentium 55) 
The birth of Mary is ordained in particular toward her mission as Mother of the Savior. Her existence is indissolubly connected with that of Christ: it partakes of a unique plan of predestination and grace. God's mysterious plan regarding the Incarnation of the Word embraces also the Virgin who is His Mother. In this way, the Birth of Mary is inserted at the very heart of the History of Salvation. (M. Valentini, Dictionary of Mary, pp. 36-7.) 
We are also celebrating to-day, of course, the end of the Paraolympics  an event that we in the country began as a result of the work at Stoke Mandeville Hospital.  Other venues: Rome, Tele Aviv and recently in the citiies where the Olympics themselves are celebrated. 
Jesus’s concern for the disabled and sick, the out casts.  
John the Baptist sending his messengers & Jesus says “the blind can see, the lame can walk etc. 
As we look at the extravaganzas surrounding the Olympics on our televisions we might recall with a twinge of embarrassment that the original Olympic Games were suppressed in 392AD by a Roman Emperor at the request of the Christian Church that regarded the Games as an expression of paganism.   
True,  the modern Olympics were devised in 1896 as a celebration of human achievement and an expression of peaceful competition among nations and the brotherhood of man etc. – all entirely laudable sentiments.  But again one has to wonder whether that assertion in the Preface to the Prayer Book is in danger of being fulfilled.  “There never was anything by the wit of man …..”  The vast sums of public money, the rampant nationalism, jingoism even,  the performance enhancing drugs, the heavy commercial sponsorship have all changed, everyone seems agreed, the original, amateur, Olympic spirit.  What price now for the spirit of Chariots of Fire? 
Already we are worrying about whether or not we can match the Chinese organisation and slickness of presentation.  Personally I hope we don’t , and that we make our Olympiad to some extent a return to the spirit of former years.  I would like to see us celebrate Britain’s unique contribution to the world through the promotion of human rights and human endeavour, by voluntary giving: the Anti-slavery Society ( and to-day is William Wilberforce’s birthday),  the YMCA, the Scout Movement, the Boys Brigade, St. John Ambulance, Amnesty International, Meals on Wheels, Oxfam,  Age Concern  etc. are all worldwide movements that we can be proud of and the Games will offer us an opportunity to bring that spirit of humanitarianism to the fore.  It was hardly been a feature of the Beijing Games.  So we can make the London Olympics the chance for spiritual as well as material regeneration and plan our own parts in that. 
The Bible tells us that life is a race to be run. It teaches us about the virtues of perseverance in the life we lead on earth, of the need for preparation for the life to come and the rules by which we are to run our race.   As St. Paul puts it 
“ Know ye not that they which run a race, run all,  but only one receives the prize? So run that ye may obtain the prize.  And every man that striveth for mastery is temperate in all things.  Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown but we an incorruptible. That is why I run for the finishing line that is why I am like a boxer who does not waste his punches. “  
Some of us may feel at times like stragglers in the race of life.  Lets others get on with it: I’ll just jog along.   It’s easier to book a  Saga Holiday than do a stint at the soup kitchen.  Jesus taught us, however, to look out for the stragglers and pick them up along our road and we can of course do that in all kinds of ways.  First and foremost by showing others by our way of life, through what we do, what the Christian faith is all about.   “Here I stand I can do no other”,  was Martin Luther’s statement of faith.   Baden Powell did it; Bramwell Booth did it; William Wilberforce did it;  Elizabeth Fry did it.   OK: I accept that we are not likely to change the world in Hollowell: but wasn’t it the Apostle Nathaniel who said “Can any good come out of Nazareth?”   So you never know.   
As we run our own races, then, let’s conscious of our own individual contribution to making our country a better place for the world to visit in 2012.  And by the way, as the person who standing up and saying that now, I do have in mind St, Paul’;s comment at the end of that passage from Corinthians about the need to pommel the body and subdue it    “lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified”. 
