Family Communion for the eighth Sunday after Trinity: celebrant the Revd Tola Badejo.

First reading: Isaiah 1. 1, 10-20
Gospel: Luke 12. 32 – 40

Isaiah's words from the Old Testament are profoundly challenging. Essentially, no ritual or religious activity is acceptable to God unless it is an expression of heartfelt commitment to God and to humanity: 'cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow'. Most of the actions Isaiah demands are public rather than private, requiring right action as well as right belief, and he calls for the defence of the least powerful in society, those who are most unlikely to be able to repay generosity in a material way.

In the Gospel Jesus uses a strange metaphor, comparing his coming to a burglary. His point is that we never know when we shall be required to respond to him; our readiness cannot be confined to an hour on Sunday morning, or to other times when we are not doing anything else. Nor do we know how his call will come: it could be in the form of a trying neighbour, a person we have good reason to dislike, or an unpleasantly tedious duty. In the engraving above, by the 17th-century Dutch artist Jan Luyken, the dutiful servant has stayed at the door while his fellows are relaxing at the table in the background; the issue is not that they are doing anything inherently wrong, but that they have forgotten their commitment to look out for their master.