‘The Thucydides Trap’ could trap Trump, with classical lessons on war and democracy

The Monument of the Unknown Soldier outside Parliament in Athens … the quotations are from the Funeral Oration by Pericles, recounted by Thucydides in ‘The History of the Peloponnesian War’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

When Xi Jinping and Donald Trump met in Beijing last week, the Chinese leader recalled another conflict between superpowers of the past, when he referred to the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece, a decades long conflict that between Athens and Sparta that began in 431 BCE.

In a reference to classical rivalry, Xi asked: ‘Can China and the United States transcend the so-called “Thucydides Trap” and forge a new paradigm for major-power relations?’

I doubt that Trump had much of a classical education, and the reference must have gone over his head, presuming he was awake and listening at the time. If he was listening, I cannot imagine that he connected with the Peloponnesian War, still less that he ever heard of Thucydides or Pericles, just as I imagine that throughout the illegal war that has been waged continuously against Iran for weeks now, he has been incapable of knowing about the Persian Wars, still less that Persia was once one of the great classical civilisations.

Trump took a pack of ambitious business deal-makers with him on the jolly to Beijing, but few actual members of his administration, and probably no-one who was educated enough to understand the reference to the Thucydides Trap or anyone who was wise enough to grasp the significance of the citation.

The Thucydides Trap refers to the idea that when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, the result is often war. ‘It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable,’ Thucydides wrote in The History of the Peloponnesian War. Just as Athens was once at war with Sparta, the implication is that China’s rise provokes anxiety and potential conflict with the US.

But the term the ‘Thucydides Trap’ was not devised by Thucydides. Instead, the label was first used by the US political scientist Graham Allison of Harvard in a feature in the Financial Times in 2012 to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power, such as Athens, threatens to displace an existing great power, such as Sparta, as a regional or international dominant power. The term has been widely used since 2015, and it primarily applies to analyses of China-US relations.

Graham Allison led a study at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs which found that, among a sample of 16 historical instances of an emerging power rivalling a ruling power, 12 ended in war. Allison expanded his theory in 2017 in his book Destined for War, where he argues that ‘China and the US are currently on a collision course for war’.

However, Allison’s theory has come under considerable criticism, and scholars remain divided on the value of the ‘Thucydides Trap’, particularly as it relates to a potential military conflict between the US and China.

If anybody is brave enough to explain to Trump the meaning of the ‘Thucydides Trap’, they might also be well-advised to explain how the concept and values of democracy – so under threat in Trump’s America today – emerged and were consolidated around the same time as Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War.

The term democracy first appeared in Greek political and philosophical thought in the city-state of Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Greek word δημοκρατία (dēmokratía), a compound of δῆμος (demos, people) and κρατία (kratía, power or rule). The term first appeared in Greek political and philosophical thought in the city-state of Athens. The first attested use of the word democracy is found in prose works in the 430s BCE, such as Herodotus’ Histories. But its usage was older by several decades, and Aeschylus strongly alludes to the word in his play The Suppliants (ca 463 BCE), in which he mentions ‘the demos’s ruling hand.’

Athenian democracy took the form of a direct democracy, and it had two distinguishing features: the random selection of ordinary citizens to fill the few existing government administrative and judicial offices, and a legislative assembly consisting of all Athenian citizens.

All eligible citizens could speak and vote in the assembly, which set the laws of the city state. However, Athenian citizenship excluded women, slaves, foreigners, and youths below the age of military service. Effectively, only 1 in 4 residents in Athens qualified as citizens.

During the run-up to this week’s election, I have been re-reading one of the greatest Greek speeches about democracy and democratic values. For many years I had a T-shirt, bought in Athens, with quotes from that funeral oration by Pericles in the cemetery in Kerameikos in Athens at the height of the Peloponnesian War.

The funeral oration by Pericles has been handed down in history by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War. He tells us Pericles delivered his oration in the cemetery in Kerameikos – not only to bury the dead, but to praise democracy.

There are excerpts from the speech on the Monument of the Unknown Soldier on Parliament Square (Plateia Voulis) on Vasilissis Amalias avenue, facing onto Syntagma Square. The monument, designed by the architect Emmanuel Lazaridis in 1929-1930, includes a large bas-relief of a dying Greek soldier by Kostas Demetriadis (1881-1943) and the Greek text of the funeral oration delivered by Pericles in 431 or 430 BCE.

Part of the Parthenon frieze in the Acropolis Museum in Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Pericles was a Greek leader and statesman and a supporter of democracy during the Peloponnesian War. He was so important for Athens that his name defines the age – the Periclean Age – during which Athens rebuilt what had been destroyed during the recent war with Persia.

The people of Athens, including those from the countryside whose land was being pillaged by their enemies, were kept in crowded conditions within the walls of Athens. Near the start of the Peloponnesian War, a plague swept through the city. Pericles succumbed to this plague and died.

Before he died, though, Pericles delivered his rousing speech about the virtues of democracy. Thucydides puts in Pericles’ mouth key democratic values that are worth remembering today when democracy is under threat:

• Democracy allows humanity to advance because of merit instead of wealth or inherited class.
• In a democracy, citizens behave lawfully while doing what they like without fear of prying eyes.
• In a democracy, there is equal justice for all in private disputes.

Pericles, in his ‘Funeral Oration’ in Athens, uses ‘the many,’ οἱ πολλοί (hoi polloi), in a positive way when praising the Athenian democracy. He contrasts them with ‘the few’ (οἱ ὀλίγοι, hoi oligoi), who abuse power and create an oligarchy, rule by the few. He advocates equal justice for ‘the many’, ‘the all’, before the law, against the selfish interests of the few.

And that’s what democracy should have at its heart despite all the threats it faces from the Trump autocracy in the US and from the far-right in Britain and across Europe: equal justice for ‘the many’ and ‘the all’, before the law, against the selfish interests of the few.

A grave in Kerameikós, Athens, where Pericles delivered his funeral oration (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

38 million in Morocco, 38 million imaginary Koreans, 38 million war victims, and 38 million blog readers

In the stepped streets and arched alleyways of Tangier … Morocco has a population of 38 million (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The viewing and reading figures for this blog continue to overwhelm me. These figures reached the 38 million mark at lunchtime this afternoon (14 May 2026). They reached the 37 million mark a week ago (8 May 2026), having reached 36 million six days before that (2 May 2026) and 35 million at the beginning of this month (1 May 2026). The figures have now passed the million mark four times so far this month, and passed that mark four times last month also: 34 million (29 April), 33 million (25 April), 32 million (19 April) and 31 million (8 April).

These viewing and reading figures have been overwhelming in these recent weeks and months and this blog continues to reach a volume of readers that I could never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. Half the total hits (19 million) have been within less than six months, having reached 19 million hits a little more than five months ago, on 9 December 2025. The total hits in March 2026 were the highest monthly total ever (4,523,648), followed by 4,365,464 hits for last month (April 2026); so far this month the figure for May is more than 3.3 million.

At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 17 million hits or visitors in 2026.

I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures continue to be overwhelming on many occasions. Of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were this month (1, 6 and 14 May 2026), three were last month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), three were in March, one was in February, and two were in January 2025:

• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)*
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2024)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)

• 318,835 (6 May 2026)
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)

The daily average is about 237,000 so far in May, although that figure is distorted by the exceptionally high number of hits on three days so far this month. There were about 145,000 or more hits a day last month; ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.

A half-page feature on Korean politics in ‘The Irish Times’ on on 15 September 1997 … Donald Trump thinks South Korea has a population of 38 million

To put this figure of 38 million into perspective:

Back in March 2020, Donald Trump said the population of Seoul, the South Korean capital, was 38 million during a White House press briefing. Trump began sharing facts about the country, saying ‘I know South Korea better than anybody.’ He asked, again and again, ‘Do you know how many people are in Seoul? Do you know how big the city of Seoul is?’ and then answered his own question: ‘38 million people. That’s bigger than anything we have. 38 million people, all tightly, wound together.’

This is all from the man who alleges the BBC misconstrued his words.

When I was in South Korea in 1997, as an Irish Times journalist and as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Global Economics in Seoul, South Korea then had a population of about 10.4 million; when Trump made that gaffe three years later, Seoul had a population of around 10 million, according to its own official figures, but no more than that. Since then, the figures has continued to fall, and is now about 9.2 to 9.6 million people. But then, he claims, he knows ‘South Korea better than anybody.’ Just, please, don’t ask Trump to calculate these decreases in percentages, and it doesn’t assure anyone that he knows anything about the Far East while he is visiting China today.

On the other hand, 38 million is the approximate population of Morocco, Poland, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Greece recorded a new record in inbound tourism in 2025, with about 38 million visitors and revenues of more than €23.6 billion, according to the latest figures from the Greek Tourism Research Institute, INSETE.

The Costs of War Project estimates that US post-9/11 wars have displaced at least 38 million people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria.

A study by the Center of Economic and Policy Research revealed last year that, between 1971 and 2021, US and EU sanctions have killed 38 million people around the world. That figure equals the total of 38 million civilian deaths during World War II.

38 million minutes is approximately 72 years, 3 months and 0 days. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take more than 72 years, from mid- February 1954, to reach today’s latest figure of 38 million.

I retired from active parish ministry over four years ago, on 30 March 2022. These days, though, about 120-140 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning. A similar number have been reading my current series of postings on churches and local history in Staffordshire, and were reading my recent series of postings on the churches and chapels of Walsingham. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 850 to 1,000 or more people each week.

This evening, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 38 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of 120-140 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each morning.

* Figure amended at midnight on 14 May 2026 to reflect numbers for the full day.

‘Tea and Oranges’ as I ‘hear the boats go by’ on the canal between Armitage and Rugeley in April sunshine

‘You can hear the boats go by … and she feeds you tea and oranges’ … ‘Tea and Oranges’ on the canal below Hawkesyard Hall in Armitage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

As I was walking one day last week by the canal towpath between Rugeley and Armitage in the April sunshine, I noticed that one of the boats I saw below the pinnacles and turrets of Hawkesyard Hall is called ‘Tea and Oranges’.

I found myself singing the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’, with its images of lovers walking hand-in-hand by boats and the water and of ‘tea and oranges that come all the way from China’:

Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half-crazy
But that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover

‘Suzanne’ is a haunting composition and over the years it has become one of the best known works by the Canadian poet singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen, who died almost ten years ago on 7 November 2016.

Like many of Cohen’s songs, ‘Suzanne’ began as poem. He published his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956) at the age of 22. This was followed by The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), Flowers for Hitler (1964), and his novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966).

‘Suzanne’ was first published 60 years ago in 1966 as the poem ‘Suzanne Takes You Down’ in his third poetry collection, Parasites of Heaven (1966). Judy Collins recorded ‘Suzanne’ for her album In My Life, released in November 1966. A year later, Cohen included the song as the first track on Side A of his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, released on 27 December 1967.

The album’s front cover depicts a sepia tint photo of Leonard Cohen. The back cover is a Mexican religious picture of the Anima Sola depicted as a woman breaking free of her chains surrounded by flames and gazing towards heaven. In a Rolling Stone interview, he described the image as ‘the triumph of the spirit over matter. The spirit being that beautiful woman breaking out of the chains and the fire and prison’.

‘Suzanne’ was released as a single in 1968, but only reached the charts after Cohen died in 2016.


‘You can hear the boats go by’ … 90 seconds on the canal between Armitage and Rugeley (Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Suzanne has become one of the most covered songs in Cohen’s catalogue. Far Out and American Songwriter ranked the song No 4 and No 2, respectively, on their lists of the ten greatest Leonard Cohen songs. In 2021, it was ranked at No 284 on Rolling Stone’s ‘Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.’

Leonard Cohen had a lengthy relationship with the Los Angeles artist Suzanne Elrod in the 1970s. But he later said ‘cowardice’ and ‘fear’ prevented him from ever marrying her. They had two children, a son Adam (born 1972) and a daughter Lorca (born 1974) named after the poet Federico García Lorca.

Leonard Cohen and Suzanne Elrod had split up by 1979. But, contrary to popular belief, ‘Suzanne’ in the song is not Suzanne Elrod, but the dancer Suzanne Verdal, the former wife of his friend, the Québécois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt.

The song’s brilliance lies in its pairing of a spare, hypnotic melody with evocative lyrics:

Now Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know she’s half crazy.

In Cohen’s version first recorded in 1968, the mood is underscored by a lilting female chorus and Cohen’s own subtle, insistent guitar playing. Cohen recalls ‘Suzanne,’ the enigmatic title figure, who wears ‘rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters.’

‘Suzanne’ was inspired by Cohen’s platonic relationship with Suzanne Verdal and the lyrics describe the rituals that they enjoyed when they met. She would invite him to visit her apartment by the harbour in Montreal, where she would serve him Constant Comment tea, and feed him ‘oranges that come all the way from China’.

Together, they savoured the beautiful view of the St Lawrence River from her waterfront apartment in Montreal, and they would walk around Old Montreal past the Church of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, where sailors were blessed before heading out to sea.

Other details speak of a romantic longing that, seemingly, remained unfulfilled:

And you want to travel with her
and you want to travel blind …
for you’ve touched her perfect body
with your mind.

The hunger these two gifted people had for one another illuminates the lyrics, giving them a spark that seems to resonate from the inside. On a human level, the song is about the mysterious forces that bring people together and, then, just as inexplicably, move them apart. ‘Suzanne’ can be heard or read as a statement of human frailty, representing a special moment in time, created by two people whose mutual attraction was not fulfilled in a physical sense, but still fulfilled in an emotional, deeper, way.

Verdal went on to travel the world, going from Montreal to France to Texas, and, finally, by the early 1990s, to Los Angeles, where she worked as a choreographer. Cohen said in a BBC interview in 1994 that he only imagined having sex with her, as there was neither the opportunity nor inclination to actually go through with it.

A fall and injury ended her career as a dancer. By 2006, she was living in a converted truck in Venice Beach, California. That year she told a CBC interview that she had ‘put the boundaries’ on the relationship with Cohen. She said then that they never had a sexual relationship, contrary to what some interpretations of the song suggest: ‘Somehow, I didn’t want to spoil that preciousness, that infinite respect that I had for him … I felt that a sexual encounter might demean it somehow.’

‘She is wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters’ … the Salvation Army shop on Market Street in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Despite beginning as a story of love and infatuation, Suzanne turns to a religious theme in the second verse:

And Jesus was a sailor
when he walked upon the water …

His ‘lonely wooden tower’ is, of course, the cross. Cohen is so fascinated by Jesus that he writes:

And you want to travel with him
you want to travel blind
and you think maybe you’ll trust him
for he’s touched your perfect body
with his mind.

The stanza ends in the most tragic and cryptic lines of the poem, as the voice returns to a third person of Jesus:

But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

This must refer to the crucifixion and the burial. He was ‘forsaken almost human.’ Despite being divine he is also human.

‘And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China’ … oranges in the Tua Pek Kong Chinese temple in Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford,)

Leonard Cohen, Suzanne:

Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half-crazy
But that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said ‘All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them’
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you’ll trust him
For he’s touched your perfect body with his mind

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know you can trust her
For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind.

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 11, Wednesday 15 April 2026

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3: 16) … a sculpture at ‘Bloom’ in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 2018 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Our Easter celebrations continue in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Second Sunday of Easter (Easter II) or, in the calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church, with Easter Day.

The choir in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford is still taking a break after the busy demands of Holy Week and Easter, so there are no rehearsals this evening. Meanwhile, I have anothermedical consultation later this morning. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God’ (John 3: 21) … darkness and light looking out into the world at the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 3: 16-21 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’

The statue of Pythagoras by Nikolaos Ikaris (1989) on the harbour front in Pythagóreio on the Greek island of Samos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

In the readings for three days this week, from Monday to today, we are meeting Nicodemus, a prominent Pharisee, a rabbi, a teacher and a member of the Sanhedrin. He has a Greek name – Νικοδημος (Nikodemos) means ‘victory of the people’ – and this Greek name probably indicates he is an urbane and sophisticated man.

Nicodemus appears three times in Saint John’s Gospel:

1, He visits Christ at night to discuss Christ’s teachings (John 3: 1-21)
2, He reminds his colleagues in the Sanhedrin that the law requires that a person should be heard before being judged (John 7: 50-51)
3, At the Crucifixion, he provides the embalming spices and helps Joseph of Arimathea to prepare the body of Christ for burial (John 19: 39-42)

In this first encounter, Nicodemus comes to Christ by night. Perhaps he did not want to be seen consulting Jesus, who is newly-arrived in Jerusalem and is already causing a stir. But we should remember too that Saint John’s Gospel uses poetic and dramatic contrasts: heaven and earth, water and wine, seeing and believing, faith and doubt, truth and falseness. Here too we have the contrast between darkness and light, the world that is in darkness is being brought into the light of Christ.

Nicodemus is a good and pious Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish religious court. But, despite his positive attitudes to the Mosaic Law, what is the foundation of his faith?

Nicodemus acknowledges Christ is a teacher sent by God. But is this enough – is it simply an understanding of Christ without faith? At this point, Nicodemus sees but does not believe; he has insight but does not have faith.

Christ’s reply puts the emphasis back on faith rather than on law, on believing more than seeing. But does Nicodemus understand this?

Nicodemus seems to misunderstand what he hears. He thinks Christ is speaking about a second physical, natural birth from a mother’s womb.

The dialogue that follows includes two of the most quoted passages in Saint John’s Gospel:

• ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above’ or ‘born again’ (verse 5)

• ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (verse 16)

For many, this saying in verse 6 is a summary of the whole Gospel. Martin Luther called this much-quoted verse ‘the Gospel in miniature’.

This passage is a favourite inscription to place on the outside walls of churches in China. But it is often translated in Chinese as ‘God so loved man (humanity) …’ It is not that God so loved the saved, or even all of humanity, or even the world, but that God so loved the cosmos (κόσμος), the whole created order, that he gave, or rather sent (ἔδωκεν, from δίδωμι) his only-begotten Son.

In Pythagorean thinking – and it is relevant that Saint John was in exile on Patmos, the neighbouring island of Samos, where Pythagoras was born – the cosmos (κόσμος) includes the arrangement of the stars, ‘the heavenly hosts’, as the ornament of the heavens (see I Peter 3: 3); it is not just the whole world, but the whole universe, the whole created order; it is earth and all that encircles the earth like its skin.

And this love is the beginning of Missio Dei, God’s mission – he sent (ἔδωκεν, from δίδωμι) his only-begotten Son.

To perish and to have eternal life are absolute alternatives.

By now, in today’s reading, the dialogue between Nicodemus and Christ turns to a monologue.

In verse 17, the same Greek verb (κρίνω) can mean to separate, to select or to condemn, and to approve and to judge. God’s purpose is not to condemn but to save. In verses 18-19, individuals judge themselves by hiding their evil deeds from the light of Christ’s holiness.

So what happened to Nicodemus who came to meet Christ in the darkness?

This is his first of three appearances in Saint John’s Gospel. He would have left Jesus that night challenged to ask whether he needed to move beyond the Law to an encounter with the living God, an encounter that brings death and rebirth. But we meet him again a second time when he states the law concerning the arrest of Christ during the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7: 45-51).

The third time we encounter Nicodemus follows the Crucifixion, when he helps Joseph of Arimathea in taking the body of Christ down from the cross before dark, and preparing the body for burial (John 19: 39-42).

So in the story of Nicodemus, we find birth is linked with death, new birth is linked with new life, and before darkness falls Nicodemus really comes to possess the Body of Christ, to hold the Body of Christ in his hands.

Nicodemus comes to Christ in the darkness, and is brought into the light. In this reading we come across, once again, the Johannine theme of the seeing and believing.

What would you miss if you could not see? What would you miss if you were blind?

So often, we take for granted not just our health and well-being but our physical senses too – our sight, speech, hearing, sense of smell and touch.

Many grieving and suffering people often wonder how or whether their suffering and the suffering of their children fit into God’s plans for the fullness of creation. Indeed, so often, too many of us turn aside from the needs of other people in their plight, and how many of us still believe that those in poverty and deprivation simply need to ‘pull themselves up’ or ‘to see the light’?

Christ’s compassion, caring and non-judgmental stance are in stark contrast with some who would like to claim the ground for conservative evangelicalism today, but who ignore the example of Christ.

Some years ago, in what looked like an interview with himself – the ultimate verbal equivalent of a ‘selfie’ – Professor Don Carson of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School arrogantly argued: ‘Christians who by their failure to proclaim the Christ of the gospel of the kingdom while they treat AIDS victims in their suffering here and now show themselves not really to believe all that the Bible says about fleeing the wrath to come. In the end, it is a practical atheism and a failure in love.’

Practical Christianity is reduced to practical atheism in this sharp judgment without any reference to the example of Christ in the Gospel.

On the dark side of evangelicalism, voices on the Christian right in the US, increasingly, are preaching that empathy has become a vice that manipulates caring people into accepting views such as abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, illegal immigration and issues such as social and racial justice and the #MeToo movement.

Allie Beth Stuckey, the evangelical Baptist host of the podcast Relatable and a regular guest on Fox News, is the author of Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion (2024), arguing against many accepted Christian expressions of empathy. Joe Rigney of New Saint Andrews College, a fundamentalist college in Idaho, has published The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits. He is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), whose members include the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who prayed publicly for ‘overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy’ and for God to ‘break the teeth of the ungodly.’

Stuckey and Rigney appeal to audiences that are firmly among Trump’s supposedly Christian base. As early as 2018, Rigney shared a platform with Hegseth’s far-right pastor, Doug Wilson, discussing ‘the sin of empathy’ and since 2023 Rigney has worked at Wilson’s Idaho church and seminary. After Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon pleading with Trump to ‘have mercy’ on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, Rigney accused her of ‘feminism is a cancer that enables the politics of empathetic manipulation’.

Canon Dana Colley Corsello, in a sermon in Washington National Cathedral, warned that ‘the arguments about toxic empathy are finding open ears because far-right-wing, white evangelicals are looking for a moral framework around which they can justify President Trump’s executive orders and policies.’

In today’s Gospel reading, Christ reminds Nicodemus that he has come into the world not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved. He puts this into practice in the ways he heals the sick, feeds the hungry, brings sight to the blind, comforts those who mourn, putting into action what he proclaims in the synagogue in Nazareth immediately after his temptations in the wilderness, as being the heart of the Gospel:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ (Luke 4: 18-19)

He sees their plight, and responds by showing what the Gospel truly means, what the Kingdom of God is truly like, with true empathy and compassion. As Saint Matthew’s Gospel records, ‘Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them’ (Matthew 9: 35-36).

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!
Christ is Risen!

’God so loved man (humanity)’ … Guizhou Theological Training Centre in Guiyang Province in central China (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 15 April 2026):

‘Stocked with Hope’ provides the theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 46-47. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Mayank Thomas, Programme Manager, the Synodical Board of Social Services, Church of North India.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 15 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, guide the formation of grassroots women’s agencies in villages across CNI’s reach. May these groups act courageously to address domestic violence, access government schemes, and protect women’s rights.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
you have given your only Son to die for our sins
and to rise again for our justification:
grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness
that we may always serve you
in pureness of living and truth;
through the merits of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord God our Father,
through our Saviour Jesus Christ
you have assured your children of eternal life
and in baptism have made us one with him:
deliver us from the death of sin
and raise us to new life in your love, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred:
open the doors of our hearts,
that we may seek the good of others
and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace,
to the praise of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’ (John 3: 21) … darkness and light at the Harbour in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Three Governors in the Straits Settlements who had immediate family links with Lichfield

The Hedgehog Vintage Inn in Lichfield … as Lyncroft House, it was the home of the composer Muzio Clementi, direct ancestor of two governors of the Straits Settlements (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I arrived at Kuala Lumpur from Kuching early this afternoon today, hoping to catch a seven-hour flight to Muscat in Oman tonight and then a third, eight-hour flight in the early hours tomorrow to London. But the Trump regime’s decision to wage war on Iran has created mayhem in the Gulf, and all my travel plans are now shrouded in great uncertainty.

I am in Kuala Lumpur with no idea when I am going to get home, or how to get home at this stage. With all this uncertainty, I decided to spend the day in the airport and to forego any ideas of spending a few hours in Kuala Lumpur. Those postponed hopes have have become the least of my woes at the moment.

When I was in Singapore on a previous journey to and from Kuching, I had taken the opportunity to learn a little more about colonial administrators there who had Irish connections, including Major General Sir William Orfeur Cavenagh (1820-1891), who was the Governor of the Straits Settlements in 1859-1867 and who had strong family connections with Co Wexford, and Sir William Cleaver Francis Robinson (1834-1897) from Co Westmeath, who was the Governor in 1877-1879.

This time, I was hoping to learn a little more about three Governors of the Straits Settlements who had strong family connection with Lichfield: Major General Sir Edward Archibald Harbord Anson (1826-1925) was the last Governor of Penang and as the acting governor of the Straits Settlements on four occasions: in 1871-1872, for one day in 1873, for four months in 1877, and for a fourth time in 1879-1880; Sir Cecil Clementi Smith (1840-1916) was the governor in 1887-1893; and his nephew Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947), was governor in 1930-1934.

Anson was related to the Earls of Lichfield, while Clementi Smith and Clementi were direct descendant of the composer Muzio Clementi who lived in his later years at Lyncroft House, now the Hedgehog Vintage Inn.

Major-General Sir Archibald Edward Harbord Anson (1826-1925) was acting governor of the Straits Settlements on four occasions between 1871 and 1880

Major-General Sir Archibald Edward Harbord Anson (1826-1925) was a member of the Anson family of Shughborough Hall and of Lichfield. He was born at 32 Devonshire Place, London, on 16 April 1826, the youngest son of Major-General Sir William Anson, the first baronet, who grew up in Shugborough Hall, and he was also a first cousin of Thomas Anson (1795-1854), who became the first Earl of Lichfield in 1831.

Archibald Anson’s military career began in 1844, and he had postings in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Crimea. After the Crimean War, Anson returned to Ireland where was married Limerick on 9 January 1851 to Elizabeth Mary Bourchier, daughter of Richard Bourchier. One of the best-known members of her family was the journalist James David Bourchier (1850-1920), from Baggotstown, near Bruff, Co Limerick, an advocate of both Crete’s unification with Greece and Bulgarian interests in early 20thc century European political diplomacy.

After his marriage in Limerick, Anson had a career in colonial administration that brought him to Mauritius, Madagascar and India before he was appointed the last Lieutenant Governor of Penang, a post he held from 1867 to 1882.

In his memoirs, About Others and Myself (1920), Anson describes the feeling of depression upon his appointment as Penang’s Resident Councillor. His time there was marked by the Penang Riots. When the riots ended, Anson negotiated a peace agreement between the contending parties: Red Flag and Tua Pek Kong members against the White Flag and the Ghee Hin.

While Anson was in Penang, he was also the acting Governor of the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements on four occasions: 4 March 1871 to 22 March 1872; 3 November 1873 to 4 November 1873; 3 April 1877 to 29 October 1877; and 10 February 1879 to 16 May 1880. When he retired from the army, he was appointed as an honorary major-general. He was knighted (KCMG) in 1882 when he retired from Penang and returned to England.

Elizabeth (Bouchier) and Archibald Anson retired to Hastings. There he was a magistrate and they gave the name Penang to their house on Markwick Gardens. They were the parents of two sons and a daughter, and Elizabeth Mary (Bourchier) Anson died on 23 September 1891. Anson married again on 15 May 1906; his second wife Isabelle Jane Armistead was from Dunscar, Lancashire. Isabel Anson died on died 11 May 1923; Sir Archibald Anson died at the of 98 on 26 February 1925 and is buried in Hastings.

Anson gives his name to Anson Road or Jalan Anson (安顺路), Anson Bridge and Anson Bay in Penang and Anson Road in Singapore. The Chinese call these road it ann-soon-lor (安顺路), derived from the English name. To the local Chinese, the name Anson is a good name, because Anson, pronounced as An-soon in Chinese, means peace (安) and stability with smooth sailing (顺).

Sir Cecil Clementi Smith (1840-1916) was the Governor of the Straits Settlements in 1887-1893

Sir Cecil Clementi Smith (1840-1916), who was the governor of the Straits Settlements in 1887-1893, was a grandson of the composer Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), who had lived at Lyncroft House in Lichfield, now the Hedgehog Vintage Inn. Muzio Clementi rented the house from the Earl of Lichfield’s Estate from 1828.

Cecil Clementi Smith’s father, the Revd John Smith, was an Essex rector, while his mother, Cecilia Susanna Clementi, was a daughter of Muzio Clementi. Smith was educated at Saint Paul’s School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

He began his civil service career as an interpreter in Hong Kong in 1864, learning about Chinese culture and becoming the Colonial Treasurer of Hong Kong. He moved to Singapore in 1878 as a Colonial Secretary in the Straits Settlements. There his knowledge of Chinese culture and language proved useful and he was involved in quelling Chinese secret societies in Singapore.

Clementi Smith was knighted (KCMG) in 1886 and was appointed Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner to Malaya in 1887. He was a popular governor, and the local Chinese community petitioned for a continuation of his appointment when he left Singapore in 1893.

Clementi Smith married Teresa Alice Newcomen; they were the parents of three sons and four daughters. He died in Welwyn, Hertfordshire, on 6 February 1916, at the age of 75.

Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947), was the Governor of the Straits Settlements in 1930-1934

Clementi Smith’s nephew Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947), who was also Governor of the Straits Settlements and held other colonial postings in Hong Kong and Singapore, was a great-grandson of the musician Muzio Clementi.

Clementi, who was the Governor of Hong Kong in 1925-1930, and Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Straits Settlements in 1930-1934, was born in Cawnpore (Kanpur), where his father, Colonel Montagu Clementi, was Judge Advocate General in India. He was educated at Saint Paul’s School and Magdalen College, Oxford.

Clementi joined the civil service in 1889, and was sent to Hong Kong and Canton at the time of the Boxer Rebellion. He was seconded to India in 1902, but he returned to China a year later to join famine relief work in Kwangsi (Guangxi). A year after that, Clementi was appointed a member of the Land Court, an Assistant Land Officer and a Police Magistrate in the New Territories, Hong Kong, a position he served in until 1906.

Clementi was promoted to Assistant Colonial Secretary and Clerk of Council in 1907. He represented the Hong Kong government at the International Opium Conference in Shanghai in 1909. A year later, he became the Private Secretary to the Administrator, Sir Francis Henry May. Clementi eventually became Acting Colonial Secretary and Member of both the Executive and Legislative Councils of Hong Kong, and remained there until 1912. He also played a part in the founding of the University of Hong Kong.

From 1913, Clementi had colonial postings to British Guiana(Guyana) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), but returned to Hong Kong as Governor in 1925, and held that post until 1930. He organised the opening of Kai Tak Airport which continued to operate as the main airport in 1998, and is remembered for ending Mui Tsai, the traditional Chinese ‘female maid servitude’ that meant the abuse of young servant girls.

To counter the growing radicalisation of the Chinese intelligentsia against colonialism and imperialism after the May Fourth Movement, he proposed a revised school curriculum in Chinese language that stressed loyalty and traditional Chinese values, and he advocated training more teachers in the Chinese language and setting up a Chinese Department at the University of Hong Kong.

From Hong Kong, Clementi went on to become the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Straits Settlements, which included Singapore, and High Commissioner for the Malay States, from 5 February 1930 to 17 February 1934, when he left for England due to illness. Clementi married Marie Penelope Rose Eyres, daughter of Admiral Cresswell John Eyres (1862-1949), in 1912, and they were the parents of one son and three daughters. Clementi died in High Wycombe on 5 April 1947.

I have no idea of how or when I am going to get from Kuala Lumpur to Oman later this evening. Searching for Anson, the Clementis and links between Lichfield with this part of the world are going to have to wait for another visit to Malaysia and Singapore on my way to and from Kuching.

The composer Muzio Clementi, who lived in Lichfield, was the grandfather and great-grandfather of two governors of the Straits Settlements

Daily prayer in Lent 2026: 12, Sunday 1 March 2026, Second Sunday in Lent (Lent II)

Reflections from above on Stowe Pool in Lichfield in Lent … what would Nicodemus have understood by being born from above, or being born again? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We have come to the beginning of March and today is the Second Sunday in Lent (Lent II, 1 March 2026).

I am attending the early morning Eucharist in the Lady Chapel in Saint Thomas’s Cathedral, Kuching this morning before we head off to visit some more family member in the Kuching area. Meanwhile this morning, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘God so loved man (humanity)’ … Guizhou Theological Training Centre in Guiyang Province in central China (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 3: 1-17 (NRSVA):

1 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ 3 Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ 4 Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ 5 Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ 9 Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ 10 Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

11 ‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’

‘Christ Instructing Nicodemus,’ attributed to Crijn Hendricksz Volmarijn (ca 1604-1645), oil on panel, 87.5 x 111.4 cm, sold by Sotheby’s, London, 1994

Today’s Reflections:

In the Sunday Gospel readings in Lent this year, we meet some interesting if unusual characters, including:

1, The Devil, who appears as the serpent (Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7) and the Tempter (Matthew 4: 1-11) in last Sunday’s readings (Lent 1, 22 February 2026)

2, Nicodemus, who comes to meet Jesus in the night (John 3: 1-17) this week (Lent II, 1 March 2026)

3, The unnamed Samaritan woman at the well (John 4: 5-42) next week (Lent III, 8 March 2026)

4, The women at the Cross (John 19: 25b-27) on Mothering Sunday (Lent IV, 15 March 2026)

5, Lazarus who is raised from the dead (John 11: 1-45, Lent IV, 22 March 2026)

All these characters, as we meet them on our journey through Lent, challenge us to prepare to meet Christ in Jerusalem at his Passion, Death and Resurrection.

All are marginalised people in the Gospel. But they challenge us to abandon our old ways of thinking, to ask what holds us back, what keeps us rooted in old ways, those old places in our minds or hearts that hinder us from taking up this challenge. Where do we refresh and renew our faith and find new life?

Today, we meet Nicodemus, a prominent Pharisee, a rabbi, a teacher and a member of the Sanhedrin. He has a Greek name – Νικοδημος (Nikodemos) means ‘victory of the people’ – and this Greek name probably indicates he is an urbane and sophisticated man.

Nicodemus appears three times in Saint John’s Gospel:

1, He visits Christ at night to discuss Christ’s teachings (John 3: 1-21)
2, He reminds his colleagues in the Sanhedrin that the law requires that a person should be heard before being judged (John 7: 50-51)
3, At the Crucifixion, he provides the embalming spices and helps Joseph of Arimathea to prepare the body of Christ for burial (John 19: 39-42)

In this first encounter, in today’s Gospel reading, Nicodemus comes to Christ by night. Perhaps he did not want to be seen consulting Jesus, who is newly-arrived in Jerusalem and is already causing a stir. But we should remember too that Saint John’s Gospel uses poetic and dramatic contrasts: heaven and earth, water and wine, seeing and believing, faith and doubt, truth and falseness. Here too we have the contrast between darkness and light, the world that is in darkness is being brought into the light of Christ.

Nicodemus is a good and pious Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish religious court. But, despite his positive attitudes to the Mosaic Law, what is the foundation of his faith?

Nicodemus acknowledges Christ is a teacher sent by God. But is this enough – is it simply an understanding of Christ without faith? At this point, Nicodemus sees but does not believe; he has insight but does not have faith.

Christ’s reply puts the emphasis back on faith rather than on law, on believing more than seeing. But does Nicodemus understand this?

Nicodemus seems to misunderstand what he hears. He thinks Christ is speaking about a second physical, natural birth from a mother’s womb.

The dialogue that follows includes two of the most quoted passages in Saint John’s Gospel:

‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above’ or ‘born again’ (verse 5)

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (verse 16)

For many people, this second phrase is a summary of the whole Gospel: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ Martin Luther said this verse is ‘the Gospel in miniature.’ But the original version does not say that God so loved the world, but that God so loved the cosmos (κόσμος), the whole created order, that he gave, or rather sent (ἔδωκεν, from δίδωμι) his only-begotten Son.

God so loved the cosmos (κόσμος) that he actively sent his only-begotten Son on a mission. And this love is the beginning of missio Dei, God’s mission.

Nicodemus finds it difficult to understand what Christ is saying. But what about the first saying, the phrase, ‘being born from above’ or ‘being born again’?

The key word (ἄνωθεν) here has the double meaning of ‘from above’ and ‘again.’ A new birth, a second birth, getting a whole new take on life, a new beginning, a fresh, refreshing start … what does it mean here?

The way we hear the phrase ‘born-again’ being used today may be derived from this event in Saint John’s Gospel. But that understanding is not available to Nicodemus, because it can only be traced to American evangelicalism in the second half of the 20th century.

Until the 20th century, most discussions about this phrase focussed on questions about baptismal regeneration. The key references are in Article 15 and Article 27 in in the 39 Articles. Article 15 seems to imply that all who are baptised are ‘born again in Christ’ – which is not the phrase used in this reading. Article 27 says, ‘Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference … but it is also a sign of Regeneration or new Birth …’

Despite its present-day use, the term ‘born again’ has been widely associated with evangelical Christians only since the late 1960s, beginning in the US. The phrase ‘born again’ now refers to a particular type of individual conversion experience – although the plural is used grammatically in verse 7 in this Gospel story.

The phrase gained popularity after 1976, when the Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson published his book Born Again. The term was so prevalent within a few years that in an interview during his presidential campaign Jimmy Carter described himself as ‘born again.’

But Nicodemus could not have anticipated late 20th century, evangelical, American uses of this phrase, let alone decide to answer the words of Jesus in an individual way that is promoted by the modern self-styled ‘born again’ movement.

So, what could a pious Jew and rabbi like Nicodemus have understood Jesus to mean in his own time?

According to the Mishnah, the duty of loving God ‘with all your soul’ (see Deuteronomy 6: 5) means ‘even if he takes your soul.’ Love of God is a total commitment – unto death. In commenting on this insight in the Mishnah, the rabbis quoted the psalms, ‘Because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter’ (Psalm 44: 22, NRSVA).

One rabbi (Rabbi Simeon ben Menasya) asked what it could possibly mean for a righteous person to die many times throughout the day. He answered: ‘It is not possible for one to be killed every day; but God reckons the life of the pious as though they died a martyr’s death daily’ (Sifre Deuteronomy, 32).

Tradition said that when the people in the wilderness heard the words of the Ten Commandments revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, the revelation struck death into their hearts. But [Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said], they were brought back to new life ‘by God’s power’ [Rabbi Joshua ben Levi here quotes Songs 5: 6 and Psalm 68: 10].

In this way, the Ten Commandments were given to the people through a succession of deaths and rebirths. In other versions, death and rebirth come with direct encounters with God’s glory, with the miraculous rebirth of each of the 600,000 people present as they continuously encounter God face-to-face.

In this way, an encounter with the living God brings death and rebirth, a rabbinic tradition that a pious rabbi like Nicodemus would be familiar with.

It was believed that longing for spiritual transcendence is expressed through overcoming material desire. In this way, a life imprisoned by desire is a living death, but dying into God by total self-giving brings true life.

This tradition of interpretation continued into the Middle Ages. Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (1075/1086-1141), in his poems, says he would gladly die, for life without God ‘is death’.

In other words, in the rabbinic tradition, life without God is like death, but life committed to loving God with the whole heart is lived as though I had died and had been given back my life as a new life by God.

What happened to Nicodemus after this reading? And what makes this an appropriate Gospel reading at an early stage in Lent?

In line with this rabbinic tradition, Nicodemus would have left Jesus that night challenged to ask whether he needed to move beyond the Law to an encounter with the living God, an encounter that brings death and rebirth.

This is his first of three appearances in this Gospel. We meet him again when he states the law concerning the arrest of Jesus during the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7: 45-51).

The third time follows the Crucifixion, when he helps Joseph of Arimathea in taking the body of Christ down from the cross before dark, and preparing the body for burial (John 19: 39-42).

Compare the unfolding faith of Nicodemus in these three encounters with the way Saint Peter is going to deny Christ three times.

So, in today’s Gospel reading, in the story of Nicodemus, birth is linked with death, new birth is linked with new life, and before darkness falls Nicodemus really comes to possess the Body of Christ, to hold the Body of Christ in his hands.

It is an appropriate Gospel reading for an early stage of Lent, as we prepare to recall the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ; he becomes a full communicant member of the Church.

This Lent, we are invited to join me on this journey, this pilgrimage, that leads to Good Friday, and that leads, of course, to the joys of Easter Day.

‘Entombed’ … Christ is laid in the tomb by Nicodemus, Station XIV in the Stations of the Cross in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 1 March 2026):

The theme this week (1-7 March 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is: ‘Saint David’s Day’ (ppp 34-35). This theme is introduced today with Reflections by the Revd Sarah Rosser, Team Vicar in the Netherwent Ministry Area, Diocese of Monmouth, Church in Wales:

‘On 1 March every year Wales celebrates Saint David’s Day, through the abundance of Welsh cakes, daffodils, leeks, and traditional Welsh dress. Saint David is the patron saint of Wales and was a bishop who lived in Wales in the 6th century AD.

‘It is said that on his deathbed on 1 March, 587 AD, David shared these last words to his monks: “Be joyful, brothers and sisters. Keep your faith and do the little things that you have seen and heard with me.”

‘This very much echoes Jesus’ words in Matthew 5: 13-16 which encourages us to “shine our light before others” and do “good works” so that we reflect our faith and the glory of God. As Christians, every moment is an opportunity to serve God and reflect his love in the world. Whether our “little things” happen in our workplaces, our homes, or the local shop- God is present in our lives at all times. We do the “little things” or “good works” not because it gets us a better seat in heaven but because we know God’s deep love for us and, firm in that knowledge, that love overflows out of us to others.’

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 1 March 2026, Lent II, Saint David’s Day) invites us to pray by reading Matthew 5: 13-16 from Revd Sarah’s reflection and to consider the words of Saint David, ‘Be joyful, brothers and sisters. Keep your faith and do the little things that you have seen and heard with me.’

The Collect:

Almighty God,
you show to those who are in error the light of your truth,
that they may return to the way of righteousness:
grant to all those who are admitted
into the fellowship of Christ’s religion,
that they may reject those things
that are contrary to their profession,
and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same;
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Almighty God,
you see that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves:
keep us both outwardly in our bodies,
and inwardly in our souls;
that we may be defended from all adversities
which may happen to the body,
and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
by the prayer and discipline of Lent
may we enter into the mystery of Christ’s sufferings,
and by following in his Way
come to share in his glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Andor Borúth (1873-1955), ‘Portrait of a Blind Rabbi,’ the Museum of Jewish Culture, Bratislava (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

A balcony view at night in Kuching gives insights into Chinese religious and cultural traditions

The Hin Ho Bio temple, seen from our kitchen window in Kuching, has been lit up throughout the night each night during the Chinese New Year celebrations (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

The Chinese New Year celebrations in Kuching began last week (18 February), and this is the Year of the Horse. The Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, marks the new year and the arrival of spring, and is the most important festival for Chinese communities everywhere.

While most Chinese-owned businesses reopened this week, the celebrations of the 15-day lunar festival continue, with lion dancers visiting restaurants and shops as they reopen, people exchanging traditional gifts or red-wrapped packets and mandarin oranges and visiting homes and temples. The celebrations here focus on family reunions, and there are red decorations everywhere and fireworks and firecrackers late into the night to welcome prosperity,and it all comes to a dramatic finale with Chap Goh Mei next week (Tuesday 3 March), when the Lunar New Year celebrations end with spectacular Lion Dances, fireworks and firecrackers, and colourful performances on the streets and in the temples.

This year, the celebrations of Chinese New Year coincide with Muslim observances of Ramadan and Christian observances of Lent, all part of the religious, cultural and ethnic diversity found throughout Kuching. From our flat we hear the bells of Saint Thomas’s Anglican Cathedral, the call to prayer from the neighbouring mosques, and the drumbeats from a variety of pageants and rituals in the four Chinese temples nearby.

The Hin Ho Bio temple is easy to miss on Carpenter Street, with its hidden rooftop location (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

From our kitchen area, we look out onto the Tien Hou Temple, also known as the Hin Ho Bio temple, which has been lit up throughout the night each night during the Chinese New Year celebrations. The other three Chinese temples in the neighbourhood are the Hiang Thian Siang Ti Temple, a 19th century temple around the corner in Carpenter Street, the Hong San Si Temple on the corner of Ewe Hai Street and Wayang Street, and Tua Pek Kong Temple on a small mound overlooking the Kuching Waterfront and the Sarawak River.

Kuching in the 1800s had two major Chinese dialect groups: the Hokkien from southern Fujian and the Teochew from Guandong province. Both are mostly merchants and tradesmen compared to the rural-based Hakka who are mostly farmers and miners.

The Teochews built the Hiang Thian Siang Ti Temple in 1863 on Carpenter Street, sandwiched between commercial shophouses, and the Hin Ho Bio temple is the main Hainan temple in Kuching.

A rooftop view from the Hin Ho Bio temple, looking down on Carpenter Street below (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Although we see it from our kitchen window, it is probably unknown to visitors and tourists because it is tucked away far above the street, sitting on the top floor of the Kuching Hainan Association building.

The ground floor has a hair salon and a traditional Chinese restaurant, and I had to climb the stairs to the top floor to see this small Chinese shrine with its rooftop views of Carpenter Street below.

The temple is dedicated to Mazu, the goddess of the sea or ‘Heavenly Sage Mother’, recalling the maritime traditions of the Hainan community.

There was a small number of Hainanese people in the area that is now Carpenter Street and China Street from ca 1840, and the first Hin Ho Bio Temple was on Carpenter Street by 1878. The temple was renovated following the Kuching Great Fire in 1884. In the early years, new Hainanese migrants lived in the temple while looking for permanent places and jobs. The temple also served as a martial art hall and a social gathering place for the Hainanese, and was used as a school too.

The temple had a major uplift in 1987-1991, and the Kuching Kheng Chew Association changed its name to the Kuching Hainan Association in 1992.

Inside the Hin Ho Bio temple in its hidden rooftop location (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Kuching Hainan Association marked its 140th anniversary last year (2025) with major events, including a visit from a grand Mazu statue from Meizhou Island in Fujian in China in November. A 14-member delegation from the Kuching Hainan Association travelled to the Mazu Temple on Meizhou Island to formally receive the statue.

The statue was escorted from Kuching Airport in a vibrant procession with a lion dance troupe through several key cultural sites, including Wisma Kuching Hing Ann Thien Hoe Kong, Tua Pek Kong Temple, Hong San Si Temple and Hiang Thian Siang Ti Temple, before arriving at the Tien Hou Temple on Carpenter Street, where a special enshrinement ceremony was attended by the Deputy Premier Datuk Amar Dr Sim Kui Hian and community leaders.

The association chair, Teo Kwang Hock, said the initiative for the visit of the statue came from the Fujian Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, which is presenting 100 Mazu statues to Tien Hou temples worldwide.

There are plans for a Mazu Park in the grounds behind the temple. The project is waiting for official approval and will provide easier access to the temple, marking a significant new chapter in Kuching’s cultural and religious heritage. It may even may make for a more colourful view from our kitchen window.

Catching a glimpse of the Hin Ho Bio temple from below on Carpenter Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The name of Soho Baptist Chapel survives on Shaftesbury Avenue despite many changes over the years

The former Soho Baptist Chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue is now the Soho Outreach Centre of the Chinese Church in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing yesterday about Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on Shaftesbury Avenue in the heart of the West End in London. But for much of the 19th and throughout the 20th century, Shaftesbury Avenue had another Baptist church, on the corner of Mercer Street, known for its ‘Strict Baptist’ theology and teachings that were in sharp contrast to the traditions and ethos of neighbouring Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church.

The former Soho Baptist Chapel at 166A Shaftesbury Avenue has been known at different times as Soho Baptist Chapel, Gower Street Memorial Chapel and Shaftesbury Avenue Chapel and it is now the Soho Outreach Centre of the Chinese Church in London.

The church was built for a Strict Baptist community that had been formed almost a century earlier in 1791. Its origins dated back to the 18th century revival associated with George Whitefield and John Wesley.

In 1770, young Richard Burnham, began listening to a preacher in High Wycombe and within a few years began preaching himself. He was a pastor for a few years in Staines in Surrey. He moved to London around 1780 and was a pastor in Green Walk near Blackfriars Bridge. By 1787, he had formed a new congregation, Ebenezer Chapel, near Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Burnham left the congregation at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1791, and moved to Edward Street in Soho, naming his new congregation as Salem Chapel.

Four years later, another Baptist church on Grafton Street in Soho decided to relocate in 1795 and Burnham and his congregation took a lease on their property. Soho was then one of the poorest and most densely-populated areas in London. Burnham continued to minister there for another 15 years until he died in 1810.

Burnham was succeeded as the minister by John Stevens, originally from Northamptonshire, the son of a shoemaker. Stevens moved to London at the age of 16 to work as a shoemaker. He was rebaptised by Burnham at the Edward Street church and then moved with them to the new Grafton Street church.

Stevens had returned to Northamptonshire in 1795 and began preaching in his grandfather’s home. He founded a new church in Oundle in 1797, then moved to St Neots in 1799 and formed the town’s first Baptist church. He moved on to pastor a small church in Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1805. He was considering his next move in ministry when Burnham died. The church at Grafton Street in Soho now had over 200 members and invited Stevens to return. He preached his first sermon at Grafton Street in July 1811 and by 1812 the church had 100 new members.

Stevens was known for his idiosyncratic positions, including his view on the pre-existent humanity of Christ. Soon, numbers meant a new building was needed, and the congregation moved west in 1813, still in the Soho area to a chapel built for Catholic services behind the Spanish ambassador’s house at No 8 Saint James Square, York Street, now Duke of York Street.

By 1818, Stevens’s writings were being debated heatedly. The church split into two factions, with Stevens building a new purpose-built chapel, Salem Chapel, at Meards’ Court, behind No 8-10 Wardour Street. He preached his last sermon at Salem Chapel in 1847 and died in October 1847. The Salem Chapel continued with JE Bloomfield and JT Briscoe as pastors until the 1870s, when it was sold to Bloomsbury Baptist Mission and then demolished in 1907.

Meanwhile, the faction that disagreed with Stevens’s Christology rejoined the Soho Chapel congregation that Burnham had originally founded at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and called George Comb as pastor. The congregation was located at Lisle Street when Comb became their pastor in January 1824, then moved to Oxford Street in 1825 and built a new chapel there in 1835.

Comb died in 1841, and was succeeded as pastor by George Wyard (1842-1856), John Pells (1858-1864) and Joseph Wilkins (1866-1873). While Joseph Wilkins was pastor, 23 churches met at Soho Chapel on Oxford Street in 1871 to form the Metropolitan Association of Strict Baptist Churches, later the Association of Grace Baptist Churches South East.

The former Soho Baptist Chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue was designed by the architect William Gillbee Scott and built in 1887-1888 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

John Box, who became the pastor in 1875, drafted the Articles of Faith and oversaw building new church premises on Shaftesbury Avenue. The church was forced to move from Oxford Street in 1885 when the freeholder wanted to buy-out the lease to build business premises.

A new site was bought from the Metropolitan Water Board in June 1886. The site was on Shaftesbury Avenue, then a new road from Piccadilly Circus to Bloomsbury and described the as ‘a broad thoroughfare cut through a horrible and densely populated district’. Plans were drawn up to build a new chapel to seat 500 people and additional school accommodation. While the new chapel was being built, the congregation met in the Albert Rooms, Whitfield Street, Tottenham Court Road.

The church was built in 1887-1888 to a design by the architect William Gillbee Scott (1857-1930) of Bedford Row. When the chapel was partly built, three memorial stones were laid in May 1887 at a service attended by 600 people. A service of dedication was held in February 1888, and the congregation moved into its new premises.

After 26 years in pastoral ministry, John Box died in 1901. The church continued for several years without a pastor until TL Sapey was appointed in 1904. But numbers were falling, there was difficulty in paying Sapey’s stipend and removal expenses, and in 1906 he moved to Brixton Tabernacle.

The membership continues to fall and by World War I many members of the congregation were living in the Finchley area. Soho Baptist Chapel was sold in 1915, when it was bought by the Gower Street Chapel, which was being forced to move. The closing service in Soho Baptist Chapel was held in March 1917. The congregation moved to Finchley, where the Soho Memorial Chapel later became High Road Baptist Church.

Soho Baptist Chapel was bought in 1915 by the Gower Street Chapel and became he Gower Street Memorial Chapel in 1917 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The original Gower Street Chapel, which opened on 9 July 1820, was built in 1820 by seceding members from William Huntingdon’s Providence Chapel, which had been rebuilt in 1811 in Gray’s Inn Road.

The congregation in the Gower Street Chapel became known as Gadsbyites, or Strict Baptists, followers of William Gadsby (1773-1844), who is regarded by many as the founding figure of the Strict and Particular Baptist movement in England. They believed only a select few of God’s chosen people, the Elect, would attain salvation and everlasting life.

The hymn-writer Henry Fowler was the minister of the Gower Street Chapel from of July 1820 until he died in 1838. After Fowler’s death, the church could not agree on appointing a new preacher. Gadsby and another preacher, John Warburton, began preaching conflicting ideas to the same congregation.

Fowler was succeeded by Edward Blackstock, but his inconsistent views on communion led to many members to leave the chapel and in 1843 they formed their own Strict Baptist Church at Eden Street, Hampstead. Blackstock stayed on at the Gower Street Chapel, with fewer and fewer people attending his services, and eventually the mortgagee foreclosed. The chapel was sold to a born-again preacher, the Revd Arthur Triggs, in 1848 and enjoyed a brief resurgence.

However, Triggs was trying to sell the chapel in 1854. By then, the disaffected and now Baptist congregation had outgrown its premises in Hampstead and was looking to move. They bought the Gower Street Chapel back in 1854, and the congregation returned with its first service on 7 January 1855.

Disputes about key aspects of Christian doctrine and practice continued to divide the congregation, and by 1860 some members were denying the divinity of Christ.

The lease of the Gower Street building was to run for 99 years from 25 March 1820. The remainder of the lease was sold to Maple & Co in May 1917 for £250, and was due to expire on 25 March 1919. The congregation began planning and fundraising for a new building in 1911, and in 1916 they bought the Soho Baptist Chapel, on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Great White Lion Street.

The last service at the Gower Street Chapel was held on 24 April 1917, and the congregation moved to Shaftesbury Avenue in 1917, renaming the chapel as the Gower Street Memorial Chapel.

The church and congregation on Shaftesbury Avenue continued during the years between the World Wars without a pastor, and remained without a pastor until the appointment of JS Green (1956-1978), the first pastor the church had for 112 years.

The name was changed from Gower Street Memorial Chapel to Shaftesbury Avenue Chapel in 1994 to avoid confusion about its location.

But by the end of the 20th century, young people and students who frequented the chapel were no longer living in the Shaftesbury Avenue area and attendance figures had dropped dramatically. For financial reasons, the Gower Street Memorial Chapel finally closed in June 2002, and the building was sold in 2004 to the Chinese Church in London and became its Soho Outreach Centre.

Inside the Soho Outreach Centre today (Photograph: Chinese Church in London)

The Chinese community in London had shifted from the Docklands and the East End after World War II to the West End and the area off Shaftesbury Avenue in the 1950s and 1960s, forming a new, thriving commercial area, and by the 1970s Chinatown had become a distinct area of its own.

The first gathering of the Chinese Church in London (CCIL) was on Christmas Eve of 1950, when a small group of people led by Pastor Stephen YT Wang met in Trafalgar Square. They began holding official services on 7 January 1951.

The CCIL began inquiring about the Gower Street Memorial Chapel in the 1980s and once again in the 1990s because of its location close to the relocated Chinatown. CCIL rented space in the Gower Street Memorial Chapel for baptismal services In the early 2000s,, and finally acquired the Gower Street Memorial Chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue in May 2004.

The Chinese Church in London has four other properties and seven congregations, offering services in Mandarin, Cantonese and English. Because of the popularity of the Chinese services, English services cannot be hosted in the Soho Outreach Centre and are instead are held at the Seven Dials Club.

Sunday services are in Cantonese and Mandarin, with English-language services in the Seven Dials Club (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

• Sunday services are in Cantonese from 9:30 to 11 am and in Mandarin from 11:30 to 1 pm at the Soho Outreach Centre, and in English from 11:30 to 1 pm and in Cantonese from 2:30 to 4 pm at the Seven Dials Club.

The Mercer Street side of the former Soho Baptist Chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)