You may know the classic children’s story of Henry Penny or Chicken Little or Chicken Licken. It’s had a variety of names over the centuries. The main character Chicken Little is in the woods one day and an acorn drops on his head – plop! “Oh no, the sky is falling down,” cries Chicken Licken. Off he goes to tell the king and on the way he meets Cocky Cocky, Ducky Lucky, Drakey Lakey, Goosey Loosey and Turkey Lurkey and they’re all very worried by the news about the acorn dropping and the sky falling down and resolve to go off to tell the King. And then they meet Foxy Loxy and avid readers of such children’s stories will know never to trust a fox. Foxy Loxy invites all the aforesaid into his lair so he can “show them the way to the King” and, I’m afraid – brace yourself for a sad ending – they all get eaten and they never did get to tell the King that the sky had fallen down. It’s a warning against hysteria and one we must be careful doesn’t drop out of the canon of the stories we tell the next generation as it has a meaning we must take to heart today in an age where there is huge amount of fear. So much so, that the customary hope-filled farewell people used to use of “See you soon,” has been replaced with the rather ominous “Stay safe.” We do live in troubled times but much fear is stoked by twenty four hour news. I’d definitely suggest limiting the amount of news you listen to or watch or are alerted to on your phone. Twenty minutes a day I think would be sufficient. It’s not like that much can happen during lockdown anyway! There’s so much more we could be learning about. We will have seen on street corners, no doubt, preachers calling our attention to the ending of the world. Jesus didn’t call us to stand on street corners haranguing people: there’s no record of Jesus or the disciples doing that at all. In our first reading we hear of the reluctant Jonah proclaiming repentance. Remember, he began the book hearing the call of God and running off in the opposite direction to Nineveh. He wasn’t going there. It’s in stark contrast to the speed with which the people of this pagan and godless city hear the call to repentance and change their ways. The people of Nineveh could have just run away but they didn’t. Jonah’s reluctance is also in stark contrast to the account we heard in the Gospel of the disciples, who pretty rapidly drop everything and follow the Lord, interrupting their well-made plans. In the teaching of Jesus, Jonah is referred to as a sign (Matthew 12:38-42). Jesus refers to His own death and His lying in the tomb for three days and says this is to evoke a response in the hearts and lives of those who see it, just like Ninevah changed its ways after Jonah had spent three days and three nights in the belly of the whale. Our Lord says this in response to the request for a sign and in doing so He’s ridiculing those who ask for it. Paul hands on this teaching too (I Corinthians 1:22). What’s wrong with a sign, we might ask ourselves? Indeed we will hear folk say that this pandemic, that war, this scandal is a sign of the end times. “The world will end soon.” All that is true at one level but not in the sense they mean it. They usually mean they’ve had some special revelation that the world will end sooner than imagined and this gives them a supposed power over the souls of men and women. Such knowledge is not what we see in our Lord, who states that even He does not know when the world does not end (Matthew 24:36). Christ’s divinity emptied Himself of this knowledge that He might embrace our humanity. In other words, we’re not meant to know the time and the date when the world will end. And even if we could, it shouldn’t make any difference to the way we behaved. The world will end one day. We need to amend our ways to prepare for that. Lent begins in less than a month’s time: a time for fasting and repentance, of remembering we are dust and to dust we shall return. When we celebrated the feast of St Thomas Beckett on 29th December just after Christmas, I discovered something new about the archbishop who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 on the orders of Henry II. Thomas lived a rather luxurious life. He’d been Chancellor of England – a sort of Prime Minister role – and then Archbishop. The monks criticised him for his feasting at court. But when Thomas was cut down by soldiers, they discovered he was wearing a hair shirt, a sign of penance and a mortification of the flesh. Our tastings and our penances are to inconvenience us and give us a little constant reminder that we’re not destined to live on this earth for ever.  Christianity over the the last three hundred years has sadly lost much sense of living in the last days. In our second reading today we’re reminded by Paul that we mustn’t lose sight of that: “we know the world is passing away … our time is growing short.” Think also of the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) where the labourers are hired at different times during the day and given the same amount’s pay. We are to understand ourselves as those hired in the last hour, the eleventh hour, and yet receiving the inheritance promised to those had followed God long before us, like Abraham, Moses and the prophets.  The Christian must be ready for every day to be their last day on earth but they must also be ready to live until they’re 100 years old. This means we can’t sacrifice today because tomorrow is guaranteed. The lie we tell someone today won’t necessarily be made up for by what we hope to achieve tomorrow. The anger we express today can’t always be undone tomorrow. The indolence of today won’t necessarily be redeemed by tomorrow’s activity.  As I tried to say in my sermon on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day: each day is precious and that is the fundamental measure of time for us. This view of life on earth must not reduce it to being some sort of waiting room, as we long for the next world to come. What would the point be in making friendships or getting married or building beautiful churches if we thought life on earth was unimportant? Rather, our life on earth – pandemic or no pandemic – is to settle us in to routines of Heaven. This is why truth and worship and love are to fill our lives on earth, because otherwise we won’t actually want to go to Heaven. Jesus calling the disciples shows us this: He calls them not just as gang of cheerleaders to follow Him round for the next three years of His earthly ministry, but because they are to have thrones of judgment in the Kingdom of Heaven. He makes this clear with the power to bind and loose entrusted to them, the keys of the kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 16:19). These two book marks of the life of the Christian – being ready to die to tomorrow while also ready for life until we’re 100 years old is not unimaginable – these create the framework for our existence which will highlight gratitude and patience. Paul emphasises in his letter to the Romans that we live now, not under the old law but through grace, God’s grace (Romans 6:15). We pour ourselves out; we take up our Cross; we know the body we have is not our own – remember Paul’s teachings last Sunday that we’re temples of the Holy Spirit. Thus emptied of our selves, we’ve made room for Christ, whose life is to dwell in us for eternity, and we will dwell in Him. Whether the sky is falling down or not makes no difference.