In a one-horse town somewhere in the US of A the local magistrate got an invite to a fancy dress party. He decided to go dressed in a chicken suit. When the evening came he kitted himself out, jumped in his car and headed to the party. The local policeman, fresh out of the academy, spotted a car being driven by a man in a chicken suit. He was sure there was something illegal about that, so with lights flashing and siren wailing he pulled the driver over and demanded to see his driver’s license. Well, it’s not exactly easy extracting a license from a chicken suit so the judge was a little exasperated and said, “Listen son, I’m in a hurry. I haven’t done anything wrong”.

“Are you refusing to show me your license?” said the over-zealous policeman, “That’ll get you an audience before the judge in the morning”.

“Look, you idiot,” exclaimed the magistrate, his feathers now well and truly ruffled, “I am the judge!”

“Right, and I’m Mother Teresa”, said the policeman, “I’m arresting you for resisting arrest”. With that he dragged the protesting chicken out of the car, yanked off his head covering . . . and came face to face with the magistrate!

The moral of the story? Don’t book a judge by his cover.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness . . .

Whenever I have a group of young people preparing for their Confirmation service I always make sure I let them know how easy they have it these days. Oh yes, don’t worry, they roll their eyes as I go off on my ‘old person’s’ ramble about ‘when I was your age’! But, it’s true . . . when I was their age we had to sit a final exam to pass Confirmation class. And, if you were a generation before me you probably had to stand up in front of the whole congregation and be quizzed publicly about what you had learned! Ah, those were the days.

But, I wonder how you’d go if you had to do it now? How would you go if you had to stand up in front of the congregation now and answer questions about your faith? No problem, right? Afterall, you’ve had so many more years of experience and growth in knowledge and understanding since you were a teenager. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to do that this Sunday, but, I do wonder how I’d go if I had to stand before God and answer questions about my faith? How about you? How would you go?

There’s a character in the Taika Waititi’s movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople called Psycho Sam. Sam lives out in the bush, as far away from civilization as possible. He wisely wears a colander to prevent the authorities tracking him. He’s a bit of a ditsy, doomsday prepper who hasn’t quite got around to building the bunker that will protect him from the impending nuclear holocaust and his cooking leaves a lot to be desired.

I guess that’s one way to deal with the anxiety about the end of the world. Dig a bunker. Stockpile food. Wear a colander. Look after number one. But Jesus suggests that when you see the signs – in the sun, the moon, the stars, distress among nations, the roaring of the seas – when you see the signs there’s another way of responding . . . and it doesn’t involve a colander!

Oh, and, if you haven’t seen the movie, I recommend it.