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Good morning.

It’s the feast of St James the Apostle, and though its selection is entirely unconnected I’m sure, tonight’s Prom 10  at the Royal Albert Hall will include Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, otherwise known as Enigma. Elgar’s affectionate musical portrayal of fourteen close acquaintances turns my mind to what ‘original theme’ Christ saw in James and the other eleven apostles?

Perhaps it was their single-mindedness? When first summoned by Jesus, James and his brother John left what they were doing without a backward glance. Maybe it was their impetuosity? Do you want us to command fire to come down? asked the ‘Sons of Thunder’ when the Samaritans failed to show Jesus hospitality. Christ rebuked them, as he did again when they asked the Lord for places at his right and left hand in heaven. But then, perhaps the same headstrongness was what led James to his death at the hands of Herod Agrippa – the only original apostle martyred in the pages of the New Testament.

Elgar famously never revealed the musical theme he saw as common to his ‘friends pictured within’. Never mind music, I guess most of us would struggle to find words to express what draws us to the ones we love – it’s something more elemental, more spiritual than that. Suffice to say, we know it when we see it, though it gives us no guarantee that those friends will prove to be any less human than were Elgar’s or, for that matter, Christ’s.

Lord we think fondly and gratefully this morning of those who are dear to us for as Christ Himself needed friends, so do we: those who will suffer us and humour us, wind us up and take us down a peg or two – as we will them. Amen