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Yesterday, amid the rolling news coverage of the summit of European leaders about Brexit, I made my Christmas cake, reminded of the need to do this by the traditional prayer for the last Sunday of the Christian year that begins, ‘stir up, we beseech thee O Lord…’ Stir up Sunday in particular or the end of November in general I guess marks a shift in attention for many of us as Christmas appears undeniably on the horizon. With Christmas markets in the streets and carols in the shops obediently we start to make lists of food and people and presents.

Stir up Sunday though is intended to focus attention on the long-distance view and not just on the short term sprint to Christmas Day. It marks the summit of the Christian year from which the longest view should be possible… stretching not only to the next big date in the calendar, but to the end of time itself. The Sunday before Advent focuses on God’s eternal kingdom and rule - a moment at which our usually more limited horizons are stretched as we climb higher in order to see further and get our human decision making into better perspective.

If you google the word summit and ask why a meeting of world leaders is called a summit you will get a range of answers… The highlighted favourite suggesting that it apparently stems from a metaphor that Winston Churchill used in 1950 when he likened a meeting of world leaders at the depth of the cold war to a "parley on the summit" (of a mountain).

The bible is littered with such conferences on mountain tops… places that take a lot of effort to get to, places of revelation where human beings are more clearly able to hear what God is saying, markers put down in the mind or in tablets of stone that shape the landscape for generations to come – the division of territory, the giving of law, the anointing of a King who knows God’s heart and to whom God instructs his people to listen…

Yesterday we witnessed such a parley on the summit as EU leaders gathered, seeking to shape the contours of the future and this morning the horizon has already shifted onto the next determining point as we await Parliament’s response.

Amid all the mountain top excitement of a series of summits, all the adrenalin, all the media attention, all the awareness that here political futures will be staked and lost my prayer is that our leaders will take the time to breathe – as you do at the top of a mountain – and look around – that their focus might honestly be on the far horizon… on the impact of decisions that will shape the landscape for generations to come, and that will shape the lives and opportunities not only of those living in these islands but across our interconnected planet on which inequality and climate change and food insecurity threaten to threaten us all…

‘Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord’, is not about stirring the Christmas pudding or even about stirring up deeply held political passions. It is about stirring us all to use the opportunities we have to do real good in the long term perspective of the judgement of history.

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