Almost two years ago four of my friends and I travelled to the south western part of Turkey with the purpose of visiting the ancient archaeological sites of what were known as the Seven Churches of the Revelation. Set in what was then called Asia Minor these seven Christian communities are the primary focus of the early chapters of the final book of the Bible.

We all had a wonderful time eating kebabs and stuffed aubergines, getting every bone in our bodies battered, manipulated and repositioned by a masseur in the traditional Turkish bath and spending the entire fortnight trying to find a decent cup of coffee. However these was not the only reasons we had all gone to Turkey.

For myself at least, this was not just an opportunity for a suntan disguised as a grand tour of 5 star religious rubble. I had always hoped to visit the sites of the seven churches at some point in my life and this trip was in a real sense a pilgrimage to a place of profound importance in the geography of my soul.

We began our trip together at the breathtakingly beautiful mountain top city of Pergamum and I knew we would end it at Ephesus, undoubtedly one of the most impressive archaeological site anywhere on the planet. While we travelled from site to site each of the places we visited was very different and I enjoyed them all. Yet for me this trip was about only one place and that place was Laodicea.

You will find Laodicea mentioned in very few of the guidebooks and the locals don't exactly sell it as a top tourist attraction. I suppose in a country coming down with archaeological sites another field of historic debris is just one more cultural burden to carry. And anyway, it is found only a few miles from the much more interesting modern day tourist attraction of Pamukkale. Here the tourists come by the coach load to view the cascades of snow white pools created from the calcium carbonate found in the hot springs that have been breaking through the earth's crust at this point for thousands of years. And to further deter visitors from heading to Laodicea, Pamukkale has its own ancient settlement, Heirapolis, which has been better restored and is more convenient to all the carpet shops than Laodicea.

However on a sunny afternoon in mid October we headed from our guest house in Pamukkale to the hill top site close by where the vast ruins of Laodicea stand and I saw for the first time (in the physical sense) a city I have visited and revisited many times throughout my life.

To try and explain the importance of Laodicea in my life I need first to set the scene by telling you a little about the early chapters of Revelation. In these writings John the author of the book is given what he claims is a prophetic letter from Christ to each of seven churches in Asia Minor. Each receives a message which deals with the specific needs of that Christian community. While some of the letters are filled with support and encouragement others must have left the receiving church feeling challenged and admonished. If we read the last of these letters, the one to Laodicea, we are left in no doubt as to the state of its spiritual condition.

"....To the Angel of the church in Laodicea write:

These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either one or the other! So because you are lukewarm - neither hot nor cold - I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so that you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness, and salve to put on your eyes, so that you can see.

Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them and they with me.

To anyone who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. Anyone who has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches."

So why did the words in this passage make it important for me to go and see the site of the community to whom they were written?

Since my early teens they have had an impact on my life. As a thirteen-year-old I remember swimming off shore from the Isle of Arran on Scotland's West Coast to a small rock late on a summer afternoon to spend time in prayer and recommitting my life to the ways of Christ because of words found in these letters.

As a student in Manchester during a long period of spiritual seeking and finding I read avidly many of the Quaker and Christian classics and on the recommendation of a friend read a book by a nun on these letters to the early church. I was challenged in my faith to my very core.

And in the many years since I have returned to Laodicea again and again.

It is true to say that with the possible exceptions of Christ's sermon on the mount and David's wonderful Psalm 51 written as a confession after his murder of Uriah the Hittite and adultery with his wife Bathsheba, no passage in the Bible has challenged me or developed my Christian faith as much as the letter to Laodicea.

For the central challenge of Christ's words in this passage is a call to spiritual discipline, to servanthood, to what Thomas Kelly called Holy Obedience. These are not sweet words of comfort and support. Christ does not mince his words. These are strong words, harsh words. They were intended so as to leave the Christian community in Laodicea feeling utterly uncomfortable, challenged and repentant, and as a thirteen year old, as an twenty year old and to this very day they often have the same impact on me.

In our world of personal independence where each individual is encouraged to think for themselves and personal freedom of choice is often prized more highly than the corporate good, Christ's call to see our soiled and dirty lives for what they are, shatters the nonsense of belief that we are in control. We are pushed to recognise our own sin and weakness.

The passage challenges us to question the things we use as props in our lives, whether they be positions of power, financial security, achievement of our goals or conforming to the expectations of those around us. It pushes us straight out of our comfort zone and tells us that the activities that we attempt to build our lives around are pointless on their own and of little worth in the real meaning and purpose of our existence.

Laodicea despite this blunt analysis of its condition is offered a solution. And Jesus does not offer the kind of solutions so often suggested in this world of ours. Christ's offer is not based on the same methods used in almost all self-help books. He makes no suggestion about setting realistic targets in our lives and then working towards achieving them. He does not offer advice on how to gain self esteem or how to make friends and influence people. He offers no help on how to invest in property or the stock market or how to beat the trends.

It is not that financial security or personal goals are not important as part of our lives. But they can never be the purpose in themselves.

So what does Jesus offer as the solution. If our work and endeavour is meaningless, a chasing after the wind, as Solomon suggests in the book of Ecclesiastes, if human companionship can be removed by death or rejection or by changing circumstances, if striving after financial wealth is as pointless as Christ suggests in the Sermon on the Mount, what can God offer that will meet our needs?

In the letter to Laodicea only one method is suggested for resolving the inward needs of the human condition. It is not based on some disciplinary or structural code of practice as found in so many other faiths and religions. We are not obliged to conform to a set of rules or prayers or meditations or symbolic acts. It is simple. Christ offers us relationship and this relationship is rooted in God's grace.

And so for the last 40 years of my life I have built my world round that relationship. I have tried as best I can to play my part in this core partnership of my life. I have struggled to live up to the calling God has given me. I have experienced great moments where the sense of dwelling in the very presence of the living God, of knowing and walking in the will of the Almighty seems to me an integral part of my very being. I have known joy unbounded as I have sat quietly soaking up the summer warmth of God presence, trusting that this Love Divine will knows what is best for me. And yet I have also known times of great darkness where during months on end a winter of what seems like Godless despair sets in and when despite fervent prayer and spiritual seeking I have felt utterly abandoned by God and my sense of hope simply disappears. Answers I long for fail to arise and it feels and seems like God has forgotten that I exist at all.

And it is not just the personal burdens and concerns that leave me struggling for answers. I am left pondering on many much bigger issues. Questions of human heartbreak, of Divine justice that often leave me confused and sometimes in despair. In a world that is broken and hurting, where humanity longs for an omnipotent power who will apply the healing ointment, to many of us God often appears at best unconcerned by our pain and at worst seems to abandon us to hopelessness.

At this point I want to return to the whole idea of relationship. Surely God could have found a better way of dealing with creation. The problem with relationship is that it is experimental and experiential. In some ways religion based on a specific set of rules or actions would be so much easier. We would simply have to tick the boxes of obligations fulfilled and feeling religious or even holy could be neatly defined. But relationship involves the actions and responses of the heart and that by its very nature involves so much more risk. In human terms a relationship is great if everything is going well. But if communications breaks down, or there is a lack of understanding between the partners, or one person is let down by the other then frustration, hurt and a sense of hopelessness can arise. And in a sense this is just as true of the relationship between humanity and the Divine. Sometimes those of us who put great emphasis on our relationship with the living God are frightened by the suggestion that we as humans can feel utterly abandoned by God and enter a place of hopelessness. Somehow we fear that this unacceptably challenges the nature of the all seeing, all knowing, all loving God.

Having experienced such a sense of abandonment for myself I cannot and will not deny that such darkness is part of the struggle of our spiritual lives. Personally I take hope in the story of Job and in his willingness to hold on even when everything must have felt utterly futile and the God he endeavoured to serve appears to have abandoned him to the wolves. In the story of Job there is a happy ending yet we all know of lives where that is simply not the case.

But there is another story of suffering which dominates the pages of the Bible. And it is the reality of Christ's life and death and resurrection that I turn to when all hope seems to have gone. In my darkest hours when all I could feel for God was anger and frustration because questions were unanswered and God seemed heartless and uncaring, I found myself turning and giving thanks to the suffering Christ of Calvary who knows my human pain and who understood my hopelessness. For the greatest Divine gift of all was the gift of God made man. I am often prompted to humility when I think of the wonderful words of Isaiah 53.

He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

It is therefore no surprise to me, that it is Jesus who stands at the door and knocks, who promises to come in and dwell in our lives if we simply let him in. It is Christ who promises to be with us, to never leave us or forsake us. It is Christ who reaches us at our most human level, for Christ has been there before us. For this reason it makes utter sense to me that the living relationship which I believe is at the heart of my communion with Almighty God is a relationship with Jesus Christ himself.

I do not for a moment doubt that darkness will in the future return, that questions will continue to be unanswered, that I will again believe that I have been abandoned by the Almighty, but I will also know that in the Christ who died for me there is understanding and love and a tender concern.

Let me now return to another key theme in the letter. If there is a central challenge to this passage found early in the book of Revelation it comes in the words of Jesus where he bluntly says that:

'You are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either one or the other! So because you are lukewarm- neither hot nor cold –I am about to spit you out of my mouth.'

These must have been deeply uncomfortably words for the Christian community in Laodicea that received them and they are still an uncomfortable challenge to us today, if we are prepared to take them seriously. They certainly left me challenged when I first read them as a teenager. Why was Jesus so forceful in his condemnation?

If we look at the spiritual life of this Yearly Meeting, the worship life of our Preparative Meetings, and maybe most importantly at the commitment we as individual Friends make, not to committee meetings or practical efforts but to our devotional and prayer lives, we begin to see why Christ's concern and burden for the Church in Laodicea was so expressed. For these words were asking Laodicea and are asking us whether we have a commitment, a passion, a zeal for the things of God that are eternal.

Before I go any further maybe I should declare my own feelings on this issue. If there is one prevalent characteristic in our Quaker or wider Christian community that deeply frustrates and sometimes even angers me it is half-heartedness. I have no problem with the Christian who fails to do something out of forgetfulness or disorganisation. I understand from personal experience that sometimes our lives are so busy and chaotic that we are just too tired to go to the bible study or Quarterly Meeting we should have supported and attended.

But that is not what I am bothered by. The kind of half-heartedness that I find so objectionable is inward. I simply do not understand the person who longs for the relationship with God which this letter to Laodicea offers, make a commitment to the indwelling Christ and then decides that the relationship must be based only on their terms and conditions. Like so many relationships they want the perceived benefits without the costs. They want the security of knowing that a loving God cares for them, walks with them, supports them. They like the idea that God holds them in a protective embrace. If they are in a hole they want God to pull them out. The reasons they stay within the community of Friends may have more to do with their need to be part of that supportive community than because of their commitment to the Divine. These Friends simply don't see that a relationship with God works both ways and that it is unconditional.

We see this attitude all the time in the Friends who turn up at Meeting or events when it suits them. We see it in the attitudes of casual acceptance of moral stands within our society. This is not because after much spiritual and prayerful struggle, Divine freedom has been given to act in a way that would have been considered unacceptable in the past. There is simply an attitude that if the rest of society accepts it, why shouldn't we. We see it in complacent religious attitudes where packaged Christianity is offered as a fix all solution. In this packaged deal Hell is avoided but once again relationship is surface deep. The struggle for servanthood, for discipline, for holy obedience to the living God appears to be of minor consequence.

I see this attitude of half-heartedness in myself.

I want to make it clear that I know that often there are good reasons for being unable to join other Friends in worship on a First day morning.

I want to state that I believe with all my heart that our faith is not static, that we are not somehow bound to hold moral or other views forever simply because we have held them for a long period.

I want to declare that I unconditionally believe in the simple Gospel message of the saving power of the risen Christ.

But none of these factors should result in us excusing the half-hearted attitude towards spiritual growth we find in our Yearly Meeting.

In truth, most if not all of us live compromised lives. What I mean is that we live our lives in a way that compromises our communion with God our Creator. Like Jonah, when God calls us along a path of service or moral obligation, which doesn't match the lifestyle we long for ourselves, we so often chose a path that suits us and in doing so damage the most important relationship in our lives.

In suggesting that we live compromised lives I am not for a minute suggesting that compromise is necessarily wrong. Sadly in any religious community there are individuals who see compromise as change, and change as always being a watering down of the Truth, as they perceive it. And yet I have found at times, that it is my very desire to be uncompromisingly obedient in my relationship with God, that has driven me to change my beliefs or to find compromise with Friends with whom I strongly differ. However at the other end of the spectrum there are Friends who appear to be accommodating of almost everything and see compromise as the backbone of Truth. I find this position untenable as any desire to be obedient to God means that under God's guidance a stand for light over darkness must be taken. Divine Truth must be victorious or in the end there is little if any reason for hope.

Friends in Ireland have been struggling over this last 6 or 7 years with the very thorny issue of our corporate theological position as a Yearly Meeting and how we as a Christian community portray that position to the outside world. The enormously valuable process which the revision of Christian Experience has resulted in has left us wounded and in need of some healing.

As someone who has been involved throughout the process I have experience frustration, satisfaction, anger and encouragement with the ongoing revision. At one point while working in the revision committee I was brought almost to tears by the awareness that Friends from various traditions who I love and owe so much of my spiritual development to, seemed unable or unwilling to hear and value experiences other than their own. At the heart of that sadness was a feeling deep within me that what drove Friends from all traditions to hold the views they do, is a desire to find Truth in their own lives and because our lives are different so are our experiences of Truth.

To put it in the context of the letter to Laodicea, it seems that this Yearly Meetings difficulties in the work of the revision have often been as a result of a passionate zeal for Truth from Friends on all sides. We feel we know the right way forward whether it be because of our personal experience or because of our knowledge of scripture or early Quaker faith and practice.

Can I remind you of something I said in session at this Yearly Meeting two years ago. I told of how my teenage experiences of going to Moyallon Camp and Ireland Junior Yearly Meeting had had profoundly different influences on my spiritual development. Moyallon had provided deep spiritual roots for me, based on strong biblical teaching and a considerable emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus. JYM on the other hand offered the necessary space for me to find out who I was and to understand my relationship with God in the context of the world and the community around me. Both events have their weaknesses but without them I would not be the Christian or the Quaker I have become. For the future of this Yearly Meeting we need both. Our Young Friends need both. They need a relationship with Christ but they also need the space to question and challenge their faith in an environment that is safe. I am really grateful for the fact that while Friends in the past would have tended to encourage their young people to attend one or other of these events depending on their theological persuasion, there is now a growing recognition across this Yearly Meeting that both have an important role to play in spiritual growth.

In our Yearly Meeting as a whole we experience the same breadth of perspective and in many ways we find it more difficult than younger Friends do. As our communal journey in revising our Book of Christian Experience has shown us, our difficulty has been in discerning as a community where Divine Truth lies and supporting each other in the process of seeking it. This is not because some of us are very definitely right and the rest of us are wrong but think we are right. It is not even because there is no right or wrong in the decisions we make. It is because our understanding of the nature of God and our relationship with God is profoundly effected not only by our theological upbringing but also by the impact on us of our life experiences.

The reality of this fact has been most pronounced when dealing with the issue of homosexuality. The pain that we as a community have felt over this issue is because the Bible, held so dear by almost all Friends, appear to condemn homosexuality while at the same time there are those in our midst whose life experience is that they are homosexual. Many of these Friends have experienced a sense of rejection in the Christian church because of this biblical condemnation. The problem we as Friends have is that not only do we believe that the Bible is divinely inspired. We also hold that if our faith is not experiential it is nothing. Our struggle as a worshipping community and as individuals has been to find Truth in this dichotomy between the divinely inspired word and the personal experience.

There are very clearly those in our Religious Society who see this dilemma from only one prospective and these individuals are found in all sections of our Yearly Meeting. Yet I have been encouraged that in this struggle to find where Truth might lie, traditionally held views are not always found where expected. There is a diversity of view to be found in both the evangelical and liberal wings of our Yearly Meeting that suggests to me an honest desire on all sides to find answers to this issue.

I believe that it is vital for us to do so, not only for the sake of Truth, but also for those who are presently growing up in our community with the realisation that they are gay. If we are to be able to offer them spiritual guidance that relates honestly and justly to their personal life experience then we must continue to seek answers. While we challenge and encourage our Young Friends who are heterosexual to live their sexual lives obedient to the teachings of Christ, if we fail in this task we may leave a spiritual and moral vacuum in the lives of our homosexual Young Friends and all we will have to blame will be our own ignorance or neglect.

It is my prayer that the Holy Spirit may guide us to find answers to the dichotomy we face and that we will all have a clear conscience in doing so.

In order to achieve this I believe we need to rediscover as early Friends did a commitment to truly know God for ourselves. To do this we need to understand that this will not come about by doing but rather by waiting. Friends in the past century or two have become obsessed with doing. We seem to justify our existence by activity. We have more committees than we usually know what to do with. Yet while we achieve some wonderful things through our personal and corporate activities they are only a small part of the grand sum that makes up our spiritual whole. We can rush around busying our lives in such a way that we can disguise and ignore the gaping holes deep within us.

One very interesting aspect of the challenge, which Christ gives to the Laodiceans, is the indication that cold is better than lukewarm. Surely being half-committed is better than not at all. After all the lukewarm swell the numbers in the Church. Yet if we see this as Paul did, where each believer is part of the body of the Church and each part is dependent on every other part, we begin to understand that the half committed become more of a hindrance than a help.

Yet I have always felt that Christ is, in this comment, saying something else as well. How many of us in our human relationships long for and take joy in partners and good friends who are honest and open and trusting. You know where you stand with them. They say it as it is and it gives you the security to do likewise. If they disagree with you they will say so and because of that honesty you trust their judgement. And this is just as true of those with whom we have very little in common. If someone you oppose acts with integrity and honesty you are naturally drawn to respect them. You know where you stand with them because you know where they stand. I have always felt that this challenge from Christ was therefore a call to integrity. Better that we declare to Christ our doubts and failings, our questions and even our rejection of him than to pretend an empty commitment.

I have always felt that if there is one Friend in Quaker history who can guide us by example to live our lives obedient to the Truth then that Friend is John Woolman. Many Friends today whose lives are dominated by active service see Woolman as a wonderful inspiration and rightly so. For out of this simply lived New Jersey life came the catalyst for the antislavery movement in North America. And not only did Woolman concern himself with slavery. He was burdened for the wellbeing of native Americans, was concerned about the impact of industry on our lives and was literally centuries ahead of the rest of us in his concern for the delicate balance required to maintain God's creation that present day scientists spend so much time on.

And yet Woolman was not out there as some social campaigner, some trend-setter, some political activist driven by the cause. His motives and longings were focused not so much on the evil he saw around him but on the God who grieved because human beings were suffering at the hands of other human beings. We find him writing in his journal that:

'Before I was seven years old I began to be acquainted with the operations of divine love. Through the care of my parents, I was taught to read nearly as soon as I was capable of it; and as I went from school one day, I remember that while my companions were playing by the way, I went forward out of sight, and sitting down, I read the twenty-second chapter of Revelation: "He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb," etc. In reading it, my mind was drawn to seek after that pure habitation which I then believed God had prepared for His servants.'

And later as he matured he declared:

'There was a care on my mind so as to pass my time, as to things outward, that nothing might hinder me from the most steady attention to the voice of the True Shepherd.'

Our Friend John Woolman had discovered early in life what many take at least a lifetime to realise. He had found out that a relationship with the Almighty built on half-heartedness was hardly worth the bother. And from the evidence of the life he chose to lead I suspect he had learnt more. Everything about John Woolman life shouts integrity. While we in the Religious Society of Friends today also put a strong emphasis on this essential testimony we tend to see integrity in terms of our interactions with other human beings and with all the aspects of God's creation. I believe Woolman understood integrity at a deeper level. Not only did he base all his actions and concerns around his relationship with what he refers to as the True Shepherd. He went further. His understanding of this Divine relationship meant that he treated it with the same honesty, openness and honourable intention that was found in the rest of his life.

You may be wondering how we can achieve this in our lives. In truth it is simply a matter of laying our lives bare, standing truly naked before almighty God and handing the not very attractive reality of what we have become unconditionally into God's loving care. If we are to be the obedient servants for good that God would have us be then this is our only option.

Woolman's life showed that he understood something else as well. He realised that the human relationship with the Divine could only work on the basis of a God centred agenda. And perhaps this is the most difficult spiritual lesson for some of us to learn. We feel more secure when we are in control and yet in order to really know the God who loves us with absolute love we have to let go and surrender and take a leap of faith into the great unknown.

Finally, how do we move from a position of lukewarm to total commitment?

It seems right to finish with another of those monumental passages from Scripture that have influenced my life. David in Psalm 51 reveals so many of the qualities required for rebuilding our relationship with God.

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.

Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.

Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.

Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will turn back to you.

Save me from bloodguilt, O God,
the God who saves me,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart.