Every city, every community at one point or another has to ask itself what do we owe to one another? What do we owe to one another? People speak don't they about the contract between people and government and they notice it when it's noted there.

People speak about the recognition of dignity owed to one another. About the respect that we owe to one another.

But I wonder whether or not we're not missing some thing? When I say to a friend, I owe you one, it's away of saying thank you.

And perhaps the bottom line is that what we owe to one another most deeply of all, is gratitude. Not even respect. Not even the recognition of dignity so much as gratitude.

We are indebted to one another. I am indebted for your existence. Because I would not be myself without you.

And a society, a community, a city that can get to that level of recognition, is one that lives from a deeper place than one that simply talks about contract or even respect.

And it's this perspective which I believe, this perspective above all that the church brings to bare. Because the church is a community which lives from and in gratitude.

And if the church does not live by thanksgiving, I don't know what the church lives by. And when the church fails as it so often does to live from thanksgiving, I wonder whether it lives at all.

Why is it that the most central and important action we do as christians is called the thanksgiving? That's the well spring of who we are and what we are.

So as christians we recognize our indebtedness to one another. My indebtedness to you for just being there. Never mind anything else.

And the gospel reading opens up that further and deeper dimensions which says that what we owe to one another is exactly what we owe to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, who gives us life, Jesus Christ has given us a new creation, the humanity renewed, restored and reset that we are celebrating tonight.

Jesus Christ gives us hope. Who gives us the capacity to move away from our fears. Who gives us the strength and the joy to (inaudible).

We owe Christ big time as they say.

And the gospel tells us that it's that level of owing, that level of indebtedness that we have to try to introduce into our relations with one another.

Because the other who waits for us, especially in the stranger, in the naked, in the sick, in the imprisoned, the stranger who waits for us, the neighbour who waits for us, waits for us with a gift of life given within them. Without them we will not live.