Which Halo do you want?

Homily preached at Eltham College on 18th June based on St Matthew vi.19

It’s your best game of Halo ever.

You’ve destroyed
an entire battalion of Grunts
and their commanding Elites
through careful use of fragmentation grenades
and a Scorpion tank.

A few plasma grenades
have wiped out an attack
by The Flood.

You’ve retrieved the Index,
and set Pillar of Autumn
onto self-destruct
finally escaping
within the 15 minute countdown
before it destroys the Halo.

And then you’re done.

That’s it.

You’ve won.

You’ve beaten the computer.

You’re the champion,
the best,
the bees knees…

But what now?

Well, yes 343 Guilty Spark
does survive the attack,
but that just sets you up for Halo 2.

How are you going to keep hold
of this feeling of victory?

[PAUSE]

Computer games
have come a long way from Pong or Pac-Man,
where if you reached level 8
the thing would flip round
back to level 1 again.

If all you do is guide
a little yellow eating machine
around a maze for hours on end,
then what’s the point?

What’s the end result?


Whatever your victory may be,
there’s the fact that
at the end of the game,
you’ve got to switch the console off.

Your victory
as Master Chief Petty Officer John-117
over the Covenant
is obliterated in the flick of the switch
as if it never happened.

In the course of a second,
you’ve gone from the king of the world
to just you.

You have desire
to try and preserve that stupendous victory
on the screen for ever,
immortalised as a testament
for future generations
that you beat the Covenant.

Your family would object if you graffittied it
to the television screen.

But no.

It’s dinner time
and the Xbox must be switched off.

So what’s the point of reaching
for victories that disappear
at the flick of a switch?

[PAUSE]

What is it that truly lasts in this world?

Fame?

Fortune?

Well, how many of you have heard
of Larry, Curly and Moe?

Of Wilson, Kepple and Betty?

Of W.C. Fields and Mae West?

Of Lon Chaney Sr or Bela Lugosi?

Of Les Dawson or Dick Emery?

Of Peter Beardsley or Gareth Southgate?

What about Chantelle?

All famous in their time,
but now, even within a few decades
(or 5 minutes for Chantelle),
their memory is fading.


Rockerfeller and Howard Hughes
are no longer exactly household names.

Their fame has been replaced
by the likes of Roman Abramovich
and Bill Gates.

But who says that their fame
will last the test of time?

[PAUSE]

The human race is very good
at depressing itself with its own mortality.

Channel 4 rejoices
in its quest to make us miserable
by showing us in gory detail

images of Big Ben standing
corroded and stopped;

the Eiffel Tower,
rusted and overgrown with climbing plants,
collapsing into a pile of mangled metal

statues of famous people
broken and fallen


all human books,
records and computer discs
corrupted and rotting in a pile of mildew.


All human construction and achievement
seems to fade away.

Of course when the Sun dies,
it will be as if humanity never had existed.

Depressing, eh?

[PAUSE]

That’s how we can choose to look at our lives
– see it as a struggle to hold on to bits of life
that crumble and fall through our fingers
like the packet of biscuits
that someone has dropped several times,
run over with their trolley
and put back on
the supermarket shelf.

We can hoard up wealth,
or possessions,
or certificates,
but they aren’t going to last forever.


Wealth is always stolen,
certificates always get destroyed.

Achievements always get forgotten.

What will remain of you in a million years time?

[PAUSE]

Now that you are thoroughly miserable,
take a look at yourself.

Isn’t there something more to your self
beyond your ability to out-run,
or out-think every one?

Isn’t there something beyond
your ability to remember useless facts?

Isn’t there
something within you
that says, “yes, I am!”?
something that screams out against Time,
against change,
against decay?
something that objects to being forgotten?

It’s difficult to think of
our own existence
beyond our own lifetimes.

Some people believe
that we no longer exist after we are gone.



Others believe that we always exist,
that within you there is the flavour of eternity,
that you matter eternally.

Certainly, Christians fall into the latter category.

Jesus says:
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust destroy,
and where thieves break in and steal.

Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where moth and rust do not destroy,
and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also.”

What He is saying to us is that
each human being has an existence and a worth
beyond the world where our achievements
can be switched off as easily as an Xbox.


We have to become aware
of those things that really matter
and that cannot be taken away from us
no matter
how poor, ill or miserable we are.

[PAUSE]

So what is the stuff that lasts for ever,
that doesn’t decay?

Love?

Generosity of spirit?

Kindness?

Won’t the actions
to which they are attached
still be forgotten?

The fact that you helped an old lady
across the road in 2007
is not going to be remembered in 2057,
but the effects of that kindness
may well linger on
- not through fame or honour.


Kindness,
like hatred,
grows and grows forever.

An act of charity may be
unnoticed in the ages to come,
but its worth to the future
is incalculable
and its place in the fabric of the universe
indestructible.

What are you storing up
for yourself?