My theme for this All Saints’ Sunday is the question, "Is the Gospel only for women?" Let me explain why I put it that way. Recently I attended a theological conference at which one of the lecturers was a woman, a professor at a church college. She observed that although there are more women in the church than men, we men are still in control, that theology - the study of God - has always been a man’s world and that all the definitions of God are usually in terms of experiences that pertain to men. She felt this put male preachers into a strange position: we’d like to be strong and vigorous and in charge of things. But on the other hand we also want to follow Jesus, who she said was so much like a woman.

It’s in the Beatitudes that her charge comes into focus quickly, because the Beatitud…