I want to ask you this morning to look in two directions. First, look toward Calvary. What do you see? Here at this cross-crowned mountain Christ is suffering, dying, giving himself. Fix this picture in your mind.

Now turn in another direction: look around you, look about you here in this place now. What do you see? Here are your fellow-followers of Christ, some of them anyway - your fellow-disciples in our time, your fellow-pilgrims on the Christian way - here is the church, the church of our Lord Jesus Christ, part of it anyway. And fix this picture in your mind.

There is a profound kinship between what we see when we look at Calvary and what we see when we look about amongst us here. We here are the reason he did what he did there. We have this identity with one another and with him because he loved the church, loving her even before she was born, and by his death giving her birth.

Self-identification is always important; it is important that we know who we are. And who are we, the people assembled in this place on this day? We are the church - this is who we are. We are the church Christ loved and for whom he gave himself. "Merchants, bakers, or candlestick makers," let us try today to see ourselves as the church Christ loved.