All this teaching on the Kingdom of Heaven. But what is our understanding of it? The Kingdom of Heaven is Matthew's phrase for what other Gospels call the Kingdom of God. Perhaps Matthew, as the most Jewish Gospel, shies away from using the name of God, in the way the Jewish religion did. Is the Kingdom of Heaven, then, just another way of thinking about heaven and the place we go to when we die? Well, there is, of course, an eternal aspect to the Kingdom of God. One day, the Christian hope is we will enter a new time, when God's Kingdom fully arrives, and all difficulties, pain, suffering, will no longer be present. Scripture speaks of a 'new heaven and new earth' suggesting (as indeed Christian belief in resurrection does!) there is something very physical as well as spiritual about eternal life. 'Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven' - we pray it in the Lord's Prayer. But it is not just a future hope. In part, the Kingdom is here now. When Jesus preached 'The Kingdom of Heaven is near' he meant with the coming of Jesus, the Kingdom, God's community of people, began to be established, and signs of this are everywhere, if we have eyes to see. That's why the kingdom is compared to small things - mustard seeds, yeast. Sometimes our world may seem a long way off from what it was meant to be. But signs of hope are all around us. God's love will be found in all sorts of ways. As children of God we live in his kingdom now, and long for the time it will be fully here.

Today the General Synod of the Church of England voted to allow women to become bishops for first time in its history. The vote was as follows:
House of Bishops 37 in favour, 2 against, 1 abstention.
House of Clergy 162 in favour, 25 against, 4 abstentions.
House of Laity 152 in favour, 45 against, 5 abstentions.