Rating 2 out of 5 (A little platitudinous)

52,000 Roman coins have been found in Somerset. They date from the 3rd century, which is a very long time ago. Even very longer ago though, are the 950,000 year old flints found in Norfolk. They're from a very, very long time ago. But even very, very longer ago, is the picture from the Planck telescope. This is a picture of the universe 13.5 billion years ago. That is a very, very, very long time indeed.

Yet with all this time around, we always seem to be short of it. There's last night's washing up to do (although I get my housekeeper to do that) and the boss wants a report on his desk by 11 am (although I don't really have a boss). There's just so much to do as a retired bishop and a busy professor of divinity. I just don't know where all the time goes.

Life is like a short fleeting thing. As the poet says, "Life is so very fleeting." As Bede the Venerable said "Life fleets like a sparrow doing a poop." As the psalmist says, "What is man but a very fleeting thing." The wonders of modern science, and I'm a big fan of science by the way, shows me how very insignificant you all are. Yet, despite your fleeting insignificance, you're also tremendously important on a cosmic scale. You see, there's a great, big, wonderful spiritual universe out there, of which you are a part.

May the Force be with you.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Isn't the crucifixion just brilliant? Even Jews think it's brilliant. Of course for a long time they didn't think it was brilliant. They thought it was horrible because Christians used to persecute them, but thanks to Hitler's attempted genocide, Christians started to wonder whether persecuting Jews was really a good idea after all. So something good came out of the holocaust in the end - every cloud has a silver lining. Now we're all best of friends and Jews think the crucifixion is brilliant too.

There are some really good paintings of the crucifixion, full of suffering and anguish. They're very artistic. Very artistic indeed. When I see Jesus, naked on the cross, full of suffering and anguish, I think to myself, "That's very artistic, that is."

There's an exhibition of crucifixions at the Jewish Museum in London. It's got a crucifixion by Graham Sutherland that's really nice - lot's of nice suffering and anguish there. There's not quite as much suffering and anguish in Stanley Spencer's but it's still very artistic. Maggie Hambling's, is very dark and evocative of suffering and anguish.

There's even a crucifixion by Chagall. This isn't the famous one. The famous one, the one that isn't on show at the exhibition in London, is really good because it shows the suffering and anguish of Jews, with Jesus looking particularly Jewish. That's one of the other good things that came out of the Holocaust - some really brilliant paintings of the crucifixion, with lots of really good suffering and anguish.

Of course, to we Christians, the crucifixion is more than just a symbol of suffering and anguish. It's a reminder that one third of the Invisible Magic Friend became temporarily visible so that he could experience a bit of suffering and anguish himself. Now he sits there, up in heaven, looking down omnipotently on all of us, saying "Isn't all that suffering and anguish just terrible?"

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

I met a good friend of mine who, like many of my friends, had spent forty years running a large business. When he retired he found that he had no hobbies or interests and was utterly dejected. He wanted to go back to making larger and larger profits, which is all he knew how to do. Contrast this with yesterday's announcement that the retirement age is to increase. For many this only prolongs the misery of work. Not every one is fortunate enough to have had a job where they can be as creative and productive as I was as a bishop. Some people find that their work stifles their creativity and prevents them pursuing their real interest.

Why do most people, apart from my friend, share this creative spark? Is it because human beings, more than any other creature in nature, evolved to use problem solving and cooperation as a survival tactic and that that talent requires us to have a vivid imagination that constantly throws up new and exciting ideas? No. It's because Adam and Eve, from who we are all descended, were made in the image of the Invisible Magic Friend. The Invisible Magic Friend is constantly creating the universe so that it holds together and doesn't fall apart. He spends lots of his time making electrons perform energy level transitions so that they emit a photon of light of exactly the right frequency. As you can imagine this keeps him pretty busy a lot of the time, which I expect is why he doesn't have time to answer every worthy person's prayers.

We've inherited a little bit of this creativity which is why we are all, apart from my friend, constantly being creative. Even I am constantly being creative. At least, I think you'll agree, the explanation I've just given you for human creativity is pretty creative.

A poet said something about retirement once. Indeed several times.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Daphne Todd painted her dead mother. By coincidence, Van Gogh did a painting once as well - this time of something religious. And Rembrandt painted something religious too. A lot of people use art to give life meaning. Without a nicely arranged still portrait, life just isn't worth living.

This just goes to show that art is really just a poor substitute for religion, because religion's much better at giving meaning to life, namely to get a good deal after you are dead. A poet said so too, so I must be right.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Happy Saint George's day old boy! Saint George is the patron saint of England on account of him being a Palestinian dragon murderer. For the same reason he is also patron saint of Aragon, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, and Russia.

But what does it mean to be English? Well, cricket, warm beer and war with France, naturally. It may come as a surprise to many, but being English does not occur naturally. We're not "born" English - well, we are, or at least some of us are. The point is we can change what it means to be English. That's why warm beer is optional now, whereas cricket and war with France still remain fairly popular.

I think the First Letter of Saint John puts it rather well, "I don't know what it means to be English, or what it will be to be English, but Jesus will be back any day now and he'll be able to tell us."

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Rating 2 out of 5 (A little platitudinous)

Those clever scientists have gone and done it again. They've transferred DNA from a fertilised egg to another egg with working mitochondria. Hurrah for science! As an expert on theology, I was part of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority that allowed all this to happen. So hurrah for (correct) theology.

Of course some people have a different theology. The Roman Catholic Church, that great moral conscience of the nation, think every sperm is sacred. I do, of course, totally respect this wrong idea. Complete and utter respect for such nonsense, no question about it. I wouldn't dream of disrespecting an idea that assigns the same rights to a bunch of cells as to a mature human being. I really couldn't be more respectful about such a laughably silly notion that ignores the welfare of the born in favour of the unborn. I'm just full of respect for an organisation that forgets that it is quite natural for humans to use their Invisible Magic Friend given minds to interfere with nature.

Did I mention that I respected them?

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Rating 5 out of 5 (Extraordinarily platitudinous)

The Prime Minister has apologised for sending thousands of children to British colonies. He didn't send them there personally but he apologised on behalf of society. You see, people in those days, when most people went to church, didn't realise it was wrong to tell children their parents were dead when they weren't, to split up siblings, to send them to people who didn't care about them, would deprive them of an education, put them to unpaid work and physically and sexually abuse them. In these more enlightened times, when hardly anybody goes to church, we now realise that these were great injustices.

This always happens - later generations look with dismay on the morals of their forbears. A good example of this is the Catholic Church. Being Christians, they are always quick to recognise their own faults. After a mere 2,000 years of persecuting Jews, the Catholic Church realised this was wrong and said "Oops, sorry!" And it took less than 500 years to apologise for Galileo. In this way, the church leads the world into a brighter more ethical way of looking at things.

Future Christians will probably look back in disgust at our own morals. I wonder what they'll find so lamentable in the modern church's outlook? Let me see now... no, nothing comes to mind... I can't really think of any group of people that the modern church discriminates against or preaches hatred towards... nope, nothing obvious. There might be some, but I guess we're just blinded by the standards of our time. Oh, wait, I know! You know how everyone thinks it's a really, really good idea to traffic women and children? Well, get this, as an Extravagantly Reverend Lord Professor Bishop Baron, I think that might be BAD!

Something to think about, eh?

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

The case of identity theft using British passports raises important questions about identity. Who am I? Where am I? What am I for? Sometimes I'm a Right Reverend Bishop, other times I'm Lord Harries Baron Pentregarth. Occasionally I like to be Gresham Professor of Divinity but sometimes I'm just Welsh. It's so confusing trying to figure out just what one is, don't you find?

Thankfully, Christianity spotted that identity isn't fixed but can change. Non-Christians don't realise this, so it's a good job Christianity came along and sorted that out. With striking boldness, 1 John says, "we don't know what we'll become but we'll definitely become something". The extremely good theologian but unfortunately not quite so good assasin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, agreed that we probably don't know what we'll become, but he thought that Jesus, the visible bit of the Invisible Magic Friend, probably knew. I think this demonstrates once again the practical value of theology.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Should we torture suspected terrorists or not? How do we know they are terrorists. One way to find out is to tie them down, inflict ever increasing levels of fear and pain, and keep shouting "YOU'RE A TERRORIST. CONFESS!!!".

Some people, people who don't have a religion, think this is OK. These are people with no moral fibre, no character. They think the utilitarian argument is always right and apply it blindly without regard to the rights of the suspect. People who are Christians, such as Tony Blair and George W. Bush, for example, or even people of some other religions, Osama Bin Laden for instance, are people of character and would never consider infringing the rights of suspects under any circumstances. This is called being ethical. Clifford Longley said something similar, which just goes to show I must be right.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Fed up with all the talk of Advent and Christmas? You almost certainly are, so let me just mention that today, 17th December, is a day in Advent, the preparation for Christmas. And the big news is that the Church of England Calendar has an antiphon for today. I know you're all just dying to know what it is. So here it is, the Church of England antiphon for today, the 17th December, in Advent. This is what it is. It is this.

It is an ancient antiphon. It dates back to really early times. We had it in the 10th century, in the 11th century, in the 12th century, in the 13th century and in all the other centuries since. We had it before the Reformation. We had it during the Reformation. We had it after the Reformation. Are you ready for this antiphon that is so ancient and that we had in all those previous centuries? It was in the Book of Common Prayer, just as it had been in lots of previous prayer books before and has been in many prayer books since. Of course, it was in Latin before - a piece of information which I'm sure is of no particular interest to any of you, but it is in English now.

Isn't it wonderful that natural laws are so beautiful? I know this because the Invisible Magic Friend said so somewhere in the Old Testament.

Which brings me neatly onto the climate change talks in Copenhagen. What we really need all the leaders to do is make the right decision. In almost every case I can think of, the right decision is often to be preferred to the wrong decision.

This is not exciting to teenagers.

As a massively Reverend Lord Professor Bishop Baron, let me just assure you that deciding to wear a left and a right shoe, rather than two left shoes, or indeed two right shoes, is the right decision. Other examples include deciding to have white wine with fish, rather than with steak, or listening to me for three minutes rather than doing something completely unproductive. Making the right decisions instead of the wrong decision is so important. We need to make the right decisions at home, at work, in the garden, on public transport, on the playing field, in business, in government, at the theatre and in the shops.

Making the right decisions instead of the wrong decisions is the true meaning of Advent. Which brings me back to the Church of England antiphon for today.

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