Does anyone knock anymore? Our electronic bell-ringer is currently broken, and I’ve removed the button-press from beside the front door, but now I’ve noticed that visitors don’t know what to do, which makes me wonder if our generation’s lost the art of knowing how to knock. Not to mention the previous generation’s art of having a signature knock, so that you could tell who it was, like my grandfather’s sequence of raps and taps.

If there’s one area where ignorance is not bliss, it’s in the art of recognising the knock of a spiritual kind. Said Jesus, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” I’m not implying that Jesus has forgotten how to knock, but perhaps some of us have forgotten how to hear. “Was that a noise outside?”

What then does his knock sound like? Perhaps a prequel that question is this: When ought his knock to be expected? The knock mentioned in the verse above comes to a church that is very sick. Not physically, but spiritually. It has gorged itself on wealth, stuffed itself on pleasure, and then applauded itself with self-congratulation. And when a church is like that, Jesus usually comes knocking, and not with the gentle “I’m home honey, let me in”, but the signature rap and serious tap that sounds like “Please come to the door and don’t ignore me”.