John Davies - Notes from a small vicar

Luke 7 - Ruptured rituals and transformed taboos

... Jesus places himself in situations where the rituals of old have run their course, and opens up  opportunities for people to create new ones, breaking taboos where they have to, all for the sake of liberating oppressed people from those things which harm them, all for the sake of bringing marginalised people into the centre of things, all for the sake of love.

... the story (of the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with her hair at the table of Simon the Pharisee) encourages us that with faith in one who loves us, who longs to forgive us and liberate us from all that harms or limits us, we can turn those situations around. We can find the wit and the imagination to do something different, to make something new, to challenge prevailing norms and open up new arenas of experience for ourselves and others. 

We live in a world where the rituals of old are fading and new demands are being made on how we humans co-exist. A fitting subject, I suggest, for Father’s Day, with the role of the male within the family unit having changed massively in our lifetimes, presenting families generally, and fathers in particular, with the challenging need to create new rituals to sustain new models of relationships. ...

- from Luke 7 - Ruptured rituals and transformed taboos, my talk today.

Respecting the widows - and a request to Government

Respecting the widows - and a request to Government - my talk today connects with the churches' call for action....

My Tokyo photo album

My pictures from our week in Tokyo, here....

Tokyo thanks

So we made it to Tokyo, had a very fine time indeed, especially on Gary and Naoko's wedding day, of course, but also in spending plenty of other time with Naoko's parents and family, lovely people all. Pictured here (by Amy) at a family meal on the evening of the wedding. If you helped make this happen for us - again, and for the final time, many thanks.

On being under authority

... In our highly specialised, compartmentalised, divided, society we tend to regard ourselves as autonomous individuals, able to stand on our own without reference to higher authorities. To show allegiance, to admit dependence, we regard as signs of weakness. 

Yet I suggest that we do all subject ourselves to authority, to outside forces, higher powers, willingly or unwillingly, wittingly or subconsciously. I suggest that though we may think that we are islands, entire to ourselves, we aren’t - but rather, that we are formed by the values and expectations and behaviour of those around us. From the day we first begin to imitate our parents, as tiny children, to the day when we decide what career we should take, or who we should marry, we subject ourselves to the authority of others; our desires are determined by what others desire, our decisions depend on the decisions which friends and family have made around us. In a very real sense these significant others authorise our life choices. 

And consider again those news stories about errant politicians and priests which we soak up unquestioningly: in so doing we demonstrate how much authority the media has in our lives. And consider the authority we give to rumour or gossip at the school gates or in the village hall... 

Which is why it is so important for us Christians to read the Bible alongside the newspapers day by day, to put the authority of one in dialogue with the authority of the other. And to test what other people tell us against the values of scripture. So, returning to our miracle - the centurion carried what we might call secular authority, or temporal authority, just like military leaders or captains of industry or those who have the power to authorise us bank loans or the custody of our children, or make us their Facebook Friend (and I don’t say that lightly - it’s worth reflecting on the amount of authority which social media carries in our society today). But the centurion saw that Jesus was under the authority of a greater power - one able to break through where secular authority, temporal power, fails. One with the power to heal. ...

Revisited my Diamond Jubilee talk for the anniversary of Coronation Day today: On being under authority.

Unity - without a victim

... Uniting like this is normal human behaviour, from the playground to the bartering-floor of the stock exchange. Groups of people get together to put things right with each other by putting someone else away. I’m keenly aware of this today, having heard that one of the influential people in my journey of faith, Janet Henderson, a woman of intelligence and integrity who was my personal tutor at theological college, has resigned as Dean of Llandaff Cathedral after just two months in post. The reason given in the newspapers is a dispute with the cathedral choir over fees for a TV appearance; but they also report an underlying cause - the opposition she received from some clergy who object to a woman being appointed. ‘I ask ... that they may be one’, prayed Jesus to his Father; unfortunately it seems that unity for the cathedral has come at the cost of another person’s vocation. ...

- from my talk today, John 17 - Unity - without a victim.

Up

Have you ever wondered why, when the time came for him to leave his people on earth to return to his Father in heaven, Jesus chose to go up?

He could have gone forwards, he could have gone backwards, he could have gone sideways, he could have gone downwards; but he chose to go up.

He could have gone forwards. Like Alice through the looking glass or the children entering Narnia through the wardrobe, Jesus could have stepped through a gap in space-time, his disciples watching the air in front of them ripple like liquid as Jesus stepped ahead into it and through it, and in the next instant when all was normal again, finding him gone.

He could have gone backwards, simply pulling away gently from the group of friends as they walked and talked together, until they realised he was not with them, and as they looked back, finding that he was not there.

He could have gone sideways, launching himself from the mountainside like a freefall parachutist, arms wide open in a gesture like the crucifixion but now floating, freely, gracefully away out of sight.

Or he could have gone downwards; down into Galilee’s waters, in an act recalling his baptism, this time the waters gently closing over his head as he surfaced no more.

But Jesus chose to go up. As we say in our creed, ‘he ascended into heaven’. The direction he chose is significant. Why go up? ....

- the start of my Ascension Day talk, Up, posted a couple of days late.

Where we are placed on the way to the city

Have you noticed how the story of God and humankind begins in a garden and ends in a city? Eden is our Paradise Lost - and the start of our separation from God; the new Jerusalem, the holy city coming down out of heaven, completes our reunion with God, it is the location of our everlasting union, in a place which is endlessly fruitful, endlessly generous, full of light, a place of blessing for each of its inhabitants.

And inbetween the broken promise of Eden and the light of the new Jerusalem - we journey each day in places which carry elements of both; places of promises made and promises broken, places of light and darkness, places we love and places we hate, places where we feel safe and secure and places where we feel vulnerable. As followers of Jesus Christ we believe that we are moving in the overall direction of the new Jerusalem, drawn by its light. But in everyday life we sometimes struggle to make our way. ...

from today's talk, Where we are placed on the way to the city.

 

Peter's funny picnic

Would you go on a picnic with Peter?  Look at the food he he laid out on his picnic blanket: four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air..... Would you eat any of those? 

- from yesterday's talks, Peter's funny picnic. The family service featured a 'real' picnic including camel pie, crocodile soup, tiger sandwich, and vulture vol-au-vent. 

Knowing the master's voice

... Peter the betrayer was like a lamb who had gone astray, a rueful ruminant torn between his love for his Lord and his fear of powerful others. But some time later Peter the loved and protected follower of God found himself transformed into a healer, a worker of a miracle which brought back from death his sister in Christ, Tabitha. 

The transformation came because Peter knew his master’s voice. And on that misty morning three days after the crucifixion, breathless, having run to see for himself the empty tomb where Jesus had laid, Peter recalled the words which Jesus had taught him: that the Son of Man would be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and after three days  would rise again. [Luke 24.7] And each day and each night since, Peter’s head span with the wonder of knowing that Jesus was alive, had conquered death.   

Because he had listened well to Jesus in the time he spent with him Peter knew his master’s voice - and in the reawakening which the resurrection wrought in his life Peter remembered that Jesus had once called him ‘the rock, on which I will build my church’ [Matthew 16.18]. And hearing and believing, Peter set about that work of building the community of believers together. ...

From my first sermon at Whitegate and Little Budworth. Knowing the master's voice, today.