John Davies - Notes from a small vicar

Now is the judgement of this world

... We should not be surprised that we live in a judgmental society. For this is the way of the world. It is the way that the ruler of this world, the devil himself, wants us to be. He wants us to be like those guests smiling politely at their host around the meal table on Come Dine With Me, and tearing their host apart as soon as she leaves the room, for human conflict, division, and distress are the goal of the ruler of this world. What is the opposite of human flourishing? Where people diminish each other and tear each other apart. That’s the intention of the ruler of this world. And that’s why we live in a judgmental society.

Sadly we listen too much to the ruler of this world. Our churches are by no means immune to judgmentalism and divisiveness. Stop a moment to consider how you talk about those in the pews around you, or in the village you live in. But today, Passion Sunday, encourages us to listen to another voice on this subject. The voice of one condemned by the judgements of the world, condemned to die a dissident’s death by crucifixion, the voice of one who turned around the judgements of the world against him, turned those very judgements back onto the ruler of this world. No statement in any court of law at any time in history has greater significance than the words which Jesus told his disciples about the meaning of the cross:

‘Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.’

Jesus on the cross is the judgement of this world. For Jesus on the cross reveals the ways of the world for what they are - the opposite of human flourishing, where people diminish each other and tear each other apart. The onlookers at the cross knew they were watching an innocent man die - a man innocent of malice, innocent of hatred, innocent of anything except his claim to be the architect of a new way of life for the world, a way which put God at the centre and where the consequence for people’s lives would be to live in love for each other - the kingdom of God, a world of of human flourishing. ...

Today's talk, Now is the judgement of this world: probably my best stab so far at a talk about the intelligence of the victim, without using the term 'the intelligence of the victim', but talking about Simon Cowell instead.

Turning the tables on the taxman

During the trial of Ken Dodd for tax evasion, held in Liverpool in 1989, Dodd’s representative in court George Carman QC famously quipped, "Some accountants are comedians, but comedians are never accountants". [1] The trial revealed that Dodd had very little money in his bank account, but did have £336,000 in cash stashed in suitcases in his attic. When asked by the judge, "What does a hundred thousand pounds in a suitcase feel like?", Dodd made his now famous reply, "The notes are very light, M'Lord."

 While this court case rumbled on I was working in an office block which overlooked the main entrance to Liverpool’s Queen Elizabeth Law Courts, which opens out into a large public square dominated by a massive monument to Queen Victoria. I worked for the Department of Trade and Industry but the two floors above us housed the regional offices of the Inland Revenue - and the officers who had put together the case against Ken Dodd.

 Every day of the trial Ken Dodd’s exit from the court was met with a large crowd of supporters cheering him through the square, and above them from the tax office, lines of civil servants hanging out of open windows booing and jeering him. On the day that Dodd was acquitted of all charges the boos from the tax officers were louder and bitter; but the crowd on the square was enormous and in great celebratory mode. Beneath Queen Victoria’s stern gaze an impromptu street party took place with the vindicated Ken Dodd at its core. As I watched this astonishing scene through our office windows I thought, it shows just how much ordinary people love seeing someone turn the tables on the taxman.

Preparing for this talk this week, I got to thinking that the scene I’ve just described has a very strong gospel feel to it. For one of the great themes of the gospels is Jesus turning the tables on the taxman. He did it in the Temple, as we just heard (and we’ll return to that story in a short while). And he did it many other times too. In his exchange with the Pharisees about paying taxes to the emperor; in the observation he made about the widow’s contribution to the treasury; in the call of Matthew and his meals with tax-collectors and sinners; Jesus turned the tables on the taxman. ...

From today's talk, Turning the tables on the taxman.

 

What's in a name?

The expression, ‘Take up your cross’ has been greatly spiritualised and taken out of context over centuries of preaching. But as a statement of what Jesus requires of his followers it cannot be clearer. For as the writer Ched Myers puts it, ‘The “cross” had only one connotation in the Roman empire: upon it dissidents were executed.’

Jesus left Peter and the other listening disciples with no room for misunderstanding when he instructed them to ‘Take up [their] cross’ - the cross was a political and military punishment for those who opposed the forces of empire, the military and administrative establishment, the structures and powers of death. That was then, and is now, the calling for those who want to follow him.

This is very political. It demonstrates to us that to follow Jesus means making a clear choice between two incompatible powers - the power of death or the power of life. That if we choose life then we cannot but oppose the powers of death at large in the world.  And that if we do that then we will be made to suffer, alongside others suppressed and punished for their opposition to the powers of the world.

‘Taking up our cross’ means identifying and standing up against injustice in all its forms; but it equally means renouncing the temptation to react by using righteous violence. ‘Taking up the cross’ is an act of radical nonviolent love in the name of, and in the company of, the One, the only One, who overcomes the power of death and will bring us into resurrection life.

Perhaps one of the most powerful ways to take up your cross is to speak up in opposition to those who brutalise others by calling them names - speak up against the playground bully, speak up against the business manager manipulating jobs to get rid of employees he dislikes, speak up against the crowd scapegoating a man proved innocent of a sexual crime. 

From today's talk, What's in a name?

After the waters, the wilderness

It is said that ‘the wild beasts’ who troubled Jesus in the wilderness is a figure of speech which Mark used to describe all these secular forces of the volatile world in which Jesus lived. Like the wild beasts in Daniel and Revelation, these wild beasts in the wilderness were the powers of the kings of the world ruled by the Prince of the power of the air - Satan. The context for Jesus in the wilderness was a world conflicted and broken by the forces of evil.

And Mark wants to show us this - that when Jesus presented himself to John and was immersed in the waters of the River Jordan, that full immersion symbolised a full and total abandonment of the influences of the world, of Satan and the wild beasts; and a full and total abandonment to the will and purposes of God. Jesus’ full immersion has been described as a ‘death experience of repentance’. In that total submersion Jesus ended his participation in the structures and values of society. In those waters his debts to that society were cancelled. ‘He became totally unobliged’. Renouncing the old world order Jesus emerged from the waters signalling the creation of a new humanity.

From After the waters, the wilderness, my talk today. I admit, very Ched Myers.

On mountaintop experiences

Mountaintop experiences are sometimes a mystery to us. I can’t explain what really happened on the day that two friends and I were caught in a white-out on a peak in Snowdonia, where we couldn’t see our way any more because all there was before us was snow - in the sky, in the air, on the ground - we were surrounded by white, in the blizzard our footsteps had disappeared, and we knew that whichever way we headed we were in danger of stepping off an edge into a drop of hundreds of feet. Our minds play tricks with us now as we recall the moment that a man emerged from nowhere, and greeted us as we stood stranded and stricken there in the white-out, an old man, ill-equipped for a winter mountain climb with a string bag hanging from his shoulders. Was he real? He was real enough to help us overcome our fears that day. Did that incident actually happen? All we know is that he guided us down into safety.

- from my talk today, On mountaintop experiences (which also features a reworking of my M62 Ainley Top poem Junction 24: thanks for the high places in Walking the M62, and an extract from Martin Luther King's last speech). All to do with The Transfiguration, of course.

Mark 1 - The slow unveiling of the man of mystery

We are with the gospel of Mark for quite some time now. Which means that the Ched Myers season begins - and what a great inspiration Binding the Strong Man will be. Mark 1 - The slow unveiling of the man of mystery, today's offering.

Big Brother and the desert experience

The TV programme Big Brother isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. The prospect of watching a house full of strangers thrown together for a few weeks with very little to do except eat, sleep, do their make-up and talk, doesn’t appeal to all. And the characters, chosen for their quirkiness or likelihood to create tabloid headlines, aren’t always the most endearing, more often instead self-promoting, self-serving, not the easiest people to live with in a confined and highly-controlled space, for any length of time.

But look at it another way and Big Brother is a fascinating experiment in human behaviour, an exploration of how people relate, bond, make decisions, form groups, fall in and out of love, when all that they have to do all day is to focus on that very process and their part in it.....

I got Pip Wilson (who champions Big Brother) and a meditation on the ‘desert’ or ‘wilderness’ experience into my February article in The Lydford village magazine [Big Brother and the desert experience]: with the suggestion that this Lent people consider the parish church available as a real-time Diary Room ...

Turning water into wine, and blaming the ship's captain for a disaster

... I also like to think that Jesus performed the miracle of the wine at the wedding at Cana for the sake of the bar staff, the caterers. It may or may not have been their fault that stocks ran so low; whatever, they would have got the blame and took the shame when the wine ran out. Jesus saved them from all that. 

How quick employers are to blame their staff for mistakes: how little time it takes for a shipping company to blame the captain of a stricken vessel for a disaster, and how quick everyone else is to join in the scapegoating. Evidence is not required - just a victim.

This brings us to the very heart of the gospel where Jesus’ crucifixion is the consequence of scapegoating, but Jesus the crucified victim brings the scapegoating mechanism to light for all of us to see; on the cross the scapegoating mechanism dies with Jesus and Jesus’ self-giving generosity reveals another way we can be. That’s the very heart of the Good News. The miracle at the wedding in Cana gives us the first hint of it. 

From my talk today, Intemperate Christianity - the good news.

Nathaniel and the new vision of God

Nathaniel and the new vision of God: today's offering.

 

Epiphany - dreamers and stargazers

Epiphany - dreamers and stargazers: today's offering.