John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

The Gucci olympics and the infinite gift

... Olympic celebrities speak of being worn down by the attention of crowds. India’s Olympic boxing hopeful Vikas Krishan recently said ‘It is good to be unknown.’ The 20-year-old Asian Games gold-medallist told zeenews.com, ‘Too much publicity impinges in the private life of a person. I can’t do normal things which people of my age do. I can’t even talk loudly or criticise somebody because people and media will blow it out of proportion.’ ‘I don’t have many ambitions,’ he added, ‘I want to live a simple and content life’. But Krishan knows that if he succeeds in gaining an Olympic medal then the crowds won’t leave him alone. The crowds crave those who show signs of greatness, the crowds will convey greatness on them, and will follow them everywhere to receive a share in what these great ones have. The crowd craves to make kings of ordinary men.

We know that Jesus 'was moved with pity for [these crowds] because they were as sheep without a shepherd' (Mark 6:34), but they still wore him down. After a long day by the lakeside he felt harrassed to provide food for them; and in one of the most memorable actions of his entire ministry he produced enough bread and fish to feed five thousand. 

 The crowd had seen Jesus heal people, even without touching them, and they wanted more of that. But it wasn't just about healing, the crowd wanting more. They couldn't get enough of Jesus; their appetite for him was relentless; they were addicted; even after eating their fill they wanted more from Jesus - they started to call him a prophet, they wanted to make him a king. They were suffering what Gil Bailie calls a ‘famished craving’. 

The famished craving is our craving for the famous, our focus on those who fascinate us, our craving for the attention of others, a process in which the crowd wavers between being impressed and being bored, always craving something new. 

The Galilean crowds desired to make Jesus a king, this figure who fascinated them for a while. Like celebrities, kings are really sacrificial victims with a suspended sentence, ones who fascinate us for a time, until our famished craving devours them. The crowds turn on those they once made king; like Olympic athletes who age and are soon eclipsed by another, abandoned to drift in sea of criticism. By the end of the chapter, the Galilean crowd has dispersed; by the end of the gospel it has reassembled to devour Jesus.

At this present moment our country is in the grip of an Olympic obsession - is that a famished craving? Or our culture’s driven desire to shop for that one item which will satisfy us - and having purchased that, to need to shop for something else - is that a famished craving? Our need to gain the attention of others; our hunger to be fed, physically and emotionally, is insatiable. 

To be able to post on Facebook photos of oneself inside the Olympic Staduim; posing with the Gucci Union Jack handbag purchased at Westfield. In Stratford, in the world, satisfaction is unachievable. And when we realise this we turn on those we hoped would satisfy us.

But compassionate Jesus gives us more than we ever imagined. ... Working from another set of values altogether, Jesus gives an uncountable, infinite gift. ...

- From my Olympic offering today, The famished craving. 

The famished craving at Stratford International

Last month I stayed at the Premier Inn in Stratford, overlooking the Olympic Stadium. As technicians assembled the BBC studio on top of a sequestrated car park, crowds massed through the gleaming Westfield Shopping Centre, anticipating the serious shopping which will be going on there during the Olympics. Imagine the crowds passing through there today, hungry for a celebrity sighting, yearning to touch the glory of the Olympics, determined to visit Prada. Crowds just like those who pursued Jesus as he made his way through Galilee.

Mark’s Jesus is constantly pursued by crowds, all wanting his attention, wanting to touch his flesh, holding their hands out, expecting him to feed them. Like fans mobbing Usain Bolt on a London street, they hemmed Jesus in, wanting more and more, giving him no time to himself, even to eat. Jesus tried to escape them to recuperate. They kept looking for him until they found him again. 

Though the crowds wore Jesus down he was 'was moved with pity for [them] because they were as sheep without a shepherd'. In a most memorable action he produced enough bread and fish to feed five thousand. You'd have thought that this would have satisfied their hunger: but no, soon after, here they were again, looking for Jesus, wanting more. They couldn't get enough of Jesus; their appetite for him was relentless; they were addicted; they were suffering what Gil Bailie calls a ‘famished craving’. 

Our Olympic obsession - is that a ‘famished craving’? Or our driven desire to shop for that one item which will satisfy us - and having purchased that, to need to shop for something else? Our hunger to be fed, physically and emotionally, is insatiable. In Stratford, in the world, satisfaction is unachievable. But compassionate Jesus gives us more than we ever imagined. Jesus gives us twelve baskets full to overflowing.

- my note for this week's Parish newsletter. Got it in early as my contribution to the Olympic bandwagon.

Flesh it out with Jesus

I begin this sermon with an advisory notice, in the style of a TV continuity announcer. This sermon contains rather a lot of references to flesh.

Jesus fleshed it out - his compassion for people; as he placed himself before great crowds by Galilee, received, taught and healed them. 

Paul fleshed it out - his belief in a God for all people; as he journeyed through the towns and villages of the Mediterranean preaching a gospel of inclusion to the Gentiles.

And we flesh it out - our faith; by what we do with our bodies - where we place ourselves, who we spend our time with, what we do and say to those people. 

What we do expresses who we are; it demonstrates what we really believe. Christianity is a physical religion - we embody God, we flesh out our faith, just as Jesus did. On reading scripture we perceive the character of God by what we see Jesus doing; on observing our behaviour people perceive the character of God by what they see Christians doing. 

To other people, God isn’t who we say he is - God is who we show he is. Think about it. The old Jesus People anthem ‘We are one in the Spirit, We are one in the Lord’ doesn’t say, ‘And they’ll know we are Christians by our creeds, by our creeds’. It says, ‘And they’ll know we are Christians by our love’. And love is something which we embody.

What a responsibility - bearing the beauty of God in our bodies. 

What a tiring task - carrying God’s compassion to others in our mortal frame.

What a wonderful privilege - bringing God’s embrace to others through our flesh and bones.

From today's talk, Flesh it out with Jesus.

 

Let us Spray on Radio Four Today

This morning Radio Four's Today programme ran its feature on the book In the Company of Ghosts: the Poetics of the Motorway. Including a brief contribution from me, and the first half of the poem Let us Spray. Listen here. Complete poem here.

Herod the haunted

... Herod was clearly haunted by John’s judgements. And after John’s beheading Herod began to hear voices. When Jesus came along speaking like the prophets of old, siding with the poor and exploited in the land, condemning the powerful who cause the poor to suffer, Herod took this as an echo of the words of John. And because the judgements of the prophets and John led to inevitable violent retribution, Herod trembled at what he heard Jesus say.

But Jesus was no ghost - he was a man in history whose words indeed challenged the domination system of his day, who championed the cause of the poor and exploited in the face of the Roman and ruling elites in the land.

But Jesus was not John either - for he didn’t fulfil the apocalyptic scenario John preached: he did not come armed with weapons and fire; he wasn’t the judgemental God wreaking  violence on those who had offended him, nor did he call on such a God. 

The surprise for Herod and for those peasant revolutionaries who aggressively opposed Herod, was that Jesus came peaceably, he came with an agenda which replaced burning flesh and spilt blood with an offer of bread and wine. He came bringing people together around meal tables, people of all backgrounds united in fellowship in ways which had never been possible before. He came proposing a new kingdom, based on love and fellowship. He renounced the violence of exploitive rulers and apocalypse-seekers and showed them all a new way. ...

I've been reading Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer's Jesus against Christianity. His thesis - that Jesus rejected apocalypticism and the concept of a vengeful God - demands that Christians reject the idea (still held, according to Nelson-Pallmeyer, by many theologians of nonviolence) that God’s ultimate act will be of retributative violence. My sermon, Mark 6 - Herod the haunted, embraces this dangerous proposal.

In our village Jesus has no place

... Jesus has been saying, 'The first will be last, the last, first.' But if he thinks we, who have worked so hard for so long to achieve the standing and status we have in this village, will easily relinquish it to the young, the inexperienced, the incomers, then he needs to think again.

We liked Jesus the youth, devoted to learning, devoted to prayer. For those of us who find learning and prayer difficult he seemed to be acting for us, on our behalf, living out his life that way. We appreciated and accepted him when he was our devout young carpenter.

But we don’t like Jesus the teacher, whose teachings seem to directly attack the way we are. We don’t want to be told how to live alongside others in this village; we don’t want our ways challenged. We don’t want to change our ways. We certainly don’t want to have to think about reaching out with all our heart and energy to those we dislike or don’t know. We don’t want to sit at Jesus’ feet to learn from him how we can heal old wounds and make a fresh start in relationships gone sour. 

If that’s what Jesus wants from us then we don’t want him here any more. He’s got no place in this village any more because in this village we don’t do things his way, we refuse to learn how to do things his way. His word is an offence to us. We’ll carry on the same old way without him. We’ll carry on with our family lives and social lives, our attendence at public worship, our civic lives, just as we always have. And having dismissed Jesus, no-one need know that we ever knew him.

The conclusion of my talk yesterday, In our village Jesus has no place, which melded the events in Nazareth in Mark 6.1-13 with everyday life in everyday England, and was designed to chill. 

 

Let us spray

Let us spray
For we know no other way to travel 
than the wet road way

Let us spray
Let us aquaplane 
Let us thrash our wheels through a wash
of wicked water
Let us squint through a screen of grey

Let us spray
Though we endanger 
Our companions on the sluicing skid-surface
Let us spray
between their dazzling foglights
and their indistinct headlights
Let us spray 
through the terror of dabbed brakelights
and the torment of the torrent
Let us spray

O blackened cloud protect us
Let us spray
O dreadful deluge purge us
Let us spray
O glassy tarmac shift us
Let us spray

Until I got to the reading the other night and received my copy of the book, I'd forgotten that I'd also contributed some motorway poems to In the Company of Ghosts. I had fun starting my presentation with the above, which I first blogged in 2008 after a wet day on the M62.

In the Company of Ghosts

Out now from Erbacce-Press

A few days in London forthcoming, including next Wednesday's appearance at The Poetry Library reading from my contribution to a new book, In the Company of Ghosts: the Poetics of the Motorway, which is being launched there that evening. Chuffed that the editors Edward Chell and Andrew Taylor chose my chapter title as the title of the book. It refers back to my sense of being not-alone on my 2007 trek alongside the M62, in various senses. More on the book from Edward Chell's website. More on the launch forthcoming.

On Shame

... But when his daughter died, things fell apart for Jairus. The synagogue failed him because it had no good answer to death. A good Jew - among the best of Jews - but now he was ashamed to go to the temple because the law regarded his dead daughter as unclean. Unclean by death - and so outside Judaism; unclean by death - and so outside holiness. Holding his dead daughter this holy man became contaminated; no longer welcome in the temple to make sacrifices. Shamed by his daughter's death. So he knelt at the feet of a greater holy man. And received Jesus' mercy. 

Which holy man, or woman, in today’s church, is in a similar position to Jairus? Perhaps Jeffrey John, a man who has given his whole life to the service of the church, one of the Church of England's great scholars and teachers who was offered the post of a bishop, and was denied that post, because of his sexuality. All of a sudden this previously-respectable church leader was shamed by many because of his private life. In some people's eyes this holy man had become contaminated; no longer welcome in the temple to make sacrifices. Shamed by his sexuality. 

Or perhaps other modern-day Jairuses within the church are those clergy and others who have recently made the journey outside the doors of their cathedrals to join in with the Occupy protesters camping outside, to engage with them and seriously debate the issues they raise. Shamed by many for mingling with these noisy, messy outsiders. ...

From Shame: only say the word, and I shall be healed - my talk today.