John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

Intense conversations with the God who bends

... our faith unerringly reflects our wider culture. For society at large is generally in denial of the difficulties and harsh realities of our lives. We don’t have a language to express the deepest struggles of our souls, our conversations are reduced to the most functional, to tweet-and txt-level. The more Facebook friends we gain, the less of ourselves we can  articulate to them.

The theologian Walter Brueggemann writes, ‘As children of the Enlightenment, we have censored and selected around the voice of darkness and disorientation, seeking to go from strength to strength, from victory to victory.’ We shun negativity. We deny the failure of our attempts to control. And consequently, ‘much Christian piety is romantic and unreal in its positiveness’.

I suspect that many people regard today’s version of Christianity as irrelevant to them, not so much because they think its theology doesn’t match the insights of modern science, but more because they feel it has forgotten how to help them make a deep connection with a God who can meet them in their darkness and disorientation, a God who  surely must have the power to treat the infections of today’s toxic mental environment.

But note the words of Rabbit in John Updike’s Rabbit is Rich: ‘Laugh at ministers all you want, they have the words we need, the ones the dead have spoken.’ In particular, I suggest, they have the words of the Psalms. And the Psalms are not dry theological treatises, they are intense conversations, dialogues between faithful but sometimes struggling people, and the God who listens, bends, makes amends. ...

- My editorial in a couple of church / community magazines this month, Intense conversations with the God who bends. I'm preparing a series of Lent gatherings around Brueggemann's Message of the Psalms, and Wild Goose Resource Group's Sweet Honey and Hard Places.

 

Learning Cooperation in the Body

Jesus wasn’t among the poor in his society, he came from an artisan’s family, he read at the synagogue. So how could Jesus know what would be ‘good news’ to the poor? He would know by putting himself among them, listening to them, observing their lives, engaging with them, recognising the differences between him and them but taking the poor on their own terms. This is where the parables came from - Jesus’ retelling the stories of the everyday struggles of the poor in ways which opened up the good news of the Kingdom of God to them.

Now, how we live with people who are different from us is one of the greatest challenges facing our society today. With an international labour market and splintered patterns of work we live in an age of increasing differences - racial, ethnic, religious, economic differences - and we tend to avoid socially engaging with people who aren’t like us. Modern politics tends to emphasise unity and similarity, the politics of the tribe, hence UKIP, rather than addressing the complexities of our differences. 

We need to learn how to live together not just sympathetically, for sympathy barely scratches the surface of our differences, but empathetically, for empathy is a powerful tool of cooperation between people who are different, and cooperation is a craft we can practice so as to become more skillful in dealing with others. 

- Today's talk, Learning Cooperation in the Body, owes its inspiration to Richard Sennett's Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation; and of course to The Nazareth Manifesto....

John 2 - Intemperate Christianity: the Good News

... We're not called to be party-poopers. We're called to join Jesus at the party. We're not called to stop others enjoying themselves. We're called to join Jesus in filling their glasses to the full with the very best wine. Now that makes our Holy Communion look a little mean, even inhospitable, by comparison. It’s a long way from looking and feeling like a party. We invite people to very soberly take a modest sip from a tiny chalice. Does the relative meanness of our Communion ritual influence the way we express our faith outside of church? Maybe we should be doing it differently; maybe we should rethink Communion in the spirit of the Wedding at Cana....

- from today's talk, Intemperate Christianity - the Good News

The baptism of Jesus and the baptism of John

... John’s baptism was a means of appeasing the Judge who comes carrying tools of destruction, and wielding lethal fire. Those who came to John for baptism were motivated by the fear of death. The relationships generated by their baptism were relationships of mutual suspicion, even enmity - such as the enmity generated between John and Herod. Because of John’s judgement on Herod for his affair with his brother’s wife, the king had John imprisoned, and later beheaded. But when Jesus was baptised, baptism itself altered. For at Jesus’s baptism the only fire that was wielded was the gentle heat of God’s Holy Spirit. At Jesus’s baptism the only judgement on him was the judgement of a loving father expressing his love and his pleasure over his son. The relationships generated at the baptism of Jesus are relationships of unconditional mutual love, the love of the Godhead, together in a complete unity. This baptism is the one in which we share...

From today's talk, The baptism of Jesus and the baptism of John.

They left by another road

The Epiphany reminds us that the study of scripture and its application is not just for personal piety, but for the transformation of the world. This is deeply understood by those Christians in other countries who are today being persecuted and killed, for their faith in Christ. It is keenly followed by those who work for change in our own society, motivated by their faith: in running foodbanks and credit unions, campaigning for a living wage, and for debt relief to the poorest people. Each of these have had their Epiphany; and each have left by a road where struggle and salvation travel together, just as those magi did. Our calling and our privilege is to share that road with them.

- from my talk today, They left by another road.