John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

As a Hen Gathers Her Brood

'How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!'

If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world - wings spread, breast exposed - but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand. ...'

- Barbara Brown Taylor's sermon on Jesus' lament over Jerusalem (Luke 13.31-35) can't be bettered, in my estimation. It's brilliant. So rather than attempting a pale imitation, I shared it, verbatim, today...

The temptations of Jesus and the horsemeat scandal

The devil roamed the moral wilderness of the international food industry, and met a supplier, hungry for profits. The devil said to him, ‘As you have the means to do it, why don’t you substitute horsemeat for beef?’ And the supplier said, ‘That sounds like a profitable idea, I’ll give it a try’.

Then the devil came across the executive of a multinational supermarket chain and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority, if you do things my way, exploiting the land and the poor to maximise your profits.’ And the executive said, ‘Show me the contract, I’ll get our lawyers to approve it straightaway’.

Then the devil appeared at a supermarket checkout, and said to the customers purchasing processed food, ‘If you throw yourself wholeheartedly into consuming food full of additives, fat, sugar, and calories, you have nothing to fear, for the angels of God will protect you from cancer, heart disease, obesity and tooth decay.’ And they said, ‘I believe you, here’s my loyalty card’.

The three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness are the very same temptations which we all succumb to today:

(1) The temptation to turn stones into bread - or horsemeat into beef: in other words to manipulate nature for our own gain; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with the earth;

(2) The temptation to gain power and authority over others in the world: to stop at nothing to improve our wealth and social status; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with others; and

(3) The temptation to jump from the temple: that is, to behave in self-destructive ways, believing that however noxious our lifestyle, we will be saved; a temptation which troubles our delicate relationship with God.

The horsemeat scandal of today brings this home: that our relationships with the earth and its creatures, with each other and with God, are deeply affected by the way we give in so readily to temptation. ...

From The temptations of Jesus and the horsemeat scandal, my talk today.

On prayer which gets involved

Prayer is a private matter? Consider ‘... the case of the 22-year-old Nottingham law student who boarded the last bus home after a night out, found herself 20p short of the £5 fare, and spent eight minutes – documented on CCTV footage – pleading with the driver to let her on or wait while she went to a cash machine. He refused, and she had to disembark alone at 3am and telephone her mother to pick her up. In the intervening period she was abducted, raped and brutally beaten by a 19-year-old man, Joseph Moran.’

Like the journalist reflecting on this event I am disturbed by the bus driver’s unyielding application of the fare-taking procedure ‘[which] outweighed his moral duty to a vulnerable young girl’. But equally disturbing to me is the behaviour of the other passengers on the bus, ‘not one of whom stepped up and offered to make up the pitiful shortfall in cash’ so that the young woman could take that late journey home in safety. Why did no one on the bus give that student 20 pence? 

Perhaps they were too drunk or sleepy to think at all, or they didn’t wish to annoy the driver by intervening, or they even felt a small, mean-minded pleasure at watching a dispute unfold and a young girl duly “punished” for a very slight error in not having the correct change. No doubt the passengers would want someone to help their own daughter, sister or mother. Yet none of them was moved to help this woman.

Why? because “Don’t get involved” has become the mantra of our age, a phrase which manages to imply that inaction is [the wisest option in all situations]. Of course, sometimes it is sensible to keep quiet... [but as this story shows] there is  a price to be paid when law-abiding people decide not to “get involved”.

 I hope you can see now why I’m uncomfortable with a message that our faith should be kept indoors, that it should not show out on the street so that others can see it. I hope you can see why I’m unhappy that we might interpret Jesus’ words to justify a quietist faith, which doesn’t display itself outdoors, doesn’t share itself with others. This news story is in one sense extreme, but in another sense an everyday tale of life today; so let us not delude ourselves by thinking that those passengers on the bus are not like us: because they are, just like us.

If we ease into another Lent where private prayer is everything, then we ought to be aware that the privacy we treasure has consequences in society, some of them as terrifying as the consequences of the bus driver and passengers’ refusal to help that girl, each of them as potentially destructive to our community.

- On prayer which gets involved (My Ash Wednesday talk)

Why am I carrying a stone?

Lent is an opportunity for you and I to ask ourselves, why am I carrying a stone? And Lent is an opportunity to turn towards Jesus, the one who can help us to release our grip on those stones, to let go of them, drop them to the ground. Jesus,  ‘the stone that the builders rejected’ who became ‘the chief cornerstone’. 

- Why am I carrying a stone? - an old Girardian sermon revisited for Lent 2013.

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 Luke 9 - On mountaintop experiences, my talk today.

 

Thanks to you we're off to Tokyo

Thanks to everyone who gave towards our Tokyo Wedding appeal. Gary and Naoko's wedding is on 25th May and because of your support Diana, Amy and I will be going. Target figure: £3,000. Total raised: £3,080. We are so grateful.

 

 

Celebrating the character of faithful old men

Today let us celebrate the character of faithful old men; let us give thanks for the nature of males in their maturity.

We all know a faithful old man; one whose life has developed into a series of small rituals, repeated unfailingly, at home, at prayer; rituals around rising, eating, reading, gardening perhaps; the ceaseless study of newspaper and prayerbook, the conversations at the gate, the walk down the lane, the weekly act of corporate worship.

We all know a faithful old man; one whose later years are given over to the concerns of others, caring for the wife whose health is failing, learning how to use email to keep in contact with his distant daughter, making conversation with village boys as they pass by; nurturing, sharing, gently giving.

Today we celebrate the character of faithful old men like these, for although they are closer than ever to death, their nature is to give life. ...

From my talk for the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Celebrating the character of faithful old men, today.