John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

We are Resurrection People

... Resurrection People get the point of Jesus. The point that because he has overcome the forces of evil in the world, because he came back to life after taking all the world could throw at him, there is no death in Christ, only life - and that is our experience, those who embrace him and follow him.

Resurrection People have a zest for life: I’m thinking of the story on the front page of this week’s Okehampton Times - with its headline, ‘A charitable leap by George’: 

A second world war veteran from Okehampton was among those to brave the drop in the Meldon Abseil last Sunday. George Heathman, 92, took on the 100ft abseil off Meldon Viaduct to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care... [1]

I spoke to George yesterday and know he’s unhappy that the newspaper got his age wrong - he’s only 91. But on the application form for the charity abseil he’d put his name down as ‘Twenty-plus’. Resurrection People are indefatigable.

Resurrection People never say die: I’m thinking of my friend Adrian, a vicar in rural North Wales, who last weekend opened the front door of his rectory to find that the snow outside was waist deep. He was due to host a wedding later that day. Afterwards he wrote, saying,

Yes! Alison and Michael got married! So we dug our way out of the Rectory (!) and Alison and Michael got married. A magnificent community effort - after a huge snowfall overnight and, in response to my email appeal, over 30 people of all ages turned up with snow shovels to remove the two foot of snow (and much bigger drifts) around the church and to start to clear the impassable road outside. The local farmers were all up to their necks, both in snow and lambs, so the local councillor's influence in providing a last minute snowplough received cheers, and the organist heroically managed to arrive by thumbing two lifts, one of which was on a fire engine! A heartening reminder of the love in human hearts and, as Alison said, 'there were people with shovels that I didn't even know!' [2] 

Resurrection People stare death in the face and create life...

From my Easter Sunday sermon (my last in the Northmoor Team churches), We are Resurrection People.

Buy Devon Sermons by John Davies online at Lulu

Buy my book at Lulu.com

A legacy of my time in Devon: I've today published Devon Sermons, a collection of my talks, sermons and poetry 2010 - 2013, 'a fertile time for my preaching', as I write in the introduction. Because of the keen interest of many listeners to what I was saying, not least the late, lovely Ron Hopkins 'who late in his life developed a keen desire to learn and understand what the Christian faith was all about' and to whom I've dedicated the book. 

In over 200 pages Devon Sermons contains 35 sermons, talks and poetry. An opportunity for a new audience to read them for the first time, and for John's Devon congregations to revisit those words which challenged, inspired, confused or annoyed therm. With useful indexes and a full introduction.

Including ‘The temptations of Jesus and the horsemeat scandal’, and ‘In our village Jesus has no place’, among others which caught people’s imaginations. Also featured: John’s reflections on the year of Jubilee and the significance of the Olympics, and his school assembly poem, ‘Jesus - a funny sort of king’.

Angela Elkins kindly permitted me to use her approving comment: ‘These sermons are even better the second time around’.

Buy Devon Sermons by John Davies (Paperback) online at Lulu.

Jesus' crowd is a flash mob

... It may not be stretching our imaginations too much to suggest that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was a carefully orchestrated one-off event - a flash mob, if you like; a deliberate provocation towards the Roman imperial power with all its military hardware designed to keep the Jewish people compliant, and the Roman imperial theology which upheld the emperor as not simply the ruler of Rome, but as the Son of God. Jesus adopted the donkey-king persona to mock the emperor’s pretensions and to playfully assert his own status as God’s Son, entering the holy city by the back door in a silly but pointed peasant procession, just as Pilate entered by the main gate. And the two processions into Jerusalem that day embodied the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’ crucifixion’. ...

- from today's Palm Sunday talk, Jesus' crowd is a flash mob.

Placed among the poor

‘The poor, you will always have with you.’ Surely one of the most misread and misrepresented verses in all the gospels. Poverty is unfortunate but it is the way things are; there will always be poor people - so why spend time trying to eradicate poverty? For generations Jesus’ words have been used as an excuse for non-involvement in social and political reformation. But surely that was not what Jesus meant. How can I be so sure? ...

- offered as background to the debate between Church leaders and government over the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill, Placed among the poor, my talk today.

The bulrushes and the benefit system - celebrating battling mothers

My Mothering Sunday talk The bulrushes and the benefit system - celebrating battling mothers owes a great deal to Bishop David Walker's comments this week: Bishop of Dudley expresses Mothering Sunday concerns, Diocese of Worcester website, 7/3/2013.

Repentance and reorientation - breaking the bonds of blame

How often have you heard it said of someone’s misfortune that they must have done something wrong to bring it on themselves? Worshippers murdered by armed soldiers whilst in the very act of worship - they must have done something wrong to have brought that on themselves; civilians caught in a falling building - there must be a reason why this happened to them. 

In this day and age we might be surprised to hear people talking about God intervening in the world, but often it is in this sort of conversation - God must have allowed this to happen to those people to punish them for something they’ve done. The question for us is, is that the sort of God we know? And are these the sort of questions he wants us to be asking of others?

These are important questions to consider because they address the way that people speak of each other today. You will recall how, when AIDS was first identified and thought to be an affliction unique to gay people there was no shortage of Christian preachers to identify it as a divine judgment on sexual perversion. Now that we know the disease afflicts people of all sexual orientations, it has become a judgment on promiscuity. Or on Africa.

‘It’s their fault, they’ve brought it on themselves’ - whether victims of state terror making themselves open to the assaults of government forces, or victims of natural disaster caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether people who some years back, bought houses on the edge of East Devon clifftops, or whether the single mother whose child is born disabled, society is always quick to judge, to look for a reason for these people’s affliction, a reason to blame people for their own troubles, a reason to assert that this situation is what is to be expected, it is the way things are, it’s God’s will, so nothing need be done about it, we can leave the victims to suffer. 

Is society’s way the Christian way?

- from my talk today, Repentance and reorientation - breaking the bonds of blame.