John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

Let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest

Weeds have their day - as Joseph did when his starving brothers turned up in Egypt, bargaining for food. Where once he had fallen victim to their rough hands, on that day he had the upper hand, and the card he played reminded them of how they had once treated him, their weedy younger brother. He asked them to bring him their youngest, Benjamin, the weakest, weediest, most vulnerable of the eleven brothers. And - remembering how they had once mistreated the weak, weedy, vulnerable Joseph - they feared that this powerful man might do the same to Benjamin. In other words, Joseph taught them a lesson. But not out of malice - out of the love which welled up inside him for the brothers he thought had lost forever. The one-time weed - emotional at the potential for  a reunion with his kinfolk - changed their behaviour and won the day for them all. 

- Sissy Fotherington-Thomas, dreamy Joseph, and the teenaged John 'bites-yer-legs' Davies feature in this mixing of weedy metaphors - Let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest - tonight's talk.

Illuminating what makes Martha mad

... Martha ... is in rivalry with her sister. The ... cause of Martha’s worry and distractedness [is] that she is entirely focused on what Mary is or isn't doing. Have you ever been there yourself - working up a sweat in the garden or the kitchen or at your desk whilst all the time not thinking at all about the work you’re doing, but obsessing about the other person in the situation, who you’re increasingly resenting because you feel they’re not helping you, they’re not there for you? Like Martha, you are in rivalry with an other, which can only end in tears of anger, frustration, and loss.

Martha’s rivalrous relationship with her sister causes her to employ the age-old tactic of trying to ‘triangle’ someone else into her relationship with her sister. In her distracted state of mind Martha asks Jesus to take her side and intervene: ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ Martha’s intention (though she probably isn’t conscious of it) is for she and Jesus to unify themselves against Mary. 

And so what has taken shape before us here is a classic example of what psychologists call a ‘drama triangle’. Not a love triangle - though love triangles might become drama triangles from time to time - a drama triangle is a model of human behaviour which involves three psychological roles which sound very familiar, roles which people often take in a situation:

• The person who plays the role of a victim;
• The person who pressures, coerces or persecutes the victim; and
• The rescuer, who intervenes, seemingly out of a desire to help the situation or the underdog.

The victim, the persecutor, and the rescuer - roles we each play out all the time, every day - think about it, you’ll recognise it. But unlike the pantomime formula of the hero, the villain, and the damsel in distress, we’re not type-cast in one role particularly, but we change roles all the time, for the drama in a ‘drama triangle’ comes when people’s roles switch. ...

- from Illuminating what makes Martha mad, my talk today

The Polish builder and the rescue team: the Good Samaritan today

... On the building site, when a rogue piece of scaffolding fell to the ground and impaled itself in Danny Collins’s left leg, his closest mates, his drinking pals, Dean and Billy disappeared from the scene - and it was one of the Polish lads, Alexy, who came to the rescue, made Danny comfortable, called for emergency medical help. Dean later apologised for his weak stomach - it was his fear of blood and gore which caused him to flee, he said, sheepishly. Billy said it was because the accident happened at the end of the working day and he had to go and pick up the kids from their after-school club. After the ambulance took Danny away Alexy just went back quietly to his group of Polish friends, who usually kept themselves to themselves on the building site because Danny, Dean, Billy and the other English lads treated them with suspicion. ...

So sadly easy to update the Good Samaritan story, ie to dream up an example of sectarian division from today's 'world of interracial suspicion'. From today's talk: The Polish builder and the rescue team: the Good Samaritan today.

 

Christ's disciples in a world of acceptance or rejection

... Luke chapter 10 offers us a unique expression of the meaning of the cross. There, in verse 18, as nowhere else in scripture, Jesus describes his crucifixion experience. In just one brief, astonishing, line he projects himself forwards in time to tell us what he sees at the moment of his death:

‘I see Satan fall from heaven like lightning,’ he said.

If you want a definitive description of the most powerful moment in history, then this is it. ‘I see Satan fall from heaven like lightning.’ In this one vivid phrase, Jesus describes what his eyes see from the cross, at that pivotal moment of his death. It is so intense an image, like a scene from a motion picture, that it is likely to become fixed forever in our own mind’s eye once we’ve visualised it for the first time. 

Jesus, crucified by brutal enemies, whilst hanging there utterly engaged in a cosmic battle between the powers, at the very moment of his death ‘sees Satan fall from heaven like lightning’, and in a flash the world is changed substantially, for ever.

But how is the world changed, substantially, for ever, by this fall? ...

- from my talk today, Christ's disciples in a world of acceptance or rejection. Readers of Rene Girard's I See Satan Fall Like Lightning will guess which way this is heading. 

The prophets - home wreckers or home builders?

A prophet is without honour ... at home. 

Prophets tend to emerge at times of political and social crisis. And those of us who are home birds, home bodies, whose homes are our castles, tend to close our ears to them, switch our screens away from them and keep focussed instead on the entertainment channels. Why do we do this?

Well, we do this because prophets speak Home Truths. They unveil those troubling things which we try to keep beneath the surface of everyday life so that we can get on with it without having to change our ways - like today’s prophets detailing our addiction to economic debt, and predicting the awful outcomes of continuing in this way.

We sidestep our prophets because they threaten Home Security. They open doors we’d rather keep closed - to other people with other ways and other points of view, who make us feel uncomfortable, vulnerable - like today’s prophets asking us to start to build a world where Christianity and Islam can co-exist as good neighbours.

We give our prophets short shrift because to do otherwise means we have to get started on some Home Maintenance. We’d rather put off fixing that leaky tap to another day. We’ll deal with global warming, tomorrow, next year, some other time...

We do not welcome prophets here because they undermine our Home Insurance. If we can keep things as they are here then we’ll keep the world at bay. But prophets will not keep quiet about the world and its ways, and insist on bringing it into our living rooms. 

Facing with open eyes a world set on a path of environmental destruction, today’s prophets cannot understand why most of us are just not bothered about the demise of the rainforests, about the world shortage of pure water; they’re amazed at our unbelief. ...

- from my talk last evening, The prophets - home wreckers or home builders?