John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

Emmaus Road - Surprised by Joy

I once read a true story about a Brazilian businessman Alvaro Weyne who had £10,000 in cash and cheques and decided that the safest place to hide it would be in his office waste bin, because no one would think of looking in there. He was right. While he was away from his desk the cleaner came in and emptied the bin without giving it a second glance.

Life is like that sometimes, isn't it? You think you've got something precious and all of a sudden it's gone. But here's another story, which may or may not be true, but says something else about life. 

Enrico, a Brazillian pauper, who scrapes a living by scavenging the rubbish tips of the city and using or selling what he finds, picked up a small plastic bin-liner from the top of the new pile of refuse which had just been dumped. He opened it up, and to his great surprise and joy, there inside it was £10,000! He ran home to his wife and family, bought them all new clothes, had a celebration meal and put down a deposit on a house away from the slums. 

You see, sometimes life can do things like that to you. You think you've got nothing precious at all, that life has given you little, that the good things you once had are lost, and suddenly, without any warning, you are surprised by joy. ...

From my talk at the West Camel Methodist Church Anniversary Service: Luke 24 - Emmaus Road - Surprised by Joy, this evening.

 

A win-win answer to a lose-lose question

'Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's'

What a memorable punchline. The words of Jesus are the climax of a drama, a confrontation between the disciples of the Pharisees and Jesus. As Matthew tells it, the drama is this: that the Pharisees, through their disciples, are trying to entrap Jesus. We are set-up for a win-lose sort of drama. A win-lose sort of drama which tempts us to cheer, because Jesus seems to be the winner. ...

  A win-win answer to a lose-lose question is my rewrite of Paul Neuchterlein's original sermon, today.

 

All things being equal, sang Mary

All things being equal, sang Mary, God will have his day.

When God has his day, sang Mary, he will cast down the mighty from their thrones, and lift the lowly up high.

When God has his day, sang Mary, he will fill the hungry with good things, and the rich he'll send away empty.

When God has his day, he'll comes to the help of his servants; he'll remember to keep his promise of mercy to those who have been treated mercilessly. All things being equal, sang Mary, God will have his day.

I promised the people organising Blog Action Day (#BAD2014) that I'd join in today's universal post on the theme of #inequality. And so I returned, as I so often do, to The Magnificat, that wonderful song of Mary, a young woman deeply touched by the realisation that God's economy turns things upside-down, reverses fortunes, alters statuses, rights wrongs. It's what's inspired me to campaign over the years with groups like Church Action on Poverty, who got me into this Blog Action thing today.

Of course, you don't need to look at The Magnificat for long to realise that God's not actually interested in establishing a level playing field; 'equality' in the economy of God involves a series of reversals. The equality is that all are loved equally - the poor lifted out of poverty and valued; the wealthy released from their destructive grasping self-absorbtion. I spoke about this some time back:

With our modern eyes, the eyes of the Enlightenment, we regard the Palestinian country girl Mary as a victim of the violence of a male-dominated society under the oppression of occupying forces. But with the eyes of faith, through her encounter with the Holy Spirit and the Angel of the Lord, Mary sees herself quite differently: ‘Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed’, she sings.

Mary’s song is her gift to us, all these centuries on, so that we can embrace her intelligence - and apply it to the state of our world, past and present. What God has done for her, she wants us to know, he will do for us.

No longer moved by the powerful forces of society around her, but moved instead by the Holy Spirit at work deep within her and deep within the world, Mary has freely given herself to others in body and soul and song, just as her son Jesus gave himself to others in flesh and spirit and sacrifice. May we understand the significance of the transformation that they brought to the world, God’s great act in history. May we offer our minds in understanding that great reversal, our souls in praise of that great reversal, and our bodies in the work of revealing that great reversal to the world.

Never let a man arrange a wedding

Don't Tell The Bride and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, among others, feature in my talk today, Matthew 22 - Never let a man arrange a wedding.