John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

I am Charlie Hebrew: Jesus, the world’s satirist par excellence

... Jesus challenges all fundamentalisms, all extremes. His backyard birth and foot-washing style of servant leadership, satirises both the powerful and those on the outside agitating for power. His ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God’s’ lampoons the idolatry of the economic system as the basis of human flourishing and the battles fought by opposing sides within it. His donkey-Messiah performance on Palm Sunday mocks both the prevailing kings of the day and those seeking to follow a Messiah who will rule by terror and force of arms. His death on the cross derides the motivation of rulers who manipulate the law to keep their version of the peace, and the equally aggressive ambitions of subversives who challenge authority by acting outside the law.

One problem with worldly satire is that it appeals to elitism, that it stands outside and above those whom it lampoons, treating them as a different species, not-like-us. This is the way of the world; the way which leads to crucifixions, jihads, holocausts and Reigns of Terror.

The beauty of Jesus’ satirical way - a way of life he called the Kingdom of God - is that it does not stand outside the world or apart from others but inside, alongside, but in a wholly different way. ...

- from my talk today, I am Charlie Hebrew: Jesus, the world’s satirist par excellence.

A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace by Brian Zahnd
My Goodreads rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is not about giving up Mars the chocolate bar; this is about abandoning the god of War to follow the Prince of Peace. And it is a thrilling ride.

The book was everything that I'd been led to expect by previous enthusiastic reviewers whose opinions I respect deeply. It is a tour-de-force and a great gift to everyone seeking to follow their hunch that Christianity is not a warring religion, despite centuries of warped history which suggest otherwise; in fact in Jesus it offers the distinctive way to live in a peace reliant on nothing other than love. The greatest encouragement for me (in a book in which there are encouragements on every page) was that this project of 'peace reliant on nothing other than love' - otherwise known in Jesus' terms as the Kingdom of God - is for the here and now, it is 'an alternative political vision for humanity'. I'm very grateful to Brian Zahnd for this book, it encourages me to continue to seek to follow the Jesus he celebrates so vividly here.

They came from another place - they left by a different road

Having met Herod in Jerusalem behaving the way of all kings, the pilgrims found in the child Jesus in the most unlikely of places, in a Bethlehem stable, a new form of kingliness, a new form of authority, altogether. It dawned on them that this child was not a king, this child was the king, but a king with no position - except the position of complete vulnerability, a king with no power - except the ‘soft’ power to fill them and all people with overwhelming joy. 

So they left by another road - avoiding a King Herod who was flexing his muscles in a show of hard power, and - transformed by their joyful  encounter with the new-born king - embarking on a journey forwards into the ways of soft power.

Their story resonates for us today, especially for those who might feel that the road we are on is a dead-end, a road too dependent on things which won’t last; for those who feel at a crossroads in our lives; for those who feel we’ve arrived at our Jerusalem but long to get to our Bethlehem. For those longing to learn how to exercise soft power in a world where hard power appears to hold sway.

- celebrating Ravi Singh and the volunteers from his Sikh international aid agency Khalsa Aid who helped in the Somerset Levels flood relief efforts last year, and Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani schoolgirl the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2014, for her activism for rights to education and for women ... among the magi and other outsiders ... in my talk for Epiphany, They came from another place - they left by a different road.