John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

It’s not about you; it’s about the sheep....

“My job is simple:  get around the fields and feed and shepherd the different flocks of ewes – dealing with any issues that arise. First rule of shepherding: it’s not about you; it’s about the sheep and the land. Second rule:  sometimes you can’t win.  Third rule:  shut up, and go and do the work.”

- James Rebanks, from The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District, which I've just read. That's a great quote to carry through life and (especially) ministry, a perfect commentary on The Ordinal.

 

The famished craving: He has given us so much - that we want him to give us more

... At those moments when our country is in the grip of an Olympic obsession, or a Wimbledon obsession, or a James Bond or Royal Family obsession - is that a famished craving? Or our culture’s driven desire to shop for that one item which will satisfy our longing to look good in the eyes of others - and having purchased that, to immediately feel the need to shop for something else - is that a famished craving? Our need to gain the attention of others; our hunger for others to feed us, physically and emotionally, is insatiable. We have received so much - that we want to have more … and more…

To be able to post on Facebook, photos of oneself inside the Olympic Stadium; posing with the Gucci Union Jack handbag purchased at Westfield. The pleasure in such things is intense, but fleeting. In Stratford, in the world, satisfaction is unachievable. And when we realise this, we turn on those we hoped would satisfy us. He has given us so much - that we want him to give us more… Watch out, Jesus, watch out, Usain Bolt, one day the crowd will turn on you. ...

The famished craving: He has given us so much - that we want him to give us more - my talk on the feeding of the Five Thousand, Usain Bolt, our obsession with celebrity and our relentless hankering after Gucci, followed by a church picnic at West Camel today. Gil Bailie (after T.S. Eliot) first drew me to the rich insights in the phrase 'the famished craving'. See Gil Bailie's audio tape series, ‘The Famished Craving: The Attention of Others, the Fascination for the Famous, and the Need for Faith’, and T.S. Eliot's poem ‘Gerontion’: ‘And what [History] gives, gives with such supple confusions / That the giving famishes the craving....’

 

 

Flesh it out with Jesus - revised

Warning: this sermon contains rather a lot of references to flesh.

Jesus fleshed it out - his compassion for people; as he placed himself before great crowds by Galilee, received, taught and healed them. 

Paul fleshed it out - his belief in a God for all people; as he journeyed through the towns and villages of the Mediterranean preaching a gospel of inclusion to the Gentiles.

And we flesh it out - our faith; by what we do with our bodies - where we place ourselves, who we spend our time with, what we do and say to those people. 

What we do expresses who we are; it demonstrates what we really believe. Christianity is a physical religion - we embody God, we flesh out our faith, just as Jesus did. On reading scripture we perceive the character of God by what we see Jesus doing; on observing our behaviour people perceive the character of God by what they see Christians doing. 

To other people, God isn’t who we say he is - God is who we show he is. Think about it. The old Jesus People anthem ‘We are one in the Spirit, We are one in the Lord’ doesn’t say, ‘And they’ll know we are Christians by our creeds, by our creeds’. It says, ‘And they’ll know we are Christians by our love’. And love is something which we embody.

What a responsibility - bearing the beauty of God in our bodies. 

What a tiring task - carrying God’s compassion to others in our mortal frame.

What a wonderful privilege - bringing God’s embrace to others through our flesh and bones.

From today's talk, Flesh it out with Jesus.

 

Herod the haunted - revisited

... Herod was clearly haunted by John’s judgements. And after John’s beheading Herod began to hear voices. When Jesus came along speaking like the prophets of old, siding with the poor and exploited in the land, condemning the powerful who cause the poor to suffer, Herod took this as an echo of the words of John. And because the judgements of the prophets and John led to inevitable violent retribution, Herod trembled at what he heard Jesus say.

But Jesus was no ghost - he was a man in history whose words indeed challenged the domination system of his day, who championed the cause of the poor and exploited in the face of the Roman and ruling elites in the land.

But Jesus was not John either - for he didn’t fulfil the apocalyptic scenario John preached: he did not come armed with weapons and fire; he wasn’t the judgemental God wreaking  violence on those who had offended him, nor did he call on such a God. 

The surprise for Herod and for those peasant revolutionaries who aggressively opposed Herod, was that Jesus came peaceably, he came with an agenda which replaced burning flesh and spilt blood with an offer of bread and wine. He came bringing people together around meal tables, people of all backgrounds united in fellowship in ways which had never been possible before. He came proposing a new kingdom, based on love and fellowship. He renounced the violence of exploitive rulers and apocalypse-seekers and showed them all a new way. ...

My talk today, Mark 6 - Herod the haunted, reprises my treatment of Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer's dangerous proposal (in Jesus against Christianity) - that Jesus rejected apocalypticism and the concept of a vengeful God - demands that Christians reject the idea (still held, according to Nelson-Pallmeyer, by many theologians of nonviolence) that God’s ultimate act will be of retributative violence.

In our village Jesus has no place (revisited)

... Jesus has been saying, 'The first will be last, the last, first.' But if he thinks we, who have worked so hard for so long to achieve the standing and status we have in our village, will easily relinquish it to the young, the inexperienced, the incomers, then he needs to think again. If he thinks that, for the sake of the suffering ones and vulnerable ones, we will be prepared to relinquish any of our luxuries, then he has a fight on his hands.

We liked Jesus the youth, devoted to learning, devoted to prayer. For those of us who find learning and prayer difficult he seemed to be acting for us, on our behalf, living out his life that way. We appreciated and accepted him when he was our devout young carpenter.

But we don’t like Jesus the teacher, whose teachings seem to directly attack the way we are. We don’t want to be told how to live alongside others in our village; we don’t want our ways challenged. We don’t want to change our ways. We certainly don’t want to have to think about reaching out with all our heart and energy to those we dislike or don’t know. We don’t want to sit at Jesus’ feet to learn from him how we can heal old wounds and make a fresh start in relationships gone sour. 

If that’s what Jesus wants from us then we don’t want him here any more. He’s got no place in our village any more because in our village we don’t do things his way, we refuse to learn how to do things his way. His word is an offence to us. We’ll carry on the same old way without him. We’ll carry on with our family lives and working lives, our attendence at public worship, our social lives, just as we always have. And having given Jesus his marching orders, no-one need realise that we ever knew him.

The conclusion of today's talk, In our village Jesus has no place, which melded the events in Nazareth in Mark 6.1-13 with everyday life in everyday England, and was designed to chill.