John Davies - Notes From a Small Vicar

On loving, but losing Eurovision, and other Babels of our time

Katrina and the Waves in church today, in celebration of my Pentecost theme: On loving but losing Eurovision, and other Babels of our time...

We are One? Cultivating the strong-benign identity

... It is in our nature that often when we find ourselves united - we are united against another. If I had a penny for the amount of times people from around here have said to me, ‘Yeovil? Oh, we don’t ever go to Yeovil’, then I’d be rich enough to put a small bet at 50,000 to 1 on The Glovers winning the FA Cup next year. And please don’t think that I’m getting at you on this one - local rivalries are everywhere, defining ourselves as being not-like-them-up-the-road is part of what makes us who we are, wherever we are. ...

- from my talk today, We are One? Cultivating the strong-benign identity.

At the Sheep Gate - Saved from Sacrifice

The vulnerable ones are always the first to be sacrificed ("there is no alternative," say the architects of 'austerity') and ...

Sheep have always been used as sacrificial victims - the scriptures are full of the blood of those creatures, led through the one-way gate to their death.But Jesus said, "The gatekeeper opens the gate for the shepherd, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out" ... "Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture."

Jesus reverses the sacrificial system, and saves the condemned ones - from my talk today,  At the Sheep Gate - Saved from Sacrifice.