... I think we are just like the ancient Greeks today. We fill our towns and cities with altars to all sorts of gods, but there's still a small voice in our ears suggesting there's an unknown god around.
Today we have the god Tesco, a giant who provides all the food and drink we could ever need and whose priests are dressed in blue-and-red-coloured robes.
Today we have the god Lotto, who promises us the earth but is very reluctant to share his gifts; or the god JP Morgan promising us more the more we sacrifice to him.
Today we have the god Berry, that is Mary Berry, who titillates our taste buds with beautiful baking whilst taunting us with her impossibly slimline figure (how could we mere mortals manage to eat so many cakes and still look so trim?);
Today we have the god Titchmarsh, who makes the hard grind of gardening look attractive and easy;
And today we have the god Sky, who sits in a black box in our living room satisfying all our needs for entertainment, sport and culture.
We smile at these gods, because we know they don't truly satisfy us. And I think the ancient Greeks would have smiled at their gods in just the same way, knowing that they too were flawed. Paul said they were "like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals." ...
- from today's talk, Gods of yesterday and today, a rewrite from 2005 with Kate and William replacing Posh and Becks, JP Morgan now featuring alongside Lotto to demonstrate changing times in culture and in my congregations' income status...
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