Notes from a Small Vicar

2 Corinthians 9.6-15, Luke 12.16-30

Harvest Festivals: 

Keasden, 27 September 2026

Eldroth, 4 October 2026

Austwick, 11 October 2026

Harvest-time invites us to be thankful for what we have. And Harvest-time asks us to let our thanksgiving overflow by living generously towards others.

At Harvest-time we can learn from Pelagius, a British monk from the fourth century who taught that deep within each person, at the heart of humanity, is the goodness of God; that we are all afflicted by the habit of doing wrong which corrupts us, but we can all overcome this habit by listening to the commandments of God and obeying them. “A person who has heard that God commands people to be generous, and then shares what he has with the poor, is truly wise,” he wrote. [1] Let us listen to  what he said about our attitude towards possessions:

If you were besotted with the things of this world, would want to surpass all others in the luxury of your house, in the magnificence of your garments and jewellery, in the abundance of food on your table, in the splendour of the carriage which took you from one place to another, you would never be satisfied with what you possessed, but would always want more. And you would constantly be comparing yourself with others, looking with envy at those even richer than you. Your wealth would be like a spiritual prison; and your limitless desires would be the chains that bound you. 

Thus in giving up all these things, you have smashed the chains and broken free. You have little; yet you are satisfied with what you have. You are poorer than most; yet you feel no envy towards the riches of others. To you a simple tunic is like a royal robe; a tiny hut is like a palace; a bowl of porridge is like a feast; a pair of sandals is like a golden carriage. [2] 

Pelagius taught that God has created all things for our enjoyment; and therefore physical pleasure is good. But it is in the pursuit of simple, small pleasures, that we find perfection. “The perfect person acquires more and more pleasure from less and less,” he wrote. “The perfect person derives the greatest pleasure from the simplest food.” [3] 

This chimes nicely with what Jesus taught his disciples, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear… for God who feeds the birds and clothes the lilies of the field, will even more clothe you. So do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, do not keep worrying.”

When our thankfulness for God’s provision exceeds our fearfulness about not having enough, then we’re able to look outside of ourselves towards others, and be those  cheerful givers who God loves. Of course, in giving we receive – joyfulness, satisfaction, fellowship with those with whom we share. This is part of God’s plan for us in creation, and it is something which we learn from our non-human neighbours in nature: 

[for we know] that when plants put roots into the soil,their roots do not simply suck water and nutrients out. They share. They build community. They put out sugars, proteins and carbohydrates—“cakes and cookies”—that gather and feed a communion of microfauna, whose activities hold and return nutrients that the plants themselves cannot make, at just the rate and amount that they require. The most important thing in good soil is not nutrition, but biology. Or, to say the same thing: the richness known to plants is not an abundance of stuff, but an abundance of relationship. [4]

An abundance of relationship: a Harvest-time theme. For our thankfulness, our satisfaction with the good gifts given to us, our joyful acceptance of the simple things, our generous giving… these are all aspects of the ‘abundance of relationship’ which connects us to others, to the earth and all of life, and to God, the generous, gracious, source of it all. 

Notes

[1] Helen Gould, Pelagius; a Celtic Christian & Quaker Forerunner. The Australian Friend, 4 August 2012.

[2] Robert Van de Weyer, The Letters of Pelagius: Celtic Soul Friend. Letter of Pelagius to Demetrias.

[3] Robert Van de Weyer, The Letters of Pelagius: Celtic Soul Friend. Letter of Pelagius to Demetrias.

[4] Marcus Peter Rempel, Life at the End of Us Versus Them: Cross Culture Stories. Kindle edition location 276-280.

Philippians 1.21-30, Matthew 20.1-16 

The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, 20 September 2026

Austwick, Eldroth

The parable of the hired labourers – now, there’s a story to unsettle people like me, trade unionists who like to see people being paid a fair wage for their day’s work; and I know that it also unsettles management-minded, business people, who just can’t see the value in getting less work out of some people for the same money as they’re paying others who’re doing more work. It doesn’t make sense to anyone, conditioned as we are to value ourselves and others in the terms set by ‘the market’, a world in which we experience ourselves being evaluated in terms of our net worth, our performance, our competitiveness. [2]

But those who have ears to hear will realise that this sort of language isn’t Jesus’s sort of language at all. Society always tries to remake God in its own image, to justify its own set of values, but Jesus’ parables open our minds to the true nature of God: they set us thinking about how God’s values might play out in our everyday world.

Advocating for a fair wage, or for getting the best value for money from your workers… all that really misses the point.

In this parable, surely Jesus isn’t saying that it is acceptable to insist on the letter of the contract rather than acting in its spirit. Rather, isn’t Jesus using this parable to describe the radical graciousness of God, the outrageousness of the divine love, a love that surpasses human understanding at every level? [3]

Jesus is asking us to consider the possibly disturbing truth that unlike us, God is not driven by the law of exchange, but rather by the generosity of grace. God doesn’t see our relationships as being mere transactions; God is not even too attached to our ideas about equality or fairness. With God it’s not about rewarding the deserving and sanctioning the undeserving. With God it’s about freely and justly giving to all.

‘Are you envious because I am generous?’ The vineyard owner’s question is God’s question to me, because it forces me to ask myself: does other people’s good fortune make me unhappy, do I resent it when those who I don’t think deserve it get rewarded, where those I think are unworthy are blessed and graced by God? Rather than only really wanting some people to relatively gain – that is, me and people like me – this story challenges me to ask, how wonderful would I find it if I chose to live by God’s standards, where everybody is equally highly valued and loved? [4]

When Jesus taught ‘the last will be first, and the first will be last’, it’s easy to mistake this for a revolution in society in which the workers rise against the ruling class and replace them – only to reproduce their oppressive activites. But what if he’s describing a revolution of the heart in which all people share good life together?

I’ve spoken often before about Jesus’ acts of generosity towards the most despised, rejected people: lepers, beggars, tax cheats, prostitutes, and of how his generosity came at the financial expense of the better-off people, those he persuaded to open up their homes to offer meals for the all-and-sundry guests who he invited. This was to their financial expense, because it cost them money – but it was also to their social, spiritual gain. 

For these meals were astonishing occasions when the respectable and the frowned-upon broke bread together, when the beggars poured wine for the magistrates and the conversations between them flowed, and everyone benefitted from the experience. You can imagine how each of them found their worldview expanding richly as they opened up to the stories they heard and shared together, as they embraced each other’s lives. No longer thinking of each other in categories of rank and status, now they appreciated each other for the fully whole, rounded, humans they each were.

A few years back Pope John Paul II wrote that 

Today perhaps more than in the past, people are realising that they are linked together by a common destiny, which is to be constructed together, if catastrophe for all is to be avoided. From the depth of anguish, fear and [escapism], the idea is slowly emerging that the good to which we are all called and the happiness to which we aspire cannot be obtained without an effort and commitment on the part of all, nobody excluded, and the consequent renouncing of personal selfishness. [5]

The word for this is solidarity, the Pope asserted, which is ‘not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes’ of others, but ‘on the contrary… a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good’. 

It is heartening to hear echoes of that Catholic social teaching from our present Prime Minister, teaching which has influenced him since childhood, when he talks about getting ‘care for people … at the heart of politics.’ [6] We should pray that he can hold onto these foundational values as the political winds threaten to blow strongly in many other directions. 

Are you envious because God is generous? Or are you inspired by the thought that there is room at his table for us all?

John Davies

Notes

[1] Drawing from my previous talks Good news? The least deserving get the best reward, Eldroth and online, 2020, and Don’t be a moaner – heed the Sign of Jonah, Somerset, 2017.

[2] “Neoliberalism remakes human beings as market subjects.” Wendy Brown critique of neoliberalism, Pol Science, accessed 16 September 2026. See also Neoliberal subjectivity, Pol Sci Facebook post, 12 September 2026.

[3] Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Outrageous Grace, preached on 18 September, 2005 (unable to access, 16 September 2026). Originally sourced from Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary Reflections Year A, Proper 20A.

[4] Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Outrageous Grace, as above.

[5] Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Vatican, 30 December 1987.

[6] Paul Vallely, Burnham’s Manchesterism echoes papal encyclicals. Church Times, 3 July 2026; Liam Geraghty, Andy Burnham exclusive on rough sleeping plan: ‘It’s not just a one-off thing for Christmas’. Big Issue, 14 September 2026.

Romans 14.1–12, Matthew 18.21-35

The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, 13th September 2026,

Austwick, Keasden

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, as it’s often called, is a fitting title, for the man in question treated his debtors heartlessly, in comparison to the merciful way that his master had first treated him.

But, given that, I sometimes say that we could also call it the Parable of the King whose Forgiveness had its Limits. 

Let’s replay the tale Jesus told. The king first pitied the man who owed him, and released him from his debt. But when he later found out that that same slave had been pitiless in extracting repayments from his own debtors, the king’s mercy ran out, and ‘in anger he handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt’. Forgiving once – the king could do that. But forgiving twice – that was beyond him. [2]

And so this is a salutary tale about not one, but two, men, who found themselves unable to take on board Jesus’ teaching about how often we should forgive: ‘Not seven times,’ he told Peter, ‘but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,’ in other words, countless times. Forgive without limit, Jesus teaches, forgive every time, whether that’s practically, as in this story, forgiving monetary debts, or whether it’s forgiving those who have hurt you emotionally, maybe, spiritually. Whatever the circumstances, make it your practice to always be ready to set free those who are in debt to you. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but I can sympathise with the king in this story. I can  imagine that if I was in his position I might feel the same sense of injustice that the king felt about his forgiven servant’s misdemeanours. I’m sure it would play on my mind if someone who couldn’t repay me and I’d let them off, then came back and did the same thing again: wouldn’t it make me feel like a pushover, being willing to forgive this debtor over and over again? Or is that just a cross I’d have to bear?

May God give us strength to forgive those who trespass against us; God grant us wisdom to learn how to forgive over and over again and to know ourselves uplifted, not diminished, in so doing. 

May God help us through hearing the testimonies of those who have survived being terribly wronged, by showing grace towards those who have wronged them. 

Forgiveness is important in our relationships with others because, as Paul taught the Christians in Rome (in our reading today), ‘We do not live to ourselves’. 

‘We do not live to ourselves,’ he said, in a passage which describes the way we judge each other, and shouldn’t. It’s all about food and the way the believers were acting around food, and it contains the memorable line, ‘The weak eat only vegetables’. 

Now, as The Christian Vegetarian Association are quick to point out, this is not about denigrating vegetarians, but it is to do with the circumstances of the time in which Paul was writing. In Rome, the authorities were outlawing Jewish practices, including eating kosher meat, and kosher butchers were being arrested. So, unable to obtain kosher meat, many Jews and Jewish Christians abstained from meat altogether, rather than risk eating meat that had been offered to a pagan god. 

Of course, some Gentile Christians, who had converted from the Roman religion, carried on being the meat-eaters they’d always been. And there was judgement being passed on all sides. Those who believed in eating anything accused those who ate only vegetables of being ‘weak in faith’. Those who abstained from meat accused the meat-eaters of being heretical. Hurtful words were hurled – these self-inflicted bruises to the body of the community spread and spread. Paul, concerned about differences on diet dividing the church, was not justifying meat-eating per se, but teaching that no-one should condemn those who had different beliefs and practices in this or any other part of life. [3]

‘We do not live to ourselves’, Paul said. We live to others. We live in community with others, and for that community to thrive we need to find ways to live healthily together. Forgiveness plays its part in that; the more we generate a forgiving spirit in our relationships the less room there is for a spirit of accusation and judgmentalism.  

‘We do not live to ourselves’, Paul said. We live to the Lord. We are constantly in God’s hand, and God’s heart and mind, and the less we pass judgement on our brothers and sisters, then the better becomes our relationship with God; the better our relationship with God, then the more we are able to live well with others. 

God help us to truly know in our hearts that he forgives us not seven times, but seventy times seven, for all our jealousy and bickering, our accusation and judgmentalism.

Each time our hearts accept that God forgives us freely and always, then we are more ready than before to put all such harmful things aside, and to enjoy playing our part in letting God and community thrive.

Notes

[1] This talk draws on previous sermons, Reprieved debtor, ruthless creditor: a tale of forgiveness in finance, Keasden, 2020, The Parable of the King Who Failed to Keep Forgiving, or ‘What if the Messiah Came and Nothing Changed?’, Somerset, 2014, and Even now in Palestine, imagine a debt-free world, Somerset, 2017. 

[2] William R. Herzog II, ‘What if the Messiah Came and Nothing Changed? The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant’, Chapter 8 in Parables As Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed, pp.131-149. 

[3] Christian Vegetarian Association, Honoring God’s Creation – Replies
From Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA). Accessed 8 September 2026.

Colossians 1:15-20

The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, 6 September 2026, Eldroth, Clapham

“I lift up their eyes to the hills, from where is my help to come?” asks the Psalmist. 

Many people look for salvation in nature, but don’t know where it will come from. Every day people visit here seeking something special, something restoring and  healing, maybe something spiritual, in these hills. But what?

People have always been on this search for God in creation. The ancient people often thought of a Creator God as a sky god – bringing forth rain in season; they regarded him as a nature god – punishing wrongdoing through famine or flood; the ancients saw him as just like a god of any other emperor cult – destroying enemies to claim territory for his chosen people. There are echoes of all this n our own scriptures.

But with wonderful insight, our scriptures perceive a personal God – Psalm 121 speaks of one who like a loving parent watches over us whilst we sleep; One who like a caring companion on an uphill trail makes sure that our feet do not stumble; One who even shades us from scorching sun and the dangers of a shadowy moon. Ever-present, ever-giving, this Creator God has something more. 

And then, Jesus comes along. And Paul teaches us in Colossians that the Creator of this very earth, these very hills, is also and at the same time the Saviour.

Could he be the One God who not only sets Creation in motion and sustains it, but who also intervenes in human history to save it? If he is a personal God then is it possible for us to see him?

The city of Colossae around 60 years after the birth of Jesus had been twice shaken by cataclysmic  earthquakes which destroyed the place. It had become a place of spiritual turmoil whose people were seeking certainty and Salvation. One of the earliest Christian communities was established there. 

To try to help these Colossian believers, Paul wrote one of the very first Christian creeds. We heard it this morning. It begins by saying, ’Christ is the visible image of the invisible God’. This is a remarkable statement: if you look at Jesus you see what God is like. This Creator God who had been hidden for so long is visible in the very human shape and form of Jesus. Jesus is God in the flesh.

Jesus is the saviour, through his absolutely self-giving act on the cross and his glorious life-giving resurrection. And he is also entirely the Creator – ‘who existed before anything was created and is supreme over all Creation, through whom God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth.’ The Creator is the Saviour, says the earliest Christian creed. 

There is no division between Creation and Salvation. This means that as well as seeking heavenly, ‘spiritual’ things we also find God acting at the heart of the life we live now, the human and the non-human parts of Creation. This good news inspires those who are seeking Salvation in this world – those who care about life on earth becoming better, now; and it is inspirational for those who are seeking Salvation for this world – those who care about the earth and its well-being.

This passage of scripture helps us understand that Jesus brings Creation and Salvation together. His life-affirming act of creating everything from nothing, is exactly the same thing as his self-giving out of love on the cross through which death itself dies. The Creator is the Saviour of the human and the non-human world, which is one world, entirely made and saved in the absolute love of God.

The Salvation which Jesus worked was, at the same time, the fulfilment of his Creation. On the cross human sinfulness died, as did everything else that is broken in nature. On the cross Salvation was bought, marking a new beginning for God’s whole Creation. [2]

We can celebrate because by the life of Jesus, God’s fullest life; and by the cross, God’s gift of self-giving unconditional love; and by Jesus’ resurrection, God’s release of healing, forgiving, renewing power into the world: all that is broken in Creation may begin again – human and non-human alike.

We can give thanks that as a result of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Creation is in the process of leaving death behind. As a result of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, all Creation is in the process of being reconciled.

Is this the good news for those who are seeking Salvation in nature but didn’t know where to look?

• the good news that there is a Creator behind all this beauty and wonder, who existed before anything else, and who holds all Creation together;
• the good news that this same Creator can be known because he has shown himself, he has walked the earth, lived, laughed, loved, taught, blessed, healed.

Yes – the good news is that this Creator-Saviour has wept over the world’s brokenness, has calmed nature’s storms, has restored afflicted people to good health, has cast out evil spirits and brought blessing to the poor.

Yes – the good news is that this same Creator-Saviour, by exposing and confronting the sin of the world, paid the price with his life but now lives again, having overcame death once for all.

All this is very good news for all who are seeking after God’s life and truth in this world.

The final piece of good news is that the creative work of Salvation – of reconciling Creation – is a work in which we believers share in every day.

The Colossian creed says that ‘Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body.’ Which means that just as Jesus himself once embodied God on earth, showing the world the image of the previously invisible God, so now, with the help of his Holy Spirit, The Church now embodies God on earth. It is our joyful task to share in his work of Salvation – of reconciling Creation – in the way we live our lives each and every day. 

Let us pray constantly for all who ‘lift up their eyes to the hills’, all those who are looking for God in this world. And let us continue to encourage each other in the joyful task of opening our eyes to The Creator, who is also and in the very same way The Saviour. 

Notes

[1] A précis of a longer sermon, The Creator is the Saviour, preached at Ayashi Chuo Christ Church, Miyagi, Japan, 31 July 2022

[2] This section is based on James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, pp.49-50. Read extract of the passage here. See also Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary, PROPER 11 (July 17-23) – YEAR C / Ordinary Time 16, Resources on Colossians 1:15-28, and my previous sermons Reconciling Creation (Somerset, 2015) and Rebirth and reconciliation: Creation starts with Christ (Yorkshire, 2021)

Romans 12.9–21, Matthew 16.21–28

The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, 30 August 2026 

Keasden (Benefice service)

Jesus said, “Those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Now, it may not sound too appealing to you, the idea of losing your life – for his sake or anyone else’s. This is the sort of bible passage often deployed by the puritanical strand of Christianity, which assumes that anything we enjoy must be bad for us, teaching that any such self-indulgence must be remedied by a large dose of self-denial. [1]

Now, I’ll defend puritanism insofar as it is important to be careful to live in harmony with God, with others and ourselves. But I wonder if, when Jesus spoke about losing our life for his sake, rather than preaching ‘against pleasure’, he was using the word ‘losing’ in a more positive way. There are positive ways of talking about ‘losing’ and ‘loss’. For instance, have you ever found yourself completely lost in a book? Have you ever been lost in wonder at a building’s incredible architecture? Have you ever gazed at a mountain, lost in thought, or been in a concert audience swaying on their feet, completely lost in the music?

To be be lost in something, the Cambridge English Dictionary tells us, is to be “giving so much attention to what you are doing that you are not conscious of anything else that is happening around you.” [2] These examples of being lost – in a book, in wonder, in thought, and in music – suggest that generally, being lost in something is a positive, fulfilling experience.

When Jesus says, “Those who lose their life for my sake will find it,” does he mean  that giving all our attention to him is the way we will find fulfilment in life? 

I think this is how St Paul picked it up in his letter to the believers in Rome, when he said, at the start of Romans Chapter 12, which we heard last week, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Paul is saying that giving ourselves to God completely is the way we will find fulfilment in life. 

‘Losing ourselves’ in God is a desire of the heart. Giving all of ourselves to him needs  a decision of the head. Paul encourages the believers, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” 

If our heart’s desire is to be lost in God, then we must make some conscious decisions about how we go about that. This is the concern of the second part of Romans Chapter 12, today’s reading. Here, Paul details how a life-lost-in-God is minded to “Let love be genuine; to hate what is evil, to hold fast to what is good.” These matters of the heart show themselves in the way we live towards others. 

“Love one another with mutual affection,” Paul tells those who want to lose their lives in God. We are to enter into a form of competition with each other completely devoid of rivalry: “Outdo one another in showing honour,” he writes. Imagine what that might look like!

When our desire is to serve the Lord wholeheartedly then we learn how to “Rejoice in hope, to be patient in suffering, to persevere in prayer.” One whose life is lost in God will “Contribute to the needs of the saints and extend hospitality to strangers.”

The person lost-in-God gives so much attention to doing this that they  lose consciousness of other ways of behaving. So, rather than being drawn into rivalry with those who persecute us, we bless and do not curse them. We set aside our self-concern to show empathy with others, rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep. We lose ourselves in a spirit of harmony, associating with the lowly and living peaceably with all. 

A life lost in God is a life without vengeance and wrath, refusing to be overcome by evil, determining to overcome evil with good. I’d like you to please note that the phrase “the wrath of God” is a mistranslation. The bible scholars have added something in English which does not exist in the original Greek. There is no wrath in God: “do not be conformed to this world” by thinking that there is, or wanting there to be, for the wrath is in the human heart. “Leave no room for wrath” is what Paul actually wrote.[3]

When you think about it, we are forever being transformed by the renewing of our minds. Consider how differently you think about things now to when you were a child; consider those things which have made you change your mind through the years. The way we think and act is forever being transformed by technology as it impacts on us, and by other changes to our material lives. Today society is waking up to the realisation that our children’s children’s wellbeing, even survival, depends on how we turn our minds to the obvious challenges of adapting to Earth’s rapidly-warming climate. As Dolly Parton once said, “We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.” [4]

For times like this, Paul writes, “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” To “lose our life for the sake of Christ” is a decision we make in our heart and with our head, which leads to a transformation by which we will find our life.

Notes

[1] Wikipedia: Puritans.

[2] Cambridge Dictionary: be lost in something.

[3] Paul Nuechterlein, “Romans 12:9-21: Exegetical Notes #4” in Girardian Lectionary, Reflections: Year A: Proper 17a, quoting Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross, pp. 150-156, on “Love, Law, and Vengeance” (excerpt).

[4] Widely quoted, see quoteinvestigator.com; Dolly Parton died on 25 August 2026.

Introduction: Creation groaning

The Seventh Sunday after Trinity, 19 July 2026

Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now,” writes St Paul. 

Creation groaning – when we hear that phrase, we might think of our poor world, its plants and its creatures and their struggles to survive the excesses of human behaviour which – we must now surely humbly accept – are proving increasingly damaging to the rest of the natural world.

Creation groaning – under the heat of our increasingly warming planet. Creation groaning: as the seas rise and as species are lost to pollution, over-hunting and over-fishing we can almost hear the sound of nature crying in its despair and decline.

I won’t go on, we know the situation and it saddens us. 

But St Paul didn’t stop at creation groaning. He said that “the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now.”

Now, this, his full statement, takes us somewhere quite different altogether. It takes us from lamenting what is being lost in creation, into a place of hope.  For the groaning of labour pains is a groaning which leads to new life. The groaning of labour pains anticipate new birth, new worlds being born. Paul is giving we, his readers, hope that despite the extreme painfulness the beloved earth is currently experiencing, a new world will come. 

“The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God,” Paul writes. This new beginning for creation is shared with humankind, suffering, broken, humankind. As he puts it:  “and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

The much-loved naturalist David Attenborough has said about humans that “We moved from being a part of nature to being apart from nature.” 

“The truth is,” he said, “the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.”

Saving the planet, taught Attenborough, means saving ourselves. “Laid upon us, whether we like it or not, is an awesome responsibility,” he said. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.” [1]

Maybe the best place to start to take that responsibility to heart is to affirm and celebrate our love for God’s world in all its beautiful complexity. And if we want to celebrate our love for God’s world then a very good place for us to start is in song. 

There are many beautiful songs which celebrate creation, from traditional hymns like All Creatures of Our God and King – a joyous prayer of St. Francis of Assisi rewritten in Victorian times – to How Great Thou Art, popularised during Billy Graham’s crusades of the last half of the twentieth century.

But perhaps the most popular, most enduring, also the simplest, purest, celebration of God’s world, is All Things Bright and Beautiful, an Anglican hymn, also sung in many other Christian denominations, written by Cecil Frances Alexander and first published in her Hymns for Little Children of 1848. [2]

‘Fanny’ Alexander, as she was known, may have been inspired by Psalm 104, verses 24 and 25: “Oh Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts”. 

She may also have been inspired as well by a verse from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which goes: “He prayeth best, who loveth best; All things great and small; For the dear God who loveth us; He made and loveth all.”

Or maybe inspiration may have come from William Paley’s Natural Theology, published in 1802, that argues for God as the designer of the natural world. The hymn speaks of “tiny wings” and “eyes to see them”, and Paley cited wings and eyes as examples of a complex design, like a watch, with God as the Divine Watchmaker.

Fanny Alexander was the daughter of a a land-agent on an Irish estate, and began writing poems and songs as a child. By the time she married the Anglican clergyman William Alexander, afterwards Bishop of Derry and Archbishop of Armagh, in 1850, she was a successfully published, and well-travelled, writer. [3]

Inspiration for Alexander’s hymn text “The purple-headed mountain, The river running by” has been attributed to four separate locations in Wales, Ireland and England. Alexander visited Llanwenarth House in Govilon, Monmouthshire in 1848, and it is claimed that the hymn refers to the nearby Sugar Loaf Mountain or the Blorenge mountains, and to the River Usk. Other places where Alexander is known to have visited have also been suggested as inspirations: the gardens of Markree Castle near Sligo, the village of Dunster in Somerset, and the landscape of Grabbist Hill and the River Avill.

It may have been that “the purple headed mountain” is in Benevenagh, County Londonderry, a place she often visited, and “the river running by” is the River Roe which flows there. We will never know for sure, but what we do know is that whenever we sing this song – first learned at school – the words invoke in us pictures of the places and things in nature which mean the most to us. 

For the next few Sundays this summer I’m going to invite you to reflect with me on different lines from All Things Bright and Beautiful, so that we can celebrate God’s world together. Next week I’ll talk about “Each little flower that opens”; in subsequent weeks we’ll think about “Each little bird that sings”, “The ripe fruits in the garden”, “The tall trees in the greenwood”, and finally “The sunset and the morning”. I hope you’ll find these little reflections helpfully refreshing reminders of all the beauty the surrounds us, and inspiration to keep on caring for it all as best we can. [4]

God saw all that he had made: And it was very good.

On the sixth day God completed all his work,

Heaven and earth with all their mighty throng,

And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy

Because on the seventh day he rested from all his work.

Notes

[1] David Attenborough quotes from goodreads.com.

[2] Wikipedia:  All Things Bright and Beautiful.

[3] Wikipedia: Cecil Frances Alexander.

[4] These talks are based on ‘A Celebration of God’s World in Summer’ in The Staffordshire Seven, Seasonal Worship from the Countryside,  pp.105-114.

Romans 8.1-11, Matthew 13.1-9,18-23

The Sixth Sunday after Trinity, 12 July 2026, Austwick, Keasden

How would you describe what a parable is? I’d say that Jesus’ parables were “earthly stories with a heavenly twist”.  He drew his stories from real life, but often gave them a twist in the tale, to awaken his audience to some fresh perspective from God which he wants us to discover.

So let’s look at this morning’s Parable of the Sower. It seems straightforward, but there are at least two twists in this tale that would have struck Jesus’ audience. The first is that this sower apparently does nothing to prepare his field before sowing the seed. He doesn’t clear any rocks out; he pulls no weeds; he doesn’t turn the soil over. No, this free-spirited sower simply goes out into a field with a lot of rocks and weeds and trampled down, hard ground, and flings the seed anywhere and everywhere.

The second aspect of this story that would have given Jesus’ audience a jolt is the ending: the good soil that produces thirty, sixty, and a hundred-fold. This is an unheard-of harvest!Today, with our heavy, mechanised agriculture we would expect that sort of outcome. But in Jesus’ day, thirty, sixty, and a hundred-fold would be an outrageous expectation for a harvest. 

So what is going on? What heavenly perspective is Jesus presenting to us here? Let’s compare the Parable of the Sower with another well-known story, The Parable of the Prodigal Son, which also has a heavenly twist.

What’s really surprising in the story of the Prodigal Son is not so much that a young son would make mistakes, prodigally wasting his father’s money. No, that’s quite common, isn’t it? What’s surprising is how easily the father welcomes him home afterwards. From the standpoint of the elder son, who had remained faithful to his father, his father was the prodigal one, wasting such love on a good-for-nothing son. 

Now, that invites us to see today’s parable as being the story of a Prodigal Sower, a farmer who seemingly wastes most of his seed on soil that isn’t going to produce much, if anything. This sower throws out lots and lots of seed, and he doesn’t seem to care where he throws it.

But Jesus isn¹t trying to teach us about farming, but about God’s kingdom, and that¹s why there’s this heavenly twist in the tale. The Prodigal Sower is meant to surprise us into seeing that God’s kingdom is wonderfully different than what we might expect it to be. It first helps us unlearn something about God’s kingdom before we learn something new and wonderful. 

We might believe that the most precious commodity in God’s kingdom is God’s loving forgiveness. And if we do, then Jesus is teaching us that there is an unlimited supply of it, enough for everyone. God can afford to ‘sow’ it absolutely everywhere, because there is never any danger of God running out of it. 

So we need to unlearn the idea that there might be a limited supply of God’s love and mercy, that there will come a day when God’s mercy will run out, and God’s wrath will do all the evil-doers in. We need to unlearn this stuff about God’s wrath, which sounds less like a loving Father God and rather more like us and our limited amounts of mercy. We need to learn that the supply of God’s mercy does not give out, he just keeps on sowing and sowing that seed until it will one day yield a fantastic harvest. 

There is something else very important to unlearn – that is, our habit of always trying to decide who’s in and who’s out. This parable seems to divide up people into groups of who’s in and who’s out. There are three kinds of soil, representing three kinds of people, who resist and reject God’s word as bearing fruit in them. They all reject the word. We are tempted to assume we know who the bad ones are, and to assume that we are the good soil – but is that the message, really? 

Let’s look again at the climax of the Gospel story: Jesus hanging by himself on the cross, utterly and totally rejected. The cross is the ultimate in heavenly twists. Not even his disciples have joined him in this terrible fate, those closest to him who might have thought they were the good soil in his parable. They have all run away afraid at the first sign of persecution – in other words, even they have turned out to be like rocky soil, those who fall away when persecution arises. 

Jesus is God’s Word made flesh given to this world. And when all was said and done, no one had eyes or ears or minds to understand. That Word was completely rejected. But on Easter morning it bore fruit anyway. God raised that seed of Jesus’ death to bear the fruit of new life precisely in the teeth of such total rejection. 

God has to be so prodigal with that word of loving forgiveness, that seed God planted in this world through Jesus Christ, because all of our hearts are so stubborn to truly receive it. If God wasn’t so prodigal in sowing the seed, it never would have stood a chance, because this whole world had become tramped down and rocky and overgrown with weeds. There was no good soil left. 

If you or I were given a field that was completely grown over and rocky, what would we do? Abandon it perhaps. Or get a big, powerful plough of some sort and at least try to plough it all under, in order to find some good soil. But notice that is not what God did in Jesus Christ. God did not plough us all under and start over. That happened in the story of Noah and the flood, with its rainbow which tells us that God tried that way once and promised never to do it again. 

No, instead God kept on sowing the seed of his loving forgiveness anyway, and it bore fruit not just in spite of the rejection of the bad soil but through it. It was precisely by Jesus himself becoming the Rejected One on the cross that God somehow bore the fruit of new life. This is where the parable leads us, and the mystery of God’s grace comes forth. God sowed his mercy in the cross and the incredible harvest was the resurrection. 

There is one further twist to this parable. If I am to unlearn the usual human story filled with divisions and strife, then I need to unlearn looking at myself as good soil and others as bad soil. 

No, I must remember that I am the whole field and have all those sorts of soil in me. In my life there is sometimes hard soil and rocky soil and weeds which rejects or fails God, and sometimes there is good soil that bears the fruit of sharing God’s limitless love with others. 

God never stops sowing his grace into my life. I must constantly pray, then, that by his grace, my heart and life may be good soil today, good soil which will bear good fruit. 

Thank God for being such a generous sower; Lord, let my heart be good soil today. 

 John Davies

Note

This sermon is substantially based on a sermon of Paul Nuechterlein, The Prodigal Sower, Girardian Lectionary, Reflections,  Year A, Proper 10A Sermon (2002); and this version is a rewrite of Matthew 13 – The Prodigal Sower preached in Somerset in 2014 and Norris Green in 2005.

Genesis 24.34-38,42-49, 58-67, Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30 

The Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 5 July 2023, Eldroth, Clapham 

‘Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’ 

Such gracious words tell us that ours is not a God who makes hard demands on people – contrary to what we may have been told. Ours is a God who wants to free us from our burdens. 

Neither is our God one who controls us by keeping us busy – though the Church can tend to do that. Our God wants to give us rest. 

Nor is ours a God who imposes on us – no, our God is gentle and humble in heart. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. 

So if we are carrying heavy burdens, we must understand that those burdens are coming from somewhere else. God invites us to turn ourselves away from those places, and come to him to find rest. 

The burdens we carry, they’re often to do with our relationships with others. It doesn’t take very long in the Bible before the perfect couple sail into troubled waters and Adam is blaming Eve for taking the apple – ‘she told me to do it’, he tells God, and god is unimpressed. 

Then there’s Psalm 45, a song for a royal wedding, where the Psalmist sings to the princess, ‘Forget your own people and your father’s house. The king … is your master; therefore do him honour.’ [2] Imagine what pressure that put on this bride: the burden of her being pulled in two opposing  directions at once: one way towards her beloved family, and the other way towards her beloved husband. Maybe you’ve sometimes felt torn like that.

We are always listening to what others say about us: how we respond to them is what shapes and forms us into the people we are. And when others’ expectations of us tear us in different directions or are impossible to fulfil, that’s a heavy load to carry. And, if we’re honest, then we must admit that sometimes we are the ones who burden others with our expectations of them. 

I don’t think people have changed that much since New Testament times. Jesus said that his generation were never satisfied. They berated the ascetic John the Baptist for neither eating nor drinking, but when they saw how Jesus enjoyed eating and drinking, they called him a glutton and a drunkard. 

Each of us feel the pressure imposed on us by outside forces: whether that’s what our friends and neighbours are doing and saying, or how the Sunday supplements or social media are telling us how we should live. It can be depressing, feeling that you don’t measure up.

Maybe the greatest burdens we carry are those we impose on ourselves. Whether it’s the young worrying about their image, their body shape, their looks, or the old worrying about their legacy, dealing with unfinished business, regrets. 

Jesus invites us to turn our backs on these pressures, to cease comparing what others have achieved or what they want us to do and be, and to gently attend to our own, unique, life story. 

Jesus invites us to trust God, to carry our anxieties to him in prayer. Our knees may buckle under the weight of these prayers; he promises that as we bend the knee before him he will take the load away. 

Some things which burden us are outside our control and may not be easily fixed: so the pressures they impose are intense. Prayer can help us to cope with the pressure and to change these circumstances; in prayer God can reveal to us a way to deal with the challenges which life throws at us. 

And praying with others can inspire and guide us to work together to change our material circumstances, and those of others who are in need or distress. [3] 

Let us take a few moments now, to unburden ourselves before God….

Jesus says, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, 

and I will give you rest.’

Come to me. Take a step back to forget for a few moments what others think of you; and to remember what God thinks of you. 

‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.’

Know yourself to be loved by him, so that love will fill your heart so much that that it flows out in blessing into all your other relationships too. 

We thank you, Lord, that your yoke is easy, and your burden is light. We thank you that you always long to lift us up when we are down. Help us to always come to you with our burdens, to always trust in your care. Amen

Notes 

[1] A rewrite of Unburdening: life in the divine presence, preached at Austwick and Keasden, 2023, and Come to me all you weary and burdened, preached in Devon, 2011.

[2] Psalm 45. 

[3] See e.g., Deirdre Brower Latz with Carmel Murphy Elliott and Sarah Purcell, Church on the Margins. Church Action on Poverty, Referenced February 2023. 

Romans 6.12–23, Matthew 10.40–42

The Fourth Sunday after Trinity, 28 June 2026, Austwick, Clapham

When the slaves were released, they came out singing.

In 1873 a group of freed slaves from North America came to the UK to sing. Newspaper adverts announced that The Jubilee Singers from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee would be giving a rendering of their “Marvellous and heart-stirring melodies” in concert halls, cathedrals and churches across Britain, including an appearance before Queen Victoria herself. [1]

They sang Spirituals, songs that convey both the hardships of slavery and the freedom the singers find in Christ. Having been emancipated in 1865 these Singers were on a mission to raise funds for Fisk, America’s first black university, proclaiming the right of all African Americans to education.

Touring the world the Fisk Singers introduced audiences to their “songs of sorrow” like Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Steal Away to Jesus, and Nobody Knows the Trouble I See, which went on to become anthems of freedom and equality across the world. It was reported that Queen Victoria and the Prime Minister Gladstone ‘treated the Singers like equals’ – a very telling turn of phrase.

For Victoria they performed “Go Down, Moses”, a song drawing on the ancient Hebrew scriptures which reminded the singers and their audience that just as slavery has a long history, so does liberation, as enacted by Moses, who was tasked by God to set the enslaved people free:

When Israel was in Egypt’s land – let my people go

Oppress’d so hard they could not stand – let my people go

Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land

Tell old Pharaoh, let my people go [2]

Musician Harvey Brough, who recently brought the story of The Jubilee Singers to the London stage, said of those who sang the Spirituals, “They had the most shocking terrible inhumane treatment for all their lives as slaves, but there is not a word of anger or revenge in the songs. It’s about: ‘We are going to get to a better place and it will be different’.” [3]

This echoes the words of African American theologian James Cone that “Through all of the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope — a faith in the ultimate justice of things.” Even when being treated most fearfully, through their songs the enslaved were able to say, “I’m no longer a slave to fear. I am a child of God”. [4]

A century after The Jubilee Singers visited England, another musician rose to prominence. Bob Marley, the son of Norman Marley, an English colonial army captain, and a Jamaican woman, Cedella Booker, a descendant of the Coromantee slaves who had staged the strongest uprising for freedom in Jamaica’s plantation era. In ‘Redemption Song’, Bob Marley sang: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds.” [5]

Mental slavery, Marley suggests, is the real slavery, the fundamental slavery from which one must free oneself. This emancipation is something towards which the enslaved peoples of the Americas were constantly reaching, as they sang their sorrowful, spiritual, songs. 

And this leads us into another discussion of slavery – that of St Paul in his epistle to the Romans. He wrote about the slavery of sin, which seems to have a lot in common with the mental slavery Bob Marley sang about. “Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions,” Paul wrote. 

What were the passions of the colonisers who developed and drove the transatlantic slave trade? The passion to explore the world and discover lands new to them, to derive as much wealth as possible for themselves from these places by fully exploiting the natural and human resources, as they saw them, which they found there.

And what was the sin which exercised dominion in their colonial hearts and minds? The sin of white supremacy, the belief that white people are superior to those of other races. One slave owner, future American president Thomas Jefferson, wrote in 1785 that blacks were “inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind.” Lawmakers created codes which socially segregated white colonists from black enslaved people, creating divisions which would hinder their ability to unite. [6] The enslavers who were themselves enslaved – to the sin of segregation – formed the modern world, its inequalities of social structures and of spirit their legacy which we carry with us.

Paul asks his readers, “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” 

Those who seek to live a spiritual life understand the need to search ourselves, to ask the question – to whom are we enslaved? Living a spiritual life often requires a change of heart, a conversion. [7]

And Paul is writing to those who, in seeking to live a spiritual life have experienced a change of heart, a conversion. “But thanks be to God,” he says, “that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

Slaves of righteousness – this is a different form of enslavement altogether. It is a willing giving-over of oneself to the God of righteousness. Those of the colonial mind who experience a change of heart, a conversion, give over our passion for wealth and status for a passion for goodness and justice; we gave over our belief in our superiority over those of other races to discover the joys of travelling in unity with all people; we give over the angers and fears which fuel division, for love and peace.

There is still in our society a widespread reluctance to truly grapple with colonialism and its legacy, and so the colonial mindset lies deep within each one of us, and in our communities and institutions, and it is not dormant. ‘Othering’, the way we separate ourselves from peoples unlike us, is ever-present, driving anxiety and fear, weakening and destabilising society. 

But redemption songs are for everyone, they are for the sons and daughters of former slaves and of former slave owners willing to gather at the table of fellowship. [8] They help us all to say together joyfully, that ‘We are going to get to a better place and it will be different.’

When the slaves were released, they came out singing. Paul, in his theological Greek, and Bob Marley in his Jamaican patois,together ask us to humbly acknowledge that we all carry something of the Pharaoh within us: whilst also celebrating that, by the grace of God, we can also all be Moses. The question they pose to us provokes a change of heart, a conversion: “Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom… [these] redemption songs?”

Notes

[1] Emma Bartholomew, Fisk Jubilee Singers: Amazing story of how freed slaves sang in Hackney 150 years ago. Ham&High, 21 February 2019.

[2] Wikipedia: Go Down, Moses. 

[3] Emma Bartholomew, Fisk Jubilee Singers: Amazing story of how freed slaves sang in Hackney 150 years ago. Ham&High, 21 February 2019.

[4] Bethel Music, Jonathan David Helser, Melissa Helser, No Longer Slaves.

[5] Bob Marley, Redemption Song; Horace Campbell, Bob Marley and Emancipation From Mental Slavery. United Reggae, 25 May 2011.

[6] Wikipedia: White supremacy. 

[7] “Living a spiritual life requires a change of heart, a conversion. Such a conversion may be marked by a sudden inner change, or it can take place through a long, quiet process of transformation. But it always involves an inner experience of oneness.” Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Spiritual Life: Eight Essential Titles by Henri Nouwen.

[8] “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” Martin Luther King Jr, I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World.