Bridestowe, Lydford, Trinity 5, 8/7/2012
Sutton Montis, Weston Bampfylde, Trinity 5, 5/7/2015 (slightly altered)
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden, Trinity 6, 8/7/2018 (slightly altered)
In our village people know that they have a place: we are a community. Young and old together.
There’s a place in our village for the children, in their gardens, in their homes; it’s good to see them enjoying growing up with friends around them, though we don’t know their names, nor do we know their parents so well, they’re busy working.
There’s a place in our village for the workers, those who work the land, their long hours regulated by the seasons and the needs of their animals; those who travel to work in service or administration elsewhere, some prospering, some scraping a living in tight economic times.
There’s a place in our village for people of leisure, those who don’t need to work but who contribute to the community through their acts of benevolence.
In our village people know that they have a place: and people know their place. They know where they stand in the eyes of others. There are some here who we don’t get on with.
But in our village there is a place for eccentrics, provided their eccentricities don’t intrude on our comfort. There’s a place for the sick and suffering, and those who spend their days looking after them. There’s a place for the artists who entertain us and the activists who sit on committees keeping our parish life going. There’s even a place for those who prefer to keep themselves to themselves, who we tolerate despite their non-involvement with us.
And in our village there’s a place for the carpenter Jesus, Mary’s son, brother of James and Joses, Judas and Simon and their sisters. He’s a good Nazareth boy. We welcome his skill in joinery, learned from his father, and we know him as the devout one, the one who from a very early age spent all his time in the synagogue and temple, listening to and debating with the teachers and elders. And that’s fine, we accept his enthusiasm, as long as it doesn’t disturb anyone else.
The problem with Jesus is that he’s begun to upset the balance of things in our village. He’s forgotten his place, and started to challenge the way things are and need to be.
He’s been preaching ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’ Now we accept this as an ideal, but in practice it doesn’t work for us here in our village – we don’t know some of our neighbours, we don’t like some of those we do know, and when it comes down to it we’re simply not going to make the effort to love people we don’t know or don’t like. He’s asking the impossible – and he’s upsetting us by doing so.
If we loved our neighbours as ourselves we’d be out around the houses of our village befriending the newcomers, getting to know the children, helping out their hardworking parents. We’d be doing more than just supporting charities, we’d be supporting others practically and financially, looking after the lonely, even daring to approach the isolated ones who are maybe not antisocial after all but just shy. We can see how it would be good to love our neighbours as ourselves, but we haven’t the time or the inclination for it – and Jesus knows it.
He’s also been preaching ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ We can’t do this and we won’t do this – we’re not equipped to. We refuse to love those in our village we dislike, who wind us up, who upset us with their contrary ways. ‘Love your enemies’? No, we’re not taking Jesus’ teaching on board. And ‘pray for those who persecute you’: again, our prayers are reserved for those we care about here in this place, not those who oppose us. We’ll pray for the vulnerable ones, the suffering ones in our village, but asking us to pray for those who make our lives difficult – that’s going too far. That’s not the way we do things here.
It’s as if Jesus thinks we can heal old wounds. It’s as if Jesus suggests we can make a fresh start in relationships which have hardened and divided over the years. It’s as if Jesus expects that we can find the means to settle our arguments peaceably. We have no time for any of that.
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.