The Sixth Sunday of Easter, 25 May 2025
Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth
I love Michael Leunig’s cartoon The Plodder. The veteran Australian cartoonist and philosopher of everyday life died last year, but my framed print of The Plodder continues to adorn my wall, as it has done for the past, probably, 35 years or more. I don’t see myself as The Plodder. He’s someone I would like to become. [1]
I love The Plodder because he is a man at ease with himself. He’s not interested in joining in the rush to be recognised or successful, he has no desire to show off his intelligence or flaunt his knowledge; he’s not concerned about how he looks to others, and he’s not bothered about keeping up with the village gossip or the worldwide news. He’s happy to be outside of all that fuss. He’s content to have removed himself from all that pressure.
I love The Plodder because he’s a rare human creature who seems to have truly embraced the teaching of Jesus when he said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
I’m not sure if The Plodder is a Christian, I’m guessing he’d be unconcerned about whether or not he belongs to any particular tribe. And his creator Michael Leunig is similarly relaxed about his spirituality, though he does lean in that direction, as in the cartoon he published of two Roman soldiers at the crucifixion, one saying to the other, “Look at that! Brilliant! You kill the leader and you nip the whole movement in the bud!”
Without doubt, we can see The Plodder’s joyful, slow and carefree jaunt through life as a living-out of someone who has the peace of God at their heart. Jesus tells his friends and followers, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives…”
How we long for that peace; for the world does not give peace. The world makes us anxious: we are anxious about many things. I have a friend whose job is to make people anxious. He’s an advertising copywriter. Every day he goes into work and sits in a room with two or three others plotting about how they can sell products to people. Whatever the product, the method is the same – make the people worry that without that product there’s something wrong with them; there’s something lacking in them. The anxiety will compel them to buy it.
So … Worried your teeth will fall out? – Well, I wasn’t, until I heard about this fancy toothpaste, approved by a handsome dentist with an unnaturally gleaming smile.
Anxious about your credit rating? – I am now I’m not sure I even understand what that is: best sign up to this broker, who say they’ll turn my miserable debt into the right kind of debt.
No wonder we’re anxious, assaulted by all these messages every hour, every day. And my friend the copywriter – do you know how this makes him feel? Yes – he feels anxious about his work, he worries about it because he knows it’s a terribly manipulative job, but like many other people he feels stuck in it, he’s no idea what else he could do instead if he left, or if he was laid off.
Jesus tells his friends and followers, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives…”
How we long for that peace; for the world does not give peace. The world thrives on conflict: we are embattled, embroiled in other people’s battles.
Imagine if our avaricious heads of states and multinational CEOs behaved like The Plodder: they’d be uninterested in grasping after other people’s territories or natural resources, and they’d leave them alone, to enjoy them in peace. And the children of Gaza, Kiev, and Sudan could play safely in their streets; and the apprentices and engineers of Barrow-in-Furness could be happy developing medical equipment rather than weapons of mass destruction.
Those people anxious for wealth, success or power are driven by their fears of not achieving them; their anxieties diminish them and cause them to damage the world around them. I once heard the Liverpudlian community worker Ann Morisy speak on this subject; I think she’s a real sage, and she said a memorable thing: HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE. [2] Anxious people spread anxiety; but the other side of this is the beautiful revelation that people at peace with themselves spread peace.
When Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid,” he was giving clear advice about a particular way we should act: he was saying very plainly that we can cultivate peace of mind, intentionally. By paying attention more to those things which lead us towards peace, and less to those which increase our anxiety. It’s a discipline. It’s good, hard, work.
I had a friend called Brother Bernard, a Franciscan who had been Guardian of Hilfield Friary, a retreat house in deepest rural Dorset, but when I knew him, he had relocated to somewhere quite different: a Franciscan townhouse in East London, just off the bustling Whitechapel Road. I once asked him how he could concentrate on his prayers: with all the sounds of the city going on around him, wouldn’t they distract him? He said, with time and practice you learn to embrace them: to attune your rhythm to the rhythm of the hammer drill at the roadworks; to allow the shrieks and cries of passers-by combine with the cries of your heart for those same people, for whom you pray.
From Bernard I learned that being a person of peace is a discipline, forged in the fiercest furnaces of life. After all, Hilfield Friary is a home of refuge for displaced men tramping rural English roads, and he had devoted his time there giving hospitality to men in rehabilitation. [3]
Spend time with The Plodder, contemplating his state of heart and mind, and I guarantee it will ease your soul and spirit too. Spend time with God in prayer, contemplating his love, and reflecting on his words, and I guarantee you will find his peace growing within you.
The activists among us may resist this way of thinking, saying, isn’t all this contemplation just an escape from the realities of life? Doesn’t it avoid or ignore the difficulties? It’s a conversation I have within myself often. It makes me ask questions like:
- Will searching for peace make me more or less well prepared to face life’s challenges?
- Will learning to overcome my fears give me strength for the struggle ahead?
- Will growing my reverence for life empower me to resist those things which diminish it?
I look at The Plodder again, for he’s someone I would like to become. I admire the strength in his simplicity; the secureness in his serenity, the assertiveness in his quite disarming passivity.
Notes
This talk draws from my Anxious about many things, preached in Croxteth, 2004.
[1] Wikipedia: Michael Leunig.
[2] Ann Morisy and Phil Stone, Anxious about many things. Greenbelt Festival 2002; John Davies, Anne and anxiety, Notes from a Small Vicar, 19 October 2002.
[3] Hilfield Friary, About Hilfield.
