The Holy Spirit embraces the diversity of Jerusalem

Here's the Pentecost sermon that I shared at St Catherine's Wickford this morning:

The Day of Pentecost is the turning point in the history of Christ’s Church. The believers have gone from gathering together in fear of the authorities to gathering together in readiness for the promised gift. They are waiting to be baptised with the Holy Spirit. Jesus has spoken to them about the Kingdom of God and told them that when the Holy Spirit comes upon them they will be filled with power and will be witnesses to him in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. That prophecy and promise is fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit enables the believers to God’s message to all (Acts 2.1-21).

We often think that Jesus’ words, “you will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,” mean that they were to start with their own people and gradually move from there to the ends of earth. What we forget is that on the day of Pentecost there were Jews and Gentile converts living in Jerusalem who had come from every country in the world. The different countries or areas are listed for us in verses 9 – 11: Parthia, Media and Elam; Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia; Pontus and Asia; Phrygia and Pamphylia; Egypt and Libya; Rome, Crete and Arabia. Every country in the world was right there in Jerusalem.

There was a real diversity of nationalities present and of languages spoken in Jerusalem and the coming of the Holy Spirit enabled the believers in Jerusalem to engage with the diversity that they found in Jerusalem. As they were filled with the Holy Spirit they all began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them. As a result, although the believers were mainly Galileans and not known for being multi-lingual, each person there in Jerusalem heard God’s message in his or her own language. The Holy Spirit embraced the diversity of Jerusalem and gave the believers the tools they needed to communicate in and through that diversity.

This was a reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament. There, because the people were working together to arrogantly build a tower reaching towards heave, the people were given different languages so they were unable to work together and progress the tower. Here, God communicates in and through a diversity of languages to bring people to him and into a God-given unity of purpose and practice.

The diversities of nationality and language aren’t the only diversities mentioned in this passage, however. In explaining what God is doing at that time in Jerusalem, Peter speaks about a diversity of age and gender. Look at the passage that he quotes from the Book of Joel in verses 17-21 – there we find the Holy Spirit being poured out on everyone, young and old, men and women, so that all see visions, dream dreams and proclaim God’s message. God uses the diversity of age and gender among the believers in order to speak to the diversity of nations and languages in Jerusalem.

Now, think for a moment about our situation here in the UK. Doesn’t it seem similar to the situation in Jerusalem? According to the 2021 Census, the total population of England and Wales was 59.6 million, and 81.7% of the population was white. People from Asian ethnic groups made up the second largest percentage of the population (9.3%), followed by black (4.0%), mixed (2.9%) and other (2.1%) ethnic groups. The census found the following in relation to Religion in England and Wales: Christian (46.2%); No religion (37.2%); Muslim (6.50%); Hindu (1.70%); Sikh (0.90%); Buddhist (0.50%); Jewish (0.50%); and Other religions (0.60%). The census found that 91.1% (52.6 million) of residents, aged three years and over, had English (English or Welsh in Wales) as a main language. While the most common main languages, other than English (English or Welsh in Wales), were: Polish (1.1%, 612,000), Romanian (0.8%, 472,000), Panjabi (0.5%, 291,000), and Urdu (0.5%, 270,000). From this quick survey, we can see that the same diversity of ethnicities and language as was found in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost is also here in the UK. The world is right here in the UK, just as it was in Jerusalem.

Just as, at Pentecost, God poured out his Spirit on old and young, men and women, so we see a diversity to our congregations here in the Parish and also among the churches throughout the UK. That diversity is not given to us so that we can pat ourselves on the back and think how wonderful we are, it is given to us so that we can proclaim the message of God to people of every ethnicity, age, gender, disability, sexuality and religion. And we need the Holy Spirit’s power, gifts and enabling to make that happen.

We need to remember too that as the Early Church grew and as God’s message spread there were people who tried to restrict this wonderful new diversity. Even Peter, who led this move into diversity at Pentecost, on one occasion in Galatia tried to restrict the diversity of what God was doing and had to be rebuked by Paul. In the same way today, there are those both in the Church and in our society who want to place restrictions on this diversity.

In the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost God celebrates and engages with the diversity that we find in the world he has created. The Holy Spirit comes on all for all and we must not seek to restrict the Spirit’s coming but must enable all to hear God’s call on their lives and be filled by the Spirit just as occurred on that first Pentecost in Jerusalem when all the world’s diversity was gathered to see the pouring out of God’s Spirit on all and for all.

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Delirious? - History Maker.

Advent Meditation: The Prophets

Here's the meditation on The Prophets that I shared during Advent Night Prayer at St Andrew's Wickford this evening:

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of Bethlehem.
Of Bethlehem of Ephrathah, one of the little clans of Judah,
from whom shall come one who is to rule in Israel,
one whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.
When she who is in labour has brought forth,
then the rest of his kin shall return to the people of Israel
and he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God,
and they shall live secure, for now he shall be great
to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a sign that the Lord himself would give.
The sign a young woman with child.
A young woman who shall bear a son.
A young woman who shall name that son, Immanuel.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a child.
A child born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority grows continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom
when he will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from his time onwards and for evermore.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a shoot.
A shoot to come out from the stock of Jesse,
and a branch to grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord would rest on that shoot,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight would be in the fear of the Lord.
He would not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he would judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he would strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips kill the wicked.
Righteousness would be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and the little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear would graze,
their young would lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child would play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all God’s holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of a star.
They saw him, but not then;
they beheld him, but not near.
They saw a star,
a star that would come out of Jacob,
and a sceptre that would rise out of Israel.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of Egypt.
As, when Israel was a child, God loved him,
and out of Egypt he called his son.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of the Temple.
The temple to which the Lord who is sought will suddenly come.
The messenger of the covenant in whom we delight,
the messenger is coming,
coming to be like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap;
to sit as a refiner and purifier of silver,
and to purify the descendants of Levi
and refine them like gold and silver,
until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.
Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord
as in the days of old and as in former years.

The prophets dreamed.
They dreamed of people,
people who walked in darkness
seeing a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shone.

The prophets dreamed.
They saw from a distance and greeted their dreams.
They died in faith without having received the promises.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of Mary and Joseph travelling to Bethlehem,
a census requiring Jesus’ birth in Joseph’s home town.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the sign given
in the child Immanuel, God with us.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the child born for us,
the Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the shoot
coming from the stock of Jesse
on whom the spirit of the Lord did rest.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the star,
the star that led the Magi to worship Israel’s star.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of Egypt,
where our Saviour fled and from where he returned.
We are those on whom light has shone;
those who know the story of the Temple,
where Simeon and Anna see salvation
in the young Christ unexpectedly come.

Therefore, since we are surrounded
by so great a cloud of witnesses and prophets,
let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,
and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,
looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
the one from of old, from ancient days,
the son who is named Immanuel,
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,
the one on whom the spirit of the Lord rests,
the sceptre that rises out of Israel,
the one God calls his son,
the one who refines like gold and silver,
until we present offerings to the Lord in righteousness,
that our offerings will be pleasing to the Lord
as in the days of old and as in former years. Amen.

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G.F.Händel - The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.

Renewing the Church from the edge with disruptive prophets and uncomfortable conversations

“If the Church is to be renewed from the edge it must make space for the edge to come to the centre. That space needs to be open to disruptive prophets and uncomfortable conversations – and accessible,” say Fiona MacMillan and The Rev’d Jonathan Evens from St Martin-in-the-Fields writing for anglican focus, the news site of the Anglican Church Southern Queensland.

Our article can be found here.

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The Byrds - 5D (Fifth Dimension).

A Memorial Service for Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Ambassador Lindiwe Mabusa: Prayers

Here are the prayers I prepared for today's Service of Celebration and Thanksgiving for Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ambassador Lindiwe Mabuza at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

God of justice, we give you thanks for your prophets, prophets like Desmond Tutu, who advocate for love, justice and human rights in the struggles against apartheid, oppression and exploitation and for climate justice, peace in Palestine and Israel, equal rights for the LGBTI community, equality, fairness and justice across the world. Like the Arch, may we come to see that all humans are of infinite worth intrinsically because all are created in Your image and that systems such as apartheid are blasphemous because they treat the children of God as if they are less than Your own. Challenge us through your prophets to create societies wherein people count and where all have equal access to the good things of life, with equal opportunity to live, work and be educated. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of culture, we thank you for your poets, poets like Lindiwe Mabuza, for whom art was an essential part of the struggle and poetry a part of a whole arsenal of weaponry to be used against apartheid. We thank you for all who shape their words to get to the heart of the matter and move their hearers. We thank you for all who kneel, where road-blocks to life pile precariously, and scoop earth, raising mounds of hope, who oath with their lives to immortalise each footprint left, each grain of soil that flesh shed, each little globe of blood dropped in the struggle upon the zigzag path of revolution. We thank you for those who saw that Soweto's blood red road would not dry up until the fields of revolution were fully mellow tilled, always to bloom again. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of unity, we give thanks for your reconcilers, reconcilers like Desmond Tutu, who do the demanding, sometimes agonising, sometimes traumatic work of truth-telling, testimony, confession, listening, reparation and rehabilitation. We thank you for all who helped investigate the violations that took place in South Africa between 1960 and 1994, provided support and reparation to victims and their families, and compiled a full and objective record of the effects of apartheid on South African society. Remind us that while we are not responsible for what breaks us, we can be responsible for what puts us back together again and naming the hurt is how we begin to repair our broken parts. That, as the Arch reminded us, in our own ways, we are all broken and out of that brokenness, we hurt others. May forgiveness be the journey we take toward healing the broken parts and become whole once again. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of relationships, we give thanks for your Ambassadors, Ambassadors like Lindiwe Mabuza, who succeed in promoting their countries and cultures winning new friends from across many fields, from business to tourism, music, literature and arts and culture. Give us the gift of bringing people together and of polishing rough diamonds until they themselves know how brightly they shine. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of freedom, we give thanks for 27 years of freedom since South Africans voted in their first democratic elections. We give thanks for the lives and work of Desmond Tutu and Lindiwe Mabuza and the part that each played in the anti-apartheid movement. We give thanks for those of all faiths and none who contributed to the anti-apartheid movement. We give thanks that Trafalgar Square became a global focal point for the movement and for the part that St Martin-in-the-Fields played within that movement. We give thanks for the ongoing partnership between St Martin’s and St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg. We give thanks for the work of the High Commission in the UK as it contributes to the creation of a better South Africa through its engagement with the government and people of the United Kingdom. God Bless South Africa; Guard her children; Guide her leaders And give her peace, for Jesus Christ's sake. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Merciful God, accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

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David Fanshawe - Dona Nobis Pacem - A Hymn for World Peace.

God desires love, not sacrifice

Here's my reflection given during today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ (Mark 12.28–34)

Allow me for a moment to take you on a journey through the scriptures to explore the reasons why, in the kingdom of heaven, love for God, others and ourselves is much more important than offerings and sacrifices.

We begin where the Bible begins, in Genesis, with acts of human sacrifice made to appease the gods. People, often children, killed because, when trouble or tension arose in society, the belief was that, by sacrificing one or a few as a scapegoat, order would be restored by the gods for the many. That was the culture which Abraham was called to leave when he left Ur of the Chaldees to found a people that would become God’s people. As a way to create a decisive break with that culture, God took Abraham through a dramatic experience where it seemed that he was, as Abraham would have expected, demanding the sacrifice of Abraham’s firstborn son Isaac. At the very point of sacrifice, God made it clear to Abraham that he did not desire human sacrifice and provided an animal as an alternative. This became part of the founding story for the people of Israel, a people whose ritual sacrifices were of animals and not human beings.

If we then move forward in time, we can pause again for a moment at Mount Sinai and the giving of the Law to Moses. The Law received by Moses contained detailed instructions regarding the sacrifice of animals but also contained the commands quoted by Jesus and the Scribe in our Gospel reading. In addition to the system of sacrifice it introduced, the Law did two things. First, it gave minimum standards for the maintenance of good relations within society – do not murder, do not steal, do not covet etc. Second, in the greatest commandment, it set love for God, others and oneself as the goal to which all the other laws, including those concerning sacrifices, pointed. The Law was given not that people became of obsessed with the keeping of its minutiae but that people moved from the base point of not harming others to the point or goal of the Law, to love God, others and oneself.

We know that many paid lip service to the Law while ignoring it and others did become obsessed with following the minutiae of the letter of the Law and thereby missed the point of the Law. The prophets were the ones used by God to point this out to the people and their rulers. The message of the prophets can in many respects be summed up by these words from the prophet Amos through whom God said: ‘I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ Amos was essentially saying, ‘Love God, others and yourself.’

When God’s people ignored God’s messengers, God eventually took matters into his own hands and, in Jesus, showed us, by entering our world and being with us for 33 years, that what he desires is love and relationship. He longs to be with us and enjoy us for who we are, as we also enjoy him. That is the message of the incarnation. It is a demonstration of love.

Yet we still did not understand and, as we have been doing for millennia, made Jesus a scapegoat to excise us of our troubles and tensions, sacrificing him to relieve our fears and anxieties. The God who does not desire sacrifice became the ultimate sacrifice to show that once God has been scapegoated and sacrificed there is really nowhere else to go. There is now no god to be appeased because God does not desire sacrifice and God himself has been sacrificed. This is the end of sacrifice. The curtain was torn in the Temple at the point of Christ’s death because there was no longer any need for sacrifice and the system of sacrifice, the system that began at Mount Sinai, was itself ended in AD70 when, as prophesied by Jesus, the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

‘The Kingdom of God is justice and peace, And joy in the Holy Spirit!’ Like the Scribe we have come close to that kingdom when we realise that God is one, and “besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ ‘God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them’ (1 John 4. 16). That is the story of scripture. That is the place to which all scripture leads. It simply remains for us to pray, ‘Come, Lord, and open in us the gates of your Kingdom!’ Amen.

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GSNY Music - The Sun Will Rise.

Why does the Church so rarely value and nurture the artists and prophets found in its midst?

Why does the Church so rarely value and nurture the artists and prophets found in its midst? 

That is a question which underlies the exhibition, at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, of Corita Kent’s vibrant, passionate, wry, colourful, compassionate, and contextually relevant art. 

Her art generated a string of correspondence from the Archbishop of Los Angeles that placed ever more stringent constraints on her art and teaching. Copies of that correspondence are displayed at the end of this most marvellous of exhibitions, leading me to raise this question in my exhibition review for Church Times:

'A wonderful piece of contextualised mission was brought to a premature end by the Archbishop’s inability to understand, combined with his inability to resist the local voices of complaint. Sister Corita was a true pioneer in, and heroine of, the 20th-century Church. This exhibition cannot be commended too highly.'

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Aaron Rose - Become A Microscope (Extract).

Tony Benn: Prophets vs Priests

The Guardian has published two excellent pieces (here and here) exploring the Christian influences on the life and thought of Tony Benn:

'He stood in a high-minded tradition that went back to Keir Hardie, co-founder of the Labour party, George Lansbury, its leader in the early 1930s, and the historian RH Tawney, its most important intellectual influence in the early 20th century. It went still further back to Victorian figures such as Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies, and even to the Old Testament. "For Benn," David Powell, an early biographer wrote, "the entire socialist venture is rooted in history, a continuum reaching back in time to its biblical roots".'

Giles Fraser writes: 'His big thing was that the Bible was the story of the battle between the kings (and their priestly lackeys) and the prophets – the priests, in his book, being the establishment baddies and the prophets being the social-justice-seeking goodies. And it's not a bad interpretive lens through which to understand a lot of the Biblical action.

For Benn, the priests were the theological justifiers of monarchy. They cemented the conservative relationship between an eternal and unchanging God and a static social order. The prophets, on the other hand, were a total pain in the arse, forever railing against those who thought that the ceremonies of the temple were more important than the purposes for which the temple existed. He was a bit like Amos: "I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!"'

Benn's understanding is one that Walter Brueggemann has unpacked in greater depth. For example, Sam Norton highlights Brueggemann writing that: “… in 1 Samuel 8, Samuel is in deep dispute with Israel over the function and nature of public leadership. Israel wants a king, in order to be “like the other nations.” Samuel, here the reliable voice of Yahweh, refuses them a king, on the grounds that human kingship is an act of distrust in Yahweh … This interpretive tradition, suspicious of concentrations of power, anticipates that the centralized government is in principle exploitative, usurpatious, and self-serving. We may say that this recognition is fundamental to a biblical critique of power.”

The people of Israel, in the course of the rest of their history, were going to endure many examples of monarchs who were self-serving and who exploited their position and power for their own ends. What God said, through Samuel, would occur did occur on many occasions in the subsequent history of the people of Israel.

But that is not all that this passage or the Bible, as a whole, says on the subject because God and Samuel, despite their misgivings and predictions, all the people of Israel to have what they want. Why do they do this? In part, because there is another, more positive, strand of thinking in the Bible about monarchs. This is the strand which sees David and, initially, his son Solomon as great Kings under whose reign Israel was at the peak of its prosperity and influence.  

Brueggemann notes that the kind of kingship that we see David and initially Solomon exercise: “had the establishment and maintenance of justice as its primary obligation to Yahweh and to Israelite society. This justice, moreover, is distributive justice, congruent with Israel’s covenantal vision, intending the sharing of goods, power, and access with every member of the community, including the poor, powerless, and marginated.”

This is what Brueggemann thinks the Bible sees as key to any form of public leadership: “The claim made is that power – political, economic, military – cannot survive or give prosperity or security, unless public power is administered according to the requirement of justice, justice being understood as attention to the well-being of all members of the community.”

Brueggemann writes about this in terms of the core testimony and the counter testimony. The core testimony is structure legitimating; that is to say it is about order and control – everything in its rightful place and a rightful place for everything. The counter testimony is pain embracing; that is to say it is about hearing and responding to the pain and suffering which is found in existence. The core testimony is “above the fray” while the counter testimony is “in the fray”.

The wonderful thing, it seems to me, about the Christian scriptures is that this debate and dialogue is resolved in favour of the counter testimony. René Girard writes that, in the Gospels, “God himself, the Word become flesh in Jesus, becomes the victim … The New Testament Gospels are the starting point for a new science or knowledge of humanity. This new knowledge begins with faith in Christ the innocent victim, and it becomes the leaven that will work itself out and expand to the point that the concern for victims becomes the absolute value in all societies molded or affected by the spread of Christianity.”

Similarly, Gerd Theissen writes that in the life, teaching and death of Jesus of Nazareth:

“religion takes an unprecedented turn, and becomes instead an agency of healing for the wounded. In the religion of the prophets, and in the religious commitment for which Jesus lived and died, we see the distillation of faith in a God who is on the side of the downtrodden rather than their oppressors, and who seeks to bring a new, supernatural order of justice and peace out of the natural laws of selection and mutation which spell death for the weak and powerless.”

Finally, Rowan Williams says that:

“All human identity is constructed through conversations, in one way or another. The gospel adds the news that, in order to find the pivot of our identity as human beings, there is one inescapable encounter, one all-important conversation into which we must be drawn. This is not just the encounter with God, in a general sense, but the encounter with God made vulnerable, God confronting the systems and exclusions of the human world within that world – so that, among other things, we can connect the encounter with God to those human encounters where we are challenged to listen to the outsider and the victim.”

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Billy Bragg - Upfield.

A heart for people, the Arts and for God

“Disgusting!” That was Michal’s comment on King David’s dancing (2 Samuel 6. 1 - 20). If it had been Craig Revel Horwood critiquing my two left feet I would have understood but this was David’s wife criticising his contribution to the sacred dance.

“Disgusting!” That is how some Christians have responded to dance, and even the Arts generally, at certain times and places in Church history. For example, the Rev. Increase Mather, an influential Puritan leader in Boston in the 17^th century, wrote, in a book entitled An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing Drawn Out of the Quiver of the Scriptures (1684), that "A Dance is the Devils Procession. He that enters into a Dance, enters into his Possession. The Devil is the Guide, the middle and the end of the Dance."

Why was Michal disgusted? She thought that David had demeaned himself in front of their servants. She said that he had “exposed himself like a fool in the sight of the servant women of his officials” (v. 20). David had led all the Israelites in dancing and singing with all their might to honour God with their playing of harps, lyres, drums, rattles, and cymbals. Michal criticises both what David has done – exposing himself like a fool through his dancing – and his having crossed boundaries and taken on roles that were inappropriate for a King – having done it in all in front of the servant women of his officials.

If we were to translate what Michal says into today’s slang we might say that he by dancing he had looked a prat in front of the plebs. To put it that way brings out the inherent snobbery in Michal’s critique. As the daughter of King Saul, she is suggesting that there is an appropriate way for a King to behave in front of his people and that there are also appropriate roles which people play in society which should not be altered or varied. It is not the job of the King to lead the people in worship, as the King has priests and Levites a-plenty to do that for him.

David, though, has a heart for the people, a heart for the Arts, and, most importantly, a heart for God and so he both instinctively and deliberately crosses social and cultural boundaries to lead his people in worship and is clearly commended by God for doing so.

David didn’t forget his origins. He was not born into a royal family instead he was the one that his father left looking after the sheep because he considered him too young to meet the prophet who had come to anoint the next King of Israel (1 Samuel 16). David knows, therefore, that the place for a King is among the people even if that means he demeans himself in the eyes of some and acts in ways that are inappropriate. The fact that he has a heart for the people means that he is loved by the people.

David was also a musician before he was a King, playing his harp to soothe King Saul’s spirits. He is credited with writing many of the Psalms – songs which speak of praising God with trumpets, harps, lyres, drums, dancing, flutes and cymbals. So, David is a lyricist, musician and dancer who values the role that the Arts play in the worship of God and, not only appoints those who will use the Arts in that way, but actively uses his own God-given artistic abilities to lead worship himself.

Central to all this, however, is his heart for God. It was this that led to his being anointed by Samuel as the future King of Israel. It was on the occasion of his anointing that God said, “People look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.” In Sirach 47. 8, one of the books of the Apocrypha we read, “In everything David did, he gave thanks and praise to the Holy Lord, the Most High. He loved his Creator and sang praises to him with all his heart.” David’s heart was, as we say, in the right place and this can be clearly seen in this story through the way in which he risks ridicule in order to lead worship.

In this he is similar to the prophets who also cross cultural and social boundaries in order to speak and visualise God’s message, often attracting ridicule as they do so. “On one occasion, God told Ezekiel to shave his beard and to cut the hair of his head with a razor and a knife and divide the cut hair into three parts.” Then he was told to burn a third of it, chop a third up with his sword, and scatter the remaining third to the winds (Ezekiel 5:2). Ezekiel was also commanded to draw a picture of Jerusalem on a tile (Ezekiel 4:1–3); lie on his left and right side (4:4–8); bake bread that contained dung (4:9–17); tremble as he ate and drank (12:17–20); sigh, groan, and beat his breast (21:6–7); and make sweeping movements with a sword (21:8–17). All these actions prophesied impending doom, destruction, and hardship upon various groups in the region.

In Hosea 12. 10 we read this, "I have also spoken to you by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions for you and have appealed to you through parables acted out by the prophets.” The Hebrew phrase translated as "acted out" means "a silent mime, an enactment, or judgment". The prophets used drama rather than the lyrics, music and dance used by David but their impulse was the same to point the people to God through the Arts even if they looked ridiculous in the process.

Today, St John’s Seven Kings has been visited by a prophet who uses the Arts with the same heart for God that we have seen in David and the prophets.

Bishop David, the Bishop of Barking, is well known for his visualisations of the Gospel message which remain in people’s memories and hearts long after his visits. Over the years in church at various confirmation services we have seen him release live doves, wash and iron clothes, pitch a tent and boil a kettle on a camping gaz stove, use a leaf blower to fill the sails of a full-size sailing dinghy, bake a cake, build a wall and burn straw. At my first training weekend as a curate he did a handstand to demonstrate the way in which Jesus, through his teaching in the beatitudes, turns our understanding of life upside down. Through these acted parables we remember not only the visual image but also the point that was being made. Yet there are some who feel that this is not an appropriate way for a Bishop to behave and who criticise, in private, his actions and approach.

Bishop David has said that he loves to use surprise, shock, mirth and amusement in order to make what are hopefully memorable spiritual and theological points because our insistence on using far too many words often goes right over people’s heads and a picture can say more than a thousand words. Jesus also used visuals in his very concrete teaching, so he feels he’s in good company in using everyday objects to make connections for others.

The relationship between Church life and music has sustained through the centuries but the connection been Church and theatre has suffered. There is also great scope for dance and drama in Church, as well as the visual arts. There is great scope for recovering those connections that have fallen into decline.

So, he agrees with Rowan Williams that the Church needs more artists and “that artists are not special people but every person is a special kind of artist.” He thinks that there is great scope in the Church encouraging creative expression in everyone as this is a way of helping us to be fully human. Where appropriate that flowering of artistic expression can be expressed - as we have seen King David, the prophets, and the Bishop himself doing - in Church as, for example, an outflow of worship. We are fellow-creators with God and need to remember that He is creator as well as redeemer.

What David shows us is that all this stems from having our heart in the right place - in everything we do, to give thanks and praise to the Holy Lord, the Most High loving our Creator and singing praises to him with all our heart.

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J. Moss - Psalm 150.