Taylor Swift

It seems that the world is agog at the release of Taylor Swift’s new album; the Sun newspaper devoted it’s entire front page to the subject and it occupied the slot of Radio 4 immediately after “Thought for the Day”. I admit that until I heard the latter, I had no idea who Taylor Swift was, and after hearing a few bars from one of her songs, I equally had no idea what it was about. To be fair, Taylor Swift will never had heard of me and would probably find my sermons incomprehensible…

Whilst Taylor’s songs may not be entirely to my taste, she is popular because her music deals with serious emotions; it is called “The Tortured Poet’s Department” and much of it focusses on her feelings about past relationships. Critics have said that she is popular because her songs allow so many of her followers to better work through their own emotions. This goes to the heart of what good music can achieve; it moves and addresses its listeners in ways that plain words cannot. In this respect, her music has a spiritual side. The link between Gregorian plainsong from monasteries and the records of best selling artists like Taylor is closer than many people might imagine.

Rev David Poyner

Anger and Forgiveness

Perhaps the most challenging of all Christian teachings is the command to love our enemies and forgive those who wish us harm. For some, this has proved impossible. The Rev Julie Nicholson, whose daughter was killed in the July 2005 London bombing attacks, resigned her post as a priest because she could not forgive the perpetrators of the attack. I doubt I would be able to offer much forgiveness if I were in her position. I am uncomfortable with the position of some, who seem to regard a refusal to offer forgiveness as a moral failing on the part of the victim. Whilst Jesus certainly did teach his followers to forgive those who had done them wrong, it is interesting that on the cross, the words that St Luke records are that he asked God, his father, to forgive those who were crucifying him; he did not explicitly forgive his tormentors himself.

I have recently been reading a book by TV vicar, Rev Kate Bottley. In a chapter on love, she deals with loving those we find unlovable. For me, she makes the helpful point that it is possible to balance two contrasting emotions. Her example was of a parent dealing with a naughty child; in my own experience it has been the frustration of dealing with an elderly relative. It is possible to feel anger and love together. So I think it is with forgiveness or love and anger; there is a way of holding the two together when we have been hurt.

Rev David Poyner

Indifference

A couple of days ago, a mother of one of the Israelis still being held hostage spoke on the radio. She had no time for Hamas, the kidnappers but she spoke of how she used her pain to understand the pain of the civilians in Gaza. This quality, of using our experience to reach out to others is very important; all to often we are content to shield ourselves behind a wall of indifference.

The same day as I heard of the interview, I was sent a poem by Geoffrey Stothert-Kennedy, a priest who served as a chaplain in World War 1 and was nick-named “Woodbine Willie” because of the cigarettes he would give to the troops. It is called “Indifference” and it chimed with what I had been thinking as a result of the interview.

When Jesus came to Golgotha
They hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet,
And made a Calvary.
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns;
Red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days,
And human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham,
They simply passed Him by;
They never hurt a hair of Him,
They only let Him die.
For men had grown more tender,
And they would not give Him pain;
They only just passed down the street,
And left Him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried, “Forgive them,
For they know not what they do.”
And still it rained the winter rain
That drenched Him through and through.
The crowds went home and left the streets
Without a soul to see;
And Jesus crouched against a wall
And cried for Calvary.

Rev David Poyner

Resurrection

I have just been listening to the Today programme on Radio 4; as I write it is Good Friday. As befits the day, the reports were thoughtful and considered, not reacting to some event with a few sound bites. There was a piece on how Good Friday was being marked in Jerusalem; the reporter commented on how powerful religious belief was and how, for once, it did seem to something that was strangely uniting people.  Then there was a piece on Damiola Taylor, the 10-year old who was stabbed to death back in 2000. Damiola’s father has recently died and the well-known actor John Boyega spoke, for the first time, of how Damiola had shaped his life. The two were friends at school; John still has vivid memories of how the police came to his house to break the news, of  Damiola running round the playground in a silver anorak “flirting with my bloody sister!”. He imagined how Damiola would have grown up to be a writer, perhaps of dramas in which he would have acted. Their friendship was still real. And so I reflected on love that is stronger than death and on the words of a third contributor to the programme this morning, Canon Richard Sewell, Dean of St George’s College, Jerusalem. He spoke of celebrating Easter in spite of all the current horrors in Israel and Gaza, of how the Resurrection shows that life conquers death, love conquers hate. John Boyega’s interview made me think that resurrection is not such a strange idea; if we look, we see examples of it all around.

Rev David Poyner

What did Jesus mean on Palm Sunday?

This Sunday, 24th March, is Palm Sunday, when we commemorate Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. According to the Gospels, he was greeted by cheering crowds who laid palms before him. Five days later the crowd turned on him and he was crucified. In many churches, on Sunday, palm crosses will be distributed to the congregation; a few will have a donkey, or a donkey-substitute at church as well. The crowd on Palm Sunday would have thought they knew exactly what they were doing with their palms; this was a well known way within ancient Israel of greeting a triumphant leader. It may well have been especially associated in their minds with the Maccabean Revolt around 150 to 200 years earlier, when Israel last successfully rose against an oppressive occupier; palms were laid in the path of the leader who, for a period, won the country freedom by a military campaign.

The donkey was not just the mount of those too poor to have a horse; again in ancient Israel, it was also ridden by kings, the rich and the powerful; King David himself rode a donkey. When Jesus picked a donkey to ride, he was almost certainly thinking of a prophecy in the Old Testament that spoke of Israel’s Messiah entering Jerusalem humble and lowly, riding on a donkey, but elsewhere in the prophecy, it looks like this only happened after this Messiah had triumphed in battle to overcome Israel’s enemies.  My guess is that many, perhaps all, in the crowd, would not have understood what Jesus really intended with the donkey; that in him, God had arrived in triumph but unthinkably, the path to his kingdom would lead to his execution as a criminal. Power was being redefined in a way nobody expected. It a lesson we still, so often, do not understand.

Rev David Poyner