Category: Thought for the Week

Some may recognise the name of Marianne Budde; she is the Bishop of Washington who preached at the inauguration of President Trump back in January; her sermon, on Christian values, did not go down well with the president. These are extracts from a blog she wrote in June; I would encourage you to read it in full (Hopelessness is Not an Option – by Mariann Budde).

“Earlier this year…. I was invited to lead a morning Bible study on Matthew 28:1-10 with 4,300 participants and also give an evening address. It was deeply humbling and inspiring to witness that level of unity, compassion, and hope that reverberated amongst the attendees….. it is essential for Christian leaders to speak and act with humility in the wider society in which we live, for we are in need of the same forgiveness, mercy, and grace that we are called by God to embody for others. If the continued response to the sermon I preached on January 21st has revealed anything, it is that simply professing a faith rooted in mercy, dignity, honesty, and humility is like water in the desert for parched souls…. We’d be made of stone if we didn’t feel discouraged some days and deeply saddened by what we see around us. But remember that hope isn’t something we need to conjure on our own. It is a grace that God gives, allowing us to face evil and death, yet still believe that the life-affirming Spirit is always at work within and around us, bringing about good…. This is a time for us as Christians to be present in as many places as we can and offer what we have to give…. For Christians, hopelessness is not an option — not because of us, but because of Christ’s dwelling in us and our ultimate hope in our true home in the love of God. We have our north star. In that faith, we go on. We are the ones now. For this hour, we are here.”

Rev David Poyner

A new exhibition has recently opened featuring art associated with the iconic 20th century composer, Benjamin Britten. I do not particularly like his music but he was a towering figure in the cultural life of this country in the mid-20th century. He was commissioned to write religious music, especially “War Requiem” for the consecration of Coventry Cathedral but I do not think he would have called himself a Christian. Jonathan Evans, reviewing the exhibition for the Church Times, opens with a quotation at Britten’s funeral from Bishop Leslie Brown; [Britten] believed deeply in a Reality which works in us and through us and is the source of goodness and beauty, joy and love. He was sometimes troubled because he wasn’t sure that he could give the name of God to that Reality.” It seems to me that a great many people are in the same place as Britten; quite a few in or around the edges of the churches in which I minister. I call that Reality God but I am not sure that God is really that bothered what name people use for her or him. At least in my opinion, it is much more important that people recognise and engage with that Reality; I pray that in our churches, we help people draw nearer to that Reality and to understand it more deeply. As a Christian, I trust the Holy Spirit to do the rest.

Rev David Poyner

I recently received an email from a clerical colleague. It was an invitation to a meeting. Immediately there came another email from the same colleague, trying to correct the date for the meeting. Unfortunately that date was still wrong. I took some delight in replying to point this out, until I recalled that earlier in the week I had sent an email around all members of a PCC (including my colleague) with the wrong time for a meeting that evening… At times like this, the words of a classic song come to my mind:
Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble
When you’re perfect in every way
I can’t wait to look in the mirror
Cause I get better lookin’ each day
To know me is to love me
I must be a hell of a man
Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble
But I’m doin’ the best that I can

I must go now to admire myself in the mirror.
Rev David Poyner

The day after the killing of two worshippers at the synogogue in Manchester, a day that will almost certainly see more civilian casualties in Gaza, it is difficult for me to find any words. But this morning, I heard the Bishop of Manchester, Dave Walker, speak out about what perhaps is the worse danger of all; that moment when we forget those who are our enemies are also humans. As a Christian I believe we are all made in the image of God. Last week, I wrote about the murdered American political activist Charlie Kirk, a man noted for his controversial views. At his funeral, his widow, Erika, gave a powerful address; she publicly forgave his killer because that was the way of Christ. It was too much for some at the funeral, indeed the sentiment is too much for many. If I suffered grievous wrong, it might be too much for me. But she understood the shared humanity of victim and perpetrator and recognising this is the only way for ultimate healing between individuals or peoples.

“That man, that young man – I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and it is what Charlie would do.”

Rev David Poyner

Hypatia is not a person who is well known, but in 415 in Alexandria in Egypt, she was a celebrity. She was a leading philosopher, noted for her learning. She was also a pagan. In that year, she was attacked by a mob and killed; some attributed her death to rabble-rousing by the Bishop of Alexandria, St Cyril. Cyril was undoubtedly a bruiser, although it is not clear if he really was behind Hypatia’s death. None-the-less, by any standard, the murder of Hypatia, for her beliefs, was an inexcusable act of brutality. I am sure everyone has head of Charlie Kirk, the US political thinker, recently murdered whilst giving a speech; another inexcusable act of violence. The link between both is that their deaths were due to their beliefs. Can either be called martyrs? Hypatia, as a pagan, was clearly not a Christian martyr but could a case be made that she was a martyr for freedom of thought? Some have called Charlie Kirk a martyr; I cannot see that he was killed for his religious beliefs, although he was a Christian. Like Hypatia, perhaps there are stronger grounds for freedom of thought. The wider issue is that when someone is murdered because of their beliefs, the murder is always wrong. The beliefs, be they religious or not, need us to examine them; we may or may not think they are worthy.

Rev David Poyner

I’m in the middle of harvest festivals at the various churches at which I serve and a friend recently sent me this poem by EE Cummings. It speaks to me.

I am a little church (no great cathedral) far from the splendour and squalor of hurrying cities

– I do not worry if briefer days grow briefest I not sorry when sun and rain make April

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;

my prayers are prayers of the earth’s own clumsy striving

(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children

whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness.

Around them surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory in death and resurrection:

over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope, and I wake to a perfect patience of mountains

I am a little church (far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature

– I do not worry if longer nights grow longest;

I am not sorry when silence becomes singing winter by spring, I lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever:

standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence

(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

This weekend is Ride and Stride, the annual fund-raising event for the Shropshire Historic Churches Trust. I offer one of my favourite poems by R.S. Thomas by way of response.

The Chapel

A little aside from the main road,

becalmed in a last-century greyness,

there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal

to the tourist to stop his car

and visit it. The traffic goes by,

and the river goes by, and quick shadows

of clouds, too, and the chapel settles

a little deeper into the grass.

But here once on an evening like this,

in the darkness that was about

his hearers, a preacher caught fire

and burned steadily before them

with a strange light, so that they saw

the splendour of the barren mountains

about them and sang their amens

fiercely, narrow but saved

in a way that men are not now.

Rev David Poyner

Last month, I ticked off one more item from my bucket list; I descended Gaping Gill. Gaping Gill is one of the most spectacular underground caverns in the country. It is 300 feet from its opening to the bottom, a cavern the size of a cathedral and several water falls descending from the top. The easy way is to go down on a winch, which is what I did with a friend. I am very pleased I did it; I look back on the experience with great enjoyment. And yet, at the time, my reaction was more muted. Yes, it was spectacular, but I have been in big underground caverns before. It has been an experience I have needed time to process, to look back on and reflect, to fully appreciate it. Sometimes if we want instant gratification we will be disappointed; we need to wait and contemplate. Yesterday, talking about something completely different with a colleague, she sent me this email; “Perhaps it’s like most things the harder you try the further away it gets and the more it alludes you.  Perhaps we should all quietly sneak up on it.” You can’t exactly sneak up on Gaping Gill, but the full satisfaction of going down it has quietly sneaked up on me. And, because I’m a vicar and I try to see God in everything, I also know this to be true of my spiritual life. I regularly pray, I try to actively think about God (sitting on a winch over a 300 foot drop is conducive to this), but so often, at the time, I feel nothing. Then, hours, perhaps days later, God quietly sneaks up on me.

Rev David Poyner

“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now, these kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school, they were in a church.”

These are the reported words of the Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Fry, after two children were killed and 13 seriously injured in a mass shooting in a service to mark the first day of the new school year at the Church of the Annunciation in that city. The massacre raises hard questions; the ageless dilemma of why a loving and apparently all-powerful God allows such atrocities and what our response should be to these. It is the latter that is particularly exercising me. So often I find myself with people who have suffered loss, sometimes tragically and all I can say is that I will pray for them. I often feel embarrassed as I say that; it feels so inadequate. However, it is sometimes all I can do in that situation and I am a vicar; if I do not pray, I am nothing. I do not think the Mayor was rejecting thoughts and prayers, but that they need to be accompanied by action. This is particularly pertinent in the USA, with its history of regular gun massacres. There is probably nothing we can do about this particular situation other than to pray and empathise, but that ought to leave some mark on us for the future, to strengthen our resolve to reject evil.

Rev David Poyner

As I drew up to Billingsley Church yesterday, I noticed a motor bike outside. Now the Bishop of Hereford is a biker so my first reaction was panic was that he was doing an unannounced inspection of the church. But on looking closer, the bike didn’t look like his Harley Davison. On entering the churchyard, I saw a man of a certain age (OK, my age), sitting on a bench with a flask and a sandwich; we greeted each other and he asked if it was OK for him to be there. Of course it was. When I had finished in the church, I went back out and we chatted further. He enjoyed going round churches on his bike; he had a booklet produced by a tourism group on Shropshire churches and was using this as a guide. He liked to visit one church on his bike trip. He complimented me on how well kept the church and the churchyard were, what a lovely spot it was for a bench to enjoy the tranquillity. Then he said words I often hear; “I’m not a religious man, but….”. Being in the churchyard, next to the church, was feeding him spiritually. Even though he might not want to use the word “God”, I suspect his experience was similar to my experience when I kneel in prayer before the altar at a church as I prepare for a service. Perhaps he was closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than he might realise.  

Rev David Poyner