Video for January 15th, 2026
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
I recorded a few videos over the Christmas/ New Year period at my mother’s house in France, although its been -7C overnight here the last few days, so a little chilly being outside!
A question I’m sure I’ll be asked in our diocesan year of celebration is, “what about when you don’t feel like celebrating?” What if your life circumstances are a real struggle or some health issue hits you out of left field you weren’t expecting, or you find yourself with caring responsibilities that seem difficult to fit alongside the normal demands of life?”
In any community of people gathered for worship on a Sunday there will be a variety of life experiences. Some will be rejoicing over new babies or grandchildren, the gift of health and comfortable old age, others with terminal diagnoses, fractured relationships or financial anxiety. Not only that, but as part of a global community we have brothers and sisters displaced and persecuted simply for their faith whilst their governments side with their persecutors.
Paul’s exposition of the implications of the Gospel in Romans 12 encourages us to, ‘rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep’. In Matthew 11 Jesus uses the analogy of children playing in the marketplace calling to others, “we played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn”. In context, Jesus is talking about people’s response to two contrasting modes of gospel proclamation. John the Baptist’s is severe, calling people to repentance and lament for their sins; his, on the other hand, is a call to joy and celebration – the Kingdom has come near. In both cases the overwhelming cynicism and ennui of the day prevented an appropriate emotional response. Confronting people with the reality of the human condition as John did, Jesus would have expected his hearers to do something about it rather than shift the channels on the TV. Similarly, the joy and life Jesus came to bring should have produced more than a response of, “meh!”
The danger in our world of hyperstimulation is to dull down our emotional responses and thereby reduce our capacity for the empathy that is the foundation of any human community. Its an understandable defence mechanism. When we see ghastly things happening on the TV over which we have little influence or control, the temptation to switch channels to something more pleasant is very strong. Neil Postman, an American cultural critic wrote a book in 1985 entitled Amusing Ourselves to death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. The title was prescient at a time when there were far less options than there are now. However, his central thesis that visual entertainment encourages a view of truth that is less about coherence and evidence and more about what is visually appealing or amusing remains compelling.
This is the cultural soup we swim in. It fights against the sort of community where empathic connection allows us to mourn with those who mourn and celebrate with those experiencing joy. To celebrate is not to dismiss the experience of those in pain. True community allows us to hold these things in tension. Joy and pain can be shared and borne together.
I’ll finish with the wise words of Paul from Romans 8 where he places all of this in a wider context of hope, both for the ultimate future and in his action in the present, even when he seems absent. Bear in mind these words are written initially to those who had seen their relations torn apart by wild animals in an arena for public entertainment. “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subject to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Until Jesus returns this is the way of Christ.
+Richard