Video for May 15th, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
There are close links between the neighbouring counties of Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. The two most obvious are the Three Choirs Festival and the Three Counties Show. One of the fun things I get to do this year is to be the Honorary President of the Three Counties. I spent a lot of the last three days at the Malvern showground. It felt a bit like being a presenter of Gardeners World for the day. I got to present various prizes for the show gardens and champion growers. They are passionate people, highly knowledgeable in their areas of expertise and do things with plants that most of us could only dream of. Some have overcome adversity, mental illness and other difficulties to get to that point. Although a prize for a show garden is a possible gateway to lucrative business, its not about the money. They do it for the love of it. After speaking to them they inspire you to want to go home right away and do some gardening!
Passionate people will do that. Their energy is infectious; their joy in what they do an inspiration, even if its something you don’t normally find interesting. The New Testament envisages that passionately held faith would be a similar inspiration. The whole story of the Bible is about the creation of a witnessing community. The gathering together of the people of Israel from inauspicious beginnings was a call to influence the surrounding cultures with a vision of a different way of living. The Church is similarly called to model and inspire, providing evidence from the way we relate to one another of the difference faith makes. Evangelism, the sharing of the good news of Jesus Christ, should ideally be more about inspiration than exhortation. I met people at the RHS flower show who made me want to become a better gardener. Through my life I have met people who make me want to become a better Christian. Some of them have had a charmed life, free of too much pain and adversity. However, many have become the inspirational people of faith they are through adversity and suffering.
There is a Japanese type of pottery called Kintsugu. It involves repairing broken pots, often using precious materials like gold to glue the broken pieces together. The cracks, filled in this way, become a feature of the piece. Even quite mundane pieces can be transformed, the blemishes and breakages becoming integral to the whole. The flaws are embraced turning them into part of the object’s history and beauty. Reflecting on that pottery I can think of two people who inspired in such a way. One, a writer of books on RE, reflected in a meeting about how her time at university shredded her original simplistic faith, bringing her to the point of a breakdown. From that place of despair, she felt the Lord’s hand on her life in a new way. It was a road of mystery rather than certainty, but the Holy Spirit filled the room when she spoke. Another, a young man who had wrecked his life through a gambling addiction and still struggled with it after coming to faith. In that place of acknowledged brokenness, you sensed the presence of God when you spoke to him. In Uganda, people spoke with awe of Archbishop Janani Luwum, martyred by Idi Amin. From humble beginnings he grew to be an exemplar as a Bishop and disciple marked by humility, and the power of God.
Peter was a ‘Kintsugi’ apostle. His original call, marked by his bravado and confidence, was wrecked in the courtyard of the High Priest’s palace when he denied Jesus three times, just as Jesus had predicted he would. His restoration at the lakeside stuck the pieces of his shattered life back together again. His failure continued to mark him for the rest of his life. The scars it left were not those of guilt but of gratitude. His failure and receipt of grace was a testimony to Christ’s extraordinary forgiveness. Perhaps all of these dear people have been through the cycle of failure and sin followed by forgiveness; failure and sin followed by forgiveness so many times that eventually grace leaves an indelible mark, visible to all they come across. The journey to such a place is never ending, but for the sake of the Kingdom well worth it.
+Richard