Video for 18th September, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video, indoors to avoid the wind.
A few weeks ago, I spent a wonderful afternoon with the people of Kington Benefice. We started with a pilgrimage walk followed by a service of evening prayer. The Vicar Sally Welch has been working on these pilgrimage walks. They are very simple, with four pauses over the course of the walk for a spiritual reflection, in this case on Psalm 23. It was quite a village event. I had the opportunity over the course of the afternoon for some significant spiritual conversations with those right on the edges of church life, but who were spiritually curious. Most stayed on for evening prayer and I was told there were more people there than they get at Christmas. I had a similar experience at the Bromyard Folk Festival last weekend. The church was full of visitors for the festival service, and again plenty of people who were curious. We Anglicans have these sorts of relational connections that many of our non-conformist friends would die for. Our problem is often turning the relationships into something deeper. I wonder whether we have been so enculturated in the modernist lie that faith is a private thing that we’ve lost our confidence in the authenticity of our own experience. We are fearful of being caught out by the curveball question, so we keep silent. However, most people are more content with a don’t know answer than an attempt to bluff our way through it. We are people of faith who trust in the face of mystery. There are some questions for which there is no answer, at least one within the grasp of human intellect.
The Gospel reading on the day of the pilgrimage walk was Luke 12 from verse 49. This was a cheery number for the end of the day with many relatively uncommitted people present. Jesus says from v. 51, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.” At the beginning of my reflection, I acknowledged it was difficult to general murmurs of agreement. Clearly, Jesus isn’t advocating violence here. Paul’s reflections on citizenship in Romans 12: 18 are clear, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone”. When it comes to evangelism Peter is similarly helpful in his first letter, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience”. But the sad fact is that not everyone welcomes the invitation to follow Jesus on the way of love. There are people with financial and spiritual interests in the preservation of the status quo. There are people who are so established in destructive and even wicked patterns of behaviour that they can’t imagine a different way of doing things. In those contexts, the gospel can sound like uncomfortable news as it challenges to repentance and to live differently. People like Martin Luther King who non-violently resisted the evils of segregation in the deep South of the USA found a deeply resistant and hostile culture. Ultimately, such resistance cost him his life. Jesus’ prophesied division was plain for all to see. To have avoided the conflict for a quiet life would have been a betrayal of the gospel imperative.
Some years ago, as a selector at a Clergy selection conference, I interviewed a quite outstanding candidate. In those days, we graded candidates out of six on several criteria. I have never graded someone so highly before or since. I don’t know where she is now, but I think she will have been an outstanding priest. But here story was one of struggle. From an aggressively atheist family she had come to faith at university. For her, fidelity to Christ meant following the call to ordination. Her parents were hostile to say the least. She was torn between parental loyalty and the call of God. I’m glad obedience won through, but that was a family divided as a result.
Such division is not something Jesus is advocating we seek out, but it may be an inevitable part of our discipleship journey at times. Part of our humanity is that proud interiority that wants God to take a hike. We will know our own resistance to the way of love. Its no surprise that we encounter it in others too.
+Richard