Tag Archives: Christianity

All Posts, Blog, Published Talks

Compost for the vegetable patch

Leave a comment

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

Matthew 5:13

Developed from a sermon preached at Felpham Methodist Church, West Sussex, on 5th February for their Vision Sunday. The full audio recording of the sermon is available below.

Audio recording

Compost for the vegetable patch

When we moved into our home, the garden was a mess. the bushes and weeds hadn’t been pruned regularly, and so it had all become rather overgrown. but one day, as we cut back some of the overgrown bushes, I was delighted to find a compost bin.

That compost bin now sits proudly on the corner of the vegetable patch, and in it we collect the grass cuttings, vegetable peelings and the occasional mouldy orange – and over time the worms do their thing and it all becomes compost, which has helped to boost the soil and grow great plants and crops on our veggie patch.

In the last weeks, all the autumn’s offerings have meant the compost bin has been overflowing, and I recently had to dig out some from out of the bottom to make space for more to be added.

Compost is great for the garden, but only when it is used. My compost will never serve its purpose if I leave it in the compost bin. it needs working into the soil to fulfil its purpose.

Jesus’ words ‘you are the salt of the earth’ in Matthew 5 are often understood as calling us, as salt, to flavour the earth, the world, will God’s goodness. But sometimes this can also lead to seeing the world as other than ‘us’, and something to not be directly engaged in, for fear of being tarnished by an unsalted world.

But, while the idea of being people who bring the flavour of God to the world can be a helpful metaphor – I find another interpretaiton equally helpful, if not more so.

Because in Jesus day, I don’t think they had table salt as we do today. So the word we read as ‘salt’ might have meant something slightly different to Jesus first hearers.

In the dead sea area of Palestine, minerals we now know as phosphate were plentiful, and used to fertilize the ground and were spread and dug into the land.

So when we read Jesus saying you are the salt of the earth, could Jesus actually have been saying you are the minerals of the soil? The compost for the vegetable patch?

In many ways I find that a comfort and encouragement. That might seem odd… why would I find encouragement in being told I am a mouldy orange or pile of potato peelings?

But for me, I find that an encouragement because it reminds me that despite my own self-doubt, my imperfections, my brokenness, my humanity, my own feelings that I can never live up to what God wants for me – God says you have great potential.

Even in the mess of my life,
there is goodness and fruitfulness to be discovered.

Jesus doesn’t want perfect human specimens, stored up in a salt cellar of equally human specimens, looking out on the world.

Jesus wants us to be real. Human.
Jesus wants us, calls us, loves us, warts and all…
And invites us to be salt of the earth,
the mineral for the soil,
potato skins, banana peels and grass cuttings – compost for the veggie patch, with great worth, purpose, potential and goodness.

So Jesus invites us to get out and live on the earth, dug into the soil of the world. Getting stuck in and living as people of God.

All Posts

Is there room for conversation about inclusion?

1 Comment

This week, as part of a series of blog posts engaging with the Methodist Church in Great Britain’s Advent & Christmas theme ‘There Is Room’, I posted a blog titled ‘There is Room for All Ages and Genders’.

The brief blog reflected on my own experince leading a school assembly last week, and through the charcter of Mary reflected on God’s calling to all people regardless of societal expectations around age and gender.

I confess to it being the blog post in the series that I was most anxious about – because there is so much debate and vitrol around gender in particular at the moment, in society and especially on social media. But I having been moved and challenged by my own experience during the assembly, this was a reflection I wanted to share.

As always, the post also linked to Twitter, and I’ve been surprised by some of the response… challenging my use of language in the blog, suggesting it was the most exclusive depiction of inclusion and blasphemy. Others challenged that to talk about age and gender was not inclusive because and lacked narrative about abuse, appearance and beauty.

I’m not perfect, no one is, and when it comes to the use of language, we are all at the mercy of writing something that means one thing to us but gets interpreted in different ways by others. We write from our perspectives, our experiences, our limited learning and understanding.

And I know as a white, heterosexual man I write from a place of privilege and power. I’m always conscious of that, and as a result, I know there are times in my past where I have dissuaded myself from engaging in this area. Knowing others have more experience, more knowledge, more right to speak into the debate.

But recently I’ve found myself feeling challenged afresh by God that in being relatively silent, I serve to enable the powerful, not empower the powerless. That I will facilitate the marginaliser, not stand alongside the marginalised. In not being explicit in speaking up – I abuse the place in which God has placed me.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised at all that posting about inclusion of age and gender led to a backlash. But I think the idea that one short blog, from one voice, reflecting on my experience of one tiny part of scriptures story, should tackle every nook and cranny of inclusion, seems ridiculous.

Twitter isn’t always a healthy space – cramming what we want to say into 280 characters often drowns out the possibility of nuance and at times, friendliness.

Jesus was not afraid to challenge, but the gospel I read also shows Jesus’s character was one of compassion and grace. He taught his disciples, sometimes he rebuked them, but he also educated them.

This experience of choosing to speak out, while knowing I have less personal right to speak on it that others, leads me to ask – Is there room? Is there room for conversation? Is there room to help one another learn? Is there room to share together constructively, with compassion and grace, rather than shoot one another down?

I leave you witha short quote from John Wesley, which has guided me through many moments of diverse opinion in my early years of ministry.

“Be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion…
love each other, despite holding differing opinions.”

John Wesley, 44 Sermons
All Posts, Book Recomendations

Recommended Read: Unapologetic

Leave a comment

Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense.
Written by Francis Spufford.

Published by Faber & Faber, 2012

I have loved reading this fresh and bold story and exposition of why belief in God matters and makes a difference. Loved it, but struggled to work out how to share it with you – because it is not a book that is easily reviewed – it simply needs to be read and experienced for yourselves.

I’ll be honest – it is a challenging read – not that the words are hard to read – in fact quite the opposite, you may well struggle to put it down. But it is challenging because every page has at least one line, idea, or phrase that will make you stop and need to think about – possibly even want to disagree with – and then find your mind blown and read on to the next bit that makes you stop and think.

Spufford offers a unique presentation on how to make sense of God, faith, Jesus, bible and church for today – challenging any reader to look in a mirror, recognise our brokenness and need for mending and to find that mending in the grace of Jesus.

Unapologetic will make you think deeply and differently about life and relationships and faith. It asks questions about the existence of God, how we understand sin, why there is suffering in the world and how on earth Jesus dying is what brought redemption to the world. And to those questions there are few definitive answers offered, but there is a whole lot of Jesus , and a whole lot of hope offered in the questions, the mystery and the uncertainty that emerges. Oh, and a whole lot of unconditional, unwavering grace.

Church, Spufford argues, is a space of failed people seeking to perpetuate the unlimited generosity of God. it is a messy place, where the institution messes up (actually, Spuffords language is more colourful than that!), but Christ is still looking at and God is still shining.

Spufford concludes (and this gives you a flavoyr of all the book explores):

“If that is, there is a God. There may well not be, don’t know whether here is. And neither do you, and neither does Richard bloody Dawkins, and neither does anyone. What I do know is that, when I am lucky, when I have managed to pay attention, when for once I have hushed my noise for a little while, it can feel as if there is one. And so it makes emotional sense to proceed as if He’s there; to dare the conditional. And not timid death-fearing emotional sense, or cowering craven master-seeking sense, or censorious holier-than-thou sense, either. Hopeful sense. Realistic sense. Battered-about-but-still-trying sense. The sense recommended by our awkward sky fairy, who says: don’t be careful. Don’t be surprised by any human cruelty. But don’t be afraid. Far more can be mended that you know.”