Video for April 30th, 2026
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
I wonder if you’ve been on one of those conferences or events where they run an icebreaker to encourage you to get to know one another a bit better. I’m a bit hung up myself, so I’ve entered into them reluctantly. One of the less cringeworthy ones asks you to submit an unusual hobby or interest from your childhood. Whenever I’ve done it no-one has ever guessed mine. But in the interests of transparency and full disclosure I share with you that when I was younger, I used to breed and collect butterflies and tropical silk moths. The latter required humid and warm conditions for the caterpillars. My mother was frequently alarmed to discover plastic boxes containing enormous caterpillars in the airing cupboard. In my pre-Christian days, it was the closest I got to wonder and worship. There is something almost miraculous about the way an insect can change from an egg, through an ugly caterpillar to emerge from its chrysalis or cocoon as the most exquisite butterfly or moth. I still rejoice when I see small tortoishell and peacock caterpillars eating the nettles on the bank of the Wye beyond our garden fence. For, me a butterfly flying by will always invite closer observation. They bring me joy. I was walking around the Laskett garden last year and a small copper butterfly landed on my finger. I treasure the photograph.
In his final words to his disciples in John 15: 11, Jesus said, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete”. Its hard to see joy amid current political events and their knock-on effect on livelihoods. Its hard to see joy amid severe illness. Although some of the most moving stories in the debate on assisted dying in the House of Lords last week were voices that described joy in the face of death. St. Augustine said, “In the House of God, there is never any festival; the angel choir makes eternal holiday; the presence of God’s face gives joy which never fails”. The resurrection encourages us to look at the world in a different way; to look at joy without having to pretend it isn’t there because of the suffering of the world. There is a tendency in English culture to be wary of excessive displays of emotion, both positive and negative. Anglicanism is frequently the religious manifestation of it, like the bishop during the Wesleyan revival in the 18th century who described methodist fervour as ‘a very horrid thing’ or those members of the congregation in Pulverbatch in the same period who pelted Sukey Harley, a pioneer of charismatic experience in that parish, from the balcony during services. One of the wonderful gifts a more multi-cultural church has brought to us is a less self-conscious celebration in worship. It has been a joy to visit other countries less influenced by western culture and share in the exuberant praise and thanksgiving. If you can’t un-self-consciously celebrate with joy the fact that God has raised Jesus from the dead, defeated death itself, opened the way to eternal life and conclusively demonstrated that evil will not have the last word I’m not sure what you can celebrate.
There is so much suffering in the world that we perhaps think that it cancels it out, as if it’s a zero-sum gain, or says that we don’t care about suffering. But the story of Holy week holds the two together. As disciples we shouldn’t look away when we are confronted with suffering. Love should prompt us to action. But in a similar way we shouldn’t look away from the joy in embarrassment. Its an equal part of the face of reality. In the great story that God is telling it will be joy that has the last word, not the pain. At the end God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, because there will be no more mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will pass away. We read those verses from Revelation 21 frequently at funerals.
I was grateful for my colleague Bishop Hugh’s reflections on the above at a conference last week. He brought it together, the joy and the suffering, beautifully with a few lines from TS Eliot’s poem, Wait without Hope. I’ll finish for this week with that.
“So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.”
+Richard