Heroes and Villains
Sunday 27th August 2023
So God created mankind in his own image (Genesis 1:27, NIV).
… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23, NIV).
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Heroes and Villains
We recently visited ‘The Garden of Heroes and Villains’ near Stratford-on-Avon. It was the creation of Felix Dennis, a publisher and poet who died in 2014, and contains 50 or so bronze sculptures which he personally commissioned, each one wonderfully executed and set in a beautifully landscaped garden.
I think it is fair to say that it is a somewhat eclectic – even eccentric – collection. The first sculpture you meet is of Albrecht Dürer’s Rhinoceros. Then there are The Beatles, The Owl and the Pussycat, Muhammad Ali, Tim Berners-Lee, Winston Churchill, a scene from the battle of Thermopylae, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. You get the idea!
Why ‘Heroes and Villains’? Because Dennis acknowledges that one person’s hero is another person’s villain, and indeed that there is something of the hero or the villain in each one of us. Perhaps he saw both in himself?
I have no reason to think that Felix Dennis was a Christian, but this is a distinctly Christian insight. It stems from seeing that every singly human being as both made in the image of God (and so a ‘hero’) and at the same time has fallen short of the glory of God (and so a ‘villain’). And we need to remember that both are true: true of ourselves and of every person we will meet. We are both created by God and fallen from grace.
It helps to explain why wicked things can seem natural to us. It helps to explain why apparently good people can do thoroughly wicked things, and also why deeply bad people can sometimes do genuinely good things. It helps to explain why the world we live in, and every part of it, can appear at times both beautiful and broken. It means that prayers of both thanks and confession are appropriate for us.
Father, help me to see what is created by you and good, and make me thankful for it; and help me to see what is fallen and bad, and make me sorrowful for that. Amen.
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)