What should I have said?
Dear Friends,
I should have seen it coming. I was talking with a lady I met. It wasn’t long before she found out that I was a vicar, and straight away she asked me what I thought of the protest outside St Paul’s Cathedral. I could have been prepared for that one! To my shame, I realised I hadn’t really given it much thought, and I mumbled something feeble and incoherent.
What should I have said? People naturally like to sit in judgment of others and their situations. So it’s tempting to answer a question like that in those terms, and to decide in favour of either the protestors or the authorities.
I wish now that I’d tried to say something about God, especially something that might have allowed the conversation to develop. Perhaps something along these lines: “Well, I wonder what God thinks? What do you think about that?”
Or, even better, I could have put it in terms of Jesus: “What would Jesus say about it, I wonder?” The advantage of this is that it introduces Jesus, not just God, and it immediately suggests that he’s alive and still an authority worth listening to. Who knows where such a conversation might lead? But I didn’t do it. Let’s hope I’m better prepared next time. By the way, what might you have said in response to that question?…
Chris Hobbs, Vicar