Family Communion
- Occurring
- for 1 hour, 15 mins
- Venue
- Kidbrooke, St Nicholas
- Address Whetstone Road Kidbrooke London, SE3 8PX, United Kingdom
Family Communion for the First Sunday after Trinity: celebrant the Revd Tola Badejo.
First reading: Psalm 42. 1–14
Gospel: Luke 8. 26–39
Psalm 42 is about faith challenged by adversity, and the psalmist's reliance on God even when God seems to have abandoned him. The deer longs for water because. like the psalmist, it is being pursued by hunters intending its death, be they wild animals or humans. The psalmist, against all objective evidence, is utterly confident that in the end God will save him.
In a way, the Gospel illustrates the salvation longed for in the psalm, although it comes to a different person in a completely different context. The man possessed by a legion of demons is not the victim of political conspiracy or civil war, but someone suffering extreme problems of personality or mental health, to an extent that makes his own life intolerable and lays a heavy burden on his community. It's worth reflecting on what Jesus does here: he engages with someone whom most people would, with good reason, be careful to avoid and brings healing in a situation which (like the psalmist's) appeared objectively hopeless.
The Bible is full of animal imagery, and, particularly in the Old Testament, animals are often seen very positively, as representations of attributes of God. In the Christian Middle Ages the stag had come to be regarded as a symbol of purity and nobility, and as such was adopted as an emblem by King Richard II. The image above is the reverse of the Wilton Diptych, a two-panel travelling altarpiece made for the king in about 1395. On the front (see attached) are the kneeling king and, behind him, John the Baptist and two regal saints: Edward the Confessor and Edmund, king of East Anglia. It's interesting that although by this time St George was generally regarded as as the patron saint of England, Richard chose two solidly historical English figures as his supporters, one of whom was undoubtedly martyred for his faith in our own country. Above the St George's Cross banner on the right is a tiny circle which contains a miniature map of Britain - the 'precious stone set in a silver sea' described by Shakespeare in his play 'Richard II'.
