we are condemned by what contradicts us most. St. Francis, Dr. Schweitzer, and supremely their Lord and ours, shame us, humble us.”
The sermon “Christianity as the Servant Church” is particularly resonant with oppositions, as Davies tries to show the evolution of the church for the needs of the modern world. Describing Christ as the man for others, Davies states: “He is not the pre-existent Christ but the pro-existent Christ.” Defining the social role of the church, we hear: “It is to be a holy secularity, not set apart, but sent serving into secularity” and later, according to Gibson Winter, it is neither a “cultic organism . . . nor a confessional fortress . . . but . . . a prophetic fellowship.”
Questioning can occasionally become hypothesis to convince the unbeliever. In “The Hidden God,” Davies has to defend to a stricken congregation the choice of God to give us free will to do good or bad. To the question: “Why doesn’t God intervene and stop the war?” he retorts: “Suppose God had chosen the former way: then there would be no moral evil in the world . . . But what would be the value of such service, when the creature who gave it was not free to do otherwise?” But this is a rare occurrence.
What is not rare is the use of exclamation as a way to reach the heart in assent or indignation. In “Immortality” Davies expresses the liberation brought by the assurance of immortality in these terms:
It is the eternal home-coming! What are twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years compared with eternity! What is liberation from the evil clutches of the Gestapo, compared with liberation from death, the last enemy that shall be destroyed in our passing hence! Death is abolished, liquidated, annihilated by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ . . . What great glory to God!
In “A victorious faith conquering racial prejudice,” exclamation is used as irony. Color-blindness in a country with racial tensions like Africa or the America of the fifties and sixties is viewed thus by its detractors: “This is revolutionary! Crush it! Away with troublemakers! Crucify them! These are they that have turned the world upside down!”
Illustrations and Examples
Davies was convinced that the only thing most people remembered in a sermon was the illustration, hence his care in choosing examples and coining imagery. He refers to musicians, but analyses paintings. He admired the luminosity of Rembrandt’s paintings and speaks of his Ecce Homo in the anecdote of a little girl who challenged the master. As he expressed his admiration for the sacrifice of Christ and she realized the profound gratitude of the painter, she asked him bluntly what he had done for Him. This, tradition says, was the origin of the famous painting. This, Davies argues, is the question one should ask all Christians.
There are also two references to Raphael whom he liked for a different kind of luminosity, that of the Italian sky. One is to the paintings in the rooms of the Vatican. The other mixes description and drama. In “Lord I believe, help my unbelief” Davies first depicts Raphael’s painting of Christ healing the epileptic boy, with its human drama, to contrast it with the peace of the mountain of the Transfiguration. Then, to make the picture come to life, he dramatizes the dialogue between the humble and worried father and the healing Jesus. There are other references to visual art, as in “Saints alive,” a reference to stained-glass windows and MGM pictures. In “Christianity as a Servant Church” he goes over the gamut of changing fashions in art from post-impressionism to “Op” art and proceeds to correlate art and religion.
Examples are taken out of the Bible, of history, literature or real life. He correlates the learned to everyday life, and human experience to the biblical testimony. For instance in “The Harvest of the Holy Spirit,” in a discourse of the three forms of love, Eros, Philia and Agape, he explains Eros by the statue erected on Piccadilly Circus.
Further human and humorous instances include in “Why I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church” the anecdote taken from Victor Murray, when a schoolboy expresses pride in his school, but confesses that he is a bad representative, or in the same sermon, the story of the poor man who is promised a crown in England and would prefer the modest sum of half a crown in the immediate present, with the pun on the word “crown.”
In “Immortality” he uses quid pro quo to lighten the mood in the time of war:
The story is told that an American soldier was walking along Whitehall. He had only recently arrived in London and it was therefore unfamiliar to him. He saw a British colonel approaching in his red hat. Undaunted he asked him: “Which side is the War Office on?” The Colonel’s eyes twinkled as he gave the laconic reply, “On our side I hope.”
In “The severity of God,” there is the story of the old lady who thought that her friend knocking at the door in love was the owner come to collect her rent, to show the fear that people have of letting God into their lives, and that he might take over. There is the story of Bishop Quayle preaching about “trust in God,” but incapable of letting go of his daily worries and go to sleep at night. And there is the little girl who gives an ethical lesson to Rembrandt. Other prominent examples have already been dealt with.
Imagery, Metaphors and Similes
Besides these stories we find also an amazing number of images and metaphors drawn from all areas of life. Some are expected: the Holy Spirit as a bird, for instance; but most are vivid. Many are taken from nature, many are mixed metaphors.
In “The Harvest of the Holy Spirit” he uses a scatological image to show the cleansing of Christ: “see Him turn the cesspool of Corinth into a well of water undefiled. A church of God in Corinth, it was like creating a Christian community out of the brothels of Paris!” Or he can be gruesome as in “Wanted a perpetual Pentecost”: “Without the presence of the Spirit of God, in the souls of members, the church becomes a human museum, a collection of stuffed-human beings, dead.” In “The meaning of the Resurrection” he states: “It would be blasphemous for me to think of the Ruler of the Universe as a giant Hooper, impersonally conveying the carcasses of humanity to the great refuse-heap of time.”
His images can be unusual either because of their coining or their application. In “Sin is rebellion against God,” we read that these words seem “as remote as old rusty Roman coins, or a Victorian penny-farthing, or a fossil.” Later he uses an image from apparel: “He has confessed his sin as he might acknowledge the color of his socks or the size of his hat,” to show the levity with which sin is taken in the psychologist’s world. In “Wanted, a perpetual Pentecost” he speaks of the desiccated souls of men with a mixed death metaphor: “They are pressed petals in a botanist book, preserved fruits bottled in a dark larder.” And in “The Verdict,” the bereaved are “barricaded behind the door of fear.” Of Christ he uses a colloquial metaphor: “Jesus did not seem to have bees in his bonnet,” we read in “The Divinity of our Lord.”
The way between death and life is described in coruscating fashion. In “The meaning of the Cross” the weather image is brought forth as a storm:
Have you ever been on a hill-top in a storm? Once I was. The black cumulus clouds were piling up, filling the valley below me with darkness. The landscape soon was blotted out; the sky and land were deep in mourning, and the wind whistled and shrieked like a soul in pain. But suddenly, for an instant, the clouds parted, and a golden arrow of sunlight broke through the dense darkness.
The Cross is like that. At history’s darkest point, there breaks forth history’s most blinding light. Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. The occasion of man’s blackest crime and deepest degradation, reveals the blazing wonder of God’s holy, forgiving, and reconciling love.
And in “Terminus becomes tunnel” we visualize:
The impenetrable curtain dividing the end of this
