{"id":645,"date":"2010-10-13T08:25:26","date_gmt":"2010-10-13T08:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardlittledale.wordpress.com\/?p=645"},"modified":"2010-10-13T08:25:26","modified_gmt":"2010-10-13T08:25:26","slug":"of-shepherds-and-fluffy-kittens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/2010\/10\/13\/of-shepherds-and-fluffy-kittens\/","title":{"rendered":"Of shepherds and fluffy kittens&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"color:#333399;\">&#8230;was the title of a Christmas sermon written and never preached in 1993<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>BBC\u00a0news reader Martyn\u00a0Lewis\u00a0had recently made a statement lamenting the absence of good news stories from the television news, and been lambasted by his colleagues for wanting to feature more &#8220;fluffy kitten&#8221; stories. My intention had been to preach on the rough and ready shepherds being told genuinely good news by the angels in a setting which was anything but cutesy. In the end this was overtaken by world news events and the sermon was never preached.<\/p>\n<p>This morning I watched with unashamed tears in my eyes as another miner was brought to the surface at the\u00a0San\u00a0Jose mine in Chile in a genuinely good news story. A number of things struck me:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The tremendous respect shown to the miner&#8217;s wife &#8211; with everyone from dignitaries to engineers stepping back to give her first hug of her husband.<\/li>\n<li>The word &#8220;Chile&#8221; emblazoned on the top of the phoenix rescue capsule. Chile may have all sorts of questions to answer in the future about mine safety, but right now this is a moment of national triumph to savour.<\/li>\n<li>The President and First Lady waiting in line to greet the miner.<\/li>\n<li>The transparent pleasure and surprise on the face of the chief rescue engineer when the miner made a point of turning to him to thank him.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Like many preachers I will be thinking about how this story may feature in what I say on Sunday. However, may I share one or two cautions?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Don&#8217;t hijack the story<\/span>. This is not in fact a story about Jesus rescuing people even though it may have all kinds of parallels.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Don&#8217;t recruit the miners to your cause<\/span>. They may have sent for Bibles to read deep down in the mine, and expressed much faith in their letters sent to the surface. Reputedly one of them even said &#8216;There are actually 34 of us, because God has never left us down here&#8221;.\u00a0However, don&#8217;t turn them into Christian heroes just yet -for now they just need to be ordinary people in an extraordinary setting. Subsequent reflection may bring many spiritual lessons from their experience &#8211; but let the dust settle first.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Do enjoy this story of human triumph<\/span>. On the occasion of his best friend&#8217;s wedding, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was unable to attend as he was\u00a0imprisoned. In his wedding sermon, he wrote of his &#8220;joy that human beings can do such great things&#8221;. This is just such a moment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Pretty soon the <a href=\"http:\/\/richardlittledale.wordpress.com\/2010\/08\/31\/a-camp-called-hope\/\">Camp called Hope<\/a> will be dismantled, the rescue equipment will be shipped off elsewhere, the media will move on to the next story&#8230;and many of these men will return under the earth again because that is where the work is to be found. For now as Pastors, preachers&#8230;and human beings we should just enjoy the story.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00a0would\u00a0great to hear about other people&#8217;s concerns or experiences in communicating this story in preaching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;was the title of a Christmas sermon written and never preached in 1993 BBC\u00a0news reader Martyn\u00a0Lewis\u00a0had recently made a statement lamenting the absence of good news stories from the television news, and been lambasted by his colleagues for wanting to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/2010\/10\/13\/of-shepherds-and-fluffy-kittens\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,70,117],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}