Dear All
I have been reflecting this month on a particular Bible passage;
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?”
These words of Jesus ask a searching question of the church. When someone comes to us hungry, grieving, ashamed, frightened or alone, what do we place into their hands? Abstract solutions can become stones instead of bread; judgement on another person’s experience or choices can become a snake instead of a fish.
I have been fortunate enough to train twice for ministry. My first formation was three years of full-time contextualised ministry based in Blackheath, just outside Greenwich. It took me among the armed forces in Germany, people experiencing homelessness in central London, youth work in Nottingham, Liverpool and Stockton, and industrial mission, literally down a coal mine in Coventry. Later, when I studied theology in Durham and completed teacher training in Leeds, I never forgot that first training. It put flesh on the bones of academic ministry and deepened my conviction that incarnation lies at the heart of faithful service. God’s answer to the human condition is not merely to speak from heaven, but to step into our shoes and live among us.
That experience taught me that the church does not need a prescriptive gospel of platitudes. We do not need a faith that speaks before it listens or ministry that offers explanation before compassion. People do not come to Christ as problems to be solved, but as human beings carrying hunger, grief, fear, shame, loneliness, longing and hope. If we meet them only with formulas, however pious, we have not loved them; we have given them stones instead of bread. If we judge their human experience or choices before we understand them, we have given a snake instead of a fish.
The gospel we need is incarnational. “The Word became flesh” is not a decorative doctrine; it is the pattern of God’s love. In Jesus Christ, God entered our life from within. Christ walked our roads, shared our hunger, touched our wounds, sat at our tables, wept at our graves and carried our pain. Incarnation means that love comes close and meets people not as categories or causes, but as neighbours.
This is the gospel the church is called to embody. It does not begin by telling people what they should feel, believe or overcome. It begins by drawing near. Love requires solidarity: listening before speaking, staying present when there are no simple answers and walking in another person’s shoes long enough to feel something of the weight they carry. Anything less risks becoming another abstract answer, another stone placed into empty hands.
Good news must be good news in context. To the hungry, it must become bread; to the grieving, presence; to the lonely, companionship; to the stranger, welcome; to the ashamed, mercy. To the person bruised by judgement, poverty, illness, exclusion or loss, good news cannot arrive as a lecture. A lecture may sound correct and still be a stone. Condemnation may sound moral and still be a snake. The gospel must arrive as Christ arrived: in flesh and friendship, truth and tenderness, justice and healing.
Teaching, scripture, creed and conviction matter, but they must never substitute for love. A creed that does not lead to compassion becomes a stone. A sermon that does not teach us to see the wounded becomes noise. And when our certainty turns into judgement on the lives and choices of others, what we offer is not fish but a snake. Truth is not weakened by tenderness; it is fulfilled through it.
Jesus did not heal from a distance. He noticed people, asked questions, allowed himself to be interrupted, touched those others avoided and listened to those others dismissed. His holiness moved towards need. If we are to be his church, we must move the same way: not away from pain into safe religious language, but towards pain with open hands, attentive ears and lives willing to be changed.
An incarnational church does not ask first, “What can we prescribe?” It asks, “Where is Christ already suffering, waiting and calling us to come near?” It listens for God’s voice in the hungry, the exhausted carer, the grieving, the anxious young, the displaced refugee and the lonely person who feels unseen. It learns that ministry is not done to people, but with people. Love without solidarity becomes sentiment. Love without listening becomes control.
Love without the humility to walk in another’s shoes becomes judgement. The gospel calls us to share life, carry burdens and offer bread, not merely words about bread. It calls us to become a community where people are received, heard and accompanied.
This kind of love is costly because it changes us. When we truly listen, we may have to surrender assumptions; when we stand in solidarity, risk comfort; when we walk in another’s shoes, admit that our tidy answers were too small. Yet transformation begins here: in meeting Christ in the suffering and hope of our neighbour.
Matthew 7 does not invite the church to become more confident in its slogans, but more faithful in love. If someone asks for bread, they need bread; if they ask for mercy or to be heard, they need our presence, not impatience. We must resist offering spiritual stones: polished sayings, defensive doctrines and quick advice that leave people as hungry as before. And we must refuse the spiritual snake of judgement, which wounds people by condemning their experience before we have listened to their story.
So, let the church become flesh again in the world. Let our faith take the form of listening, solidarity, hospitality, justice, patience and shared tears. Let us enter the places where people actually live, rather than calling them towards the places where we feel safe. May Christ deliver us from stones of abstraction and snakes of judgement, and make us a people of incarnation: bread for the hungry, presence for the grieving, welcome for the stranger, mercy for the ashamed and companions on the road where love learns to walk in another’s shoes.
God bless.
Eric