Anna and the Royal Hospital School
Sermon for Weekday Worship in the School Chapel – Thursday 13 March 2025
One day I was stopped by Sunday School Teacher. Sunday School Teacher asked me, no, told me, to instruct Anna to behave herself in the class. I asked what it was that Anna had done or had not done and was told: one, that Anna interrupted, two, that Anna contradicted, and three, that Anna used bad language.
Anna could, I admit, use a pretty good cuss-word at times and I tried to explain to Sunday School Teacher that, although Anna sometimes used language badly, she never in fact used the language of badness. My arrow missed the target completely. I could well imagine that Anna had interrupted her and also that she had contradicted her, but she wouldn’t tell me the circumstances of this episode. That evening I spoke to Anna on the subject. I told her that I had met Sunday School Teacher and told her what had been said.
‘Not going to no Sunday School no more.’
‘Why not?’
‘ ‘Cos she don’t teach you nuffink about Mister God.’
‘Perhaps you don’t listen properly.’
‘I do, and she don’t say nuffink.’
‘You mean to say you don’t learn anything?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Oh, that’s good. What do you learn?’
‘Sunday School Teacher is frightened.’
What makes you say that sort of thing; how do you know that she’s frightened?’
‘Well, she won’t let Mister God get bigger.’
(from ‘Mister God, this is Anna’ by Fynn)
ooooOOOoooo
‘Your God is too Small’ a book written by theologian and Bible translator JB Phillips in 1953 – 15 years after Anna’s story and 20 years before her words were written down – laid out the problem of thinking we know everything about anything and especially about knowing all there is to know about God.
Phillips list the names of some of our ‘small’ Gods – you may recognise a few;
The Resident Policeman, a Parental Hangover, God the Grand Old Man,
Meek-and-Mild Jesus, God-in-a-Box – the challenge faced by Anna’s Sunday School teacher, and (Lord please deliver us from this one) Jesus the Pale Galilean!
Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion was making the same protest. My very naïve critique of that work though is that Dawkins does not always see that he is himself speaking from the God-Box of his own privileged background and education at Oundle School (interestingly enough they do not list him as one of their famous Alumni….)
Wisdom is not about ‘God in a box’ but allowing ourselves to be called out of the box.
Wisdom is knowing that we don’t know everything about anything
Wisdom is facing the fear of our incompetence and incomprehension
Wisdom is learning the glorious truth that occasionally we might be wrong
Whenever we put God, or our belief system, or our ethical structures into a box we render them powerless and end up re-making the things that should help us grow and flourish into our own image. And, much as I think I’m not a too bad vicar, that Collingwood is the House closest to God, and am just a teensy bit proud to be allowed to put #RHSmadeMe on my Socials, I am not the centre of the universe.
Novelist and Christian Mystic Evelyn Underhill has this too say about how we box God in;
‘If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.’ (Evelyn Underhill)
The Book of Proverbs says:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. (Proverbs 9v10)
But this is not a quaking hiding fear wherein we dodge the wrath of God. That is to put God back in a box.
The Fear of God is knowing that we don’t know. This fills our lives with hope and encourages us to journey with Peter Pan on ‘An awfully big adventure’.
‘Your God is too Small’. Admittedly it is safe to keep God in a box. There we can limit God’s demands on our lives. There we can mould God into our image and force God to hate the people we hate and love only people like us.
And on that road lies only darkness and despair.
Let Mister God get bigger!
Suffolk Vicar 