A Different Drum

Last Wednesday 150 of us packed around a 6m x 6m square stage, up close to the five actors of Riding Lights as they performed a different drum – truly riveting, inspirational theatre. Having lived in Derbyshire when I was a curate I was pleased that the story focused on the villagers of Eyam in north Derbyshire, where in 1665 the village decided to sit out the plague, which had arrived unnoticed with a cloth merchant from London, carried by the fleas in his overpriced cloth. In order to protect surrounding villages, and even the nearby city of Sheffield, from the plague, the villagers decided to live in a self-enforced isolation for a year, and in 1666 the plague was gone and one third of the village had died. There has been no major outbreak of the plague in the UK since.

With this story at the heart of the evening we heard other stories of how inspired by the teachings of Jesus people and communities defied convention, oppression and even laws to demonstrate their love for God and others – people prepared to walk to the sound of a different drum:

Revd ‘Woodbine Willie’ Kennedy with his faith and cigarettes in the WWI trenches; Archbishop Oscar Romero standing up against the torture, assassinations and injustice of the government of El Salvador; the Catholic monks of the Notre-Dame de L’Atlas monastery dying with, rather than deserting, their Muslim neighbours; and contemporary stories of Katie Davis working selflessly with Ugandan Children and Anna and Chris Hembury working with CMS in the most troubled areas of Hull. All walking to the sound of a different drum. His drum. Christ the drummer.

As we mark Jesus riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday with our ‘sweet hosannas’, perhaps our perception of this event has become a bit house-trained; domesticated by repetition and familiar ritual. We might miss this one man riding against the efficient brutality of the Roman Empire and the political scheming of the religious establishment. We might miss one man dying that others may live. We might forget that for many to take up their cross and follow Christ is more than a philosophy. Palm Sunday reminds us that because Christ entered Jerusalem to the sound of a different drum, we are forever called to live and speak differently. Words from Archbishop to lead us to the cross:

“We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us.”