Believing. Horton Davies
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God as transforming truth fulfills “the nature and destiny of man.” Examples of such preaching are to be found in the sermons of Archbishop Temple and Professor Herbert Farmer (Page 29). The second task is “to deepen the congregation’s understanding of God and, assisted by the interior power of the Holy Spirit in preacher and congregation alike, to awaken and confirm faith” (Page 30). Thus there is a teaching function and the task of arousing faith in the worshipers hearing the preacher. As the sermons in this volume affirm, Davies was both a preacher and a prophet, challenging his auditors to believe and to act in accordance with belief. This is “the expository type of preaching” exemplified in the sermons of Dr. W. Sangster, in England, Dr. James Stewart of the Church of Scotland, and the Rev. John R. W. Stott of the Church of England” (Page 30–31). The third task of the preacher, related to the second, “is to teach the holy love of God so as to elicit the response of adoration” (Page 31). Examples of such preaching are to be found in the sermons of Dr. J. H. Jowett and Dean Inge, proponents of Christ in mysticism. Davies also points to the Roman Catholic tradition as a whole in which devotional preaching flowers “in the rich loam of the Roman liturgy.” Davies came to possess a wide and rich knowledge of liturgy in the various denominational expressions and viewed his own preaching not in isolation from but in the context of liturgical worship as a whole. The fourth task is to assist the members of the congregation “to rediscover that their near or remote neighbors of every race and class are brothers in Christ. The motivation is compassion (literally a suffering with others), not sentimentality” (Page 32). Such moral or ethical preaching, exemplified by Henley Henson and William Temple, with their quest for social justice, was inspired in part by Davies’s experience preaching in London during the horrors of World War II, in South Africa during the apartheid regime, and in the United States during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.
Davies’s sermons in this volume exhibit the realization of these four tasks. Under the title of apologetic preaching there are many examples. I think of his sermon on “The Hidden God” expositing Isaiah 45:15. Here, during World War II, he remembers the pain and agony, the 10 million deaths of World War I, the Great War, and asks “Where was God then? Where is God today?” and seeks to answer the question in terms of God’s “dwelling in light unapproachable,” God’s transcendence, but also in relation to the profound insight into God’s respect for humanity. “He will not thrust himself upon men. If He did, He would undo His own works in us: He would take from us the most precious thing we have—our freedom of choice and will.” But, God, though hidden, is not absent. The Incarnation speaks to how God came hidden in the form of Christ, for us and for our salvation.
In sermons on the Incarnation Davies exhibits the challenge of the second task, teaching faith to arouse an awakening faith. He speaks in plain terms, teaching that at Christmas time “we celebrate not the rising of man to deity: but the infinite condescension of God to mankind. The Virgin Birth is simply a poetical and pictorial way of suggesting that the birth of Jesus was no ordinary birth. It was the spirit of divine intervention, with human cooperation, of the spirit of God and of Mary.” And so he proceeds ending with the assertion that the last word is not “argument: it is adoration in the presence of Christ.” To adore is to feel faith awakening, belief affirmed as we fall down before the One who is God incarnate. Here is evidence to the third task: to respond is properly adoration resulting in the life of the devout mystic or the ordinary way of life transformed by the Holy Spirit working in us.
Davies’s involvement in the fourth task was focused on realizing the effects of faith in life individually and corporately. His sermon called “A Victorious Faith: Conquering Racial Tension” given at the Congregational Church of Brookfield, Connecticut, on July 15, 1959, was clearly exemplary of the fourth task. Beginning with St. Paul (Galatians 3:26–28), Davies set forth the two great classes of the church’s inter-racial Charter that we are all God’s adopted children and that “Christ’s new family, the new ‘Christian race’ has overcome racial prejudice, class prejudice, educational prejudice and sexual prejudice.” It is not surprising that the world seeks to destroy such revolutionary affirmations. The preacher was clearly inspired by the Holy Spirit, stating with various illustrations that to be a disciple of Christ is to affirm the infinite worth of all people, to fight for justice for all.
This does not mean that Davies ultimately focused on social justice. Such justice was the fruit of faith in God, in Christ, by means of the Holy Spirit. A vital faith was integrally relational. First, it was so in relation to the church. Davies could be severely critical of the church when it mirrored the faulty society around it rather than reflecting the Kingdom of God. But, he affirmed that it was still, under God, the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic church. Believing is mainly belonging to a community that affirms the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And this affirmation leads to relationships to the world, the society to which it is sent by Christ with the message of love, reconciliation, forgiveness, peace and justice. Davies quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer as writing: “The Church is her true self only when she exists for humanity.” Davies adds:
In the past the church has been an institution alongside, not the leaven within the world it is meant to change . . . Christ is the man for others; the church is men and women for others. This is the suggestion of the central Christian affirmation of the Incarnation where we see the Supreme as servant.
Christian joy according to Davies involves “a good conscience”: freedom “from resentment against others or against life,” the affirmation of faith, the realization of trust, and finally “the deepest source of joy is a selfless spirit that forgets itself and its worries in seeking the good of others.” He recalls a newspaper photograph taken during the fire raids on London during the second World War, showing two elderly nuns in the midst of the smoke and terror delivering “trays of tea to the exhausted fire-fighters, unaware of their own danger, heroic, undisturbed.” He concludes, “They had all four secrets of Christian joy.”
In so speaking, Davies was bidding his listeners “to follow Christ, thus receiving that which the ever-living Christ promises you in his service, a clear conscience, the removal of bitterness, the faith and love that cast out fear and the selflessness of the Cross.”
Admittedly, reading the sermons of Horton Davies is not the same as hearing him preach them. But reading the few sermons that follow in this book gives you, and all of us, an opportunity to benefit from his inspiration, as in all good preaching, as spirit speaks to spirit, inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.
Artistry
Although most of the sermons in this collection were often youth sermons, yet one can find in them the artistry that led Horton to write later about the Puritan sermons and about the “metaphysical preachers.” Indeed Davies took sermons very seriously as the exposition of the Word of God. His family would know that on the morning of his preaching they had to make themselves scarce, so high was the level of intensity of the preacher. When in the pulpit, the sermons were delivered with controlled Welsh passion, the voice strong and persuasive, trying to keep his voice from falling at the end of sentences. This was a completely different manner from the humble and gentle delivery of his lectures or precepts. He preached with great conviction, very much aware of the responsibility that preaching entailed, on truth, the human condition and the turmoils of the world he lived in.
Typically a sermon would be 4 to 6 single-spaced typewritten pages in length and very compact. Davies preferred the plain style of the Puritans, designed to move his flock to repentance and transform them into soldiers of Christ or saints. However, if judgment was passed, Davies rarely resorted to invective. In “Eternal Life: Heaven and Hell” he said:
That kind of preaching has gone. It has gone because it is not the purpose of our Faith to offer men salvation as a fire-escape. It has gone because its conception of God and of our Lord was vindictive, cruel and unworthy. But, and here lies the mistake, we have rejected the Christian doctrine of judgment because the imagery in which it was clothed was liable to be crudely used.
As an ecumenist, he alternatively followed the Christian calendar without necessarily adhering to the lectionary, or took up the Creed and atypically for modern Puritans, did not pursue the expository of one of the books of the Bible. He adhered faithfully to Christological themes, in exegesis and applications of Scripture related to contemporary situations. As in other