Reflection on the readings for the 5th July, the 5th Sunday after Trinity: 10.30 Service
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Readings: Zechariah 9:9-12; Matthew 11:16-19,25-end
Today’s reflection is by the Vicar, the Revd Canon Jonathan Cain.
What sort of ships?
I want to begin with a question asked by a child. Not a clever question. Not a complicated question. But a question that cut straight to the heart.
Some years ago, my neighbour Alwyn, an anaesthetist in the Leeds Hospitals Trust, took unpaid leave to volunteer on a Mercy Ship off the coast of Benin in West Africa. Mercy Ships, as many of you know, are floating hospitals that bring free, life changing surgery to some of the poorest communities in the world. Since 1978 they’ve served in more than fifty-five countries, offering healthcare valued at over £1.3 billion. Their mission is simple and profoundly Christlike: to bring hope and healing to the forgotten poor.
When Alwyn returned, he gave a talk at Menston Parish Church. Many of us went along. We heard stories of people whose lives had been transformed; stories that echoed the healing miracles of Jesus. One woman had lived for years with double incontinence and bleeding after complications in childbirth. On the Mercy Ship she received surgery that restored her dignity, her health, her hope.
After the talk came the questions. The adults asked what adults tend to ask: How much does the ship cost? How many crew members? How many operations a week?
All sensible questions.
And then came a question from a child, my eldest son, Arthur, who was twelve at the time. He asked:
“Why are there not more mercy ships?”
A question that cut through everything. A question that carried wisdom.
Today, sadly, the news is full of ships of a very different kind. Oil tankers stranded in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian attack boats. American warships. And closer to home, debates about what sort of ships the Royal Navy should build as nations rearm after decades of arms control.
It is sobering how quickly the world moves from cooperation to competition. From restraint to rearmament. From hope to fear.
And Arthur’s question lingers: Why are there not more mercy ships? Why do we invest so much in instruments of destruction, and so little in instruments of healing?
Before we go further, it helps to distinguish two ideas: disarmament and arms control. Disarmament means eliminating weapons. Arms control means limiting or regulating them. Most successful agreements in history have been arms control, not disarmament. Nations have been willing to limit competition, but rarely willing to give up weapons entirely, especially when they fear rivals might cheat.
And the lesson historians draw is blunt: Treaties succeed or fail not because of their design, but because of the political will of the major powers. When trust collapses, so do the treaties.
Into this world of suspicion and fear, Jesus speaks of wisdom.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus says, “Wisdom is proved right by her actions.” And later: “You have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children.”
The “wise and learned” Jesus speaks of are those who possess worldly wisdom — strategy, calculation, cleverness — but whose knowledge is divorced from the knowledge of God. They know how to build warships. They know how to negotiate treaties. They know how to secure borders. But they do not know how to trust God. They do not know how to love their neighbour. They do not recognise the gentle wisdom of Christ.
Children do not have a monopoly on wisdom — I can assure you that not all of Arthur’s questions have been so righteous — but children often see what adults overlook. They cut through complexity. They ask the questions that matter.
This tension between worldly wisdom and divine wisdom is not new. It runs through the whole story of God and God’s people, Israel. Before the establishment of Israel as a nation, the Old Testament tells the story of a people bound by kinship and a common identity. When Israel was threatened by internal or external strife, God raised up judges to lead them… but, in time, the people demanded a king “like the other nations”. The prophet Samuel stood before them and warned them what a human king would do:
He will take your sons for chariots and horses. He will take your daughters for labour. He will take the best of your fields. He will place heavy burdens upon you.
In other words: The yoke of human power will be heavy. It will cost you dearly.
Samuel’s warning is not simply about monarchy. It is about the human tendency to seek security in the wrong places: in armies, in chariots, in war horses, in the accumulation of force.
Israel wanted a king who would fight their battles. God offered them a king who would bear their burdens. And they struggled, as we still struggle, to see the difference. Israel got their kings, the fought their battles and they won, and they lost.
Writing a few centuries later, during the exile of Israel in Babylon, the prophet Zechariah imagined the return of God’s people to their land. The prophet criticises Israel’s leaders who had made war and suffered terrible defeat. In the restored Israel he imagines, the king will ride not a war horse but a donkey. A king who comes in humility. A king who brings peace. It is a vision that resonates with Palm Sunday, when Jesus enters Jerusalem as the Messianic king.
Throughout his writing, Zechariah wrestles with a profound question: How do we break free from the endless cycle of sin, punishment, repentance, restoration? How do we stop repeating the same patterns of violence and fear?
His answer is startling: The king who brings peace will be gentle.
Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Those who are weary and burdened include all who live under the weight of sin and the frustrations of an imperfect world. In Jesus’ day, many felt the military burden of Rome or the religious burden of zealous hypocrisy.
Jesus then speaks of a yoke. Rest, he says, cannot be found apart from taking on a yoke. The question is: Which yoke will you choose?
The yoke Jesus offers is easy — meaning good, kind, fitting. It brings freedom, peace, rest. Other yokes are heavy. They crush peace. They burden the soul. Jesus’ yoke is easy because it is a perfect fit for human beings created for relationship with God and neighbour and because following Jesus enables us to carry the yoke of loving God and loving neighbour.
Now, we must be honest. There are no easy answers to the questions of our age. What should our government do? How should nations respond to aggression? How do we balance security with peace? These are not questions solved by childlike simplicity. The world is imperfect, conflicted, and often frightening. Samuel understood that. Zechariah understood that. Jesus understands it most of all.
When Jesus invites the weary to come to him, he is not removing them from the world. He is teaching them how to live within it. How to bear its burdens without being crushed by them. How to carry its weight without losing hope.
The world will continue to build warships. Nations will continue to arm themselves. The headlines will continue to unsettle us. And we will continue to carry the burden of living in an imperfect world.
That is the honest truth.
But the Gospel does not leave us there.
It invites us to turn again to the Lord and ask for his mercy; not as an escape from responsibility, but as the source of wisdom for living faithfully within complexity. It invites us to take up the yoke of Christ — not because it removes the world’s heaviness, but because it teaches us how to bear it.
And in our active loving of God and neighbour — in the choices we make, the compassion we show, the justice we seek, the mercy we extend — we become agents of God’s wisdom. We become signs of the kingdom Zechariah imagined and Jesus embodied. We become, in small but real ways, builders of mercy ships in a world that too often prefers warships.
Arthur’s question still echoes: “Why are there not more mercy ships?”
Perhaps the answer is that God is waiting for us, his people, to build them. Not only literal ships, but communities, relationships, habits, and actions that carry hope and healing into places of fear and division.
We cannot solve the world’s problems. But we can bear Christ’s yoke. We cannot remove all burdens. But we can carry them with grace. We cannot make the world childlike. But we can live with the wisdom that comes from humility, gentleness, and love.
And in doing so, wisdom will be proved right by her actions.
Amen.