We’re delighted that Canterbury diocese has chosen The Everyday God by Jonathan Arnold as their 2025 Lent book and are recommending it to Lent groups across the diocese. Jonathan, executive director of the Social Justice Network, has prepared a study outline for groups and individuals which we’re offering to you as a free resource, wherever you live.
Combining profound but accessible theological reflection, moving contemporary stories of deprivation and need, and compelling musical metaphors, Jonathan – musician, priest and social activist – explores the enduring and non-negotiable challenge of the works of mercy outlined in Matthew 25:34–40: Jesus’ call to feed the hungry, clothe the naked (shelter the homeless), give drink to the thirsty, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, welcome the stranger and bury the dead.
The following is an edited extract from the section entitled ‘Overture’.
9 March 2025
Overture
Everything that follows is based upon a belief that God is active in our everyday lives. This belief is in turn based upon two premises: first, the evidence of the life, teaching, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as presented in the Bible; and second, personal experience of a lived reality with God in the everyday through knowledge of Christ and grace of the Holy Spirit.
You may think that there is enough evil and suffering in the world to demonstrate that God is nowhere to be seen or heard in our pain. But it is precisely here where God is to be found: in our pain, our loss, our suffering; also in our joy, hope, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, drudgery or contentment, in the everyday. More specifically, the evidence of Christ’s humble and sacrificial life of service, teaching and healing suggests that he most especially identifies with the poor, the oppressed and the suffering.
If what I believe is true – that the ‘Christ event’ of 2,000 years ago was the self-emptying and self-disclosure of God by entering the depths of our humanity to bring salvation and life – then we cannot ignore it, because with that belief comes a response to a call. The call comes from love and is a call to love.
The Everyday God is an exploration of how we can hear, and tune into, the sweet music of that call, and how we might join in with Christ’s music of mercy, justice and love.
It is precisely here where God is to be found: in our pain, our loss, our suffering; also in our joy, hope, anxiety, boredom… in the everyday.
The vocabulary of music
To love God with all our being, to love ourselves and to love our neighbour is a lifelong endeavour and adventure. To explore how we can connect with, participate in and be ‘in tune’ with the divine action of God in the world, I am going to draw some help from the vocabulary of music. Concepts and images from the musical world will form a metaphorical backdrop to our theological reflection.
To talk about an everyday God is to recognise that to live fully as a Christian is to see and hear where God is acting, whether inside or outside our churches, and to join in with that work. The music of our mission as Christians is to join in with the melody of the missio Dei, God’s mission.
To love God with all our being, to love ourselves and to love our neighbour is a lifelong endeavour and adventure.
Every day there are stories of healing and hope
The Everyday God is structured around the seven works of mercy, those practical and down-to-earth acts that can reflect God’s grace in the world.
‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me… Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
Matthew 25:35–36, 40 (ESV)
I am fortunate to work with a team of skilled and passionate people who manage projects aligned with the seven works of mercy. The Social Justice Network team is an outward-facing framework of the diocese that works to express our faith in God through work in high-profile topical issue areas, such as prisons, homelessness, deprivation and forced migration. We build relationships with partner networks to discern and develop new audiences for future engagement.
Every day there are stories of healing and hope. The Everyday God has emerged as a testament to these initiatives and in response to the many social and community projects within our parishes, villages and towns. Drawing upon this experience in community, I hope to explore how the biblical imperative to love one’s neighbour through practical and applied faith is evident in the works of mercy found in Matthew 25:35–40 and in people today, and how these works of mercy are a means of grace, through which God gives blessing, forgiveness, life and salvation.
Through these true stories of everyday lives lived courageously and generously in the service of one another, The Everyday God shares observations of lives transformed through the dedication of ordinary people seeking to follow Christ, and thereby reflects upon Jesus’ call to feed the hungry, clothe the naked (shelter the homeless), give drink to the thirsty, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, welcome the stranger and bury the dead. Pope Francis added an extra spiritual work of mercy in 2016, to care for our environment, which will also be explored in this work.
Every day there are stories of healing and hope.
An everyday theology
By using the term ‘everyday God’, I am not referring to the idea that ‘God is not just for Sunday’, ‘24/7 discipleship’ or ‘fresh expressions’ of being church, nor am I centred on who we are and what we do as Christians, but rather on who God is, where God is and what God is doing there. It is God’s music, Christ’s melody that is playing, and if we tune in and listen, we might be able to hear it, be moved by it, sing along with it. We might even find ourselves in harmony with it and with one another.
If there is an ‘everyday God’, then I guess there must also be an ‘everyday theology’, which you and I are now engaged in. So, what is it? Kevin Vanhoozer describes everyday theology as ‘faith seeking understanding of everyday life. Nothing should be easier to understand than the notion of “the everyday” for the simple reason that it is so commonplace.’ It is therefore a curiosity, a seeking, a questioning born out of our faith. And hence we don’t need any special place or institution to be an everyday theologian. Our research laboratory is the everyday and the ordinary, whatever and wherever that might be for you, because God’s grace is in the everyday.
God is revealed through the ordinary, because God is at the very heart of every human experience. Through the creation of the world, through the Logos (Christ), to the incarnation of Jesus, God has demonstrated that he dwells with us, as Paul Tillich put it, ‘as the ground of our being’. This divine gift of grace at the depths of our human existence is Christ’s identification with ‘the least’ (Matthew 25:40).
We do not, therefore, treat our neighbour as a means to an end, a means to receiving or invoking divine grace. Rather, we see that the everyday encounter is made holy. It follows that we love and serve our neighbour for their own sake, as they do for us, and in so doing forget our own selfish concerns. Only then can the encounter be grace-filled.
The challenge that God’s work in the world sets for us is how to tune into God’s love, service, mercy and justice. How do we connect with the work of God? How do we join in with the music of God and play his theme of mercy.
