 Throughout my life, I've increasingly found that reading scripture in public is not just about feeding our own spirits and minds, it's about rehearsing the mighty acts of God for God's glory. So let's think together about 1 Samuel 5.3. And first, let's have some tea. When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon fallen on his face to the ground before the Ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. So what's this going on here? Who is this Dagon character? Well, the people of Israel have been in battle against the Philistines. In the previous chapter, 1 Samuel 4, they are losing the battle. And so though they have been very careless in their worship of Yahweh, though they haven't bothered about keeping his commandments, and indeed the young priests who are supposed to be teaching the people the ways of God have themselves been disobeying in so many ways that they're a total waste of space in terms of fidelity to the God of Israel. But nevertheless, when things are going badly in battle, they say, oh, wait a minute, let's bring the Ark of God, the Ark of the Covenant, the place where the stone tablets from Mount Sinai and other pieces from the Exodus had been placed. This is the holy object at the heart of the shrine placed in the middle of the tabernacle. This is where Israel's God has promised to meet with his people. So they say, ah, we remember, we have this religious symbol. Let's go back to the tabernacle and take the Ark of God and bring it into the battle. And then we'll be sure to win because our God is powerful. After all, he defeated the Egyptians, didn't he? And indeed the Philistines at the end of the previous chapter are really worried about this. They think that this means they're going to lose, but actually they don't. They defeat the Israelites and they capture the Ark of God, major disaster for the people of Israel. So what are the Philistines then going to do with the Israelite holy object, the Ark of God, which the people of Israel have been ignoring until they thought they could use it as a bit of sympathetic magic to help them in their battle? They put the Ark of God in the temple of their God, Dagon. And they think, there we are, this is celebrating Dagon's triumph over the gods of Israel, whoever they may be. But then the next morning, as we heard, there was Dagon fallen on his face in front of the Ark of the Lord. And then I love this touch. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. Later on in the Old Testament, there are passages where the prophets are scorning the idols of the nations because they need people to prop them up and hold them in place. They can't do it by themselves. And then having put Dagon back in his place, the next verse it gets worse. The next morning, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the Ark of the Lord and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off upon the threshold. Bad news for Dagon. And the Philistines realize through this and through other things that the Ark of God actually carries a strange, mysterious power after all and eventually, long story short, they end up sending the Ark back to Israel. This has resonated for me for many years with the reality of the symbols of our faith. That if you have symbols of your faith, whether it's maybe a wooden cross, maybe it's a picture of Jesus, or maybe it's actions like the symbolic actions of baptism or the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist, the things which we do or the places we go to, the churches, the buildings where we worship together, it's very easy for Christians to slide like the Israelites into the attitude of treating them as a bit of sympathetic magic. Oh, we'll do the religion thing and then somehow it'll all work out, even though we're not actually paying much attention to what God wants. And when that happens, when we treat the symbols as just magic to help us get round the consequences of our own folly or faithlessness, then likely as not they won't work. But that doesn't mean they're not real symbols. And again and again, when the chips are down, when bad things happen, actually those symbols still carry power. This is a strange spiritual truth which I in my ministry over many years have seen many times, that even though the people of God may be treating their symbols flippantly, actually these symbols do carry power. The cross, the message of Jesus which that symbol contains is the most powerful thing in the world as the disciples in Acts found. So when we're thinking about symbols, beware of the easy rejection. Oh, that's just outward show. Actually the reason it was outward show in the first place may be because people realized that the story which was encoded in something like the act of baptism, in something like the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine in the Holy Communion. These things carry a strange power. Paul says about the Holy Communion, as often as you break the bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. And the death of the Lord is the most powerful moment in the history of the world. This is when, as Jesus himself said, the powers of darkness which have done their worst are now being defeated. Symbolism is a strange thing. We in the modern West aren't very good at it, but a story like this one in 1 Samuel reminds us both of the danger of taking the symbols lightly and of the power which they can still carry. So may God give you grace so to follow the way of Jesus that the symbols of the cross and all that goes with it will remain the source of power and joy in your life and through your work. Amen.