A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on September 3, 2025 by  Jolley Gosnold

Have you ever noticed how children often gravitate towards the same toys, the same games. Perhaps little Lewis had never previously had any interest in the fire engine but he has seen Amy playing with it and now he wants it too. This very simple observation is the basis of mimetic theory. Mimesis – from the Greek word for imitation – is a concept that suggests we don’t just imitate the behaviours of those around us. We imitate the desires too. I want what you want.

This imitation of desire, unfortunately, often leads to rivalry. Let me try to illustrate.

Lewis observes what Amy wants. And now he wants it too. The two children are now set on a collision course against one another because now both children want the exact same thing and there is only one of that thing.

The philosopher Rene Girard who pioneered this observation of imitation argues that as we begin to compete this rivalry quickly metastasises into division, tension and violence. Maybe Lewis snatches the toy. So Amy snatches it back. Lewis pushes Amy. Amy starts to call Lewis names. But Lewis and Amy are not alone. They have friends. And Amy’s friends jump to her defence. They join in. But Lewis has his own pals too. Now we have two tribes pitted against one another. And what started off as a simple desiring what another desires has turned into an outbreak of violence and division.

Girard argues that the most common way we as humans know how to diffuse such situations is to find someone to blame. A scapegoat to take the fall. The teacher walks in and hears the raised voices and sees the scuffle. “What on earth is going on in here?” they ask.

This is the key moment where a calculation happens. Our survival instinct kicks in and we realise that if we’re going to get out of this without getting into trouble ourselves we need to find someone else to blame. It’s usually the weakest, the most vulnerable, the odd-ball, the one who is different from the ‘normal’ centre. The minority on the edge.

So Lewis points to Amy and says “Miss! Amy won’t share!”. He is backed up by those who say. “Lewis asked nicely!”

“She hit him!”

“She called him a loser”

Even her friends now start to realise that if they are going to get out of here without being in trouble they best turn on her too. And those who don’t, find themselves also cast as a scapegoat in this saga over two people desiring the same thing.

You can replace Lewis and Amy here with any number of situations in our world today. I wonder if you recognise this behaviour in the Middle East? Outside hotels where asylum seekers are sleeping? On social media?

For so long in religious traditions communities have sacralised this scapegoat mechanism and placed it at the heart of their worship. Literally sacrificing animals, or even human beings to appease the God they worship and to heal the relationship between humanity and the divine.

Jesus, the innocent victim the willing scapegoat on the cross ends a cycle of violence and sacrifice that starts in the beginning of Hebrew scriptures with the murder of innocent Abel as his brother Cain responds to the threat of his rivalry, all the way through to the murder of Zechariah who was slaughtered between the sanctuary and the altar. This literal A-Z of violent punishment which had for so long been the dominant narrative of the Hebrew scriptures was disrupted by Jesus’ vindication in the resurrection.

In that moment, God didn’t just raise a man from the dead he raised a mirror up to humanity and in that mirror, we are invited to see ourselves. We see the ugly truth of our scapegoating mechanisms. We see the innocent victim, and we see that the violence satiated our desire for a victim, not God’s.

The resurrection is God’s great divine “No” to the entire system. It exposes the lie. It unmasks the mechanism. And it offers us a way out. A better way.

More than just philosophical thought, the concept of mimesis is backed up by the scientific discovery of mirror neurons. We are genuinely wired this way to observe, imitate, and act accordingly. And if this is the case, if this is how we are created, then we can’t just will our way out of a pattern woven into our biology. We, instead, need a new pattern to imitate. A new desire to get wrapped up in.

I wonder if that desire, modelled in the person of Jesus Christ, is not just Godself, but what God wants. It would be lovely to be able to say ‘I want what God wants’, but perhaps more truthfully we want to want what God wants or even we want to want to want what God wants.

In Jesus we see a different way to be human and an invitation for our desiring to be reoriented. This reorientation is the changing of our minds, the repentance that we are invited into in baptism, and reinvited into as we confess in prayer.

I believe this is not a solo mission. Our spirituality, our life in Christ, is fundamentally communal. We cannot do this alone. A quick look at the divisions in the Church will reveal what happens when we try to go it alone how quickly we manage to turn faith, doctrine, belief, practice, into another toy fire engine to fight over.

I like to think that we as the church are on a pilgrimage together on a journey from rivalry to love. Where, by being around one another, our desiring is transformed. Not that we simply want our version or understanding of God more, but that we, by living alongside each other, in all our differences, disagreements quirks and failings, are being shaped and formed and learning together to want what God wants.

We are here to hold up a better mirror for each other. When I see your patience, it strengthens mine. When you see someone offering forgiveness, it makes it seem more possible. When we sing together, pray together, serve together, we are synchronising our desires away from rivalry and towards compassion. We are quite literally, through these shared practices, rewiring our brains for love.

And there is no practice more central to this than the one we are about to do. If you were present for my sermon on Sunday, you will be aware that recently I have become fascinated by the power of the Eucharist. I am endlessly curious about this gift given to the church to help us to live faithfully and abundantly. I believe that the Eucharist is the ultimate subversion of the mimetic cycle. In a world of rivalry, we bring simple bread and wine, the work of human hands, offered. We don’t bring a scapegoat to sacrifice. We don’t bring violence to appease an angry god. We bring a gift, and we offer it to a loving God. And God, in grace, transforms it and gives it back to us. And then it is broken. And shared.

This meal is the opposite of the world’s economy. It is the end of the cycle of violence. It is the body of Christ, the innocent victim, not being blamed, but being shared. Not being cast out, but being taken in. We are participating in the one sacrifice that ends all sacrificing. And as we take this bread into our hands, into our bodies, we are saying,

“God, rewire us. Let our deepest desires be shaped by this self-giving love. Let us want what you want.”

Amen