the crisis

 Today's epistle tells the well-known, well-loved story of Paul on the road to Damascus- so well known a story that a 'Damascus road experience' has entered common parlance. I take it that means a sudden change of heart, of mind. 

But the Acts of the Apostles is not a psychological study, and it seems to this observer that Luke fails to do justice to Saul/Paul- surely the nearer Saul got to Damascus, with his aim of arresting any Christians there, the more the incompatibility of his mission with the evidence he had gathered about Jesus, and the scene he had observed as Stephen was martyred, played on his mind and heart until a crisis point was reached as he neared the city. 

But what interests me more is that the crisis has to come to a head, work itself to almost a point of breakdown, of a shattering of Saul's personality, before we read of the voice of Jesus speaking to him.. There's a courtesy in this, which I find most striking, Given Saul's prodigious intellect and deep knowledge of Jewish tradition and scripture, I presume he exercised these to the fullest before he came to the point of seeing that he couldn't square the circle- and the Risen Christ steps in. 

I have a memory of the late Mahalia Jackson, gospel singer extraordinaire, singing 'He may not come when you want him, but he's right on time'. That squares the circle neatly enough and saves from breakdown, putting all back, over time, into one whole.. 

Two road diverged in a yellow wood.... and I- I took the one less travelled by.....

When we can't see a way ahead, the temptation to go back is strong. By and large we're people who like action, so better to go back than stay put until the fog ahead, the traffic ahead,- whatever- clears. At least we know, back there, where we are, the parameters, the risks, the comforts. 

Yet the great discovery of the faith is that Jesus is always calling on, calling us away from the past. There will be a forward movement, and periods of rest, and sometimes it may seem that 'calling us on' has a circularity about it. Revisiting the past with a new perspective. 

These thoughts arise from the incident towards the end of John's gospel where Peter says 'I'm going fishing', fails to catch anything, and Jesus, preparing a meal on the lakeside, tells him and his fellow fishers, to put the net down on the other side.

By a miracle of grace, even going back to the old trade produces results. But far more interesting are the unspoken, unrecorded comments over the lakeside breakfast. They are surely all about the way ahead; 'Are you really alive?' 'What does this mean?' 'This is very scary' 'Does this mean we are continuing to be with you, going round while you teach and heal?' 

You supply the missing questions about the way ahead. You can do that if you stay by the fire, in the now, eating the bread and fish Jesus gives. The questions may not arise if you go back to the old ways. In the light of what subsequently happens in the New Testament, which way lies growth?  Which, to go back to Robert Frost's poem in the title of this piece 'made all the difference'?  

The silence

I spent part of yesterday catching up with Diarmaid MacCulloch's radio essay, broadcast over five nights, on 'Silence'. I'm not at my intellectual best at 10.45 at night ( some might ask when am I ever at my intellectual best, but let that pass) so the five podcasts of fiften minutes each proved a blessing early on Holy Saturday.    

There's a symmetry in listening to an essay on silence on the most silent day of the Christian year. But a dissonance too; a wordy beginning to a day which is essentially about a quiet processing of the pilgrimage of the last forty days, or at least the last week. The silence of desolation and grief, inevitably bound up -we know the outcome of the story in today's resurrection- with incipient joy.

So the silence of yesterday was not empty. It wrestled with the many faces of love, the many costs of love in the life and death of Jesus. It backwashed into the wrung-out liturgies of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, surged greedily into today's resurrection, and finally found a resting place in the fact of God, allowing Holy Saturday to bring its own balm;

Silent, surrendered, calm and still, open to the word of God, 

Heart humbled to his will, offered is the servant of God, 

  

How it helped

The NHS blood service sent me an email this week to tell me that my last blood donation, after processing, went to the Royal Chesterfield Hospital. I was strangely moved by this information. I've known that my previous donations were doing good somewhere, and was happy enough about that, but the specifics of this new information touched me at a point my more general 'do-goodery' didn't. 

So, someone in the Chesterfield area is now (I hope) healthier, from my giving an hour of my time (and very probably several others donated  in the batch which went to Chesterfield)  to donate blood . The repercussions crowd in. What of that person's family? Are they now relieved, off tenterhooks, calmer, as as result of this transfusion? Speculation could go on and on. 

Somehow it's the parable of the sower again, in a very different context to what Jesus imagined as he spoke it. A small gift from me, a life is changed, and the family breathe once again. Maybe this qualifies for 'thirtyfold' - I'm content with that.   

trials, frustrations

 A cup of tea spilt on the table dribbled into the laptop. The world ended- for about an hour anyway, as I thought of all that stuff stored within, now gone to some computer black hole, never to return. But the sun still shines on the unrighteous (let the reader understand)  and here we are, up and running. 

This week we were in the Yorkshire dales for two nights. Such a different landscape from the flat plain of York. The dry stone walls and the limestone pavements, the crags, the cliffs and gorges, the outcrops of rock- surely there is enough stone here for every person on earth to build a house from the stones which rise to the surface after each winter? Does there need to be so much rock in such a small area that all the world can be housed from what lies on the surface?

Beyond the stones- which as you can see, amazed me in their outrageous quantity, my eyes were drawn to the cliffs and outcrops in the steep hillsides. Rock is a constant feature of the biblical narrative; 'lead me to rock that is higher than I' a favourite verse from the psalms. 

That higher rock was a constant companion during our brief stay. Given the landscape, he could not be anything else, anywhere else. Nor does he disappear down a black hole, never to return.  

Continuity

 At last I have finished the book Mary bought for me at Christmas-'Going to church in medieval England'. Not that it was hard going- at just over 400 pages I should have finished it long ago, but the shear wealth of detail made it necessary to put it aside about three quarters of the way through, in order to digest it.   

Thousands of years ago, when I took 'O' level history, the view prevailed that medieval religion was effete and exhausted, ripe for the renewal offered by the Reformation. That view was overturned thirty years ago and more by the likes of Eamon Duffy, whose' The Stripping of the Altars' painted a quite different picture of a vibrant religion in the centre of national and local life before the Reformation. The present book continues that narrative. 

Though much has been lost, I am struck by how much remains which is familiar. Much of the liturgy of the Church of England would be recognisable to a time travelling 15th century merchant or peasant. And that sense of  continuity gives some sense of stability among the tides of history. 

But liturgy has to be more than words on the page- it has to leap into our hearts, be expressed in our voices. It has to become the worship of the heart. Might all that is written and read by us today in hymns, prayers, responses, scripture, become real in our hearts. Otherwise it is lost.  

Cleaning

The house has been cleaned ready for the visitors this afternoon. Vacuum cleaner, cleaning agents, dusters have all been applied. Energy has been expended- a slight warmth in the body noticed. 

Now let's qualify that; the house has been cleaned in the parts the visitors are likely to go. The usual preparations, I imagine, in most houses when visitors are expected. Dusty corners remain. Unpolished surfaces too. 

If I take this as a metaphor for what Lent is about, this half-preparation will not do, although again it's about as far as most of us get. The 'turn away from sin, and turn to Christ' will leave us with unexamined habits, favourite attitudes still harboured and loved. 

We do our best, with limited insight into what makes us tick, what makes us who we are. Few can produce the 'hundredfold' harvest in the parable of the sower, but there is no berating  from Jesus' lips of the ones who produce thirty, sixty fold. The direction of travel is Godward, and I'm sure God will honour that.