People of the light

Friday for me was one of those frustrating days you can sometimes have. In the morning I had a meeting that was quite important in Kings Lynn. I jollied along the A17 and then I saw a queue in the distance. The sat nav pulled me off the road and somehow eventually I ended up by the Adrian Flux arena. The roads into Lynn were all closed or blocked. I had to cancel my meeting. There had been a fatal accident. I had to come home but how? While working it out a man tapped my window. He didn’t have a sat nav or a map and was relying on signposts. “How do I get to Fakenham?” he asked. We were in Wiggenhall St Germans. Where on earth is that? I don’t know how I got home! 

Then on Friday afternoon we had to go to Lynn again. Coming home on the A1101 road with all those signs saying it is a race track and people have died on it, there was another crash. A motorcyclist had collided with a concrete post. The road was closed and everything came along Little Ramper just north of Leverington. 

Little Ramper is a tiny little Fen back road. I wouldn’t want to try and drive an articulated lorry along Little Ramper. The traffic jam was horrendous with one poor police lady in a fluorescent jacket trying to direct us all. The man in the lorry behind us yelled at one point “oh come on!” Everybody wanted to move forward. 

It is part of the human psyche to want to move forward, move on, get results, and not be stuck or have to go back.

 We are put on hold on the phone and we get annoying music played at us and we get cross, we write an e mail and want an instant answer, we don’t want to wait for our dinner when we go out eat. 

But sometimes in our faith and I’m sad to say in our churches, we act every way we can not to go forward, we revel in being stuck and moaning we are stuck or we want to go back to the old days when the sun shone every day and the church was full three times a day. 

The challenge I see for us is to ask are we really wanting to be God’s people in Christ constantly inviting us on, leading us through our traffic jams and changed plans through unexpected things on our road, to new possibilities and a kingdom of overwhelming life and hope? Or shall we just sit and moan or reopen as a museum to past glories? 

In her book Walking in Darkness and Light, Kathy Galloway writes that because we so rarely experience real darkness it is easy to forget what it’s actually like to walk in the dark. It takes longer to get to where you’re going, sometimes you don’t get there at all, you get lost or you get fed up or despondent, you turn back, you give up. 

In the dark you shorten your steps, bump into things and feel the physical tension as you stumble and feel your way ahead. In the dark you hear noises that seem different, louder, stronger, perhaps more threatening than they would in the day. Your imagination plays tricks, you see things that aren’t there and fears rise. Your heart starts to race and your breathing falters.

  

 Walking in the dark you are guarded, tense, fearful. Freedom, mobility, beauty, relaxation are all gravely limited. What a relief to see a light in the distance. You follow the light you have and pray for more light.

Darkness suggests a world where nobody can see very well or knows which way to turn; it conveys a sense of uncertainty, of being lost, of being threatened or afraid; it suggests conflict between races, nations, individuals of all types and ages; darkness fills our newspapers; and it is often darkness that causes us to pray.

 The way forward is this message: the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot put it out.

 Communities this weekend are marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

 Once a year now we remember the atrocities beyond our comprehension as people of a certain creed or race were just wiped out. We need more than ever to be people of the light because the things that led to the gas chambers are still there. 

Prince Charles had it right in his speech this week visiting Jerusalem: 

“The lessons of the Holocaust are searingly relevant to this day. Seventy-five years after the Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, hatred and intolerance still lurk in the human heart, still tell new lies, adopt new disguises, and still seek new victims.

All too often, language is used which turns disagreement into dehumanisation. Words are used as badges of shame to mark others as enemies, to brand those who are different as somehow deviant. All too often, virtue seems to be sought through verbal violence. All too often, real violence ensues, and acts of unspeakable cruelty are still perpetrated around the world against people for reasons of their religion, their race or their beliefs.” 

We need a different way. Jesus invites us to live it. So secondly today, we need to be prepared to move forward.

We are called to be distinctive in a dark and confusing world and that’s hard. 

But we can’t avoid the call to be involved. In America it was Martin Luther King Day this week. He once said “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.  The true neighbour will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others.”

Someone wrote this: “This may seem like a very difficult call – to get up out of the comfort and convenience of our boats to lift up our shaky voices and join this terrifying movement of following Jesus.  And yet, the good news is that Jesus does not call us to follow him by ourselves.  He calls us in community to follow him in shining His light in the darkness and lifting up our voices together to spread the good news of the kingdom.”

I was in Peterborough tonight. I was shocked by the number of homeless people there were in the city centre. Surely this cannot be right in January 2020. 

In the covenant prayer Methodists say this month, we say to God we will come with our fears and our doubts, with our hopes and our dreams and we will accept the yoke Jesus puts on us and we will willingly serve him as and where he chooses. 

We don’t have all the answers, we might be frightened, we might not be confident in the future of our churches but like fishermen of old the first step is to come, move, believe, walk, live in the light of new possibilities. 

Then, we have to be a people who actually put this stuff into action. We need once again to give the conviction that Christianity makes a difference. We need once again to enjoy exploring our faith together. We need once again to have confidence in our Church and do less moaning. I always say to churches when I’ve done a bit of time as their new minister what is it we do well here, and let’s do more of it, rather than everything. We need once again to remember the call of Christ on us. The Kingdom of heaven has come near. 

We are still relatively towards the beginning of a New Year. Maybe we have had a tough time, plans have been dashed and we’ve had to go home, maybe it’s all too overwhelming and we feel stuck on our own Little Ramper unable to think straight, or maybe we see something new.

 “I will make you…,” he says. He makes us more who we truly are to be. The light shines ahead of us and we need urgently in a world where darkness and separation and discrimination and blame are dominant for so many people who yearn every day for light and inclusion and community and a voice. Why can’t we learn? A lady was visiting the local church coffee bar last week. She told me her minister is gay. “But he is a very good preacher!” She was a bit aghast when I asked her why she used the word “but”. Remember the atrocities of genocide in Nazism began with a convincing of ordinary people the “other” didn’t fit. Victor Frankl is a hero of mine. Even in the darkness there is hope when those who’ll risk living light do something. 

 “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” 

As I often quote thinking about light, one little candle says to the darkness, I beg to differ. 

We can make a difference.