The Way Ahead

Passage for reflection: John 14: 1 - 14 

I love the dialogue between Jesus and Thomas I the Gospel reading for this Sunday. 

Jesus says in what is the beginning of his farewell discourse in John’s Gospel, “ you know the way to the place that I am going.”

And Thomas, always honest, says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going so how can we know the way.”

Perhaps today we are saying the same. We do not know where we are going. Tonight we will hear of a road map from the Prime Minister. A Sunday paper has leaked the government’s new slogan. It’s a bit worrying that stay at home has gone. Let’s hope he knows where we are going. We need some assurance if any of the lockdown measures are to be lessened. 

The way ahead needs some planning. This weekend we’ve been commemorating the 75th anniversary of VE Day. There was euphoria on the streets as five and a half years of war in Europe came to an end. But I wonder what people thought the way forward might be. Just to have some hope and some light must have been amazing. 

I’ve also been thinking of people in the Channel Islands, who were liberated the next day, 9 May, 75 years ago. They’d endured years of occupation. I visited Jersey several times in a previous life (!) and the moving thing I remember was a visit to the war tunnels museum. What folk so close to home had to endure has stayed with me. No wonder there is, in Jersey, every 9 May in Liberation Square, a yearly celebration. 

We know now, of course, there was a lot of thinking during the war about the way ahead after it. The Beveridge report of 1942 set out how we might build a different world. The 1944 Education Act was ground breaking for schools and much of it is still law today. It’s quite something that Churchill was defeated in the 1945 General Election as people saw we needed a radical new way to help us move on. Clement Attlee’s Labour government brought in measures such as the NHS and is seen as one of the most reforming in modern history. 

When I was studying in Manchester, I enjoyed doing a course on Christian Social Ethics at the University, which was taught by the wonderful Canon John Atherton from the cathedral. He introduced me to the book pictured above, Archbishop Temple’s “Christianity and the Social Order.” I’m so glad to have a copy of it on my shelves. The book is a landmark in Christian thinking about a just society and it influenced the Beveridge Report that laid the foundations for the post-war Welfare State. The Archbishop’s most famous quote is this:

“The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

William Temple and countless others in history showed Jesus the Way by passionately working for that Way to be at the heart of policy making, planning and thinking. If Jesus IS the Way then the Christian has to not only follow that Way but then live it in the world. No wonder the early followers of Jesus were known as “people of the Way.”

Like Thomas in a world that is confusing, we might ask how can we know the way. The way is not a road, it is a person and we need to journey to him and from him if our Christianity is to be relevant and authentic. 

What is this Way? First, it is to him.

I love the picture below. It’s in Castor Church on a night we turned up for evening prayer. There was just me and Lis and lovely Brian there. It is powerful that people like Brian used to turn up day after day in sacred space to keep the prayers of God's people alive as others have done for centuries before. Let’s hope one day we can do it again. 

The board outside advertised angelus and evensong. I asked Brian what angelus was. An interesting idea. I found this article and I like the concept of being "called to prayer". 

"Over the centuries workers in the fields halted their labours and prayed when they heard the Angelus. There is an 1857 painting that shows two workers in a potato field stopping to say the Angelus. There are also stories that animals would automatically stop ploughing and stand quietly at the bell. 

Like a heavenly messenger, the Angelus calls us to interrupt our daily, earthly routines and turn to thoughts of God, and of eternity."

Eugene Peterson once wrote this: “The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him.”

To follow the Way, we have to journey towards him. In normal times that might involve being in a holy place with people like Brian, reciting the story of the providence of God together. We are having to understand that now we will need to find new ways for some time to find the divine as the Angelus bell rings within us to stir in us a consciousness of God’s love at least once a day. It might be through a sustained pattern of prayer, it might be through reading the Bible and some theology, it might be through forming a Zoom house group, it might be through silent walking in creation two metres away from others. As Saint Augustine said “you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Then we need to enable others to find the Way for themselves. We go out (when it’s safe) to live and work to God’s praise and glory. These words above were the daily reading in the Northumbria Community prayers for Friday. Read them slowly. They speak of the call of the Christian to be an encourager. I’m convinced as we work out what the future of the Church might be, it is to be encouraging, to help people see a new way might be possible. 

William Temple in his writing and ministry saw the need to put worship first and in doing that one would naturally look outward: the Way of Christ for him was to open the heart to God’s love, surrendering one’s will to his purpose and “all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centred ness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.” 

The planners of a new way post war, wanted to put others first with a conviction that a new society could be built. Attlee after a landslide victory in the election said this: “You will be judged by what you succeed at gentlemen, not by what you attempt.”  There was an excitement and a conviction a new way was possible! 

And tonight, we wait for Boris. What will be the way ahead for us in this mad coronavirus world? I love this tweet which reckons the “find a slogan or a catchphrase committee” has been meeting! But seriously, we need direction later as to what comes next in this crisis. As I’ve said before I don’t envy him his responsibility.

 Following a person they need to gain our trust, even if that person has deep convictions. I watched again  last night Gary Oldman’s superb portrayal of Churchill. It took some ages to trust his way of doing things that “you cannot negotiate with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.” 

Tonight we will analyse the PM’s every word. But at least we will know a way. This week of speculation and a lot of people thinking the lockdown is over has been difficult. 

SHUT THAT DOOR ✖️

THEY DON’T LIKE IT UP ‘EM ✖️

YOU GET NOTHING FOR A PAIR (NOT IN THIS GAME)✖️

STAY ALERT✔️

A way is two way - in spiritual terms we take in in one direction and we serve in the world in the other. 

The Way of Christ is a way where there is room for everyone, after all, Mr Shapps says we are to have wider pavements! 

The Way of Christ is a road full of diverse people celebrating life together. 

The Way of Christ is a lifestyle choice and it brings life, it isn’t always easy, but no one comes to the Father except through following it. 

Being a Christian means renouncing ourselves, taking up the cross and carrying it with Jesus. As I said earlier, it’s very powerful Jesus speaks the words of today’s Gospel passage with dark clouds and uncertainty looming. He sees the cross but says to all his friends “do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 

The Way of Christ is the answer to the Thomas’s of today who haven’t a clue where they are going so how can they know the way. All will be well. “In my Father’s house there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

“How can we know the way?”

“I am the Way.”