Uncategorized – Coastlands

Some reflections on the Gospel for today: John 4.5-42

What a story this is! It moves from the heat and exhaustion of the day and the aridity of its setting to “living water,” a refreshing, cleansing and inexhaustible source of joy (v. 14). It begins with an individual encounter with Jesus and ends with the creation of a new worshipping congregation that acknowledged Jesus as the Saviour of the world (v. 42).

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”(vv.13-14)

We may be finding that our environment, without many of the activities which we anticipate so pleasurably, is rather dull and featureless. Our circumstances may even have made the background of our lives seem fearsome and harsh. What, we may wonder, had made the woman of Sychar in Samaria come out. solitary, in the noonday heat, when most women drew water in the cool of the morning? I’m afraid that in our world of advertising and “feel-good” entertainment the picture of spring-water bubbling up endlessly could seem a cynical call to escapism from the reality of life.

Jesus’ offer to the woman is precisely the opposite. Water is not only for refreshment, but for the very sustenance of life and, as we are currently only too aware, for cleansing. The woman’s eager, almost desperate response, of “Give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water,” is met with an uncompromising challenge to open up about her life and to be changed. The discussion about water had an inescapable subtext concerning repentance and healing, an understanding that infuses the whole Bible.

The encounter is life-changing. She leaves her enormous water-jar, on which so much had depended, unable to wait before telling the world what had happened: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

Dramatically, we find ourselves looking forward to Pentecost and to consider how spiritual life is to be sustained, grow and flourish. The unnamed woman at the well seems to become aware that her life, and indeed her religion, were stagnating and, drawn by the Holy Spirit, responds to Jesus as the one who offers life and healing.

The startling acceptance by the Samaritans of Sychar, hitherto separated from their Jewish brethren, that Jesus was none other than “the Saviour of the world” becomes a foretaste. It was based initially on the woman’s testimony but then they started listening to Jesus for themselves and “many more believed because of his word” (v.41).

“The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him” (v 23)

Reflections

Reflections on becoming a Reader in the Church of England

My journey to becoming a Reader in the Church of England is a testimony to the incredible patience of God.

I was admitted and licensed on a sunny 13^th October during a joyful Morning Eucharist in Warsaw. Preparing to meet Archdeacon Adèle at the airport the day before, I found myself thinking back to Saturday 12^th October 1985, when I myself first landed in Warsaw to take up a British Council teaching post, in Gdańsk, “my plans” for that academic year having fallen through a couple of months earlier. Warsaw had then been bleak and rather grim and I had felt very much an alien. However, wondering what I had let myself in for, I had recalled an October day, earlier still, when, as a fresher at university, I had joined, mainly out of curiosity, a prayer group for communist countries. Be careful what you pray for!

While marriage and a family kept me anchored in Poland, I lived in Gdańsk for the next thirty years as an “isolated Anglican,” participating in public worship in a different language and in a different, distinctively Polish, tradition. God, in his mercy, kept me throughout, yet the situation was not ideal. I was not starving, but I was hungry.

It was against this background that God called me to become a Reader in the Church of England and it was both unexpected and clear. A few years ago, when signing the “patient’s charter” on admission to hospital for surgery, I was struck by its guarantee of a right to pastoral care in the patient’s own faith tradition. Where could an Anglican find this in Gdańsk, or anywhere in northern Poland come to that? Where indeed?

It was immediately apparent that this was something that I could not drift into. It would require authorisation, Gdańsk is geographically remote from Warsaw, where the Anglican chaplaincy had finally been reinstated in 1996. Rev. David Brown, the Chaplain, with whom I had had no previous contact, answered my phone call almost as if he had been expecting it and was eager to explore whether now was the time for services to be held in Gdansk. I have since become aware that his vision is part of a wider recognition of a role for “missional readers,” who may be embedded in a particular geographical area or community.*

The fellowship of the wonderful people who have found their way to the small but growing church in Gdańsk and friendships made elsewhere in Poland and in the Diocese in Europe have been a great joy. However, I hope I will never forget the “isolated Anglicans” as I go forward. I was one myself.

While training in such an environment requires self-discipline, it has, in my case, been a feast after a long fast. I also began to check some of the habits of a lifetime! The Church does not need too many more “opinions” these days. I would argue that the training of a lay minister is necessary to form the habit of making prayer and reflection on Scripture the starting point for a response. I’m not the person I was a few years ago. This is, of course, work in progress and my prayer is, in the words of Charles Wesley, “Finish, then, thy new creation!”

Archdeacon Adèle said, accurately, after my licensing, “You’re up and running.” I sometimes feel I have ground to make up, although I’m mindful that running, especially at my age, risks tripping and falling if I do not look where I’m going. Yet there has been no “lost time.” God has just been incredibly patient.

*See, for example, Exploring Missional Reader Ministry by Liz Shercliff (Grove Booklet MEv123, 2018)

27th February George Herbert, Priest, Poet (1593-1633)

Coastlands

Montgomery, Powys, Wales is a very special place. It is associated for me with my family and with some wonderful people. It was also the birthplace of George Herbert, whose life and work is commemorated today. SONY DSC

Herbert was born into an aristocratic family and had a brilliant career in academic and public life. However, he withdrew from both in order to serve the Lord devotedly in a rural parish. His poems are jewels of English Christian verse.

Here is one of Herbert’s best known poems. I recommend reading it aloud.

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I…

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An epiphany at Cana

Malcolm Guite

Photo by Margot Krebs Neale

The set readings for this third Sunday of Epiphany tell the story of ‘the first of the signs that Jesus did and manifested forth his glory’; the transformation of water into wine at the wedding at Cana. (John 2:1-11). I love this miracle, though John doesn’t call it a miracle, he rightly calls it a sign. It is a sign that points to so many profound and liberating things about the God whom Jesus reveals to us; His delight in and concern for our own personal life and loves, attested by His presence at the wedding feast, His abundant generosity in more than meeting our needs in the midst of everyday life, His call to us to move from the mere outward purity, symbolised by the water for ritual washing, to a transformation of inward joy, symbolised by the wine. But most importantly, this sign…

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Streams of living water

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4.13-14)

I can count on one hand the times in my life when I have been properly thirsty. Many of us are so blessed with good things that it is a rare experience. The same may be true in the spiritual sense. Indeed we may not even be able to identify our problem. In western countries it is all too easy to turn aside from spiritual thirst and dryness, seeking a panacea, a distraction or a quick fix. Some of us may ‘treat ourselves’, seek out ‘comfort food,’ decide we need a holiday or some entertainment to lighten the mood, watch a box set, perhaps escape into ‘retail therapy’ or decide that the cure lies in a nice cup of tea. Yet these strategies, helpful as they may be in the short term do not solve the problem when strength is sapped and morale sinks (nor, of course, does escapism cure the suffering of depression). At worst this turning aside can take the form of rebellion against God and the idolatry of materialism, as was the case with those of the Israelites in the wilderness who, experiencing real thirst, denied God’s work among them and wanted to return to Egypt.

If Nicodemus in last week’s gospel was pointed forward to the cross, the Lord’s discussion with the woman of Samaria looks forward beyond this to Pentecost. Nicodemus, a man who seemed to have his life under control, struggled with the sheer simplicity of the call to accept a free gift and be born again. New birth is the beginning of new life, but now we are made to consider how spiritual life is to be sustained, grow and flourish. The unnamed woman at the well seems to become aware that her life, and indeed her religion, were stagnating and responds to Jesus: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. She leaves her water jar (and remember that set of enormous water jars at the wedding at Cana!), understanding what is meant by “living water”, an endless stream bubbling up from the source that will transform the staleness of her life.

Many in religious communities have deliberately turned their backs on the avoidance tactics that the materialistic world offers. To do so is not a kind of self-flagellation, but trust, and those who have done this often describe periods of spiritual dryness followed by a discovery of the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit. Those who accept the challenge to trust, find the streams of water in the desert. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert (Isaiah 35.6)

When in the noonday heat we may be tired (as Jesus was), when in suffering we may thirst for God (as did Jesus, unimaginably, on the cross when he bore the sin of the world), we are not abandoned in the wilderness, as individuals or as a people, if we go forward in trust instead of turning aside. The living water bubbles up from the source, ultimately filling everything. It is from the source that this life-giving sustenance comes, by contemplation of what the Creator has done, by prayer, which is the daily centre of our relationship with God, the Bible and the sacrament. This may be experienced as we pass through green pastures or, through perseverance and trust, in the wilderness.

Christian unity: personally speaking

1905-09-18 — My grandmother 18th September 1905

16^th January was the birthday of my grandmother, born when Victoria was still on the throne into a family of Congregationalist lay preachers. Her own grandfather (1818-1881) had spent a lifetime of service in chapels in Berkshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire, before settling in the Polesworth area of North Warwickshire, where he remained, ‘teaching three times each Sabbath and twice during the week until his death’ (The Congregational Year Book 1881). The writer George Eliot immortalised this era in her novels, when every village had both a church and a chapel, a division which at the time often sprang from and reinforced social divisions.

The Congregational Church does not have bishops but is led by elders and deacons. Women served as elders long before they were admitted to positions of leadership in other churches, and my grandmother was an elder of Albert Street Congregational Church, Rugby, where my parents were married and I was baptised as a baby (without godparents – Congregationalists regard the children of believers as members of the church and responsibility rests with the parents). Unfortunately, this church is no longer in existence, although I possess a plate stamped with the name, which appears each year for the opłatek when we celebrate Wigilia here in Poland.

After a Congregationalist early childhood I was later confirmed in our local Anglican church. This I regarded as personally ratifying the baptismal commitment made at the beginning of my life through my parents. I was actually confirmed by Archbishop Michael Ramsey, whose historic meeting with Pope Paul VI in 1966 was recently commemorated by Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin Welby).

In my working life I have spent time in different places and worshipped in different churches, mainly Anglican, but also Baptist. Early in my career I taught for several years in a Moravian school and learnt much about this church, historically linked to the Bracia Czescy. I have been enriched by all and am thankful for them all.

Almost half my life now has been spent in the mainly Roman Catholic environment of Poland, where I have learnt and shared with Catholic Christians. It has been saddening, however, when occasionally someone has assumed that by not being a member of the Catholic church I am somehow not a Christian! All need to be realistic about divisions but still to rejoice in the diversity of the Church, as has historically been the case in Gdańsk. We have been able to reflect recently on this heritage as our Lutheran brothers and sisters have celebrated the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation and their long history in this city. I hope that the reinstatement of the Anglican Church here may also have a part to play, however small, in the enrichment of the Church in this area.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4.4-6)