From Your Vicar
Dear Friends
If I was to ask you to choose and image or a metaphor that describes what the church is, I wonder what would come to mind. For example, some church buildings are shaped like an upside down boat, remembering the story of Noah and his big boat. The image of the church here is of being saved, or rescued, and being in a place of security. What images come to your mind about what the church is? What does it mean to be part of the church (or not part of the church) for you? Perhaps you can take some time now and ponder this before you read on.
One of our Bible readings during last month was from Exodus chapter 17. That passage describes a part of the journey of the descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as they made their way from Egypt. When they were in Egypt they were slaves. They had to give all their time to labouring on building for the Egyptians, and somehow scratch out a meagre subsistence existence afterwards in growing crops and keeping animals. In Egypt, they were subject to unimaginable cruelty: there were no unions, and the idea of health and safety at work would have been laughed down. The people were simply there to do a job, and if they were seriously injured, or died, who cared?
The people left Egypt through God’s mighty intervention, to release them from slavery, and even to protect them from the pursuing Egyptian army as they crossed a sea on dry ground. They had been promised a new land to live in, but none of them had ever been there, they did not know how to get there, and they could not carry enough provisions to last for the journey. They were utterly dependent on God for showing them the way to go, and for supplying what they needed to eat and drink.
It must have been very difficult for the people, journeying each day, not knowing where they were going, not having what they needed to eat and drink each day. In this situation they reconstructed their memories of Egypt, and gradually Egypt seemed to have been a golden age in the past. If only they could go back there where it was safe and secure, which of course it was not. Somehow the challenge of their vulnerability and having to trust God every step of the way was too difficult, and so they began to have false memories of the past.
It all came to a head one day after a long day’s walking. There didn’t seem to be any water where they camped, and so they grumbled against God. Why did God bring them out of the safety and security of Egypt, into the desert and die? The trusting and faithful alternative to this would have been to look back at the ways that God had provided for them all along the journey so far, and to come before God in their need, and ask God to provide for them again. But no, they preferred to grumble and complain, choosing a false story about the past instead of the truth about God’s care of them. Basically, they were refusing to trust God on the journey on which they were taking them. In graciousness, God still provided the water for them, but eventually, through their lack of trust and grumbling, the people pushed themselves out of God’s favour, and they wandered in the desert for a whole generation before they were allowed to finish their journey.
This history implanted itself strongly on the memory of the people. It is recounted in Psalm 95, where the people are admonished, ‘Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on they day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seem my work.’
At the beginning of this letter, I asked you to consider what images or metaphors came to mind to describe what the church is. I think that one of the most fertile images for us today is of a pilgrim people, people wandering in the desert like the people from the story in Exodus 17. For many centuries, the church has been part of English life, to a greater or lesser extent, and probably much less than we imagine it was in some ‘golden age’ in the past, but we are in a different place now where the church seems to be irrelevant to most people, and when it tries to engage with public issues, it is firmly told to be quiet and to stop interfering. But the church is being forced out on a journey to an unknown future. It is a journey with an unknown destination. We cannot pack up everything that we are going to need before we go. We cannot develop a business plan for the whole journey. But it is a journey with God. It is a journey where we know that God is at work in the world around us, and where we are called to take one step at a time in trust. Sometimes we will know the general direction in which we are moving, and so we will need to put our energy and resources in this direction, but the specific details of the next step of the journey don’t become clear until we have taken the present step that we have been shown to take.
Going on such a journey with God can feel risky, but it is ultimately the most true way of living, the journey of life.
Grace and peace
Geoffrey
