There is a label on the worksite outside the church which reads ‘Making sure the past has a future’. I noticed it as I came home from a meeting of our working party on communications which has been trying to redraft our current mission statement. The old one is rather wordy and too full of adjectives rather than verbs – it tries to describe what we think we are like, rather than setting us a clear goal for what we should try to become. Nevertheless, in discussions it has been our relationship with the past which has caused the most problems; we have had difficulties with the way in which we might use the words ‘tradition’, ‘rootedness’ and ‘continuity’.
To include the word ‘tradition’ in relation to your church’s mission, can these days be taken as a coded message, that you are against the ordination of women or gay relationships. To talk about rootedness or continuity is perhaps less specifically nuanced but still may not make quite clear what you are about. With our historic buildings and our liturgies shaped by centuries of Christian practice we are clearly trying to preserve or protect something which stands apart from the fast changing nature of our society, where Monday has become the new Sabbath (as I discovered when trying to get into the newly restored Ashmolean museum recently) and where students sitting in the Bodleian Library can now write essays, listen to music and keep up instant communication with their friends all by means of their lap top. But if I feel ill at ease in such a technologically developed and multi tasking society I cannot escape it unless I join a sect which turns its back on all aspects of the modern world, or try to surround myself only with examples of the way things were. I forget who said that tradition frees us from the burden of the contemporary but such a maxim can be used as an excuse for not facing present reality or it can more positively set present reality against a broader perspective; but even then the church is still left wrestling with its relationship with the present in the light of the past and the future. We seem to spend so much time in our church meetings struggling to ensure that the past has a future, that we can find the present moment difficult to attend to.
We might therefore ask ‘How do we know where we are?’ It is a question which the author of Mark’s gospel frequently asked himself. In telling the story of Jesus he found himself wrestling with questions about time at several levels. There was the time in which Jesus conducted his ministry, which might have been considered as the time of original revelation, except that people seem not to have understood him very clearly, even his own disciples. Then there was the time of the crucifixion and resurrection which Mark considers to be the lens through which the ministry of Jesus can alone come clearly into focus – not until then can the disciples understand what they were witnessing and experiencing in the ministry of Jesus. And yet the resurrection is in itself a mystery – the women who first received the Easter message ran away in panic and said nothing to anyone. They have been instructed to go back to Galilee to meet their Risen Lord and for us as readers of the gospel there is perhaps the implication that we must go back and read the gospel again in the light of its ending – in order to understand more clearly.
The Jesus of the gospel story also, however, talks about a future in which he will appear again, so there is no ultimacy about the post resurrection situation – there is in the future still to come a time of final revelation, final vision. It is still possible in the present that we will look but not see, hear but not understand as the disciples had done during the ministry of Jesus.
The implications of what Mark is saying for us now are I think these: we cannot look for our security in the past; the way things were then, have to be seen through the ever present reality of the cross and the resurrection, the self sacrifice expected of us now and the new life which is always and only ever gift; and what we have in the present will always be changing and dependent for its fullest meaning on something which is still to be revealed in the future. We are at a specific point on a trajectory from the past into the future which has been given to us as a community by God, so that where we are now must be the place of encounter with God. Our present is informed by the past but not to be controlled by it, for the ever changing newness of history is also the work of God’s providence. The past can provide us with roots, with a sense of identity and continuity, and yet who we are is also shaped by the more immediate confusions of the present whose significance is often hard to fathom. Our shaping by the past will only prove its validity if it enables us to respond in love and solidarity to what is new and challenging so that this present time will find its place in the church and help build up the body of Christ for the future. Because of Christ’s place in history and the ever present momentum of his Spirit we do not need to fear history and all its changes. The church itself is not here to make sure the past has a future (whatever the sign outside our church may claim) it is here to make possible an abundance of life in the present.
The Vicar Writes
Stephen Tucker