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THE REVEREND JIM FIELD PRIEST IN CHARGE March 2010 |
Revd Jim Field |
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My dear Friends, ‘No,’ I said to Jan Day a few weeks ago, ‘I won’t go to the next PCC meeting at Newchurch, it’s on Pancake Day and if it’s a choice between a PCC meeting and pancakes, then pancakes win.’ Jan, never lost for a word, promptly replied, ‘The PCC will be at Peter and Pam Baxter’s so I’ll get Pam to make you some pancakes and you can stuff your face as we carry on with the PCC meeting.’ ‘Beaten,’ I thought as Jan came up with her good Anglican compromise but I wasn’t going to tell her that I was of course going to the PCC anyhow, Shrove Tuesday or not, so perhaps I win. So here we are at the beginning of Lent once again. Winter seems to have dragged on and had a sting in its tail to boot, with spring and its promise of new life, new growth and of warmer days to follow, not even on the horizon. A dull and dismal season but an opportunity perhaps for us to re-charge our spiritual batteries. I did have a series of very readable books entitled, ‘The Armchair Theologian’ which went on to summarise the thoughts of some of the theological giants of the past and although I seem to have lost them in house moves over the past four or five years it’s not a bad way of studying, sitting in a warm armchair with an adjacent cup of tea or something stronger to hand and reflecting on the struggles of great minds. The comfort I get in reading the valuable insights of these great minds, these theologians of distinction, is they often didn’t grasp the complete picture, were not themselves blessed with total clarity and often expressed in faltering words the truth as they saw it. And it’s also that glimpse of truth, that moment of insight, that warmth of closeness we plods need to be satisfied with. Saint Paul in one of his letters to the Christian church at Corinth puts our understanding as ‘seeing through a glass darkly’ 1 Corinth 13:12. What a lovely expression, what a wonderful way of putting our lack of clarity. If Paul, for all his academic ability, all his one to one learning with the risen Christ, his understanding of the Hebrew bible [that’s our Old Testament] and his grasp of things to come, was able to say, ‘I don’t see the full picture’ then we, with our shortcomings are in good company. But seeing through a glass darkly is no excuse for not seeing any-thing at all. Jesus constantly gave simple illustrations to the [largely] uneducated ordinary people of his time about the kingdom of heaven. Pictures and stories and parables that enlightened; and people flocked to listen to him. They were not academic, probably in the main couldn’t read, there were no books, they had little schooling but Jesus was at pains to meet them where they were in their understanding. I see it no different today, Jesus wants us to know about his Kingdom, his Father in heaven, wants us to know about his love for us. Now Lent doesn’t give us the opportunity to walk with him on a grassy mountain or sit at his table and listen to him but we can read, can sit in warmth and can draw closer to him. So why not pop to the Vine Christian bookshop in Folkestone or wherever, buy a book that appeals to you [Tom Wright’s books are a good place to start] and draw a little closer to Jesus and he will draw close to you, and that’s a promise from his word James 4:8. With my love. Jim
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