With you wherever you go - our final worship
We had had very little time at all to get together to plan the final worship ... but in the wonderful way that happens in worship the music, the prayers, the readings came together and there was a very real sense of the Spirit's presence with us.
We had in the Bible lectures been walking the road to Emmaus. In one of my workshops I had explored the connections between the history of art and the history of the interpretation of the Bible. I had been using and looking at Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus.
In a workshop part of the worship we asked the two questions Jesus asked of the expert in the law of the painting by Caravaggio. What is written there? What do you read there?
We then went on to discover that Caravaggio had painted another painting of the same story.
Why should this be so much darker?
Between the two paintings something had happened.
Caravaggio had been involved in a duel, killed a man and was on the run. The two paintings had been brought together in a wonderful exhibition at the National Gallery in London, the Last Years of Caravaggio. As with the other paintings of that period they are dark because he is a haunted, hunted man ... and he is aware of it.
We reflected on the way that stories from the Bible can speak to us at different times in different ways and how they speak into the circumstances we find ourselves in wherever we may be. God really is with us in his word wherever we go.
A wonderful song invited us to touch Jesus - in just the way the later of the two pictures seems to invite us to take hold of the hands of the two friends and become part of the circle with Jesus himself.
I then shared some final thoughts in what I had been invited to think of as a charge, a challenge to all on the way home.
I recapped the three Bible lectures. In the conversation with the Lawyer in Luke 10 Jesus reminds us of the importance not only of what is written in the Torah but also of what we read there. And in a story that is effectively a midrash, a commnetary on the whole of the Torah, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, we realise that there are no limits to who is our neighbour.
In the second lecture we went on to see how those two questions can be asked of the Prophets. And we explored the way Jesus fulfils the Prophets by taking up the mantle of the prophets and taking to heart all they say it takes to be King in the Kingdom of God.
As Pentecost people the mantle is passed on to us and young and old, women and men are empowered by the Spirit to share that prophetic message.
Take up the mangle and discover the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
In the third of our Bible Lectures we made connections between the writings and Jesus and discovered that indeed in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus uses those very questions to invite us to take seriously all that is written in the Law, the Prophets and by implication the Writings, but at the same time to be open to read what is there. Do to others as you would others do to you is after all the whole of the Law and the Prophets.
The résumé over, I took up the final part of the story of what happened that first Resurrection evening.
Having taken the broiled fish and having opened the Scriptures to them, Jesus shares his last words with the disciples. It is as if he sums up the whole of the Gospel
He speaks of himself as the Messiah, but not the all-conquering Joshua figure the two had pinned their hopes on but rather one that would suffer and rise from the dead.
Now repentance is to be proclaimed to all the nations. But what is repentance? Not just saying sorry, not just making a new start. Metanoiew the Greek words brings together the little word 'meta' which in the word metanarrative speaks of looking at a narrative that holds everything together. Metanoia, repentance, involves a whole new way of thinking of the world. A very different way of being kingdom from the one in practice under the Romans and envisaged by those who would want a military insurrection against Rome.
TypecastRecast was an invitation to a whole new way of thinking.
It was about rebuilding what was old.
It was about gathering together in community
And I just had to take this picture of an American Robin - a faithful friend on our walks around Omaha!
This celebrates the ordinary people who make a diffence in community.
And a reminder of the great significance of water to us all - but how different is its accessibility
And over those Grand Union railway tracks the side of the hotel and a new wall - talking of the divides maybe that need to be overcome.
But the final piece was the most wonderful.
Never forget were the first words we came to.
And then on the other side, Always forgive
It may sometimes be important to forgive and forget. But often things cannot and should not be forgotten. But forgiveness is still the key.
Never Forget
Always Forgive.
Along with a whole new way of thinking of the world forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all the nations.
And so where can we begin?
Those two and the disciples had to begin where they were.
And so do we.
The meetings have been addressing big change in the NACCC. This does not mark the end of the process but the beginning. It starts here.
But so too the things that have come out of these few days, the way we have been touched, the changes that have happened can make a difference if everyone is willing to talk about them.
And the sad reality is that none of us can rise to the task.
In our own strength.
But the good news is that we have a strength to draw on from beyond ourselves, a power from on high.
We too are Pentecost people who can draw on the strength, unseen and yet so real, of the power of God in the Holy Spirit.
The Lord your God, our Father,
the Lord your God, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
the Lord your God, the Holy Spirit in all its power and strength
is with you wherever you go!
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