Transition: 1 John 2, 8 October 2017
October 2017 brings us to the 500th anniversary of, what’s taken to be, the beginning of the Reformation in Europe. It was to be a hugely significant transition. In 1517 Martin Luther pinned his 95 theses, or arguments for church reform, onto the door of the church at Wuttemburg in Germany. It was the sparking of a period of huge transition for Europe.
It led to the collapse of the authoritarianism of the church, the new authority of nation states, the search for truth through one’s own journey of intellectual discovery and encounter with the scriptures, the release of scientific and philosophical insight. But this took many decades. On one level the Reformation was one very big argument across Europe, and, to some extent, we’re still having it today.
The latest outworking of the argument is the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. This period of transition is only in its early phases and we’re living with considerable uncertainty in our political, agricultural, commercial and cultural life as a nation.
Transition always looks and feels better when the new landscape can be more easily seen, the direction begins to look brighter and clearer. I hope, and believe, this is where we are with Cathedral Pilgrim Phase 1. Externally and internally, the transition is beginning to reveal its physical shape. At the Pilgrim meeting earlier this week, the Dean was alerting us all to the need to see beyond this current state of transition for the building and its external layout, and to think more seriously about how we want to use the spaces –especially on College Green.
Within our cathedral Rule of Life is that crucial Benedictine element of hospitality. This is a positive sense of wanting to welcome and connect and engage. The College Green renewed space, from its inception, is working along those lines of promoting the welcome facility and integration of space both outside and inside the cathedral.
The task in this phase of transition will be to welcome the opportunity to reshape our hospitalityand to develop the way we are welcoming and positive about those who come here. And whether they come here to visit, or gather for music, or to sit and reflect, or to find a space for what might be bordering on the antisocial, these are the people that God is giving us here, and our hospitality needs to be shaped to offer them the warmth and open-mindedness of the Christian gospel.
In the second reading today from the first letter of John, the early Christian communities are finding themselves at the emerging point from a period of transition. After a number of years those Christians have worked through how they are inheritors of the Law of Moses and yet how changed by the coming of Christ. As they emerge from their transition they are discovering, under the guidance of the HS, that they are in a new landscaping.
Now, the religious life is less about physical actions and observances, but, about the use of the mind in the search for righteousness. Living in the light, is first of all, about attitude and disposition to God and neighbour, about love attuned to Christ’s example that flows outward in lifestyle.
‘Beloved I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard’. 1 John 2
We are inheriting the glory of the past in the word of God.
‘Yet, I am writing you a new commandment that is true in Christ and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining’. 1 John 2
We are being given new opportunities for the future in the mind of Christ.
Canon Richard Mitchell