What does a vicar do when he gets a pious, churchy curate to train?
That’s the problem that faced my training incumbent when I arrived, fresh from Mirfield, becassocked and still smelling of incense. After five years training I was set to bring in the Kingdom – which for me meant getting people into church and becoming devout. I had got the post because I had a motorbike, and it was in the days of Mods and Rockers, and our church hosted the Rockers’ Youth Club with their motorbikes, while the RC church on the opposite side of the dual carriageway hosted the Mods’ Youth Club with their scooters. As curate, I was responsible for the Youth Club!
Every Sunday night, as the clubs closed there was a riot in the middle of the dual carriageway which the police had to come to sort out. To put it mildly, I was terrified and soon developed an ulcer. No way could I communicate with these youngsters who had no interest whatever in coming to church. Eventually the vicar agreed to close the club – as a result of which the church windows were smashed and the building daubed with uncomplimentary graffiti.
But the wise vicar devised a plan. A couple of weeks later the Diocesan Youth Officer came round to my flat and asked if I would like to go out with him the following Saturday evening. He took me to Otley, a market town to the North of Leeds. We drove through a council estate and into the car-park of some kind of community centre – there in the car park were well over 200 big, shiny motor bikes. We got out and he introduced me to a lad called John who was standing beside his huge bike – a Vincent 1000, and then, quick as a flash, jumped back into his car shouting through the window that he would be back in an hour.
‘Do you want a ride?’ It was in the days before crash helmets were compulsory, and not was there the speed limit of 70. ‘Okay’ – I couldn’t say ‘No’.
It was all right going through the town, but then up the hill and the throttle was wound back. If any of you know the Leeds road out of Otley you’ll know the hairpin bends: sparks were flying as we leaned into the bends, - no crash helmet! No protective boots or leathers! - my mouth hung open with sheer terror as over his shoulder I could see the speedometer showing 100, 105; - 110 as we straightened out towards the top of the hill. He stopped. We got off. I was like a jelly.
‘You take her back.’ - My bike was a 250cc. I’d never ridden more than a 250. This was a 1000cc. Somehow I got us back, and as we rode into the car park everyone was there waiting. John got off. ‘He’ll do!’ ~ and I was the new chaplain of the Bike Club.
That’s a long way of telling you how I got to the point of realising that God was much bigger than the Church. These were lads who diced with death every day. Within the first six months I had taken seven funerals and spent many hours beside hospital beds containing mangled bikers, and sat up into the early hours talking with them about the meaning of life – and death. I discovered that my church-language communicated little or nothing to these lads and their families.... and they wanted to know; they didn’t want pious platitudes ... or a pious parson! They needed someone ‘real’. I owe more to those lads and their families than I can ever say. That’s where I began to learn to say “I don’t know”….but I longed to, because I was sure there was God and God was more than I had ever guessed.
One of the fruits of it all was that I realised that the terrifying thugs in the youth club were actually pretty insecure teenagers who responded well to someone who showed even a scrap of interest in them and their bikes, and with some new paid leaders the club was re-opened a few months later. I began to realise there was nothing to be afraid of – and also how much I had been paralysed by a fear of people who appeared different, a fear I simply didn’t understand. ...
And now, here in today’s Gospel Jesus is asking the disciples ‘Why are you frightened?’
It’s a question that, one way or another, I suspect he is asking each one of us, too. ‘Why are you frightened? What are you afraid of?’
The Risen Christ wishes us peace.... Why then are we frightened?
Who says we are frightened? ~ We don’t feel frightened, and certainly not startled or terrified like the disciples.
My hunch is that we are too sophisticated to feel fright when confronted with the idea of the Risen One, and we have the inheritance of almost 2000 years’ experience of constraining and making the Risen Christ small enough to be manageable ~ so manageable that we fail to meet him as he really is ~ we tend keep him more as an idea or a benign spiritual friend.
But why would we be afraid to meet him?
Because he would be more than we would want him to be ... and he might invite us to risk letting go and let him take control ... and where might that end up?
Many of us get distinctly uncomfortable when we meet enthusiastic Christians who are shallow or narrow in their understanding. When we see Christians with integrity and enthusiasm it can be very different. As long as they keep their distance, we can see them as inspiring ~ but if they come too close, we sense danger. We can’t crucify them, so we do the next best thing and simply distance ourselves from them, or diminish them in some way.
As long as Desmond Tutu is in Africa or on the television he’s okay ... but begin to engage with him and he will be a huge challenge to our integrity. Same with Jean Vanier, the founder of the l’Arche communities.
I suspect that the same would be true if we were able to be absolutely open and allow the Risen Christ to meet us and confront us with the Gospel. No wonder the disciples were terrified!
“Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.”
The disciples had been with Jesus, day in, day out, for three years, with him trying to teach them, but it seems from Mark’s Gospel that they had hardly begun to grasp anything of what he was on about.
And we need to note that and remember it. It takes a long time to understand the implications of Jesus’ teaching – in face, it’s a life-time’s journey and we never get to the end in this life.
When you see what eventually happened to the disciples, you see that they had every reason to be frightened of encountering the Risen Lord. But the great thing is that all but Judas Iscariot were able to overcome their fear and go on learning, and discover that, in fact, Christ would give them the grace to do whatever they would be asked to do – and do it with a joy and an enthusiasm that would be infectious, even though it would take them well out of their comfort zone.
As members of the Church in the twenty first century, in Western Europe, in what is described as a post Christian society, the invitation to us is the same as it was to those first disciples, to overcome our reticence, our often unacknowledged fear, and allow the Risen One to encounter us; to open our minds to glimpse his vision of the Kingdom – to understand the scriptures; to allow the Risen One to encounter us, both in the Words of the Gospel andinthe needs of our contemporaries, and also in person, in the silence of our prayer and amongst us as we meet together.
There will be moments of intense joy and certainty, and there will also be times such as Archbishop Rowan describes: ‘a sense of being completely lost, imaginatively and emotionally; times when we face not only dryness and boredom but spells of desolation and fear that can be shocking in their intensity.
Perhaps these are times when we are invited to share something of Jesus’ experience in Gethsemane – times that bring us to the point of saying, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
We all need to pray for the grace to allow that God really is bigger and more wonderful and more demanding than we can ever conceive, and that the Holy Spirit can use us in ways we can’t yet imagine.
As the newly risen Jesus says to Mary Magdalen in Ann Lewin’s little poem, “Easter Morning”,
Do not cling… [that is, do not cling onto the past, onto what you have already understood, onto who you assume the Risen Christ to be, to the familiar Jesus of your comfort zone.]
Do not cling…
Let me be bigger than your
Heart can hold.
Rise with me to a
Larger vision.