I Wish I Could Stay Here

John 20:1-2  11-18  2 Cor 5:14-17  Mark 9:2-7  John 1:39

After the celebration weekend service a couple of weeks ago, all the children got on a coach bound for Ashdown Forest. Our aim was to continue the theme of the weekend with more stories of the journey of God’s people to the promised land and to use God’s own natural theatre as the backdrop to our storytelling. We wandered in the forest using the props of creation to bring it all to life. Each place we stopped at was so evocative, I really didn’t want to move on and I suspect that if I’d said to the children – let’s just stop here until it’s time to go home, they would have been perfectly content. But we were on a journey and pilgrims never remain in one place for very long.

In the shade of some wonderful old trees that became for us an outdoor cathedral.

In a sudden clearing where there were sticks of all shapes and sizes to play with.

Down in a valley making a pretend camp whilst God gave out the ten commandments from way up above.

Beside a massive fallen tree which was beginning to show signs of new life.

On a huge carpet of leaves where we ate grapes and left behind our fears in a heap of stones upon a giant’s body.

It was hard to pull myself away and go on to the next place – I was perfectly content with one dose of magic you see – and when the time in the forest was ended, I certainly didn’t want to get back on the coach.

Such feelings can be true of our faith too – we reach a place of blessing, we have an experience when we feel God is touching us – and it’s enough – we want nothing more than to stay in the moment – a Holy Communion that lasts for eternity.

I think this was true for Mary Magdalene. I think she was always running to catch up with God. Her life had been changed when she had been healed of numerous evil spirits, how she must have wanted to just stay in that state of new wholeness. Walking with Jesus as the disciple I’m sure she was – she must have wanted nothing more than to be like that forever, by his side. But it all had to change, with the onset of Calvary and all that.  She moves on to the point where she has only a dead body to cling to and so she goes to the tomb early in the morning to help preserve it.

In the garden she discovers Him alive and it’s like old times again. Who can blame her when she clings to Jesus – yet Jesus needs her to journey on for him, to let the other disciples know just what had taken place – to move on from the place and the moment where she could have stayed forever.

I love the passage near the end of the first chapter of John’s Gospel where the first disciples are called and the first thing they want to know is where does Jesus lives and they spend the rest of the day at home with him – how they must have wanted to stay where they were and not have to traipse the countryside and not have to deal with opposition and not have to have anything to do with Calvary.

I love the passages which describe the transfiguration experience and how Peter asks if he can build three holy shelter for Moses, Elijah and the Lord. The glory of the moment must have been so strong that he must have wanted to cling to it forever. Never to go back down into the valley, never to deny, betray or forsake. Not ever.

The journey goes on though for us all and will ever do so, so long as the words of the epistle today remain sounding in our ears.

“The love of Christ controls us”- and this is a love that is on the move – we have to go with it – like disciples whose hearts burned within them as the travelled on the road in his company. Like a Spirit which blows where it wills and into the lives of surprising people at off beat times.

Mary Magdalene’s life was truly blessed in those special moments when she could touch and hold our Lord – we have a right to look for those moments too – to cherish them and give thanks for them.

Her life was a blessing to others though when she could pull herself away from what was comfortable and run and tell for the good of others – so must we stride out in faith, taking on the challenge, meeting the new situation head on. His love, a living thing in us.

I wonder if we shall go to Ashdown forest next year and try to recapture the spirit of what was shared this year or I wonder if we shall move on somewhere else and be surprised at what we might find – all over again.

RH  23.7.08