THE PARISH CHURCH FOR LYTHAM

Last Updated 19/05/2008 22:34:12

GOING BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS

I don’t like going back. It is rare for things to be as you remember them. For some strange reason, when we do go back we are often left with the sense that things aren’t as good as they used to be. Frequently, when we try to recapture the special essence of a place or an experience, we end up disappointed. A favourite place has been spoiled by over commercialisation or standards of behaviour have declined. But this surely cannot be true of every place we have visited, otherwise there would be no hope for an improvement in lifestyle or environment anywhere. Everything would appear to be in terminal decline. So maybe a memorable experience happens when someone or some place leaves us with a special memory that we long to preserve. It is an event – or series of events – which by their very nature cannot be repeated. An experience like this can involve any number of different factors such as the people we are with, our emotional state at the time and the way we are able to appreciate the environment we are in.

Some years ago I was invited to return to my old school to preach in its chapel. I accepted because I felt it was a privilege to have been asked, considering it to be a rare opportunity to share the faith of the Church with the present generation of the school.

When I arrived, however, I unexpectedly entered into a time warp where I could see both the present and the past at the same time. I have spoken to others since and discovered this is quite a normal experience. As I was shown around the school, while I was aware of the changes that had taken place around me, I could also see the buildings and grounds as they had been. I found myself walking past both the current pupils and also those who had been there with me as fellow pupils many years ago.

Comparing the present with the past, I could see that life had changed almost beyond recognition. And what an easy time the current pupils were having, it seemed to me. After all, they had hot water in which to wash. The dormitory in which I slept during my first year which comprised of four long rows of nearly sixty beds had gone and the new study-bedrooms that replaced the dormitories even had curtains.

My memories of the night when the boy whose bed was opposite mine took his life hadn’t gone, though. I was drawn to the place where he fell to his death. Maybe I was still trying to come to terms with this awful tragedy. (I returned once again to the school since this visit and still found myself drawn to revisit this place as if to make peace with the dreadful death of one so young who I only knew by his surname.) When I later described the way of life we were subjected to in my particular area of the school to someone who knew about these things, he replied that he had not come across such brutality except in an elite regiment of an army. Intense experiences can leave us with intense memories and we have to be careful sometimes when we re-visit them.

And of course things change. Life moves on. Not always for the best. But sometimes it quite definitely improves, maybe not for ourselves but for others. I might think the current pupils of my old school have an easy life and are pampered and spoilt but I wouldn’t want them to go through the daily fear and intimidation I and many others had to endure.

Sometimes it’s easy to think the past is better than the present, simply because it is the past. But if we are serious about making the most of the present – and we can neither live in the past nor the future – we have try hard to integrate the past in such a way that we allow ourselves and those around us to move on. If we cannot or refuse to move on, we are likely to miss out on making the most of the present and whatever lies ahead.

There is a story about how a follower of Jesus - she had come to know him very well and was one of his closest followers - failed to recognise him when she went to his tomb.[i] She had expected to see his dead body but it had gone. She presumed it had been stolen. And even when Jesus – raised from the dead – was standing near her, she didn’t recognise him. She hadn’t realised that even – and especially – in times when we encounter death, life moves on. And so must we. Her experience of loss had been so great, her memories of the past were naturally defining the way she lived in the present. When she realised that Jesus had somehow overcome death, she wanted to preserve her relationship with him as it had been in the past. But that was never going to be possible. She soon realized that her memories of him were going to form the basis of a new life for millions of others in the future, living beyond Galilee and Jerusalem in many different lands throughout the world.

So going back can be great fun but it can also be demanding. And sometimes for life to move on, we have to find ways to re-integrate the past so that we can embrace what lies ahead. This kind of death and resurrection can be extremely liberating. Such an understanding of one of the standard units of human experience is what helps human beings make the most sense of themselves. For this daily dying and rising forms the basis of an integrated life where we can deal with both the demons and the delights that can cloud our appreciation of today. Maybe this – in part at least - was what Jesus was talking about when he said that if we know the truth, it will set us free.[ii]

Andrew