Simon Marsh

WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY? – my friend Bill would almost always interject … sometimes to the considerable chagrin of one or two of us … who were very probably articulating our current flight of fancy at the time. What would Jesus say?

And the painful answer often was, and is, that we’re not entirely sure! And this is sometimes the more acutely painful because our human conditioning makes of us a people who want to be sure what we’re about, what we’re doing, what we’re believing. And – to complicate matters further – there are some folk who, in addition, want to be sure what others are about, or are doing, or are believing. This is real human commerce! This is the stuff of what it means to be community … to live together.

Archbishop Rowan speaks words of counsel to us in his The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today: A Reflection for the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion. (see Ruth Gledhill)

Meanwhile in parishes around the globe we chatter about “Fresh Expressions”, of “Looking Outwards”, of “Justice” and of “Peace”; of mission and of schism, of unity and of disunity; of straight and of gay. And in all of this, and more, I’m endlessly interrupted by Bill’s “What would Jesus say?”

And difficult though it be I know that I ought to have a better idea of what Jesus might say to the Church in our day. I ought to have a clearer idea of what Jesus is saying to me. And so, deep down, I know that I must spend less time looking backwards, forwards, outwards, inwards or sideways, and learn to look upwards.

I’ll come to a clearer understanding of Jesus’ view of things when I study the Scriptures and share in the Sacraments with that openness of mind and heart that is invoked by true “worship in Spirit and in truth” … and when I remember, amidst the clamour and the clatter of life in the Church and in the world that whatever Jesus would say, whatever Jesus is saying, HIS tone is a “still, small voice of calm”.

Let me then pay more attention to “looking upwards”: more to worship, and to prayerful listening, than to soapbox flights of fancy … or good old (bad old) religiosity …

What would, what does, JESUS say?