Lent is a time for self-examination. John Bell’s hymn ‘Will you come and follow me’ has always struck me as a harsh and challenging text, so I chose it as the focus for our 2023 Lent explorations.

It’s based on Jesus’s words in Matthew 25 verse 31 onwards about feeding the hungry, tending the sick, and so on. Bell’s text and the teachings scattered throughout the gospels demand that we examine what makes us ‘tick’ as people so that we can see how our own desires and prejudices and behaviours prevent us from being Divine agents in the world, and prevent the Divine light that is in every one of us from shining out to light the way for others. 

See: http://www.billysloan.co.uk/songs/will_you_come_and_follow_me.html

But the more we have explored the text, the more I find myself torn. It is so demanding that I am doomed to fail. And if I am doomed to fail, then what’s the point of even trying? It raises the question: ‘why am I a Christian’?

The answer is simple. I am a Christian because I was born in Carlisle in 1950 with Scottish and northern English ancestors that were saturated in Methodism. Had I been born in Damascus or Khartoum or Delhi or Beijing I would almost certainly not be a Christian. I am a Christian, therefore, through accident of birth. Simple as that.

What has kept me a Christian? The answer without doubt is beauty: music, ritual, mystery, architecture, ideas, longing, being transported to another place. In short, liturgy and ritual done in a relaxed and seemly manner with all of us giving of our best in reading, in singing, in serving, in speaking. It is a performance — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Yes, gospel teaching is the best way to live life in all its fullness, but without the numinousness it’s all rather puritan and sterile.

Indeed, I wonder if the ritual, the beauty, the mystery are more important for me than the Christian message. If the focus of the liturgy were the Easter Bunny rather than Jesus Christ, would I still be a Christian, or would I be a devotee of a small mammal of the family Leporidae with a bobtail and floppy ears?

I’ve come out of these Wednesday evenings feeling inadequate about my inability to live the The Summons. And so I become more determined to enjoy the liturgy and abundant life and do the best I can secure in the knowledge that like everyone else I shall fail. I bash on. 

The Latin for ‘I bash on’ is perfero — which coincidentally was the motto of Cumberland County Council emblazoned on the exercise books of my education in the 1950s and 60s.  And that takes me back to where I started. You can take the boy out of Cumberland but never Cumberland out of the boy.

God bless this mess.