Welcome to the
North Wiltshire Methodist Circuit
The first two months of
this year have seen me most days in hospital wards at the Great Western here in
Swindon or latterly the John Radcliffe at Oxford, not I hasten to add as
patient, but visitor to Joyce, my wife, who is now thankfully at home and setting
out on a period of recuperation following major heart surgery.
Being more a non-chatty
than chatty man, except when in my churchy comfort zone and when required
beyond listening in my pastoral role as a minister, and having been designated
an off-the-chart introvert by a personality test model to which I with my
ministerial colleagues submitted myself many years ago, I tended to make a
bee-line for Joyce and confined conversation to her over these past weeks. This
may not exclude a smile of acknowledgement to neighbouring patients.
However, one of Joyce’s
adjacent bed dwellers in the Great Western enquired of Joyce whether her
husband, me, was a ‘vicar’! All the vicars this person had ever met looked like
me, apparently, tall, white-haired, slightly bowed! Joyce admitted my Methodist
identity which, on my next visit, prompted a warm discussion initiated by
Joyce’s immediate neighbour about her Methodist chapel in the Surrey village
where she once lived, the lively goings on of the youth club there and MAYC*
green and yellow festooned journeys to the MAYC Weekends at the Royal Albert
Hall. (Let those of my Methodist vintage and upbringing understand). The
‘vicar’ spotter, as I passed her bed, became a ready sharer of her frustrations
as she waited for scans and tests that seemed to recede ever into the future.
We became a small, passing community.
At the John Radcliffe my
attentions were similarly focused, albeit accompanied for one of those critical
weeks by our lovely daughter, Rachel. In the critical care unit, I found myself
for a few minutes sitting next to a man who like me had been asked to move from
his wife’s side to allow care to proceed. We knew instinctively that whoever
else we were, our hopes and fears meant that as human beings we were together
in that moment. The currency of words simply allowed that deeper recognition.
The nearest we got to this was This is tough, isn’t it? A couple of days
later I encountered him on the cardiac ward just as his wife had been taken
back to the operating theatre for a further, emergency procedure. Words were
hardly necessary, nor again when the next day I was able to reciprocate the
smiles of both of them, sitting together, glad still to be by each other’s
side.
At time of writing this, I
am studying the Gospel for next Sunday, the Sunday before Lent. This is Luke’s
account of Jesus’s Transfiguration on the mountaintop accompanied by disciples
Peter, James and John who get to see their Master in the company of Israel’s
two greatest prophets Moses and Elijah, and hear God’s affirmation of Jesus, This
is my Son, my chosen; listen to him! We are generally led to understand
this as a moment of encouragement and enlightenment for these friends of Jesus
to help prepare them for what’s to come in Jerusalem. (Lk 9:28-36) The
passage that follows, relating Jesus’ healing of the boy almost certainly
living with epilepsy, is an optional extension of the prescribed lesson in the
Revised Common Lectionary. (Luke 9: 37-43) This is, I think, an
artificially manufactured break in the text. The force of the Transfiguration
includes what happens at the foot of the mountain as much as at the top. Any
vision of God’s glory, including and supremely in the flesh and blood being of our
Saviour Jesus Christ, is authenticated as it brings us closer in our own flesh
and blood humanity, in instinctive empathetic understanding to the joys and
sufferings of our fellow human beings. In this narrative, God’s glory comes
close to a desperate father helplessly witnessing the pain and fear of his
only, dearly loved son. The disciples grasped it in the end, perhaps by stages.
If you have indeed been or are met by God’s glory in whatever way, including
maybe through any Lenten discipline you choose to pursue over these coming
weeks, then your presence, however chatty person you are or are not, will bring
some hope, comfort, healing, life to those you may happen to encounter on the
way, and critically you will be more open to the enlivening love we all need
from others for the journey.
Tony Barnes
*Methodist Association
of Youth Clubs.
Welcome to the
North Wiltshire Methodist Circuit
The first two months of this year have seen me most days in hospital wards at the Great Western here in Swindon or latterly the John Radcliffe at Oxford, not I hasten to add as patient, but visitor to Joyce, my wife, who is now thankfully at home and setting out on a period of recuperation following major heart surgery.
Being more a non-chatty than chatty man, except when in my churchy comfort zone and when required beyond listening in my pastoral role as a minister, and having been designated an off-the-chart introvert by a personality test model to which I with my ministerial colleagues submitted myself many years ago, I tended to make a bee-line for Joyce and confined conversation to her over these past weeks. This may not exclude a smile of acknowledgement to neighbouring patients.
However, one of Joyce’s adjacent bed dwellers in the Great Western enquired of Joyce whether her husband, me, was a ‘vicar’! All the vicars this person had ever met looked like me, apparently, tall, white-haired, slightly bowed! Joyce admitted my Methodist identity which, on my next visit, prompted a warm discussion initiated by Joyce’s immediate neighbour about her Methodist chapel in the Surrey village where she once lived, the lively goings on of the youth club there and MAYC* green and yellow festooned journeys to the MAYC Weekends at the Royal Albert Hall. (Let those of my Methodist vintage and upbringing understand). The ‘vicar’ spotter, as I passed her bed, became a ready sharer of her frustrations as she waited for scans and tests that seemed to recede ever into the future. We became a small, passing community.
At the John Radcliffe my attentions were similarly focused, albeit accompanied for one of those critical weeks by our lovely daughter, Rachel. In the critical care unit, I found myself for a few minutes sitting next to a man who like me had been asked to move from his wife’s side to allow care to proceed. We knew instinctively that whoever else we were, our hopes and fears meant that as human beings we were together in that moment. The currency of words simply allowed that deeper recognition. The nearest we got to this was This is tough, isn’t it? A couple of days later I encountered him on the cardiac ward just as his wife had been taken back to the operating theatre for a further, emergency procedure. Words were hardly necessary, nor again when the next day I was able to reciprocate the smiles of both of them, sitting together, glad still to be by each other’s side.
At time of writing this, I am studying the Gospel for next Sunday, the Sunday before Lent. This is Luke’s account of Jesus’s Transfiguration on the mountaintop accompanied by disciples Peter, James and John who get to see their Master in the company of Israel’s two greatest prophets Moses and Elijah, and hear God’s affirmation of Jesus, This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him! We are generally led to understand this as a moment of encouragement and enlightenment for these friends of Jesus to help prepare them for what’s to come in Jerusalem. (Lk 9:28-36) The passage that follows, relating Jesus’ healing of the boy almost certainly living with epilepsy, is an optional extension of the prescribed lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary. (Luke 9: 37-43) This is, I think, an artificially manufactured break in the text. The force of the Transfiguration includes what happens at the foot of the mountain as much as at the top. Any vision of God’s glory, including and supremely in the flesh and blood being of our Saviour Jesus Christ, is authenticated as it brings us closer in our own flesh and blood humanity, in instinctive empathetic understanding to the joys and sufferings of our fellow human beings. In this narrative, God’s glory comes close to a desperate father helplessly witnessing the pain and fear of his only, dearly loved son. The disciples grasped it in the end, perhaps by stages. If you have indeed been or are met by God’s glory in whatever way, including maybe through any Lenten discipline you choose to pursue over these coming weeks, then your presence, however chatty person you are or are not, will bring some hope, comfort, healing, life to those you may happen to encounter on the way, and critically you will be more open to the enlivening love we all need from others for the journey.
Tony Barnes
*Methodist Association of Youth Clubs.