Coracle Trust E-Reflections

Lent: You belong, forever

Friday 1 April 2011

You are the vastness into which you gaze. "Deep calls unto deep in the roar of your waters" Psalm 42:7

Read John 8:33-56 and return. 'A slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.' 'You have no room for my word.'

The deep well, the vast ocean

It is galling to think of ourselves as slaves. It’s demeaning and clearly the Jews in this narrative were offended. It pricks any exaggerated sense of autonomy and status. Here Jesus focuses on belonging. For the slave there is ‘no permanent place in the family’. They are compared to sons, who ‘belong forever’. And here we dive into deep waters, slip into a deep place. The air is thick with the question, How deeply settled am I?. How fragile and impermanent do I feel my place is - as me - in my place on the earth and our place in the world? For a christian this seems to prove difficult and awkward – having a foot in two camps. We are strangers, pilgrims moving through yet the good creation, the holiness of life on earth and the incarnation give us strong food for thought.

Room for truth?

Last weekend I was in Julian of Norwich’s 14th century prayer cell. There was such a sense of permanence, of sinking into a deep bed or well. It felt like floating on a lilo in the middle of a wide and bottomless ocean. This belonging to God, do I give it room? Do I hold onto it or let it slip through my fingers even cast it away at times? Give room by imagining yourself simply floating on that ocean or slipping into this deep well, this permanent place of belonging.

And I am aware that I am left with two questions with which to float

Do I belong - is there as sense of permanence, or calm and settled hereness? To what specifically am I a slave? Andrew Hook