Very Present

‘And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'’ Christ bringing to a close both Matthew’s gospel and his Great Commission - the Great Afterthought, perhaps; Jesus the realist anticipating that the church would probably lose its nerve. Perhaps he had an idea that making disciples (his commission) would turn out to be a virtually impossible task, it is, have you ever tried it? I saw a woman crossing the road this morning who I had baptised and could only reflect on how profoundly easy it was to cover her head in water and how profoundly challenging it remains to teach her to obey all the teaching of Christ – this stuff knocks the smugness out of any minister. Jesus, I think, knew that the infant church would need all the reassurance it could get as it stepped out to minister in a godless world; the reassurance that the world is never, ever in fact God-less. I am with you. As the Sons of Korah sang for us in Psalm 46, ‘God is our refuge and strength, our very present help in trouble’. The very presence of God is not just doctrinal to us, it’s a lifeline when our circumstances point to the very absence of God, it’s our courage when our faith has dribbled out our boots. Always, I am with you.

Malmesbury Abbey is experiencing human absence right now. The sad passing of congregational members whose lives we celebrate, but who, although they are now fully present to God, are painfully absent to the life of the church. And we also face the moving on of a key leader, Revd Lee Barnes, who has changed the lives of many and has been at the heart of shaping the mission of the church in Malmesbury – really quite surprising for a Derby County supporter. His vocation to serve from September in the Diocese of Liverpool leaves us with the limp lettuce of his absence as St Mark’s Haydock tucks into the Sunday lunch of his presence. I love change, when somebody observed that ‘change is here to stay’ in the Church of England, I was a happy chappy. But I sometimes wish we didn't have to turn the page quite so quickly; I sometimes wish that those who have so tangibly revealed God’s presence to us didn’t so suddenly leave us.

‘Why have you forsaken me?’ ‘I am with you always.’ These simple words of Christ spoken within a few days of each other point to the fact that we will always have to hold together the tension of presence and absence in our Christian journey. The richer the companionship, the greater the loss. The deeper the springs of God’s grace, the more barren the desert wanderings. To those that have moved on we say simply, job very well done, thank you. To Jesus we gently remind Him in our prayers that He did say ‘the end of the age.’