Reflection -  Rev Michael Greer

Tell me with whom you walk

I recall coming across those words in my reading years ago. I have to confess it wasn’t just yesterday. It was back 40 and more years now, when as a student for ministry at Trinity Theological College. “Div Students” we were then called, short for ‘Divinity’ – something of a misnomer I fear, if you’d known us then. But we scrupulously maintained lengthy reading lists, knowing we would be minutely examined on every last one of them.

Our world has changed much since those years – although not always for the better I guess. Perhaps the most dramatic change over these recent weeks, has been the practice of social distancing. Keeping us literally from ‘walking with’ friends and family, at least for the moment anyway. But as we begin our journey into Level 2, such change seems to have been all worthwhile.

But more even than that, I suspect that for all of us it has deepened our awareness of how much we need on another.

Over the weeks ahead, as we continue our journey towards whatever our return to ‘normal’ may mean, hopefully that deepened awareness will also generate within us the energy for lasting change. A new normal that will create fresh, better and more inclusive ways of walking with others.

It’s a timely reminder. For having walked Holy Week and celebrated Easter, we are stepping towards a season of transformation: Pentecost. That part of the Church’s year during which the Gospel and the whole of the New Testament make clear that as Jesus walks on with us, he is also the mans of real change.

So just as Pentecost is all about transformation, hopefully this year our journey will also be about transformation. Allowing it to create within each of us an opportunity to be more Christ-like. To include others; to care for the least of our brothers and sisters; to be genuinely concerned for social just-ness; to walk together in what creative ways we can imagine; and discover new ways of being loving. To walk with Christ.

“Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are”.

Rev Michael Greer, 17 May 2020

Hymn - Send us your Spirit, Lord