VICAR'S LETTER

17 Sundon Road     
Streatley      

May, 2005      

Dear All 

For thousands of years, people have been fascinated by mazes. Some of the earliest cave paintings and rock carvings are pictures of mazes. The reason for this fascination is not hard to work out. People have found in them a model for life itself. The journey of life is like a journey through a maze. On such a journey we need a guide. That was why Jesus came. First he guided his disciples through the Maze. Now the same guidance is offered to us.

When the first disciples joined Jesus, they followed him into a maze. To begin with they were content to simply follow where he led. But then they lost faith in their leader. They abandoned him. For a while thereafter they wandered in total confusion, desperately trying to find their way out of the Maze. But then Jesus, returned. Their faith in him was restored and they followed him onward into the heart of the Maze.

The guidance that Jesus offered to the disciples is offered now to us. The way through the Maze, he says, is to follow the way of the cross. It is to live lives devoted to the selfless service of all. Many other options will be on offer – the way of wealth, the way of power, the way of personal fulfilment, but they will lead to dead or tragic ends. Only the way of the Cross leads to the heart of the Maze.

What lies at the heart of the Maze is communion - a world where all are at one with God, with each other, and with themselves.   This was the goal glimpsed by the disciples in the very earliest days of the church:

They met constantly to hear the apostles teach, and to share the common life, to break bread, and to pray. A sense of awe was everywhere...  All whose faith had drawn them together held everything in common; they would sell their property and possessions and make a general distribution as the need of each required.  With one mind they kept up their daily attendance at the Temple, and, breaking bread in private houses, shared their meals with unaffected joy, as they praised God.

It is the global realisation of that goal that is the object of our journey.

The journey through the maze is one we re-enact every Sunday in Church.  We gather in the Nave, bringing with us all our perplexities and confusions.  We move forward down the central aisle at the head of which stands the Cross.  We pass beneath that cross and kneel together to share communion.  The challenge to us is to enact that journey in our own lives.

All best wishes

Roger

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