Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 9th April 2023

Dear Friends,

Last week I joined two memorial meetings, thanks to Zoom. One for a former colleague and one for someone whom I did not know well but whom I had met and respected. Both were held in the Quaker manner and both brought out the varieties of ways in which the Friends we were recalling had mattered, not least to those who had personal memories of them, and the ongoing significance of that for all of us. Each of those for whom we were giving thanks had found a faith that nurtured them and which was strengthened by being amongst Quakers. For one it was keeping a questioning mind, asking “Who is Jesus for us today?”; for the other it was an acceptance that comprehending God is beyond human grasp but finding the good that is within us and others is possible.
 
I have been wondering, therefore, what a memorial meeting for Jesus would have been like with the disciples and those who knew him present? What would Peter, John, Martha and Mary recalled? Had such an event happened shortly after his death uppermost probably would have been the sadness they were all feeling, though with a sense that he had not entirely left them and that they had to continue what he had shown them. A few weeks later it would have been very different. After the Pentecost experience, there was confidence, courage and conviction that they had a message to share in word and deed. And they went off and did it, whatever the opposition.
 
Looking through ‘Quaker Faith and Practice’ for something pertinent to all this, I found reflections on Mary Hughes who was active a century ago in caring for others amongst whom she lived in the East End of London. It is a long passage so I pick out just a bit of it:

“She had no set schemes. She founded no institution. Neither did Jesus… ‘He went about doing good.’ So did Mary Hughes… It was a question of being rather than of doing. You trusted to the contagion of goodness rather than to homily or sermon. … It was in the nature of things that the world contained sinners, and she wished above all to live close to the nature of things. This she could confidently do because of her belief that the overriding reality is spiritual.” (QFP 18.13)
 
Greetings at Easter weekend,
Chris

On behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Tim Pitt-Payne, Theresa Samms, Nancy Wall)