Photo: What are You Looking For?, by Franz Ittenbach, 1835.
Inheritors of a message: Damian Entwistle confirms an old lesson
‘The bells can be encouraged to ring again.’
On Sunday last, I joined Scarborough Friends for Meeting for Worship – I was making a weekend visit to family.
Scarborough Friends, like Marsden Friends, are selling their Meeting house, and this awareness was burbling quietly as we moved into the Meeting room and settled into worship.
As we were sitting, a long-forgotten memory surfaced in the gathered silence, called forth by these setting conditions.
My mind went back to 1991, when I was a student friar. I went back to term-time at the Franciscan Study Centre, in Canterbury; Joseph O’Hanlon was presenting a scripture lesson to the assembled class. The text was John’s account of the calling of the first disciples (John 1:32-39).
John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptise with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptises with the Holy Spirit”… The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.’
Joe indicated that the original Greek text uses just one word meno in this passage, which is rendered in English as ‘live’, ‘remain’, ‘stay’. So, what John sets before us is the repeated iteration of one word, which would raise a clamour if we were Greek, but whose insistence is diluted because we speak English. Joe helped us to explore the significance of this.
By re-reading the passage and substituting the word ‘abide’ where the words ‘remain’ or ‘stay’ appear in the English text, the bells can be encouraged to ring again. This resonance shifts the entire narrative and furnishes it with a depth and intensity that is camouflaged by the English rendering.
The Spirit abides with Jesus. John tells us so twice, to make absolutely sure we get the point. With this at the forefront of our minds, when Jesus asks the disciples, ‘What are you looking for?’, he is not enquiring of them whether they need directions to the Post Office in Bethany. Similarly, when the disciples ask Jesus where he abides, they are (assuredly) not asking him to show them his B&B accommodation. They are enquiring about his spiritual life, about his way of being, about his way of belonging: they are asking about his relationship with God.
Jesus – now voicing explicitly what was implicit in his first question – invites them to spend time with him, to find out. And they do so: they saw where he abided and they abided with him, that day.
An understanding was taking shape for me: an opening, furnishing a new understanding, and perspective.
‘An understanding was taking shape for me: an opening, furnishing a new understanding, and perspective.’
At this point, back in the present, a Scarborough Friend stood and offered ministry about those who come among Friends and how they come into membership. He shared a passage from Quaker faith & practice (11.01):
‘Membership does not require great moral or spiritual achievement, but it does require a sincerity of purpose and a commitment to Quaker values and practices. Membership is a spiritual discipline, a commitment to the well-being of one’s spiritual home and not simply appearance on a membership roll. The simple process of becoming a member is part of the spiritual journey: part of the seeking that is so integral to our religious heritage. The process of becoming a member is not only about seeking but also about finding.
‘The process is an important part of the life of the area meeting, too; accepting a new member means not only welcoming the “hidden seed of God” but also affirming what it is as a community that we value and cherish. Quakers once called themselves “Friends in the Truth” and it is the finding of this truth that we affirm when we accept others who value it into membership.’
This ministry was a gift to me, for it solidified the emergent insight, first conjured by Joseph O’Hanlon’s words, thirty-five years prior at the Franciscan Study Centre.
George Fox said repeatedly (and somewhat brusquely on occasion) that only those animated by the self-same spirit which animated Christ, the prophets, and apostles – who gave forth the Scriptures – were true disciples. He insisted that some ‘had the Scriptures, but they wanted the power and Spirit that those had who gave forth the Scriptures; and that was the reason they were not in fellowship with the Son, nor with the Father, nor with the Scriptures, nor one with another,’ and he did so precisely because they lacked the spirit.
This stridency Fox inherits from John’s gospel, because John’s whole understanding of Christian discipleship, fellowship, and truth, was predicated on being animated by that spirit vouchsafed by the risen Jesus.
And so I was brought to recognise, and affirm, that – just as surely as those first disciples were not asking Jesus about his B&B accommodation; as surely as Fox yearned for the spirit to awaken in God’s people insights that would lead them into truth; as surely as people come among Friends because this spirit animates them; as surely as we hold ourselves to be the inheritors of this message, and to be responsible for witnessing to it before the world; as assuredly as this – a Quaker community is not to be conflated with a Quaker Meeting house.
Our Quaker heritage is proper to us, as Friends (if not something unique). We offer a way of belonging that is as old as the gospel itself – one predicated on the spirit, not on place.
Thus prompted, I stood and ministered.
