‘Back to School’ – September Clergy Reflection

September can’t help but be associated with new classrooms and pencil cases, fresh uniforms and nervousness around new environments. I distinctly remember how alien it felt to write in my new workbook having not held a pencil for 6 weeks.

So, it’s interesting to me, that in the gospel reading for the first Sunday in September, Jesus want us to think about how we learn: more specifically, how to learn to follow him. In Mark 7 the ultra-smart most learned people in Israel, the Pharisees and scribes, start a debate with Jesus about the cleaning rituals of washing hands and cleaning their eating utensils. They ask Jesus why his disciples aren’t following these codes handed down to them in the tradition. Jesus responds by quoting Isaiah, “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

I wonder if Jesus wants to remind us, this September, that it is entirely possible to diligently follow the letter of the law, to have everything memorised, to have learnt the tradition and be capable of spouting chapter and verse and yet, to have completely missed the Spirit of the law, worse – to be actively opposed to that Spirit. The purpose of learning is not to put more facts in your head, but to become a different person, to be transformed from the inside out by what you have learnt.

Blackburn Cathedral as an institution, and each of us individuals connected to it, has a lot to learn. In our community building, the way we serve this region and town, the way we safeguard and seek to protect the most vulnerable from harm.

The question Jesus places before us is this: will we be a people that give lip-service to learning (to rephrase Isaiah) while our hearts are still far away from the subject matter, or will our learning transform us from the inside out?

Revd James Lawrence
Canon Missioner