28th June, 2020.
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My dear friends,

I hope you had a good St John’s Day, despite the difficulties this year. I was amazed and hugely impressed – though not entirely surprised – to discover that so far during the Coronavirus pandemic members of St John in England and the Island have contributed 115,000 hours of voluntary service. Please know that millions of your fellow countrymen and women appreciate you and are grateful for all you do, and remember you in their prayers.

The County Chaplains marked St John’s Day this year with a conference held over ‘Team’ – a first. We heard about the work that has gone into reformulating chaplaincy in St John. As well as a Priory Dean, there is to be a Vice-Dean and three Sub-Deans to resource the work of the County Chaplains.
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It has been announced by the Government that churches may open for public worship from next weekend. We await further information from the House of Bishops. If it is possible, I hope to celebrate a very simple Eucharist in St Mary’s Church, Great Bardfield, next Sunday, 5th July, at 10.30 a.m. I shall of course pray at that service for the work of St John during the present emergency.


     With continued prayers and kindest regards,

      The Rev. Dr ROBERT BEAKEN, County Chaplain
TRINITY 3 – 28th JUNE 2020
 
Gospel: St Matthew, chapter 10, verses 40-4
Let me begin with some words from today’s Gospel:
 
Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.
 
That image stuck in my mind – even a cup of cold water. It was the great Biblical scholar St Jerome who pointed out the significance of cold water: these people were so poor they couldn’t even afford even a little fire to heat up warm water. We can’t begin to imagine such acute poverty. We here see Jesus talking to the people at the very bottom of Hebrew society and telling them that they matter to God, just like anyone else; and, just like anyone else, they too can serve God. They might not be rich or powerful, and they might not have much to offer; but it’s not what we do, Jesus tells them, it’s why we do it. A cup of cold water is a very small thing; but given with Christian love to someone who is thirsty, it turns into a very big thing.

            This leads me to the observation that in Christianity, the small things of daily life matter a lot. From time to time in our Christian pilgrimage through life, we are granted special, wonderful spiritual experiences of God: a sense of peace in the middle of a crisis or illness, an answered prayer, the wonderful feeling that God has forgiven our sins, and so on. Sometimes we feel that God is so close, we could almost reach out and touch Him! These moments are little glimpses of heaven, sent to reassure and sustain us. But we soon learn (1) that God sends these special moments when He chooses to do, which might not be quite when we would choose ourselves, (2) such spiritual experiences are rare and exceptional, because (3) we could not live with such spiritual intensity. Indeed, we soon learn that on some days, following Jesus can be very hard and painful.

On most days, of course, we find ourselves somewhere between the two experiences: neither wonderfully, consciously aware of the presence of the Lord, nor especially suffering because of our Christian faith.

All Christians must learn the lesson as the years pass that God is most often to be found and worshipped in the nitty-gritty of everyday life: peeling the potatoes, going to the supermarket, looking after the family, doing our work. Someone once noted that in his Rule for Monks the great St Benedict spends more time writing about the reception of visitors to the monastery than about prayer.

St Benedict had grasped that little things matter. We wouldn’t be very impressed by a Christian who was honest in big matters, but not in little ones. Our Christianity must affect the small things of our lives as well as the big ones. After all, Christianity is not an escape from reality, but a journey into the heart of divine reality, which is supposed to affect the whole of our life.

Over the past few Sundays we have been working our way through the Gospel according to St Matthew. We have seen St Matthew’s great concern for the spread of Christianity. If I might paraphrase: We have Good News, St Matthew says, and we can’t keep it all to ourselves, we must share it with the men and women around us.

This is a task for all the Baptised, not just the clergy. We are all ambassadors for Christ, all the time. My mind goes back to a remark made by the Bishop of Horsham at a Church conference held at a holiday camp at Caister. One of the ladies in the kitchen came up to him and said, “We always look forward to having your group here every year: you’re so much nicer than most of the other people we get.” Even when we are carrying our trays of food through a canteen, we are still witnesses for Christ. People notice how we behave in small things. It’s not much good being a good Christian on Sunday, but being a uncaring employer or a bad employee during the week. Big things may go over people’s heads, but they notice little things – cups of cold water.

We should also recall that it is most frequently the little things of our lives that bind us closer to God and to each other, and enable us to grow as Christians. My mind goes back to a little old lady from Yorkshire who once said to me “Most people will help in a crisis: it’s what you’re like the rest of the time that matters.” Precisely. God wants us to be Christians on Wednesday afternoons as well as on Sunday mornings, when we’re in the pub as well as when we’re at the altar.
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In all aspects of our lives, little things, done with Christian love, matter a lot.