And simply walk home in the rain

A significant event in John’s life – but no one noticed.

Each day for almost 20 years he had commuted by train from Bedford, where he lived, into central London. But this particular day was different. It was his last day before retirement.

He told me some years later that, as he stepped off the train at Bedford station that evening, he realised this was a major milestone in his life: his final journey home after a lifetime of various commutes. For him, it was a moment of real significance.

But no one knew and no one noticed.

He simply walked home in the rain.

I tell this story about an old school friend because it gives some context to this blog. This month marks the 50th anniversary of my ordination at Liverpool Cathedral – 26th September, to be precise, the same day that my annual car insurance expires. Yes, Sunday, 26th September 1976.

I happened to mention the anniversary to my daughters, and immediately they took control of the situation. One contacted the cathedral, with the result that I shall be presiding at a service of Holy Communion in the Lady Chapel.

It will be on Saturday, 7th November, the first Saturday when all four daughters are able to be there, at 12.05 pm.

I find it slightly embarrassing.

When I was inducted as vicar, first at St John’s Thornham in 1984 and then, eight years later, at Christ Church, Aughton, I realised that both services were inevitably focused on me. Yet they weren’t really about me as a single individual. They were community events – moments when a church and its people stopped to recognise that something significant was happening.

It was much the same with my retirement weekend, spread over two days. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to being the centre of so much attention. And yet, during the Covid lockdowns, many vicars retired without any gathering or service to mark that momentous milestone. Some understandably felt that something important had been missed.

Perhaps this need to mark things is simply part of the way God has made us. We celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. We gather for weddings and funerals. We mark beginnings and endings, arrivals and departures.

Annie Dillard once wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

But perhaps we also need particular days which cause us to stop and notice the life that has been passing almost unnoticed around us. In fact, only this morning I went into Ormskirk to buy four “You’re leaving for Uni” cards for our granddaughters.

Another milestone.

Jesus as a law-abiding Jew made communal celebrations a priority, especially the annual Passover festival in Jerusalem.  He seems to have understood our need to mark things. He went to festivals, attended weddings, shared significant meals, one in particular. 

In fact, writing this blog has helped me to see his Last Supper in a wider context.  It’s not just that he is preparing them for his death on the cross as the definitive sacrificial lamb, it is also the culmination of three years of ministry. 

Each disciple had been chosen to accompany him on his travels; they had been with him seeing him calm the storm and feed the thousands, heal the sick and even raise the dead.  A truly remarkable few years which would transform them radically and permanently. 

But now this phase of his ministry, their ministry, has come to an end.  And fittingly Jesus marks this with a meal, a moment – like all celebrations – of both looking back and looking forward.  And at this moment of transition, a special meal together.   

Here we see the real purpose of marking milestones. Not to congratulate ourselves, nor to pretend that everything along the way has been successful, but simply to stop. To notice. To remember.

For Jesus and his disciples, the meal was not an ending in the ordinary sense. Something was finishing, certainly, but something quite different was about to begin. Within days their world would be turned upside down. Yet before all that, they sat down together.

T. S. Eliot observed, “We had the experience but missed the meaning.” Here anniversaries give us the opportunity to recover some of that meaning. They give us a brief pause between what has been and what is still to come; an opportunity to give thanks for people, places, experiences and, above all, the grace of God which we often recognise much more clearly looking backwards.

So on 7th November I shall overcome my embarrassment and celebrate.

Because John’s story reminds me that there is another possibility.

You can reach a great milestone in life — and simply walk home in the rain.