Day 56 of the End to End in 2019 was my last on the Lancaster Canal. This was the last canal in England for me and I wouldn’t walk alongside a canal again until the Great Glen.
The Lancaster Canal in its present form is interesting for its un-naviagable Northern Reaches. Tewitfield is the terminal junction for boats. Beyond that you can walk although the route encounters plenty of challenges. The main one is of course the M6. We were able to see it up close, and this would continue the rest of the way to the Scottish border. I went under a bridge, I followed a foot path and I spotted various culverts, all signs of the M6 effect. There was a large sign saying M6 on the other side of a fence. I see it whenever we go North on that motorway. Now we were standing along side it, on the safe side of the fence.
The safe side of the fence, is a comforting concept. It’s not one I’ve been very good at in my life. Indeed ‘fence sitting’, a common occupation in churches, is always one I’ve found as uncomfortable as any posture I’ve encountered. We are called to be active interpreters of scripture and our times, and in any context this doesn’t usually point to fence sitting.
For some time now one subject has been on my mind: the rise of human intolerance. I still meet people who tell me they’re not political and I understand that it is a difficult mix, but I cannot except that the bible and politics are not related. I follow a radical Jesus. I met this Jesus in Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. I rediscovered this Jesus in the UK on my return and I have made it my choice to listen out for and follow a call to be along side those on the margins of society, wherever and whoever they are. Sometimes this has lead to some seemingly incongruous choices like the one to do RB in an Independent School (see https://sacredtexts.hcommons.org/using-the-remembered-bible/ )
It was a place in which children and young people needed to be able to encounter the radical nature of the gospel, not it soporific alternatives. Along the Northern Reaches of the Lancaster Canal, with traffic pouring past behind the fence, a walker is faced with choices. But once a walker, always a walker. And once a follower of Jesus, that Jesus who demonstrates a preferential concern for the marginalised ones, always that follower.
From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘Follow me’.
I follow you, Calling One;
through the political ins and outs of your day and mine,
along the highways and by ways of ecological change and choice,
through the cities streets where hope and despair live side by side,
across the meadows and hills of isolated rural poverty and distress.
I see the fences, cutting us off from each other.
I listen again; some fences need cutting, bringing down:
human beings belong together.
May your kindom come, may justice and peace reign.
I will continue to follow you, Jesus.
JAL: 01.06.2020 in Longdendale.