Insiders/Outsiders: Reflections on a Few Days in Oxford

 

The British Methodist Church suggests that ministers take three days off each quarter in addition to the usual weekly day off, and I just took advantage of my first "quarter days" by spending a few days in Oxford.  The idea is that we take a real break from the pressures and stresses of ministry in order to relax, renew, and restore so that we can return  to our circuits rested and ready to be more effective leaders and pastors.  I didn't realize how much I needed this until I hopped aboard a bus to leave town, but the feeling of relief I experienced after just a few hours in Oxford was palpable.

When I travel, I always enjoy glimpses into ways of living that are different from my own, and I sometimes let my imagination run wild as I consider what it would be like to inhabit a particular house, follow a different profession, or even live during another era altogether.  Rambling around the canals and streets while staring up at the "dreaming spires," it was easy to give free rein to all sorts of thoughts and impressions.  Spending four days there in no way makes me an expert, but I was struck by a feeling of being a definite outsider in what appears to be a very charmed and charming world of academic privilege, one limited to those with membership in an exclusive club. Many popular sites were either off-limits to tourists or had extremely limited access because of coronavirus, so there were literally closed doors everywhere I looked.  I felt like a stranger in a strange land.  I am a graduate of some fine institutions of higher learning, though not in the same league as Oxford or Cambridge, and I can also remember moments of looking around those campuses and wondering what I was doing there, and when I might be unmasked as an interloper who clearly didn't belong there.

If I were to list all the famous leaders and brilliant minds who boast the colleges of Oxford on their resumes, that alone would take up this blog post, but it won't surprise you that my interest was mainly on two particular graduates of Christ Church.  Even though the college is  currently closed to tourists, people desiring to worship are welcome to the cathedral, and I attended Evensong one night.  For a cathedral, it is a curiously intimate space, and it wasn't hard to imagine the large numbers of people who have worshiped there down the centuries sitting shoulder to shoulder with the rest of us.  As I listened to the glorious music, bowed my head in prayer, and discreetly looked at the beautiful interior, I began to feel that sense of being an outsider ebbing away.  Here in this sacred space, my nationality and status didn't matter.  Here in this place, I was as much an insider as anyone else who has ever stepped through those heavy wooden doors because we were all the same in our need of spiritual solace and comfort.  

That would have been gift enough for a lifetime, but to my surprise and delight, when they discovered that I'm a Methodist minister, I was led to the stone in the floor that honors John and Charles Wesley, graduates of Christ Church and leaders in the Methodist revival.  Because I was carrying my knitted John Wesley, I took a picture of him on the spot, and then I was invited to stand in the lofty pulpit in whose shadow that stone memorial lies, and one of the officials took the picture of me and Mr. Wesley that appears above.  You can easily imagine how excited I was about this wholly unexpected turn of events!  I am sure they don't just allow any and everybody to do that, so that made me feel pretty special, like a real insider.  

But to dwell on that is to miss the real point which is that ALL are welcome in the house of God, no matter what their earthly qualifications or privileges are.  ALL people are God's beloved, and ALL are invited to pull up a chair at the Lord's table.  In the light of the ways that the most vulnerable (the elderly, children, and the poor) are suffering from the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, it makes me reflect on the responsibility we all bear in making sure that they do not remain outsiders but that they have access to economic support, health care, and most essentially, to their daily bread.  The current upheaval has revealed gaps and cracks in the systems many of us have taken for granted or ignored, and we must open our eyes, our mouths, and our hands in order to see, speak, and serve those most in need.   

Arising from his deeply-held Christian faith, John Wesley spoke firmly, even harshly about those who ignore the plight of the poor and who plead ignorance of their needs because of their deliberate avoidance of them, and he poured his energy, time, and resources into relieving their poverty and desperate circumstances.  He did so because Jesus spent his earthly life seeking out and drawing in the outsiders, turning the order of things upside down, lifting the downtrodden and broken and honoring them as children of God, as inheritors of the kingdom, as those whose deepest hunger and thirst will be satisfied by God.  We are called to do the very same, and shame on us when we do not.

An unexpected takeaway from my "quarter days" spent amongst the dreaming spires, and one I shall not quickly forget ...