John 10.1-10 and verse 4 “he goes ahead of them” This comment is about the shepherd who goes ahead of the sheep, like a traditional Middle Eastern shepherd and the sheep follow. (he has no need of a dog to round up the stragglers!). But the fact that these words are chosen for use during the Easter Season remind us that there are other dimensions to this text. Jesus Christ has gone ahead through the experience of death and resurrection and he beckons us forward to share in this new life he now enjoys with God. So later in John’s gospel (in chapter 14 vs 1-3) we have those words read at many a funeral. “In my Father’s house are many rooms….I go to prepare a place for you” I re-read a quite old book on prayer recently by Olive Wyon called” The School of Prayer”. She is an author who I was first introduced to by The Revd Dr Eric Wright when I was a probationer and he was Probationer’s Secretary in Leeds nearly thirty years ago! In her book Wyon reminds her readers that in the middle east region where travel was (and still is often) by nomadic people undertaken by camel or with herds and flocks, facing a long journey the travellers journey by stages, stopping every so often at a resting place (the same concept John 14.3 uses). There would be a series of resting places along the journey. And at every resting place a servant would be sent on ahead to prepare for the arrival of the main party, so when the weary travellers arrived, food would be ready, the table laid, fire lit, beds made. They would be welcomed. The dragoman as he is known often undertook this role, but he would then move ahead again to the next staging post. We, in the modern western world stop off at the motorway service station on a long journey and perhaps sometimes we may even stay overnight in a motel or B & B. Originally the word hostel meant a place of hospitality and it is this same root that we find used for what we now call a hospice. Of the 18 places I have called “home” so far in my life, I only ever once lived in a hostel, when I was at Lincoln Theological College, its original name was The Bishop’s Hostel. And unlike a short stay in a hostel, I lived there for three years whilst I trained for ministry. We are as Christians invited to a journey of discipleship. On that journey we are supposed to grow, develop and change as we grow in maturity in faith. It is a journey with stages, and we must keep moving ahead. We are not supposed to remain static. Just like some of the seeds I have sown this Spring, they have not all germinated and spouted forth shoots out of the soil. I sent some tomato seeds to my 94 year old uncle who could not get out to buy stock, but he gently complained that only two of the ten seeds I sent him have germinated, whereas all of mine have. I jokingly asked him if he had remembered to water them! If each of us might be likened to a seed in God’s garden (and remember Mary mistook the Risen Christ for a gardener), the idea is that we grow and develop. My hunch is that many of us still think the same as we were taught in Sunday School, which might be fine for a child but not able to withstand the complexities of the weathers of adult life. I quite recently met the girl I once lived next to fifty years ago as a small child in Lune Street, Saltburn. We reminisced of course. She told her husband that I used to go to their house often when my mother was in hospital and if asked what I might like to eat for tea would invariably say “egg and chips”. That was the summit of my culinary horizon at the age of four. I still like egg and chips but probably would ask for something different and more varied now than the repeated answer I gave then. I have changed a bit in fifty years of course! Christ goes ahead of us and he wants us to follow, to move in the direction as he is leading us. The words of an old hymn by Godfrey Thring come to mind “ Saviour blessed Saviour” ( Hymn & Psalms 274) , verse 4 has “ onward ever onward, journeying o’er the road, worn by saints before us, journeying on to God, leaving all behind us, may we hasten on, backwards never looking till the prize is won”. Many speakers on Thought for the Day have expressed hopes that we do not just return once this coronavirus pandemic is over to what was normal, but that this experience of restrictions has changed us and we cannot and should not just long to go back to what we knew before all this. A businessman called Dick Elsie, who is an engineer,spoke of how he is co-ordinating engineering businesses to switch to make ventilators and he said his business meetings were now much shorter and more focused than before. Perhaps we need some of that! Both Sam Wells of St Martin in the Fields and John Bell of the Iona Community have spoken recently of not wanting to go back to “normal” because a new normal has been forged where we have more time for each other, for longer conversations rather than just soundbites, time to hear the sounds of birds that are usually drowned out by traffic and we are probably more sensitive to the environment and the planet on which we live as our common home with all the people around the world and all that lives, we must take the lessons we are learning into the new future. We might be more aware than ever that we are in the business of living in God’s world together in a common humanity. And we must begin to shape that new future now, even as Church as well as in other areas of life. So, I want you to think what shape and pattern our churches might have when we come out of these social distancing restrictions (whenever that might be). Don’t assume we will go back to how things were, because I don’t think we will. Some of the things we have been doing are probably past their sell-by date and need to cease. New green shoots need nurturing, fresh expressions need encouragement and we have not always been careful to do that. We need to start doing that more passionately. Christ goes ahead of us to prepare a place and we must make sure we follow. With every good wish, Christopher Humble