	A Hot Summer Day
	My father has an extensive and extremely interesting collection of Ordnance Survey maps, some of them dating back to the 1930s. I enjoy studying them and a couple of weeks ago I was opening one when a piece of paper fell out onto the table. It was a letter I had written to my father when I was a student in London back in the late seventies. I had not set eyes on it from the day I placed it in its envelope and popped it in the post. I don’t remember writing it; but it describes an event I certainly do recall, namely an all day five-a side football event in Ruskin Park, Camberwell. The weather was (shall we say) on the warm side and, apart from the odd twenty minute break, I was on the pitch for about eight hours! It resulted in a not particularly comfortable evening trying to get rid of a belting headache! The letter bears testimony to the heat: The weather down here for the last week has been blistering. We played our football on a gravelly five-a-side pitch and by late afternoon when the dust started rising it was unbearable! It wasn’t too bad in the morning, on the bus at 8.30 it was very pleasant. Leaving aside such concerns as whether ‘gravelly’ is actually a word or dust starts ‘rising’ in the late afternoon, reading the letter brought back a forgotten memory. It was an enjoyable day (the headache apart), but not one that had a great impact on my life! It didn’t profoundly shape my moral vision or deepen my spirituality – and without the accident of discovering the letter the event would, in all probability, never have made its way out of my subconscious mind ever again. All of us have written many letters that have been sent and forgotten. By contrast, much of the New Testament consists of letters (by Paul and others) of great significance written almost two thousand years ago and still read today. In one of his letters to the Corinthian church Paul encouraged his readers to remember the words of Jesus as he broke bread on the night before he died: ‘do this in remembrance of me’ – Paul is encouraging his readers to keep the memory of Jesus alive, something we continue to do each time we celebrate Holy Communion.	Importantly, the four accounts of Jesus’ life in the Gospels provide us with many more memories of his teachings, encounters with all sorts of people and miracles as well as his death and resurrection - for those who follow him, remembering Jesus is very important. The day in Ruskin Park described in my letter was a good memory but not a particularly significant one. For us as Christians remembering Jesus has a profound impact on our lives because it enables us to be formed in his image, to live in his love and to worship him in Spirit and in truth. His call to be pure in heart, to hunger and thirst for righteousness and to love God and neighbour have not just shaped and formed the church over the centuries but have also had a profound impact on human history. Christian communities are places where the memory of Jesus is kept alive, where his stories are told over and again, where his death is remembered every time bread is broken and where people can see what life in the kingdom he described so vividly looks like. But there is more; we are not just remembering a dead hero who set us a good example to follow. After the trauma of Jesus’ death his disciples were terrified and full of despair and all their memories of him were laced with the bitter taste of loss and failure. But they and their memories were transformed by their encounter with the risen Lord. The stories they told about Jesus, preserved in the four Gospels, were given power and new meaning in the light of that experience. So in each new generation hearing these old stories transforms lives in the power of the Spirit. It might seem strange, in a culture where new is best and yesterday’s newspapers go out for recycling, to be telling such old stories, but all I know is that the superficiality of so much that is ‘new’ can be wearying beyond words whereas the remembered words and works of Jesus have a freshness and immediacy that fascinates, captivates and involves me. So we need to keep telling the old, old story of the one who is alive today and for ever – it’s the greatest story ever told! Rob Green
	Norbury Parish Church, Hazel Grove, Stockport, Cheshire. Telephone: 0161-483 6325

A Hot Summer Day

My father has an extensive and extremely interesting collection of Ordnance Survey maps, some of them dating back to the 1930s. I enjoy studying them and a couple of weeks ago I was opening one when a piece of paper fell out onto the table. It was a letter I had written to my father when I was a student in London back in the late seventies. I had not set eyes on it from the day I placed it in its envelope and popped it in the post.

I don’t remember writing it; but it describes an event I certainly do recall, namely an all day five-a side football event in Ruskin Park, Camberwell. The weather was (shall we say) on the warm side and, apart from the odd twenty minute break, I was on the pitch for about eight hours! It resulted in a not particularly comfortable evening trying to get rid of a belting headache! The letter bears testimony to the heat: The weather down here for the last week has been blistering. We played our football on a gravelly five-a-side pitch and by late afternoon when the dust started rising it was unbearable! It wasn’t too bad in the morning, on the bus at 8.30 it was very pleasant.

Leaving aside such concerns as whether ‘gravelly’ is actually a word or dust starts ‘rising’ in the late afternoon, reading the letter brought back a forgotten memory. It was an enjoyable day (the headache apart), but not one that had a great impact on my life! It didn’t profoundly shape my moral vision or deepen my spirituality – and without the accident of discovering the letter the event would, in all probability, never have made its way out of my subconscious mind ever again.

All of us have written many letters that have been sent and forgotten. By contrast, much of the New Testament consists of letters (by Paul and others) of great significance written almost two thousand years ago and still read today. In one of his letters to the Corinthian church Paul encouraged his readers to remember the words of Jesus as he broke bread on the night before he died: ‘do this in remembrance of me’ – Paul is encouraging his readers to keep the memory of Jesus alive, something we continue to do each time we celebrate Holy Communion.

Importantly, the four accounts of Jesus’ life in the Gospels provide us with many more memories of his teachings, encounters with all sorts of people and miracles as well as his death and resurrection - for those who follow him, remembering Jesus is very important.

The day in Ruskin Park described in my letter was a good memory but not a particularly significant one. For us as Christians remembering Jesus has a profound impact on our lives because it enables us to be formed in his image, to live in his love and to worship him in Spirit and in truth. His call to be pure in heart, to hunger and thirst for righteousness and to love God and neighbour have not just shaped and formed the church over the centuries but have also had a profound impact on human history. Christian communities are places where the memory of Jesus is kept alive, where his stories are told over and again, where his death is remembered every time bread is broken and where people can see what life in the kingdom he described so vividly looks like.

But there is more; we are not just remembering a dead hero who set us a good example to follow. After the trauma of Jesus’ death his disciples were terrified and full of despair and all their memories of him were laced with the bitter taste of loss and failure. But they and their memories were transformed by their encounter with the risen Lord. The stories they told about Jesus, preserved in the four Gospels, were given power and new meaning in the light of that experience. So in each new generation hearing these old stories transforms lives in the power of the Spirit.

It might seem strange, in a culture where new is best and yesterday’s newspapers go out for recycling, to be telling such old stories, but all I know is that the superficiality of so much that is ‘new’ can be wearying beyond words whereas the remembered words and works of Jesus have a freshness and immediacy that fascinates, captivates and involves me. So we need to keep telling the old, old story of the one who is alive today and for ever – it’s the greatest story ever told!

Rob Green

A Hot Summer Day

Norbury Parish Church, Hazel Grove, Stockport, Cheshire. Telephone: 0161-483 6325