Village Shepherd

In John Osborne's famous play, "Look Back In Anger", first produced in the post-war years of the mid-fifties, Jimmy, the anti-hero is a very angry young man. He's angry about the class distinctions and privileges of the upper middle classes, personified in his wife, Alison, the daughter of a retired British Army colonel who served in India. Jimmy rages to the point of violence, reserving much of his bile for Alison's friends and family.

The situation is exacerbated by the arrival of Helena, a friend of Alison's from school. Appalled at what she finds, Helena calls Alison's father to take her away from the flat. He arrives while Jimmy is visiting the mother of a friend and takes Alison away. But as soon as she has gone, Helena moves in with Jimmy. Alison returns to visit, having had a miscarriage, losing Jimmy's baby. Helena can no longer stand living with Jimmy and leaves. Finally Alison returns to Jimmy and his angry life.

Jimmy spends his life looking back in anger, but seems to be unable to look forward or to see any life beyond the unfairness and injustices of life as he knows it as a working class man. Alison is something of a victim. She is the product of her upbringing and is therefore part of a privileged society through no fault of her own. Yet out of the couple, Alison is the one who is able to move. She doesn't look back at the way things were, but looks forward and chooses to spend her life with Jimmy, despite his anger and his violence and his unhappiness.

Those who bemoan their lives, constantly harking back to the way things were, often seem to be trapped, stuck in a kind of no-mans-land where they are unable to move either forwards or back.

This kind of prison in which they find themselves is personified in the Bible in the story of Lot's wife. She simply looked back when the family was fleeing from the doomed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and was turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26). No-one could help her because she was out of the reach of any help, stuck in her no-mans-land.

In the New Testament, Thomas is in a similar position. The other disciples have seen Jesus and are full of their experience, but Thomas is unable to go forwards. He's stuck in the past, in the misery of the crucifixion and death of Jesus and he can't see any life beyond that. But unlike Lot's wife, help is available for Thomas in the person of the resurrected Jesus, who reaches out to Thomas and draws him forward into the community of the Easter people.

In today's Old Testament reading from Exodus, God is doing a new thing for his people. He is leading them out of slavery in Egypt and towards the Promised Land. But the people are stuck, trapped in the misery of their former lives as slaves and full of deep-rooted fear. When the people look back and see the Egyptians advancing on them, their fear becomes a paralysing terror. They're stuck because there's no way forward across the vast expanse of the Red Sea and no way back against the might of the Egyptian army.

But help is available. They cry out to God and God finds a new way forward for them, a way which hadn't occurred to any of them. God parts the waters of the sea so that the people can pass through safely. God is able to do this through Moses who had sufficient faith to obey God even when God's suggestion that he hold out his staff over the water, seemed ridiculous.

Looking back is dangerous. It's dangerous to look back in anger. It's dangerous to look back in fear. And it's dangerous to look back in a sort of self-indulgent wallowing in the way things always used to be. People who look back become stuck and unable to move forwards.

But Jesus is always there for us, even when we get stuck. And Jesus leads us on, into the present and enables us to face the future. Like Thomas, we are Easter people because we experience the risen Lord. Let's leave our doubts and uncertainties, our fears and our angers and our looking back behind us and look forward with our risen Lord.