My auntie always reminds me about when I was a little boy – I can’t remember it at all, so I’m trusting her memory – that I would tell the same joke over and over again. ‘Two biscuits were crossing the road. One got run over; the other shouted’ ‘Crumbs!’ She said I laughed every time and that really amused them, even if the joke didn’t.
Well, here we are again; the last Group of Sessions for this extended quinquennium of the General Synod has begun. We thought we would be in-person in York and then York University decided otherwise. Then we thought we’d be in-person in Westminster and then Boris decided otherwise. So we are back with another virtual meeting with just the platform party in the strangely empty chamber and everyone else on Zoom. This is the sixth gathering of Synod in a year – can you believe it? I think the Synod staff can if this morning’s Panel of Chairs meeting is anything to go by. But it is what it is.
However, I am very sad that all the atmosphere of the final Group of Sessions has been lost, all the opportunities to say farewell to those who are retiring or who have decided enough is enough and they are not standing for election again. And, of course, there’s all the out of the chamber conversations, the sitting by the lakes watching the wildfowl and the time in the bars that we miss out on.
This final Group of Sessions is always about tying loose ends, trying to get the final pieces of legislation through, so that when the Synod is dissolved at the end, it is neat and clean. So the agenda that is before us is a rather bitty, stuff around ministry, the work of the CNC, thoughts on CDM, the shape of the church, where mission is, annual reports that need to be made, and of course, safeguarding.
It’s important that this final sweep, this gathering of the crumbs is done. But it does mean there isn’t a theme that you can pick up on.
Jesus was so keen that nothing be lost. I love the account in St John’s Gospel of the feeding of the multitude (John 6.1-14).
When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. (John 6.12-13)
The fragments, the crumbs were so important – ‘that nothing may be lost’. It applies to our lives, it applies to the church and it even applies to the Synod. And the gathered fragments in their twelve baskets became a symbol of the kingdom, the new Israel, the twelve tribes.
My prayer is that we can do a good job at gathering and completing and revealing, by the grace of God, something of the kingdom as we do it.
Lord, bless our work, our gathering, that nothing may be lost. Amen.
Andrew Nunn's reflections from General Synod 
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