Page 8 - The News for the three villages October 2018

CHURCH VIEWS
This is the time of year when many parents have just said goodbye to their sons and daughters as they head off to university for the start of a new life. For some, it may be their first time away from home for an extended period. It can also be an emotional moment for parents, as they drive away from the campus in a car that is now empty. Parting can be such sweet sorrow. Yet, as a parent, you know that they will return before too long. And they will continue to come back again, and again, and again. They still need you.
This is what a student, Paul Behain, wrote to his widowed mother in Nuremberg in 1547:
Dear Mother... I have just used the money from the sale of my horse to have the simplest coarse green clothing made for myself – a doublet with modest trim, pleatless hose and hooded coat. Lest you think things are cheap here, all this has cost me approximately 17 or 18 crowns, even though it was as plain and simple as it could be. I could not have been more amazed when I saw the bill that you will be when I send it to you.
You may ask what the boy did with the money from the horse, if his tailor’s bill remained unpaid. Life at eighteen can seem free from some of the cares of adulthood. And being a student is devilishly expensive. But then, what’s a parent for if not to pick up the tab?
Another worry parents often have to face is their children’s sudden change of career choice. Just as you had planned for your daughter a safe career in law, she tells you that she wants to go on the stage. Mr & Mrs Zebedee must have wondered what their sons, James and John, were doing when one day they threw up their secure future in the family fishing business to go after that young preacher from Nazareth.
Their story, like much of the Gospel narrative, is tantalisingly sketchy. However, it does give us just enough detail to glimpse the support given by their families to those young men, including the one from Nazareth, as they followed the dream which led them to
J e r u s a l e m a n d t h e r e d e m p t i o n o f t h e h u m a n r a c e . T h e w o m e n w h o p r o v i d e d fo r t h e m while they were on the road ‘out of their own resources’ (Luke 8.1-3) - who were they if not their mothers, aunts and sisters?
A cynic might scoff at the comparison. Young Paul Behan’s tailor’s bill can in no way be likened to the cost to their parents of the disciples’ vocation. But who knows? The feckless youth with his green doublet and hose might have grown up to be like his late father - a successful merchant and worthy citizen of Nuremberg. The panache and sheer cheek of his letter boded well for the future. His mother paid the bill, but had no way of knowing how he would turn out.
Perhaps he would be a prodigal son, but more likely a patient and forgiving parent like the father in that parable.
Andrew Sinclair
THE NEWS OCTOBER 2018 www.thenewseec@gmail.com