The Road to Emmaus
Address at Thanksgiving Service for the life and work of Christopher Jones, MBE
Peter Carruthers
Last Saturday, 15 June 2024, I gave the address at a service organised by the Farming Community Network (FCN), at St Peter’s, Grandborough, Warwickshire, to celebrate the life of its founder, Christopher Jones MBE, who died last year. Below are the text and a downloadable PDF version of the address (scroll to bottom of text). You can read more about Christopher in an article on Pages 14-15 of the Winter 2021 issue of Village Link and about FCN here.
Reading - Luke 24:13-35
A sign of hope
Christopher Jones was both pastor and prophet, who helped define what it means to be a Christian in agriculture in the 20th and 21st centuries.
He was both a shepherd caring for the flock and a voice in the wilderness, he sought both to bind up the brokenhearted and to proclaim liberty to the captives (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18).
In the tradition of Hosea, he showed something of God’s own sacrificial love for those who were casualties of the system or even of their own waywardness.
In the tradition of Amos, he spoke out and campaigned against injustice and unrighteousness in agriculture, not only in a national context, but in the global food system.
He was a man of both thought and action. He had huge vision and energy. But, above all, he did everything with those rare virtues of kindness and humility.
He is a shining example and a sign of hope in our time. And I suggest in our present circumstances in church and nation, with a seeming famine of real leadership, we badly need such exemplars and signs of hope.
Christopher was a truly a ‘merciful man, whose righteousness has not been forgotten’ (Ecclesiasticus 44:10).
Three ventures
As Agricultural Christian Fellowship’s (ACF) national coordinator, he built up the organisation and strengthened its identity and purpose.
As founder, architect and the first national coordinator of Farm Crisis Network (FCN), now the Farming Community Network, with its distinctive ‘walking with’ approach, he extended pastoral and practical care, in the name of Christ, to thousands in the farming community.
Through the Agriculture and Theology Project (ATP), he thought, wrote, spoke, built connections and mobilised co-workers, to bring a prophetic voice and biblical perspective to global agriculture.
My debt of gratitude
I was privileged to be part of the story of all three of these ventures.
I served on the committee, and later as Chairman, of Agricultural Christian Fellowship.
I was involved in the founding of FCN and, later, served as its Chairman, taking on the challenge of managing the transition from Christopher as founding leader to FCN’s first Executive Director, Sarah Brown, who is here today. We had some interesting times in those days!
And I was closely involved with the Agriculture and Theology Project throughout its life.
All this was down to Christopher and I owe him a personal debt of gratitude. He got me involved in things, made me feel useful, recognised and deployed my gifts, helped shape my own thinking and introduced me to many people (many of whom remain friends; indeed many are here today).
In contrast to others in Christian leadership I have known, none of this was to serve Christopher’s own agenda. Rather, he sought to involve me and many others to make the best of our talents, to serve the common good, to love our neighbour, and to bring the love of Jesus and the word of the Lord to people in global agriculture, at all levels.
We surely still need such leaders, who like Eliakim in the days of Hezekiah replaced the self-seeking Shebna and became a father to Israel in the time of crisis (read about in Isaiah 22).
A voice in the wilderness
Let me say a little more about Christopher’s thinking, writing and advocacy work.
From 1988 onwards, Christopher was a major player in the UK Food Group, which promoted debate and collective action amongst British NGOs working on food and farming issues, and Banana Link, which works for justice and fairness in the global banana trade.
Alistair Smith, who stills leads Banana Link, wrote to me recently as follows.
“Christopher played a very influential role in the work of the UK Food Group, bringing his wisdom and experience to bear amongst a group of small and large organisations focused on the great questions of food and agriculture worldwide.
“As Chair of Banana Link he enabled us to balance the interests of family farmers and employed workers in the development of our organisation's strategies and activities, with tremendous clarity, compassion and insight.
“He was a man who embodied the Christian values of solidarity, compassion and love in all that he undertook. Deep and sincere thanks from the whole team at Banana Link.”
The Agriculture and Theology Project began, in effect, with Christopher’s booklet, ‘Biblical Signposts for Agricultural Policy’ published in 1991 and drew to a close in 2015 with the publication of Honey & Thistles, authored with John Martin, which brought together much of Christopher’s wisdom and writings from the previous 15 or so years.
Christopher is no longer with us, and the Agriculture and Theology Project has drawn to a close. But there is still work to be done.
When I first met Christopher in 1993, it was at a conference I organised (when I was at the Centre for Agricultural Strategy, University of Reading) with the Small Farmers’ Association (now the Family Farmers’ Association) to address the decline in small and family farms, entitled ‘Crisis on the family farm: ethics or economics?’ That decline has continued since; the issues remain, only more so.
In 2002, Christopher and I wrote in an article: “across the world, farmers are facing dwindling incomes and many are leaving farming. Many causes for this could be invoked. However, there are two constantly recurring related themes - the diminishing share of the consumer's expenditure which is reaching farms, and the oligopolies of powerful buyers that are ranged against thousands of 'must sell' seller”. The concentration of power and control in the global food system has increased greatly in the years since. The black horse of the apocalypse is galloping across our world with even greater energy and fearsome power (Revelation 6:5-6)!
Caring for the flock
FCN was formally founded in 1995, but the story started several years before.
Acutely aware of the plight of farming people in the UK, Christopher had already make contact with groups, in the UK and several other countries, who were trying to do something about it.
In June 1993, Christopher recruited me and three others to spend a week in Germany hosted by the Protestant Farmers Association of Württemberg, to learn about how they were dealing with the ‘existential crisis’ (as they put it) facing many farmers in their region. We were the Württemberg Five!
We reported on our findings and our reflections on them in a short booklet, published in 1993 (‘The church and the farming community. A model of partnership from southern Germany’). Like Biblical Signposts, this was a sort-of self-published ‘samizdat’ - maybe we need such today?
This kickstarted a process that culminated in the founding in 1995 FCN as a joint venture between ACF and ARC (Arthur Rank Centre). For this assembled company the rest is history!
FCN was founded as a Christian organisation whose work is ultimately to bring the love of Christ to those is crisis and earn the right to share the Gospel.
‘Walking with’
Its distinctive of ‘walking with’ people through their difficulties was inspired by the closing address of a seminar on “five years of farming family counselling by the churches of Baden-Württemberg” we attended at the end of that week in Germany.
In our report (above) we wrote:
“In the final address, Fr Werner Kohler spoke of symbol of the Emmaus road, of how the two disciples … had lost the past and had no hope for the future. .. they tried to run away, but as they did started to talk to each other; Jesus joined them, and they continued to talk together, indeed their sharing was strengthened by his presence. Finally, he broke bread and their eyes were opened: they could look back on the past with new eyes and they could start a new future as new people.
“Fr Kohler saw this progress from death to life as reflecting the work of those present: ‘we can all find ourselves in this story, we all live under the same sky, but not all see the same horizon… this is the story of the Resurrection’, he said. And we were left with the challenge, not only of learning to share our fears and disappointments, but also, as Jesus did, to come alongside those in difficulty, those for whom indeed ‘ hope deferred has made a heartsick’, and to bring the reality of Christ’s Resurrection to the heart of the farming crisis.”
A future and a hope
The Emmaus Road story is one of eight post-resurrection appearances of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, five of which take place in rural settings and three of which involved food!
For the two disciples, the critical issue was the restoration of Israel, and they hope that Jesus was the one who would bring this about. The Gospel does not tell us exactly what Jesus said on the road. But we are told He interpreted what we now call the Old Testament. So we can surmise that He explained how the Messiah of Israel would redeem not just Israel, but the whole world.
And, as He said later, before His ascension, Israel’s temporal redemption and restoration will come, but that was not to concern them then. Their remit was first of all an eternal one, to preach the Gospel to all creatures, so that all who respond and believe, Jew or Gentile, can be saved, can have a good life now, and eternal life in the age to come.
The breaking of bread
However, the climax of the story is not a walk in the countryside, but a meal around a table. For, as Fr Kohler said, it was only when Jesus broke the bread at the meal table that they recognised him and were transformed from people without hope, for whom the day was almost ended, to people full of hope, for whom a new day had dawned.
And of course for most Christian churches, the centre of worship is still a meal – albeit a somewhat reduced one. Whatever your theology or churchmanship, the Lord’s Supper, Communion, Eucharist or Mass does at least five things:
It looks back to the Last Supper and to the One whose body was broken for us at Calvary;
It signifies our present allegiance to Christ and participation in His life, by which, as Jesus said, we have eternal life and the hope of resurrection (John 6:53-58;
It speaks of reconciliation with God and with one another, of renewal, of a new beginning;
It looks forward to that great harvest supper at the end of this age, when Jesus will once again share break bread and drink wine with us in the Kingdom that is to come;
And, as the closing words of many liturgies say, it ‘sends us out in the power of the Spirit to live and work to His praise and glory’.
It was fitting, therefore, that when we marked Christopher’s passing from this life to eternity, we shared in the Communion (which is not always the practice in Anglican settings).
Maybe also, as we share tea and cakes together shortly, we can in the quiet of our own hearts reflect on our own communion with one another, with the Lord, and with the whole communion of saints, including our brother Christopher. Amen.
