New Zealand roads are likened to a journey
Michael Cocks is a fourth generation Anglican priest in the Diocese of Christchurch, and shares with his father, Maurice, a desire to explore the spiritual experiences which lie behind the teachings of Christianity.
Michael says “to love God and neighbour was how Jesus summed up everything. And so, our interest has been what Christians have in common, rather than what divides us. God is in all, through all, and above all.”
And it is that faith that lead to both Michael and his being elected as chairmen of the Christchurch Council of Churches.
When Michael was British Chaplain in Gothenburg, Sweden, he ministered to a congregation of immigrants and refugees from forty different countries, and from many Christian denominations. Recently, he had been a country vicar in Canterbury NZ, and wondered how he could cope with such a different congregation.
But Michael quickly discovered the obvious - that we are all human and have similar needs. He realised that all are children of God, that Christ is not the property of a Christian sect and that Christ is for the whole world, not just for people who call themselves Christians.
“Faith, love and prayer, and mutual service are at the centre of Christianity”, Michael says, and moreover “in our church we had our varying beliefs about things which could have caused divisions - but we kept it simple. Our relationships with Christ and with each other were our central concern. When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, who had had five husbands He spoke to her with love and respect. He did not “throw stones.” His story of the Good Samaritan has the wrong-believing foreigner as showing love, not the “right believing” priests and Levites.”
In his private life, the Lord seems to have been leading Michael down strange paths. Over his bed Michael has a picture of the infant Samuel saying, “speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” Even as a child, Michael says, he searched for that voice.
Cable car Wellington
Christchurch University and then Oxford
Michael became interested in psychic research and telepathy and he studied philosophy and psychology at the university in Christchurch. Later he studied theology at Oxford. He was ordained at the age of 24.
When in his 30s Michael says: “I surrendered to Christ at a deeper level, and soon found myself experiencing many strange teaching synchronicities. Answers came to me much more clearly, in prayer. The pressure to communicate with Spirit mounted, and the time came when I found myself communicating with the spirit of Stephen, the first Christian Martyr, in a group with others I’ve had almost 200 conversations with him over seven years. If interested in this story - to this link”
Stephen’s teachings, Michael says, are close to that of St John chapter 17 verse 21 and to the Gospel as a whole. Namely, Jesus’ prayer, that “they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me.”
Michael says: “I have been struck how the picture of things in St John’s Gospel is mirrored in the world picture of the physics of Quantum Mechanics, and implied in the whole field of psychical research and consciousness studies.
Michael Cocks
Michael Cocks explores all this in The Ground of Faith, an online journal which he has been editing for the past fourteen years.”
Emma Seabrook
Emma is a full time admin worker with a passion for Christ and an interest in reading, writing and music.
Emma Seabrook’s previous articles may be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/emma-seabrook.html