Rector on the roof

Those of you who come to the Church cleaning days will know that I don't like being up ladders. I couldn't, however, miss the opportunity of the scaffolding being up at the moment while we are carrying out the roof repairs to the Church. So, after a short ladder climb, I got to see a part of the church I haven't been able to view before. Once again I reflected on how fortunate we were in the way the newer part of the church blends into the old. I also rather like these gorgeous curved skylight covers - although the roofers were less impressed with their practicality! I know that sometimes we feel that maintaining a church burdensome, but we are fortunate in having had relatively few problems with our church, which in the main is of course not that old, despite there being norman parts and saxon remains. Pray that it may continue to be so! Also spare a thought for your churchwardens who have spent a lot of time at the church over the last few days.

Star Wars

Those of you who know me well will know that I am quite a science fiction fan. Unfortunately much science fiction creates a future in which religion is not taken seriously. There are interesting exceptions, such as Babylon 5, and the mystical overtones of Star Wars, but the religious themes explored by them are far removed from Christianity much of the time.

So I rather like this Star Wars parody which you can find here.

St Peter's Festival

Due to unforeseen circumstances the St Peter's music festival is not going to be able to make a full fledged launch this year. 

However we are still going to be having our Gilbert and Sullivan evening on Saturday 5th July, thanks to the hard work of our Director of Music Anthony Roberts.

We will also be holding a Choral Evensong service on the previous weekend for the feast of St Peter and St Paul - which is of course our patronal festival. This service will take place in the afternoon early evening, probably 4.30 p.m. Sunday 29th June. Our good friends from S. George's will be coming.

It is one of those happy weekends when the St Peter's Day actually falls on the Sunday and will be my 8th anniversary at St Peter's, my 11th anniversary as a priest, and my 12th anniversary as a deacon!

In fellowship with our brothers and sisters from S. George's who are beginning a special year of celebrating the life and witness of St Paul, we will also remember St Paul - who usually gets forgotten because it is St Peter who is our patron!

The CHoir have already started practicing so make sure these dates are in your diaries!

Caritas 2008

As part of our preparation for Caritas we have been asked to prepare a twenty word aspiration, as well as pictures of our church building, church family, and our parish. 

Our aspiration, agreed by the PCC, is that we become more deeply a church where: “All are made welcome, the gospel is proclaimed, and we are drawn ever more deeply into the life of Christ.”

I hope that most of you will have picked up one of the leaflets about the Caritas celebration and though about whether you can come. It should be a good and fun day of encouragement, gathering together with other Christians from across the Diocese. If you haven't already, please do think about whether you can come.

APCM Sermon 2008

I know that many people were not able to attend the APCM because of childcare commitments, or got caught out because of the holidays!

So I'm posting my sermon for the meeting, and hope that members of the congregation will take the time to both read it and take up its challenge for the coming year.

Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.

At the PCC recently we have been discussing our mission priorities. It is only 3 years since our Growing a Healthy Church exercise, and we are still being guided by our conclusions on that day that we need to be working to develop our spirituality and be a Church which clearly puts God at the heart of everything we do.

But that is a general aspiration, and this discussion was about trying to focus our energies over the coming year in response to a suggestion from the Diocese. This suggested three aspects to mission – Attending to God, Building Community, Commending God’s love for the world. We looked at what we were already planning practically and how they might fit into these categories. It’s an ongoing discussion and the new PCC will have to take on the task of thinking this through further with me.

What was clear from our discussion is that as with all these schemes it is a useful exercise to concentrate on improving one thing at a time. You may remember from Growing a Healthy Church the advice to concentrate on doing a few things well. Yet at the same these priorities are part of the same thing.

As individual Christians and as a church family we have three interwoven parts of our Christian lives; knowing, living, and proclaiming.

Knowing the faith is both about our personal relationship with God, and knowing the content of our faith.

Living the faith is living out in our own lives and as a community the implications of that faith. 

Proclaiming the faith is about sharing our Christian lives with others, both in the specifics of encouraging others to know the Lord Jesus, and in the love and care for our neighbour which he demands from us.

You can see at once how these three are related. Clearly one of our priorities at St Peter’s is to share our faith with others, to encourage others to join our church family and to grow our church.

As you know we are using the Credo course again as a way of giving us something to invite others to. We were one of the parishes in the Diocese who experimented with Back to Church Sunday last year and are looking forward to using it again this year supported by some Diocese wide advertising. These are some of the structured practical things that we can do as a church to help encourage others to come and join us, or to become more involved.

Yet clearly we cannot effectively proclaim, share our Christian faith with others if we are not committed to living it clearly ourselves. The most effective way to evangelise is to live such a distinctive and clearly committed Christian life that other people are interested and encouraged by your witness to find out what makes this so important to you. This is true whether you are sharing your faith with a work colleague or your children.

One of the many encouraging things that has happened this year is the effort in the Children’s Liturgy to make provision for our children over the school holiday periods, this is a very important and symbolic move. I quite understand that our children’s liturgy leaders, who do a sterling job, are often on holiday and need time in church themselves. Yet if we have no provision for our children at these times, what are we saying? Are we not encouraging a view of church that it is indeed like school, something that is only a part time commitment, and one you grow out of. It was precisely for that reason that we began to stop talking about Sunday School and talk instead about the Children’s liturgy. If we want others to respond to our invitation to join us as Christians we have to show them that we are serious about what we are inviting them to. That it matters to us.

I am very interested in some of the research that shows that how committed we are to our celebration of the Eucharist plays a big part in whether we provide a community in which others find this service a good place to meet God, as it should be.

And how can we live our faith effectively if we do not know what the faith is ourselves. How can we share our faith if we do not know what we are sharing.

As many of you will know my girlfriend is a Roman Catholic, and with her little girl we regularly attend a Saturday evening mass so that she can fulfil her obligations as a catholic and still attend St Peter’s as well. It has given me a new level of respect for all of those of you struggling to help your children through the service, as there is usually no children’s provision on a Saturday evening. At the same time it also makes it very clear how much you need to be connected yourself to what is going on in order to communicate it to others.

What I really want each of us to do this year is to reflect upon what we as individuals are doing to grow in our Christian faith. It is perfectly possible to come to church faithfully every Sunday, listen attentively to the readings and the sermon, reflect upon them and grow in our life with God. However many of us aren’t able to do that. If you are helping with the Children’s Liturgy or looking after children you won’t have the luxury of even being able to listen easily to the readings and sermon. So I want each of us to reflect on what we are doing to grow closer to God.

Maybe you are the sort of person who gets on best beavering away on your own. Check out the resources as we slowly add them to the parish library, or come and ask me for suggestions.

I suspect that most of us however are not cut out for self study. I really want to encourage you to think about joining in some of the groups we organise. There are the Credo courses, Bible study groups, especially at Advent and Lent, and many other opportunities. I have been leading the Following Jesus course at Church house this year and it has been very helpful. It is not demanding, other than a commitment of an evening a week during term time. It involves getting to know the Bible better and seeing how it connects with what the rest of our Christian and Church life. I really can’t recommend it highly enough to anyone who has been confirmed. This is a very good course, and there will be another one beginning in September.

As always, within the constraints of time I am always happy to take suggestions as to what we could be doing better or differently in the provision of groups and other support to help us grow in our faith.

By doing these things we will, both as individuals and as a church, be able to respond better to the challenge that we heard in the first letter of Peter.

Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.

Because it is together that we make up the church – and our lives are shaped in this way then when we invite or welcome new members to our family they will see a church in which God is known and our faith lived out and proclaimed.

As always be assured that you are all daily in my prayers – and I ask you to remember me in yours.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Easter in the snow

Caister Retreat

The poor blog has been a bit neglected in April! Here are some pictures from the Caister Retreat/Conference I went to a couple of weeks ago. Included are pictures of my training incumbent Fr Roger, Canon Martin Warner who welcomed us at St Paul's, and two showing you how to create a lovely chapel out of a holiday camp dance hall! 

The retreat/conference is an interesting mix. It is organized by Bishop Lindsay who is the area Bishop of Horsham in our Diocese, and incidentally the Bishop who ordained me to the priesthood. There is a regular pattern of worship, bible studies, seminars, keynote addresses, and special themed acts of evening worship - and that's before you get on to the chance to socialize in the Bar of an evening. At first sight it seems a somewhat riotous mix - how do you marry a retreat and a conference? The idea that most of us probably have of a retreat is of a silent one in a monastery, coming together only to pray, eat, and hear some addresses. A conference is a more active affair. Yet if the conference is a spiritual one then the retreat and the conference have the same goal - to encourage and feed us in our spiritual lives.

I have come back armed with CDs of talks - all of which can be borrowed  - and some of which will be passed around the PCC. There was for instance a talk about how to make the most of the  Back to Church Sunday initiative. Fr Martin also gave a really excellent talk on the resurrection  and Mary. I also made a new friend - another priest from the Diocese who likes to talk theology!

But for me the heart of the retreat - and what in the end made it for me more of a retreat than a conference - was the hour of meditation in front of the Blessed Sacrament which lay at the heart of each day. It was great to be able to attend worship which I wasn't having to lead, and to hear somebody else's sermon. But that encouragement to simply be with God was most rewarding. But, an hour! What do you do for an hour? I find that for me the thing to do is to break it down.

First I said midday prayer. Then I prayed silently, prostrating myself on the ground before the presence of God with us in the sacrament. Then I did some spiritual reading, a few pages at a time of Pope Benedict's letter God is Love, which is a lovely meditation on this theme. (It's available free on the internet here.) Then I prayed the rosary. This is when I found that just as I was beginning to think of the people I wanted to pray for at this point the hour had proved to be too short, as there were the hymns and blessing that make the final act of adoration. For that encouragement to prayer alone the retreat was worthwhile. Why not come along on the next retreat or pilgrimage we organize as a parish?

Holy Week Pictures

There haven't been any posts recently as I've been away quite a bit, but I've now uploaded pictures for most of the Holy Week entries - so its worth going back and looking at the technicolour version of the blog.

Holiday Mass

This is a picture of St Carons, the church my parents attend in
Tregaron. I always try and attend mass there when I'm on my Easter
break. My mother has travelled a long way since her days as a
Congregationalist, but one of the vestiges is a lack of enthusiasm for
services without hymns. So it's just my Father and me.

Closing the ecumenical circle

This is one of the wonderful paintings with which S. George's is
blessed. The artist is local and a practicing catholic and the
paintings are almost icon like in their theological symbolism.
Caroline of course had attended the vigil in the morning and had to
fulfill her Sunday Mass obligation so I ended Holy Week at S. George's
where we had began it with the Procession of Palms.

Renewal of Baptism Vows

We had a good congregation for the 10.00 Easter Family Eucharist - by
which of course I mean the attendance, passing no judgement on the
state of our souls! Last year at the vigil we had the joy to baptise
Eleanor Hayes. Since not all the family were able to make it to the
Vigil we took the opportunity of renewing our baptism vows to make a
special renewal of her patents and godparents vows. I wasn't quite
sure how thus would work, given that it required a bit of creative
liturgy, but in fact it worked very well.

Easter Vigil

Like so much of the Holy Week ceremonies the Vigil is something that
has to be experienced rather than simply described.

I know that most of you who haven't yet made the effort to get up for
the dawn service are a little non plussed by the whole thing. If
anything should encourage you to go it should be the fact that I, who
find mornings so difficult, am enthusiastic about it, there must be
something to it......

To simply describe the vigil fails to capture the experience. You get
up early (or stay up late if ypu have a Holy Saturday evening
celebration) light a fire, sing to a candle, have a long series of
Bible readings and have a Eucharist including the renewal of Baptismal
vows. That prosaic description somehow fails to bring out the way in
which the vigil can have a power to really draw us into the mystery of
the resurrection.

Like the women coming to annoint the body of Jesus we gather before
dawn, only to find that the Lord has risen. The kindling of the new
fire a simple sign of the glory of Christ's victory if death which
takes place in the night and which yet destroys the power of death and
sin and fear (all of which we tend to associate with darkness). The
darkness of the tomb is transformed into the brightness of the
resurrection day. The sun has not yet risen, but the Son has.

From the fire we light the great Easter Candle and are reminded that
this great event of 2,000 years ago is not past, Christ is alive at
the right hand of the Father, and he is with us now as we carry this
candle which, as candles always do for us in Church, is a sign of his
presence to us. And so I sing the great song of Easter Praise, (the
Exultet) not to the Candle, but in praise to Christ, celebrating his
saving work, enabled to proclaim it literally by the light of Christ,
the light from the Easter Candle illuminating the pages of the Exultet.

I always imagine the vigil readings, which help us through a selection
of passages to see the whole of salvation history as leading to the
death and resurrection of Christ, as rather like being able to listen
in on the conversation Jesus had with disciples on the Emmaus road,
when he opened the scriptures for them, helping them to understand the
Passion.

All of this transforms the celebration of the first Eucharist of
Easter, helping us to see more clearly the risen Lord meeting us as he
akways does. As the sun rises we are also reminded of the first
Christians who would gather like this Sunday by Sunday before going
off to work. A reminder to us that they could always find time for
Christ.

If you were able to come I hope you enjoyed it, and if not perhaps
next year you'll be encouraged to try it out.

Special thanks are of course due to everyone who works so hard to
prepare for these celebrations, among them the flower ladies and
sacristans, but especial thanks to Maggie and her team for preparing a
wonderful Easter Breakfast afterwards.

Holy Saturday

It is difficult to communicate a theology or spirituality of Holy
Saturday in the parish. I prayed the office of readings and morning
prayer as the bustle of the day began, a succesion of flower ladies
coming to beautify the church, and I soon join them with the
preparations for the Vigil which take up a good part of the day. The
irony of our busyness does not elude me. Jesus' body is in the tomb,
and his soul has descended to the dead. In an ideal world today would
be a day of quiet meditation and prayer for the departed. However it
is possible to connect the activity of the day with the tradition of
Christ as on some sense preaching to the departed who in this life had
not had a chance to hear the gospel. In this way of looking at Holy
Saturday it begins to anticipate Easter. Von Balthasar's vision of
Christ as being in some sense passively active, not preaching so much
as experiencing the uttermost separation sees the day more as a
continuation of Good Friday and is one he presents in my opinion a
strong argument for. However one meditates on this day it is a shame
for it to be simply lost.

Good Friday - The Liturgy of the Lord's Passion

In a Church like ours where the pattern of the Sunday liturgy is
largely the same the liturgies of the Triduum have an especial power.
What we now simply call The Liturgy of the Lord's Passion used to be
known as the mass of the presanctified because although we do receive
communion we do so from the communion that was used for the adoration
of the Watch, thus it is presanctified. Although this is a beautiful
description I think I prefer the new title as this takes our focus
onto the different ceremonies that help us to adore Christ crucified
for us. Of course we do this on every celebration of the Eucharist
when we enter into the offering of Christ to the Father of his own
self upon the cross, and recieve the Lamb of God who still bears for
us the glorious wounds of his Passion. The ceremonies of the Liturgy
however do not compete with the Eucharist but serve to bring out the
depth of the mysteries contained therein, and is on that sense
complimentary. I was struck once again by an experience isolation and
desolation as I proclaimed the part of Jesus during the dramatic
reading of the Passion Gospel. For me the Liturgy always brings me to
an appreciation of the Lord's love for us. My training incumbent Fr
Roger always wept so much during the Veneration of the Cross that the
cross was almost awash with his tears. Why do we not live more as a
people who know just how much we have to be thankful to the Lord for?

In the evening I watched Mel Gibson's version of the Passion. I know
many people found if hard to watch the violence inflicted on the
Lord's body, (which is precisely why I think we need to watch it
because we often fail to appreciate the depth of what the Lord
suffered put of love for us) I do find it a very devotional depiction
of the Passion.

Walk of Witness

After the Children's Way of the Cross we had our walk of witness.
Photo to follow. I always enjoy this simple act. When I was a child on
Maidenhead there was a huge walk of witness led by the Salvation Army
Band. West Blaychington is a rather smaller affair but it has a real
impact on our small shopping area. Our brothers and sisters at Hounsom
Memorial URC Church always kindly provide us with a soup and roll
lunch - perfect for a collation for those of us keeping the Good
Friday fast (one meal and two collations/snack meals). It is also good
to meet up with the other Christians of our local Churches Together
during the Triduum.

Good Friday - Children's Way of the Cross

Following Fr David's example we have begun our Good Friday devotions
with a Children's Way of the Cross service. This year we had an
especially good attendance, over forty children and adults. (I hope to
post some photos for this and some of the following posts on my return
from my Easter Break.) We are blessed at S. Peter's to have a good
number of young families so services like this are an important way to
help them to participate in the Triduum. Special thanks to Erica for
organising hot cross buns before the service.

The Watch

The Maundy Thursday Eucharist and watch is always a wonderful experience. I think like many priestly activities it is difficult to understand the impact that they have upon the priest. From the outside of the sacrament many people assume that the hearing of confessions must be either a depressing or a prurient experience. Nothing is further from the truth, it is always for me an experience of grace for the one ministering the sacrament as well as for the recipient. All the clergy I have spoken to about this have a similar experience. I would imagine that the same is true of the foot washing. One member of the parish told me that she couldn't possible imagine me washing her feet, it would seem far too intimate! From the outside again one can imagine how it might look that way. However for me the experience is simple and moving. As usual there was a spread of people and feet - from that of a child to that of an older person. What moves one is not the foot - whether it is attractive or less so - but the fact that this is a gesture of love, like a mother caring for a child, or a child caring for a parent in later life. To kneel before another person and perform this simple act of service reminds one of the nature of the priestly ministry - to be an icon of Christ. We are all poor copies of course, but in the sacramental ministry we are to step aside and allow his grace and love to shine through 'the unworthy minister' as I sing during the Exultet at the Vigil. Pray for me, and all clergy, that we may be better witnesses to the Lord than we often are in our frailty. The sign of the foot washing of course is also a sign to us that we need to receive ministry. Like Peter, some of us are not always good at receiving ministry, but if we don't then we are only a step away from Pelagianism, of assuming that we need nobody's help, not even the Lord's..... The body of Christ needs all its members! After the Eucharist I am always humbled by the prayerful devotion with which the Watch is kept. Apart from a brief break to eat I am there for most of the watch, and I usually spend some time in prayer and meditation, and some time in spiritual reading. We don't do enough of this, simply spending time with the Lord. I am convinced that there is great spiritual benefit from doing this (if you believe that the Lord is truly present with us, veiled by the form of bread and wine how can you not), and hope that some of you may be encouraged by your participation in the watch to spend some more time doing this on other occasions.

Maundy Thursday

I know that our individual circumstances don't always allow us to attend all of the services of the Triduum, but it is for me always the high point of the liturgical year, as it should be. In many ways the fact that I spend a large portion of each day setting up for the services to come helps, because it keeps me firmly centered in the liturgical action. So Maundy Thursday began with the celebration of the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer as normal, and then I began to set up the Altar of Repose. The finishing touches are of course provided by Maggie Keeling who so ably coordinates the work of our flower arranging team. Also posted is a picture of the notice board, once again restored by Peter Elliott after the latest spate of Vandalism. 

The Passion (BBC) Episode 2

I caught up with the second episode on Wednesday, and found this to be a much better on the whole than the first. This episode was shorter, and led us up to the beginning of the Last Supper. On the whole it seemed more faithful to the Gospels. This episode however did read as if someone had been reading a little bit too much liberation theology. Now of course there is some good liberation theology, but, especially in the earlier phase of this theological movement there was a tendency to cast Jesus too much as a revolutionary leader of a failed uprising. i.e. the way in which Jesus' disciples followed the man with the water jar in order to find the 'upper room.' In many ways this was a good scene, and drew out the unusual fact that it was a man carrying the jar. (This has led some commentators to posit a link with the Essene tradition of celibacy). However, it had a heavy emphasis of skullduggery..... The intention of course is to flesh out the characters in the dram of the passion, make them seems a little more human and ordinary, and to provide more psychological motivation. Thus there is an emphasis on presenting Jesus' teaching in a way that makes it difficult for Caiaphas not to see Jesus in this light. Here we see the downside of this kind of dramatization.  It provides us with an apparent window in the events of Holy Week, a fly on the wall documentary - surely we think this must help us to get closer to Jesus in those final days than the written accounts in the Gospels. Except, (and leaving aside the divinely inspired nature of the Gospel accounts) what we find is that the media of TV requires us to provide a lot of interpretation. Thus Jesus' teaching often seems reduced to a sort of religious egalitarianism - down with organised religion and be nice to everybody. Now Jesus is certainly critical of aspects of contemporary Judaism, but he is also a faithful Jew who comes to fulfill the Torah and the Prophets. Fr Hunwicke in his blog draws attention to the interesting writings of Jacob Neussner who is clear that the cleansing of the Temple has to be interpreted as leading to the end of Temple Sacrifices. And the Gospels are full of other actions of Jesus which lead to similar conclusions, such as his forgiving sins. This episode drew attention to this as well. However, because we can't be expected to draw these subtle conclusions ourselves the drama has to make them in unsubtle ways - and this it seems to me leads to a distortion of what Jesus actually said and did. In passing it worth noting that Pope Benedict in his excellent book on Jesus engages in a discussion with some of Neussner's writing on Jesus. So on the whole a good episode, but again one which must be read with close attention to the Gospels. So brothers and sisters this is a reminder to you that you need to read your Bible and be aware of the Gospel accounts actually say - then you will be in a position to watch programs such as this is a positive and yet also critical way.

Mystagogic Catechesis

As an addendum to my post on the Chrism Mass I came across this lovely quotation from Cyril of Jerusalem's Mystagogic Catechesis. Cyril was Bishop of Jerusalem in the 4th Century and much of what we do in the special ceremonies of Holy Week goes back to the liturgies he celebrated for the pilgrims who gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate Easter. The Mystagogic Catechesis were the addresses given to the newly baptized after Easter explaining to them something of the meaning of the 'mysteries' they had experienced. 

Be sure, however, not to regard the Chrism as a mere ointment. Just as after the invocation of the Holy Spirit the Bread of the Eucharist is no longer just bread but the Body of Christ, so when the Holy Spirit has been invoked on the sacred Chrism it is no longer merely an ordinary ointment. It is Christ's gift which instills his divinity into us through the presence of the Holy Spirit. With a symbolic meaning it is applied to your forehead and sense organs. Just as the body is anointed with a visible ointment, so the soul is sanctified by the Hidden Holy Spirit.

Chrism Mass

Yesterday was largely taken up with the Chrism Mass. For those of you who don't know this is when the clergy of the Diocese gather together, renew their commitment to their ministry and celebrate the Eucharist with their Bishop before the Triduum and receive the Holy Oils for anointing those to be baptized, the sick, and those being baptized, confirmed and ordained. This last oil is the oil of Chrism - thus the tradition name for this celebration. Sometimes the day can feel like a bit of a chore - simply something that has to be done - but at its best it is a very symbolic occasion, and a time for prayerful renewal. St Saviour's Eastbourne is a stunningly beautiful Church which reminds me a bit of All Saint's, Boyne Hill where I spent so many formative years as a child and young man and I was especially struck by the lovely frescoes of the Doctor's of the Church. Bishop John preached well and encouraged us not to neglect our own spiritual life as clergy - something which many clergy struggle with in the midst of the busyness of ministry. Will the CARM process encourage us to make time to be still and pray - I hope so though I think inevitably with its measurable targets it will the practical... I was especially struck by Bishop John quoting Augustine while standing directly beneath the fresco of that Holy Doctor. Members of the parish will know from frequent sermon references that Augustine is my favourite of the Fathers. It was also good to catch up with my training incumbent Fr Roger Russell SSC who was himself a good model of a prayerful priest to me during my curacy.

Agape

Although the Agape is not one of the key liturgical events of Holy Week it is nonetheless one of the ways in which we manage to celebrate Holy Week together with our brothers and sisters from S. George's. There remains much scholarly debate as to exactly what form the Agape took in the early church took, and whether it preceded the eucharist or was something entirely separate from it. For us it is simply an opportunity to hare together in a meal in Holy week with prayers and readings and the opportunity to break bread and share wine together. It is not a Eucharist, though it carries of course echoes of the Eucharist in it, and it is not a passover meal, though in this week it of course carries echoes of that meal too. Fr David took as his text the Gospel reading of the day (John 12: 1-11), which I had enjoyed preaching on at the morning Eucharist, and also took the opportunity to share some of his thoughts on the BBC Passion, not too dissimilar to my comments already posted on the Blog. For him the disappointment was not the interpretation (inevitably perhaps it is going to try to balance some of the religious and secular agendas already mentioned) but the fact that it departs so much from the text of the scriptures. No disagreement here! Last year I was impressed by Pope Benedict's book on Jesus, which has an excellent introduction about how to read scripture in a way that takes into account the usefulness of modern historical criticism without forgetting to read the scriptures prayerfully. I'm still recommending it as the best book to buy on Jesus! I hope he is able to write the second part for us.

I am especially grateful to the many people who worked so hard to prepare the meal, especially Erica and Lynne among many others, not least those from S. George's who helped us as we used their Hall, which is bigger than ours! You can see from the pictures how hard (and blurrily fast!) people worked to clear up afterwards.

The St Peter's Festival

Hopefully many of you will know about the St Peter's Music Festival which is Anthony Roberts' brainchild. His enthusiasm  seems boundless and those of you who have experienced the Bella Voce concerts he has organized over the last couple of years will know that the festival is likely to be well worth attending. As often happens with new projects we have had a few teething problems over dates, but these seem to have now been resolved, and the festival will take place over three weeks.

On Friday 20th June there will be a Variety Performance.

On Friday 27th June there will be a Bella Voce evening.

On Saturday 5th July there will be a Gilbert and Sullivan Evening.

Auditions for the Variety evening for all you talented performers will be held on Saturday 10th and 17 May in the Church from 10.00 am until 12.00 noon. So there is plenty of time to start rehearsing!

Monday in Holy week

Apologies for the quality of the photos on the blog - my iphone is a superb piece of all in one kit but the quality of the camera is no more than ok!

I was quite expecting myself to be the only one for the morning eucharist today. Most people will be going to the Agape this evening and we don't usually have a eucharist on a monday as it is my day off. It seems to me important in this week of all weeks to offer mass daily in the run up to the Triduum (the Three Holy Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter), so it was a joy to be able to celebrate with a parishioner who turned up to celebrate with me. I then went off to make my confession, and now feel ready to face the rigors of Holy Week. I do hope that members of the parish all have a copy of the Holy Week booklet and look forward to celebrating this week with you all.

The Passion (BBC)

I was interested to see this new BBC version of the Passion. We often complain as Christians that the BBC doesn't seem to mark Christian Festivals like Holy Week as well as it used to. It is encouraging therefore to see them producing something like the Passion. It is too early yet to see make a full assessment, but it is clear that it is a production that will need to be 'read' carefully. See my post above on spiritual reading on the dangers of relying too heavily on non Christian accounts of the faith! Clearly that is what this production is. It is a production designed to avoid offending Christians, Jews, atheists, and Muslims. That sounds a bit tricky when it is also supposed to be a reasonably 'straight' reading of the Gospels. On the basis of the first episode this seems to be accomplished by avoiding Jesus' miracles, neither denying them or asserting them. In other words dear viewer fill in the blanks. It seems that we are being thus presented with a design your own Jesus model. For instance, at what appears to be the  Pool of Bethesda we see Jesus being very compassionate and caring for the sick, but no healing. Again you may have found the way in which Jesus obtains the donkey and colt somewhat odd. At first you think that Jesus is going to rob the poor owner of the animals but in the end buys them. This is quite at odds with the Gospel accounts in which it appears that Jesus has made a prior arrangement with the owner of these animals. I shall be very interested to see how they deal with the resurrection! Still, despite these criticisms, I think that it will be worth watching - just as long as you do so carefully. It may also provide good opportunities for discussion with friends and family! I think I shall still watch my copy of The Passion of the Christ as a superior piece of devotional viewing later in the week. It isn't an easy film, but I believe it has greater spiritual depth, and helps us to understand how much Jesus really did suffer for us. 

Palm Sunday

I imagine that faced with the rain we had on Sunday morning many parishes decided not to hold an outside procession for Palm Sunday. Because of our longstanding practice of holding a joint procession of Palms with our Christian brothers and sisters from S. George's we processed back from S. George's in the rain. I'm not sure I'd want to do it every year - even though with my clerical cloak I managed better than Fr David in his splendid cope - but it didn't seem to inappropriate in marking the transition from the joyful Palm Gospel to the sorrow of the Passion Gospel. Like many Churches we have a dramatic reading of the Passion, which I always find very powerful as a way of drawing us into the events of Holy Week. Reading the part of the Jesus one feels, just from the words, the rejection of the crowd closing in on you. If that's how I feel simply from the words of the Gospel how must our Lord have felt, rejected by his own people, abandoned by his own disciples. And how much of that pain is a result of the actions which we continue to do, the sins which are the greater pain that that of the nails themselves?

In the evening we had a beautiful service of Stations of the Cross. We are not a parish where there is a great tradition of praying the stations, but  a small number of us gathered to do so in the evening and found it very moving. This year I used a very simple set of meditations written with young people in mind (The Way of the Cross CTS Children's Books) which was beautiful. I had been toying with using Balthasar's Way of the Cross, which is excellent but aimed at a very different level. These were much more appropriate and deeply prayerful. I may get a copy for the Parish Library. Due to the generosity of the parish I am going to be able to go to the Holy Land on pilgrimage later in the year. Many of us cannot afford to do so, but meditations such as the Way of the Cross enable us to make a spiritual journey there. There is another opportunity to do this on Good Friday (11.00 a.m.) with our children's Way of the Cross. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Spiritual Reading

I have been invited to join a theological reading group, and since they have just started looking at a new book I went to my first meeting on Friday. We are looking at Exploring & proclaiming the Apostles' Creed. Books on the Apostles' Creed are not unusual, I have a few on my shelf, including Balthasar's excellent little book Credo. This one however is arranged so that it looks at different phrases of the Creed by providing a theological reflection and then a sermon. The idea is that preachers need to be encouraged to preach doctrinal sermons more than we tend to. This is not an encouragement to replace sermons with lectures, far from it, but to make sure that our preaching and our theology are actually joined up. I heard on a report on the Sunday program that less than half of those who identify themselves as practising Christians believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ. It certainly seems to be true that most Christians are very ill informed about the beliefs of the Christian Faith, let alone as they are held by the particular denomination of which they are a member. Perhaps more worrying is the source of their information. If for instance your knowledge of the Lord's Passion is mainly informed by bits and pieces you catch on the TV you are going to end with a very disjointed view of the faith, and one which is actually trying to express multiple different beliefs and world views at the same time. More about the BBC's The Passion in a later post! We really do need to take the time to inform ourselves better about the faith. I don't expect members of the congregation to suddenly all sign up to do a theology degree, but it would be good if more of us were willing to take the time to resource ourselves a little more. The Following Jesus course which forms the first part of the Bishop's Certificate course run by the Diocese is very good.... And no I'm not just saying that because I'm running one at the moment......

PCC Meeting 11th March

On Tuesday we had our last PCC meeting before the Annual Parochial Church Meeting on Sunday 27 April, which we will be holding again immediately after the 10.00 a.m. service. Most of our meeting was taken up with the normal business of preparation for the meeting, approving the accounts, working out whose term of office is coming to an end and so who needs to decide if they are willing to stand again. I do hope that as many of you as possible will make sure you have time to stay for at least part of the APCM. This meeting is a sort of AGM which reminds us in the most powerful way possible that St Peter's is a parish in which we together express the life of Christ in his body the Church. There are all sorts of particular ways in which as the parish priest I have special duties and responsibilities which flow from the way I am called to express particular aspects of Jesus' own priestly ministry in the community. Yet only together do we make up the Body of Christ here in this place. So the APCM isn't simply an occasion to get a report on the accounts - and hopefully respond generously when we aren't paying our way (!) - it is an annual chance to reflect together on our common life. Being a member of the PCC is a way of joining me in the task of guiding and leading St Peter's for the rest of the year. Perhaps you might be being called to this ministry? 

Perhaps the other most important issue of discussion was part of our preparation for the Caritas Celebration on 21st June.  As well as ourselves we are bringing to Caritas a twenty word aspiration (vision statement), some photographs (remember Mothering Sunday!), and the grandly titled Mission Action Plan - a way of focusing our priorities over the next three years. We had a good discussion although we haven't finalised our three priorities yet. What really encouraged me though was the clear belief that everything we do flows from our love of God. Sometimes I get a little downhearted that it seems difficult at St Peter to get people to come to study groups and some of the other things that can really help us to grow in our spiritual lives with Christ. So I was buoyed up by this affirmation of our priorities!

Roman Catholic attitudes to contraception

Sorry that this post is out of date order! Many of you will know that my girlfriend is a Roman Catholic, and you can imagine that even with a convinced anglo-catholic like me there are issues of, if not disagreement, then at least divergence between our understanding of what is required of us as Christians. Perhaps one of the big differences between the Church of England and the Catholic Church is found in our attitudes to contraception. (And yes as unmarried Christians this is a theoretical discussion for us!) The Church of England has the 'distinction' of being the first of the main protestant Churches to change its attitude to contraception. What many people won't be aware of is that until the twentieth century all Christian Churches were against contraception. At the Lambeth Conference in 1930 this changed with the decision that if there appeared to be ethical reasons why the couple should not have more children and should at the same time continue to have a sexual relationship the Conference agreed 'that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of Christian principles.' Today it is a pretty uncontroverted issue in the Church of England, and an extremely controversial one for the Roman Catholic Church. What I think we find it hard to get our heads around is that this is not simply an issue of mechanics for Catholics. For most people within the Church of England it appears to be a matter of semantics. Catholics are able to use non artificial methods of birth control, is there really such a big difference between a scientifically informed use of sexual abstinence and condoms and artificial methods of birth control? Modern methods of natural family planning are as statistically effective as artificial ones. Leaving aside the fact that many of the methods of birth control available are abortifacients, the Roman Catholic answer is that there is a difference, because of the attitude that the use of contraception and a 'contraceptive attitude' encourages. For someone who is concerned with the unity of our two churches (and indeed Christian unity in general) as I am this is challenging and worth thinking about. So last Thursday I went to hear Janet Smith give a lecture on this subject in London. Janet Smith is a catholic professor of Ethics from the United States and a very powerful speaker. There was little in her lecture that required you to be a Catholic, simply drawing on basic Christian attitudes to family life and marriage and an examination of scientific and statistical evidence she made a very strong case for the fact that the widespread use of contraception in the West has been a significant contributory factor in the break down of family life and the appalling and rising number of abortions. If you feel like being challenged to think about this, and at least come to understand our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters on this a little more then I have a CD of her lecture I am happy to lend out, or you can find out more about her here. In the live talk she also pointed out that Natural Family Planning is also a way to shrink your carbon footprint.....

RSCM Choir Festival

On Saturday the choir took part in the annual RSCM Choir Festival at Chichester Cathedral. With about 400 choristers you can imagine that this is is a wonderful opportunity to do some of the music that we would find more difficult to produce Sunday by Sunday. We had a great service of Choral Evensong, although I felt very conspicuous at the front. It had been suggested that I robe, but discovered that few clergy had chosen to do so, so that including the Dean and Canons there were only six robed clergy... The choirs blended together well, especially since they had only been able to rehearse together on the day. Hopefully we will be able to hear some of the music learnt for the day sung back here in the parish. I felt rather spoilt having had a Cathedral experience of Choral Evensong twice in one week. members of the parish may be interested to know that our Choir Director, Anthony Roberts, is keen to sing Choral Evensong at St. Peter's more regularly, perhaps once a quarter, which would be lovely.

The keen-eyed among you will be able to spot a reunion with Angie Jackson who was a great blessing to us in the musical 'interregnum' before Anthony was appointed, keeping regular Choir practices going for us. 

I also took the time after the service to pray at the beautiful Shrine of St Richard. I was ordained deacon in Chichester Cathedral and it remains a very special place for me.  

Spring Clean

Thanks to everyone who turned up for our pre-Easter spring clean of the church. Given the short notice we managed a very good turn out, which was augmented by lots of younger members of the congregation who made up with enthusiasm whatever they lacked in skill....

First prize however has to go to Linda Brooker who managed to get me to clear out my stall. This herculean task managed to unearth not only a large pile of sermons but even a pewsheet from 2003 - which has of course now been recycled. No doubt that is why I was saving it. Back in 2003 I have to admit that it would have gone straight into the bin!

St Paul's Pilgrimage

It feels like the pilgrimage to St Paul's Cathedral has been a long time coming, but the substantial preparation put into it by John Lockyer and Janet and Derek Hand in particular helped to make it such a success. John as many of you will know was a virger at S. Paul's for many years and his enthusiasm for the Cathedral and his contacts there were invaluable.

The pilgrimage was organised under the umbrella of Churches Together in Hangelton and West Blatchington, and it is a tribute to the close relationships we have built up over many years that it was possible to make a pilgrimage to a very Anglican Cathedral in this way. I was particularly glad that Fr David Weston, who has been a good friend to me and to St Peter's, was able to come with a good number of our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters from S. George's. 

It was particularly good to be met by Fr Martin Warner, who gave us a warm welcome and a spiritual introduction to St Paul's as we gathered around the font. Fr Martin was previously the Administrator of the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and has always reminded me of John Mason Neale. It's partly that ascetic look, but also because he comes across as a very holy and prayerful priest, though I'm sure he'd be amused by such a comment. 

I hadn't been to the Cathedral since I had been a pastoral assistant at St. James the Less, Sussex Gardens, in Paddington. I have always found medieval and gothic churches more appealing than neo-classical ones, but I must admit to warming to St Paul's. Although distance had made my memory of the Cathedral rather cloudy I suspect that the £40,000,000 cleaning project had transformed the aesthetic appeal of the building.

We are already talking about arranging a similar day pilgrimage for next year, perhaps to a pilgrimage site associated with one of the other Christian traditions such as Aylesford Priory, in Kent.

 

Where to begin...

A number of events recently almost got me started on the blog. Rowan William's lecture about the relationship between Sharia and British Law was the first. Members of the parish will have heard my sermon about it. For those who didn't I am on the side of those who think you should read the lecture before you assume you know what he is talking about, and I believe that he was raising important issues about the increasingly difficult relationship between secular and religious law. 

An excellent comment on this can be found here. The text of the lecture can be found on Archbishop Rowan's website.

For those of you who don't think that this conflict is on the increase keep an eye on the lack of a free vote being allowed to members of the Cabinet over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. This is an issue that I believe we should take very seriously as Christians. Especially with proposed amendments this Bill is likely to:

1.  further liberalise the abortion laws and therefore lead to an increase in the number of abortions
   
2. lead to the creation of Animal/Human hybrids
3. remove the need for a Father for a child in law and on birth certificates
4. increase the use of embryos in stem cell research even though alternatives are available.

If this is something you too are concerned about please fill in the cards available in Church this Sunday and send them to our MP, Celia Barlow. You might also want to check out this link.

Another event which seemed a propitious starting point was attending my first SSC chapter as an aspirant. Most people at St Peter's won't have heard of SSC, it is a priestly society which I have been thinking about joining for some time. I was encouraged to see that many of the priests whom I respect are members. More about that another time.