Category: Seasonal

A Harvest of Righteousness

In our churches recently we have been celebrating Harvest Thanksgiving. It’s four down and one to go. In lots of ways harvest appears anachronistic. Even in rural parishes like ours few people work the land today. Most working people commute to nearby towns and some even further to our cities. Most of us are hardly affected by the success or otherwise of the harvest.

So why do we keep on with Harvest Thanksgiving? Is it just that it’s an opportunity to get more people into church than we would normally have? And why do people who otherwise hardly ever come to church come for the harvest service? Does the harvest celebration just make us feel good, or is there something deeper, perhaps something only half acknowledged? Continue reading “A Harvest of Righteousness”

I bind unto myself today

I bind unto myself today
the strong name of the Trinity. (att. St Patrick)

What sense can we make of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity? I suppose most of us would say, ‘Not much!’ And yet, everywhere we look the Trinity pops up as if to mock us for our lack of understanding. There it is in our prayers – through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit. There it is in our hymns – praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. There it is as we begin

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The Holy Trinity – Peter Paul Rubens

our worship – In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And there it is, of course, when we baptize new Christians – I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Everywhere we look, it’s there. There’s no escaping it. Continue reading “I bind unto myself today”

The Lord is risen indeed!

At our celebration of the Eucharist on Easter Day we will hear, as we always do, the account from John’s gospel of the discovery of the empty tomb and a first encounter with the risen Lord (John 20.1-18). He tells how Mary goes early in the morning to complete, what the disciples could not complete because of the Sabbath, the burial ceremonies for Jesus, or perhaps she goes simply to spend a little time with her thoughts in the quiet of the early morning.

John brilliantly gives us a sense of the panempty-tombic in Mary’s mind as, finding the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, Mary runs to find Simon Peter and tells him, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they have put him. Continue reading “The Lord is risen indeed!”

Telling the Passion Story

Yesterday was Palm Sunday and now we’re into Holy Week; that week of the year when we tell the story of the suffering and death of Jesus as we prepare to celebrate his resurrection on Easter Day. Most Christians find this to be a bitter sweet time for it can be hard for us to reflect upon the death of the Jesus we love – even though we know the end of the story. The end may be wonderful and glorious but the journey towards that end can be painful.

Telling the story is important. Any child can tell you that about stories – they need to be told to come alive. It is necessary for us to recount the events of that week from Jesus entering Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, greeted by the crowds, cheered by the people but upsetting the religious

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Christ on the Cross, Alonzo Cano, 1646

leaders as he throws the traders out of the temple and rebukes the priests and scribes and lawyers for their hypocrisy, to the shadow of the cross that almost immediately falls over the story and leads us to the rigged trial (rigged by the priests, or rigged by Jesus, or both?) and so to the death on the cross and the tender burial by disciples who had, at best, been on the fringes of the group who followed Jesus. That story needs to be told. It needs to be heard. It needs to come alive for us. Continue reading “Telling the Passion Story”

The True Meaning of Christmas

The words the true meaning of Christmas crop up quite a lot at this time of year. Often they’re heard when someone is bemoaning the rampant commercialism and consumerism that accompanies the run up to Christmas_House_LightsChristmas. And then again you hear them when someone is complaining that the Christmas promotions in the shops in the high street and the advertisements on television appear to start earlier and earlier each year. You hear them when someone takes exception to the over-the-top Christmas decorations which some people put up outside their homes.

On the other hand, in an almost opposite case, you will hear them spoken when we hear of a local council or business “cancelling” the Christmas party or refusing to display Christmas decorations or preferring instead a “non-religious” alternative because the celebration of such an overtly Christian festival might offend people of another faith, or none. Continue reading “The True Meaning of Christmas”