exultemus

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  • 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. (more…)

  • 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

    Alonso_Cano_-_Cristo_crucificado_-_Google_Art_Project
    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. (more…)

  • When you pray, say …

    Prayer is a tricky business. Or at least so it would seem from conversations that I’ve had with other Christians, with people on the fringe of Church life and non-Christians who challenge me about it. And, if I’m honest, it can be a bit of tricky business for me too. And lots of teaching on prayer appears designed to make us feel guilty about it.

    CANDLEAnd because so many of us find it tricky, we also find that it becomes a source of guilt and anxiety for us. We don’t feel that we pray for long enough or often enough; or we don’t pray well enough; we don’t know what to pray about; our prayer is too formulaic and stale, lacking variety and inspiration; we get too easily distracted; and everybody else seems to do it better than me. You probably have your own anxieties that you could add to the list. (more…)

  • Welcome to Lent

    We often describe Lent as a season of Fasting. But, in truth, fasting has fallen out of favour. Now, rather than fasting, we are likely to give up something for Lent – biscuits, cakes, wine, sweets. Increasingly we are encouraged to take on something for Lent – more prayer, more bible reading, more charitable work. All of this is good but I want to suggest that there is still some benefit to be had by fasting.Lent

    The dictionary definition of fast is: Abstain from all or some kinds of food or drink, especially as a religious observance.

    So what are the benefits to us of abstaining from food or drink? (more…)

  • I love Christmas, but …

    I love Christmas. But I often feel that the Christmas I love and the Christmas I celebrate do not always seem to be the same thing … and I don’t think that I’m alone in this.

    The Christmas I celebrate has two main features – Church and family. That’s good. That’s a big part of what I love.

    Nativity_CD_Reredos
    Detail from the Reredos in St Mary’s Church, Chilthorne Domer

    I love exchanging presents. I love Christmas dinner – with all the trimmings. I love the tree, the crib, the cards (well, most of them, anyway). I love the traditions. (more…)

  • 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. (more…)

  • … to cultivate the earth and take care of it

    The fourth storm of the winter hFloodas brought chaos and anxiety to the north of the country. I know it’s the fourth storm because the Met Office now gives them names and this one is called Desmond. High winds have led to bridge closures, homes are without power, homes have been evacuated as the floods rise, the army has been called in and the government has called emergency meetings to discuss the right response to the crisis. All of this at the same time as the Paris Climate talks are taking place as world leaders endeavour to find a way to agree on the measures that need to be taken to minimise the effects on the world of global warming. (more…)

  • Our Father …

    The Lord’s Prayer has been in the news this week and has received lots of publicity. And all because a Church of England advert for the new Just Pray website has been banned from being shown in cinemas because it might be offensive to people of other faiths or no faith.

    The outrage would suggest that the cinemas have got that wrong. Critics of all faiths and none have condemned the decision, but it’s probably the case that more heat than light has been generated in the debate.Lords_Prayer

    I guess that it’s likely that more people have watched the advert in two days on YouTube than would have seen it in the cinema on its day of release – and certainly more people have noticed it – so it’s probably already been an effective piece of publicity. (more…)

  • What shall we do with all these Churches?

    St_Gargoyles1On Friday in the Guardian Giles Fraser wrote in his Loose Canon column that the Church of England needed many fewer Churches. He suggested that if the Church of England were in a position to spend less time, energy and money on maintaining its many thousands of ancient beautiful and loved parish churches it would be able to give more time and attention to its most important work – proclaiming the gospel. He said that we need someone to do the same job for the Church of England as Lord Beeching had done for the railways in the 1960s.

    By coincidence, in the Church Times on the same day, there was a report of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury preaching at the consecration of a new chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary in the United States, their old chapel having burnt down in 2010. Here the Archbishop posed the question, “Why is it that we are so addicted to buildings?” He said that sometimes the buildings are the servants of the Church and at others they are the Church’s “tyrants.” (more…)

  • Required – the Wisdom of Solomon

    The Anglican Communion is in crisis. That’s not really news, it’s been in crisis for many years.

    The Anglican Communion is a grouping of national and regional churches which are in full communiCompassroseon with the Church of England. It grew out of the the British Empire as the Church of England sent, first, missionaries and then bishops to establish outposts throughout the empire. Those new churches eventually became autonomous and, modelling themselves on the Church of England and their worship on the Book of Common Prayer. It is often claimed that the Anglican Communion came into existence with the ordination of Samuel Seabury as the first Bishop of what is now the Episcopal Church of the United States of America (ECUSA). The first Lambeth Conference (the meetings of the Anglican Bishops from around the world) was in 1867. The ties that bind these churches together are loose and born largely of mutual respect and a broad agreement on matters of doctrine. Traditionally the Anglican Communion has treasured its Union in Diversity bound only by it’s four Instruments of Communion: (more…)