On Palm Sunday, we found ourselves in Wales and we went to worship at St Woolas Cathedral in Newport. The Dean, Ian Black, used to be in Peterborough so it was good to see him in his current role. The Eucharist was for me deeply moving. Ian spoke in his sermon about the nature of Jesus’ leadership and our tendency to be armchair activists when it comes to putting the wrong in the world right. I spent most of the service meditating on the wire rood of the crucified Jesus hanging above the chancel. It was installed in 2020. Ian wrote in the cathedral newsletter for April that we live in a culture which sees Good Friday as another day, and we have a sanitised faith which jumps from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday without passing through the passion of the cross. “We want Easter without the pain, but such a faith has nothing to say to the darker sides of life.”
It was a privilege to worship with the community in Newport. We were made very welcome. Afterwards sitting outside we chatted to two folk who were getting some air in the sun. They live in a hostel which one of them described as a prison. It felt good to say to them the cathedral outside which they sat might genuinely help them.
On Palm Sunday afternoon, we went to choral Evensong at Salisbury Cathedral, another new cathedral for me. We were shown to a seat in the nave, but the service was in the quire. The guide told us we would hear from where we were. We couldn’t! She was rather bemused when I asked for a hymn book and a prayer book. We weren’t meant to take part nor understand what was going on. It was a bizarre experience. The cathedral also felt very dark. I’m not sure we will be going back! I wish I’d gone to look round Edward Heath’s house opposite instead!
Monday found us in Poole at the Guildhall for my cousin’s wedding. It was interesting to listen to the words of a civil ceremony where God isn’t mentioned. I was pleased to be asked to bless Jenny and Roger’s marriage at the reception in a pub at Sturminster Marshall afterwards and we had a very happy family time. It’s very rare I see my cousins and it’s usually at funerals!
The rest of Holy Week and then Easter Week is being spent on Holy Island. Holy Island has very much been my most important sacred space since I first went on retreat there in 2009. I met Lis on Holy Island in April 2016, proposed to her on the beach in November 2016 and the day after our wedding in March 2017 we had our marriage blessed in St Mary’s Church, a place where we realised we both “get” the spirituality of the island. It will be really good to do the passion and Easter story here again. I did it while off sick in 2019 and wasn’t expecting to have a chance to do it again before retirement.
Maundy Thursday saw me visit three churches on the mainland. Holy Trinity with St Mary is in Berwick-upon-Tweed. It is a rare example of a parish church built during Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth. Consequently it has no tower, spire or bells and as it was built in Puritan times it is very plain and simple inside.
Then I called in the little church at Ancroft, which is an eleventh century church and is really beautiful. The priest in charge is Charlotte Osborn. Leo, her husband, is a former President of the Conference and I know them from Leo’s time as minister in Oakham. I also called into another of Charlotte’s churches in Lowick, but have no pictures as my phone battery died as I went up the path to it!
This first of my Holy Week blogs ends with the Maundy Thursday service in St Mary’s on Holy Island. There are so many things to think about as we remember Jesus’ last night before his death. I was struck by the symbolism of the stripping of the altar more than anything else this year. It looked empty, naked, bare.
Each of us knows what it is to be that empty. There are times when life suddenly strips us bare. We get the awful phone call, a betrayal is exposed, death strikes out of the blue. Other times, the stripping happens to us through hard stuff after hard stuff coming: the barrage of devastating news stories, bouts of insomnia, chronic health issues, that same old argument erupting yet again. All those things drain away our energy and joy.
We know what it is to stand bare like the altar, empty like trees in winter. Jesus knows what it is to be stripped bare. He was betrayed – his friend denied knowing him. Before his death, Jesus was stripped and beaten. He even felt forsaken by God. Jesus knows what it is to have relationships, dignity, and life itself stripped away.
When so much can be stripped away from us, our instincts are to preserve what we have, to secure our life and our energy. Yet on this night, by his own example, Jesus calls us to a different way of being – to cease our futile efforts to preserve ourselves and to instead give ourselves freely to one another. That’s the power of the Christian Gospel. In a week where we’ve had to look at leaders and question their honesty and integrity yet again, and in a week where we think it okay to send desperate people in peril on the sea looking for hope a one way ticket to Rwanda, we need to be challenged by a different way. I’m glad to see this Methodist statement:
“People are not a problem to be dealt with, but are individuals with inherent value and dignity made in the image of God. Sending some of the most vulnerable people in the world thousands of miles away to be imprisoned does not respect this dignity.”
Perhaps as folk stripped the altar on Holy Island this Maundy Thursday, the words they chose we sing as it happened help explain the gulf between Christ like and human like sacrificial loving and leading…
Sing, my tongue, the Saviour’s glory, Of his flesh the myst'ry sing: Of the Blood, all price exceeding, Shed by our immortal King, Destined for the world’s redemption, From a noble womb to spring.
Of a pure and spotless virgin
Born for us on earth below,
He, as man, with us conversing,
Stayed, the seeds of truth to sow;
Then he closed in solemn order
Wondrously his life of woe.
On the night of that last supper,
Seated with his chosen band,
He, the Paschal victim eating,
First fulfills the Law’s command;
Then as food, to the disciples
Gives himself with his own hand.
Word made flesh, the bread of nature
By his word to flesh he turns;
Wine into his blood he changes:
What though sense no change discerns?
Only be the heart in earnest,
Faith its lesson quickly learns.
Down in adoration falling,
This great sacrament we hail;
Over ancient forms of worship
Newer rites of grace prevail;
Faith tells us that Christ is present,
When our human senses fail.
To the everlasting Father,
And the Son who made us free,
And the Spirit, God proceeding
From them each eternally,
Be salvation, honour, blessing,
Might and endless majesty.
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