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The Parish of Bishopstoke |
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Dear Friends Each
year during Lent the Bishop of Winchester invites clergy, Readers and anyone
else who is interested to a day of ‘Lent Lectures’ at Winchester
Guildhall. Perhaps ‘invite’ is the
wrong word for the clergy – it’s more like a three-line whip! I had to send my apologies for missing the
Archbishop of Canterbury two years ago when I was in the Over
the past few years we’ve had some excellent speakers and a great variety of topics. Often, though, there’s some emphasis on the
death and resurrection of Jesus, as it’s assumed that people will be
preaching or leading worship on these themes just a few weeks later. And after all, this is at the heart of our
faith. Last
year, the lectures were given by Paula Gooder, a very dynamic New Testament
scholar and author – with not a few original thoughts. She looked at the Gospel of Mark, with
three quarters of the day spent on Palm Sunday, the Crucifixion and the
Resurrection. And this reflects the
make-up of the Gospel: in Mark, Jesus’ final week occupies 6 of the 16
chapters, and in all of the gospels the amount of space given over to Jesus’
arrest, trial and crucifixion is huge, when compared to the number of hours
this took. But then, this is at the
heart of our faith – no crucifixion... no resurrection... no Christianity! However,
we are not that likely to hear these parts of the gospels in our Sunday
morning services. We hear the story on
Good Friday, of course (often with relatively small numbers present), and
some churches read through the whole passion from one of the gospels on Palm
Sunday (which leaves no time to explain any of it). And yet it can be deeply moving to hear the
story as a whole, sometimes with individuals reading the words of the
characters and all the congregation becoming the crowd. At
the Lent Lectures last year one thing that hit me was this: why don’t we read
a decent chunk of the passion of Jesus each Sunday in Lent one year? Then we would get the flow of the story and
also have some time to think about it in the sermon. So this year, starting on 28 February,
we’ll be reading through Luke’s account of the passion in three sections, and
I hope that by doing this we will be more prepared for Good Friday and
Easter. Do come and enter more deeply
into the heart of the Christian faith, and the heart of Jesus, who out of
love for each of us chose the way of suffering – no pain... no victory... no
eternal life. I’m
not sure what Bishop Michael has in store this year, but I look forward to 18
March!
With every blessing, |
