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FROM THE RECTORY

FEBRUARY

 

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 Holy Land.  It’s also a great chance to catch up with other people in the Diocese, and you don’t need to take your own lunch – always a bonus!

 

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,