A Reflection on Makin, the Archbishop's resignation and the Church - ‘your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19)

 

‘Your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19) These are the closing remarks of Jesus in today's Gospel reading. So often the Spirit moves through the lectionary to give us what we need to hear in a given moment. 

Following the recent revelations brought about by the release of the Makin Report into historic abuse perpetrated by the Evangelical Lay Minister John Smyth, and the subsequent resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury owing to criticisms of oversight made in that report, many will be feeling pain, anxiety or bewilderment. More important than anything else is that we hold all survivors of abuse in our prayers now and into the future. We also need to pray for those called to deal with these issues on the ground, as they are always complicated and difficult. This is a very challenging time for so many.

We may have many different views about the issues raised in the last few days. Whatever our thoughts, we must all now take account of what has been going wrong for so long and address them. Whatever failings there have been, they have come about as a direct result of us, the Church, losing our focus on the Jesus we are called to follow and reveal to others.

Now, we must always remember that we are not called to worship the Bible, we are called to worship God, the God we see in and through Jesus Christ. This seems obvious, but getting this the wrong way round, which can be so easy to do, can be the cause of significant problems. Christians have never believed that the Bible is directly dictated by God. The Bible is divinely inspired, not divinely dictated. The Bible for us contains the reflections, revelations and historical retellings of God’s interactions with the world and humankind through the experience of very faithful and saintly individuals. The Word of God is Jesus Christ, the Bible leads us to him!

Each of the Gospels are written by a writer, an author, and there is much debate about who those authors were. They may or may not be the people they are ascribed to. What we do know is that the Gospels contain eyewitness material and are remarkably historically accurate (as archaeology so often confirms). This gives us a direct connection to Jesus. That eyewitness testimony, testimony of people who witnessed these events first-hand, reveals to us the God who was present in the person of Jesus. When the Church gets into a pickle, when it loses its way, it is nearly always because it has lost its focus on that real person of Jesus.

As I said a few weeks ago, The Bible is a huge document, so with a narrow overly literalistic view, we can find justification in it for whatever we like.

We can find in the Bible justification for genocide or for the protection of minorities. We must ask ourselves which looks more like Jesus?

We can find justification for abusive control or for gentle encouragement. We must ask ourselves which looks more like Jesus?

We can find justification for pursuing inequality or for upholding every individual in the dignity of God as equal. The question we must ask is which one looks more like Jesus?

We can find justification in the Bible for trying to sweep things under the carpet, for not being transparent and open, for protecting the institution, for deviating from the truth, for denying what’s before our eyes –Joseph, Moses, David, Peter, Thomas, Paul… Whilst all of these are no doubt holy men, they each have their flaws. So, we have to ask ourselves, does lacking transparency, does failing to show concern to victims of abuse, failing to take whistleblowing seriously, failing to properly support people dealing with abuse issues on the ground, look like Jesus? If the answer is no, then we know we have got things wrong…

I think, for the last decade or more, our Church has lost its way primarily because it has forgotten its primary calling is a pastoral calling; it’s a calling to care, a calling to empathy, a calling to be present and visible. It is a calling to stables and alehouses and homes; to market squares and offices and factories; to crack dens and brothels and hovels. Just as Jesus’ calling was a local calling to be on the ground with real people in all the messy complexity of the world, so the Church’s calling is a local calling to serve real people on the ground in community. It is a calling to be where people are, to understand their issues, their pain, and to bring them close enough to Jesus to touch his cloak and look into his gaze.

Charles Simeon, onetime vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge, had carved on the inside of the pulpit, where only the preacher could see, the words from John 12:21 when some Greeks came to Philip saying, “Sir, we want to see Jesus”. Our job is to show people Jesus, and by seeing Jesus, they will be healed. Our churches should be places of wellbeing, safety and healing.

For too long this has been obscured as we have pursued glamorous growth agendas, vision statements and neat managerial concepts above all else – a corporatism has swept through our church that has made us feel more like a cold and hard Church of England PLC rather than a warm and welcoming Church of England please come and see. We have presented a Jesus that looks more like a calculating CEO than a caring physician.

So, this next period must be a period of change. Each of us has a responsibility for transforming the culture. We each need to do our bit to help our Church heal and become a place where people can see Jesus. And on seeing Jesus, they will be healed. Our Churches should be places of safety and healing. Our job is to make them safe, loving, caring places to be. Places that reflect those qualities we see in Jesus. Locally and nationally, our Church is called to the same.

So, my prayer is that we will have a major reset: that we will learn the lessons and challenge the toxicity in our systems and structures. As a Church, let us turn away from the corporatism and entitlement that has so dominated and devoured us - challenge the elitism, break up the cliques and throw a sledgehammer through the glass ceilings. Let us once again recognise that our primary calling is a pastoral calling to real people at a local level – an institution of transparency and openness, that cares for people and clergy, and places their wellbeing above all else. Let us recommit again to being an institution that exists to serve and care for everyone, including those outside of our metaphorical walls. May our Church nationally and locally be a place where people come and are able to find Jesus; a place of health and wellbeing, safety and healing.

Jesus, light of the world, who came as a healer, full of love and compassion, and speaks up for those who have no voice. May our churches be places of safety, where we stand up for the vulnerable. Places of justice, kindness and humility. Light of the world, drive out the darkness. May we bring light and life to others. May it be so (prayer taken from Safeguarding Sunday Materials).

Amen.

“I will give you rest”

 

“I will give you rest” –

A Sermon for Evensong on Sunday 13^th October 2024

In this evening’s Gospel reading[1], we were given another reminder of Jesus’ offer of spiritual rest and refreshment. It is my belief that those who come seeking God through the Church are, above all else, nearly always in search of that rest and refreshment.

In tonight’s reading, we first hear Jesus denouncing those places where he has performed miracles. He is doing this, in part, because of their lack of response. It would be easy for us to hear in his words a call to greater activity.

Response. Activity. Most often for us, the two things become one and the same. But what if the kind of response Jesus is calling those communities towards is something very different indeed? What if we don’t hear his words through 21^st Century corporate ears, but instead through the ears of an older, more devoted age? I wonder if as Jesus is denouncing those places where he has performed those miracles, he is challenging them not to return to their lives of busyness and corruption, instead inviting them to allow the love of God to transform their communities into something more?

What if some of the frustration we hear coming through Jesus’ words, a frustration so understandable after he has poured out so much of himself into their communities; what if that frustration is based on his call to them not returning to the mundane busyness of their lives, but to something deeper instead?

Maybe, if Jesus’ words and actions had transformed those communities, they would have recognised the folly of their fraught, feverish and frenzied living, and begun to replace it with lives of peace, rest and refreshment. Not lives without anything to do, but lives filled with purpose and order precisely because of their individual and corporate focus upon God – lives marked by gentleness and holy tranquillity. 

Our neighbouring bishop, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford, has been in the press recently following a lecture she delivered at the Festival of Preaching in Cambridge a few weeks ago.[2] In that lecture she describes the weariness that she has discovered among clergy and congregations in her diocese since taking up post. She speaks of anxiety created from unreasonable workloads and expectations coming from both local and central pressures. She associates an awful lot of the weariness and anxieties as being created by the Church of England’s preoccupation with growth at all costs…

She goes on to suggest that very preoccupation, that frenzied activity that central church is calling everyone to in order to avert their fears and the inevitable decline that they have convinced themselves of, is actually causing that very decline – or at least accelerating it. Perhaps, if we were to take the foot off the gas a little people may well be drawn to us all the more, precisely because we become places of rest and refreshment instead.

Some of the stuff - these are my words not hers – some of this stuff we see coming from the centre can seem almost faux-Gospel (anti-Gospel). Why? Because when we look below the surface we see that it is ladened with guilt and fear, or a combination of both. There is often a ‘carrot and stick’ approach. ‘We need to see quick gains, action plans and initiatives or else you might lose your priest…or else you will be worse off and you will not be thought as well of as those down the road who are doing better. However, if you have a plan that can convince us that you will be able to bring about disproportionately quick growth, and we don’t much mind what this will entail, then here’s a huge sack of money to help you along the way’… Carrot – and – Stick. Fear, Anxiety, Guilt.

These things do not come from the Gospel of Christ. These things come from a different actor. Thank God for Bishop Guli being the first one to be brave enough among the bishops to openly speak out against it. It is a shame that the authorities in the central church chose to give her a dressing down for not keeping to ‘script’ when she first spoke of these things at her Diocesan Synod shortly after coming to office – something she openly talks about in her lecture. I think I am pretty clear in my mind which persons the Spirit is working through.

It is so easy to focus on what is missing, and so we should forgive those who find themselves in places of central authority, enveloped by anxiety and fear as they feel the weight upon their own shoulders to bring about results. When they look at the figures, the spreadsheets and the pages of accompanying analysis, why wouldn’t they be filled with fear? And relying on all that their lives in business have taught them, why wouldn’t they look to all kinds of management theories and initiatives to try and turn the tide? We can surely understand all this, because it is so easy only to focus on what appears to be missing or going wrong. Yet, what we see when we take a step back is that such focus, whether in the business world or in the life of the Church, eventually only ever creates a kind of feverish and frenzied fear which feeds the inevitable decline – not to mention the untold damage it does to individuals and communities.

Decline - Fear – Frenzied Activity – Decline, an ever-decreasing circle. Tonight’s Gospel suggests we are called to something different, does it not? Maybe, in tonight’s Gospel, we can see what we have been missing for so long.

You see, the world of the past few decades has seen change at unprecedented levels – people are less likely to stay in the same community for as long, families are far more likely to split up, individuals have far less job security, homes are no longer lived in for a lifetime – and we haven’t even touched on the accelerated change brought about by computers, the internet, social media and artificial intelligence. This has all propelled a pace of change in society that we could barely have imagined just ten years ago.

Is the Church called to inhabit that same pace of change? Or is it called to be an oasis for people to find when their souls are wearied? Is the church called to a different kind of presence? God has a concern for the marginal spaces and for those who feel on the margins. For many, a fear of failure places them on the margins. A fear of not being able to keep up with this fast pace of change puts people on the margins. Levels of anxiety and depression in our society are at an all-time high – and is there any wonder at it. It’s not just our young people, but people of every age.

Where do they find the space to be fed, nurtured and cared for. Where do they get the permission to just stop and bask in something enriching of their souls? What if, amidst all the fevered activity of the world, our churches and their communities offered something more life giving and refreshing?

To my mind our churches should and could be places where people can encounter a stilling and grounding peace. The kind of peace only to be found among the people of God.

The word ‘Mission’ in our current age has become badly misunderstood. ‘Mission’ has come to imply feverish activity, getting people in through the doors and their bums of pews at any cost whatever. Yet, ‘Mission’ properly understood should mean a drawing of people more deeply into the gathered ecclesial community. That is the kind of mission we find in the New Testament. Mission should be seen as the drawing of people into the Church as a place where the wanderer and the weary can find their rest and be refreshed by basking in the stilling presence of God.

What an attraction that might be to a world obsessed by fast passed everything…

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’[3]

R. T. Parker-McGee 2024

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[1] Matthew 11.20-30

[2] https://soundcloud.com/user-632063010/dr-guli-francis-dehqani-encouraging-the-weary-with-a-word, 27^th September 2024

[3] Matthew 11.28-30

‘I only pray to God when I need a favour’ - Prayer

 

‘I only pray to God when I need a favour’ - Prayer

Trinity 18 - James 5.13-20; Mark 9.38-50

I know this will surprise you all, but I have finally got to that age where I can no longer listen to Radio 1. Radio 2 occasionally replaces it in my eclectic soundwave selection, but even that can be a struggle. More often than not, it is talk radio that grabs my attention, a combination of Times Radio, LBC, Radio 4 or Radio 5. Sometimes, when I need to chill, it’s Classic FM, but to even my surprise, I have recently become a convert of Country Music. When all else fails to hit the spot, I find myself listening to Smooth Country. I know, right! Mid-life crisis or what?  

Now, there is a modern Country artist whose name, I kid you not, is Jelly Roll (though, I doubt that is the name he was christened with). The other day, as I turned the radio on, Jelly Roll was singing a song called ‘Need a Favour’, and this song’s lyrics are fascinating. It goes something like this: ‘I only talk to God when I need a favour. And I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer. So, who the hell am I to expect a Saviour? Oh, I only talk to God when I need a favour. But God I need a favour!’[1]

These catchy lyrics are really clever. They cut right to the bone of what, I’m guessing, is so many people’s experience of prayer – it is certainly mine, all too often.

How many of us leave prayer to the last minute or as a last resort? How many of us only really return to prayer as a final straw, once we have exhausted all other options?

In the fifth chapter of his letter, St James is trying to encourage in us a different approach. ‘Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call the elders (priests) of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord…’[2]

In any given situation, our own endeavours can only take us so far. Sooner or later, it is only prayer that can bring the kind of holistic resolution of goodness that we crave.

As St James continues: ‘The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven’.[3]

As some of you know, the Parker-McGee’s had a rather tumultuous year last year. 2023 was probably one of the most taxing our family has known to date. In our darkest moments, one thing kept us strong – your prayers. I know that can sound like a platitude, but it is true. When we had exhausted all of our own abilities, it was then that we felt both mystically and tangibly held in the most profound way by the prayers of the Diocese, the Monastery, and of these parishes. I can’t explain it, yet it was certainly true. And all of us in the family felt it. So Thank you – your prayers really work!

I have a strong faith. I ordinarily feel a close connection to God in most situations and I have always been an advocate for saying that prayer works. I have seen it often enough in others. Be this as it may, our experience last year was on a completely different level - as though we were being carried by countless invisible wings of angels yet unseen.

Perhaps this reveals something else about prayer that we sometimes misunderstand. In the Gospel of St John, Jesus says “Remain in me and I will remain in you”.[4] Too often, we consider prayer to be of our making, in our control. Prayer only happens when we pray, right? Wrong!

We often approach prayer as though it were a shopping list of things for God to do, as though he needed reminding and isn’t already on the case. How silly of us. God already knows what needs doing and he is working that out for the best, not in the limited way our unimaginative agendas would have things go, but in infinitely better divine proportions. We come with our list of items to be bought cheaply from Aldi, when God is already filling his trolley at Waitrose (other premium supermarkets are available!). So perhaps we need to think again about what prayer really is.

To properly understand prayer, it’s helpful for us to go all the way back to the story of creation, to that period when God creates all things into being.

But, first a caveat. Now, this may sound somewhat controversial, but its important. When reading the creation narratives in the first few chapters of Genesis, we have to ask ourselves what is literal fact and what is allegorical device to help with deeper meaning and understanding. For instance, when the author speaks of the ‘days’ of creation, do they really mean periods of 24 hours or are they referring instead to less precise but nonetheless clearly discernible stages in the process of creation?  We might ask, for example, how can there be a day of 24 hours, before a day is even created? Is it plausible that the ‘first day’ actually refers to a discernible period of change which may have taken many years in our present understanding of time? Might the association of this period to a day be a textual construct employed by the author of the text to help the reader better understand? Just a thought!

Anyway, casting our minds to those narratives, how does Genesis tell us creation took place? Well, God spoke the universe into being and he breathed the Holy Spirit over it to give it life. God spoke with divine breath. That is fundamentally what prayer is – divine communication. It is that same divine communication that continues to keep all things moving in the right direction, bringing light out of darkness, good out of evil and life out of death. It is in God that we have our life and our being.

Our all-loving and caring God is constantly speaking words of love into creation. Love is always creative. It builds up and enables things to thrive. It overcomes darkness and brings light, just like the formation of the sun at the beginning of time. God does this through his divine communication. Properly understood, when we pray, we are simply stepping into that divine communication.

The English Bishop and Theologian, John V. Taylor, use to think of mission as ‘finding out what God is up to and joining in’.[5] To be truly engaged in mission, then, is to be deeply rooted in prayer, not activity.  When we are consciously praying, we become intimately and corporately swept up in the creative power of God’s divine communication and are carried along on the breeze of what God is up to. To pray is to live life as it is meant to be lived.  

This means that we do not need the right words or phrases. We can simply step into it at any moment. All we need is a little intentionality – to switch our focus from the material to the mystical – to invite God into our focus. To step into the stillness of the divine presence and allow him to take control.

This is how we access the divine power of which Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel reading.[6] ‘No-one’, he says, ‘who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us’.[7]

So, not to contradict the inestimable Jelly Roll, although it is not ideal to ‘only pray when we need a favour’, we all have to start somewhere, and there is never a time when we ‘haven’t got a prayer’ because the divine communication of God is always ongoing. All we need do is find the headspace to join in.

Prayer is about more than just the words we use. It is the place where our head is at. If we can, more and more, connect with that prayer that is already ongoing as the divine communication of God and the lifeforce of the world, then our lives and the world itself will be far better place for it.

Amen.

R.T. Parker-McGee 2024

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[1] Jelly Roll, ‘I need a Favor’, 2023

[2] James 5:13

[3] James 5:14

[4] John 15:4

[5] John V. Taylor, The Go Between God, 1972

[6] Mark 9:38-end

[7] Mark 9:39-40

I heard the voice of Jesus

 

I heard the voice of Jesus – Sermon – Trinity 16 – Mark 8:27-38

Who do you say I am?

Who do you say Jesus is? When you are alone, when all the distractions have disappeared and you find yourself sitting alone in your bedroom, or your living room, or that quiet corner of your garden; when the smart phone has run out of battery and the omnibus of ‘Corrie’ is over, and the North London Derby has been won or lost; in those quiet places and moments what does God’s voice sound like to you?

Over the last week, I have had numerous opportunities to ponder today’s Gospel.[1] When we read those words of Jesus, and many of us will have heard them hundreds of times before, I wonder, how does that voice sound?

‘Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, (read/recite with loud, angry voice) ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’[2]

How often have we heard those words in that kind of angry voice? How often when in the liturgy the Gospeller has made it to the centre of the aisle, and whether or not the Gospeller has employed that actual tone, how often is that the way we have heard it nonetheless?

I wonder if there is another way of hearing that voice?

‘Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, (read/recite with a gentle, compassionate, understanding voice) ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’[3]

When you hear that voice of God resonating with great velocity at the centre of your soul, when you are sitting in that quiet corner of your garden lamenting the fact that your favourite rose bush is wilting, which one of those two voices (angry or understanding, loud or gentle) is most like the living God you think you know?

For many of us… well, I know for me personally, I have picked up from a very young age that my God is an angry God. I know as an adult that is not true, and yet there is tiny bit of me that always goes back there – especially when I have done something wrong, or I am feeling a little bit ashamed, or I can’t summon the energy to get out of bed because I am feeling a little depressed or sorry for myself, it is too easy for me to return to that notion of my God being angry with me.

You know, I have been thinking about this an awful lot this week and I think some of this leads back to the way we read (and hear) the Old Testament in the Bible. You see, we can read the Old Testament in a simplistic superficial literalistic way, without context, deeper understanding or much intellectual thought of what might be going on in those pages, and then we can use that to inform how we interpret the New Testament and our image of Jesus. Alternatively, we can discover the Jesus of the Gospels and allow him to inform and add context to what we read in the rest of Scripture.

The Old Testament clarifies who Jesus is, it does not limit who Jesus is. We can find no truer representation of God than in the incarnate Jesus, God as man, God in our presence, real, alive. The Bible comes a good second in our search for God, but it is a clear second. We do not worship the Bible, we worship Jesus. Jesus is the living Word of God – the Bible leads us to him. Therefore, if our interpretation of the Bible does not fit the person we know to be Jesus, we can assume that we are interpreting that particular tiny part of the Bible incorrectly. ‘I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it!’.[4] This simple statement from Matthew 8 reveals that the Law of the Old Testament had not achieved its purpose, humanity was still missing the point, something else is needed in order to achieve what the Law set out to do. That something was Jesus Christ and the uncompromising all-encompassing love we see in and through him.

In other words, when we read the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, we need to read it through the lens of Jesus Christ. We need to hear all Scripture through the mouth of the loving Saviour we know him to be.

You see, it makes no sense for our living God to have given himself to us in such a way, if he were a vengeful and angry God. The idea that God somehow brought Jesus into the world just so that he could destroy him in order to satisfy his own vengeance, anger and blood-lust, like something from a terrifying horror movie, makes a complete mockery of the God of love. The only way the cross makes sense is when we realise that our God is a loving, compassionate and empathetic God. A God who is willing to give himself for us. A God who walks the way of the cross so that he can stay in front of us as our shield paving the way, clearing the decks, making our ways straight and our paths clear.

(Read/recite in a loving, compassionate, soft voice) ‘Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’[5]

Reflecting on this over this past week has made me realise that I need to try much harder at some of this. When I am alone in those quiet spaces, I need to remind myself that my God is a loving, compassionate, empathetic God who gives everything for me… and everything for you. And then I need to model my life on his life. He calls us to ‘love one another as he has loved us’.[6] In a world that is too much obsessed with hatred and division, it is that God who brings the healing we all need.[7]

Amen.

 

R.T. Parker-McGee 2014

 

 

 

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[1] Mark 8:27-38

[2] Mark 8:31-33

[3] Mark 8:31-33

[4] Matthew 5:17

[5] Mark 8:31-33

[6] John 13:34

[7] Acknowledgement: much of the inspiration for this sermon comes from: V. Johnson, On Voice - Speech, Song, Silence: Human and Divine (Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, Croydon; 2024).

A Lent Lecture - Morden College - March 2024: Liturgical Worship, Sacramentality and the Rural Landscape

 

A Lent Lecture – Morden College – March 2024

Liturgical Worship, Sacramentality and the Rural Landscape

I grew up in the Cambridgeshire Fens of East Anglia, with its beautifully flat landscapes marked by endless waterways and vast skyline. One of my earliest memories of Godly encounter involves a warm summer’s day, sitting by a lakeside with rod in hand, waiting for the fish to bite. I will have been no more than seven or eight years old. Nothing particularly remarkable. Just a sudden realisation of sitting in the presence of God. I remember catching my breath at my equivalent of the calling of Samuel.[1] Undoubtedly, the raucous sound of nature all around me was influential, and the sense that every time I met a fish on the bank, I was being given a privileged opportunity to meet one of God’s fellow travellers on this earth. To this day, on the rare occasions I find time to go fishing, and the even rarer occasions when I actually catch a fish, I try to resist the temptation to weigh it (to give it a number). I just admire its beauty and individuality, thank it for having taken the time to say hello and gently and lovingly place it back in the depths.

Around the same age, I occasionally attended Sunday School at the church in the fenland town where I lived. I can’t say I remember learning much, in a cognitive sense, but I do remember being captivated in awe and wonder as we sat at the back of church observing our parish priest celebrating the Eucharist, as he elevated the sacred gifts of bread and wine each in turn. I had that sense of trembling on the edge of eternity. A sensation I continue to have regularly to this day when I go to Mass.

I currently find myself ministering in five parishes located in the beautiful Suffolk countryside. One of those parishes was the birthplace of Dame Susan Morden. It is not difficult to see why she grew up to be such a committed Christian. It is a place of divine encounter, with gently undulating countryside and green pastures. The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Edwardstone is a remarkable rural church that radiates a spirituality nurtured by centuries of prayer and devotion, rich in symbolism and sacramental integrity. It is the only place in my five churches that owns a fiddleback chasuble! For me, there is a deep connection between liturgical integrity and the natural world, and perhaps more than anywhere else I have known, the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Edwardstone encapsulates that.

In previous places I have been, I have had the privilege of teaching liturgy and the sacraments to cohorts of ministers in training. I have a deep fascination of how God engages us through ritual and symbolism. The other thing that good liturgy does is connect us to the timelessness of God through the eternal wisdom of the earth.

The English church has always been marked by rich liturgical ceremony. We don’t have much by way of what the earliest church in England might have looked like. It certainly wasn’t centred on Rome, since there was already a thriving English church here by the time Augustine of Canterbury arrived with his Roman delegation to ‘evangelise’ the English. The ritual of those times is mostly lost to history, but likely as not it would have been earthy and rich in symbolism, building upon its Celtic roots and connection to creation. Later, England became the home of some amazing liturgical movements.  In 1075 CE, the Sarum Rite came into being. This order for the Holy Eucharist became used extensively throughout England right up until Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s first edition of the Book of Common Prayer in 1549, by which time the Sarum Rite had become bulky and complicated. Much of what became the Book of Common Prayer was influenced by the Sarum Rite, but the Book of Common Prayer’s great richness comes from its rich poetic language and use of the vernacular. It changed the landscape significantly. In 1570, the Roman Catholic church also moved to a new universal order called the Tridentine Mass, written by Pope St Pius V and rolled out from 1570 CE, but again drawing influence from the Sarum text. And that connection with our ancient Christian roots through liturgical consistency continues today in the ordering of our modern Eucharistic liturgies, with prayers, texts and much of the ordering owing allegiance to the liturgies of our ancestors. 

Common Worship could be said to be a mixed blessing; affording us the opportunity to add rich variety and options to focus on special themes in the liturgy, whilst invariably disrupting some of the constancy and memorability that is the fruit of repetition in more simplified liturgical structures. At present, we have no less than eight volumes, with other mini-editions open for use, such as Additional Eucharistic Prayers for use with Children, Additional Collects, and Reconciliation of a Penitent. You can see the challenge!

But the liturgy, properly understood, is more than just a set of texts, and perhaps it is here that the modern church would benefit from a little more focus and thought.

As the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, infers;[2] rightly understood, the Church is our corporate participation in the eternal reality of God. We often fall into the trap of thinking that we make the church. We do not. God builds the Church – always has and always will. The Church will continue with or without us. But we are his hands for making it known in the world, should we accept that challenge.

This has profound consequences for our understanding of what we do in the worship space. It could be said that the modern mindset too often values worship on an experiential basis, treating it as a form of entertainment. Consequently, it is too easy to approach church as we might a supermarket.  If I don’t much like or fancy the worship that is offered in my local church, just as if I might not like the produce on offer in my local shop, I will go somewhere else to find something that is more my style, and I will keep moving on to somewhere else until I find what I want. Then, when that no longer meets my fancy, I will move on again. I may be being a little disingenuous here to make a point, but you can see the danger.

On the other hand, when we understand the Church to be of Divine and not human origin, something profound happens to the way we engage with it. No longer can it only be on my own terms. Regularity and rhythm suddenly become important, and we see how the routine of ‘just turning up’ brings deeper fruits than simply feeding the cravings within us to have our consumerist mindset, and ever decreasing attention spans, appeased.

It is in that faithfulness that God calls to the recesses of the heart and the real fruits of a life of prayer come; but prayer is never passive and always prompts a response in us as we enter more deeply into our Trinitarian God’s loving and self-giving life. Sacrament and symbol draw us more deeply into the eternal mystery of God.

The liturgy of the Church is inherently missional. Through it we enter more deeply into the divine dance of the Holy Trinity, the very life of God, as he feeds and nurtures us. As we grow more deeply into him, so we model his life of love and self-giving. Sometimes, as we gaze upon Christ in the Sacrament, we see him staring back. And it is as we are fed by his eternal gaze that together we grow in confidence and become ever more visible in the streets we inhabit, for the glory of God and the growth of his Church.

And it is here that we come full circle. As we step more deeply into the life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so we become more at one with the world around us. We begin to recognise his hand in the moulding of every nook and cranny of our natural landscape and in the intricate design of every living thing: a truth we can see all the more vivid in the rural landscapes of our country. We are a significant but tiny part of the Creation into which God breathes life: intimately loved and cherished by him, no more and no less than every other person in whose face we can see Christ if only we look with the right kind of eyes.

We are, of course, in one of the richest liturgical moments of the year. As we walk through Lent with Lent array draping our Altars, we move with increasing rapidity towards Holy Week and Easter. Holy Week is a season of extremities, with Palm Sunday beginning with dramatic procession through the gates of Jerusalem singing hosannas and ending at the foot of the cross. Maundy Thursday’s dramatic gathering in the upper room places servanthood in its rightful place of eternal value uniting earthly and heavenly realms.  And in the actions of the Last Supper, Jesus gives to his disciples as a last offering before he is ripped from them which is more than just a memorial. In this re-formed Passover meal, Jesus gives them, and us, an eternal rite that we are to do ‘in remembrance of him’[3], each time bringing the past into the present where he meets us in the ‘breaking of bread’[4]. In so doing, he establishes for all time that, at the heart of the Eucharist, is the sacrifice of the Son to the Father in the power of the Spirit.

Good Friday’s starkness then plummets the subliminal depths of the soul as we focus upon the instrument of torture on which our Saviour died, whilst also contemplating our own ongoing part in that tragedy. There are times when we must walk the way of the cross, both in our individual and corporate lives. In the liturgy of Good Friday, we live this out. But God does not abandon us to the gloom: ‘The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it’.

And so we arrive at Easter Day, no less taken by surprise than those first disciples by the ethereal richness of encountering the risen Christ at the tomb. As we are renewed in our commitment and promises to him in the Easter Day liturgy, his light illuminates our lives and re-establishes our calling as God’s adopted children, and with it the hope that Christ instils within us. Just like the disciples on the road to Emmaus[5], we celebrate the Eucharist in a strangely transformed way as the risen Christ makes himself known in the ‘breaking of bread’ once again, and with it our spiritual eye becomes aware of being surrounded by countless saints and angels as Christ breaks through the barriers of death and hell opening for us a new eternal reality. Then we will realise, that we are a resurrection people and alleluia is our song!

 

R.T. Parker-McGee 2024

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[1] 1 Samuel 3

[2] Rowan Williams, Mission and the life of Prayer. In ‘God’s Church in the World: The Gift of Catholic Mission, Susan Lucas Ed. (London; Canterbury Press, 2020), pp.3-5

[3] Luke 22:18-20

[4] E.g. Luke 24:30-31

[5] Luke 24:13-35

A Biography for Rob Parker-McGee, generated by AI

 A Biography for Rob Parker-McGee, generated by AI

I was recently asked to supply a short biography for something I am involved with. Short of inspiration I decided to ask Microsoft Copilot to produce one online. Here is what it came up with. Scarily accurate and yet troubling where it gets it information. 

"Fr. Rob Parker-McGee is a hard-working, dedicated and passionate clergyman currently serving as the rector of the Box River Benefice, which includes the parishes of Boxford, Edwardstone, Groton, Little Waldingfield, and Newton in Suffolk, UK12. He is a practicing liturgist with a sacramental theology and has taught trainee ministers in numerous disciplines including worship, sacraments and preaching. He has a particular gift in ministry to young people and families.

Early Life and Education

Rob grew up near Newmarket, on the border of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. He spent 29 years in this fenland region, deeply rooted in its rural landscape and Christian heritage. He initially pursued studies in science and sport, which led him to work as a fitness instructor and later as a mill manager at an animal feed mill where his father and grandfather also worked. Whilst there he studied business management.

Career Path

After the mill closed, Rob transitioned to a role in a church outreach initiative and then worked as a risk advisor at Anglia Ruskin University. It was during this time that he began to explore his calling to the priesthood.

Ordination and Ministry

in 2007, Rob and his family moved to Mirfield, West Yorkshire, to begin his theological training and was ordained in 2010. He graduated with a First Class Degree with Honours in Pastoral Theology at Leeds University. He was ordained deacon at Worcester Cathedral in 2010 and joined the priesthood in 2011. After curacy in Sedgley (Wolverhampton), Rob took on his first post of responsibility in Geddington with Weekley (Kettering) where he oversaw the significant growth of the church community. He also completed a MA by Research (entitled Charles Gore and a Theology of Priesthood), became a founding member of the Society of the Resurrection and served as a Training Officer in the Diocese of Peterborough. He has since served in various other capacities, including as the vicar of All Saints’ Church in Orpington, Kent13, where he oversaw the transition of the church's culture and implemented successful initiatives such as the Cross Cultural Carnival.

Current Role

In 2019, Rob returned to Suffolk to take up the position of rector of the Box River Benefice. He and his family—his wife Sarah and their teenage children Jasmine and Thomas—moved into The Rectory and Rob expressed his delight at returning to a familiar area where he was warmly welcomed by the local community. In 2024, he was awarded a certificate in Spiritual Direction and continues a close link with the Anglican Church in South Africa.

Personal Interests

Rob has a passion for sports, including football, cricket, golf, and racket sports. He values informality and prefers to be called Rob rather than Robert.

Fr. Rob Parker-McGee’s journey from a fitness instructor and mill manager to a respected clergyman highlights his diverse experiences, hard-working nature and deep commitment to his faith and community."

So there you have it. Though I haven't played any racket sports for many a year...