“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 pass 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 a 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.

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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

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...

O God of Earth and Altar

 

Dear Friends,

I write this article whilst away on a Priest’s and Deacon’s Retreat at Walsingham. On my journey here, I had to approach Bury St Edmunds from the Sudbury direction of the A134, just as I have to do on an almost weekly basis. On this occasion, my attention was drawn to the skyline in front of me. There was a bright and clear winter sky as I drove leisurely along and, in perfect symmetry, sat the Cathedral Tower on the left and the Sugar Beet Factory Chimneys on the right of my vision. It reminded me of the wonderful hymn by G.K. Chesterton which is entitled ‘O God of Earth and Altar’. As I sat following a stream of traffic, the backdrop seemed to hold the ever-present sanctity of temple and earth in perfect balance. It struck me how important it was for any rounded spirituality to hold a holiness of sacred space and a holiness of the natural world in equal measure - when these two get out of balance, we are in trouble. We are lucky that our beautiful Cathedral Town holds a spirituality of the sanctuary, workplace and natural world so perfectly poised.

During the lockdowns of the pandemic, many people rediscovered a spirituality of the natural world. They spoke of finding a sense of the eternal in the hedgerow and meadow. The natural world can be a wonderful place to encounter the divine. But I wonder, as life has once again resumed its normal busyness, whether that heightened awareness of God all around us has continued? Where is it that you now encounter God?

As beautiful as the natural world can be, we must not forget that God is also to be found in the workplace, wherever that may be. We find him in the intricate tasks, in the skills necessary to perform them and in the colleagues we work alongside. A rounded spirituality doesn’t banish God to an occasional Sunday or leisurely walk in the countryside, as though he were a puppet to be brought out of a box when we feel in need of a little comfort. A rounded faith recognises him in the everyday; even in the messy and mundane. But even that is not enough on its own. Eventually, a spirituality without a sense of holy space and place at its core to ground it will wain and become self-indulgent. That is why Church is so important to complete the circle.

From the beginning of time, holy space has been central to the spiritual journey. In some of the earliest scenes in the Bible we see the great ancestors of faith marking certain places out as holy following encounters with God. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, King David all do this at places where God has been especially vivid to them. Overtime, it becomes clear that God’s people need a settled place in which to encounter God’s presence and so King Solomon builds a temple. The Temple is designed with intricate detail so that those who enter may experience something of the awe-inspiring, transformative, cleansing intimate presence of the divine. Today, all major religions hold holy spaces as important places to come as part of a wider acknowledgement of spiritual presence in our lives; temples, synagogues, mosques, churches. This is not some institutional attempt on behalf of world religions to create buildings to grow property portfolios or wealth. These holy sites are essential in nurturing, experiencing and reminding us of the intimate presence of God in our lives.

The churches of our benefice span centuries, and it is no surprise that almost all have some feature or other that replicate that earlier temple of the Old Testament – the Temple that Jesus will have known and visited regularly in order to keep his relationship with God on track. Our Churches afford us that unique opportunity to at once encounter the timelessness of God, past, present and future. They continue today to be one of those rare places that are untouched by much of the frenzy and fervour of modern-life. ‘Thin’ places where heaven feels that little bit closer to earth.

So, whilst God is to be found in the natural world and the workplace, it is also important that we remember to seek him in the gathered Assembly and at the Altar. As Rachel Held-Evans reflects, ‘Sometimes just showing up to the Communion Table is a way of looking straight into the Beast and saying, “Not today!”.’ At the Altar, God challenges those divisions within ourselves and each other that the world so often entrenches, uniting us in the gift of His Son and healing us from the pain that these divisions so often cause.

In the Benefice, we try our best with the resources we have, to provide wide opportunity to encounter God holistically. We have a varied diet of services. These include services for every generation; provision for families as well as those of more mature years and everywhere in-between. Importantly, we hold regular Holy Communion Eucharistic Services every week so that God can meet us at the Altar, whilst also interspersing other types of services for those who prefer something a little different. We hold services in church so that we can encounter God in the intimacy of the Sacred Space, as well as outside in Forest Church so we get a sense of the magnificence of his awesomeness in the great outdoors. As we approach Lent, a time for attending to our spiritual health, maybe it is a good time for us all to pay a bit more attention to God in earth and Altar.

I leave you with the words of that hymn mentioned at the beginning – rather apt for this and every age:

O God of Earth and Altar, bow down and hear our cry.

Our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die;

The walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide.

Take not thy thunder from us, but take away our pride.                                (G.K. Chesterton)

 

May you encounter God in the earth and at the Altar and may he bless you and yours abundantly.

 

Fr Rob

Fr Rob, why are you a Christian?

 

Dear Friends,

The last few months have been busy in the Benefice. Community events and special services have taken place in St Mary the Virgin Edwardstone, St Bartholomew’s Groton, St Lawrence’s Little Waldingfield and All Saint’s Newton Green. We undertook a walking pilgrimage of 14 miles around our five churches. Then a few weeks ago, we had the most amazing day as St Mary’s Boxford flung its doors open wide and welcomed our Bishop to lead our Patronal Festival (the day which commemorates our Patron Saint, St Mary), new people were Baptised and Confirmed as Christians in the Anglican Tradition and we held the Annual Church Fete. Hundreds of people wandered through and we hope were able to get a tiny glimpse of the Church’s hospitality sitting at the centre of our communities and our lives.

People often ask me, “why are you an Anglican Christian?” (or words to that effect). There are lots of very good answers that I could give to this question: because Christianity makes sense and adds that missing bit of philosophical truth to modern scientific endeavour; it offers stability and balance in an otherwise unsettled world; it provides a stable pillar of morality to individual and national life, the Anglican Church is a sanctifying presence at the heart of the nation. All these are valid and true. Nevertheless, I think a recent interview on Radio 4 offers something equally profound.

‘What would you do if you weren’t afraid?’ is the title of a new book by Michal Oshman, discussed on Radio 4’s Women’s Hour. Now, Michal is no stranger to success having held senior international roles at both Facebook and TikTok. Yet in her book she reveals how she has spent most of her life hiding anxiety and fear bred into her by surrounding culture. Therapy did not help, if anything it made matters worse, causing her to keep revisiting childhood experiences over and over again. She wanted to move forward, not backwards. So at 38 she began exploring what she calls the multiple ‘isms’, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism… Her family were Jewish, yet early on she felt no curiosity towards Judaism because society had impressed upon her that to explore that would be regressive. In our society we are led to believe that everything must be shiny and new; different from what our forebears held dear. Nevertheless, it was only after she began re-familiarising herself with the wisdom at her roots did she begin to feel a sense of wholeness, stability and belonging, and with it a calmness and purpose not based upon success or worldly influence.

It may seem a strange thing to say, but I think I am a Anglican Christian partly for similar reasons. It embeds me into the Judeo-Christian tradition of our ancestors and draws me deeper into a timeless wisdom and truth. A wisdom and divine connection that has guided and sustained the lives of countless Christians before me. Its rhythms have brought structure and purpose to otherwise directionless lives and continue to do so. Through its balancing of Tradition, Scripture and Reason, the Anglican faith connects me in the present to the past and the future. It forces me to take seriously my place in a mysterious and complex ecosystem of existence. It reminds me that I cannot neglect spiritual morality nor the importance of community for too long without there being consequences for me and others. Too often, the things we pursue in modern life do not bring us satisfaction, connection or grounding. Christianity teaches me that if we nurture our whole selves, body and soul, then we will become something quite beautiful. Christianity offers me that hope and purpose, even if through my own failings it often seems just beyond my grasp.

When we offer bread and wine on the altars of our churches each Sunday, we do so as a communal act on behalf of the whole parish and benefice (not just those attending). The joys and pains of our community are offered up in prayer, we reflect on God in the life of Jesus, we are fed by his body and blood, and we go out to share that life with others.

I am an Anglican Christian, because the Church is a blessing to us and our communities and I recognise that in order for it to continue we have to commit our time and attention to it. If any of this resonates with you, why not pop in, re-familiarise yourself with the faith of our ancestors and start your journey towards belonging and purpose today?  

With every blessing,

 

A Talk on Prayer to the Open Forum – St Steven’s, Pinelands, SA

 

Talk to the Open Forum – St Steven’s, Pinelands, SA - 2019

Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with your spirit and love. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of yours. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus. Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. Amen.

This is the prayer of St Mother Theresa of Calcutta. It is claimed that she used it every day in her private prayers. This beautiful prayer expresses, I think, a deep desire that sits within each and every one of us who feel called to serve Christ in some kind of ministry: that Christ may shine through us, through our very being, to those we serve. But there is a deception in many of us that believes it will come by simply doing more activity: more events, more services, more administration, more work. If we have families, then we can sometimes feel an added pressure, as we try and hold all of this whilst also attending to those we love and have a duty to care for. But we are not justified by our work, we are justified by our faith. And our faith, our ministry, our very being, is entirely dependent upon prayer; upon that deepening of relationship that places us closer to the God who we would have known to the world.

I am not intending to encourage an attitude that would see us shirk our responsibilities. There is a large part of our calling that requires us to get stuck in, ministering in our communities, working hard for our congregations and caring for our families.

But the reality for many priests and ministers in varying contexts - whether they be parish ministry, secular ministry, teaching ministry or senior leadership - busyness threatens our stillness and our prayer life. The ravenous demands of the world pressing in upon us make it more and more tempting for us to crave its approval. And as we become ever more entrenched in the deafening drumbeat of the world, so we are in danger of moving further away from the still small voice that calls us home.

Ultimately, however, we model our ministry upon Jesus, the pioneer of our faith. And as we look to scripture, we find plenty of pointers of how we can come to a healthier balance.

Jesus taught his disciples how to pray and not only gave them a prayer to say when other words fail - what we call the Lord’s Prayer - but also how to go about prayer.

Jesus tells his disciples to be persistent in prayer. He tells two parables, the first being the parable of the friend at midnight in Luke 11:5-13 and the second is the persistent widow in Luke 18:1-11. Jesus tells his disciples to ask and to seek and to knock when you pray; to be persistent. He says whatever you ask for, it will be given to you – which is a very provocative statement.

A 5 year old boy called Johnny, said to his dad; “I’d like to have a baby brother. I’ll do whatever I can to help”. His dad, paused for a moment and then replied, " I'll tell you what, Johnny, if you pray every day for two months for a baby brother, I guarantee that God will give you one!"
Johnny responded eagerly to his dad's challenge and went to his bedroom early that night to start praying for a baby brother. He prayed every night for a whole month, but after that time, he began to become despondent. Johnny quit praying.

After another month, Johnny's mother went to the hospital. When she came back home, Johnny's parents called him into the bedroom. He cautiously walked into the room, expecting a lecture about prayer. But there was a little bundle lying right next to his mother. His dad pulled back the blanket and there was - not one baby brother, but two!! His mother had twins!
His dad looked down at him and said, "Now aren't you glad you prayed?"
Johnny hesitated and then said, "Yes Dad, but aren't you glad I quit when I did?"

I wonder, if it is in the struggles over persistence where the cracks sometimes begin to show in our prayer lives? Such persistence is difficult to keep up. Sometimes we can feel like we aren’t getting anywhere. There are so many distractions and it is so easy to begin feeling despondent. Of course, we must first be sure that we really desire what we ask for. We must want it more than anything else in the world. It is no good us just asking for a shopping list of momentary wants: ‘dear Jesus, today I would like a Ferrari sports car’. I’m sorry if this sounds a little flippant (I don’t mean it to), but we will all have equivalent things on our ministerial shopping lists. The point is that we must keep our prayers in line with our calling. If we can keep them relevant and real, then persistence is the key. We are in a spiritual battle and our prayers are our only weapon. We must never give up until the fight is done.

Knowing that we have support in our prayers can help. A community around us who pray with us and for us. Even here though, there is a balance to be struck.

Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 6:5 not to copy the Pharisees who go into the public view and use long statements and complex words, designed to impress anyone who might be listening, in order to show off. Instead have integrity before God, find a quiet place and just pray simply, letting the simple concerns of your heart be offered up to him. Don’t make a show of it!

A little boy was kneeling beside his bed praying. His mother and grandmother knelt with him.  "Dear God” he said softly, “please bless Mummy and Daddy and all the family and please give me a good night's sleep."
Then he looked up and shouted, "And don't forget to give me a bicycle for my birthday!!"
"There is no need to shout like that," said his mother. "God isn't deaf."
"No," said the boy, "but Grandma is."

For those of us who are called to lead God’s people, there is a danger of us turning our prayer meetings into a public exhibition; we want our parishioners to see we are good priests, to have confidence in our abilities and we need all the good will we can get if our ministry is to flourish. If we are not careful, we find ourselves craving the public recognition and the massaging of the ego this brings. Before we know it, we are only ever praying for the benefit of the public, and our private prayer-life and personal relationship with God is taking a nosedive.

Public prayer is important, of course it is. The problem is that we can rarely be truly honest to God when we know others are observing us and we fear they are assessing our every word. We need to find a way of removing all of the emotions that get in the way. None-the -less, the common-life we live with others can be a real source of support for us, if it is ordered well and we must also find space to meet God in private stillness when we can offer to God our real selves; the real and entire person that we rarely allow others to see.

We will have dry spells. There may well be many of us in this room who feel we are slipping into a dry season, or indeed that we have been there for some time. If those fallow patches aren’t to turn what was once green pastureland into an arid desert, we need a robust shape to our prayer lives to see us through. Having a daily pattern of public and private prayer, which includes the daily office and times for stillness, will be a real weapon against some of this. And sometimes, just the persistence of going through the motions can help us through the difficult spells until we step out the other side.  

There are many other places where we glimpse little teachings on prayer in the Gospels, but by far the greatest weight of material lays in Jesus’ prayerful example. If we wish to model our lives on that of our sacred Lord, then we should look firstly to his example. There are numerous occasions when Jesus simply goes off into a quiet or deserted place to pray, often alone, but not always. Sometimes a select few of the apostles join him. Nonetheless, it seems that after every major encounter, every big teaching event and during every significant challenge, Jesus finds the time and the space to be with God and pray, often silently. Jesus is at one with the Father and draws his essence from him. So reacquainting himself regularly with the Father through prayer enables him to revive himself – only then can he go again and minister to his community.

As a royal priesthood, we draw our very being from Christ. In like manner, we need to spend quality time reacquainting ourselves with him through prayer. When my kids ask me if we have wi-fi, I tell them that we Christians have had wireless communication for two thousand years. The trouble is, we need to learn how to use it again.

All of this leads us towards structure. A structured prayer-life will be a robust prayer-life. The experiences of life and the ministry will take us to moments when we feel sheer exhilaration and times when we feel we’re in deep peril. The one thing that will keep us grounded is good routine, a balance between work, prayer, rest and study, together with solid support networks in our common-life.  We need time to get away from it all on occasions and we need things in place which enable us to see the wood from the trees. An annual retreat of 4 or 5 days, might well be the most valuable thing you can do for your ministry each year. A quiet day once a month could provide that little bit of regular space you need for God to show the way the next big issue needs to be addressed. Setting time aside every week to do just a little bit of study will produce fruits beyond measure. Saying the daily Office and daily reading of Scripture will implant you into the cycles and prayer-life of the universal church. 20 minutes of silent prayer each day will deepen your relationship with God and inform your ministry with fresh insight. Making sure you get proper time on recreation, to relax and to be with your family and those close to you will give you renewed energy at other times.

Of course, none of this is new. In his rule, St Benedict formulated a structure and pattern that provides space for all of this, and his rule of life endures time. It is no surprise that a real curiosity seems to be growing around monasticism, as people begin searching for structure amidst a chaotic world.

Personally, I have found that life in the parish would be unmanageable if it were not for the structure, support and balance that following a solid rule of life brings. And being a member of a dispersed monastic order, like the Society of the Resurrection brings commitment and responsibility, that is strangely freeing. It gives a structure to, what can be, a rather unstructured working day. It places a responsibility upon me to keep up with my prayers, my study, and my relationships to others, not just for myself, but also for the building up of the common-life in the rest of the community. And above all, it drives me to keep seeking God during all of the seasons of life and challenges me during those moments when I would otherwise choose the easy road.

Of course, I often fail in living up to the ideal. In fact, I haven’t yet been to a chapter where most of those present hasn’t lamented their failure at keeping the rule. But that’s not the point. The point is that each time we fail, the rule encourages us to start again – it provides the structure we need to keep things going, especially when life is getting in the way.