Messages from the Churches
Published Spring 2022
AS the sight and sound of the fireworks on New Year’s Eve fade away and the sun rises on the first day of January, many of us take stock of things. As we stand at the dawn of a new year we make resolutions—lose some weight, exercise more, smile more often, stop being such a gossip… the list is endless. But, as many of us know only too well, these resolutions rarely stick. A survey I chanced upon over the New Year found that as many as 23% of people abandon their good intentions within a week. Why? Lack of willpower? Too many temptations?
For Christians, it’s the season of Lent, the six weeks leading up to Easter, that moves us to pause, reflect and re- orientate our spiritual lives – to step off the broad and easy way that leads to destruction and return to the narrow way that leads to life as Jesus so vividly described it.
Lent is modelled on Jesus’ own forty days and nights in the wilderness. There, he was tempted to embrace the seductive power and honour of this world – a power and honour that’s focussed on selfish desire. But he resisted. How? By focussing on the will of God – a will that is centred on self-giving love not selfish desires. It was this focus – this unmoving point of reference that enabled him to remain faithful and keep going through the times of temptation and privation. This year we celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. During the seventy-five years of her reign the Queen has no doubt enjoyed many highlights – moments of pleasure and joy. And yet even the Queen doesn’t live a charmed life. Like you and me she has also experienced times of great pain. But what must have made these times all the more difficult to bear is that they’ve been played out in the full glare of the media.
What keeps her going? As she has made clear, it is her faith in Jesus Christ. He is her focus – the fixed reference that enables her to live out her promise to serve her people to the end of her life. No doubt it’s something that she inherited from her father, King George VI, who at the outbreak of war quoted the words of Minnie Louise Haskins: And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
As we journey through Lent towards the bright light of Easter, this is the perfect time for all of us to reflect on our lives – who we truly are – and focus on the one who not only gives us life and being, but also gives meaning to our lives. The one who, through the death and resurrection of Christ, gives us true life. For not only does this focus bring joy, contentment, peace and fulfilment such as the world can never give, it also enables us to keep going through the challenges, temptations and pain that life inevitably throws at us. May God bless you.
CANON DAVID TWINLEY
St Nicholas Arundel
AS I write this the sun is shining, the evenings lengthening, and 2022 is in full swing. We are reassured in the press that this time we really are coming to the end of restrictions (if we remain cautious), that travel will become possible again (if we choose carefully), and follow the rules and regulations. We are hoping to take a break in April, but then we had it booked for 2020, then for 2021, so who knows?
Maybe you are hoping to get away for a break this Easter as well. One thing is for certain, it won’t be as easy or straightforward as pre-covid or pre-brexit days, when we just got in the car or jumped on a plane and visited just about anywhere in Europe without hindrance. Now we have to make sure there are no tests we have to take before departure, fill in the correct forms, insurances, and have all our documentation fully completed and up to date. After all, it would be awful to spend weeks planning and hours travelling, just to be stopped by border control and told we are not allowed to enter. Just ask Novak Djokovic! Even all his fame and wealth and talent could not prevail against the entrance requirements of the Australian government.
The Bible tells us we are all on a journey, travelling to our final destination. And it poses the following questions: Do you know where you are going? Do you know how to get there? Do you have the right ‘entry documents’?
Jesus told his disciples “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Do you know where you are going? Jesus says that the final destination is His Father’s house.
Do you know the way there? Jesus said he is going to prepare a place for us, and he will take us there.
Do you have the right entry documents? Jesus says he is the only one we can get them from.
Jesus answered “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
This conversation took place in the upper room, just before Jesus was taken to be crucified that first Good Friday. That event was what he meant when he said he was going to prepare a place. The cross, the tomb and the resurrection was the preparation of our place there.
Why? The Bible tells us that God created us to have a relationship with Him, but we said thanks, but no thanks. We refused His authority over us, in some cases we denied His very existence. And God cannot, will not tolerate that. But He loves us, He still wants that relationship. So He sent His beloved Son to show us how much he loves us, by taking the place we deserve for our rebellion, separating himself from the Father he had been with since before the beginning of time, so we could take up our place in His house. If we don’t want a relationship with Him, then we can choose not to have it. Jesus invites us in, but we have to choose whether to accept the invitation.
God’s house is only a suitable residence for those who love and trust God. The only way we can enter into it is by accepting the personal invitation of the Son, Jesus Christ. To acknowledge that our entry papers cannot be filled in except by him. It doesn’t matter what we have achieved in life, how much money we have made, unless we accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour we cannot enter.
This Easter, why not come along to Arundel Baptist church, to one of the services or events, and find out more about this most amazing offer and invitation, and maybe start out on the most incredible journey of all.
TIM BRADDOCK
Pastor, Arundel Baptist Church
HAPPY Easter! Those two words point to the foundation of our Christian faith that Jesus died on the Cross and rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. This has enormous significance for our lives and we celebrate for a good while. The Easter season stretches to the Feast of Pentecost, this year celebrated on Sunday 5th June. This coincides with the extra bank holiday to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. We give thanks to God for Her Majesty’s service and send her our congratulations and prayers. The long Easter season is a reminder to us to live its message, a life infused with the presence of the risen Jesus. St Irenaeus (130-202AD) says that the glory of God is a human being fully alive and that is a wonderful description of how we should celebrate Easter.
To me the models of fully alive people are the saints and there will be plenty who have not made it to formal canonisation- I am sure we have all met people who fall into that category. The saints are people who enhance life through their openness to God and service of humanity, although they may not always do this in the obvious ways. They often start their work in a little corner of the world doing what they can for those who come to them in need. Through the gift of God, which we see in the power of the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit their work and influence grows and more people are inspired to dedicate their lives to the work they have taken on. Mother Theresa would be a good example of how God works through the saints. Easter invites us to be fully alive and shows us that the path to this is openness to God, through faith in the power of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and in the Holy Spirit coming to us through our prayer. The aim of our prayer is that God works through our lives.
Through prayer God raises us up to be fully alive so he can be seen in our lives and others can give glory to him.
In a few weeks’ time we will celebrate the feast day of St. Richard of Chichester and this is how a tribute in one of our liturgical books describes him: There was something big and impressive about St. Richard, something large, warm and comfortable. If the Church had not seen fit to canonise him, he would certainly have been canonised by popular opinion, for he was just the sort of man whom people loved and revered. A human being fully alive, Glory to God.
Happy Easter.
CANON DAVID PARMITER
Arundel Cathedral