Vicar's Letter for May	Archive
As I write I am part way through my post Easter holiday; the first part having been with family and then at the national lace-makers’ convention near Worcester! I love this time of the year for the coming of spring (the camellia is out at last!) and in church the readings about the appearances of our Risen Lord to the disciples. Jesus’ friends encountered him in a variety of ways in those days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, but what characterises all of those meetings is their ordinariness, within the extraordinary! One of our stained glass windows depicts the breakfast at the lakeside; other meetings we reflect upon are those in the Garden, on the Road to Emmaus and in the Upper room. Before the Risen Jesus meets with his disciples, they first go looking for his dead body in the tomb in order to anoint it for burial, but they find instead an empty tomb. It seems that where the disciples go looking for Jesus they do not find him and when they are not looking - there he is. Remembering the story of Mary who at first thought Jesus was the gardener, I am prompted to ask ‘Do we recognise the Risen Jesus when we see him?’ I always remember a colleague of mine at one of the hospitals where I was Chaplain responding to my Easter greeting of ‘The Lord is Risen’, not with ‘He is Risen indeed, alleluia’ (which would be our customary greeting on Easter Sunday), but with ‘Yes he is, and have you seen him?’ Remember how the disciples told those who had returned from Emmaus, where they had shared in the breaking of bread with Jesus, recognising him at last, ‘The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon’. So, have you seen him? Did you recognise him when he came to you? Do you recognise that it is Him you encounter in the breaking of the bread, but also in the ordinary things of daily life – those promptings and flashes of unexpected joy? Through Lent and Passiontide there has been a long tradition in the Church of meditating on the events of the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus, called the Stations of the Cross. During the latter part of the 20th century a complementary devotion emerged, possibly from the Iberian peninsula, called the Stations of the Resurrection or the Stations of Joy. They provide a resource for the fifty days’ celebration of the season of Eastertide and can be found at http://www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/downloads/pdf/tseaster.pdf During time off from the lace-making I visited Worcester Cathedral where I saw a series of spiritual art called the Stations of the Resurrection; the artist is Leonie Marklew-Barrett and she too has a website where her work can be viewed. www.leonie.marklew.net/gallery.asp I am now looking forward to the second part of my holiday which is to be on Gozo (Malta) where I shall be able to see again the Stations of the Cross at Ta Pinu; the final one of these is actually a station of the resurrection, depicting as it does the meeting between Jesus and Mary in the Garden. I would suggest that you spend time reflecting on the resurrection just as you have done so through Lent on the Passion of Jesus. We have a glorious fifty days for this reflection in a formal sense (though of course we may reflect for a life time!), and then during May we shall come to our celebration of the Ascension and Pentecost.

Vicar's Letter for May

Archive

As I write I am part way through my post Easter holiday; the first part having been with family and then at the national lace-makers’ convention near Worcester! I love this time of the year for the coming of spring (the camellia is out at last!) and in church the readings about the appearances of our Risen Lord to the disciples. Jesus’ friends encountered him in a variety of ways in those days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, but what characterises all of those meetings is their ordinariness, within the extraordinary! One of our stained glass windows depicts the breakfast at the lakeside; other meetings we reflect upon are those in the Garden, on the Road to Emmaus and in the Upper room. Before the Risen Jesus meets with his disciples, they first go looking for his dead body in the tomb in order to anoint it for burial, but they find instead an empty tomb. It seems that where the disciples go looking for Jesus they do not find him and when they are not looking - there he is.
Remembering the story of Mary who at first thought Jesus was the gardener, I am prompted to ask ‘Do we recognise the Risen Jesus when we see him?’ I always remember a colleague of mine at one of the hospitals where I was Chaplain responding to my Easter greeting of ‘The Lord is Risen’, not with ‘He is Risen indeed, alleluia’ (which would be our customary greeting on Easter Sunday), but with ‘Yes he is, and have you seen him?’ Remember how the disciples told those who had returned from Emmaus, where they had shared in the breaking of bread with Jesus, recognising him at last, ‘The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon’.
So, have you seen him? Did you recognise him when he came to you? Do you recognise that it is Him you encounter in the breaking of the bread, but also in the ordinary things of daily life – those promptings and flashes of unexpected joy? Through Lent and Passiontide there has been a long tradition in the Church of meditating on the events of the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus, called the Stations of the Cross. During the latter part of the 20th century a complementary devotion emerged, possibly from the Iberian peninsula, called the Stations of the Resurrection or the Stations of Joy. They provide a resource for the fifty days’ celebration of the season of Eastertide and can be found at http://www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/downloads/pdf/tseaster.pdf
During time off from the lace-making I visited Worcester Cathedral where I saw a series of spiritual art called the Stations of the Resurrection; the artist is Leonie Marklew-Barrett and she too has a website where her work can be viewed. www.leonie.marklew.net/gallery.asp

I am now looking forward to the second part of my holiday which is to be on Gozo (Malta) where I shall be able to see again the Stations of the Cross at Ta Pinu; the final one of these is actually a station of the resurrection, depicting as it does the meeting between Jesus and Mary in the Garden.

I would suggest that you spend time reflecting on the resurrection just as you have done so through Lent on the Passion of Jesus. We have a glorious fifty days for this reflection in a formal sense (though of course we may reflect for a life time!), and then during May we shall come to our celebration of the Ascension and Pentecost.