More goodbyes

Easter is a time that holds great significance for us as a family. Primarily, Easter is at the centre of our faith as Christians as we rejoice in all that God has done for us through the Lord Jesus Christ.

However, Easter also marks some important milestones in our family life. At Easter ten years ago I celebrated my last service at Becontree West in Barking and Dagenham, and it was an occasion made more memorable by the baptism of our son. This Easter Sunday I celebrated and preached at our last service in Great Leighs.

The whole weekend was very special. On Good Friday we met up with my wider family to celebrate Dad’s eightieth birthday in Suffolk and then later with Kate’s sister and brother-in-law who spent the rest of the weekend with us. On Saturday evening the parish held a farewell party for us and finally the Easter Sunday service. We were touched by all the kind words and generous gifts which will be treasured mementos of our time in the Leighs. Although we are saying goodbye to some very dear friends, we are only moving a few miles down the A12 and so will see them often.

Now we are looking forward in Easter hope to what lies before us in Great Baddow. At the moment it is difficult to see beyond the packing boxes and all the hassle of moving, but we already feel very welcomed and encouraged by the warmth of the messages we have received and by the prayers of people in our new community.

Oh death, Up yours!

It’s a bit hectic in the Ritchie household as we prepare for our move to a new parish next week so not much blogging going on. I have been trying to snatch the odd moment to do some reading around the themes of Easter including Rob Bell’s Love Wins, Tom Wright’s Justification and Paula Gooder’s This Risen Existence. Lots of good, thought provoking material to mull over while slapping the paint on a bedroom wall.

However, my favourite quote over the Easter period has come from Revd Richard Coles. On hearing news of the death of the great Poly Styrene former singer with X-Ray Spex, Richard sent the following tweet:

Have just heard of the death of Poly Styrene - may flights of angels hymn her to her rest. RIP, and , in Easter Hope, Oh Death , Up YOURS!

I was wondering whether we could use this in some Easter liturgy. How about:

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Oh death, Up yours!

Resurrection: Borgo San Sepolcro

Today it is time. Warm enough, finally
to ease the lids apart, the wax lips of a breaking bud
defeated by the steady push, hour after hour,
opening to show wet and dark, a tongue exploring,
an eye shrinking against the dawn. Light
like a fishing line draws its catch straight up,
then slackens for a second. The flat foot drops,
the shoulder sags. Here is the world again, well-known,
the dawn greeted in snoring dreams of a familiar
winter everyone preferes. So the black eyes
fixed half-open, start to search, ravenous,
imperative, they look for pits, for hollows where,
their food can be decanted, look
for rooms ready for commandeering, ready
to be defeated by the push, the green implacable
rising. So he pauses, gathering the strength
in his flat foot, as the perspective buckles under him,
and the dreamers lean dangerously inwards. Contained,
exhausted, hungry, death running off his limbs like
drops
from a shower, gathering himself. We wait,
paralysed as if in dreams, for his spring.

Rowan Williams: Headwaters. Perpetua, 2008. Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection hangs in the civic hall of Borgo San Sepolcro, Tuscany.

Bible, beer and the shoeshine shuffle

Great report in the Essex Chronicle on Bishop Stephen Cottrell visiting the Oddfellows’ Arms as part of Beer and Bible. Holy Week is a busy time for the bishop but he made space to visit several pubs to show his support for the public reading of the Bible. On Thursday, after celebrating and preaching at the Chrism Service in Chelmsford Cathedral, +Stephen was to be found in Chelmsford High Street outside The Saracen’s Head shinning peoples’ shoes.


Bishop Stephen’s Easter message is also well worth a read.
What does this (the resurrection of Jesus)mean for us, his followers today? Well, it means that we must look for Jesus not just where he has been, and not just in what is familiar, but beyond ourselves, and beyond our present understandings. He is going before us, and we will now find him in ways that challenge and disturb. And in all this we must be his witnesses.

Story before doctrine

Enjoyed attending the Blessing of Oils and Renewal of Ordination Vows service at Chelmsford Cathedral today. Over 200 clergy gathered for the service led by +Stephen Cottrell who preached on God’s call to Samuel and the woman washing Jesus’ feet. Some provocative and challenging insights but the comment that particularly stuck in my mind was +Stephen’s reminder that Christianity was story before it was doctrine. He went on to challenge us to allow ourselves to be drawn into the stories of the Gospel and to recapture the art of story telling in sharing the Gospel with others.

After the service we processed out and gathered around the cathedral green for a final blessing. As it was lunchtime a group of people were sitting on the grass enjoying their food and they suddenly found themselves surrounded by a circle of clergy, readers and bishops. Is this the first recorded experience of clerical kettling?


One minor whinge. Why is it that there seems to be a moratorium on hymns written by anyone who is still alive at these services? We sang a hymn written by a 13th century pope but the nearest to anything contemporary was something penned at least thirty years ago. I had hoped that a diocesan service would reflect something of the breadth of hymnody and song being used in worship across the diocese and it is no surprise that some colleagues give it a miss. It wasn’t as bad as some of the ordination services I’ve attended in the last few years but was still a bit of a culture shock after Spring Harvest.

Time to go

Today was my last day in the Diocesan Office as I prepare to take up my new role back in parish ministry. I haven’t been very successful at clearing up my desk so will have to return to pack books and other odds and ends after Easter. Highlight of the day was a leaving lunch in the Cathedral Chapter house where I was joined by nearly a hundred friends and colleagues from around the diocese who I’ve been privileged to work with over the last ten years. It was great to catch up with people and to say thank you for their encouragement and support for lay education and training. I’m particularly grateful to my administrator Liz Watson who worked so hard to put the lunch together and to Canon Dr Roger Matthews and Bishop Stephen Cottrell who spoke at the lunch.

Along with the very enjoyable food and drink were some great surprises in the form of gifts for both the family and me and a card with many lovely messages. The gifts included a bottle of champagne (for Easter), a copy of Sir Alex Ferguson’s autobiography with a message from the great man and a cheque for an iPad 2!

So a moving day in many ways. I thank God for the partnership in the Gospel with so many across the diocese and look forward to it continuing in new ways in the future.

Not giving a fig: #EasterLIVE

I’ve been enjoying following and taking part in EasterLIVE, a Twitter stream telling the story of Easter through the eyes of different characters. My main character is a pub landlord called Benny who has hired out his upper room to a group of Galileans for a party on Thursday night. However, I became rather side tracked yesterday and found myself reflecting on the experience of a fig tree.

On Monday of Holy Week Jesus and the disciples head from Bethany towards Jerusalem and the Temple. This is what happens according to Mark 11:

¹² The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. ¹³ Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. ¹⁴ Then he said to the tree,“May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.

The story continues the next morning as Jesus and the disciples again return to Jerusalem:

²⁰ In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. ²¹ Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”
²² “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. ²³ “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. ²⁴ Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

In order to understand the story we need to recognise the literary structure that Mark frequently uses in his gospel. Mark often pairs incidents together so that they interpret each other in what can be called a framing technique. The narrative begins with Incident A, Incident B then takes place and finally Incident A continues and concludes. In Mark 11 the fig tree is Incident A and what takes place in between the beginning and conclusion of the story is Incident B Jesus prophetic action in the Temple (Mark 11:15-19). The fig tree therefore symbolises Jerusalem and the Temple and Jesus’s words and actions are a prophetic judgement on them.

But I can’t help wondering how the fig tree owner would have felt when he discovered the fate of his property.