REFLECTIONS
These pieces are written each month by members of our clergy team.
May Leader
Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised,’ Jesus instructs his disciples in Acts 1:4 before his Ascension. Waiting is rarely a passive act; in the life of faith, it is a profound spiritual discipline. The period between Ascension and Pentecost is a moment of deep anticipation, as we remember the disciples huddling in the Upper Room awaiting the gift of the Holy Spirit. This wasn’t a period of idle thumb-twiddling. The text tells us they were ‘joined together constantly in prayer’ (Acts 1:14). In theology, the term liminality describes the threshold between one state and the next. In Acts 1 the disciples are no longer students of a physical rabbi, but they are not yet the bold apostles they will become, even in Acts 2. They occupy in Acts 1 what is known as a ‘liminal space’ - the space between what was (the physical presence of Jesus) and what will be (the birth of the Church).In recent months we have witnessed a period of waiting come to end, as we have seen Dame Sarah Mullaly become the first female Archbishop of Canterbury. When Archbishop Sarah was just thirty-two, in 1994, by coincidence thirty-two women became the first women to be ordained priests in the Church of England in Bristol Cathedral. This was followed over twenty years later by the first female bishop to be consecrated in the Church of England – the Rt Rev Libby Lane as the Bishop of Stockport on Jan 26th 2015. However, some may feel that the wait for a woman to become Archbishop of Canterbury has been much longer than ten, twenty, or thirty years. The very first Archbishop of what we now know as the Church of England was Thomas Cranmer, who was consecrated in 1533. So historically some might say that the Church of England has had to wait over five hundred years to have its first female Archbishop.
The disciples were waiting for "power from on high" (Acts 1:8). They knew the world expected something from them, but they didn't yet have the tools to deliver it. Archbishop level appointments carry a similar burden. Like the disciples, our new Archbishop will need the "wind" of the Spirit to provide the timing and to give her the voice she will need. When Pentecost finally arrived, the silence of the Upper Room was shattered by the sound of a rushing wind and tongues of fire. The waiting ended, and the mission began. For Bishop Sarah, the "Pentecost moment" was her enthronement as Archbishop on March 25th. As she knocked on the great doors of the cathedral, she was transitioning from the quiet pilgrim who had journeyed along the old pilgrim road to Canterbury, to the active authority of the Archbishop.
Without the period of waiting, the disciples might have lacked the spiritual depth to handle the explosion of the early Church that began at Pentecost. The period between Ascension and Pentecost reminds us that waiting is not a passive void; it is a fertile ground where the soul is prepared for a weight of responsibility that only God can sustain. Whether in an ancient room in Jerusalem or a modern office in London, the act of waiting is where the leader is truly formed.
Our prayer is that the many years of waiting will have prepared our new Archbishop for her role. As we too remember that period of waiting that the disciples experienced in the Upper Room, may we find God preparing each of us for whatever lies ahead.
Stephen
Collect for Thy Kingdom Come:
Almighty God,
Your ascended Son has sent us into the world
to preach the good news of your kingdom:
Inspire us with your Spirit
And fill our hearts with the fire of your love,
That all who hear your Word
May be drawn to you,
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection:
By the time that you are reading this Bulletin we should be moving towards Holy Week, that most solemn week when the Church recounts the events leading to Jesus’s Crucifixion, which is commemorated on Good Friday. On Holy Saturday the Church waits in quiet anticipation of Jesus’s Resurrection on Easter Day. These events are both historical, in the sense that they happened at a particular point in history. As the Apostles' Creed states, ‘Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate.’ Pilate was the fifth governor of the Roman Province of Judea serving under the Emperor Tiberius from AD 26/7 to 36/37. It is understood that Jesus was about 33 when he was executed and his death is recorded in all four Gospels with good degrees of detail and commonality.
However, Jesus's death is always more than just a historical event, on par with, for instance, the Great Fire of London or the Battle of Trafalgar. The death of Jesus and its significance stretches backwards and forwards across time to reach into the hearts and minds of all humans including you and me. In the Holy Communion service the congregation are invited to repeat the following:
‘Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world have mercy upon us.’
The first part of this verse comes from John the Baptist’s exclamation when he spotted Jesus walking along by the River Jordon. In John’s day, animal sacrifices were commonplace both in Roman, Greek and Jewish religions. The idea was that the sacrificial death of a chosen animal would placate an angry God or gods for the misdoings of communities and individuals. The problem was that these sacrifices had to be repeated every week because of the nature of human behaviour. Jesus certainly saw his death as a once for all sacrifice that would take away sin for all time.
Through this sacrifice humans would for the first time be genuinely at peace with God and reconciled to God through the shedding of Christ blood. As it says in St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:
‘Now we in Christ Jesus who were once very far have been brought near to God by the shedding of His blood.’
Of course, it is true to say that these concepts of sacrifice and death seem somewhat gruesome by today's sentiments and to think of Christ dying in agony on the cross is not something that we would readily want to think about. Yet no matter how modern life becomes we still have to struggle with the issues of the wrong inside us and the consequences of the choices and decisions that we make. None of us are ever free from guilt, sorrow and regret. The question is, do we have to carry this stuff to the grave, do we have to die guilty and afraid, or can we trust in the saving power of Christ's sacrifice to forgive us for all that is past and to allow us to stand with confidence on judgement day? Can we go on sinning knowing that the Lord will forgive us anyway? No, for there is nothing cheap about grace, our forgiveness was wrought through the utmost pain and sacrifice and just as a woman brings new life to birth through the agony of child birth, so we are brought to new life through Christ's agony and death. I don’t know how the Cross works, it is a mystery, but we all know from our lived experience the inextricable link between love and sacrifice. It was not through vindictive pleasure that God’s Son was offered on the Cross, but through love, a love that is and has always been powerful enough to transform even the most corrupt and evil heart. As St. John wrote:
‘God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, that all those who believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ John 3:16
So next time you see a cross, or wear a cross, or hold a cross, remind yourself that God loves you and has forgiven you through Jesus Christ's death. Through Jesus, God is close to you in all your sorrows and sufferings, for our Lord is no stranger to the things that cause us pain, especially the point of our death, when we know he will be with us.
We don’t get to sing hymns so much at funerals anymore, but in former times it was not uncommon to sing a strange old hymn called the Old rugged Cross. It can be a bit of a slog to get all the way through it but a couple of lines have always stood out for me and I will leave them with you.
So I will cherish the Old Rugged Cross Till my trophies at last I lay down. I will cherish the old rugged Cross And exchange it some day for a crown.
MatthewABOUT ST. GILES CHURCH
Monthly Bulletins
It has now been 5 years since we started sending out our monthly Bulletin as a result of the Covid pandemic and I know from various feedback that the Bulletin is very much appreciated. Going forward I remain very committed to making sure that all of us who love St. Giles are kept informed not only of what is going on at our Church but encouraged in the understanding and practice of the Christian faith.In the future we will continue to write to you but every other month making sure that our bulletins coincide with the important occasions in the Church's year. Our next Bulletin will be sent out in July.
Matthew Hughes, May 2025