March News From The Clergy

22 Feb 2023 • From the Clergy

Alleluia, Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

With these words of the Easter Acclamation, church lights are thrown on, bells ring, and, according to the service rhetoric, noise is made! It is a bright and joyful scene, in sharp contrast to the days which have gone before. Holy Week, particularly the last few days of that week, is a dark and highly emotional time as we commemorate the final days of Christ’s life on earth.

We have kept vigil on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, entering, as far as possible, into the feelings of despair and sorrow of the disciples, the huge burden of sin and sorrow borne by Christ himself. Before that final week, we have observed the solemn season of Lent; the period in which we are encouraged to practice disciplines of study, prayer and sacrifice.

Lent has, for many, become trivialised; luxuries are given up without any clear idea of why and with no real sacrifice involved. Lent Courses - whether run in groups or followed as an individual through reading or online - have become an optional extra, observed by relatively few. Yet all these activities - prayer, study, sacrifice - are essential elements of a true and meaningful preparation for Easter. Our joy on that day can only be complete if we have also walked through the dark days of Lent, experiencing, at some level at least, its hardships and sorrows.

At Cafe@10.15 in January, I spoke of the cycle we all go through, of life’s highs and lows; of how when experiencing either good or bad days, we can feel that we are in that condition for ever, unable to imagine that we will ever feel the opposite emotion again.

But, of course, we do. Good days give way to bad which in turn give way to good again.

Painful though they are, the bad days - the dark times - are a necessary feature of life and they often form and equip us to meet challenges that lie ahead. In his letter to the Christians in Rome, St Paul expressed this in the following words:

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Romans 5.3a-5

Few of us would claim, as Paul does, to rejoice in suffering but perhaps we can, when not in the midst of it, recognise its benefits. Suffering can make us more able to empathise with those going through life events we have experienced for ourselves. It can make us wiser, stronger, heighten our perceptions and awareness. Suffering can also make us more appreciative of our many and varied blessings which we could otherwise so easily take for granted.

At the time of writing this letter, my family is preparing for Mum’s funeral. We are walking through our own time of sadness and darkness; and yet, beneath the sadness we are also aware that we are travelling to a time of celebration. Mum held a deep Christian faith which she lived out, to the best of her ability, all her life. Her funeral may seem to be “the wrong way round” as she is being buried first, then having the church service. There are practical reasons for this (the place where she is to be buried is too far out for people to wait for a wake until the family returns) but there is another reason too; laying Mum to rest in her grave will be sad. The service afterwards is a celebration of a life well lived and a soul gone humbly but confidently to her God and Redeemer. Mum’s final illness prepared her and her family for her passing but that passing was necessary for her to be taken to her heavenly reward. In a sense, to her own small Easter Day!

By the time this magazine is in your hands, we will have entered the season of Lent. Flowers will have been removed from our churches; services will have taken on an extra solemnity; Lent lunches, the Lent course on prayer and other Lent initiatives and challenges will have been launched. There are many ways in which you can prepare hearts and minds for the events of Holy Week and, ultimately, to enter into the wonder and joy of Easter when, once again, we will joyfully proclaim the victorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Until then, I wish you a prayerful, meaningful and holy Lent.

Sarah Cottrill