Holy Week Festival 2014 Preview

In a two weeks the brochures for our Holy Week Festival 2014 will be available online and for delivery. But as I am already getting a lot of questions like ‘Dinosaurs?’ ‘Phantom of the Opera??’ here are a few answers:

During the week before Palm Sunday the Abbey will be dominated by the large Labyrinth where we will each get the chance to make a devotional journey to the cross as we wind our way around concentric circles. This is designed for both adults and children. On the evening of Wednesday 9th April we will have a candlelit late-night Labyrinth concluding with Night Prayer with Plainsong at 10pm.

I met for a couple of hours this week with the A-level art students from Malmesbury School as they make their final preparations to their Stations of the Cross pieces. This really impressive body of work, depicting Christ’s journey from Gethsemane to Calvary, opens Tuesday 8th April, and on Saturday 12th at 10am I get to interview the artists informally over coffee and hot chocolate. Come along.

The truly amazing Josh Flowers & the Wild return on the Saturday evening for a blistering evening of blues/rock/organic folk  supported by the scrumpy & western Wurzel-rapping of Tristan Cork.  Wow! Don’t miss this, and bring friends along who might be allergic to church.

After our Palm Sunday worship Monday gets a little unusual as in a darkened Abbey we project the 1925 B&W Phantom of the Opera with live organ improvisation from Anthony Hammond; and yes, that’s his real surname.

Tuesday night will be an explosion of worship with Glory! at 7.30pm and then on the Wednesday Night the dinosaur man, Mike Taylor, is back to talk about his latest discoveries in God & Dinosaurs 2. He will mess with a few heads as he holds the Bible, evolution, and dinosaurs all nicely together in one Christian palaeontologist’s brain.

Riding Lights are bringing a major Passion Play, Inheritance, to the Abbey on Maundy Thursday. This will be an evening of engrossing drama intermingled with short times of prayer and worship, and will devotionally prepare us for our services on Good Friday, including Fauré’s Requiem with the Abbey Choir at 6pm. 

BBC Wiltshire are recording a special Easter Celebration on Easter Eve at 7pm, this is ticketed and is raising money for the May Moore Trust. And then on Easter Day Bishop Lee is preaching at 10.30am, and we have 4 other services. 

I suggest we all find a corner of a sofa in the café and simply move in for the duration. I will.

Real Lives

Don’t pity me too much, there are many profound privileges to being a vicar. One that never, ever loses its shine is reading the opening of John’s gospel at our Nine Lessons and Carols Service. The service itself is one layer of joy and artistry upon another, but then to stand right in the middle of a candlelit Abbey to proclaim words of such mystery, beauty and light to a darkened world is virtually worth being ordained for in itself. (Not quite.)

John 1 begins with the heavenly identity of Christ, the Word, and there follows over the next 21 chapters many phenomenal signs and wonders which John allows to punctuate the narrative of the gospel to remind of us who precisely we are dealing with— water into wine (ch.2) , feeding the five thousand (ch.6), walking on water (ch.6), a number of significant healings culminating in Lazarus (ch.11), the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (ch.12) and, of course, the Resurrection itself (ch.20). But, just as John portrays Christ’s heavenly intimacy with the Father and the Spirit and the light and life that flows from the Trinity, John also earths Jesus—the Word becoming flesh (John 1:14). John recalls Jesus as he talks with people, and drinks and eats and cooks and weeps and washes feet and dies. The reality of heaven meets the reality of earth. And it is these real lives, normality meeting divinity, that will take us through to Easter in our next teaching series.

Nicodemus, fearful, concealing his curiosity about Jesus at night, and bringing question after question to Jesus to try and work out who this Rabbi really is (John 3). A woman at a well (John 4), who doesn’t understand how her relationships all end up so wrecked, meeting, at last, a man who seems to value her, and know her. Mary, in John 19, not a spiritual super hero, but a mother, watching her son die on a cross. Agonising human loss. Lazarus (John 11) trying to make sense of his heart beating again after it stopped four days earlier. The disciples reeling at the social awkwardness of the Messiah washing their feet. Mary on Easter Day, the first human being to have to try and live in light of the Resurrection. Thomas, wanting hard data, fingers in wounds; show me. And this Sunday, John the Baptist surrounded by a crowd hassling him about who he was, and simply pointing in the opposite direction, away from himself, ‘why don’t you ask Him who He is?’

So this Sunday we’re changing gear from John’s letters. From concepts, ideas, theologies and ethics, to real lives. Our part? To bring our real life to the table.

Reorientation

And now for 40 days of setting yourself impossible goals and beating yourself up (I’m going to read the Bible in it’s entirety before breakfast each day and spend most of my waking hours on Weston-Super-Mare beach, just as Christ was in the desert.) Or, and now for setting yourself ridiculously easy goals and not really engaging with Lent (I’m going to give up asparagus and Christmas pudding, Lent’s a bit of medieval hokum anyway and it seems to last longer than 40 days.) Or maybe, there is a window for spiritual reflection, a holy audit , which might actually be a pretty helpful to yourself, and those around you.

Lent is of the Holy Spirit, or it’s of no particular value, and potentially a bit of distracting religious weirdness. In Luke 4:1 it records that Jesus was ‘full of the Holy Spirit’ and ‘led by the Spirit’ as he began the 40 days in the desert we are identifying with. In Luke 4:14, 40 days later, Jesus returned from the desert ‘in the power of the Spirit’. So we build our desert with God, not with guilt. Jesus’ life was revealed in Luke 4 to be a life totally orientated to God; our 40 days will normally reveal the need for reorientation, realignment. We will see ourselves better, and God better. Some possibilities to consider from this Wednesday, or not:

Feast. Read John in Lent. You’ll find the readings set out on the back of the Morning Prayer leaflet handed out today. Use the liturgy as well if you wish, or join us each day in St Aldhelm's chapel at 9am (or maybe one day a week to help keep you focused.)

Fast. How would your life look if you consumed differently for 40 days, fasting from a food, facebook, TV show e.g.

Live. Like a North Korean. Use the Open Doors material, available today, to pray for the church in North Korea and to allow the life of a North Korean Christian to comment on your own.

Practice Intentional Solitude & Community. Don’t let church and prayer happen in the cracks of a busy life. For 40 days see how it feels to allow Christian community and personal stillness before God to shape everything else.

That other thing. As the 40 days progress allow the Spirit to lead you to put something down or pick something up. Allow ‘your will be done’ to feel a fresh and exciting sentence to begin the day.

Services at 10.30am and 7pm on Ash Wednesday kick off our 40 days together, our reorientation to God. Our Easter Day worship ends it as we celebrate the resurrection of Christ together.