Reflections on Holy Week 2017

This week, Christians across the world have been remembering the story of Holy Week, beginning with Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, recalling along the way the events of the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and the Crucifixion on Good Friday, before finally celebrating the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. Holy Week this year marks my final experience of this special time prior to completing my theological training, and beginning a new ministry as a Methodist probationer presbyter in September. Perhaps because of the significance  of what is to come, this has proven to be an especially powerful time for me, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts. As we are outside of term time, I've been free to choose where I worship, and have been joining the congregation at Birmingham's St Philip's Cathedral, which seems to have moved up the candle somewhat following the departure of the previous Dean and the arrival of a new Canon Liturgist. This suits me well as someone from an Anglo-Catholic background, and has contributed very much to my experience.

 

Maundy Thursday was particularly special, in that I had an unexpected and profound encounter with God. I'm not someone for whom out-of-the-ordinary experiences form a part of my spiritual life normally, but this was different. After the main service, during which the story of the Last Supper was recalled and the Eucharist celebrated, we were invited to join the clergy for a vigil in the north chapel in front of the Sacrament (consecrated bread left over from the said Eucharist). The lights were turned out and we sat for around an hour in near darkness but for a few candles, with Peter Eugene Ball's Crucifix behind the altar. During this time, I found myself reflecting on both the calling to serve reflected in the reading from John's Gospel also used in the service, which reminds us of Jesus washing the disciples' feet in an upper room, and those things that have shaped my own sense of vocation in the eleven years since I became a Christian. The beginnings of my being called to ordained ministry go back to when I was a postgraduate student in Durham and found myself daydreaming about being the one behind the altar, presiding at the Eucharist. It's incredible to think how much life has changed in that time.

Crucifix by Peter Eugene Ball

At the point God began to stir up this calling, my life was rather more messy and substantially less happy than it is today. I was living with my ex-partner in a relationship that had become abusive, and was struggling to deal with both the scars of a difficult childhood and confusion about my gender identity. In the subsequent years, I've found a sense of wholeness that I never thought possible, and a key factor in that has been the importance of the Eucharist. Meeting Christ in his brokenness, reflected in how we cannot receive that presence in the bread until it has been broken, enabled me to find healing and begin a journey of forgiveness. This didn't happen overnight, and I'm grateful to various people who journeyed with me along the way, but for me the Eucharist encapsulates the transforming reality of God's love. In that side-chapel on Maundy Thursday evening, and as much it probably sounds like a very 'cheesy Christian' thing to say, I felt myself drawn incredibly close to Jesus and at ease in his presence, aware of being completely and unreservedly loved, and safe in the knowledge of how his brokenness on the cross has brought me wholeness. As I prepare to begin a new stage of my ministry, the thing I'm most passionate about is enabling others to recognise that they too are infinitely valuable to God, and I see my role as a minister as being about inspiring those in churches to feel confident to share this amazing love with others, through words and actions, and in challenging injustices.

Moving onto Good Friday, Sally and I began the day by taking part in Birmingham's ecumenical Walk of Witness through the city centre. It consisted of fourteen short Stations of the Cross, and was led by leaders from various denominations, including the Methodist Chair of the Birmingham District. I found the experience quite powerful on the whole, but I also have some reservations. For starters, the liturgy came from a very particular perspective, and I found myself unsure about some of the theology, especially around whether talking about 'offending' Jesus really helps us speak meaningfully about the subjects of evil and sin (itself an interesting word to use in general conversation these days). However, my biggest worry is about what those who do not belong to a church would have made of it all. In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing things that are counter-cultural and make people think, but as the Mission-Shaped Church report argues, "the Christian story is no longer at the heart of the nation" (indeed, hearing a clearly bright and thoughtful student explaining to some international students on the way home on Thursday that eating chocolate on Easter Day is traditional here, but she has no real idea why that is, sums things up). I wonder how much of what we were doing made any meaningful impact on those unfamiliar with the story of Jesus' passion; there was little attempt to put things across in everyday language, and there's a real danger that although it made the local news, the Walk was little more than a source of bemusement for the small numbers of people who saw it at that time of day...

Ecumenical Walk of Witness in Birmingham

I suppose the same thing could be said of the Good Friday worship in the Cathedral - at one point, the clergy were knelt before a giant wooden cross laid on the floor, as the choir sung the reproaches to God's people - but I nonetheless found it very helpful. Remembering the story of Christ's passion reminds me that none of us is called to serve God based upon our own merits; rather, it is because God chooses to see us as worthy and makes us holy, through the reconciliation made possible in Christ, that we can stand in God's presence and be used by the Holy Spirit to make a difference in the world (for what it's worth, it seems clear to me that God uses people well beyond the Church, but that's a whole other argument for another day!). I recognise that the closeness I feel to God at the moment is not something that will always be present; indeed, things have been a real struggle since my mum had a stroke a couple of years ago, and at times I've felt like a bit of a fraud if I'm honest, though a wise person once told me that half of the battle is just turning up and keeping going. However, I know I can take heart from this assurance of God's love that I've found this Holy Week so far, as I prepare to move into this new phase of my ministry. Perhaps for the first time, I have no doubt that I'm doing the right thing.

Starting Out...

There's a film starring Martin Sheen called 'The Way', about a father whose son died walking the first stage of the 'El Camino de Santiago', the famous pilgrimage to the grand church of Santiago de Compostela. He (the father) decides to undertake the eight hundred kilometre walk himself in memory of his son, from whom he'd been largely estranged in the years before the accident. It's a film about journeys, new friendships and vulnerability, with milestones that need to be reached along the way to avoid being left sleeping out in the cold, and various obstacles to be overcome. Through the process, the father is changed from a grumpy git with a deep suspicion of others to someone who is a bit less hostile, having had some of his rough edges knocked off.

I was thinking about this today during the Holy Communion service that marked the conclusion of the induction period of my theological training, at Queen's College in Birmingham. This week has involved an intense period of introduction to college life, and this post is an attempt to make sense of this and where life is at.

 

This time last week, I was on a train to Birmingham, having completed my final day at work in London, validating mathematical models for a bank. The next few days were spent moving our stuff from a temporary flat (the rain and a leaky roof conspired to damage the kitchen in our actual flat) to our new home, and building our new furniture. It turns out that making flat pack stuff isn't as hard as I thought it would be! Anyway, after that was all sorted, there was a gap of a few days, during which time the reality of becoming a student minister (student presbyter, to be precise and to use the correct Methodist wording - apparently I'm very much not an ordinand yet) stubbornly refused to begin to sink in.

On the Sunday, I went to Birmingham Cathedral for the morning Eucharist, looking for something familiar and reassuring, and found the interior covered in scaffolding, which summed up how I felt at that point: being propped up, goodness knows by what, in danger of falling down otherwise. My mum had a stroke on New Year's Day which has left her unable to communicate in any meaningful way, and since then I've really struggled to pray. To be honest, it's actually given my relationship with God quite a big knock, in that while I can happily give intellectual assent to the same doctrinal framework I've had for the past few years, the emotional/relationship side of things feels deadened. Preaching regularly has kept me engaging with the Bible, but otherwise it's been hard to keep up any real kind of spiritual discipline. With all that going on, I was dreading going into an environment full of Christians, and wondering how it would pan out.

The first few days have involved getting to know the other people, made up of fellow Methodist student ministers, Anglican ordinands, international students and independent students, and being bombarded with things to take in, about the academic work we'll be doing, ministerial formation, college life and so on. It's all been rather overwhelming, due to both the sheer volume of information to process and digest, and the things people kept saying about being Christian leaders, the milestones on the way to being ready to go into stationing (in English, the first appointment), and the Church's expectations. I felt increasingly like a fraud as time went on, given the dryness of my own prayer life at the moment.

One of the things that has helped me settle a bit is the regular pattern of worship, and community meals and time in the Common Room have been useful for getting to know people. However, the big question that keeps coming back is 'why on earth am I here?' This all came to a head during the Communion service, which brought up all sorts of unexpected feelings. As some of you may know, I was kicked out of the ordination process in the Church of England when I came out as gay (this was before I went through gender reassignment, so I still identified as a lesbian), meaning I didn't the chance to explore my vocation. While I have reconciled myself to having moved denominations, sometimes this is still painful. I wonder if there's an element of sacrificial service, maybe? Being in an environment where familiar and deeply meaningful language was being used, and knowing that having ended up in Methodism means that isn't now my tradition, is tough. Being able to express this to one of the others, someone I've known for a long time, really helped but I think it will all take time to settle down and make some sort of sense.

The main thing I've found useful, though, is the cross in the grounds of the college, which I've photographed:

For me, it's a really powerful symbol of brokenness and God making us whole through breaking us down and knocking off the rough edges. College will be a journey with milestones that need to be passed in a given time period, obstacles to be overcome, much to learn and community to embrace and negotiate. The thing that's stopping me running away at the moment is the thought that, however confusing and muddled it all feels (which is very!), God is somewhere in the mess and I'm not here at Queen's through coincidence or accident. John 15:16 is the text we had during the corporate silence today, which makes the point clearly.

So, now there's a few days to recover before it all gets going. I intend to keep posting as and when I get the time, as a way of journaling I might actually do, so watch this space...