New Kid on the Blog

It was my privilege today to preach at the weekly '12 Step Eucharist' which takes place at Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria on Tuesday evenings.  I chose the theme, taken from the Lections from the Tuesday for Holy Week, of Death and Resurrection (surprise, a very unexpected theme for Holy Week...) As it won't be shared anywhere else, for the time being, here's a taster, the full text is on my ' New Kid Deep Stuff ' blog (where old sermons go to receive their rest) Tuesday in Holy Week 2014 – 12 Step Eucharist Ps 71:1–14 Jn 12:20–36 Death and resurrection We don’t like talking about death.   At least as a society we steer clear of talking about death.   It’s a strange reversal on the Victorian era where they took almost a delight in all the things that surrounded death, they observed mourning very visibly and even took pictures of deceased loved ones – known as momento mori – to keep.   But they were very uptight indeed about sex and (the urban...

Sometimes I am asked how those of us who offer bereavement care cope with all the sadness we encounter, and the short answer is we just do! I recognise the need to be the one who knows what is going on and whilst involved and concerned about the bereaved I also need a measure of detachment in order, to a certain extent, to facilitate and free up the grieving process for those left behind. But it doesn't stop me feeling sad about losing folk. In the past few weeks we have had a sudden death, a relatively young death and today the death of an older (but not very old) man who was a real stalwart of the church in the village where he lived. We have had other deaths in the villages, and i have mentioned the number of funerals in every post recently, but some feel, as it were, more 'natural', whilst others I have felt quite affected by. The loss of this very active, very committed church member today is one of those. I knew this person well, I was very fond of him - he was a ...

It has been a busy week, worthwhile and valuable in lots of ways, but a hard week. What has particularly overshadowed the week and used lots of mental/emotional/spiritual energy has been the death and funeral of one particularly special member of our local congregation. I'd known him since before I actually came here as he was a great friend of one of my colleagues and we'd first met a year or so before I moved to this village. When I got here I tried to visit every few weeks, but there were long stretches of time when I couldn't due to other pressures, though we would meet week by week as I led services here. When he became very ill I visited as frequently as I could make it, and for the past month or so nearly every day. He was a man of great faith who missed his wife very much and longed to join her in death, in the arms of our eternal God. Above all, he trusted in Jesus, and just a few days before he died he said to me 'I know where I am going, I'm not afra...