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HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II

We are all deeply saddened by news of the death of Her Majesty the Queen. For seventy years she has dedicated her life to the service of her country, the Commonwealth and the church.

At the churches of our benefice we recognise the sadness and loss that many in our community will be feeling at this sad time. 

Should you feel the need for prayer, or just quiet reflection, the churches will be open every day as usual. Please feel free to use this place of peace and tranquillity.

Our Sunday services will continue to be held at the usual times and all are welcome to attend, there will, of course, be prayers for the late Queen and our new King. We will have a special service on Sunday at 6 pm – see notice opposite.

Anyone wishing to sign a book of condolence may do so at Winchester Cathedral.

God Save The King

Morning Service for Trinity 13 2022

So we heard Jeremiah again this morning, being Jeremiah – utterly depressing and doom laden.  He sees all creation unravelling before him because of the disobedience of Israel.  YHWH has lost patience, creation is turned back and chaos is allowed to return.  The world becomes unglued and it is all caused by Israel’s disobedience  – it has all been for nothing. But amidst the doom and the destruction, even yet, Jeremiah hears ‘yet I will not make a full end’ – here is Jeremiah’s slight ground for hope, the door of doom is held, ajar, but only just.  

Magazine letter for September 2022

This Sunday (as I write) I have the enormous privilege of baptising my eighth grandchild, Norah. We inevitably ask ourselves what world she has she been born into, and what faith will she be taught to help her to cope with such a world.

It’s very physical this Christianity thing. Sometimes I like to pretend it’s all rather esoteric, and spiritual. But then I realise that Christianity is all about incarnation, about God alongside us… in this world and with this world – a part of this world. Christianity is not about ethics, it’s not about being good boys and girls, keeping to the rules, avoid doing bad things and you’ll be a good person, and God will think you’re just great. Jesus did not die on a cross to tell us that.

Morning Service for Trinity 12 2022

It has been said many times over the last 10 years or so that we’re in a post-Christian era, that the Christian age is over. Christianity no longer defines people’s moral values just as it no longer defines how most people spend their Sunday mornings. A majority of the population do not now come to Church in order to get married or when their children are born. We are left to take some of the funerals – perhaps as some great symbolism of ushering out an age that has passed. 

And yet when we read that passage from St Luke’s Gospel, and others which have the same message, I wonder whether we were ever a Christian nation. It seems to me that the sort of demands that Christ is making have never been contemplated seriously by more than a few individuals in any generation, let alone the whole of a nation’s population. 

Morning Service for Trinity 11 2022

Charlemagne was the greatest Christian ruler of the early Middle Ages. After his death a mighty funeral procession left his castle for the cathedral at Aix. When the royal casket arrived, so the story goes, with all pomp and circumstance, it was met by the local bishop, who barred the cathedral door.

Morning Service for Trinity 10 2022

I guess it’s all about what we think God wants from us – or perhaps what we want to give God. That was the problem that Jesus had with this leader of the synagogue. He was well versed in the way of the commandments and the practice of their interpretation, after all, hadn’t he grown up with them ringing in his ears. The commandments were, for him, the voice of God, the very will of God. Had he not been taught that when they were flouted disaster always followed – for the individual, the village, the nation? To heal was defined as work, it was not permitted on the Sabbath – it was not what God wanted, it would be against his commandments. It was in black and white what you could do on the Sabbath, if not in the Torah then in the Mishnah, the practical application of the Torah.

Morning Service for Trinity 9 2022

I found today’s readings disturbing. That is, of course, no bad thing, disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed is what the Bible is all about. It is certainly what Jesus seemed to spend a fair bit of time doing – we have this picture of him bringing peace on earth and indeed he did offer peace to many, on many occasions, but that wasn’t the whole story, certainly not according to our reading from St Luke this morning. 

Magazine letter for August 2022

We have been witness to a deal of dreaming recently, people dreaming of becoming Prime Minister, for instance. But we all dream, and there is nothing wrong with dreaming.  Dreams carry ideas and hopes. Visions to guide our lives; aspirations, longings, and imaginings of a different future, of the way things might be.

Morning Service for Trinity 8 2022

‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen.’
So wrote the author of the letter to the Hebrews – not St Paul as some say. At least that is the translation we have in the lectionary, which is quite well known and rolls off the tongue quite well. However, it isn’t what he wrote.

Magazine letter for July 2022

There seems to be an increasing appetite to concentrate power in the hands of a few individuals. The current desire from government to increase the numbers of city mayors, for instance; and the demise of cabinet government to one far more centred in the office of one person with a large politically appointed staff.

Morning Service for Trinity 5 2022

Poor old Martha – there she is working away, in her own home, trying to be the perfect hostess, and no one will lift a finger to help, not even her own sister. She makes a very reasonable appeal, ‘Lord don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’

Morning Service for Trinity 2 2022

The Christian faith, with its roots in Judaism, offers no easy answers to life’s problems. Psalm 77 which we heard this morning makes that very clear.

Morning Service for Trinity 1 2022

Our first readingg continued the story of Elijah, he has just defeated the prophets of Baal in a great show of the power of Israel’s God – proving that he is the one true God. He has brought about the slaughter of the priests of Baal and now flees into the desert, running for his life away from Queen Jezebel who intends to wreak terrible vengeance upon him.

Morning Service for Trinity Sunday 2022

Trinity Sunday is a challenge to preachers and congregations alike, for we are bidden to consider the incomprehensible, the utterly mysterious, the profoundly unknowable. For today is the Feast of the godhead, the very nature of God. Why do we bother, why do we strain to grasp with our all-too human minds something so completely unfathomable as God? 

A Service for Pentecost 2022

So this is Pentecost, when the disciples experienced the tangible presence of the Spirit, and began their mission to create a people of the Spirit, seeking to be guided and taught by the revealing, disturbing, overwhelming Spirit of God.

Morning Service for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

But at the heart of John’s meaning is an indefinable, but palpable sense of Jesus’ presence; a presence synonymous with the presence of God, the Father. Present after they see him no more but in Spirit, available as power and comfort, inspiration and encouragement.

Morning Service for the Fourth Sunday of Easter 2022

The image of Shepherd and sheep is a powerful one, it’s comforting and picturesque – it’s not particularly exciting, or, on the face of it, particularly emboldening, and it doesn’t say much for we who are the sheep, but when times are hard it’s nice to know that there is someone else in charge. 

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