Letter from Alex
April/May
2014
Dear Friends
Going to the Holy Land
was something we always said we’d do “one day”. And so I have
to admit that it seemed slightly unreal to find ourselves, at the end
of January, on the Diocesan Pilgrimage, travelling to visit the
places where Jesus lived, died and carried out his ministry. It was
an amazing experience, not least because of the privilege of sharing
it with 65 other wonderful people, all pilgrims from across the
Diocese, and with Bishop John and his wife Denise. We spent four days
in and around Jerusalem, with its hustle and bustle, its incredible
history and mix of cultures; and then three nights at Tiberias on the
Sea of Galilee, where the pace of life was slower and the scenery
simply breathtaking.
In this multi-media age,
we think we’ve seen it all; we can watch films, read books, view
video clips of almost anywhere in the world. But somehow, reality is
different. Of course places like Jerusalem have changed in 2000 years
– it would be strange if they hadn’t! But there was still the
incredibly intimate sense of walking where Jesus would have walked,
of seeing the landscape that he would have seen. Standing on the
Mount of Olives and looking over to the city of Jerusalem itself, it
became easy to envisage Jesus and the disciples walking out across
the Kidron Valley – still there today – after the Last Supper, to
the Garden of Gethsemane – also still there today – where Jesus
would finally be betrayed by Judas’s kiss.
We had expected that the
most visited sites would have succumbed to the plague of tourism and
become commercialised and tacky, with plastic souvenirs and contrived
photo opportunities, but we were surprised to find that this wasn’t
the case. Although the churches and shrines built over those places
where the key moments of Jesus’ life were purported to have taken
place were sometimes cluttered and over-ornate for our western
tastes, they were merely in keeping with the Orthodox denominations
that were responsible for them.
In Bethlehem we queued to
pick our way down the narrow stone steps to kneel at the 14-pointed
silver star that marks the place where, it is said, Jesus was born to
Mary over 2000 years ago. And in Jerusalem we knelt again, to reach
down and touch the hard, roughened rock at the spot where it is
believed that the cross on which Christ was crucified would have
stood. And I think that what stuck us with a surprising intensity at
those moments was that, although these might not be the precise
places, although the true location might have been lost in rumour and
the mists of time – still, somewhere, very close to where we were,
there was a place where all these things actually did happen.
What was brought home to
us was that all this was real. That the Bible stories that we’ve
known so well since childhood weren’t just made-up fables, but
accounts of real happenings, in real places, that involved real
people. The reality of Jesus was there all around us – and has
remained with us.
The Jesus that we mostly
have in our imagination is rooted in the images that we encounter;
the pictures in our children’s bible, the actors in Biblical dramas
in film or on TV – and in our own imaginations, the images that we
conjure up as we read the Gospel stories. But Jesus wasn’t just a
character in a story, a good subject for an artist. The Son of God
walked the dusty streets of that noisy city, trod the stone steps
that rise up out of the Kidron Valley, made long and difficult
journeys through the barren desert landscape. He was as real as we
are. And having that brought home so vividly has made our faith more
real, more alive. And as we watched the sun rise over the sea of
Galilee on our last morning, while a fisherman drew in his catch,
hauling the net up the side of his boat – we felt that we were
honoured to see something just like Jesus must have witnessed as he
stood on the lakeside waiting for his disciples.
Alex
Letter from the
Archdeacon of Dudley, Nikki Groarke
My introduction to the
Diocese of Worcester and the Archdeaconry of Dudley has been a very
watery one. As I have met with diocesan staff to find out how their
roles interact with mine, the views through their windows in the Old
Palace offices have been ones of vast expanses of water stretching
across to the Malverns. As I have driven from one church to another,
detours to avoid roads and bridges closed by floods have featured
often. I have learned that life in the country means permanently
having a dirty car and that wellies in the boot are a must-have item!
The floods across our
area, and in other parts of the country even more so, have been
devastating for many, though thankfully held back by new defences
along much of the Severn this time. Water in vast quantities in the
wrong place can be powerful and destructive, it permeates everything,
flows everywhere there is space, gets in through the cracks, over and
under many barriers. Yet we know too that water is vital for life. In
countries ravaged by drought, the rains are longed for, every drop of
clean water is regarded as a precious gift.
It may be hard for us to
imagine intense heat and desperate thirst, surrounded as we are by
our flooded countryside and with clean water readily on tap, but that
is the experience of many, and one with which many can therefore
connect when King David draws a spiritual parallel with his need for
God in Psalm 63: "You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I
thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched
land where there is no water."
God's presence is as life
giving water to the soul, as crucial for our spiritual health as
water is for our bodies. The Bible teaches us that through the Holy
Spirit we can experience God's refreshing presence in abundance. In
John's gospel Jesus talks about the water of life:
"On the last and
greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice,
‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes
in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from
within them.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed
in him were later to receive." (John 7:37-39)
As healthy kingdom people
who are deeply rooted in prayer and being renewed and transformed by
regular worship, we are constantly filled with the Spirit, in order
that the Holy Spirit might flow from us into our communities. How
wonderful it would be if the life and hope of the gospel, its values
of love, compassion, justice and freedom, flowed from our churches
into our communities with the same persistent permeation that flood
water exhibits. What an impact for good will be made if God's love
seeps through every crevice and crack as his people serve those
around them. And what good news stories there will be to share if
barriers are consistently broken down by acts of loving kindness in
God's name.
I pray that my Worcester
experiences will continue to be watery as I explore the diocese, but
in the spiritual realms rather than the physical ones, as I see God's
life-giving presence flowing from the people of our churches into our
neighbourhoods.
Ven. Nicki
Groarke
From
the Parish Registers
Christenings
Felicity
Rachel Wright; 9th
February at St. Peter’s, Cookley
Felicity
Amber White; 9th
March at St. Peter’s, Cookley
Funerals
John
Goodall; 13th
December at Wyre Forest Crematorium
Thomas
Clarke; 17th
January at Wyre Forest Crematorium
Jennifer
Ann Cox; 31st
January at St. Peter’s, Cookley
Natalia
Andree Brittain; 6th
February at St. Peter’s, Cookley
Gordon
Thomas Ross; 13th
February at St. John’s, Wolverley & Wyre Forest Crematorium
Lilian
Denise Tompkins of Cookley; 13th
February at Stourbridge Crematorium
Lilian
Mary Edwards of Cookley; 18th
February at Wyre Forest Crematorium
Cynthia
Margaret Male; 6th
March at St. John’s, Wolverley
Dorothy
Edith Pinfold of Cookley; 19th
March at Wyre Forest Crematorium
Pamela
Maud Griffin; 21st
March at St. John’s, Wolverley
