Our Parish Church

You have just stepped inside our

parish church. If you are free to walk
around you can have a look at
everything. But perhaps you are here
when the service is going on. So
there are two moments when you
come into this church. You can either
look at the building without the
worship. Or you are in the middle of
the worship, and you can only hear
what we are singing but cannot see
much. You can either hear the
sounds or you can see the sights.
Whichever way, the church itself,
and everything in it, is a message to
us from all previous generations of
Christians in this town.
Let us start by saying what you see
first.
This church is long and thin, with a
path up the middle. The church is a
model of the Christian life, and the
Christian life is a long journey. This
central aisle is our route. As we walk
up this way we learn that we are
travelling along behind many other
people, and that they are following
the Lord Jesus Christ. He is taking
them and us with him. Many other
people keep us company on this
pilgrimage, and the Lord leads us
from the front and keeps us together.
Many of the psalms we sing tell us
that the Christian life is like walking
along a path. It is not easy to see the
way, but if you follow the Lord, you
can keep going the right way, one
step at a time. God's word always
lights up the next step. Your word is
a lantern to my feet and a light to my
path, says Psalm 119. Without it, it
is easy to turn off the path by
mistake and lose your way.
The main part of this long church
building is called the nave. Nave

comes from navis, the Latin word

for boat. You can see that the roof
looks like the inside of a boat.
Imagine you see an old fishing boat
hauled up on a beach and turned
over. If you crawled in under the
boat, it would look like this roof.
The church is like a boat. An old word
for boat is ark. It is taking us across
the seas, through the storms. The
people of Israel knew that seas can
rage out of control, so they used the
word sea as another way of saying
rage or violent. This church is the
ark that will get us through that
storm.
In some churches you see the altar
right in front of you, but in our long
church you have to look through a
great wooden screen and the chancel
to see it.
You go up the middle aisle of the
nave and you get to this large
wooden lattice with an entrance in
the middle. This is the rood screen.
Rood sounds like root but it means
the whole trunk of a tree. The wood
of this cross is a vast living tree, with
growing branches that stretch across
our way. This tree is the cross on
which Jesus was crucified, and you
are standing at the foot of this cross.
You can see a cross up above you
and under it the words By thy cross
and passion deliver us. The whole
wooden structure is a tree that is
budding and bursting into life. This is
the tree of life. All humanity are
branches that grow out of the one
central trunk, and Jesus is that trunk.
So you step through the tree that is
also the cross, and inside is the
sanctuary. Sanctuary means holy.
It is a garden. It is the Garden of
Eden, but now Eden is being

redeemed, so it is decorated like

paradise. The walls and floor and
ceiling have a flower-and-tendril
pattern that has been copied all over
every wall and wood surface in the
Church. Everything is budding and
growing. The new growth has started
up here but it is spreading out from
here all around the Church, and from
the Church it will spread back out
into the world.
This place is also known as the choir.
On each side there are benches,
which tells us that the people of God
are a choir, or two choirs, one on
each side. One choir sings, and then
the other choir sings in reply and so
there is a kind of conversation, just
as there in heaven. When you look
up you can see that angels, carved
and painted on the rafters, are
holding up the roof. Each angel holds
a scroll with words of the hymn
Glory to God in the highest, so
you can read, or sing and peace
to his people on earth, as you walk
round, following the song from one
angel to the next.
When you look back into the nave,
the main bit of the church, you see
that the big stone pillars are also like
trees, like the olive trees under which
the Lord gave the gospel to the
disciples on the Mount of Olives,
where the Garden of Gethsemane is.
So the whole church is a model of
the redeemed creation. And it is a
message to us from all the Christians
of this place over many centuries. It
is good, they say, good news of
great joy. Pass it on, they say, pass
it on.
At the top of the sanctuary is the
altar and a step where we kneel to
receive communion. Communion is
what happens when the whole
congregation of people comes
together in the morning on Sunday.
Of course some people come in here

every day in the morning and again

in the evening. They continue the
worship of the Church, which never
stops, even though we may not hear
it. But communion, also known as
fellowship, is the togetherness of
the Church that meets once a week
at the Eucharist. When the Lord Jesus
is present, so is the whole Church.
Church means gathering. The
Church itself is standing in for the
whole creation, so each gathering of
Christians is the first instalment of all
creation. One day all the fragments
will be gathered up and fitted
together, and will find their true
place in the whole unbroken creation
of God. When all the broken pieces fit
each other everything will be
mended. God now calls all the piece
together, and the first pieces that
arrive are the people who meet here,
and in every other church. Together
they are the sign that God is at work
bringing things together and
reconciling them so that they not at
war with each other any longer. But
meanwhile, there is a difficult
process of getting used to being with
these people. Why are they all so
different from me, you may ask? The
answer is, that they are so because
they are God's challenge to you. He
gives them to you as a present, and
you have to learn how to value them.
Can you do it? Yes, within this holy
communion, you can.
But why is it so complicated, you
ask? Why isnt it simpler? Well, many
churches are quite simple, with plain
white walls. But Christians are always
trying to tell you the gospel as
simply as they can. And so they tend
to draw you a picture that puts the
gospel plainly and simply. Once all
churches were decorated with
painted scenes from the bible on the
walls. Each picture was simple
enough. Many of them show you
Jesus healing or helping someone, or

show you a parable. Here you can

see a picture of King David and
another of the Good Samaritan.
Then, five hundred years ago many
Christians decided that there were so
many images in each church that
they could no longer be understood.
The simple message of the gospel
was being lost in the clutter. So they
whitewashed over the images, took
out all the reminders of the saints,
and churches became quite simple
again. Christians believed that this
would make it easier to hear the
news of the gospel when the bible
was read out loud. That would also
make it easier for us to read the bible
for ourselves.
But Christians always create pictures
because people always ask for
something simple. Though we left
the walls plain, we continued making
pictures on the glass of the windows.
Hundreds of little pieces of coloured
glass are put together to create
pictures of the Lord and the apostles
and scenes from the bible. That way
we can also see what we are
listening to.
At the back of the Church on the
right the window has a picture that
shows you the Eucharist. What you
see in this picture, you also see on
Sunday morning when the priest
holds up the bread and cup. There is
Jesus in the middle, holding the
round loaf and a cup, about to share
them with us. He is going to let us
into this loaf. He has gathered us and
all the other broken pieces of
creation to make this one, perfect
loaf. Now he calls this loaf his body.
He shows it to us and then he shares
it with us. He breaks it open so that
we can come in, and become part of
this body of his.
On one side is his mother Mary, on
the left as you look up, and Mary
Magdalene who is holding the

ointment with which she anointed

the Lord. Both Marys are looking at
the Lord and then at us. It is the
same with all the apostles: We just
follow their eyes and see the love in
the expression on their faces. The
same with all the apostles; they look
at the Lord and we follow their eyes.
And the Lord? He looks at us, and
then he looks up to his Father and
hold us up. If he didn't hold us we
might run away. You see it is simple,
in a way.
So this is some background about
what you can see in this church
building when it is quiet. Now we
need to say what is going on when
the church is gathered on Sunday
morning and it is not quiet at all.

The Church Service

On Sunday morning everybody
comes to worship the Lord together
here. We call this into holy
communion or the Eucharist.
The service begins In the name of
the Father Son and Holy Spirit. This
Father is Our Father, because his
Son, Jesus has become our Lord. We
say publicly that we are the Lords
people, Jesuss people. We tell the
world that we are the people who
belong to this Lord, the true master,
who is our Father. We don't give our
time to any of the many little
masters who bother everyone else
in the world so much.
In Church as we pray to him, we
come close to the Lord. We ask the
Lord if we may enter his presence.
We are only able to ask because we
know that we may enter, and we
have entered and we stand before
him. He has come to us, and by his
Holy Spirit we can stand here, right
in front of him. A similar prayer later
is called the prayer of humble
access, which describes the
situation.
3

The Ministry of the Word

We come because the Lord called us.
Now we hear his call to us in the
scripture. In the next stage four
passages from the bible are read out,
or sung out loud. Everybody in the
bible is telling us to get ready for the
arrival of the Lord, and so they are
saying that we should shoo off all the
other little lords who try to get in the
way.
The first passage comes from the Old
Testament, which means from the
patriarchs and prophets of the
people of Israel. They explain and
encourage and warn us, in order to
prepare us for what is coming up.
Even when things were going wrong
for them, the people of Israel were
passing on their experience to us
and so acting as Gods witnesses to
us.
Then we read a psalm, which
responds to what the Old Testament
reading has told us. Someone sings
the psalm and we all sing one line of
it as our response. Then we read
from the New Testament, starting
with an epistle, a letter written by
one of the apostles, very often Saint
Paul, to one of the churches. Then we
all sing a hymn which is some
version of the psalm or repeats the
message of the psalm, or is our own
glad response to that message.
Then the priest reads from the
Gospel. We get to our feet because
we treat the Gospel as the arrival of
the Lord himself. The priest should
read that Gospel so slowly and
clearly that everyone in the building
should not only be able to hear it,
but to learn it, as he delivers it
phrase by phrase. Imagine that no
one had a bible of their own, and the
only way to receive the bible, is by
learning it off by heart as you hear it,
week by week. That is how we should

hear the Gospel. We have to chew on

that lesson from the Gospel all week,
because we have nothing else to live
on, nothing nourishing anyway.
So one witness responds to another,
and one part of the bible replies to
another. The Old Testament
prophets speak and the New
Testament apostles reply. And we
reply too, at the very least with our
Thanks be to God and our Amen.
And so week by week the Lord gives
us this great chorus of witnesses and
they give us the Lords message to
us.
The Lord always introduces us to new
people. Some of them, like the
apostles and other Christians, are
clearly on our side. But some of
whom seem to be against us. We
have to learn from the Christians
how to cope with those who are
unhappy and at war with themselves,
are also at war with us, and with
everyone else around them. Our
Christian life comes as a series of
friends and companions. And it
comes as a series of bruising
meetings with unhappy people.
Some of them try to push you
around, or frighten you or lash out at
you in some way. It is a struggle with
people who don't want us and don't
want anything we can give them. It is
a long trek through unpopularity and
other peoples grief. It is a way of
glory and at the same time it is the
way of the cross.
The bible prepares us for this by
introducing us both to Jesus
disciples, and to those who hate him.
It gives us both, at the same time. So
our life following Jesus is described to
us by the gospel and the other
passages we read each Sunday of
the year. You don't just get one
picture of the Lord. You get a new
picture of him each Sunday. As these
images flip past us we get a sort of

old-fashioned jerky movie of the Lord

moving along in front of us. We see
the disciples and all the Christians in
front of us hurrying to keep up with
him. And we get better at keeping
up, and we get better at telling who
is following Jesus and who is just
trying to get between us and him,
and so getting in the way.
The bible is read, and then the priest
gets up to open the passage for us.
His job is just to say what is there, so
we can see our own next step. That
means he should repeat each
sentence in it and say the same
thing again in different words. Then
he can connect it to the other
readings and to last weeks gospel,
so we can see how we have moved
on since last week. As I say, the best
thing is simply to learn the passage
off by heart.
Your priest is to administer the Word
and Sacrament. In other words, his
job is to stand there behind the great
pot of lamb stew, and to push his
ladle down to the bottom and give
you everything that comes up. Your
job is to say Give us more meat,
Father, or Give us more gravy,
Father. Leave nothing out. The
Gospel is the meat and the fat and
the onion and all the herbs rosemary, bay, sage, each week a
slightly different taste. Herb means
bitter. The gospel tastes bitter,
fiery, sweet too sometimes, but it
always is full of the goodness that
goes down deep and makes you
strong from the inside out. Tell the
priest that you are going to need that
nourishment to toughen you ready
for what is coming. Tell him that is
job is not to entertain you and not
even to please you. His job is just to
look into the bible and then look into
your face and see what you need,
and without being afraid of your
reaction, to give it to you, holding
nothing back.

Christ gives us his message. He tells

us who we are and who he is. And all
these people we meet in the
scripture are part of the message to
us. Of course we don't understand
them or like them all straight off. The
Lord shows us what is true, and what
is not, and we receive this as
knowledge. So that is the ministry of
the Word.

Confession
Next come prayers and
intercessions, and then confession.
We make our confession, that is, we
say what we need but do not have,
or what we cannot do or have not
done. We put together is all those
things that have gone missing, or
somehow got broken, dropped and
left behind. These includes all those
times when you said or did too much,
for instance, shouting, when it would
have been enough to tell them, or
even better, not to have told them.
You went too far? Thats a trespass.
You didn't go far enough? We call
that a sin. Its whatever was left out
but shouldnt have been.
During the week we can get bruised,
and then we sometimes lash out and
give each other bruises. Not real
ones, but the hurt is inside. But in
the mass we exchange the kiss of
peace. That is, we ask one another
for forgiveness and we do forgive
one another. We give one another
the hug that came from God, and
which brought us together in the first
place. We share the handshake of
forgiveness around the church.
Everyone there recognises that
everyone else has received
forgiveness from the Lord, so we
must add our forgiveness too. With
this handshake we publicly make

peace with those around us in the

Church and this tells the rest of world
that the same truth-telling and the
same forgiveness are available for
everyone. We Christians take the
accusations, true and false, that the
world throws at us, and we swallow
them down, along with all the hurt
that caused them. There is no place
to hide from the hard words of God.
They are true, and they will find us,
and it is a relief when they do.

very gently nudging sin out all the

time.

We are sorry. Well, sometimes we are

not sorry, but, if we carry all this
unfinished business around it gets
heavier and we will be sorry about
that at least. You shouldnt try to get
used to the weight of it, though you
see so many people trying to. So
many people try to make out their
sins are just normal and they don't
ever want to be parted from them.
But these sins are crumpling them up
like a slow illness, and the effort of
not saying so is making everyone
around them ill too. No. You want to
get rid of it. You want to dump it
somewhere. But where? I know. The
best place is at the altar when you
go up at the Eucharist.

God is holy. And God makes us holy.

Being with God, which is what the
mass is, makes us holy. And so the
elements at the centre of the mass,
known as sacraments, make us holy.
God himself does the work here, and
he uses whatever is to hand to make
us holy. Eventually all creation will be
caught up into this work, and all
creation will become holy. But here
and now, in the mass, the first
instalments of this holy creation are
bread and wine. Jesus told us to
break bread and drink this wine, and
so we do.

Go up to the altar and the moment

you reach the altar rail flip the whole
lot off your shoulder with a kind of
shrug and let it all shoot out. It will
disappear deep down under the altar
into Gods forgiveness and it won't
come back up. Then you can skip
back the way you came. This may
not mean very much to you at the
moment, because your sins are so
small they wouldnt wet a paper bag.
But as you get older, everything gets
heavier.
But we can simply dump all these
sins. They stop being ours. They are
Jesuss problem, and that means
they are no problem at all. So sin
removed, and it is replaced with
holiness. In fact it is holiness that is

Ministry of the Sacrament

Now we get to the Ministry of the
Sacrament, the Eucharist itself. It
starts something like this:
Blessed are you, Lord of creation. Of
your goodness we have this bread to
offer, which earth has given and
human hands have made.

The Holy Spirit is making us his holy

people. He set to work on us at our
baptism (or perhaps long before, but
we didn't know about it) and he been
at work on us ever since. As you look
back you can sometimes see how
this happened in different stages,
and confirmation is one of these. We
could call the Spirits work
sanctification holy-making. In
old English we used to say that the
Spirit is hallowing us. Hallow is the
same word as halo and holy.
All this means that Jesus stands
before the Father, speaking with him
on our behalf, saying the things, like
Thank You, that we would say if we
could. And he asks the Father to
overlook and forgive what is missing,
and then he just supplies whatever
that is. Jesus puts himself between
us and our sins, and puts his own

body between us and those who are

trying to harm us, to shield us by
taking their blows himself. He lifts us
up and holds us up, just as parents
do, just as he is carrying that lamb
on his shoulders in that window over
the altar. Your parents raise you over
many years, and sometimes they
just pick you up and put you on their
shoulders like that. They can do this,
because in the background Jesus
raises us all up, and keeps us there
between him and the Father.
Jesus shares his life with us. This is
the life he shares with the Father.
Together they break off little pieces
of that life and pass them to us. They
give us their life in instalments. But
they don't just put each piece into
our hands and leave us there holding
it. How would we know what to do
next? They put it into us, just as you
put milk into a baby, or just as you
would blow air into someone who
couldnt breathe for themselves.
That milk and that air do what is
necessary; our bodies know what to
do with them, or that milk and that
air know what to do to get our bodies
going again. Jesus has breathed his
Spirit into us and that Spirit puts in
us some of what he shares with his
Father. Their relationship, or their
holy communion, is what they are
putting into us, and what they are
raising us up into. It revives us. We
are able to live within this
communion of theirs, and cant live
without it. For now, each little piece
of that communion each sacrament
prepares us to receive the next
piece, so we are slowly brought up
into the whole communion. They are
bringing us into their company just
as you could (and one day, will) bring
someone into your home and life.
The Lord does not just put holy
things into our hands. He also puts
us into situations in which you find
that you know what to do with these

holy gifts, even though you have

never done it before. With them you
learn new skills. All the skills used
well together add up to what we call
Christian service or Christian love.
Sacraments give us the gifts and
skills of the Spirit. So now, looking
back at the ministry of the word, we
can say that Gods word and
scripture are not just knowledge
about God and about us. It is also
fuel that powers us along, further
and further into Gods great
assembly.
The Father and the Son between
them know we are not ready not
holy yet and they work to make us
ready. When they have finished, and
each of us is ready, they will declare
that we are holy. So meantime Jesus
works on us, to make-us-holy. His
holy-making is his sacrifice. This is
his work. He dedicates himself
entirely to it, and we can say that it
costs him everything, and he pays
whatever it costs. It is all at his
expense, and if it leaves him with
nothing, still he will go through with
it until it is all done. But at the end,
we will be holy, and the Father and
Son will decide that we are worth
their effort, and we will be quite
amazed.
Communion
We go up to the altar to receive
communion. When you go up to the
altar with everyone else you all form
a line, moving slowly forward up the
aisle. At that moment you can see
that we have all set out on a long
walk that continues as long as our
lifetime, and which takes us on a trek
through the world. We are going
through the desert with the people of
God, led by the Lord who we can only
see as a distant column of fire and
smoke ahead of us. Mostly what we
see is the long column of people in
front of us.

You are following the Lord, just as the

children of Israel did. You can
practise that long walk in glory but
through shame every Eucharist.
The line of pilgrims only appears for
a minute, and no one points it out.
But you can know that you are
always safe in the middle of that line,
because Jesus has pioneered the
route, lots of Christians saints
have followed and they now show
you the route. And lots of Christians
will follow you, and they will be
thankful because you keep the Lord
Jesus in your viewfinder and so you
show them the way too.
Standing before the Lord
In every church we look for the Lord
Jesus where the altar is. He is our
king and he is enthroned here.
Sometimes the bible tells us that the
earth is his footstool, and the altar is
a little version of that footstool. All
around the altar is white and gold,
reflecting back to us the rather
dazzling future glory of heaven. But
when all this light doesn't blaze out
at us too much, we can make out the
Lord and Mary and the disciples, and
behind them, all the Lords people.
All of them are pointing out the Lord
for us. In this church, above the
altar, in the window, we see the Lord,
with the lamb across his shoulders,
St Peter on the left, St Paul on the
right. Above them there is the Holy
Spirit, portrayed as a dove. He
hovers over creation, keeping the
covenant of God which protects us
all, and he comes down to us to bring
us into his holy communion. And
that is a pelican, who feeds his
children from the blood she takes
from her own breast.
When we see the priest in the mass
we see where Jesus is. Jesus puts our
priest and servers there, so we look
in the right direction, even though
we cant make Jesus out. On either

side of the priest are two servers

who help us to focus on the right
place. They are doing the job of the
angels, framing the view of Christ in
the middle, like a range-finder. When
it is talking about the angels in the
most holy place in the temple, the
Old Testament calls them the
Cherubim. All angels sing, Holy, holy,
holy and we join in with them.
So we see Jesus twice at least. Once
in the image of Jesus portrayed
above the altar (or maybe on the
cross on the altar), and once in the
priest who stands at the altar. But
without these images, we don't see
Jesus yet. We are not ready. But he is
making us ready.
Remember the blind man in the
Gospel of Mark (8.24) who said he
could only see stick-men, like trees
walking around? Remember how
difficult it was for the disciples on the
way to Emmaus to realise who they
were looking at? Jesus and everyone
around him are still completely blurry
to us. It is as if we can sometimes
make out their outline, but mostly
only see the brilliance without being
able to see who it is who shines that
brightly.
The priest looks like any other
Christian. He wears the dull-coloured
clothes of poverty (because in
theory, only rich people wear bright
colours). But in the Eucharist, he
puts on the bright white garment of
the holiness that God is spreading
over all of us. God lends us his
holiness, and since he doesn't ask for
it back, it stays with us, and the Holy
Spirit always tops it up for us. So the
priest becomes one of the holy
things, just like the bread and wine.
As this bread and wine become holy,
and we receive them, we become
holy. Of course this takes our whole
lifetime and more. But in the
Eucharist the priest, along with all

the other elements and the prayers,

is a true-to-life portrait of our own
future holiness. Sometimes the priest
is dressed in the green of creation,
with gold, reminding us that man is
placed in creation in order to look
after it, and that creation will be
redeemed and glorious, just as we
will. So even the vestments of altar
and priest tell us about our own
future.
We will see Jesus as he really is, and
we will be like him, and we will shine
like that too. And sometimes, when
others see us, they may get a
glimpse of that future glory.
Sometimes they like the look of that
glory, and sometimes they turn away
from it. We cant see it when we look
at each other, and yet, in the
Eucharist, we can learn to see each
other as we will be, when we are all
made holy and this glory shines
through each of us too.
Holy, holy, holy
We are at the doorway into heaven.
We can hear the singing and make
out some of the words. We stand
before the Lord and he speaks to us,
and he does so through these many
voices. And we hear what they are
singing and saying in heaven, and
we are able to join in. Everybody is
there. There are out there, in a place
that is wide open. We are still stuck
here in a smaller space, but this is
good because we are not yet ready
for life out there in that much bigger
place. It is too much for us, and there

is no point in sending us out there

before we are strong enough for it.
Our confinement here is preparing us
for the time when we are ready, just
as splashing around in the shallow
end means you the getting ready for
the deep end, and that one day you
will be ready for the sea.
What do you see in the service when
church is full of people? You see
people. You see them from behind,
and some of them see you from
behind. We see people who are
ahead of us; they started out before
us, and now they are older, they
have got a bit further. We look to
them for their experience. So in the
service the Lord surrounds us with
people and always presents us with
new ones.
At the exchange of peace they will
come and shake your hand and at
the end they will introduce
themselves to you. Then you can ask
them what they are doing here. Ask
them why they come. Ask them
something about the service. Ask
them what their favourite bit is and
why they like it. Ask them which their
favourite hymn is. You are too shy?
You are afraid that you don't know
anything and will sound silly? Don't
be. They will probably be glad you
asked your question. They may be as
shy as you are, but they will glad if
you ask them a question.
So what do you think of our parish
church now?