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For our Safeguarding Policy please see:
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/47923/view/

For Safeguarding information please see:
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/47925/view/

29/03/2026

Holy Week and Easter 2026.
Look out also for a couple of poscasts on our Youtube channel using art explore the meanings and signifcance of the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

27/03/2026

Sunday 29th March, Palm Sunday
9.00 am Holy Communion (BCP) (said)
10.00 am Parish Eucharist with the Liturgy of the Palms
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

Hosanna. Save us.

The Matthean account of Jesus’s journey to and arrival in Jerusalem indicate this was well organised, and Matthew enriches it with the references to prophecy and psalmody. The excitement is ratchetted up, sentence by sentence, to fever pitch. It is plain to us who know how this week will end that the ‘models’ of ‘Messiahship’ differ between Jesus and his followers. The latter seem to expect some kind of popular revolt, maybe with some violence and fisticuffs.

At the back of our minds may well be the account in John of Jesus before Pilate where Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here” (John 18.12). The struggle is moral and existential not physical, let alone para-military.

This is the tension we have to hold for the next week, through prayer and reflection, through the gestures of Maundy Thursday and the bitter pain of Good Friday. Its release, maybe even more so than in recent years, will be an explosion of joy at the end of our ride on the eternal rollercoaster.
Fr A

Catch the podcast
https://youtu.be/rvGAMHF0_1w

21/03/2026

10.00 am Sunday 22nd March, The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Passiontide begins)
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

Dem bones: hear the word of the Lord.

Without the spirit (or breath, ruach in Hebrew) of God we are nothing. God is love, but we see that God punishes even ‘His’ people for faithlessness. Here they are seen as lifeless bones in a wilderness. At other times, foreign powers –such as the Babylonians—act as foreign agents, placing ‘Israel’ in captivity until it comes to its collective sense, and God restores them. There’s that and timescale. God acts in God’s time to give us what we need, and this includes God in Jesus. It may have seemed cruel of Jesus deliberately to delay his journey to his friends in Bethany so that a more spectacular act than a ‘mere’ healing may be witnessed.
Lazarus may have been raised, but he was still bound, in contrast to the resurrection of Jesus where the burial cloths are abandoned as He leaps from the grave, and as I wrote in Wednesday’s notes this reminds us that we have work to do in removing that which binds us before we die.
The music after communion today reminds us of the gulf that exists between us and God—even in the best of times when we may think we are on message or ‘in sync’ with God’s will. We cannot see things as God sees them. (The fancy phrase for this is ‘epistemic distance.’)
However, as Paul reminds us, the more we live in the Spirit, rather than that which binds us, such as useless worry or the opinions of others, petty jealousies or even greed, the more we are liberated, un-bound and becoming the people God intends us to be. Hear the word of the Lord. Fr A

Link to the podcast: https://youtu.be/Dhsrw5KcEzM

14/03/2026

Sunday 15th March 2026, The Fourth Sunday of Lent aka Mothering Sunday (also Laetare)
10.00 am Sung Eucharist
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/
If you haven;t caught it yet, the podcast which explores motherhood through the Old Testament Readings
https://youtu.be/O3Wl7TgC6Qs

Behold, thy mother.

The options for the Old Testament readings, and the options for the Gospel reading every year are not very joyous. They involve, respectively, separation and tough news. This at odds with the saccharine, commercial Mother’s Day offerings in our shops. It’s a day which many find difficult, maybe even more difficult than Christmas Day, and for more primal reasons.
Despite this, liturgically there must be celebration and joy, to augment our Eucharist of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That needs to be found for all, where it can. Of the art presented in the third Lent podcast, I was most struck by the most modern image, from 1912: a photograph of a tableau, of Hannah presenting Samuel to Eli, fulfilling a promise she made to God. Those who knew nothing of the photographer would not have picked up the message, even in a time when women were fighting for their suffrage in the first couple of decades of the last century.
The image represents agency rather than passivity. In Jochebed (the mother of the boy who was to be named Moses by Pharoah’s daughter), and Hannah, we have the placing of their first-born, in these instances, into the hands of God, using human agents. God continues to prove His being in the examples of remarkable human beings, which we all are even if we are not well-known. Today we celebrate how God is known through women who happen to be mothers. Fr A.

12/03/2026

In anticpation of Mothering Sunday, the third podcast in our Lent series. This one looks at two mothers from the Old Testament - and there's a bit of history and art appreciation in it too.
Here's the link to our YouTube page, where you can find the previous podcasts - and some from a long time ago. Remember COVID?
https://www.youtube.com/

07/03/2026

10.00 am Sung Eucharist, Sunday 8th March 2026, The Third Sunday of Lent
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

Ho, everyone who thirsts.

The image is Jacob’s Well as it looks today (well, February 2017 when the Rector was on pilgrimage in the Holy Land). This is Jacob as in ‘Jacob and sons’ (think Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat) which means this is a very ancient site indeed, and also the location of the encounter between Christ and the woman at the well.

Today the well would be described as being on the outskirts of Nablus, which, in 2017, was still a very vibrant Palestinian town, sadly more recently bedevilled with violence between the ancient Arab community and Israeli settlers. The water was very refreshing; the well is deep, drunk by pilgrims from all over the world, regardless of any doctrinal differences there may be between them and the present-day custodians of the site, the Greek Orthodox.

This place, established by Jacob, a common ancestor of the Jews and Samaritans of Jesus’s day is still a place of tension. Jesus’s wisdom and authority then as now transcends all this, as it does everywhere. It illustrates that the way forward is sometimes to follow the examples of those who are outside the restrictive ‘clicks’ of the established/official religion of the day.

Fr A

05/03/2026

The latest Lent podcast, "Living Water" is up as of yesterday 6..00 pm. Using art and music we look at the Old Testament reading, "Moses strikes the Rock at Horeb", and the Gospel reading "Jesus and the woman at the well".
https://youtu.be/AtD2KxearGg
Each new episode 'drops' on Wednesdays at 6.00 pm.

27/02/2026

Sunday 1st March 2026, The Second Sunday of Lent
10.00 am Parish Sung Eucharist
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

What's my line?
I think we can all have some empathy with Nicodemus. After all it must be baffling to be on the receiving end of all these riddles. I don’t think St John intends to be unkind in using him as a ‘fall-guy’ for the Pharisees and the religious establishment which seeks to do away with Jesus. He appears twice more in benign roles and participates in a respectful and generous way after the Crucifixion. Maybe had had been born a second time, from above, after all.
Tearing up the rule book or instruction-manual is a radical act. Where do we go for guidance? It’s our faith in God and obedient response to God’s word when God speaks to us, which is one way of describing our conscience or our psyche. However, we’re not Abram/Abraham or St Paul.
Those of you who have been in plays will know the panic that can set in during the technical and dress runs when there are no scripts, let alone on the opening night. There is the comfort of the prompt who can get us back on track. However, life is not the reiteration of a fixed script, and is more like an improvisation which is underpinned by some principles with generosity built in. If we forget these, for whatever reason, our prompt comes from prayer, and thus from above. Fr A
Image Christus und Nicodemus, by Fritz von Uhde (1848–1911)

It's not too late to see the podcast which talks about images associated with 'from on high'. Just follow the link: https://youtu.be/6DcKVc0qaBE

25/02/2026

Dear Friends,
The first episode of our Lent Course 'drops' this evening at 6.00 pm. The theme is "It comes from above". I hope you enjoy it. The first episode is my first attempt at video-editing, so please be kind!
To accompany the series on YouTube there is a panel on A Church Near You, which will be updated each week. A synopsis of the podcast will be available as a pdf, including thumbnails used of the images on screen. The text of the synopsis is also available in the description box of the video.
I hope you enjoy them. I enjoyed editing the first one, and I will get quicker at it!
The link to A Church Near You is here: https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/98040/view/
The link to the video is here: https://youtu.be/6DcKVc0qaBE
Many blessings,
Fr A

20/02/2026

Sunday 22nd February, The First Sunday in Lent
BCP Sunday
9.00 am Holy Communion (said)
10.00 am Holy Communion (sung)

https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

Always let your conscience be your guide?

The Old Testament reading and Gospel were written long, long before the “invention” of psychology, but they give a very good account of what underpins the human condition, and an indication of what conscience is. Adam and Eve gave in to temptation; the Second Adam, Jesus Christ does not. Elsewhere, Paul highlights the good that we want to do but don't. What is it that causes that block? Is it the Devil? Is it evidence for Original Sin. I don't often use this question, but sometimes it’s a useful one: when faced with a dilemma, what would Jesus do? Evidence suggests it would be to seek the most just outcome even if it’s at great personal cost. How sacrificial are we prepared to be?
Fr A.
Image C12 mosaic, St Mark’s Venice

18/02/2026

Late call with apologies!
The Eucharist with Imposition of Ashes
7.30 pm this evening, Ash Wednesday

14/02/2026

Sunday 15th February, The Sunday Next before Lent
10.00 am Parish Sung Eucharist

https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

As good as it can be. Work needed.

The Sunday before Advent is the splendour of Christ the King; before Lent it is the ‘Wow’ and mystery of The Transfiguration. You have had twelve years of sermons from me on this. It is with very mixed feelings I say that this year there is even more need to bring to earth something which is as good as it can be, which is pretty much what ‘transfiguration’ means. It also means even more prayer and a very busy Lent in that department.
I hope you can make some time to engage with the themes of Lent ( see p 15 ) so that we too can be transformed and transfigured in our faith.
Fr A

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M401LR

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https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/

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