Tale of Two Parishes

5:45 am Easter Morning: The world is asleep, but as dawn breaks in Chafford Hundred, around a dozen faithful gather outside the church. Plenty of mixed murmurs and people saying: "You couldn't sleep either then," and "the Lord is risen, he is risen indeed."

Flowers in the church at Chafford

Over the road, the staff at Tesco are arriving and opening up for business, for many people Easter is the first break of the year. A full four days of not working and a chance to catch up on sleep, family life and D.I.Y.

For us at All Saints' Church, and it would seem Tesco, it is business as usual.

There is a real danger that we are so caught up in our business, it becomes business for the sake of it and we get stuck in a rut and forget the greater purpose of our activity.

The cost of Easter, of the passion, and the cross is huge and the message of Easter divides and offends as many as it unites.

So, it was with a little controversy that after our Passover meal (which included the Eucharist alongside more traditional prayers from the Hebrew prayer book for the Commonwealth) the altar was stripped.

The cross was dressed with a crown of thorns and a purple robe, the crucifix was veiled and the church took on a very moving and sombre feel.

Poster

The controversy was over a wonderful poster in the front window of the church, it looked like a body piercing window display advertising the cost of different types of body modification!

In one corner was a hand with a nail being driven through it and the tag line: "Some piercings cost more than others." 

The poster is saying at the heart of life is pain and the ability to submit to pain and in some ways conquer it.

The power and strength comes in the midst of submission to weakness and powerlessness. 

At the very moment when in worldly terms Christ was powerless, he actually held all the cards, and was able to change the history of humanity. Through perfect sacrifice, the gift of relationship with God is freely given.

Isaac Watts said not all the blood of rams on ancient atlas slain is a sacrifice as beautiful as this.

We live in an age of icon, of stereotype, of litigation. We seek to blame, to wallow in pain rather than let it strengthen and empower us. To endure torture and yet overcome and forgive is so much more powerful than to become lost in the iconisation of past pain.

If you were shocked by our Easter poster, or for that matter any other aspect of Lent or Easter in Chafford Hundred, please search your soul and ask why? 

Window at the front of All Saints'

During Lent we let the films 'Chocolat' and 'Stigmata', and the Michael Arditti book 'Easter', move us as a church into, at times, uncomfortable places. It was in each of these creative works, God using the ordinary and the unlikely despite their weakness, which heralded change and transformation.

We were left with many questions about why we judge and how we judge each other, how we see ourselves and how we need to develop new spiritual eyes!

As we waited for the sun and the son to rise over Chafford Hundred early on Easter morning, we were met with, not only the dawn opening of shops on Easter Sunday, but a deep and thick fog through which we could see no sunshine.

Easter Sunday

During the main Easter Sunday service I talked of seeing the world through new eyes, the eyes of the resurrection, the eyes with which Christ saw the world afresh as he rose from the dead on that first Easter morning.

Ten years ago I was finishing my masters degree dissertation, exploring 'Icons of Pastoral Care in Early 21st Century Soho'. In the middle of my research a nail bomb went off in the middle of the Admiral Duncan pub in old Compton Street, with much resulting injury and death.

April is the 10th anniversary of that bomb; for some it will be a day of sadness, but for others a day of change, of forgiveness, empoweremt and celebration.

It was interesting that even after the bomb, the space just along above the pub continued to be a gay and lesbian safe space. From the ashes of despair come the phoenix of new life.

Sometimes we need to have faith and believe in the powerful yet unseen sun/son which rises above the fog and clouds of our doubt and unbelief.

Father Alex Gowing-Cumber

We now move into an exiting new phase in Chafford Hundred as we pull out all the stops to bring the whole community together. In recent months we have had the joy of welcoming members of the Sikh faith to worship with us, we have also enjoyed new links with the Muslim Association of Thurrock and their help in establishing a regular coffee morning for all local women.

On June 27th and 28th we are having a cultural diversity weekend and have started to invite people from a number of backgrounds to take part.

Please do contact me if you have a group who would like to be a part in this great celebration.

Remembering the past

This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the pulling down of the Berlin Wall.

I remember the year before it came down going to see Steve Flashman in concert and the words of the song wave to me over the wall ('Before you can run you must learn how to fall').

A team or a community is only ever as strong as its weakest member, my hope this spring is that we are strong enough in Chafford Hundred to fall into and embrace each other's insecurities.

As we do this I pray that we discover again the Christ who in weakness and submission, showed us where the true strength and power at the heart of life is to be found.