easter 2015

I'm "preaching" at both of my English churches this morning. What I have planned is not really a sermon but more of a discussion-starter. With the help of Vanderbilt's Art in the Christian Tradition database and  Wikimedia Commons  I created a slide-show to go with our Gospel reading. I have an illustration for each sentence - much like a children's picture book. I will introduce this by talking very briefly about celebrations , that an important part of most celebratory gatherings is the talking. We reminisce about the old days; we share our feelings. And so I want us to  celebrate Easter  together by listening to one of the stories of Easter and then sharing our responses to it. I'll read the Gospel, showing the slides, and then I'll ask Jerome W. Berryman's Wondering Questions for Sacred Stories. We'll see how it goes. One service is an all-age service in a large church. I've already drafted one teenager to be a microphone runner for the ba...

BBC photo I was so pleased to see that the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was greeted at the door of Canterbury Cathedral by a young woman, Evangeline Kanagasooriam, rather than the Dean or some other elder churchman, at the start of his inauguration service last week. I wouldn't want to call a 17-year-old a child, but it was certainly newsworthy to have such a young person given such an important role, which included asking the new Archbishop several challenging (scripted) questions. (I have not found any copyright-free photo  of this, so have included only a thumbnail.  Another beautiful photo can be seen here .)

Dear five-year-old , Several weeks ago you asked your parent to ask me, "What is church in England like?" I have been thinking a lot about your question. I go to two churches here. My supervisor (for me to learn about being a priest) is the priest of both of them. The first thing to say is that The Holy Eucharist is the same in England and Finland. We start with the Liturgy of the Word - there are hymns, prayers, readings from the Bible, and a sermon - and then we have the Liturgy of the Sacrament - the priest tells us the story of Jesus' supper with his friends and his words, "This is my body" and "This is my blood". Your parent would know many of our hymns; some you might even recognize from our church . Something different is they only have that communion service every other week; in between they have Morning Prayer. That's kind of like the Evensong services we used to have in the big church , or kind of like the Liturgy of the Word but withou...