Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and Lent

Pancake Party
St Catherine’s Hall
Tuesday 17th February

Drop in between 2.30pm and 4pm or stay all afternoon and help raise funds for St Catherine’s tower restoration.

£5 to include 2 pancakes and tea or coffee

Gluten free available on request

Names before 15th February please

Pay on the day

Ash Wednesday (18 February)

Eucharists with the imposition of ashes will be held at 10.30 am at St Andrew's Wickford and at 8.00 pm at St Mary's Runwell.

Lent Course - Who Is My Neighbour?

A course from St Martin-in-the-Fields in conjunction with the National Gallery, exploring Art and the Bible Story. We are offering this six week course from week commencing 23rd February. The final week will be decided by each group. Lent Course groups are meeting on Tuesday and Thursday evening at 7.30 pm and on Thursday afternoon at 2.00 pm. Email to jonathan.evens@btinternet.com if joining a group would be of interest.

Stations of the Cross

A set of Stations of the Cross by the late Valerie Dean have been installed at St Andrew's Wickford for Lent and Holy Week. We will pray these Stations during Holy Week.

Valerie's Stations of the Cross have a very clear and intense focus on details which are evocative of the whole. They have previously been shown at St Martin-in-the-Fields and the Diocesan Offices of the Diocese of Chelmsford.

Valerie Dean returned to England in the summer of 2007 after living for 27 years in Belgium. There, she studied art for six years and had various exhibitions, in and around Brussels. On returning to England, she became involved in the Kent arts scene and exhibited, regularly, in the Francis Iles gallery, in Rochester. She also took part in the Canterbury Arts Festival and exhibitions in Whitstable.

She worked in acrylics and her technique was usually to put materials and colours on canvas or board, to see what emerged. It was a dialogue between the artist and her materials. Because of her background, this often consisted of figures around a religious theme. They just appeared! Very often, people seemed to want to appear in her paintings, a little like the pictures in the fire that she used to see in her childhood. At other times, she found that buildings and places she knew inspired her.

See also 'Fear not, for I am with you: An exhibition of religious paintings by David Sowerby'
9 January – 3 April 2026
St Andrew’s Church, 11 London Road, Wickford SS12 0AN

St Andrew’s is usually open: Sat 9am-12.30pm; Sun 9.30am-12 noon; Mon 2-3.45pm; Tue 1-4.30pm; Wed 10am-12 noon; Fri 10am-1pm. https://wickfordandrunwellparish.org.uk/whats-on.html

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Emmylou Harris - Prayer In Open D.

No league tables for sin

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Catherine's Wickford:

Do you remember the story Jesus told of the Pharisee and tax collector praying in the synagogue (Luke 18. 9-14)? The Pharisee prayed, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector’. The tax collector prayed, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ Jesus said that it was this man that went down to his home justified, rather than the other. The prayer of the tax collector opened him up to reality – the reality of who he really was – while the prayer of the Pharisee was an exercise in unreality because it was designed to make him look better than he was by comparison with others.

In today's Gospel reading (Luke 13: 1-9), something similar is happening as the story told to Jesus about the Galileans was supposed to demonstrate that their sins had been particularly bad. The belief, at the time, was that bad ends or outcomes were equated to severity of sin. This carried over into experiences in life perceived to be particularly difficult, such as disability. People attempted to identify the particular sin in someone's life that had resulted in the disability, as when Jesus was asked whether it was a man's own sin or that of his parents that had caused the blindness experienced by a man who met Jesus (John 9. 1-12). Jesus said that his blindness was nothing to do with sin at all.

These stories show the extent to which we can come to think of God as a kind of old-fashioned headteacher keeping a record of our sins on a chalkboard and marking some sins as particularly reprehensible and, therefore, deserving of greater punishment. Sometimes we think of God in this way because, like the Pharisee, we want to say ‘I'm alright, Jack!’ meaning it's other people that are the problem and, sometimes, we do it because, like those in the other two stories, we want to identify particular sins done by particular people as being particularly bad.

Jesus is having none of it. God doesn't keep league tables for sins, the challenges we face in life are not punishments inflicted on us by God for particular sins, and we all are sinners. The fact that we are all sinners is the fundamental reality that we need to face and all attempts to grade sins are simply distractions and deflections from facing that core reality.

Lent is an annual opportunity to reflect on that reality. That's why, on Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent, the sign of the cross is marked on our foreheads and we are told to turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ. The prayers and practices of Lent exist to open us to reality. Their words of penitence urge us to face the truth about our sins and their impact on others.

We receive the sign of the cross because it is the sign of God's enduring love for us, despite our sin which nails his Son to the cross. It is because God's love for us is deeper than the effects of sin that we can turn to him and know forgiveness and live changed lives.

That is the point of the parable that Jesus tells in response to those who come to tell him about the Galileans. In the story, the vineyard owner wants to get rid of the fig tree which is not bearing fruit, but the gardener says to give it another chance.

The imagery of trees and fruit was regularly used by Jesus in his teaching. His followers are chosen and appointed to bear fruit, so fruitfulness is the overall aim and he tells and enacts parables of fig trees which don’t bear fruit being given further opportunities to become fruitful.

So, God is the one in this story wanting to give the barren tree a new opportunity to flourish. That is what Jesus wants for our lives and what he endured the cross to show; there are no depths to which God will not go to enable us to turn from our sins and be faithful to him. And that means, too, that there is no league table of sins with some being worse than others. We are all sinners and are all in need of the second chances that God provides to turn from our sin.

How do we do this? Like the fig tree which if it doesn’t bear figs is not being fruitful in the way it was created to be, so we need to become authentically the people that God created us to be. David Runcorn argues that if “we define sin solely in terms of wrong actions or thoughts, we trivialise it [and] our diagnosis does not go deep enough.” He says that the Pharisees trivialised sin in this way by being pedantically obsessed “with external standards of behaviour” and that that is why “Jesus furiously castigated and mocked the religion of his day.”

Runcorn says that “who we are always comes before what we do” and that “our choices, desires and actions … always flow from our sense of personal identity.” This means that “our deepest need is not primarily to stop doing or saying bad things” because the power and significance of sin “lies not so much in what we are doing or saying, but in who we think we are.” Real sin, Runcorn argues, is insisting on being what we are not; the desire for a life other than the one God intended human beings to live.

We can, of course, make the decision to live the life that God intended human beings to life at any point and at any time in our lives, but, I wonder, how we are using this Lent to reflect on our own sinfulness, rather than that of others, and also are making this Lent a time to turn back to God and be faithful to Christ. May that be our intent and activity this Lent and always. Amen.

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Andrew King - Could Ye Not Watch With Me One Hour.

Ash - a reminder of our origins and our purpose

Here's the Ash Wednesday sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.

Remember you are dust. In the Genesis creation stories we read of God forming human beings from the dust of the ground and breathing life into us, so we become living creatures. In the imagery of these stories, we come from the dust of the earth and then are tasked with tilling the earth and keeping until we return to the ground, for we are dust and to dust we shall return.

My father’s career went from being a sociology lecturer and community work pioneer at Oxford to becoming a landscape gardener in Somerset. His story was an early example of escape to the country and getting back to the soil. One thing he particularly appreciated about the change was a deeper sense of being immersed in the cycle of the seasons, the circle of life.

We will shortly be marked with the sign of the cross in ash on our foreheads as those words, Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ, are said. The dust forming the cross on our foreheads, is not only a sign of mortality and penitence but is also a reminder of our origins and our purpose. We come from the earth and are on earth to tend and keep it. When we live in the artificial environment and frenetic busyness of towns and cities, it can be easy for us to forget that reality and lose a sense of being one with nature. We won’t all be able to make a similar mid-life change to that of my father, but could each seek new ways to connect more closely with the earth and the natural cycle of life.

Jesus taught that his life would be like a grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies. He would be like a single grain until he died and was buried in the ground to germinate and bear much fruit – the first-fruit of all who will be resurrected by God. Through his life, death and resurrection he entered into the natural cycle of death and new life calling us to follow him into resurrection life where we are with God, with ourselves, with others and with creation.

By forming the sign of the cross on our foreheads and by being made from burnt palm crosses, the ash or dust is also a reminder to us of Christ’s identification with us in our mortality and our identification with him in his resurrection.

The season of Lent mirrors the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness – a place of dust – in which he spent time with God and with himself deepening his sense of who he was in God to the extent that when tested he could speak with authority about God’s purposes and intentions before then beginning his active ministry. In that active ministry, Jesus regularly used times of returning to the soil for contemplation, such as the moments in this story when he writes in the dust, to find the words and actions that would open new possibilities of encounter with God for those who were constrained by their circumstances.

Lent is a time for us to do something similar by being with God, ourselves, each other and creation more deeply and intentionally in order that we learn to live God’s future now more fully and deeply. Our future is one of being with and enjoying God, ourselves, each other and creation ever more deeply for ever. We prepare for that future by anticipating it in the here and now. Doing so, is what Lent is for.

I, therefore, want to wish you a holy Lent in which you find ways to deepen your being with God, yourself, other and creation as Jesus did during his time in the wilderness. Often on Ash Wednesday you are encouraged to take up or lay down certain activities. I simply want to remind you today of the core purpose for Lent and encourage you to find your own ways to reach the goal of being with God, yourself, each other and creation. You may wish to take those four aspects of Being With and use them to explore how you this Lent you can deepen your ways of Being With in each aspect of your life. My prayer is that the sign of the cross marked on your forehead in the dust of ash will be both a sign of your commitment to reaching that goal and an inspiration for us as we begin.

Remember you are dust formed from the dust of creation for Being With and that to the dust of creation you will return in preparation for eternal Being With, turn away from the sin of being out of relationship and in isolation and be faithful to Christ by being with Christ in the body of Christ.

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Bill Fay - Garden Song.

Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and Lent

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Party, St Catherine’s Hall, Tuesday 4th March

Drop in between 2.30pm and 4pm or stay all afternoon and help raise funds for St Catherine’s restoration. £5 to include 2 pancakes and tea or coffee. There will also be a raffle. Sign-up sheet at the back of the church. Gluten free available on request. Names before 2nd March please.

Ash Wednesday: Our Eucharists with the imposition of ashes will be at 10.30 am in St Andrew's Wickford and 8.00 pm in St Mary's Runwell. All are welcome.

LENT 2025 - ON A JOURNEY

A five week course looking at journeys in the Bible. We are offering this course the week commencing 10th March. If you are interested in attending please let us know your preferences in order (1,2,3) and you will be allocated to a group. The options are Tuesdays at 7.30 pm, Thursdays at 2.00 pm, and Thursdays at 7.30 pm. If you are prepared to host a group please also let us know. Do you have any special requirements that need to be considered? Please let a member of the ministry team know.

The Bible is full of journeys made by people guided by God. Some are shorter and some are longer. All are transformational. Life is often thought of as a journey. There are high points and low points, paths where we travel swiftly and paths where we feel bogged down, there are some times when we feel like we have come to a dead end and some times when the future ahead looks far away. In this course we look at five particular biblical journeys and think about how the people involved might have felt, and what responses they evoke in us when we hear them. Do they remind us of our own journeys with God? 

• Week 1: Abraham’s wanderings 
• Week 2: The Exodus 
• Week 3: Ruth and Naomi 
• Week 4: Jesus journey to Jerusalem (based on St Luke’s gospel) 
• Week 5: Paul’s missionary journeys (based on Acts)

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Water Into Wine Band - Hill Climbing For Beginners.

Fasting that questions our security and leads to benefit for others

Here is the sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning as part of our Eucharist for Ash Wednesday with the imposition of ashes (a second service will be held at St Mary's Runwell this evening at 8.00 pm):

Fast from hurting words and say kind words.
Fast from sadness and be filled with gratitude.
Fast from anger and be filled with patience.
Fast from pessimism and be filled with hope.
Fast from worries and have trust in God.
Fast from complaints; contemplate simplicity.
Fast from pressures and be prayerful.
Fast from bitterness; fill your hearts with joy.
Fast from selfishness and be compassionate.
Fast from grudges and be reconciled.
Fast from words be silent and listen.

These are words that have been attributed to Pope Francis, although the source for these words has yet to be fully established. Nevertheless, Pope Francis has made similar or equivalent comments.

He says first of all that: ‘We must be careful not to practice a formal fast, or one which in truth “satisfies” us because it makes us feel good about ourselves. Fasting makes sense if it questions our security, and if it also leads to some benefit for others, if it helps us to cultivate the style of the Good Samaritan, who bends down to his brother in need and takes care of him. Fasting involves choosing a sober lifestyle; a way of life that does not waste, a way of life that does not “throw away”. Fasting helps us to attune our hearts to the essential and to sharing. It is a sign of awareness and responsibility in the face of injustice, abuse, especially to the poor and the little ones, and it is a sign of the trust we place in God and in his providence.’

In saying this he was following the teaching of his predecessors, Paul VI, in his 1973 Message for Lent, said that Lent is a time of renunciation and penance but is also “a time of communion and solidarity”. As a result, invited us to listen to the exhortations of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 58: 1-12): “This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: … sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.” Such exhortations, noted Pope Paul, “echo the anxieties of the people of today,” and thus, “each individual truly shares in the sufferings and misery of all.”

Pope Francis also says that we fast and do penance: ‘in order to free ourselves from dependencies regarding what is passing, and to train ourselves to be more sensitive and merciful. It is an invitation to simplicity and to sharing: to take something from our table and from our assets in order to once again find the true benefit of freedom.’ As a result, ‘Fasting reunites us to ourselves. Lent invites us to look inside our heart, with fasting, which frees us from attachment to things and from the worldliness that numbs the heart.’

‘Fasting is not a diet. Indeed, it sets us free from the self-centred and obsessive quest of physical fitness, in order to help us to keep in shape not only our bodies but our spirit as well. Fasting makes us appreciate things for their true worth. It reminds us in a concrete way that life must not be made dependent upon the fleeting landscape of the present world. Nor should fasting be restricted to food alone. Especially in Lent, we should fast from anything that can create in us any kind of addiction. This is something each of us should reflect on, so as to fast in a way that will have an effect on our actual lives.’

These arguments and the words with which we began are sometimes criticised as we should not simply abstain from sinful behaviour for a period such as Lent, but should always seek to lay aside our sinfulness. However, that is to misunderstand what Pope Francis is advocating. His argument is that we begin to abstain from sin in Lent in order to continue throughout our lives.

Finally, Pope Francis argues that ‘Prayer, charity and fasting need to grow “in secret” (Matthew 6: 1-21), but that is not true of their effects. Prayer, charity and fasting are not medicines meant only for ourselves but for everyone: they can change history. First, because those who experience their effects almost unconsciously pass them on to others; but above all, because prayer, charity and fasting are the principal ways for God to intervene in our lives and in the world. They are weapons of the spirit and, with them, we implore from God that peace which men and women are incapable of building by themselves.’

So: Fast from hurting words and say kind words.
Fast from sadness and be filled with gratitude.
Fast from anger and be filled with patience.
Fast from pessimism and be filled with hope.
Fast from worries and have trust in God.
Fast from complaints; contemplate simplicity.
Fast from pressures and be prayerful.
Fast from bitterness; fill your hearts with joy.
Fast from selfishness and be compassionate.
Fast from grudges and be reconciled.
Fast from words be silent and listen.

This sermon uses material from: https://sites.google.com/view/popefrancishomilies/fasting and https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2023-03/the-popes-and-the-lenten-fast-training-the-will-in-good.html#:~:text=There%20are%20three%20key%20elements,example%20of%20the%20Good%20Samaritan.

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Forty Days And Forty Nights.

Against whom do we compare ourselves?

This morning I took the 8.00 am Eucharist at St Mary Magdalene, Great Burstead. 

The Churchyard contains some early 17th century headstones and an ancient yew tree. Unusually, St Mary’s has two porches. Enter by the north porch and in the stonework over the 14th century doorway are the heads of a King and Queen and a scene depicting the Annunciation. There is a stoup in the porch. Watch the steps down, your first impression is of white walls, a light and a spacious interior crowned by a wonderful array of 15th century king post trusses supported by heavy tie beams. A spiral staircase in the choir vestry leads up the bell tower to the ringing chamber.

The only remaining part of the Norman structure is the nave which has a narrow Norman window, and further along is a squat Tudor window. In the chancel is a blocked in door and in the other wall a piscina, now used as an Aumbry.

An arcade of five bays separates the nave from the south chapel, which again, has beautiful roof timbers. This 16th century chapel contains the Tyrell family tombs and ten 16th century carved pews. It has a 13th century piscina with a drain and close by on the wall is a 15th century painted altar curtain. The windows here contains some ancient glass and there is a Royal Coat of Arms with an unusual crouching lion. The Font is 15th century.

Go out through the 16th century south porch and look for the medieval scratch dials (Primitive sundials) on the stonework of the doorway. To come to Burstead to see these lovely things would be enough but there is more. A 12th century oak Crusader chest, Registers which tell of the burning at the stake, in Chelmsford, of a local man and the marriage of Christopher Martin, who sailed to America on the Mayflower. The most recently discovered treasures are early 14th century wall paintings in the south aisle including the Nativity, the Annunciation, and St Catherine on her wheel.

Here's the sermon that I preached:

Against whom do we compare ourselves? Our answer makes all the difference in the world. The Pharisee in Jesus’s parable (Luke 18: 9-14) compared himself against other people: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this publican. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’

This is generally what we do when we make comparisons; we compare ourselves with others and so compare ourselves with those we think are worse than or similar to ourselves. We’ve all heard others and, maybe, ourselves saying ‘I’m alright, Jack!’ or ‘I’m as good as the next person, if not better!’ On the basis of these comparisons we think we are ok; at least no better or worse than others, at best, better than many others around us. On the basis of these comparisons we are comfortable with who we are and see no need to change.

The Pharisee lived in a simplistic world of legalism where he could look down on those like the publican because he kept certain rules and fulfilled certain practices. Therefore, he could say, I am not like other people because I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all my income. For him, there was no wrestling with difficulty and no struggling with conscience but the world he inhabited was, ultimately, a harsh world without understanding, without compassion, without forgiveness. 

Our common response as human beings to our own fallibility and failure is that, instead of acknowledging our own shortcoming, we attempt to distract attention away from our selves by identifying a scapegoat and angrily pointing out that person’s many failings. We are often very successful in covering up our own shortcomings when we adopt this tactic but, of course, the reality is that we are being hypocritical.

The true comparison that we make should not be with others, but with God. Jesus challenged us to ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ On the basis of that comparison, we all fall short. As St Paul writes, ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ Jesus, through his life and death, showed us the depth of love of which human beings are really capable and, on the basis of that comparison, we come up well short and are in real need of change. In the light of Jesus’ self-sacrifice, we see our inherent selfishness and recognise our need for change. Those are the kind of comparisons that the publican in the parable was making when he stood far off, not even looking up to heaven, beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

In the light of the way that Jesus lived his life, we see our lack of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, remain in darkness, and there is no truth in us. But when we live in the light, seeing ourselves as we really are, then we become honest with ourselves and with God. By coming into that honesty we confess our sins and are purified; as we say in this service, we make our humble confession to Almighty God truly and earnestly repenting of our sins.

This reality undermines the simplistic legalism of the Pharisee’s world by revealing the hypocrisy at its heart. The reality is that each one of us has broken the Law and each one of us are sinners. If that is so, on what basis can one sinner presume to judge or condemn another? To do so is a gross act of hypocrisy which multiplies one sin upon another. The publican, by contrast, lives in a world of without condemnation because he lives in a world where second chances and fresh starts are available. 

On Ash Wednesday the sign of the cross is marked in ash on our foreheads and these words are said: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel." In the Ash Wednesday service, we acknowledge both our sinfulness and our mortality recognising the link between the two – that the wages of sin are death.

The ash mark on our forehead is a public acknowledgement of our sinfulness but, because it is formed as a cross, it is also a sign of the forgiveness we have received. We are saying that we no longer live in the legalistic, unforgiving world of the Pharisaical Law where sin automatically leads to death; instead, like the publican, we have been accepted and welcomed into the world of love by Jesus himself. 

Jesus says to us what he said to the woman caught in adultery, "I do not condemn you … Go, but do not sin again." Those words are spoken to us all whether we are the accused or whether we are those who accuse others. Whichever we may be, we are called to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.

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Bruce Cockburn - Orders.

Lent: A course in Christian meditation

Here's the sermon I have shared at St Andrew's Wickford and St Mary's Runwell today as part of our Ash Wednesday Eucharist's with the Imposition of Ashes:

When Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, was a parish priest in Huddersfield, a friend of his, who was involved in Adult Education, told him that a course on Zen Buddhist meditation could have been filled three times over and asked why the church was not running a course on Christian meditation.

Archbishop Stephen later moved to a role at the Cathedral in Peterborough and when he told this story there, the Head of Adult Education asked him to run a course on Christian meditation as part of the Adult Education programme. He did, and the course filled up with a mix of those who were already Christians and those who would describe themselves are ‘searchers’.

This experience confirmed his belief that, with the right kind of introduction, many people are open to the riches of Christian spirituality. What better time than Lent for exploring some of that tradition? Lent is a time for going deeper with God; for going deeper into our faith and the riches of its tradition, particularly in terms of prayer.

This Lent we are essentially going to run a course on Christian meditation through our Lent Course ‘Ways to Pray’. Our five-week course explores some different ways of praying: Being Still with God, Prayer Through the Day, Using the Imagination, Multi-sensory prayer, Using Art and Images. The course gives some ideas on aspects of the Church’s tradition and practice that we could explore this Lent, as part of going deeper into God through prayer. Our Quiet Day, here at St Mary’s, on 4 March will also do more of the same. Here are some others ideas and resources too …

The Desert Fathers and Mothers were hermits, monks and nuns who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt beginning around the third century AD. These informal gatherings of hermit monks and nuns became the model for Christian monasticism. Many of the wise words and teachings of these early desert monks and nuns were collected and are still in print as the ‘Sayings of the Desert Fathers.’

One such saying has a significant overlap with today’s Gospel reading: ‘Stay in your cell. Your cell will teach you everything.’ The idea being that being in conversation with God through prayer will teach us everything we need to know. For this reason, when he was once interviewed by Radio 4 and was asked which wilderness would he go to for Lent if he could be taken anywhere in world, Archbishop Stephen replied that he would stay in his own living room. The location for our prayer is not the main point (although quiet and privacy can help); instead, the point is the quality and depth of our prayer.

Having said that, the Celtic Church has given us a model for the precise opposite; integrating prayer into our daily lives. Celtic Christians had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, which can blessed if we see God in our tasks and undertake our tasks as an act of worship to God.

This tradition was particularly strong in Gaelic countries and in the late 19th century Alexander Carmichael collected a number of the prayers and poems together in a book called the ‘Carmina Gadelica’ which ‘abounds with prayers invoking God’s blessing on such routine daily tasks as lighting the fire, milking the cow and preparing for bed.’ In more recent years, equivalent contemporary prayers have been written covering every aspect of daily life from turning on a computer to attending meetings, driving a car, stopping for a lunchbreak, and so on.

Some of the most visionary and passionate prayer in the history of the Church derived from the renewal of the Carmelite Order undertaken by St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. Through quiet prayer, resting in contemplation of God which involved forgetting all earthly things, these attained occasionally prayers of union in which their whole being was absorbed in God.

They frequently described these experiences in terms of the union of lovers in marriage. St John, in particular, described in great poetry the experience of feeling abandoned by God which he described as the dark night of the soul. Their writings can help us understand those times when we feel God is very distant from us as well as those times when we feel an intimate closeness.

St Ignatius of Loyola devised a series of prayer exercises which many have found particularly helpful in the development of their prayer life. The Examen is a daily process for reflecting on the events of the day in order to detect God’s presence and discern his direction for us. The Examen begins with prayer for light then continues through thanksgiving, reviewing our feelings and focus before concluding with future appointments and the Lord’s Prayer.

Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises are a compilation of meditations, prayers and contemplative practices developed to help people deepen their relationship with God. These are divided into four weeks; not seven-day weeks but stages on our spiritual journey. Week 1 involves reflection on our lives in light of God’s boundless love for us. Week 2 involves imagining ourselves as Christ’s disciples as we reflect on the Gospel stories. Week 3 is meditation on the Last Supper, Christ’s passion and death, while Week 4 is meditation on the resurrection.

These are just some of the resources for prayer which can be found in the Christian tradition (some of which we explore in our Lent Course) and which are available to all of us as we seek to go deeper into God this Lent. These resources can be found in books, through retreats, and by using online meditations. It is possible to travel to centres of prayer or to the world’s deserts and wildernesses in order to learn to pray in some of these ways. But we don’t have to! Like Archbishop Stephen, we could take to heart the teachings of the Desert Fathers to stay in our cell and our cell will teach us everything. Our cell can be our own front room. If we use it for committed, regular prayer this Lent then like the saints, monks and mystics about whom we have thought, we can go deeper into God.

Jesus said: ‘… go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.’

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Iona - Today.

Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return

Here's the reflection I prepared for today's Ash Wednesday Choral Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.

Remember you are dust. In the Genesis creation stories we read of God forming human beings from the dust of the ground and breathing life into us, so we become living creatures. In the imagery of these stories, we come from the dust of the earth and then are tasked with tilling the earth and keeping until we return to the ground, for we are dust and to dust we shall return.

My father’s career went from being a sociology lecturer and community work pioneer at Oxford to becoming a landscape gardener in Somerset. His story was an early example of escape to the country and getting back to the soil. One thing he particularly appreciated about the change was a deeper sense of being immersed in the cycle of the seasons, the circle of life.

We will shortly be marked with the sign of the cross in ash on our foreheads as those words, Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ, are said. The dust forming the cross on our foreheads, is not only a sign of mortality and penitence but is also a reminder of our origins and our purpose. We come from the earth and are on earth to tend and keep it. When we live in the artificial environment and frenetic busyness of cities, it can be easy for us to forget that reality and lose a sense of being one with nature. We won’t all be able to make a similar mid-life change to that of my father, but could each seek new ways to connect more closely with the earth and the natural cycle of life.

Jesus taught that his life would be like a grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies. He would be like a single grain until he died and was buried in the ground to germinate and bear much fruit – the first-fruit of all who will be resurrected by God. Through his life, death and resurrection he entered into the natural cycle of death and new life calling us to follow him into resurrection life where we are with God, with ourselves, with others and with creation.

By forming the sign of the cross on our foreheads and by being made from burnt palm crosses, the ash or dust is also a reminder to us of Christ’s identification with us in our mortality and our identification with him in his resurrection.

The season of Lent mirrors the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness – a place of dust – in which he spent time with God and with himself deepening his sense of who he was in God to the extent that when tested he could speak with authority about God’s purposes and intentions before then beginning his active ministry. In that active ministry, Jesus regularly used times of returning to the soil for contemplation, such as the moments in this story when he writes in the dust, to find the words and actions that would open new possibilities of encounter with God for those who were constrained by their circumstances.

Lent is a time for us to do something similar by being with God, ourselves, each other and creation more deeply and intentionally in order that we learn to live God’s future now more fully and deeply. Our future is one of being with and enjoying God, ourselves, each other and creation ever more deeply for ever. We prepare for that future by anticipating it in the here and now. Doing so, is what Lent is for.

I, therefore, want to wish you a holy Lent in which you find ways to deepen your being with God, yourself, other and creation as Jesus did during his time in the wilderness. Often on Ash Wednesday you are encouraged to take up or lay down certain activities. I simply want to remind you today of the core purpose for Lent and encourage you to find your own ways to reach the goal of being with God, yourself, each other and creation. You may wish to take those four aspects of Being With and use them to explore how you this Lent you can deepen your ways of Being With in each aspect of your life. My prayer is that the sign of the cross marked on your forehead in the dust of ash will be both a sign of your commitment to reaching that goal and an inspiration for us as we begin.

Remember you are dust formed from the dust of creation for Being With and that to the dust of creation you will return in preparation for eternal Being With, turn away from the sin of being out of relationship and in isolation and be faithful to Christ by being with Christ in the body of Christ.

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Forty Days And Forty Nights.

Lent Course: The Confessions of St Augustine

I was obliged to study and it did me good’ (Augustine Confessions 1/12)

Although Augustine in his childhood was not so keen on studying, at St Martin-in-the-Fields we’re excited to be reading his Confessions for our Lent Course. The course runs for six weeks on Wednesday evenings, from 13 March - 17 April, starting with a service in church at 6:30pm.

For further information, see the flyer here: https://goo.gl/nPwjSM

The Confessions of St Augustine is one of the greatest spiritual autobiographies written, and has had a significant impact on the church. It is “a canticle to God, full of psychological insights, which tells the story of a soul, and also the story of God, and how he is constantly at work seeking us.” 

For the 2019 Lent Course, we will be guided through the text, with a fresh translation by Benignus O’Rourke OSA, which sheds new light on Augustine’s spiritual journey. Each evening will follow the pattern below, with a community Eucharist at 6.30pm, where the different chapters of Confessions are introduced, followed by a simple shared supper and then listening groups. The cost of the whole Lent Programme is £15 which includes a copy of the book and study guide. The study guide will include selected quotations from the Confessions, points to wonder over, and a prayer. The book and guide will be available from Ash Wednesday on 6th March from the Verger’s office, and at the service at 6:30pm in the church. 

Services on Ash Wednesday are: an 8.30am Eucharist, a Choral Eucharist at 1.00pm and Bread for the World at 6.30pm. All these services will include the Imposition of Ashes.

The Lent Programme: 

• 6.30pm: we begin in Church with Bread for the World- an informal Eucharist, during which the theme for the week will be introduced and reflected upon. 
• 7.30pm: we share a simple Lenten Supper of bread and soup (during this time the church will remain open for silent reflection). 
• 8.00-8.45 pm: we join Listening Groups to reflect upon the theme for the week. 
• The Church will be open until 9.00pm for Silent Prayer. 

Week One 13 March Book I and II 

Week Two 20 March Book III 

Week Three 27 March Book IV 

Week Four 3 April Book V 

Week Five 10 April Book VI and VII 

Week Six 17 April Book VIII and IX

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Jon Foreman - White As Snow.

The Black & White World of the Law vs the Colourful World of Love

Here is my sermon from today's Ash Wednesday Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook:

John 8. 1 - 11 is a story in which the accusers of the woman caught in adultery are shown as living in the black and white world of the Law. In the black and white world of the Law, everything is clear and everything is simple. “This woman,” they say, “was caught in the very act of committing adultery. In our Law Moses commanded that such a woman must be stoned to death.” If you do wrong then you are punished. No consideration of circumstances or motivations, no compassion for a fellow human being, no opportunity for restoration or rehabilitation, and no equality, because in this story it is the woman, not the man, who has been brought from the very act of adultery to be tried.

In the black and white world of the Law, there we find no consideration, no compassion, no restoration, no equality. The black and white world of the Law has no colour because it has no nuances, no distinctions, no difference, no variation. People often like to live in the black and white world of the Law because everything is easy to understand and easy to put into practice - no wrestling with difficulty and no struggling with conscience - but it is also a harsh world without understanding, without compassion, without forgiveness.

The hands of the accusers point away from themselves towards the woman. This is our common response as human beings to our own fallibility and failure. Instead of acknowledging our own shortcoming we attempt to distract attention away from our selves by identifying a scapegoat and angrily pointing out that person’s many failings. We are often very successful in covering up our own shortcomings when we adopt this tactic but the reality is that we are being hypocritical.

By bending down and writing in the sand with his finger, Jesus creates a pause that is pregnant with the possibility of other points of view, other perspectives, other understanding. When the simplistic rush to condemnation is halted, other questions immediately arise to muddy the waters which had initially seemed crystal clear; what would be the compassionate response, the restorative response, the forgiving response?

The words which follow this act of writing in the sand, “Whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw the first stone at her,” are words which undermine the black and white world of the Law by revealing the hypocrisy at its heart. The reality is that each one of us has broken the Law and each one of us are sinners. If that is so, on what basis can one sinner presume to judge or condemn another? To do so is a gross act of hypocrisy which multiplies one sin upon another.

Jesus and the woman by contrast live in a world of love. They live in a world without condemnation – “Is there no one left to condemn you?” Jesus asks the woman. “No one, sir,” she answers. “Well, then,” Jesus says, “I do not condemn you either.” They live in a world where second chances and fresh starts are available – “Go,” says Jesus, “but do not sin again.” This world of Love is a world where nuances exist, difference is recognized, and variation is understood. Therefore choices and chances exist which simply did not occur in the black and white world of the Law; in the world of Love a multitude of sins are covered over (1 Peter 4. 8).

What does all this have to do with Ash Wednesday? As the sign of the cross is marked in ash on your forehead, these words are said: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.” In this service, therefore, we acknowledge both our sinfulness and our mortality recognising the link between the two – the wages of sin are death.

The ash mark on our forehead is a public acknowledgement of our sinfulness but, because it is formed as a cross, it is also a sign of the forgiveness we have received. We are saying that we no longer live in the black and white world of the Law where sin automatically leads to death. Instead, like the woman caught in adultery, we have been accepted and welcomed into the world of Love by Jesus himself.

He says to us what he said to that woman, “I do not condemn you … Go, but do not sin again.” Those words are spoken to us all whether we were the accused or whether we were those who accused others. Whichever we may be, we are called to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.

This Lent we have the opportunity to explore this in practice as we are showing crucifixion drawings by the artist Francis Bacon. Bacon was an atheist, whose lifestyle was promiscuous in many ways. It would be easy to criticise him and his crucifixion images and yet through his reflections, over many years, on the crucifixion there is much for us to see and appreciate, disturbing as his images may be. Our Lenten exhibition will therefore challenge us to look outside of the black and white world of the Law and embrace the world of Love. May we rise to that challenge.

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Valerie June - Trials, Troubles, Tribulations.

Against whom should we compare ourselves?

Here is my sermon from today's Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook:

Against whom should we compare ourselves? Our answer makes all the difference in the world. The Pharisee in Jesus’s parable (Luke 18. 9 - 14) compared himself against other people: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’

This is generally what we do when we make comparisons; we compare ourselves with others and so compare ourselves with those we think are worse than or similar to ourselves. We’ve all heard others and, maybe, ourselves saying ‘I’m alright, Jack!’ or ‘I’m as good as the next person, if not better!’ On the basis of these comparisons we think we are ok; at least no better or worse than others, at best, better than many others around us. On the basis of these comparisons we are comfortable with who we are and see no need to change.

The Pharisee in this story lived in a simplistic world of legalism where he could look down on those like the publican because he kept certain rules and fulfilled certain practices. Therefore he could say, I am not like other people because I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all my income. For him, there was no wrestling with difficulty and no struggling with conscience but the world he inhabited was, ultimately, a harsh world without understanding, without compassion, without forgiveness. Our common response as human beings to our own fallibility and failure is that, instead of acknowledging our own shortcoming, we attempt to distract attention away from our selves by identifying a scapegoat and angrily pointing out that person’s many failings. We are often very successful in covering up our own shortcomings when we adopt this tactic but, of course, the reality is that we are being hypocritical.

The true comparison that we make should not be with others, but with God. Jesus challenged us to ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ On the basis of that comparison, we all fall short. As St Paul writes, ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ Jesus, through his life and death, showed us the depth of love of which human beings are really capable and, on the basis of that comparison, we come up well short and are in real need of change. In the light of Jesus’ self-sacrifice, we see our inherent selfishness and recognise our need for change. Those are the kind of comparisons that the publican in the parable was making when he stood far off, not even looking up to heaven, beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

In the light of the way that Jesus lived his life, we see our lack of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, remain in darkness, and there is no truth in us. But when we live in the light of Christ, seeing ourselves as we really are, then we become honest with ourselves and with God. By coming into that honesty we confess our sins and are purified; as we say in this service, we make our humble confession to Almighty God truly and earnestly repenting of our sins.

That honesty undermines the simplistic legalism of the Pharisee’s world by revealing the hypocrisy at its heart. The reality is that each one of us has broken the Law and each one of us is a sinner. If that is so, on what basis can one sinner presume to judge or condemn another? To do so is a gross act of hypocrisy which multiplies one sin upon another. The publican, by contrast, lives in a world of without condemnation because he lives in a world where second chances and fresh starts are available.

On Ash Wednesday the sign of the cross is marked in ash on our foreheads and these words are said: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel." In that service, we acknowledge both our sinfulness and our mortality recognising the link between the two – that the wages of sin are death. The ash mark on our forehead is a public acknowledgement of our sinfulness but, because it is formed as a cross, it is also a sign of the forgiveness we have received. We are saying that we no longer live in the legalistic, unforgiving world of the Pharisaical Law where we compare ourselves with others in order that we come out best; instead, like the publican, we are those who compare themselves against God only to then realise that we have been accepted and welcomed into the world of love by Jesus himself.

Against whom should we compare ourselves? Our answer makes all the difference in the world. Jesus said one of the two men went down to his house justified; and it certainly wasn’t the Pharisee!

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Kindred Spirit - Ask Me No Questions.

Menu options for a holy Lent

Here is my sermon from today's Ash Wednesday Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook:

In the public imagination, Lent is primarily a time for giving up things we otherwise enjoy. A bit like an extended period of New Year's resolutions and, possibly, honoured as much in the breach as with our resolutions at New Year. For example, in today's Guardian Ian Martin writes: "Deny yourself something you like, reflect that you’re lucky to have it, feel grateful to be able to have it again."

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with that, of course, although it doesn't include the idea that we give things up in Lent in order to focus more on God and others. As Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness wrestling with God and himself in prayer preparing for the period of ministry which would ultimately lead him to the cross, so we can use Lent as a time for personal prayer and private fasting as Jesus' words in today's Gospel reading teach. The artworks that we have in church during Lent are intended to assist us in contemplation and you may wish to spend extra time in this wonderful space in prayer and reflection.

As part of focusing more on God, we may take part in a Lent Course, such as the course being run by the Bank Churches group at 6.00pm on Tuesdays at St Lawrence Jewry. Sally Muggeridge and I are involved with this course which will explore the theme of The Creeds. In addition, the Walbrook Art Group have organised a series of art talks on Wednesday's at 1pm to aid our Lenten reflections. In focusing more on God and others, it is also valid to take things up for Lent. So there are campaigns like Love Life, Live Lent which encourage us to undertake 40 acts of kindness and generosity in Lent.

All of these though miss the sense of Lent as a journey on which, through prayer and reflection, we accompany Jesus as he makes his way towards his death. As we accompany him on this journey we reflect on all that he endured for us and the reasons why he endures such things for us. This sense of Lent as a journey with Jesus is one reason why the Stations of the Cross are often so helpful to us in Lent. They take us on the journey Jesus made to the cross in Holy Week from Pilate's condemnation to the burial in the tomb. On the day he died, Jesus walked the Via Dolorosa through the streets of Jerusalem, a holy city for Jews, which would later become sacred to Christians and Muslims. Across the chasm of two thousand years, this tortured path resonates with current events for people of many faiths and cultures. In particular, it calls to mind the hazardous journeys of refugees from today’s Middle East.

This Lent we are part of Stations of the Cross 2016, an exhibition created as a pilgrimage around the Stations of the Cross each of which are located at 14 different iconic locations in Central London. This unique exhibition uses works of art to tell the story of the Passion in a new way, for people of different faiths. In this pilgrimage for art lovers, viewers will travel across London, mapping the geography of the Holy Land onto the streets of a ‘new Jerusalem.’ I encourage you to go on that pilgrimage this Lent, visiting the 14 Stations and allowing these Stations to provoke artistic, spiritual and political passions while also reflecting on Jesus' journey, suffering and love.

We are the 13th station on the trail for which Michael Takeo Magruder has created the installation Lamentation for the Forsaken. By juxtaposing the sufferings of the Syrian peoples in our own day with the death of Christ, Michael reminds us that Christ's death is symptomatic of all suffering throughout time. When we lament Christ's death, our lament is for all human sinfulness which has caused such devastation and destruction through our world and history. Michael evokes the memory of Syrians who have passed away in the present conflict by weaving their names and images into a contemporary Shroud of Turin. But the real miracle isn’t the Shroud itself, it’s our capacity to look into the eyes of the forsaken — and see our Saviour.

Alan Everett, in his exhibition, draws our attention to the persecution of Christians in our world today. These are people who have made the ultimate identification with Christ in their lives; being faithful to him unto death. Theirs’ is the ultimate Lenten journey as their own lives become the Stations of the Cross. This year the Lent Appeal in the Diocese of London is for persecuted Christians. You have been given a leaflet with information about this campaign and, beginning today, there will be a retiring offering at all of our Lenten services to raise funds for this campaign.

Jesus says that we store up treasures in heaven when our prayer, giving and fasting (or other Lenten disciplines) are done, not so that others see us and think we are particularly pious, but instead are only seen by God, who rewards what we do in secret (Matthew 6). Alas, these days, as Ian Martin notes," there is no self-denial so slight it cannot be chronicled on social media." "It’s becoming odder with every passing year, the old-fashioned idea of giving something up and keeping quiet about it. If you decide to shun alcohol for a month, we’ll be following you every step of the way, won’t we? There’ll be the Facebook page for a start. A chronicle of bravery and self-love, with its rows of daily “feeling proud” badges you’ve awarded yourself like some lunatic despot. And a photo of your dead dad or your dead dog. And an algorithmic quote in a handwriting font about how it’s not selfish to do what’s best for you because in the end it makes you a better person for others, over a photograph of zebras at sunset or Robin Williams." The reverse of Jesus' teaching in today's Gospel reading (Matthew 6).

We have considered some of the menu options before us as we begin this Lent. Which will we choose? They are not, of course, mutually exclusive and some might choose a gourmet Lent by taking up all the available options while others may pick ‘n’ mix by sampling a little of this and some of that. Whatever you decide the challenge is to make active use of the next forty days in order to deepen your relationship with God. I wish you a holy Lent.

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Bill Fay - Bring It On Lord.

Your cell will teach you everything

When Bishop Stephen, the Bishop of Chelmsford, was a parish priest in Huddersfield, a friend of his, who was involved in Adult Education, told him that a course on Zen Buddhist meditation could have been filled three times over and asked why the Church was not running a course on Christian meditation.

Bishop Stephen later moved to a role at the Cathedral in Peterborough and when he told this story there, the Head of Adult Education asked him to run a course on Christian meditation as part of the Adult Education programme. He did and the course filled up with a mix of those who were already Christians and those who would describe themselves are ‘searchers’.

This experience confirmed for Bishop Stephen his belief that, with the right kind of introduction, many people are open to the riches of Christian spirituality. What better time than Lent for exploring some of that tradition? Lent is a time for going deeper with God; for going deeper into our faith and the riches of its tradition, particularly in terms of prayer.

If we were to run a course on Christian meditation, what might it contain? Answering that question might give some ideas on aspects of the Church’s tradition and practice that we could explore this Lent, as part of going deeper into God through prayer.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers were hermits, monks and nuns who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt beginning around the third century AD. These informal gatherings of hermit monks and nuns became the model for Christian monasticism. Many of the wise words and teachings of these early desert monks and nuns were collected and are still in print as the ‘Sayings of the Desert Fathers.’

One such saying has a significant overlap with today’s Gospel reading: ‘Stay in your cell. Your cell will teach you everything.’ The idea being that being in conversation with God through prayer will teach us everything we need to know. For this reason, when he was interviewed recently by Radio 4 and was asked which wilderness would he go to for Lent if he could be taken any where in world, Bishop Stephen replied that he would stay in his own living room. The location for our prayer is not the main point (although quiet and privacy can help); instead the point is the quality and depth of our prayer.

Having said that, the Celtic Church has given us a model for the precise opposite; integrating prayer into our daily lives. Celtic Christians had a sense of the heavenly being found in the earthly, particularly in the ordinary tasks of home and work, which can blessed if we see God in our tasks and undertake our tasks as an act of worship to God.

This tradition was particularly strong in Gaelic countries and in the late 19th century Alexander Carmichael collected a number of the prayers and poems together in a book called the ‘Carmina Gadelica’ which ‘abounds with prayers invoking God’s blessing on such routine daily tasks as lighting the fire, milking the cow and preparing for bed.’ In more recent years, equivalent contemporary prayers have been written covering every aspect of daily life from turning on a computer to attending meetings, driving a car, stopping for a lunchbreak, and so on.

Some of the most visionary and passionate prayer in the history of the Church derived from the renewal of the Carmelite Order undertaken by St Teresa of Avila and St John ofthe Cross. Through quiet prayer, resting in contemplation of God which involved forgetting all earthly things, these attained occasionally prayers of union in which their whole being was absorbed in God.

They frequently described these experiences in terms of the union of lovers in marriage. St John, in particular, described in great poetry the experience of feeling abandoned by God which he described as the dark night of the soul. Their writings can help us understand those times when we feel God is very distant from us as well as those times when we feel an intimate closeness.     

St Ignatius of Loyola devised a series of prayer exercises which many have found particularly helpful in the development of their prayer life. The Examen is a daily process for reflecting on the events of the day in order to detect God’s presence and discern his direction for us. The Examen begins with prayer for light then continues through thanksgiving, reviewing our feelings and focus before concluding with future appointments and the Lord’s Prayer.

Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises are a compilation of meditations, prayers and contemplative practices developed to help people deepen their relationship with God. These are divided into four weeks; not seven day weeks but stages on our spiritual journey. Week 1 involves reflection on our lives in light of God’s boundless love for us. Week 2 involves imagining ourselves as Christ’s disciples as we reflect on the Gospel stories. Week 3 is meditation on the Last Supper, Christ’s passion and death, while Week 4 is meditation on the resurrection.

These are just some of the resources for prayer which can be found in the Christian tradition and which are available to all of us as we seek to go deeper into God this Lent. These resources can be found in books, through retreats, and by using online meditations. It is possible to travel to centres of prayer or to the world’s deserts and wildernesses in order to learn to pray in some of these ways. But we don’t have to! Like Bishop Stephen, we could take to heart the teachings of the Desert Fathers to stay in our cell and our cell will teach us everything. Our cell can be our own front room. If we use it for committed, regular prayer this Lent then like the saints, monks and mystics about whom we have thought this evening, we can go deeper into God.

Jesus said: ‘… go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.’

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Live - Call Me A Fool.

The worlds of Law and Love

Woman taken in adultery by Dinah Roe Kendall is a wonderful visualisation of tonight’s Gospel reading (John 8. 1 - 11). There are two things which are immediately apparent and which make this a picture of contrasts. First, the women’s accusers are all painted in black and white while Jesus and the woman are the only characters painted in colour. Second, the hands of the accusers all point upwards towards her while the of Jesus points downwards and away from her.

Kendall is, I think, suggesting that the women’s accusers live in the black and white world of the Law. In the black and white world of the Law, everything is clear and everything is simple. "This woman," they say, "was caught in the very act of committing adultery. In our Law Moses commanded that such a woman must be stoned to death." If you do wrong then you are punished. No consideration of circumstances or motivations, no compassion for a fellow human being, no opportunity for restoration or rehabilitation, and no equality because it is the woman, not the man, who has been brought from the very act of adultery to be tried.

In the painting, that contrast is also very clear in that it is a crowd of men who point accusingly at the woman. Dinah Roe Kendall wrote that Jesus highlighted the lack of respect in the Pharisees for woman and their judgemental attitude towards this woman. "He demonstrated how completely opposite his attitude was both to her and to them." There is a special pleasure for her, she writes, "to see how much Jesus respected and cared about women regardless of status or age."

So, returning to the black and white world of the Law, there we find no consideration, no compassion, no restoration, no equality. The black and white world of the Law has no colour because it has no nuances, no distinctions, no difference, no variation. People often like to live in the black and white world of the Law because everything is easy to understand and easy to put into practice - no wrestling with difficulty and no struggling with conscience - but it is also a harsh world without understanding, without compassion, without forgiveness.

Ultimately, the black and white world of the Law is undermined by the different hands which we noted in this picture. The hands of the accusers point away from themselves towards the woman. This is our common response as human beings to our own fallibility and failure. Instead of acknowledging our own shortcoming we attempt to distract attention away from our selves by identifying a scapegoat and angrily pointing out that person’s many failings. We are often very successful in covering up our own shortcomings when we adopt this tactic but the reality is that we are being hypocritical.

Jesus reveals this hypocrisy through his hands. He bends down and writes in the sand with his finger. He creates a pause that is pregnant with the possibility of other points of view, other perspectives, other understanding. When the simplistic rush to condemnation is halted, other questions immediately arise to muddy the waters which had initially seemed crystal clear; what would be the compassionate response, the restorative response, the forgiving response?  

In the painting however although Jesus’ is depicted as writing in the sand, his finger is actually pointing out of the painting towards us. So the words which follow this act of writing in the sand, "Whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw the first stone at her," are applied to us as to the woman’s accusers.

They are words which undermine the black and white world of the Law by revealing the hypocrisy at its heart. The reality is that each one of us has broken the Law and each one of us are sinners. If that is so, on what basis can one sinner presume to judge or condemn another? To do so is a gross act of hypocrisy which multiplies one sin upon another.  

Jesus and the woman by contrast live in a world of colour because they live in the world of love. They live in a world without condemnation – "Is there no one left to condemn you?" Jesus asks the woman. "No one, sir," she answers. "Well, then," Jesus says, "I do not condemn you either." They live in a world where second chances and fresh starts are available – "Go," says Jesus, "but do not sin again." 

This world of Love is a world of colour because nuances exist, difference is recognized, and variation is understood. Therefore choices and chances exist which simply did not occur in the black and white world of the Law. By contrast in the world of Love a multitude of sins are covered over (1 Peter 4. 8). 

What does all this have to do with Ash Wednesday? As the sign of the cross is marked in ash on your forehead, these words are said: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel." In this service, therefore, we acknowledge both our sinfulness and our mortality recognising the link between the two – the wages of sin are death.

The ash mark on our forehead is a public acknowledgement of our sinfulness but, because it is formed as a cross, it is also a sign of the forgiveness we have received. We are saying that we no longer live in the black and white world of the Law where sin automatically leads to death, instead, like the woman caught in adultery, we have been accepted and welcomed into the world of Love by Jesus himself.

He says to us what he said to that woman, "I do not condemn you … Go, but do not sin again." Those words are spoken to us all whether we were the accused or whether we were those who accused others. Whichever we may be, we are called to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel. 

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Kings X - Shot Of Love.