Sermons, services and reflections from Westminster Abbey and lectures on issues of faith, ethics, politics and public policy-making from the Westminster Abbey Institute.
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'Turn to the back of the book, read the last sentence too soon, and you spoil the story. It is a mistake we can make at Easter. ‘The day of resurrection, earth tell it out abroad’. That’s a marvellous beginning. Easter Day is a great proclamation, but then we’re tempted to rush headlong, up from earth into the sky. It’s Easter and we are all going to heaven. ‘from earth unto the sky, our Christ…
'To talk of ‘descent’ is, of course, a metaphor – the closest we can get to understanding what is going on. But Holy Saturday is when this metaphor must yield to another; of rising, of being raised. The descent into the human condition; into suffering and death and into the furthest alienation from love and life, reaches its limit today.' Listen to a reflection for Holy Saturday by the Reverend…
'Throughout Lent we have considered Jesus through his own statements of who he is: the I Am statements that fill us with metaphor and meaning as we contemplate Christ. But here, on Good Friday, we seem to gaze upon a frightening emptiness made more excruciatingly obvious by Pilate’s perhaps-ironic inscription: the King of the Jews. There are no loaves nor fishes here, no vine nor sheep, just a…
'Jesus kneels in front of them. This is the posture of an incarnate God; Jesus does not seek to control or coerce, there is no manipulation here. Simply the demonstration of loving, tender service, and a command to do as he does. That is the heart of the new commandment – the mandatum from which we get our word Maundy – to love one another, as Christ has loved us.' Listen to a reflection for…
'It is often said, but if we just skip from Palm Sunday to Easter Day, we will have missed all the important bits. We might be more inclined to think that this is some magical happily-ever-after story, rather than the deep Divine engagement in rejection and suffering and death that we discover through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. These are the days that explore why the…
'The keeping of passiontide, which we begin today, is a kind of spiritual marathon. And as with any marathon, we need to hold the end in our mind’s eye. It is not just that we will remember the events of Jesus’s passion, death and resurrection, over these next weeks. It is also that we will be re-membered by them. Our fragile humanity has been put back together by the death and resurrection of…
'Jesus said: “I am the light of the world.” Sometimes, that light is pretty literal. At the Transfiguration, Jesus shone so brightly that the disciples had to look away. But Jesus is never just something to look at - to observe. Jesus is also the light by which we see. The light that shines in the darkness, so that we might see all that he has made. And that light is not always as flattering as we…
'Of course, ‘body ‘and ‘vine’ are both metaphors, used to help us imagine a truth, the depth of dependency on each other in Christ, that we would otherwise find impossible to grasp. Precisely how we are one body, branches of the one true vine, is deeply mysterious to us, but it is like this; like a body, like a vine. Baptism and Holy Communion enact this spiritual truth, not just as an idea, but…
'In John’s Gospel, we are reminded again and again that this Good Shepherd is not only a pastoral figure working with those in his immediate orbit around Galilee and Jerusalem – he is also the Eternal Word of the Father, the One through whom all creation came to be, whose life is the light of all people, and who shall come to be their judge. This shepherd reaches right into the heart of things,…
'Every Eucharist, we are brought face to face with this abundance that does not operate on our own terms. At the altar, we are not given what we want or a vision of God which conforms to our own devices and desires, but instead we are given the bread of life.' Listen to a reflection for the First Sunday of Lent by the The Reverend Helena Bickley-Percival, Sacrist and Minor Canon at Westminster…
