Long Good Friday

Holy Week is an extraordinary part of the year. Doubly so because something that touches just a few of us so deeply is ignored by almost everyone else. We went to Wroxham Road Methodist Church on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, where Phil, Andy and Andrew (our ordinand and two of our readers) led Night Prayer. The church had been arranged with different stations of the passion for meditation. There was a calm atmosphere created by ambient music and the trickling of a water feature. It was a wonderful way to end an evening, and I came home each night and was in bed soon afterwards and slept very well (which was a real blessing after having had a rotten week when I was on leave with a chest cold).

Maundy Thursday was great for me. The two communion services could not have been more different. In the morning I went with Margaret and Gill to the Cathedral. I am not a big fan of cathedral worship - I often find it alienating - but the Chrism service brought together about 150 priests from the Diocese to renew our ordination vows, along with our three Bishops and Archdeacons so the Cathedral is the obvious place for it. In the evening about twenty of us celebrated Communion at St Mary & St Margaret's. Gill, assisted by Margaret, washed our feet while Phil read the associated passage from John's Gospel. At the end we cleared the sanctuary and stripped the altars and after reading about Jesus's arrest left the church in silence.
Some of us then went to St Cuthbert's to get ready for "Through the Wardrobe" - an activity morning based on the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

On good Friday morning I saw the start of this and then went to an ecumenical walk of witness which started at Gage Road Chapel. About twenty of us set off with a cross and walked past lots of people washing their cars and doing their gardens. Half way round we were joined by about another twenty people from Wroxham Road Methodist Church. We then made our way to St Cuthbert's just before the start of the service which ended "Through the Wardrobe".
From there I had a short break before going to St Mary & St Margaret's for the Good Friday Liturgy. Rowan Williams spoke on the radio this morning about finding in Good Friday a place of quiet with a sense that all the activity is going on somewhere else. This service was heavy with the weight of what God did for us in and through Jesus on the Cross. Emotionally exhausting but very real.

So, a day to rest a bit and then an early start on Easter morning.






"A Speeding Fine City"