shotleyfieldsforever

Apparently the Corona Virus is changing ..... It is clearly continuing to infect people, in fact outbreaks, hot spots are resulting in local lock downs and the general rate of infection as reported on the news is rising. But curiously deaths are beginning to, if not fall then at least, stabilise. I have read reports that suggest that a virus can be quite intelligent, a virus can work out that if it kills everyone it infects then it will run out of potential and future hosts so if doesn't kill then it has a nice, comfortable home environment for as long as it need it. Whether that is true I don't know. But what is true is that this Virus isn't going anywhere fast and we will be living with it for some time to come. Indeed it is questionable whether we will ever see normal again and the new normal will look nothing like the old normal. Two metres distance, one way systems, masks, no hugging strangers, avoiding public transport, keeping selves safe and strangers...

The Principal of my Theological College was called Harold Wilson and like Prime Minister Harold Wilson he was a bluff Yorkshireman. His preferred style of preaching was from notes and each sermon was filed away for future reference. Occasionally he would ask of the college what sermon would you like today? The Salt sermon was popular, after all we all feared losing our saltiness. Another popular sermon was on St Peter and todays Gospel reminded me of that sermon from so many years ago. On this Rock I will build my Church. The sermon, as I recall it, involved a play on words, not quite a pun but the association of Jesus depiction of Peter as Cephas or Rock or Rockhead and the Rock on which the Church would be built. Peter was called Cephas by Jesus. In Aramaic the word Cephas means Rock. So the Sermon went on to identify Peter, and all the things that he got so wrong, as we will see in next weeks Gospel, not with a rock, a sign of stability but as a roc...

When I lived in the Cathedral Close in Bradford I was often the subject of abuse. Not for my preaching or my prayers or my sense of dress but because a frequent visitor to the Close was a man with Tourettes. For some reason he often directed a stream of consciousness towards me. Not a particularly savoury stream at that as it often contained the words, language and commentary that is usually associated with Tourettes. I was reminded of that person by the reaction of the disciples to Jesus petitioner in todays Gospel which is 'send her away because she keeps shouting after us'. Jesus, it seems, simply ignores the woman. But then there is the exchange which takes place. There is a lovely joke about a man who is troubled, agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac he lies awake all night wondering if there was a Dog! And of course in this story there was indeed a dog or dogs. There were quite a few dogs. Domestic dogs who eat and sleep under the table. It sounds a little like the Vicarage here...

It does seem to me that this pandemic is raising some pretty fundamental questions. Indeed it is raising questions that lie at the heart of what we are prepared to believe to be true. It is raising 'existential' questions. Questions about, for example, what Eucharist is? What it means and how it should be celebrated at a time when congregations are required to wear masks and when many people are now taking a 'Eucharistic Fast'. This last Sunday I broke bread and spilled wine, but did not distribute the Eucharistic elements. Was that a Eucharist? I guess that my answer was yes. As the bread was broken and the wine blessed so Christ became a guest at the feast and in so doing became a blessing to thoses who were present in our Woodland Chapel in the Spinney. I find myself struggling with the theological issues surrounding 'Spiritual Communion'. Our Church is small, with spatial distancing we can only accommodate 16 people and so people are having to...