#NeighbourhoodPilgrimage #ExploringEaster

Welcome to our first ever ‘Neighbourhood Pilgrimage’! 

A pilgrimage, traditionally, is a journey to somewhere special, somewhere holy. The destination is important, but so is the journey to get there. For people of faith, we expect to encounter God along the way, to experience God journeying with us.

This pilgrimage has been put together by members of Hodge Hill Church, as an invitation for anyone living in the Hodge Hill area to go on a journey around our neighbourhood. We believe that there are places of beauty in our neighbourhood, if our eyes are open to notice them. And we also know that there are many, many acts of quiet love, care and creativity going on between neighbours that are worth noticing, discovering and celebrating.

Especially in these strange and challenging times, when we’re all trying to live safely and carefully to minimize the risk of catching and spreading COVID-19, we’re learning to live in our neighbourhood, and love our neighbours, in new ways. Some of those might just be temporary. Some might be a glimpse of a ‘new world’ that we’re building together, that will last well beyond COVID-19.

You can download the full booklet here, which will help guide you on your pilgrimage, encourage you to notice aspects of your neighbourhood you might never have noticed before, and help you reflect on what you notice along the way. It’s organized into a trail of 11 ‘stations’ – each one has a picture, a little bit of the Easter story (from the Christian gospels, the stories of Jesus’ encounters with his friends, after his crucifixion and resurrection), and some ‘wondering’ questions to reflect on. You don’t have to start at the beginning – you can begin wherever you find yourself. If you can, we want to encourage you to visit all the stations, but don’t worry if you are only able to do a few.

There are one or two activities we’ve suggested here (see below), that you might want to do before you go on your neighbourhood pilgrimage – and there’s an opportunity at the end to share your photos and reflections with others, via our new neighbourhood website: www.LovingOurNeighbourhood.life 

Go in love, go in peace, go safely, and may you catch glimpses of a new world along the way!

Before you set out on your pilgrimage walk: 

You might want to do two activities in advance – things to make, to bring with you on your walk…

• For the 2^nd Station:

I wonder what, or who, helps you when you feel afraid?

ACTIVITY: Write or draw a ‘thank you note’ to anyone who’s been an ‘angel’ recently – and bring it with you.

• For the 6^th Station:

I wonder what change or new beginning you long for?
(It could be a change or new beginning in your own life and relationships, or in our neighbourhood, or in our world.)
And how you could help to make it happen?

ACTIVITY: On a piece of paper, write or draw a picture of a change or new beginning you long for – and bring it with you.



Locations (see map below):

·         1^st Station: Mary Magdalene finds the empty tomb

o   The Hub, on the parade of shops on Bromford Drive: B36 8TY

·         2^nd Station – an angel appears to the women

o   Rope swing area at the back of Comet Park, behind Hollowmeadow House, off Bromford Drive: B36 8RD
(what.three.words = heavy.slices.factor)

·         3^rd Station – Mary Magdalene meets Jesus

o   Ambridge House allotments, off Folkestone Croft: B36 8RA

·         4^th Station – two friends meet Jesus as they are travelling

o   Bus stop / post box at the corner of Chipperfield Rd & Collingbourne Ave

·         5^th Station - Jesus appears to his friends

o   Tesco Express, 32-36 Chipperfield Road: B36 8BL

·         6^th Station – Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of a new world

o   The wooden cross at Hodge Hill Church, 242 Coleshill Road: B36 8BG

·         7^th Station - Jesus gives his peace to his friends, to share with the world

o   The bus stop outside Hodge Hill Church (as above)

·         8^th Station – Jesus gives his friends the Holy Spirit

o   The Hunters Moon pub, 220 Coleshill Road: B36 8BE

·         9^th Station - Jesus shows his wounds to Thomas

o   The bench on the open, upper part of Hodge Hill Common towards the houses (what.three.words = ears.gifted.useful)

·         10^th Station - Jesus cooks breakfast for his friends

o   At the front of The Raven pub, 144 Hodge Hill Road: B34 6DR

·         11^th Station – Jesus helps Peter remember, and begin again

o   Down the Cole Valley footpath about 300m (to the left from The Raven) – at the foot-bridge over to Glebe Farm (what.three.words = raft.belong.hangs). NB. can also be accessed a short way down the footpath from Cole Hall Lane.

What if I can’t go out at the moment?

We realise that there are some of you that would love to do this pilgrimage ‘out and about’, but because of the infectious risks of COVID-19 are currently in ‘shielding’ at home. We hope there might be ways in which you can still feel part of the pilgrimage experience.

On the day(s) of the ‘out and about’ pilgrimage, we will encourage people to take photos and share them – via our neighbourhood website www.lovingourneighbourhood.life. Look out for these, when the time comes.

You can spend time reflecting on each station in this booklet, and could move around your house, and in your garden (or balcony), as you do them. Some possible locations could include:

1. by your front door (a place that might often be locked, and sometimes open)
2. standing on your door-step (where angels – and messengers – might sometimes come)
3. in your garden, balcony or next to a plant/flower in your house
4. on your driveway – or, if you can’t go out, holding a map (a place where a journey might begin)
5. at your meal table, or sitting room (a place where you would usually enjoy the company of others)
6. looking out of a window (to see the world beyond)
7. opening the window (to share God’s peace with others)
8. holding your phone (to communicate with others)
9. in your bedroom (a place where we dare to expose our bodies – to ourselves, and sometimes to others)
10. in the kitchen (a place for making – and sharing? – a meal)
11. in the bathroom (the place of bathing/washing – remembering our baptism and other new beginnings)

We’d love you to share your reflections, when you’ve done the pilgrimage, in whatever way you’ve been able – via our neighbourhood website: www.lovingourneighbourhood.life

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

‘Raised in Leeds’ are 19 illustrations by Si Smith of Jesus Christ’s appearances after the resurrection. They are drawn as though they took place in and around Leeds, a city in the North of England. Each illustration is inspired by a scripture text which is next to the station title in this booklet.

Ian Adams wrote some reflections and prayers to go with Si Smith’s pictures. We have used Ian’s words as inspiration for the words in this booklet, but they have mostly been written or re-written especially for our context here in Hodge Hill.

This booklet has been put together by Ruth Harley (the ‘wondering’ questions) and Al Barrett from Hodge Hill Church. If you’d like to find out more about us, and/or get involved with what we’re doing here, do get in touch:

Website: www.hodgehillchurch.wordpress.com

Facebook: /HodgeHillChurch

Twitter: @hodgehillchurch

Journey with Jesus on the Emmaus Road - a guided reflection

In this time when we’re not able to share communion together, this guided reflection offers an opportunity for each of us to meet Jesus in the breaking of bread, in our own home, wherever we are. It was intended for use at any time in these weeks where we’re cut off physically from each other – but has special significance this week, as it’s based on this Sunday’s gospel reading.

Walk through the reflection slowly. Give it time. One of the many, many insights of this story is, as Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama puts it:

God walks “slowly” because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster…. [Love] goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, whether we are currently hit by storm or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks.’

Emmaus Road, by He Qi

With Jesus on the road: ‘what things?’

¹³ Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁴ and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵ While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶ but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷ And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. ¹⁸ Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” ¹⁹ He asked them, “What things?”

Imagine you’re walking down that road, heading home, walking and talking with a friend or loved one. Talking together about everything that’s going on in the world.

Imagine Jesus comes alongside you, and asks you what you’re talking about. It’s an open question: ‘what things?’

Tell Jesus what’s been going on. Don’t worry that he’ll know already. Imagine him as a friendly stranger, who’s a good listener. Tell him what’s important to you right now.

With Jesus on the road:
hopes dashed, and a rumour of resurrection

They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰ and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹ But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. ²² Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³ and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. ²⁴ Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.”

‘We had hoped…’, say the disciples. They share with Jesus their hopes and their disappointments – and their shock and grief. And they share their wonderings, however doubtful – a rumour of resurrection – the faintest of hopes, a tiny glimmer of possibility of life beyond death.

Share with Jesus what’s on your heart. Tell him how you’re feeling: the happy and the sad, the hopeful and the fearful, the things you’re thankful for and the things that are heart-breaking.

With Jesus on the road: re-telling the story

²⁵ Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶ Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” ²⁷ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

It’s probably not the response they were expecting! Jesus sounds a bit harsh here. But if we can get over that, we hear him responding to their story-telling with some story-telling of his own: helping them see how their fragments of experience are in fact part of a much bigger Story, that stretches back to the beginning of creation, and forward to the ‘making new’ of all things. And helping them understand that he, Jesus, is in the middle of it all – with us, in it all, every step of the way.

Where might Jesus be in the midst of all that is going on right now? What words might he be saying, to you, and to those others for whom you’re praying? What might it mean, that our stories of suffering and death, of disappointment and fear, are held within his story of love and healing, of death and resurrection?

Spend some time listening for a word of hope and promise – or, in the silence, simply know yourself in the company of Jesus.

Inviting Jesus in

²⁸ As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹ But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.

‘Stay with us…’, the disciples say to Jesus. Invite Jesus to come into your home, to stay – to be with you, here and now.

Imagine opening your door for him, and welcoming him in. Imagine him coming in with you, following you through your home and sitting down next to you where you are.

A hymn / prayer (especially for evenings):

Lord Jesus Christ, abide with us,
Now that the sun has run its course;
Let hope not be obscured by night,
But may faith's darkness be as light.

Lord Jesus Christ, grant us your peace.
And when the trials of earth shall cease.
Grant us the morning light of grace,
The radiant splendour of your face.

Immortal, Holy, Threefold Light.
Yours be the kingdom, pow'r, and might;
All glory be eternally
To you, life-giving Trinity!

Text: Mane Nobiscum Domine; Melody: Old 110th

Recognition…

³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. ³² They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

Take some bread in your hands, just as Jesus did.

Break it, just as Jesus did.

Take a piece and eat it.

‘Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…’

Know that Jesus is with you, closer than breathing.

Spend some time just dwelling in this moment, with thankfulness.

Longing to return

³³ That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. ³⁴ They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

This is where the story ends. For us, at the moment, there is an incompleteness. It’s not possible for us to leave home, and return to a place where all our friends are gathered together – where we can exchange our stories of where we’ve met Jesus. We long for that day. We maybe even ache for it.

But what is possible today, or tomorrow? Who can we speak to – on the phone, on a doorstep, or at a window? Who can we share with, the glimpses we’ve caught of the risen Jesus, of hope and life?

Jesus, beloved friend, we thank you:
for listening to us along the way,
for coming in to be with us here,
and for making yourself known
in the breaking of bread.
Stay with us, we pray,
and when the day comes,
go ahead of us into the world:
that we might see your presence and hear your voice
in loved ones, in strangers, in neighbours all,
as we join together to cry:
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

What happens on the Emmaus Road, as the bewildered friends of Jesus and the friend they’d thought they’d lost walk together, is ‘the unfolding of a Person’ (these words are from Roland Allen, a theologian): as they walk and talk, Jesus offers space for his friends to ‘unfold’ their lives, their stories, in his company; and he too ‘unfolds’ for them his story – the story they thought they knew, but had not, until then, grasped more than tiny fragments of it.

And in the walking, and the unfolding, and their instinct to want to carry on this conversation, deepen this relationship further, that is behind their invitation to ‘stay with us’ – they begin to notice, realise, see things that before they had not noticed, realised, or seen.

In these weeks of what many are calling ‘lockdown’, when so much of normal life has been put on ‘hold’ (and who knows what our new ‘normal’ might look life after this?), I wonder if we might hear a deeper invitation, an invitation from the God who is Love: to a journey, a walking together; to a conversation, an ‘unfolding’ of ourselves to each other; and to a noticing, a possibility of seeing with new eyes things about the world, and its people and other creatures, that we have not ever seen or noticed before.

I’m going to finish with a picture, and a poem, that were shared with me by a travelling companion of mine, a theologian of mission, Cathy Ross. She reminds us that it is very often the people we tend not to notice – the little ones, the ones on the edges, the ones who are rarely given value – who see Jesus most clearly, and who will help us see Jesus more clearly too. I wonder who, in our world today, we are beginning to notice more, value more, and who might help us, in this time, begin to see Jesus afresh too?

Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus, c. 1618, Velasquez

The Servant-Girl at Emmaus (a painting by Velasquez)
by Denise Levertov

She listens, listens, holding

her breath. Surely that voice

is his – the one

who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,

as no one ever had looked?

Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?

Surely those hands were his,

taking the platter of bread from hers just now?

Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well?

Surely that face?

The man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.

The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.

The man it was rumoured now
some women had seen this morning, alive?

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table

don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.

But she in the kitchen,
absently touching the wine-jug she’s to take in,

a young Black servant intently listening.

swings round and sees

the light around him

and is sure.

Priesthood for all, in the time of COVID-19

"Marsh reeds, when full grown, vary from five to ten feet in height, and the tassels on the ends of the good ones are thicker than squirrels' tails. The next time you walk past a bank of reeds, try something. Pick out the tallest one you can reach, and cut it off with your penknife as close to the ground as possible. Ostensibly, perhaps even to yourself, it will seem that you are cutting it down to carry home to your children. No one will take serious exception. But in the carrying of it, you will make a discovery. Keep a record of your reactions: It is impossible simply to carry a marsh reed. For how will you hold it? Level? Fine. But it is ten feet long, and plumed in the bargain. Are you seriously ready to march up the main street of town as a knight with lance lowered? Perhaps it would be less embarrassing to hold it vertically. Good. It rests gracefully in the crook of your arm. But now it is ten feet tall and makes you the bearer of a fantastic mace. What can you do to keep it from making a fool of you? To grasp it with one hand and use it in your walking only turns you from a king into an apostle... Do you see what you have discovered? There is no way of bearing the thing home without becoming an august and sacred figure... So much so that most people will never finish the experiment: the reed, if cut at all, will never reach home. Humankind cannot stand very much reality: the strongest doses of it are invariably dismissed as silliness. But silly is from selig, and selig means 'blessed'..." (Robert Farrar Capon, 'An Offering of Uncles', in The Romance of the Word, pp.45-6).

The vast majority of us - especially those of us who live in urban areas like me and my neighbours in Firs and Bromford - will not have the opportunity to cut and carry a marsh reed for the foreseeable future. But Robert Farrar Capon, in his characteristically poetic and provocative style, describes here something which, I have a hunch, many of us have experienced in a whole variety of different ways over the last few weeks: the discovery that ordinary and everyday things - things we may not even have noticed or have tended to take for granted - are in fact something more, something more significant, something more remarkable, something more valuable, than we had realised up until now.

In Capon's terms - and he was an American Episcopalian (i.e. Anglican) priest - the bearer of the marsh reed is fulfilling the vocation of humanity: to be priests. What that vocation looks like for that small subset of people ordained by the Christian Church to be Priests (with a capital 'P', perhaps), has been something that the current COVID-19 crisis has somewhat thrown up in the air. I've already reflected on this a bit in some previous blog posts - especially on the temptations to the power of the provider, the performer and the possessor, and the im/possibility of 'sharing communion' when we are physically separated. Here, I want to take up Revd Dr Julie Gittoes' suggestion, that I reflected on in that previous post on communion, that as church we are living in an extended time of 'scatteredness', between the moments of eucharistic 'gathering', and that in this extended interval we might be learning more deeply what it means to live 'eucharistically':

"Perhaps this interval reveals the power of the sacrament: the space where we weave the eucharist into the daily life, and thereby transform it. The scattered Church thus continues to live and move, pray and serve, breath by breath — albeit over a longer and more difficult interval."

What Julie names as 'living eucharistically', Capon calls 'the priesthood of humanity' - and he unfolds it, helpfully I think, in terms of place, time and history - terms that are, in our present times, being opened up for re-conceiving in ways that they have perhaps not been for a while. It is humanity's priesthood, Capon suggests, that refuses the abstractions of space (that can be mapped, engineered, packaged, bought and sold) and instead offers up the particularities and uniqueness, the storiedness and sacredness of place. It is humanity's priesthood that marks - notices, celebrates, mourns - chronological time ('chronos' in Greek), that measurable but uninteresting quantity (that at the moment seems, for many of us, to be dissolving even more than usual into an undifferentiated blur), in ways that discovers 'kairos' (Greek, again) time - 'real time', 'high time', as Capon puts it - time for things of significance, for noticing, for celebrating, for mourning, for loving, for living, for dying, for rising. And these priestly 'raisings' of 'space' and 'chronos-time' into 'place' and 'kairos-time' are, in Capon's way of framing things, about raising our mere 'chronicling of events' into something we might call 'history' - something with shape, direction, meaning, significance.

For Capon, it is no coincidence at all that this history of humanity's priesthood begins in a garden: 'And the Lord God took the earth-creature [adam, in Hebrew] and put it into the garden of Eden to till it and to keep it' [to 'serve and observe' it, as Hebrew scholar Ellen Davis has translated it].

"Look, Adam, he says. Look closely. This is no jungle; this is a park. It is not random, but shaped. I have laid it out for you this year, but you are its [gardener] from now on. The leaves will fall after the summer, and the bulbs will have to be split. You may want to put a hedge over there, and you might think about a gazebo down by the river - but do what you like; it's yours. Only look at its real shape, love it for itself, and life it into the exchanges you and I shall have. You will make a garden that will be the envy of the angels." (Capon, Romance, p.54)

Capon, writing 40 years ago, even then was very aware of how humanity has both responded gloriously and failed desperately in our priestly vocation as 'earth-creatures'. Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh, writing much more recently, put it starkly in their reading of the Letter to the Romans:

"The point of many of the prophetic texts that Paul alludes to in Romans is that we have forgotten who we are. The earth creatures have failed to live up to the calling we were given, this calling to make the earth fully our home. This is what the language about exchanging the image of the living God is about... We have failed to be the ones who imaged God, and we have forgotten our roots in the earth. We are no longer the earth creatures but the death-bringers. We have replaced "till and keep" with "take and destroy." We have supplanted "serve and observe" with "dominate and discard." (Romans Disarmed, p.193)

But what if this time, this time of so-called 'lockdown', is an invitation to be opened up: to our primary calling as earth-creatures, to the priesthood of all humanity? What if this time is an invitation to all of us to practise the arts some of us have been taught when learning how best to 'supervise' colleagues: to articulate well, within all our relationships, sentences (with or without words) that begin 'I notice...', 'I wonder...' and 'I realise...'? What if this time is an invitation to all of us to notice, wonder, and realise things about ourselves, our fellow creatures, our world, and the God who is in all of her creation - that we have either forgotten, or have never before known? And what if our noticing, our wondering, our realising flows into gratitude, thankfulness, a life that is 'eucharistic' (for 'eucharist', at its root, simply means thanksgiving)?

This is why our poets are so needed right now - and the particular kind of priesthood that they offer. And they are, thank God, stepping up to the moment. Lynn Ungar, Tim Watson (@beatliturgist), Arundhati Roy, Cormac Russell and Nicola Slee are among many who are offering us words as windows into the deeper realities of now - and I name these just because they are poets who have spoken to me. Barbara Brown Taylor's phrase 'an altar in the world' has resurfaced for me, especially: many of us are, I think, discovering such altars hidden in patches of woodland on our daily walks; we are learning that there are countless altars to be discovered in our world masquerading as hospital beds, supermarket tills, and bin lorries; and we are discovering too that our kitchen tables are so often such altars too.

Which brings me back to eucharist.

"For Christians, a sacrament is not a transaction - not an operation that produces an effect that wasn't there before... Take the Eucharist. And take the highest possible view of it: the bread and wine, at the beginning of the rite, are mere bread and wine; but when they are received by the faithful at the Communion, they are the body and blood of Christ - they are Jesus himself, really present in all of his divinity and all of his humanity, and in all the power of his death and resurrection. A question arises, however: Is this eucharistic "change of status" an ordinary, transactional alteration, like the change of flour into bread? Does the act of celebrating the Eucharist "mix up a batch of Jesus"? Does Jesus, during the service, show up in a room from which he was previously absent? Do benefits we were formerly without suddenly begin to flow our way in Communion?  

"The answer to those questions, I think, has to be a flat no... It's not that their tank was topped off with Jesus the previous Sunday but now needs a refill. They never lost a drop of him, because he never left them... But if that's the case, do they really receive him? And if so, how do you go about theologizing that reception? You refuse to make the Blessed Sacrament a transaction, that's how. You say it really is the presence of Jesus, but you don't make it out to be an insertion of Jesus. You say the eucharistic presence is a mirror held up to the church's face so it can see the Jesus it already has. You say it's a dinner with the Jesus who's already in the house. You say any non-transactional thing you can think of - just as long as you say it's a party the church is already at and not some limousine that brings Jesus to the church's door." (Capon, Romance, pp.22-23)

We are, to reiterate, missing something during this time when we're not able to physically gather, not able to share communion, physically present to one another. "We are less than what we can be", to quote poet Tim Watson. And yet, we affirm, Jesus is "already in the house" - and profoundly so, if we would but notice him.

Yesterday I was inspired by a good friend and (until recently) close colleague, Revd Becky Stephens, who has just been licensed (over Zoom) as incumbent to a new parish and has had to begin her priestly ministry there without any form of physical gathering of her new congregation. She tweeted:

"I'm spending time this week gathering recorded readings, prayers, music and singing from different members of the @StPeters_SC family. It's just blessing me so much and often bringing a tear to my eye. I may not know the people yet, but there are so many beautiful gifts among them."

In this time when 'providing' and 'performing' (not to mention 'possessing') are grabbing a lot of the headlines, both inside and beyond the networks we call 'church', I want to read Becky's time spent in this past week as authentic an outworking of her (ordained) priestly vocation as I have seen anywhere. She has attended to the labour of love of gathering the priestly offerings of others: their noticings, their stories, their reflections, their prayers and praise. She has found a way of creating space to 'hear those offerings to speech', inviting them to be articulated, and receiving them in humble hands to offer, in turn, to God with thanksgiving.

As Capon observes, in a church - a world! - full of priests, the specific vocation of the ordained priesthood is to be "mirrors in which the church [and the world] sees the priesthood it already has". I would add, sitting where I am in the overlap between church and neighbourhood, that this is a vital aspect of the role of community-builder too: 'reflecting back' to our neighbours the gifts that they have, the gifts that they are, and the gifts that are being uncovered and offered in our neighbourhood.

I wonder if this, picking up on Revd Jody Stowell's reflections in Part 4 of my blog on rediscovering the 'uselessness' and marginal nature of ordained priesthood, might be an aspect of that calling (to ordination and/or to community-building) that some of us need to be rediscovering. Without the usual tools in our toolbox - and without our weekly rhythms of physical gathering, for community-building and for eucharist - that gentle work of mirroring, of 'reflecting back', might in some ways be harder work than in 'ordinary time'. But in other ways, as Julie has suggested, this extended time as 'dispersed' church might also be a liberating of all of our priesthoods, a bringing our shared priesthood to the surface - that might make the particular work of gathering and celebrating those offerings much less a burden, and much more an irresistible gift.

Resurrection deferred? COVID-19 & the disruption in liturgical time (5)

This started out as a short blog post, and then it turned out there was quite a lot to say. So we're currently on Part 5. So far, we've covered:
- Part 1: why it might be helpful to think of the COVID-19 lockdown as a collective experience of trauma, and why politically we need to attend to 'what remains'
- Part 2: why it's helpful to think of the strange, in-between, grief-ridden 'Holy Saturday' time as lasting more than a day
- Part 3: why 'Easter dawns slowly' - the first time, and every year, and especially this year
- Part 4: why (for the more privileged among us, especially) it might be worth staying with the Lenten discipline of facing our temptations, and discovering the gifts that fasting brings

And now we're here. Not at the most important part of these reflections, but perhaps at the knottiest question of this moment - at least for the Anglican Christians among us - what do we do about communion?

And this needs taking slowly and carefully. Because around the networks of social media, it seems there has been at least as much heat than light generated on this question. And that's for a number of reasons. Firstly, to state the obvious, there are lots of very different eucharistic practices and theologies out there right now. Secondly, equally obvious, there were lots of very different eucharistic practices and theologies out there before the COVID-19 lockdown. Thirdly, this stuff has been the raw material for heated argument over centuries, let alone the last few weeks - because for many Christians it comes close to vital, sustaining, transformative practices of faith - not just individually, but in relation to other Christians, and in relation to 2,000 years of Christian faith and tradition. Fourthly, it taps into all of the three kinds of power I explored in Part 4 of this blog - and how power is used is always fraught with dangers for our relationships and conversations. And lastly (and I'm sure there are more reasons that I've missed), we're in the midst of a traumatic crisis, and 'crisis thinking' tends towards shutting down spaces for patient, generous conversation, rather than holding them open.

So here, I'm going to begin by sketching out some important aspects of our local context here in Hodge Hill. Then I'm going to recall some of the dimensions of what we've explored so far, focusing on the specific question of communion - attending to the entwined but different experiences of those who usually find themselves on the receiving end, and those of us who usually have responsibility for 'holding open' the eucharistic space. And finally, I'm going to briefly explain what we're currently offering in Hodge Hill, and why.

Some local context

Before lockdown, the 'regular worshipping congregation' of the Hodge Hill Church community was around 90 people. Rarely did we have all 90 in one place. Regularly there were at least six different 'expressions of [worshipping and praying] church' here - with some overlap between them all. 

Almost exactly half of those 90 are over 70 years old. Roughly half have access to WhatsApp (and have joined a daily prayer WhatsApp group, sharing prayer requests together). Around 16 people have engaged with weekly Sunday 'Zoom coffee time' over the last few weeks, and that is probably roughly the limit of those who have the technology to be able to do that. Around 25 people are on our church Facebook group. And around 35 people have no internet access - and we deliver or post weekly paper mailings to them - as well as the phone calls to everyone that our pastoral care team are getting in every week.

But there's something else to be said about 'normal life' here in Hodge Hill. Around half of the church congregation are normally involved in one of the many gathering spaces in our local neighbourhoods beyond 'Sunday church'. And when we as a church recall our mission statement as 'growing loving community - in the love of God, with all our neighbours, across Hodge Hill', we include within those wider circles of community: a Place of Welcome at our Old Rectory Community House, and a cooking group 'Flavours of Hodge Hill' at the Hub community centre, on a Monday; Morning Prayer, Open Door drop-in and Community Lunch at the Hub on a Tuesday; a communion service followed by tea & toast or a soup & sandwich lunch at The Old Rectory on a Wednesday; our Women's Group 'Place of Welcome' at Ambridge House community centre, and The Real Junk Food Kitchen 'pay as you feel' community lunch, on a Thursday; and, from Spring through to Autumn, a whole load of locally-hosted Street Events, in squares and green spaces across our neighbourhood; and more, that are either more sporadic, or with less direct church involvement, or that I've just forgotten.

In other words - and I'm sure we're far from unique here in Hodge Hill on this - there is here a rich, interconnected ecology of gatherings, reciprocal hospitality, food-sharing, conversation and inclusive participation. As well as all those spaces I've just named, it also includes Sunday gatherings as 'FAB Church' (our relatively new little expression of church emerging in the midst of our community-building work on the estate), our Psalm Breakfast gatherings at The Old Rectory, and the Sunday 10.30am eucharistic gatherings at the United Reformed Church building that we sometimes call 'big church', or the 'mother ship', in attempts at some kind of fuzzy clarity.

I'm laying this all out for one reason. All of this - all of this - is on hold during lockdown. This is not just about not being able to go to the church building. This is not just about not being able to do a Sunday communion service. This is a rupture that goes across every strand of our whole interconnected ecology. And that hurts. It is deeply, profoundly painful, heart-breaking. Personally, because I am missing the rhythm of connection and sharing that sustains and enlivens me from week to week. And pastorally, because I know so many of my friends and neighbours, who we at times only semi-jokingly refer to as our 'co-conspirators' here, are missing it too - often in ways that are felt even more sharply, and with more threat to their social, emotional, spiritual and physical wellbeing, than for me.

Doing eucharistic theology in lockdown (1): what we're missing

For many of my fellow Christians in other places, it is the eucharist, celebrated in ways recognisable within the traditions and rules of their denomination or church tradition, that makes sense of the rest of life. All other places of hospitality, bread-breaking, food-sharing acquire their meaning and significance only when they are placed within the orbit of this central, meaning-making moment. For many of my Christian kin, the loss of those other 'tables' is sad, but it is the loss of the eucharistic table that is the fundamental tragedy. It's around this table that the real 'food for the journey' is distributed. Everything else is just - I don't know - a paler imitation?

For many of us here, though, I believe it's more complex than that. For us here, I think the eucharist only makes sense - in 'ordinary time', at least - in the context of all the other eucharistic spaces which weave together the fabric of our community life. The sharing around those other tables is real food, real sharing. The gathering dimension of the eucharist is profoundly impaired here not just because we can't gather for the eucharist in person - but also because some of the most significant raw material that would normally be gathered up and offered from our daily lives - our meeting and eating and sharing around other tables - is simply not there, at the moment, to be gathered and offered. There is a rupture in the eucharistic ecology here, locally, that is not easily mended by one of the widely-available sticking plasters.

Even within the 'normally gathered church community', however, there is also a profound rupture. As I said in the introduction, only 16 out of a possible 90 'regular attenders' have engaged with our 'zoom coffee times' - and I don't think there are many more congregation members with the technology to be able to do so. And even if we were to live stream something via Facebook or YouTube, more than 1/3 of our congregation would have no way of accessing them. How can we 'make eucharist' together if a third of the regular members of the body of Christ are excluded from it? The principles of community (we make eucharist together, as the people of God - not simply receive it passively, individually) and inclusivity (we do whatever we can to not put barriers, or reinforce barriers, in the way of anyone participating) are fundamental to our understanding of eucharist - of corporate worship generally - here.

Over the last few days, helpful suggestions from across the country have led us towards the possibility of a 'phone-in' service to be able to hear a recording, of a reading, a reflection and some prayers, for example. But how can we meaningfully call this 'participation' when it is reduced simply to one of our five senses, and there is no scope for any kind of agency other than listening?

So, for the moment, and with heavy hearts, we've decided here that we will fast from celebrating the eucharist. A fast both chosen and unchosen. Chosen, because the current - and always provisional - outcome of our corporate decision-making processes has been to not attempt to find ways to 'do communion', corporately, in any way which excludes a proportion of the membership of the body of Christ here from participation. Unchosen, not just because circumstances have thrust this decision upon us as a church, but because, as I've said, we are a part of a wider eucharistic ecology locally that is inescapably (if temporarily) ruptured, and there is nothing whatsoever that we can do right now to mend that wound.

But religious fasting is always both chosen and unchosen. Chosen in the sense that individual believers could choose not to fast. But unchosen in the sense that the time of fasting (Lent, Ramadan) comes upon us without any choice on our part. Unchosen even for Jesus, who was flung into the desert by the Spirit, and whose only choice was, perhaps, not to resist.

What remains?

In the midst of the rupture, however, what remains of our eucharistic ecology? There are, still, dining tables and kitchen tables around which food is shared and eaten. There are, still, conversations full of mutual listening and shared grief and shared joy and deepening love, both on the phone and, increasingly, on doorsteps and balconies and driveways and in the street. There are, still, expressions of creativity and joy and care and community, to be found in largely unseen, untracked filaments woven through our neighbourhoods. Much of that is even growing and flourishing in unexpected ways.

There are, still, homes in which versions of our meal-time liturgy (very loosely inspired by the Jewish 'Shabbat' meal - see image at the bottom of this blog post) is being said each week - by families with children, by individuals living on their own. And candles are lit, and hands are washed, and bread is broken, and prayers are said, and wine (sometimes!) is poured and drunk, and these words, among others, are said:

"As Jesus' friends recognised him
present with them in the breaking of the bread,
so may Jesus bless our meal with his presence,

and fill us with a hunger for justice."

There are, perhaps for the first time, homes in which people - on their own or with others - are spending time quietly, gently, slowly with the story of the Road to Emmaus [see the guided meditation we've offered, here]... imagining ourselves walking and talking with Jesus... sharing what's on our hearts and listening for ways in which our stories are being re-told within a bigger, more expansive, more enduring, more hopeful story than we had known or imagined... inviting Jesus to come and 'stay with us', in our homes, where we are... and, taking bread in our own hands and breaking it, and eating it, knowing that Jesus is with us, closer than breathing.

Is it communion? Not in its fullest sense: not done all together, physically present to each other; not done with all of our senses, with all of all of us engaged and involved and active together in making it happen; not offering up in thanksgiving the whole of a rich and flourishing eucharistic ecology woven through the life of our neighbourhood - and that remains a source of loss, and lack, and longing, and heart-break. It's also not 'communion', although perhaps less importantly, in the technical senses defined by the rubrics and canons of the institution (the Church of England, in our case) of which we are always an uneasy part - but a part, nonetheless, of the wider body of Christ, in ways that sustain and enrich and challenge us (as well as vice versa). But is what I've described, still, a fragment of something good and true and life-giving? Is it a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, where all is finally gathered together and made good? Is it a remembrance of Jesus' life and death and resurrection, and also of those fragments of eucharistic community that made up 'ordinary time' in our neighbourhood? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Doing eucharistic theology in lockdown (2): what we might be discovering

What, then, remains? Julie Gittoes' wonderfully rich, reflective, heart-full and wise article in this week's Church Times describes, after Daniel Hardy, "the eucharist as a gathered interval in the scattered life of the Church". What might we discover, she asks, if we find ourselves "inhabit[ing] an interval that is longer than a day or a week - an interval of extended scattering as we anticipate the feast?"

We might just possibly, she suggests, develop both a deepened attentiveness to Scripture, and a new creativity in faithful improvisation:

On Scripture: "As our homes become more keenly places of prayer, study, and devotion, might our hearts burn within us as we keep going, knowing that one day we will gather to break bread and know the nearness of our risen Lord with us?"

On improvisation: "Might we still be able to live “eucharistically” and creatively in the fast? Perhaps this interval reveals the power of the sacrament: the space where we weave the eucharist into the daily life, and thereby transform it. The scattered Church thus continues to live and move, pray and serve, breath by breath — albeit over a longer and more difficult interval."

Julie's insights chime profoundly with the gifts of fasting I explored in Part 4 of this reflection:

• time to expose our deep desires, needs & fragilities, our drives & addictions
• stripping back our defences, including our sense of 'usefulness'
• solidarity with others, hungering and thirsting in many different ways
• deepening our capacity for gratitude
• opening space to begin to re-imagine the world

These are, I think, potentially gifts that might not find such fertile soil within us, if it were easy for some of us - the privileged, connected ones - to simply consume something that looked and sounded very similar to what we have been used to in pre-COVID 'ordinary time', without needing to acknowledge the full depth of the current rupture in our eucharistic ecology.

But I may be wrong.

Jesus, beloved friend, we thank you:
for listening to us along the way,
for coming in to be with us here,
and for making yourself known
in the breaking of bread.
Stay with us, we pray,
and when the day comes,
go ahead of us into the world:
that we might see your presence and hear your voice
in loved ones, in strangers, in neighbours all,
as we join together to cry:
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

[from our 'Easter Sunday evening' liturgy, 'Journeying with Jesus on the Emmaus Road']