Month: January 2026

Hebrews 2.14–18, Luke 2.22–40

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Candlemas),

1 February 2026, Eldroth, Clapham

There are those who come into church often, worshipping week by week or praying day by day. There are those who come occasionally, for special festivals or for family rites of passage. And there are those who like to visit cathedrals or little village churches on days out, or on holiday, who may light candles and write appreciative words in visitors books.

And there are also those people who at some point in their lives will make a one-off trip to places which are revered as being particularly holy, such as Lindisfarne or Iona, Jerusalem or Lourdes. We call these special kinds of visits pilgrimages. [1]

But whether it’s the weekly service or the festive occasion in the parish church, the holiday visit to the great cathedral, or the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage, people share the intuition that time spent in any of these places can help us find peace, hope, comfort, and understanding to take back into our everyday journey of life. 

Those who come to their local church – their ‘mother church’ – at Christmas or for a baptism or funeral, come to reconnect with the special, spiritual, side of life, and to reinforce their ties with their nearest and dearest ones, and their community. Sometimes these moments can cause a person to change direction: I can think of times when hearing a sermon or a eulogy, or saying my godparents vows, challenged me to change my ways for the better… maybe you’ve had this experience too.

Those who come to their particular place of prayer week by week, or day by day, do so for probably all of the above reasons, but also because to us, coming to worship is an integral part of our regular journey through life. Almost as instinctive as breathing, is this desire to take time out of the ‘ordinary’ to place ourselves deliberately in God’s presence to seek his guidance and know his care. You could say that, if we see our whole life as a pilgrimage journey with God, then every place we stop for prayer is a Pilgrim Place. 

The Temple in first-century Jerusalem was like the grandest cathedral you can imagine today. It was the most special place at the heart of Israel’s spiritual life. On that day when Mary and Joseph arrived we can imagine it being full of visitors, some of them making their pilgrimage, some of them there for their regular daily or weekly worship. And then we see Mary and Joseph, who were there for a family rite of passage: to fulfil the religious laws, forty days after his birth, to bring their newborn to the Temple and offer a sacrifice. 

“They brought him up to Jerusalem,” Luke tells us, and very soon after “They returned to Galilee”. Mary and Joseph’s simple offering may have gone almost unnoticed in a small corner of that vast building with so much activity going on around them, but for this couple those brief moments had lasting significance – a significance underlined by the affirmation they received from two of the Temple’s elders. Simeon’s joyful prayer and Anna’s heartfelt praises were so cherished by Mary and Joseph that they eventually found their way into Luke’s gospel, and then on into the liturgies of the Church throughout the ages. Stemming from that modest moment in the Temple,  Christians worldwide continue to sing Simeon’s  enraptured words: “My eyes have seen your salvation … a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

What a great message – the central message of our faith – that The Father’s love is for all people. At this moment in our history when Christianity is once again being reduced to a narrow exclusive nationalism which turns hearts and minds against society’s most vulnerable ones, we do well to remember that the birth of Jesus shows “God becoming like us, revealing the infinite dignity of every person”. [2] When we hear politicians preaching to us about upholding “Britain’s Christian heritage” let us remember that that heritage starts with Simeon in the Temple, cradling the newborn in his arms, and with his message: that the light of Christ shines for all people; and that by trying to walk in the light of his love and his teachings, very different sorts of people discover we can live and flourish together. 

You’ll have seen that with today’s Newsletter I’ve included a prayer card for you. It comes from a Church of England initiative called Faith in the North, which aims to celebrate the faith of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries who brought Christianity to our part of the world. [3] 

The prayer cards tell us something about their faith: that they were in touch with nature, seeing God’s hand at work in all creatures; that they celebrated the cross of Christ which offers forgiveness and new life to all; that they valued prayer and meditation as ways to stay close to God; that they found God in special holy places which they travelled many miles and crossed many rivers and seas to reach; and that in their own place too, they found a sense of belonging to God just where they were.

They call them the Northern Saints, these early pioneers who helped to spread the faith through this part of the country, whose disciples made their way throughout the North preaching, teaching, and planting churches as they went, including the first buildings on the sites of the churches in which we now worship.

We don’t know the names, anything about, those who founded the first churches in our parishes – but we can nevertheless be thankful for their missionary activity which, by a long and rich pilgrimage through history, often fraught with drawbacks and danger, enables us to be at worship here today in this place. Their faith, their example, is our heritage. 

We who find our church to be a place of peace, beauty and comfort know that God is also present in our daily lives and wants us to go on speaking, listening and learning more about him, and finding life in all its fulness with him in all our days. In the words of the Anglo-Saxon monk Aelfric, ‘God’s house is our prayer-house. Nevertheless, those who believe may, in every place, pray to the Almighty who is there in every place for those who call to him.’ [4]

Notes

[1] Faith in the North: Pilgrim Places, accessed 31 January 2026.

[2] Pope Leo quoted in Solomon Hughes, Andrew Rosindell and the politics of selective Christianity. Morning Star, 30 January 2026.

[3] Faith in the North: Exploring Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: some prayers to try, 16 July 2025. 

[4] Faith in the North: Pilgrim Trail Leaflets: ‘Discover the early Northern Saints: Signposts to God’, 14 November 2025.

Psalm 27

 The Third Sunday of Epiphany, 25 January 2026, Austwick, Clapham

What is the composer of Psalm 27 going through, to make this prayer?

Listen again to what he says…

The wicked, my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh…

A host encamp against me, and there rise up war against me…

My father and my mother forsake me…

There are those who lie in wait for me…

My adversaries, false witnesses, have risen up against me, and those who breathe out violence…

This is a man besieged, surrounded on all sides by those who wish to do him harm. His enemies want to rain down deadly violence upon him. He is ensnared in the traps they have laid for him. And he is alone in this trauma – for even his own flesh and blood, even his father and mother, have forsaken him. This is a scene of utter abandonment, fear, and the expectation of worse to come. 

You may see this person clearly in your mind’s eye if you translate this picture to any of the places of conflict in our world today – to a Palestinian West Bank home surrounded by settlers who want the frightened family gone, to a small Kharkiv apartment where a Ukrainian family huddle as   bombs whistle past their window, to the anxious people of Greenland, waiting for an invasion.

The composer of Psalm 27 speaks for countless suffering people in the world today, just as he did way back when he wrote these words nine centuries before Christ. The Psalm is usually attributed to a young David, before his days as a king, when he was fleeing from King Saul and in hiding, whilst the priests who protected him were being sought out and executed. [1]

Some people describe Psalm 27 as a cry for help – and it does contain many such cries:

Hear my voice, O Lord, when I call; have mercy upon me and answer me…

Hide not your face from me, nor cast your servant away in displeasure…

You have been my helper; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation…

Deliver me not into the will of my adversaries…

This is a man turning to prayer at a time of desperation. I’d imagine prayers of this kind rising up from the injured, their families and friends, in the minutes and hours following the train collision in southern Spain last weekend. I’m reading a book by the Yorkshire novelist David Peace, called Munichs, about the 1958 Manchester United plane crash and its aftermath. I was moved by a scene where the first reports of the crash reach Old Trafford, and the schoolboy apprentice young Nobby Styles is dismissed early from his boot-cleaning and bin-emptying duties. He leaves for home, filled with dread for the fate of his teammates, but does not go straight home, for once in Collyhurst he first heads to St Patrick’s Church, where he kneels at a pew praying and crying and pleading with his maker, “rather me than them, please God, just take me, please. Just let them live, please, please, God, let them live.” [2]

Was Nobby’s prayer a prayer of desperation or of devotion? Reportedly Nobby Styles was a devout Catholic throughout his life, who attended mass each morning of England’s 1966 World Cup campaign and made his confession on the day of the World Cup final. In David Peace’s book we next see him in church again, at the funeral of one of his club colleagues, where he is not sitting in a pew in the congregation, but serving as an altar boy. [3]

Nobby was asking the impossible in praying, “God, just take me, please, let them live”. But – this is the important thing – he was praying. In a moment of crisis, at a time of desperation, he showed the same instinct as the Psalmist David did: to turn first to God. In trust that God would hear his prayer and meet him and those for whom he prayed in their hour of need. 

And so we can read Psalm 27 not simply as a cry for help, not only a prayer of desperation, despite the awful situation, but as a prayer of devotion. For at the very start of it, the Psalmist sings out these words:

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?  

The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?

The Psalmist loves to come into the sanctuary of prayer, it is a practice at the very heart of his life. He says, 

One thing have I asked of the Lord, and that alone I seek:  

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

To behold the fair beauty of the Lord and to seek his will in his temple.

He trusts that God will hear his cries; that in the day of trouble he shall hide him in his shelter.

He knows that God will help him lift his head up high above the enemies round about him.

This gives him great gladness, it brings joy to his heart and music to his voice.

At the end of the Psalm, though his enemies are still circling with murderous intent, this is what the Psalmist confidently says:

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

And, though he is in the midst of a great trauma, he finishes with a word of encouragement for those, like us, reading his words today; a lesson from his life that he wants to share with us:

Wait for the Lord; be strong and he shall comfort your heart;

wait patiently for the Lord.

I am forever humbled by those who even in their darkest hours, turn first in faith to God. 

Those who, later, looking back on hard times, tell us, “It was my faith that got me through it.”

May God grant me, grant us all, such strength in such devotion.

Notes

[1] Wikipedia: Psalm 27.

[2] David Peace, Munichs, p.33-35.

[3] Wikipedia: Nobby Styles; David Peace, Munichs, p.33-35.

The Second Sunday of Epiphany, 18 January 2026 in The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Austwick, Eldroth

Today is the start of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It is a chance for us to give thanks for those others in our community who today will be worshipping God in their own way – in their Chapels, in their Meeting Houses, sharing solemn Mass or singing praises with songs accompanied by keyboards and guitars. 

Though each church is different – and even our own Anglican churches are different from each other – we are one with each of them in our faith, and we pray for the flourishing of all the good things we have in common.  

We can also celebrate, today, what is special, what is distinctive, about our own parish churches here in this corner of North Yorkshire.

Last week Graham Usher, the Bishop of Norwich, wrote in a farming weekly that “The church has always had a deep connection to the countryside”. What I’m about to say draws on his words… [1]

One of the wonders of the Church of England’s parish system is that, across the country, every square centimetre of land belongs.

Every field, hedge, house, barn, river, road and wood is part of one of our parishes. From housing estates to country estates, they all belong to a parish.

It gives the church a deep connection with the places and the people it serves.

In rural parishes everywhere in the country, farmers and farm workers live out that connection. Their parish church is part of their lives. They are not only farming the land and growing our food, they are helping to hold together communities.

Our village churches rely heavily on our truly remarkable volunteers – with a particular cheer to churchwardens who fulfil their duties so faithfully.

Farming families are often the people helping with the church fete, toddler group, churchyard maintenance and community lunches.

Jesus walked the farmland of Galilee. Several of his followers were fishermen, providing food for the community (and there was a tax collector of course). Throughout his ministry Jesus used images of food and farming, crops and animals, to tell his astonishing story of hope and everlasting life.

And you may recall me last week talking of the wisdom of the magi which visited Jesus at his birth – an ancient wisdom seeing no division between the physical world and the unseen world, believing deeply in a God who was at the heart of all things in creation, the originator who kept life growing and who, if you praised him, would bless your crops, bring beneficial weather, make your land fertile, so that your people could endure.  [2]

And so, like the cycle of the seasons and farming, the church year is also rooted in seedtime and harvest; preparation, work and gathering in. 

Our parish churches, many of them nationally-important treasuries of medieval art and architecture, are also treasure-troves of memory for generations of people rooted in their community. No-one has to qualify to be there; all are welcome.

When you push open the door of a rural church, whether as a local, passerby or pilgrim, you often walk into stillness and silence. But this is no empty silence but an expectant silence, waiting on God – like the seeds underground, buds on branches, sheep ready to lamb.

Likewise, our churchyards are carefully tended, often by volunteers, to provide places of contemplation, prayer and beauty for all who visit. Like ours at Austwick, many churchyards are also managed with nature in mind: balancing the needs of those who grieve with care for all God’s creatures.

In our beautiful diocese we can see the enormous work which goes into tending the land, caring for crops and livestock, and providing us with food and food security.

We can also be heartened by the number of people who are living out that fine balance between food production and nature protection.

Farmers often live with enormous pressures. Weather, illness, crop and animal diseases, finance, staffing, rural crime… the list of reasons not to be cheerful can seem insurmountable. 

Some will remember that historically, in its roles as landowner, landlord and tax-gatherer, the church has sadly played its part in perpetuating poverty; and as an institution the Church increasingly recognises the need to acknowledge these aspects of its nature, to make its confession, and perform acts of reparation.

Every new year brings uncertainty – every farmer knows there are always storms ahead. And these are challenging times for our small country churches too, of all denominations. 

So, on this day of prayer for all our churches, we ask that God will give us all strength to weather the storms ahead of us; give us all grace to help people weather the storms of their lives; and by his Holy Spirit, enable us to keep standing as a focus of hope and joy at the heart of all communities.

Note

[1] The Rt Rev Graham Usher, Bishop of Norwich hails church’s connection to countryside. Eastern Daily Press, 4 January 2026. Edited by Revd John Davies.

[2] John Davies, The wisdom which surrounded Jesus at his birth, preached for Epiphany, 11 January 2025.

Isaiah 60.1-6 / Matthew 2.1-12

The Epiphany, 11 January 2026, Austwick, Keasden

For ten months in the year 7BC, Jupiter and Saturn travelled very close to each other in the night sky. The giant planet Jupiter, thick with liquid gasses, circled by moons larger than the planet earth, to the ancients represented the highest god and ruler of the universe: to the Greeks that was Zeus; to the Babylonians, Marduk; to the Romans Jupiter. Saturn with its colourful rings was deemed to be the shield of Palestine. 

In May, September and December of the following year, 6BC, Jupiter and Saturn met in the constellation Pisces, which was also associated with Syria and Palestine, and was thought to signify momentous events. To those who followed such stars, the meaning of this heavenly conjunction was clear: a divine and cosmic ruler was to appear in Palestine.

It was clear to those who shared this star-gazing wisdom, that they should set out to find this cosmic ruler, to pay homage, to bring gifts.

All we know for sure about these visitors to the infant Jesus was that they were foreigners who were deemed to be wise. 

We don’t know how many there were: tradition says three because they brought three gifts, but you know this doesn’t necessarily add up if, like me, you received multiple presents off the same people this Christmas, like a pair of socks packaged together with a Boots gift token. 

Tradition says they were men, but their party could have included women. I think you may have heard me before quoting a female friend, whose question bears repeating: What would have happened if it had been the three Wise Women instead of three Wise Men? She says that they would have:

• asked directions…
• arrived on time …
• helped deliver the baby …
• cleaned the stable …
• brought practical gifts …
• and made a casserole.

True enough: women have always been the bearers of practical, applied, wisdom, as scripture and experience shows. So maybe some or even all of these magi could have been female….

And we’re in the habit of calling them kings, which they weren’t. There’s a slender chance that they may have been Persian ambassadors, but essentially they were astrologers, soothsayers, divines. They weren’t looking for a secular king of the type modelled by Herod, in those days,  and Putin or Trump in ours. They were looking for one who would lead with the wisdom which they shared.

The wisdom of the magi was twofold:

They found significance in the stars – like astronomers do, as scientists;

They found guidance in the heavens – like astrologers do, as mystics.

In ancient times stargazing embraced both science and mysticism. People saw no division between the physical world and the unseen world. And they believed deeply in a God who was at the heart of all things, a creator, the originator who kept life growing and who, if you praised him, would bless your crops, bring beneficial weather, make your land fertile, so that your people could endure. 

These wise ancients studied the stars and the heavens for what they revealed about weather patterns, about changing tides and seasons; and their ability to read these natural signs meant that the people knew when they should plant and when they should reap, when they ought to rest and when they ought to move on. 

Those who studied stars and the heavens studied life – seeing all life as belonging in God’s ordered universe; a universe in which they had a place, together on equal footing with the other creatures and the stars themselves, all of whom are made to praise their maker. As a Psalm of David says:

The heavens declare the glory of God; 

the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 

Day after day they pour forth speech; 

night after night they display knowledge. 

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. (Psalm 19.1-3)

Today, such wisdom is being rediscovered and celebrated by many people who are looking for gentler ways to live on this earth, recognising that the destructive ways we’ve been living for the past couple of centuries cannot be sustained. 

There is a welcome turn towards finding wisdom for life in the patterns of nature. It’s not a naive wisdom, because it’s based on ancient understandings and the tried and tested ways of many folks who have lived that way for centuries. 

The wisdom of rural ways; the wisdom of the shepherds; the wisdom of the magi: it’s the same wisdom which surrounded Jesus at his birth. 

Notes

[1] Drawing from my Epiphany – dreamers and stargazers, preached in Lydford, 2012. Original source material references unfortunately unavailable. Acknowledging Tom Bullough, Sarn Helen: A Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future, and his learning from the ways of the ancient saints of Wales: “For the natural world to be the first consideration is not, in fact, and despite all appearances, alien to the culture of Wales. Indeed, it is its very heart.” Page 265.