How to Read the Bible (in Bristol)


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Prayers for Evensong

The BBC were at the Cathedral yesterday, recording our Choral Evensong . I wrote some new prayers for the occasion, which I share here: In the evening of the day, we come to you, O God, bringing those we have met, for your blessing, our hurts for your healing, our sins for your forgiveness, our labours as our offering and our lives as our worship; we come to you through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who became like us, that we might become like him. Amen. Lord Jesus, you call us into your church; help us to leave behind the things we cling to, coax us with the treasure of heaven, and in the age to come, when the first will be last and the last will be first, allow us simply to be found within your Kingdom, and to feast at your table, where there is abundant life for all your world, for with you all things are possible, and in your name we pray. Amen. God of all hope, may the light of your justice search out the darkness of our world; may the power of your love banish al...
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Easter Vestry

The Vestry, who look after SMR's investments, meet on the Tuesday after Easter. Normally, the Vestry meetings are like any other committee meeting. But the Easter Vestry is different - much more funny. I'm probably breaking the official secrets act (or SMR's equivalent) by blogging about this, but what the heck ... We all went up to a special room in the rafters of the church, only ever used for the Vestry at their Easter meeting. The Vestrymen, some of whom are women, sit in strict order of seniority. Vestrymen who have been churchwardens are Senior Vestrymen, and consequently out-rank those who have not been churchwarden. I was done up in a certain amount of finery - cassock, gown and hood (which didn't match, not that anyone noticed!). At a small table to one end of the room sits the current churchwarden, with the vicar (or priest in charge) on her left and the Vestry Clerk on her right. The churchwarden then turns over an hour glass and the Vestry Clerk reads...
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Paul Tillich

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“It is for me,” wrote Karl Barth to Paul Tillich, “a very special phenomenon that we understand one another so well and cordially at the human level but materially, … we can only contradict and oppose one another from the very foundation up!” [1]  Barth and Tillich enjoyed one another’s company, but theologically they were poles apart.  The cordial relations did not stop Barth writing to a wife of a former student, congratulating her husband that he had made “the necessary attack on Tillich’s abominable theology.” [2]   Barth, I think far more than Tillich, found this tension made their relationship difficult.  I will make a few references to Barth as I try to assess Tillich’s work, but it should be clear that in hearing about Paul Tillich we are entering a very different world to that which the curate spoke about last week. Paul Tillich was born in Starzeddel in Germany on 20 th August, 1883.   He was a son of the Vicarage, and hi...
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