All posts by Hugh Jones

Wilderness Times

I was struck when opening my Church Times on Friday by a headline referring to the ‘40 days and 40 nights’ of lockdown that we have so far experienced. These words make a link between Our Lord’s temptation in the wilderness and our present time of isolation. Both, in turn, echo a far older narrative, that of the forty years spent by the people of Israel in the wilderness between their deliverance from Egypt and their arrival in the Promised Land. Continue reading Wilderness Times

Being Together

I’ve spent much of the last week on a course. Normally, I would have travelled down to Leicester and stayed in a hotel for this. Classroom sessions would have taken place in the St Michael’s Centre just across the way from Leicester Cathedral. The hotel bar might also have been a venue for some of the (very important) interactions in which one learns with and from one’s peers.

Continue reading Being Together

The Mind of Christ

This morning’s reading from the letter to the Philippians is easy to overlook. It has two powerful and dramatic gospel readings over-shadowing it, one shortly before, another very soon after. The story of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem comes first, and it is laden with irony since Jesus himself is the only one who has an inkling that the ultimate destination of this journey is a cross on Golgotha. We know, of course, which only makes it all the more poignant for us to witness the adoration of the crowds whose shouts of Hosanna will so quickly turn to taunts and murder.

Continue reading The Mind of Christ

Passiontide Begins

Today marks the beginning of Passiontide, the final two weeks leading up to Easter Sunday. These are days in which we are reminded that the God we worship is intimately acquainted with bodily suffering and death. Our focus as Christians now turns decisively towards the cross – not an empty one, for now at least, but one on which we can still see Jesus, suffering and dying.

Continue reading Passiontide Begins

A Mothering Sunday of Grief

There have been many reactions this week to the suspension of public worship in the Church of England, and in our own church here in Lincoln. Some people have been angry. Others have tried to negotiate ways to continue gathering for public worship, looking for loopholes in the restrictions that the Government and the national church have imposed. Others have refused to believe that this is really happening.

Continue reading A Mothering Sunday of Grief