Change is in the air! For many years my wife and I have been at The Feathers Ledbury, for our New Year’s Eve Dinner. Somehow, this year we just couldn’t get around to it. It wasn’t just our age, it was more to do with the fact that the old staff have gone and the customers have changed. Also changed is our Saturday morning routine. When we entered the hotel Mary, Mike, Sue, Edward or Abbe would greet us with, “Cafetiere for two with hot milk’. This welcome has ceased. Even Fred seated at the bar has gone. Not even the name of the Fuggles restaurant is sacrosanct and has now been changed to ‘The Eatery;’ I guess its new owners felt that newcomers might feel confused or even threatened by the name of a locally grown Hop variety. They may be right, but to me, an eatery sounds as if the food was cooked off-site and delivered on the back of a moped.
It’s also change at the parish church. A new rector will arrive around April and her work will be supplemented by a host of Lay Worship Leaders. These are local people whose role is to lead the congregation through the order of service. They do this by reading from one of the books and pamphlets containing words approved for use in the Church of England. Unlike Anglican Lay Readers, Worship leaders are not allowed to preach doctrinally. They may however talk about what the Free Churches understand as personal testimony.
Free Churches operate differently from Hierarchal churches such as Anglican, Roman and Orthodox. A major distinction being that speakers in Free Churches are more able to express ideas, interpretations and develop worship practices in keeping with local or topical need. A similarity is that both groups give weight to scholarship, historical accuracy, training and all sponsor colleges and university faculties. However, the free non-conformist groups draw on the scriptures for precedents in making no distinction between full time ministry and lay ministry. For them, it is normal to have a fully ordained priest/elder as academically qualified as a full time priest, but whilst also earning their main income from a secular trade or profession. What must puzzle God however is why his priest in one group cannot be his (or her) priest in another.
What has not changed however is the ability of local Tradesmen to get on with a job with skill and humour. Over Christmas, the pipe-work to our cess pit finally shifted to the extent where I was having to rod it out every two weeks. A young chap from a Nationwide Company came with a van, camera and pressure jet and unblocked it, and although he couldn’t personally do remedial work, his colleague would cost £2,500. In the event I rang a local chap. He too came in a van with a camera, and pressure jet but he also had a shovel. He re-lined 2 metres which was under concrete, and dug in 18 metres of new pipes. This was done in a day and cost £1,350.
This discrepancy made me wonder if we really need to use telephone companies who advertise on TV. After all, most people have their own address book of skilled, trusted, competent and local trade’s people. It is also likely that a neighbour knows someone who is competent, conscientious and honest; Why not therefore, trust our neighbour and employ local people?
Of course the biggest most recent change, is that Britain’s politicians, civil service, judiciary and establishment elites are now fully responsible for decisions about our future. They can no longer blame somebody else. But this change means that we too have a direct responsibility for our nation’s future. In this respect we are like the local tradesman who is responsible for both the quality and quantity of his own outputs. And so just like the good tradesman, we must let our demeanour and work speak for itself. In fact, even as I write, the thought of a New Testament Carpenter who did just that crosses my mind.
In conclusion, we move from matters of change on earth, to change in the heavens. Last year on the 17th June 2019 humans saw for the first time the end of a Sun. ATLAS survey’s twin telescopes in Hawaii found a spectacularly bright anomaly 200 million light years away in the Hercules constellation. Dubbed, “The Cow,” the object quickly flared up, then vanished almost as quickly. It turns out that this ‘Sun’ had been consuming its fuel source for millions of years, and at the end of its life. the energy remaining and everything in its orbit, took just two weeks to vanish into a black hole. Because we know that this will also happen to our own sun, a question arises: How will our own Sun’s gradual decay affect its surrounding planets during the next few million years, and is an effect already being felt?
I guess the Old Testament’s admonition for us to be, “Stewards of the earth and all that is within,” has never been out of date.
However, talking of the Sun and change: maybe a sign outside a New York Church is a reminder to keep a sense of proportion when we ask for something specific. …
Dear Lord is it the time to impeach the President?
Give us a Sign….
Blot out the Sun
View from the Pew 