Holy Week in London

During Holy Week this year, Anita and I took a long-dreamed-of trip to London. We traveled with our son, Eliot, and his wife Tatyana, and being with them added immeasurably to the joy we experienced.

Surprisingly, the weather was sunny and warm nearly the whole time we were there; the city’s abundant parks and gardens were bursting with blooms and glowing with vibrant color. Walking in them, and in many other astonishingly beautiful places, was wonderful.

We saw “My Master Builder,” starring Ewan McGregor in the West End; toured the Churchill War Rooms; wandered agape through Westminster Abbey; had a proper English tea at the Savoy; took a day trip to Oxford (Blackwell’s Book Store is my vision of an anteroom of heaven); prayed for a brief while in St. Martin in the Fields; stood gratefully at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park; spent time in a pub frequented by Charles Dickens and which is mentioned in Great Expectations; took in a great many other of the sites you’d expect first-time visitors to experience; and had fun conversations with London cabbies.

Unexpectedly, for me, St. Paul’s Cathedral was central to my experience of London, partly because it was Holy Week and partly because the hotel Eliot found was in its shadow.

On Thursday morning, Anita and I attended a Chrism Eucharist service, which included the Blessing of the Oils which will be used in the churches of the Diocese of London this year for anointing the sick and dying and for candidates for baptism, confirmation, and ordination.

The service also called on all the bishop, area bishops, bishops suffragan, priests, deacons, and licensed lay-ministers of the Diocese to renew their ordination vows and commitment to ministry. There were, I’m estimating, about 300 of these clergy present, dressed in black robes covered with plain white surplices.

A young person (secondary school aged) led the litany of renewal, which was moving in itself, since one of the responsibilities of those who lead congregations is to do so in a way that nurtures the young and shapes a future that will give them the opportunity to flourish. Anita and I, like so many people we could hear around us, whispered our own renewal promises.

A couple of the questions linger with me, inviting me to greater focus and faithfulness. One asked: “Will you strive to be like our High Priest and Good Shepherd, the Teacher and Servant of all, and so to be an authentic sign of Christ’s loving presence among us?” To become and be like Jesus and increasingly to learn from him how to see, hear, think, speak, and act as he did and does are at the center of the ministry to which baptism ordains all of his followers. To be an authentic sign of Christ’s loving presence is one of the beautiful burdens and transforming possibilities of clergy leadership.

Another question was: “Will you be a faithful minister of the mysteries of God by leading the worship of God’s people with devotion and care and by teaching the Christian faith with conviction and joy?” It’s that last phrase which is like a pebble in my shoe: “with conviction and joy.” For almost all of my years of ministry, I have led worship and taught “with conviction.” “With joy?” Not as much. I have been, as Leander Keck once put it, guilty of being more impressed by the problem of the world and of the church than by the power of God. I want and intend, instead, to renew my trust that Teilhard de Chardin was right when he said, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”