Patrick Comerford
Lent began this week with Ash Wednesday, and tomorrow is the First Sunday in Lent (Lent I). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Edward King (1829-1910), Bishop of Lincoln; Felix (647), Bishop, Apostle to the East Angles; and Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), Priest and Poet.
Today is also International Women’s Day, and to mark the day the current edition of Citylife in Lichfield magazine includes a feature by local historian Jono Oates on the story of Daisy Stuart Shaw, the first woman to be a councillor in Lichfield and the first woman to be Mayor of Lichfield. She was the Mayor of Lichfield when the Friary Clock was relocated brick-by-brick in 1928, and her name appears on one of the plaques on the clock tower.
After a lull last weekend, the Six Nations Championship resumes this afternoon. I am planning a short visit to London this morning, but later in the day I hope to find somewhere appropriate in Stony Stratford to watch the matches between Ireland and France (14:15), which should decide the championship, and Scotland and Wales (16:45).
Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 5: 27-32 (NRSVA):
27 After this he went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ 28 And he got up, left everything, and followed him.
29 Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax-collectors and others sitting at the table with them. 30 The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?’ 31 Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; 32 I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.’
Today’s Reflection:
In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist yesterday (Matthew 9: 14-15), Christ discussed the question about fasting put to him by the disciples of John the Baptist. The same question comes up again in today’s reading (Luke 5: 27-32) in the response to the lavish banquet Levi arranges in his house to welcome Jesus, especially during Lent, which we are supposed to mark with ‘prayer, fasting, and self-denial’.
But the difference between the welcome Jesus receives from Levi and the large crowd of tax-collectors and sinners at the banquet and the criticism levied by those who complain about this eating and drinking reminds me of ‘Indifference’, or ‘When Jesus came to Birmingham,’ a poem by the priest-poet Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (‘Woodbine Willie’), who is remembered in the Church Calendar today.
Woodbine Willie wrote this poem while he was a chaplain during World War I. He felt God’s heartbeat for people and ministered faithfully, through practical love and through his poetry, to the ordinary soldiers living through ‘hell on earth’ in the trenches.
In this poem, Kennedy compares the behaviour of Christ’s contemporaries with our behaviour today towards the stranger and the outcast, and challenges us in Lent to consider whether we are following Christ to Golgotha.
Kennedy once wrote: ‘We have taught our people to use prayer too much as a means of comfort – not in the original and heroic sense of uplifting, inspiring, strengthening, but in the more modern and baser sense of soothing sorrow, dulling pain, and drying tears – the comfort of the cushion, not the comfort of the Cross.’
Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy was given his nickname ‘Woodbine Willie’ during World War I because of his reputation for giving Woodbine cigarettes along with pastoral and spiritual support to injured and dying soldiers.He was born in Leeds in 1883, the seventh of nine children born to Jeanette Anketell and William Studdert Kennedy, a vicar in Leeds. His family came from Co Limerick, Co Clare and Clonfert, Co Galway. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and then went to Trinity College Dublin, where he received his degree in classics and divinity in 1904.
After a year’s training for ordination, he was appointed a curate in Rugby. In 1914, he was appointed Vicar of Saint Paul’s in Worcester. On the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered as a chaplain on the Western Front, and it was there he was given the nickname ‘Woodbine Willie.’
In 1917, he ran into ‘No Man’s Land’ at the Messines Ridge, to help the wounded during an attack on the German frontline. For his bravery, he was decorated with the Military Cross.
His poems about his war-time experiences were published in Rough Rhymes of a Padre (1918), and More Rough Rhymes (1919).
But during the war, he was also converted to Christian Socialism and pacifism, which influenced his books Lies (1919), Democracy and the Dog-Collar (1921) – which included chapters such as ‘The Church Is Not a Movement but a Mob,’ ‘Capitalism is Nothing But Greed, Grab, and Profit-Mongering,’ and ‘So-Called Religious Education Worse than Useless’ – Food for the Fed Up (1921), The Wicket Gate (1923), and The Word and the Work (1925).
After the war, je was appointed to the Church of Saint Edmund, King and Martyr, in Lombard Street, London. But he soon moved to work for the Industrial Christian Fellowship, travelling throughout Britain on speaking tours.
He addressed the Anglo-Catholic Congress in London in July 1923, when he said:
‘It is not enough to make the devotional life our main concern, and allow an occasional lecture or preachment on social matters to be added as a make-weight. The social life must be brought right into the heart of our devotion, and our devotion right into the heart of our social life. There is only one spiritual life, and that is the sacramental life – sacramental in its fullest, its widest, and its deepest sense, which means the consecration of the whole man and all his human relationships to God.
‘There must be free and open passage between the sanctuary and the street. We must destroy within ourselves our present feeling that we descend to a lower level when we leave the song of the angels and the archangels and begin to study economic conditions, questions of wages, hours and housing. It is hard, very hard, but it must be done. It must be done not only for the sake of the street, but for the sake of the sanctuary, too. If the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament obscures the Omnipresence of God in the world, then the Sacrament is idolatrous, and our worship is actual sin, for all sin at its roots is the denial of the Omnipresence of God.
‘I have been to Mass in churches where I felt it was sinful – sinful because there was no passion for social righteousness behind it. When ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make long prayers I will not hear you; your hands are full of blood … Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgement. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
‘Remember that medieval ritual was a natural expression of medieval life, which, at any rate, tried to consecrate all things to God – tried to build the Kingdom of God on earth, and dedicated all arts and crafts, all human activities to him. In that setting it meant much; apart from that setting it means nothing, and worse than nothing – it is a hollow mockery. The way out is not to destroy ritual, but to restore righteousness, and make our flaming colours the banners of a Church militant here on earth …’
Woodbine Willie was taken ill on one of his speaking tours and he died in Liverpool 96 years ago on 8 March 1929.
Indifference, by GA Studdert Kennedy
When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do,’
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 8 March 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘The World’s Greatest Leader: Jesus Christ.’ This theme was introduced last Sunday by the Right Revd Filomena Tete Estevão, Bishop of Angola.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 8 March 2025) invites us to pray:
Lord, we give you thanks and praise for the strength, resilience, and leadership of women across the world.
The Collect:
God of peace,
who gave such grace to your servant Edward King
that whomever he met he drew to Christ:
fill us, we pray, with tender sympathy and joyful faith,
that we also may win others
to know the love that passes knowledge;
through him who is the shepherd and guardian of our souls,
Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Edward King revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.
Collect on the Eve of Lent I:
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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