Passiontide Letter 2021

Dear friends

Part of Passiontide’s dramatic grip is its depiction of Jesus at the mercy of circumstance. I am writing to you on Tuesday in Holy Week, when the Gospel passage from Luke chapter 22 finds our Lord pondering darkly the denial of Peter and the likely need for both purse and sword in the coming ordeal – appearing to revise his previous, carefree, commissioning of the apostles. He appears deliberately, desperately under it all: muttering “this is your hour” to the arriving mob.

That the one submitting himself thus is the one in whom (as St Paul would later attest) “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” is a staggering affirmation, no matter how many Easters we experience. Apart from anything else it hallows our vulnerability, that Christ should share it so. However bowed down his people, Christ yet bears the weight of the world.

Likewise, dear friends, may you know the Lord sustaining you at the end of another demanding season: praying for you as he prayed for Simon Peter, and as he forever intercedes for the whole creation. And thank you – for your Godliness, care and character in forbearing the peculiar demands of what we earnestly trust will be the last season of lockdown.

The Lord bless you and keep you in his service. And may you - and those we serve together - find the way of the cross to be none other than the way of unquenchable risen life.

With the assurance of my prayers,

+Andrew Ramsbury