Message from our minister, Clare

Annwyl ffrindiau/Dear friends

When I first started going to church in my mid-twenties I wasn’t a Christian and I didn’t believe in God. In fact, I started going because while I knew that I rejected religion, I wasn’t entirely sure why, so I attended church to gather evidence to shore up my position. No doubt with some insensitivity, I explained this to the vicar and to most people who would listen to me in the Anglican church in the village where I lived. I was pleasantly surprised, and probably a bit wrong-footed, when they didn’t seem at all put off and welcomed me with open arms nonetheless.

What I found as I sat in that 13th Century church with medieval wall paintings still partly intact, was a sense of something way beyond me. There was an awareness of a much bigger story, there was wonder, there was something precious in being part of a community of people who prayed for the common good as people had done for centuries in that place, in being with people who recognised their common identity as they gathered around this someone or something called God. What I quickly realised was that I looked forward to going. I looked forward to switching off from just looking out for me and being part of a movement that saw things differently and believed in goodness and was less cynical and I enjoyed, to my surprise, being welcomed and known. I began to be invited to lunches and tea and cake and no-one minded one bit that I didn’t believe. I was at least twenty years younger than the nearest person in age to me and I wasn’t even a Christian, but they just gave me space to be.

I may have started going to church to find out answers and develop my reasoning about Christianity, but what I got instead was an introduction into the unknowingness of faith and before long I was surprised by a deep sense of belonging to a God who had known me all along even thought I hadn’t known God. I thought I needed reason and I was blessed with mystery.

In the latest edition of the URC’s magazine, Reform, author and broadcaster Justin Brierley notes: “It’s hard to find community in a world of screens.” As we approach Easter may we recognise what is precious about our church community – it was novelty enough as a young person in the mid 1990’s to find a range of people from different backgrounds committed to their church family, so I can only imagine how much more so it would be now. Let us not underestimate the powerful witness of simply being church, of welcome, of caring for one another and those who are brave enough to walk through our doors.

And in this season, above all, may we give ourselves space to wonder, to ensure that the little of what we understand about the Easter story does not eclipse our opportunity to experience it and be open to it. Theologians over the centuries have wrestled with interpreting Easter and have come to very different conclusions about what happened on the cross and why. But beneath the various understandings is God’s profound, costly love extended to us and a desire to be with us. May we allow ourselves to receive that and feel that this Easter.

Pob bendith/Blessings

Clare

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