Passion Play in Great Missenden

Since the publication in 1986 of Lent Holy Week and Easter, churches have increasingly enriched their observances. Real ashes on Ash Wednesday, Palm processions, and the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday are now found all over the place where once they were rather top shelf activities.

This week Great Missenden Parish Church is putting on a simple Passion Play, locally produced, developed and resourced from scratch by a group of friends led by Brenda Harris. It’s certanly a fresh way of being drawn into the story. Being in the cast also draws people together, strengthens community, and enables everyone to experience the story from the inside out. What is lost in Broadway slickery is regained, and more, in impact when you know all the people on stage, and off. The short play comes with a simple meal in Church for those who want it, and 7·30 tonight is the last performance, for this year.

This is a brave and moving endeavour for a local Church. Holy Week is a time to explore the story personally, and this production certainly brought it to life.

The use of drama in Church grew through the middle ages, aided by Franciscan spirituality with its cribs and other visual aids. Plays became suspect, though, for their embellishments and, perhaps, their inherently hazardous blend of doctrinal creativity on the hoof and local colouring, seasoned by all the precariousness of a live show.

Afficionados of full-on Anglican Life and Literature cannot forget Reverend Wiggin’s Christmas Pageant at Christ Church Gravesend New Hampshire. This is one of the finest pieces of comic writing there is, in the Quintessential Anglican novel, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. The Christmas Pageant, recounted with undersattement and comic tension worthy of Joyce Grenfell, is an irrestible imbroglio from which Owen rises heroically

‘What’s wrong with the Christ-Child?’ Barb Wiggin asked.
‘ALL THOSE BABIES,’ Owen said. ‘JUST TO GET ONE TO LIE IN THE MANGER WITHOUT CRYING. DO WE HAVE TO HAVE ALL THOSE BABIES?’
‘But it’s like the song says, Owen,’ the Rector told him. “Little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.”
‘OKAY, OKAY,’ Owen said. ‘BUT ALL THOSE BABIES - YOU CAN HEAR THEM CRYING. EVEN OFFSTAGE YOU CAN HEAR THEM. AND ALL THOSE GROWN-UPS!’ he said. ‘ALL THOSE BIG MEN PASSING THE BABIES IN AND OUT. THEY’RE SO BIG - THEY LOOK RIDICULOUS. THEY MAKE US LOOK RIDICULOUS.’
‘You know a baby who won’t cry, Owen?’ Barb Wiggin asked him — and, of course, she knew as soon as she spoke... how he had trapped her.
‘I KNOW SOMEONE WHO CAN FIT IN THE CRIB,’ Owen said. ‘SOMEONE SMALL ENOUGH TO LOOK LIKE A BABY,’ he said. ‘SOMEONE OLD ENOUGH NOT TO CRY.’
Mary Beth Baird could not contain herself. ‘Owen can be the Baby Jesus!’ she yelled. Owen Meany smiled and shrugged.
‘I CAN FIT IN THE CRIB,’ he said modestly.
Harold Crosby could no longer contain himself, either; he vomited. He vomited often enough for it to pass almost unnoticed, especially now that Owen had our undivided attention...

I’m not sure people this side of the pond are yet ready for such glorious experiences, but, this worked better than that. Seeing neighbours and friends in the story helps us locate ourselves within the plot. The play was well-supported, and may well develop further in future years...

Into the vortex: Tragic Drowning...

Maundy Thursday begins with the blessing of oils in the Cathedral, and a gathering of lay ministers and clergy which I always find immensely moving to be among. We all renew the promises made when we undertook our ministries. At the same time oils are blessed for use in the coming year for healing, baptismal and other sacramental anointing. This evening I am washing feet at the Eucharist of the Lord’s Supper at Great Kimble...

I am always struck by the way the Holy Week story changes gear at the end of the Eucharist of the Lord’s supper. Jesus, who has been very much driving the gospel story along up until now, gives himself up into the hands of his enemies. He allows himself, freely, to be drawn into a tragic vortex of betrayal, injustice, and humiliation that leads to Golgotha. Do we imagine, for one moment, that his basic instinct to fight for life was any the less than any of us? Reflecting on this mystery brings to mind a passage from Iris Murdoch’s novel Nuns and Soldiers. Tim Reede the artist remains conscious and fights for life as he is sucked into what seems to be an all-powerful inexorable drowning in a mill-race

When Tim’s head rose above the surface of the raging foam he was already close to the tunnel. He could see the waters contending, boiling, stooping as they constrained themselves into the tunnel whose entrance was below the surface. The smooth stone walls of the canal now rose high above on either side, cutting out the light of the sky. Tim thought, oh why did I have to drink this water and not the other? And he thought, oh, Gertrude, Gertrude — he was fully conscious that he was about to die. He took a last gasping breath and instinctively ducked his head into the foam as he was sucked down under the submerged centre of the stone arch.

Tim had taken another breath. He was aware of the breath as a miracle, a precious amazing event. The something hit him very hard on the head. He swallowed water, choking. He was in total darkness, at any rate if his eyes were open, which he was not sure about. With the realization that he was still alive came an instantaneous absolute death-fear identical with hope. The roof of the tunnel was at this point and for the moment and only a little way, clear of the water. Tim took another breath. All the time he was, in some sort, swimming, that is, he was agitating his limbs instinctively so as to keep his head above the surface. This was difficult since his legs seemed to have been swept below his head rather than behind it, and the strong water in the narrower space had somehow imprisoned his arms. His dabbing feet could touch no bottom below. He made a schematic effort to float on his back, with his nose and his mouth towards the roof, but this failed, and he received in the process a hard bang upon the brow. He had already grasped the problem, which was to keep his face above water while not being stunned and rendered unconscious by a blow from the roof. His body rather than his mind informed him that it was no use. In a moment the roof would descend to the level of the water or below it, or else the whole torrent would plunge headlong into some deep hole. He would die indeed like a rat, and perhaps no one would ever know what had happened to him. No one would know and no one would care. Oh, let me live! He prayed. A little while ago he had seemed to want death, but now he desired so passionately to live. He thought, I must live, I must, I must!

The roof seemed to be descending, more and more often and more and more violently it struck him as he opened his mouth to breathe. He had by now established a rhythm, not just instinctively gasping, but taking a deep breath and holding it with his head ducked down under water, then taking another. He even tried with one hand to gauge the height of the roof before he lifted his head to breathe. This was no help however since the darkness had deprived him of all sense of space and touch and it was difficult to manoeuvre his arms. Moreover his head was spinning with repeated blows and he was swallowing more water. Each time he took a breath he thought this may be the last. He thought this fear, this darkness, is death, that’s what it’s like. But oh, I so much want to live, please let me live, any life is better than death, oh let me only live...

Drowning photo by Matt Zathe Daniels.

Easter is for life...

...and not just for Christmas. Archbishop Rowan’s YouTube messages are setting a consistently high standard of thoughtful comment. He explains simply what Christians do, and what it means to us. He pictures Holy Week and Easter as a journey, following the story with multiple subtexts and inner levels — Just add imagination and honesty, and you never know; you may get some personal revelation.

Crowds, majorities, development

Palm Sunday shows the fickleness of crowds, and the limitation of group dynamics. Pilate took a straw poll, acting out of fear, and used the result to make his decision for him, against his best instinct... Thank God he did, you may say, but it was not exactly role modelling how we should undertake Change management. So how should the Church handle its decision making in the light of this experience?

Make no mistake, Every Church has group dynamics, and no Church can survive without changing. J. H. Newman pointed out in 1845 that the only way Christianity renews itself is as new ideas arise and are expressed within its common life:

whatever be the risk of corruption from intercourse with the world around, such a risk must be encountered if a great idea is duly to be understood, and much more if it is to be fully exhibited. ... In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms.

thus a living Church, says Newman, “changes in order to remain the same.” How do we decide which changes are corruptions, and which instruments of renewal?

In secular life, you take a vote. The majority stampedes; the minority becomes roadkill. But hang on, Christians are called to think differently — to recognise and respond to Christ in each other. That’s why some Christian traditions, like the Quakers, make decisions by concensus, not votes with majority wins, reframing the question until a solution emerges. Taken as an absolute principle, however, that could produce total gridlock.

Of course, everyone is right from their own point of view. But that’s just the point at which it’s vital not to focus on being right so tightly as to forget the whole picture. It is not healthy to push things through without understanding the resistance. It is a mistake to undervaue relationships, and to risk ignoring missing, if difficultly shaped, pieces in the puzzle. It’s easy to believe that if only the other lot, whoever they are, changed, everything would come right. All of these assumptions, however understandable, are dangerous and unhealthy. Resistance is, potentially, a resource to the whole Church; a radical form of feedback. Engaging with it helps test innovation, clarify goals, and improve processes. The meeting of resistance is no time to dig in with the like minded. It’s the ideal time, however counterintuitively, to stand back from the issues and engage with the people.

The question for the Church in the face of Change, whether it’s about worship or music styles, patterns of ministry, or new technologies, is not to be found in machine age binary thinking, “who wins?” but the meta level question of how both sides can better measure up to the whole stature of the fulness of Christ. In the meanwhile, the most arrant and foolish worldliness is to accept in our own processes the blame culture, cynicism, anger, intolerance and facility for talking past those we don’t understand, of the secular world.

Right or Left, progressive or traditional, to twist an old World War I slogan, do our Churches have men digging trenches, when they should be digging gardens?