Question: How do you know Christmas is over?
Answer: When you see Easter Eggs in the shops!

Well Christmas may be done and packed away for another year, but Christians have so much more to celebrate before Easter.

After the joy of the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, at Christmas, we follow the life of the young Jesus. From His Baptism by John the Baptist an event seen as the start of the ministry of Jesus to the wonderful liturgy of Candlemas (the Presentation of Christ in the Temple).

At Candlemas we not only remember Christ as the Light of the World but also the first time Jesus is recognised as the Saviour of the World. As the aged Simeon, in the Temple, says in the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke verses 29-32:

“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.”

As I write this article we have just entered the time of Lent at Ash Wednesday – the day after what has become known as Pancake Tuesday (or more properly called Shrove Tuesday).

Lent, a time of preparation, lasts for forty days and leads up to Easter just as Advent leads up to Christmas.

From our Palm Sunday celebrations (25th March) of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we spend the final week of Lent in prayer and reflection.

Join us for our traditional Stations of the Cross, and our evening service on Maundy Thursday when we commemorate the Last Supper of Jesus with the Apostles.

On Good Friday we remember and reflect on the events of the Crucifixion. Please join us at our service.

On the evening of Holy Saturday, we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The service starts outside the Church and in darkness. After the lighting of the first fire of Easter, we move into the Church lighting candles as we go; symbolically bringing the Light of Christ back to a darkened world.

On Sunday 1st of April we celebrate together Easter – Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!

(This article by Phil was originally published as part of St David’s Messenger in March 2018)

Last October was a milestone for me; I reached my seventieth birthday. Now seventy is the age that those in ministry in the Church of England are called upon to retire. There is the opportunity to carry on in a limited capacity but I decided not to take it. I was originally licensed as a Reader in 1981 and have spent the last twenty-four at St. David’s. However, prior to re-joining the Church of England I was already active having preached my first sermon in 1967 at twenty. So fifty years seemed a good innings, hence retirement.

Of course, in those fifty years I have seen big changes in both the Church and society. In the Church perhaps the biggest change is that we now have women in the ministry, some reaching the dizzy height of Bishop. We have made great strides on the issues surrounding human sexuality but not as far as I would have liked. There have been countless other changes, too many to mention.

Society has changed too, some say for the good, but I am not too sure. What is sure is that religion features less in peoples’ thinking. More than half of the British public (53 per cent) say they are not at all religious – a figure that has increased by five percent since 2015 and by 19 percent since 1983, when just three in 10 people deemed themselves non-religious. Is it all doom and gloom then; have I and my fellow ministers wasted our time? Well it is all down to what people perceive religion to be. Most see it as an adherence to a particular faith, belonging to its organisation and following its rules and teachings. They think of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism etc. But what if we come at this from a different angle? What if religion is more to do with how we live and act, particularly how we act towards our fellow beings?

It may be a great surprise but Jesus never came to start a new religion. In the Gospels he deals with all sorts of people. A Roman soldier asks him ‘What should he do?’. Jesus does not ask if he follows any of the religions of Rome rather he simply says ‘Don’t use the power you have to persecute others’. He dealt with Samaritans who were seen as heretics by the Jerusalem Jews, did he ask them to change religion? No. Jesus summed his teaching up as loving God and loving our fellow humans. Now these are not two separate things. If we say we love God and do nothing to help those made in His image then we do not really love God. If we help those who need us, then we also love God even if we do not realise it.

I witnessed many selfless acts of giving over Christmas but this one brought tears to my eyes. I have a friend who is Vicar of a Church on the South-East Coast. They do a number of things to help the poor and the homeless. One day one of the homeless came into the church and gave my friend a Pound Coin. Knowing his situation he tried to give it back. ‘Father’, said the man, ‘keep it, there are those out there worse off than me.’ Surely a modern-day equivalent of the ‘Widow’s Mite’ found in Mark 12 verses 41-44.

The Apostle James wrote: “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.” If you care for others while ignoring the voices that cry out ‘me and mine are the only ones that matter’ or ‘the poor have only themselves to blame’ – that is genuine religion in God’s sight.

Thankfully, I have met literally hundreds of people who unwittingly practise ‘pure and genuine religion’ without realising and know of thousands more. I hope and pray you are part of that army because there are plenty of people who need you.

So as I retire am I worried on surveys regarding religion? Not one bit.

(This article by Dave Chambers was originally published as part of St David’s Messenger in February 2018)