Winchester Cathedral is pleased to announce that it has received initial support* from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for a £10.5m HLF bid for repairs to the Cathedral fabric and development of a major project entitled ‘Kings and Scribes – The Birth of a Nation’. A grant of £475,000 has been awarded to fund the development work required to make a full application.

Conservation of the Cathedral fabric will encompass essential repairs to the Presbytery roof, wooden vault and the surviving medieval stained glass windows.

The development project will involve modifications to the South Transept to make the Cathedral’s treasures more accessible.

The 12th Century Winchester Bible will be relocated to the ground floor of the transept where it will be exhibited and interpreted to modern standards. An exhibition entitled Decoding the Stones will be mounted on the first floor to enable visitors to learn about the architectural evolution of the building. Further, a unique interactive exhibition will unlock the history and humanise the mortal remains of early English Saxon royals which are preserved in the ornate mortuary chests. This exhibition will be installed in the Triforium Gallery; entitled Kings and Scribes – The Birth of a Nation it will celebrate the origins of the English nation and its association with Winchester. Three levels will house the three exhibitions. This will appeal to young and old alike and will transform the visitor experience through the opportunities it will offer for active participation and learning, the latter being met by improved education facilities.

The Cathedral’s Receiver General, Annabelle Boyes, is delighted with the award.
“We are now in a position where we can realistically look forward to the day when we can undertake urgent major repairs and conservation work on the Cathedral’s fabric that will preserve it for future generations. With three new exciting exhibitions planned, in particular Kings and Scribes – The Birth of a Nation will be of national and international importance as it will set out the history of the Cathedral through the stories of the many people who have touched its ancient stones.”

Stuart McLeod, Head of HLF South East, said:
“Winchester Cathedral, built on the instruction of William the Conqueror, has weathered both the religious and political storms of over nine hundred years worth of history. We hope very much that this tradition can continue into the future and that the Heritage Lottery Fund’s initial indication of support for this conservation project will kick start a wider fundraising programme. Cathedrals are notoriously expensive to look after so we are particularly heartened by plans to get more volunteers involved as well as the desire to widen the range of visitors to the site.”

The Dean, The Very Reverend James Atwell commented:
“It is well known that Winchester is the longest medieval Cathedral in England. That means there is a lot of historic fabric to maintain. It also means that Winchester has a significance beyond the ordinary and needs to tell its story effectively in the 21st Century and offer an exceptional experience to visitors and worshippers alike. The support of the Heritage Lottery Fund is very exciting as it will enable the Cathedral both to maintain its fabric and to fulfil its potential with a fresh burst of energy and dynamism in our own generation”.

The Kings and Scribes project will conserve and re-energise the use and enjoyment of a vital piece of the nation’s heritage and open up access to the Cathedral’s illustrious history and treasures. The Cathedral now has up to two years to submit a formal application for second stage funding from the HLF.

* A first-round pass means the project meets HLF criteria for funding and HLF believes the project has potential to deliver high-quality benefits and value for Lottery money. The application was in competition with other supportable projects, so a first-round pass is an endorsement of outline proposals. Having been awarded a first-round pass, the project now has up to two years to submit fully developed proposals to compete for a firm award.

On occasion, an applicant with a first-round pass will also be awarded development funding towards the development of their scheme, as in this case.

About the Heritage Lottery Fund
Using money raised through the National Lottery, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) sustains and transforms a wide range of heritage for present and future generations to take part in, learn from and enjoy. From museums, parks and historic places to archaeology, natural environment and cultural traditions, we invest in every part of our diverse heritage. HLF has supported over 30,000 projects, allocating £4.9billion across the UK. Website: www.hlf.org.uk

For Press enquiries please email Simon Barwood, our Media & Communications Officer, or call him on 01962 857 217 / 07968 549 628.

It’s good when bishops set theological motifs running through their ministry. The one who’s been helping with our font, my own bishop once, kept saying, ‘God does two things for us in Christ. He shares our lives and then he changes them.’ Eventually, we all started saying and believing it. And we’ve already had a snatch of +Tim’s theological vision – we become like Christ in his mission.

We’re bound to hear more on this. Perhaps even the word ‘mission’ will crop up a lot in sermons – hardly surprising for the former General Secretary of the Church Mission Society. The honourable members behind me have been warned!

However, you don’t actually have to use the word ‘mission’ to be thinking about it. A word we use here in the Cathedral, which does a similar job, is ‘partnership’. Thanks largely to another General Secretary of CMS, John V Taylor, both this Cathedral and this Diocese have enjoyed 35 years of partnership with Uganda. Our own link is with St Paul’s Cathedral, Namirembe.

We are thrilled to have Bishop Wilberforce and his wife Faith with us today, because this is an opportunity to renew what has been a difficult link to maintain. A partnership means an exchange of gifts and a shared vision of the breadth of God’s work in the world. The more we can cross boundaries to meet one another, the richer and more Christ-like the link will be.

I’m only going to speak briefly, because later we’ll be hearing a word of greeting from Bishop Wilberforce, but I must drive a little deeper into the meaning of mission. Partnership is a good word, but perhaps also just a bit tame and tidy – it has the air of the manicured lawn. +Tim sets the bar a lot higher when he says, we become like Christ in his mission.

What is Christ’s mission? Certainly more than a partnership with other churches. One verse will serve us from Christ the good shepherd: ‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold’.

Shepherds gather. That’s their job. A good shepherd gathers well and protects his flock from thieves and robbers. But Christ the good shepherd is not content to pastor only those who listen to his voice, who claim his protection. Christ’s mission is also beyond his flock. There are other sheep out there, who will come to listen, who will come to belong, who will come to feed.

But they will not come unless Christ goes, and they will not trust him unless he gives his life to protect them. This is his mission and it is strenuous and sacrificial. Christ’s feet are not limited to a lawn, but go out into the scrubland, the wilderness, to find these sheep.

But more than this: when Christ says, ‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold’ it is more than an intention – to boldly go where no shepherd has gone before! – it is a conviction about God and his boundlessness. To be like Christ in his mission is to be like God, because God is Christ reaching out, outstretching, receiving back what he doesn’t possess in his own divinity – humanity, heartache and hope from his creatures.

The Christian God is not the distant and static entity that many people imagine. He is a trinity of persons, a community in unity, held in his own glorious eternal being by the bonds of abundant, outreaching love. And this Trinity not only creates out of this abundance but wishes to redeem abundantly, to take all hurting and broken creation back into his bosom. The future of creation is not repair, or even completion, but consummation – a marriage of heaven and earth, of the Creator and his creatures.

So now we’re getting to the nub of it: who are these others not yet in the fold? They are – as we are told right at the beginning of the gospel – all those who receive and believe – who by faith in his name become all that Christ is, children of God, re-born of God.

Who should be in this Cathedral? those who love the Book of Common Prayer or liturgical worship or the choral tradition, or gothic; the people of Winchester or Hampshire? No, the Normans had it right when they built this massive cathedral. The answer is: humanity, the whole kingdom, all his people.

Mission is universal. If it is a partnership, then it is a partnership between God and all creation; between the Father and his Son Jesus Christ; and the infinite connections forged in the furnace of divine love.

Salisbury’s new font, with its breathing, unbounded depths, expresses this brilliantly well; ours, however, reminds us of our Romanesque roots and expresses this mission in a different way. It shows St Nicholas, holding his bishop’s staff, like a good shepherd, saving three young ladies from a life of degradation – paying their dowries in an act of boundless generosity – and receiving back from them what he would not have otherwise have had, their heartfelt thanks and devotion.

Whenever this going beyond the bounds happens in the heart of the church, in the heart of our own lives, there we become like Christ in his mission, and there true gospel-partnership begins.

You really don’t know what’s been going on in Jerusalem?  You must be the only one!  You can come along with us if you like, and I’ll tell you, but I’m not spending another night in Jerusalem, and I’m never going back.  If we get a move on we’ll be at Emmaus before nightfall, and after that…  we’ll see. 

By the way, my name’s Cleopas – Cleo, oh, and my friend here is Zeph.  I’m from Bethany, but left home ten years ago. Mum’s still there, and some cousins…  Anyway, I was a weaver, well, apprenticed to my Father.  Some people thought I might become a Rabbi one day – but I took myself off to think about things, and ended up at Qumran.  You’ve probably heard of the Essene community, at the far end of the Dead Sea.  I had five years there.  Good years – learning, praying, making copies of the scriptures, teaching the visitors.  That’s where I met Zeph. 

One of the visitors was John, John the Baptizer, not that there was much I could teach him.  Well, on one of his regular visits, John said that the Kingdom of God was coming.  He was really fired up about it – mind you John got fired up about a lot of things, but not like this.  He was going out in the desert, by the Jordan, and telling people to get ready – to repent. 

If they really wanted to turn their lives around, he washed them in the river.  I was sure he was right, sure that God was about to act, so when John finally left Qumran, I went with him.  

John was a tremendous preacher – like one of the prophets – not a comfortable person to be with; but such integrity and passion.  I helped out as best I could, marshalling the crowds, looking after the purse, talking with anyone who seemed to want it.  Anyway, the point is that about 18 months after we went to the Jordan, John pointed someone out in the crowd, I didn’t find out ’till later than John already knew him – they were cousins I think.  It was clear that John thought this cousin of his, Jesus, was someone special, and when it came to Jesus’ turn to be baptised, bang on cue, there was a great peal of thunder.  John took that as a sign from God. 

A few months later John was arrested.  I went down to the fortress where he was imprisoned – we could bring him food, spend time with him.  John sent me, and some of the others, to talk with Jesus, and that was the first time I really met him.  When John was executed, it seemed natural to join the group that surrounded Jesus.  Zeph and I weren’t in the inner twelve, but there were about 70 of us who were with Jesus most of the time. 

As I said, John was a tremendous preacher.  When he spoke, you trembled.  Jesus wasn’t like that.  Often he didn’t preach at all – he’d just tell stories – full of everyday things, like seeds and weeds or brothers and fathers or people getting robbed on a journey.  All commonplace stuff, but once he’d told the story it kept going round in your head for days, forever maybe.  Every time you saw a weed, you’d think of his story and start to ponder what it meant.  Who needs sermons when the stories are in your head all the time?

But it wasn’t the stories that drew the crowds.  It was the – miracles – no other word for it.   I remember this huge crowd – thousands – sitting in a dip on a mountain-side.  They hadn’t been expecting Jesus, but when he came they’d followed.  No one had brought any food, except one lad, who had some bread rolls and a few fish.  He gave them to Jesus, and Jesus, in all seriousness, thanked God for them, divided them, between his disciples, and told them to give them to the crowd.  I still don’t know how it happened, but I do know what did happen – everyone got enough to eat, with loads left over.

I saw the healings too.  Blind people, some of them blind from birth, given their sight.  Skin diseases, cleared up like that. 

People who’d been tormented by demons for years, set free with just a word from Jesus.  Then there was the time when he walked on the sea, as if he had absent-mindedly forgotten that you can’t do that sort of thing.

But even without the stories, or the miracles, I would still have followed him.  There are people who can see right through you.  I wouldn’t say that of Jesus – he saw right into you.  And you knew that he did, and he knew that you knew. 

I think that that changed more people than all the healings.  It certainly changed me.  I remember as a lad, trying to copy my father at the loom.  There I’d be, struggling to remember what went where, keeping this bit taut, changing the colour of that thread.  After an hour or so, I’d be exhausted, and make a terrible mess of things.  All the while Dad would be merrily working away, chatting with passers-by, arguing with Mum, never making a mistake.  Weaving had got into his bones. 

It was like that for me with Jesus.  I’d struggled with God all my life.  He meant more to me than anything, and I desperately wanted to do what he wanted.  But it was such hard work, and I kept getting it wrong. Jesus changed that, changed me.  I didn’t have to try so hard. 

When I made mistakes, I discovered that God was like my Dad, patiently undoing the work I’d messed up, and helping me to do better next time.

Of course, knowing Jesus knew what was going on in your heart could make you uncomfortable, but it never made me feel depressed, because it was so obvious that Jesus still accepted me.  If anything, he was more hurt and upset by the muck inside me, than I was.  I knew he was on my side, and that he would help me to get sorted out.  And somehow I knew that if Jesus didn’t reject me, then God wouldn’t either.

Then the whispering began.  It was good whispering, in a way.  John had been right.  Jesus was clearly someone special – but who?  Obviously he was a prophet – but he was much more.  Some said that he was John come back to life again – well that was daft, I’d seen them together, both very much alive, and although Jesus obviously had enormous respect for John, he had a subtly different message. 

For John, the Kingdom of God was something that was about to happen.  For Jesus it was happening here and now, and you could see it in the lives that were being transformed all around him. 

It was Simon who first called him Messiah, the anointed one, God’s chosen.  I wasn’t sure if Jesus was too happy with the title, but he didn’t say that he wasn’t, and on the whole seemed relieved that it had been recognised.  But he didn’t want word to get out, and for good reason. 

We Essenes specialised in Messiah’s.  We were expecting two, one as king, one as high priest.  If people started saying that Jesus was the Messiah then he wasn’t going to be popular with the secular or religious leaders.  But there was more to it than that.  Enormous crowds surrounded Jesus.  If people started saying that Jesus was the Messiah then the crowds would get even bigger, even more excited, even more inclined to be looking for the signal that the battle for Israel’s liberation had begun – and even less likely to hear and respond to what Jesus said.

So I agreed with Jesus’ decision to play down the Messiah thing.

And then – I couldn’t believe it – I mean, every year Jesus went to Jerusalem quietly for the Festival.  But this year, when the authorities were clearly keeping an eye on him, he deliberately drew attention to himself. 

No-one, no-one, rides into Jerusalem for Passover.  Not on a horse, not on a donkey, no-one.  It’s a clear declaration of kingship.  You might as well march into the palace wearing a crown. 

The pilgrims, especially those from Galilee, loved it, went wild.  The towns-people weren’t so enthusiastic.  And what did Jesus do next?  Went straight to the temple to confront the religious authorities.  In one day he’d laid claim to the two messianic hopes of kingship and priesthood. 

It was a radical challenge, as radical as John’s call in the wilderness, except that Jesus took that call into the city of Jerusalem itself.  The authorities had to respond.  Either Jesus was the messiah, in which case they would have to accept what he said, or else he was a dangerous maniac who needed to be silenced permanently.  You didn’t have to be a prophet to guess what would happen.  They let him preach and teach in the temple, and made their plans.

Late on Thursday night they seized him.  They tried him overnight – which is illegal – and handed him over to Governor Pilate.  There’s not too many Jews go into the Praetorium and come out again free.  The towns-people supported the temple priests of course, and rather than get into more trouble Pilate had Jesus crucified, on the grounds of sedition.  Now that the main day of the Festival is over, my guess is they’ll round up the rest of his followers.

But, no, that’s not why I’m leaving Jerusalem, and I’m not running away.  I’ll tell you why I’m leaving…

I’ve seen the two men that I most admired in my life put to death for no good reason.  In a way I don’t blame Herod or Pilate, it’s their job.  But I do blame the religious leaders – they did nothing to stop it, worse than that, they encouraged it.  They never supported John, and they went out of their way to destroy Jesus.

But most of all I blame God.  Here were two men, two good, faithful, loyal men, who devoted their lives to God’s service, to proclaiming his message, to bringing in his kingdom. 

What have they got to show for it?  Nothing, that’s what.  What have I got to show for the last ten years of my life?  No family, no home, no trade, just broken dreams and shattered hopes.  That’s why I’m leaving Jerusalem and the Festival and the Temple, and I’m not going back.  It’s all been a stupid mess and a waste of time.  I wanted to believe that right triumphs in the end, that evil doesn’t have the last word, that God is in control.  But it isn’t so. 

I’m telling you, those clever Greek Stoics are right, God doesn’t care what goes on down here.  He just looks at us and laughs, and I’ve had enough.  I still want to believe, I still want this world, my life to have meaning.  I still want love and peace and joy and faith and truth to be stronger and more real than hatred and fear and power.  But how can I?  After all I’ve been through, what can God possibly do to give me hope and faith again?

And the stranger turned and said, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe…”

A Royal Occasion – The Diamond Jubilee Service of Thanksgiving

Hampshire residents are being invited to apply for a limited number of tickets to join His Royal Highness the Earl of Wessex at the Diamond Jubilee Service of Thanksgiving in Winchester Cathedral on Sunday 27th May 2012 at 3.30pm. The Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire, the Chairman and Leader of Hampshire County Council and the Dean and Chapter of Winchester Cathedral are hosting the event which will be by invitation and attended by representatives from a wide cross section of organisations across the Hampshire Community.

Please note; due to the high number of applications received for this service, the application process is now closed.

Dame Mary Fagan DCVO, JP, Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire said: “I am delighted that His Royal Highness The Earl of Wessex will attend the Service. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to come together and to celebrate Her Majesty The Queen’s dedication to the Nation.”

Councillor Ken Thornber CBE, Leader of Hampshire County Council said: “This royal occasion signals a fitting start to Hampshire’s celebrations that will culminate in an extended bank holiday weekend from 2 – 5 June. I am particularly pleased that during the Service recognition will be given to the thousands of hours given by volunteers to their communities, including the efforts of Hampshire’s ‘Diamond Volunteers’”

The Dean of Winchester, The Very Reverend James Atwell said, “The service is a marvellous local opportunity to celebrate the 60 years of exemplary service that our Queen has given to our nation. The presence of The Earl of Wessex will bring a very immediate sense of connection with Her Majesty The Queen to the occasion.”

A jazz band from the Hampshire County Council Music Service will be playing on the Outer Close at the Cathedral as guests start to arrive. The Thanksgiving Service will include the national Diamond Jubilee Prayer commissioned by The Church of England and music from a Military Band.

First, thank you for your welcome, and for all the help and support we’ve received as a family settling into Winchester. We’re delighted to be here, and look forward to many happy years in the Diocese. May I offer special thanks to Bishop Peter who has led the Diocese over the last year, and also to Joyce Cockell, my secretary, who has looked after the office – and me – in this transition. At long last this day has come. So a special “thank you” to all who’ve been involved in the preparations; and “thank you” to who are visiting.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, open your Word to our hearts and our hearts to your Word. Amen

Phil 3:10: ‘I want to know Christ’Main Point: Knowing Christ meansliving his mission

Re-Imagining Jesus’ Mission

Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Company have a mission to Britain. Their strapline is ‘spreading love, peace and ice-cream since 1978’. Everyone has a mission. Anthony Trollope, the novelist, had a mission. His day job was as a surveyor for the United Kingdom postal service and his mission was to improve this service. So he introduced the pillar post box.

Did you know that the first post box was introduced in St Helier, in Jersey, in 1852, with a similar device in Guernsey the following year?The post box helped to smooth the irregular collection of mail caused byunreliable sea traffic. The mainland was to catch up with this innovation a few years later – a common pattern, some might say!

During Trollope’s time we saw not just the spread of the post boxround the world; we also saw the spread of the gospel through the work of the missionary societies. Trollope does not draw much on the missionary movement in his novels on the Church of England yet this was the most radical change the Church of England had seen since the Reformation. This deep change is still going on. At its deepest, our imagination is being changed. We’re rediscovering the mission of Jesus. It is my conviction that we don’t really know Christ until we participate in, live, his mission - living the mission of Jesus!

When St Paul says ‘I want to know Christ’, he’s yearning for a new imagination. He’s met and been called by the risen Lord and he yearns to know more of him. Jesus is alive, and now Paul is alive with his mission. The outcome of Jesus’ mission is resurrection and the way of doing mission is cross-shaped. Paul wants to live, to know, this mission of Jesus.

My Vision: ‘I want to know Christ’: Living the Mission of Jesus

The Wessex-Winchester Diocese was founded on the pioneering mission work of St Birinus, and it became a mission sending community, when it sent St Boniface to the Germanic peoples. Winchester was also at the heart of generating the soul of the English nation and shaping it around Christian values. So our own mission heritage asks us: “What does it mean to live the mission of Jesus today?”

I believe the Diocese is called to re-found itself on this mission heritage. Europe is once again a mission field. There are more missionaries coming to this country than are being sent. Our worldwide mission partnerships can help us to see and live the mission of Jesus anew. Christ calls us to be passionate, pioneering and prophetic. My aim is to encourage passionate personal spirituality, pioneering faith communities and prophetic global citizens.

I’m now going to explore what these three aims might mean for Winchester Diocese.

1. My first commitment is to encouragepassionate personal spirituality.

Christianity took root in Anglo-Saxon culture when people made therisky conversion from one Lord to another. They changed their loyalty from the local liege lord to the Lord Jesus Christ. The cross of Jesus became the new emblem of the Lord to whom you now owed allegiance, on whom you depended for your life, and for whom you would die. Jesus as Lord was the new bond between people, and his way of life – living for others – became the new code. The cross replaced the sword-hilt and it took on deep significance in Anglo-Saxon Christianity and culture. Wearing the cross means Jesus Christ is your Lord: you’ve converted to him, giving up some things, changing others and dedicating yourself to him.

In Winchester Diocese we are called to continue in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of the cross. Last week I visited Weston parish in Southampton. Christians there have a passion. They’re living the mission of Jesus, identifying themselves with a community where many are simply trying to survive, where 25% of the children live in poverty. There’s soon going to be a new vicar in the parish; the only way to minister in Weston will be living with the passion of Jesus: to enter into the suffering of others and find hope with them.People connect with passion. If you live your life with passion it shines out. And if you live with the cross-like passion of Jesus, the world will be changed. Resurrection will happen everyday.

Perhaps we could develop a Winchester rule of life in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, offering a simple framework for passionate personal spirituality? This might also help us to reimagine ministry and leadership in the Diocese: a passionate people with passionate ministers!

2. My second commitment is toencouragea pioneering faith community.

I’ve recently met a pioneer curate in this diocese who says about his new role: “I am enormously excited to become a pioneer curate, as this means I’m now employed to seek after God and to encourage others to do the same – which are two of my absolute favourite things.” I’m sure that this curate would be delighted if someone said ‘I want to know Christ’. People want to believe. Let’s not be ashamed of sharing our faith in Jesus.

The church grew out of those who’d met the risen Lord -“We have seen the Lord!” The resurrection had vindicated Jesus’ mission and it revealed what it was all about – new life in all its fullness.So proclaiming the resurrection and passing on Jesus’ resurrection way of life is the way the church grew: proclamation and nurture. The church pioneered a new way of being human and turned the world upside down. This is, we are, a pioneering faith community: everyone is radically included and everyone is radically converted.

So, I’d likethe Diocese to plan for growth: people coming to faith, pioneer ministers, fresh expressions, messy church, but also good ordinary parish churches in local communities. This means facing tough questions about how we communicate the faith, and how church culture connects with society – this is now almost a cross-cultural relationship. I believe the Diocese is ready to move on and is ready for change. I hope we’ll pioneer change and see great growth. I’d like Winchester to become a net exporter of mission. The resurrection is a great change and brings great changes. “Alleluia. Christ is risen!”…“He is risen indeed. …”

3. My third commitment is to encourage propheticglobalcitizens.

Christian faith has been privatized or confined to faith communities: at worst it’s become a personal hobby and a social club. But Christianity is a prophetic faith concerned with public issues. Christian faith is public faith. Public issues are faith issues because this is where the outcome of Jesus’ mission is revealed:people are seen to be restored to a new relationship with God, and the resurrection is demonstrated in social change. ‘Jesus is Lord’publicly challenged the claim that Ceasar is Lord. In remembering St Alphege tomorrow we’ll remember someone who lived the mission of Jesus by refusing to be ransomed by an unjust demand that would harm the poor. He died, publicly, for his faith.

Jeremiah is often thought of as a grumpy old man. But he’s actually a prophet of hope. I’m honoured to be wearing the cope with the Winchester Bible image of Jeremiah. Jeremiahentered into the suffering of his people as they were sent into exile. And he helped to give a new shape to the faith of Israel: he reimagined the future based on hope in the God who would rescue his people and would also restore them to a new relationship with God. But Jeremiah was also clear: exile was a result of people not living according to God’s values.

Jeremiah and Alphege both encourage us to be prophetic and get involved as citizens. It is our Christian responsibility. The church is a faith community in a pluralist society: we exist for others by contributing to the common good, but we are also called to shape what we mean by ‘the good’. We need more than personal welfare, we need social well-being. This week I visited the Winchester churches’night shelter.Listening to people’s stories reminded me that we’re all just two steps away from homelessness. 1,600 people used the night shelters in Bournemouth last year. That’s as many as the big cities like Birmingham.

For the prophets it is always the person-in-community who is of greatest importance. Fundamentally we need a purpose for living together. Such purpose provides the deep resilience when things get tough and major change is needed. Christianity is one of those movements in which personal life and social life connect, and people are resourced with meaning and values for daily living and where a compassionate society can be imagined.

My hope is that the Diocese will become more prophetic about the common goodand that this will be a focus for our prayer, action andadvocacy as citizens.Christians are required to care for the needy, challenge injustice and look after our planet. For Christ came to save the world, revealing the transformation of all life in the resurrection.

So, in Conclusion …

The Archbishop’s charge includes an overarching responsibility ‘to bring the challenge of a radical gospel’.

So I’ve suggested that we’re called to be passionate, pioneering and prophetic. I believe passionate personal spirituality and pioneering faith communities will result in Christians living prophetically as citizens, building and shaping our increasingly global society.

To do this, I’ve also proposed that we reconnect with our deep mission heritage, and that we rediscover Jesus, knowing him through living his mission: living the mission of Jesus.

This, I believe to be the challenge of aradical gospel for Winchester Diocese. To sum up in the words of St Paul: ‘I want to know Christ; I want the church to know Christ; I want everyone to know Christ.’ Amen.

The 97th Bishop of Winchester has taken his seat during a service of enthronement at Winchester Cathedral, and now begins his ministry in the diocese.

During the service on Saturday 21 April at 2.30pm the new Bishop knocked nine times on the great west door, in the traditional ceremony of being granted entry to the building by the Dean of the Cathedral. Then the Chancellor of the Diocese read the Archbishop’s mandate to Bishop Tim, before the Archdeacon of Canterbury (serving as The Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative) took the new bishop by the hand and conducted him on to his throne.

In his enthronement sermon, Bishop Tim spoke of his vision to know Christ, and to live the mission of Jesus. Bishop Tim out lined three key commitments in his ministry. Firstly to ‘encourage passionate spirituality,’ secondly to ‘encourage a pioneering faith community’ and thirdly to ‘ to encourage prophetic global citizens’.

“Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Company have a mission to Britain. Their strapline is ‘spreading love, peace and ice-cream since 1978’. Everyone has a mission,” said the Bishop.
“The Archbishop’s charge includes an overarching responsibility to bring the challenge of a radical gospel, and I’ve suggested that we’re called to be passionate, pioneering and prophetic.”
“I’ve suggested that we reconnect with our deep mission heritage and that we rediscover the mission of Jesus by participating, living the mission of Jesus.”
“This, I believe to be the radical challenge of the gospel. I could summarise it in the words of St Paul: ‘I want to know Christ; I want the church to know Christ; I want other people to know Christ.’”

An extensive selection of photos and a full video of the full sermon will be available soon on www.cofewinchester.org.uk

During the service on Saturday 21 April at 2.30pm the Chancellor of the Diocese will read the Archbishop’s mandate to Bishop Tim, before the Archdeacon of Canterbury (serving as The Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative) takes the new bishop by the hand and conducts him on to his throne, or ‘Cathedra’, from which the Cathedral takes its name.

The enthronement will be a grand occasion involving spectacular ceremony and music. On the 21st, there will be a new musical commission composed by Winchester College director of chapel music, Malcolm Archer (formerly St Paul’s Cathedral). The service will begin with a huge procession of representatives from the Church and community.

According to a centuries-old tradition – said to date from the time of St Benedict – the service will begin dramatically as the new Bishop knocks nine times (three lots of three) on the great west door knocker before being welcomed to the cathedral by the Dean.

As well as being a celebration, there is a legal side to the ceremony, as the Bishop makes oaths in accordance with law and the statutes of the Cathedral. The service will see the Cathedral packed to capacity with representatives from the diocese, the community and the wider church. Entry is by ticket only, and only those already holding a ticket will be admitted on the day. For any missing out on the enthronement service, there will however be an opportunity to pray with the new bishop, as he celebrates Eucharist in the Cathedral at 10am the following day (Sunday 22 April).

Born in Tanzania to missionary parents, prior to joining the diocese of Winchester, Bishop Tim spent 12 years as General Secretary of the Church Mission Society. In addition to a host of notable predecessors, he will be following closely in the footsteps of the 94th Bishop of Winchester, John V Taylor (1974-84), who was also General Secretary of CMS prior to assuming the role.

Bishop Tim’s additional interests include reading, action films, running and cooking. He moves to Winchester from Berkshire with his wife Sally who is also ordained and their two children Anna, 21, and Johnny, 17.

He says: “To become Bishop of Winchester is an amazing privilege and presents me with a wonderful opportunity to serve in a new way. The appointment was a great surprise and I am both humbled and delighted.
“The Church of England is both fragile and robust. It’s fragile because of all the change, yet it’s strangely robust in the way we’re imaginatively tackling new opportunities.
“As Christians, our greatest communication challenge is to show, by what we do and who we are, that our faith is not primarily about what we do in church buildings but about how we live day by day.
“I shall bring with me a passion for mission, and a longing to see the church grow and have an impact in daily life.”

Paul Thaxter, who is a former colleague of Tim Dakin, and Director of Transcultural Mission at Church Mission Society says: “I have worked closely with Tim in CMS for 10 years. I know him to be fuelled by a deep faith, passionate about the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion.
“Working with a radical thinker such as Tim is like trying to eat your breakfast on a rollercoaster – with its slow uphill start, then a dive down into change around an exhilarating bend.
“Purposeful change is a core feature of Tim’s gift, and it is not every day you meet someone committed to creative and radical change within the church but for the benefit of others.
“He believes the Christian life has to be demonstrated in the public domain.
“Some say after the ride – once is enough; others say: ‘can we go again!?’
“The Diocese of Winchester has bravely discerned its 97th bishop and it will be exciting to see how this respected diocese earns its future reputation.”

Chief Executive of the Diocese, Andrew Robinson says: “I am delighted that we are officially welcoming Tim today.
“Having legally been the Bishop of Winchester since December last year, today marks the point that he will become responsible for the ministry in the diocese.
“I have very much enjoyed our initial work together, and know that Tim will provide a strong leadership as the diocese continues to grow its mission and ministry across Hampshire, East Dorset and the Channel Islands.”

The Rt Revd Peter Hancock, who has led the diocese during the vacancy, says: “As a church family, we can rejoice as Tim takes his final step toward becoming Bishop of Winchester.
“His contribution as a theologian, especially in the area of mission, has been widely recognised and I am sure he will help us to engage more effectively with the communities, parishes and people that we seek to serve.
“I would ask you once more to pray for Bishop Tim as he prepares to begin his vital ministry in the diocese.”

The Dean of Winchester The Very Revd James Atwell (who leads Winchester Cathedral) says: “This is a moment when all the resources of the Cathedral come into their own with no effort spared. It will be a glorious occasion of sound, colour and spectacle in a stunning building.
“Yet beyond all the pageantry is the welcome of a new Father-in-God to the Diocese of Winchester, to undertake a tough and demanding job that will call for tremendous stamina and resilience in seeking to bring the faith of Christ to a new generation and inspire a vision of service for our society.”

The themes of this afternoon’s readings are both ones I’ve tackled in recent sermons from this pulpit.  So if you like to imagine you have computers with you, all I need do is send you the hyperlinks to the Cathedral website, and my preaching job is done: we can all sing the last hymn and go home.  But on a vague assumption that you might like to hear something, and it being Easter, I propose to offer some thoughts about the Resurrection in St Luke’s Gospel.

St Luke has the shortest account of all the gospel writers of what happened actually at the tomb – and the simplest. The women who’d accompanied Jesus during his last days returned to the tomb after the Sabbath with the spices they’d prepared for embalming.  There they met two men, who uttered the immortal words, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead?’ Some of the ancient texts, but not all of them, then add, ‘He is not here but has risen’. 

What more is there to be said? Here is the central tenet of the Easter message and the Christian faith: that Christ overcame death, offering the greatest hope imaginable for all of us lesser mortals.  What more is there to be said?  So perhaps now we can pack up, sing the last hymn and all go home.

But maybe not quite so fast.  What about the first part of what the two men said, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead?’ ‘Then where are we to seek him?’, they could have replied. Which would have invited the response, ‘Among the living of course – stupid!

St Luke then has just two stories of people experiencing the risen Jesus, and they are linked to one another, and so are really one extended story.  Episode One is two disciples, Cleopas and quite possibly Luke himself – neither of them among the twelve apostles, despite being so labelled – setting off on foot the seven miles of so to Emmaus, discussing the tragic events of the last few days and the women’s claim about the empty tomb.  They’re joined by a stranger who joins the discussion, but then sets the events they have recounted in the context of the ancient prophecies.  These seemed to indicate that horrible suffering was the inevitable fate for God’s Messiah when he eventually came. The stranger is pressed to stay with them in Emmaus. And at the supper table, he takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to them, and then, and only then, do they realise who the stranger is – too late, for at that moment of recognition, he vanishes. The nature of his presence we do not know.  But where was the living to be found?  Among the living! 

Episode 2.  Cleopas and friend rush back with their story, presumably late into the evening, to the little Christian band in Jerusalem. At the moment they are telling their story, the Lord reappears, shares some fish with them, and once more interprets the events in terms of the prophecies of suffering for the Messiah. The physical sharing of fish may be an accretion, we don’t know.  But, once more, where was the living to be found?  Amongst the living!

There are some notable features about this combined story.

1. It typifies the fact that almost all Jesus’s appearances are to the gathered community, whether to two men in Emmaus or to larger groups in Jerusalem.
2. Like several others, the story of Jesus’s appearance involved a meal, shared food, in the form of bread and fish – one in each of these episodes – though whether he actually consumed any is open to speculation. Personally I find the concept of the Jesus who can appear and reappear through doors and walls yet eat fish rather difficult; and I suspect that element of the story as it is told may be an unnecessary distraction from the main thrust of the stories.
3. In both episodes of this story, Jesus is at pains to set events in the context of the scriptural forecasts of inevitable suffering and his own previous sayings.  These parts of the story no doubt reflect reflections and discussions within the nuclear Christian community, as the disciples tried – and succeeded – to make sense of all that had happened. There is continuity with the scriptures, and there is to be found vindication of Jesus’s supposedly tragic end.

And so what does all this remind us of?  It reminds us of the Christian community gathered for celebration, reading and discussing the scriptures together, praying and eating together, blessing and breaking bread and sharing it. Just like the Church has continued to do for two millennia and does day by day.

Bishop Leonard Wilson of Singapore, who went on the become Bishop of Birmingham, was interned by the Japanese at Changi in Singapore.  With nothing else, and a few Christian Chinese people salvaged a few grains of rice in a tobacco tin and a dash of cold tea in a tin cup and met with the bishop for a secret and impromptu Eucharist. People have shared in the Holy Communion in hospitals, on ships, on battlefields, in schools and universities, in family homes. Even on the moon, when Buzz Aldrin took tiny quantities of the consecrated elements in 1969 – the first food ever to be eaten on the moon.

For me, a memorable occasion remains – and I hope for the young people involved – the Eucharist we celebrated on a trig point in the Cheshire hills during a hike with a post-confirmation group of youngsters in the 1970s.

But also on another walk, just yesterday, with a friend.  We covered about sixteen miles, but, more important, an awful lot of conversation, and the Lord was mentioned as we ate broke our sandwiches, perched on a piece of agricultural machinery in the Hampshire countryside. Rather like the road to Emmaus .

Always, the living Christ experienced among the living.

There are aspects of the Resurrection appearances that are difficult for us in our prosaic and scientific age.  What was the nature of the appearances?  How could Jesus consume food one moment and appear and disappear through doors and walls the next?  Oral story telling in the early days has no doubt played its part, and I think it is safe to retain or dismiss some of the detail, according to whether we find it helpful and stimulating or distracting and implausible.

We are not here in the realm of exact science or exact history as we know it.  We are in the realm of story telling, story telling with a message and a purpose, by people with a view of history different from ours today.  The Hebrew culture and language are far more at home with stories than with concepts. What were the story tellers and the gospel writers trying to convey?  That Jesus was really alive: yes – hence the account of actually eating.  That he was now unconstrained by earthly limitations of time and space: yes – hence the coming and going at will.

So Jesus is alive, his presence real in a way that cannot be defined.  He is available for all people at all times, without restriction.  And we become aware of his presence above all at the Lord’s Supper, the Mass, the Holy Eucharist, when we share his body and blood in the elements of Holy Communion.

And what about us? I don’t know if you listened to the People’s Passion series on Radio 4 in Holy Week.  One speaker said, as others have done sometimes, that people like us attend a cathedral because we can remain anonymous, without any pressure to get involved with each other or with doing things.  There may sometimes be a grain of truth in this. But I don’t think it’s wholly true at all. Actually, we do come for community and shared experiences, not least of prayerful spirituality and amazing music. 

Sometimes, at some stages of our lives, we may need to be a bit anonymous; it can relieve the pressure and help for a while.  That is, provided we are not ignored, which is no good at all.  There is great freedom at a cathedral to be involved or not, as we feel is right.  But there is also freedom to here to search and wonder, and perhaps to discover faith or grow in faith.  But note that we are doing so in community – it would not make sense to be here on our own, at least not all of the time.  All the services of a cathedral are community affairs. Here, we are truly looking for the living – the living Christ – among the living.

From the intimacy of a weekday 8 o’clock Eucharist to the magnificence of the Easter Eve Vigil or Christmas Midnight Mass, there is scope for everyone to experience the special presence of the risen Christ in the breaking of bread in community.  As at Emmaus; as in Jerusalem. Someone once said, a theologian called Donald Alchin, I think: ‘the Holy Supper is not a canteen meal’ – it cannot be a solo or totally anonymous activity. And in community is where the risen Christ is to be keenly experienced.

But all in good time.  And when we are ready. It is our Christian destiny.  It will come.  But if not for the moment, don’t be despondent,.  We live in hope, and glory awaits.  It is among the living that we shall find the living Lord.

Christian faith begins with Easter Day.    If it had not been for Easter Day, not only would we not have a vivid account of the final week of Our Lord’s life, we would not know his teaching and his parables and it is unlikely we would ever have heard of him. 

A conversation was overhead in a local shop.  A lady came in looking for a children’s book on the Easter Story.  She explained that she wanted something her son could read to her grandchild and so help the child to understand the significance of Good Friday and Easter Day.  “I would not buy one of those if I were you” came the shopkeeper’s advice.  “We have still got some Christmas stories, they are much more appropriate for children; they avoid the nasty bits about death.”  The customer looked slightly quizzical and perplexed.

The fact is that the gospels work backwards.  We would not know anything about the birth of Jesus had it not been for the momentous events of Holy Week and Easter Day.  It is the unexpectedness of what happened on Good Friday and Easter Day that has seared the memory of Jesus of Nazareth into the human consciousness.   The very memory of Jesus of Nazareth and interest in the circumstances of his birth is through the lens of the resurrection.  That fact cannot be avoided.

The most succinct summary of the crucial facts as they were perceived by the first Christians is given us in a short early creed that, by amazing good fortune, St Paul passes onto us.  He says in 1 Corinthians 15 Vv. 3 – 4:

“For I handed onto you, as of first importance, what I in turn had received:  that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas (Peter), then to the twelve.” 

Paul’s tradition continues:

 “Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.”

It was clear that for St Paul those witnesses were mainly still around, alive and well, and could be interrogated.   All the biblical accounts have Peter as the primary witness of the Lord’s resurrection; all of them with total unanimity refer to ‘the third day’, ‘the first day of the week’ or ‘the Lord’s Day’, that is Sunday, which became institutionalised as the Church’s day of worship.

St John’s Gospel preserves the tradition of Mary Magdalene as the first witness of the resurrection.  It has the ring of truth.  It is a disturbing ‘new order’ which challenges the Jewish norm that only males could act as witnesses.  It has a striking continuity with Jesus’ ministry which affirmed women.

The Easter question, I submit, is not:  “did something happen?”  It certainly did!  The Easter question is: “What is the significance of what did happen?”

There are various ways the evidence could be interpreted in a self-contained way.  

• Is this evidence of something normative and inherent in human nature which survives death?
• Or, conversely, could this be quite simply a freak occurrence, completely out of the ordinary, in which the memory of the person was sustained independently of the observers?
• Or, maybe there are phenomena which are beyond the boundaries of our understanding and this is one of them.  It would be part of a pattern if only we knew the bigger picture.

None of these were the direction in which the Church went for its understanding of the resurrection.  The Church insisted that the crucifixion and resurrection must be taken as a single event; once you do that, the resurrection is itself full of moral content.  It is not just a wonder, a spectacular firework, a sort of ‘walk across my swimming pool’ moment as Herod Antipas requests of Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar.    The resurrection in Christian insight is the vindication of the sacrificial life of Jesus: it is the vindication of the quality of his life.   It is God’s ‘Amen’ to all that has gone before.  We can only understand the resurrection properly when we see it as intimately bound up with the crucifixion.  The two events taken together are the paschal mystery. 

In the Christian estimate the answer to the Easter question “What is the significance of what did happen?”  Is simply this: “It is God’s ‘Amen’ to the life of Jesus”.  It is God’s ‘Yes’.  It is an event through which God is speaking.  First and foremost Easter Day is the activity of God.

It is God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, who has given us a reason to hope and an example to follow.  He has given us a reason to challenge pessimism.  A reason to contend with adversity.  A reason to challenge death itself.

We are not given all the answers in Christ.  God does not allow us to cheat by looking at the back of the book.  Life remains full of complexity, ambiguity and tragedy.  Times of forsakenness remain real, as was the case for Christ himself on Good Friday.  There are not easy answers to moral dilemmas:  and we must not be quick to condemn.

What we are handed by God’s initiative in Christ is a reason to travel adventurously, to dare to do Christ-like and sacrificial things with our lives, and sometimes to carry the Christ-light for others who cannot for themselves.  Yes, sometimes we have to have the courage to ‘hope beyond every hope’, if we are going to say our own ‘Amen’ to God’s love in Christ.

Can any of you recall whose motto that was? Here’s a clue…

Great Uncle Bulgaria was one of a merry troupe of seven characters on our TV screens in the mid-70s, including Mme Cholet and Orinoco. All the Wombles were united in the task of ‘making good use of the things that they find, things that the everyday folk leave behind’ – a sort of prophetic precursor to the green movement! And just think: it all began on Wimbledon Common!

Great Uncle Bulgaria offers a way into our reading today, but he also fulfills a promise I made to Bernard Cribbins, the TV voice of the Wombles, who kindly sent this little fellow to me in the post when I’d told him what a fan I was

‘Unless I wash you, says Jesus, you have no share with me’ … strong, frank words in response to Peter getting the wrong end of the stick. I wonder what Peter was thinking when he said that Jesus would never wash his feet. Was he worried about his socks or corns, as we might be if invited to have our feet washed at this service?

Perhaps it was a crisis of the imagination. How could their Master wish to do something so demeaning, something even a slave might not do? When we choose our leaders, do we not choose them to look up to? To lead us onwards and upwards? What is all this down, down, down to the dregs and dirt? It’s not right; it’s not seemly!

We want the Son of God to stand before us and bid us rise; but that is not the way with this master: ‘Unless I wash you have no share with me’, and the share he means is in eternal life, in the heritage of the people of God.

Of course the corollary of wanting an exalted leader is that we ourselves feel should in some ways be higher or better than we are. Our feet should be ascension-feet, in stained glass and passing through clouds, rather than sometimes dirty, gnarled, less than presentable – and sometimes even clay feet, betraying a lack of courage and integrity, feet that dither and frequently take the wrong and easier way.

Actually, a Master who will wash our real feet, like a slave, is a God-send, And someone who will do it now, whether we understand it now or not, brings grace upon grace to our rubbishy downtrodden world.

So you see that Great Uncle Bulgaria has wisdom to teach us. He knows that after the litter has been picked up there will be more litter to pick up, and that the important thing for a Womble is not to expect this to change, but to relish what can be done with it: to love the possibilities of rubbish.

Of course with us, it is not our bottles and cans, nor our feet alone that are wrong, but the depths of our being. ‘There is no health in us.’ We are like crisp packets blown before the wind – as Psalm 1 almost says. We are the violent and cringing creatures who God loves, who God is continually acting to redeem in all our scarred and soiled reality, the children who God delights to remake ingeniously, day after day, into something new.

‘Making good use of bad rubbish’ is not such a bad image of redemption, as even in bad rubbish treasure is hidden – glinting signs of our being made from the beginning in God’s own image. But this treasure, this image, within us is certainly not what we assume to be our best, most religious or presentable selves. We are so far from knowing what the jewel of our humanity looks like that it has actually to be set before us, stuck under our noses, in the form of a servant; and when we see it we recoil from it: how can that be what we aspire to be, stooping, washing our feet?

One of the most interesting bits of learning in Germany was a comparison between two sorts of aspiration. The protestant pastor at the very beautiful Kaiser William’s Memorial Church – the one built next to the famous bombed out spire of the original church – had a mission: to make the love of God hearable (hoerbar). Just down the road from there lies the hospital, also rebuilt, run by Franciscan nuns where my mother was born in 1930. Their motto was to make the merciful love of God visible (sichtbar).

As I was shown round the hospital by two of the nursing sisters it seemed to me as plain as day that God really loved individuals in all their frailty, sickness and need. I didn’t get to hear the pastor, but if I had I might have heard without understanding, because of the language barrier; and what are words anyway when it comes to loving well. Some, few words are necessary by way of explanation and evocation, but the form of our life, as individuals and communities, is much more eloquent. Do we, as a community, as individuals, carry and communicate love in the parcel of our lives.

And that’s why it’s important that I stop speaking in order to make way for the actions of washing and feeding, where God is sticking something under our noses and saying by what he does, mostly, this is it – this is how your desolate selves find fulfilment – and, as Jesus says to Peter, you and me, unless I deal with that, unless I befriend the rubbish you reject as ungodly and unpresentable, how can there be a stake for you in heaven?