Sunday morning

For assorted reasons, this past week has been quite hard work.
I’m sure that everyone in ministry sometimes has the sense of innumerable miles travelled between one Sunday and the next, between one gathering of God’s people, and another. I’m increasingly aware of how much I rely on being fed Sunday by Sunday, of all the strength I draw from that gathering, and the privilege of presiding, and naming the presence of God among his people.
For me, it’s what keeps me earthed if anything does, though as an “F” Im always susceptible to the ups and downs of my own inner life…
Anyway, this morning was an almost incalculable blessing.
FabVicar was away celebrating Christian Unity with our URC friends, and the rota declared me preacher, with a much-loved retired priest presiding. But he, poor love, had been unwell this week and so I found myself both presiding and preaching and, oh, it was so lovely!
Dylan had launched me on a sermon that felt utterly right in its direction for these people on this day…and because I was presiding I was able to pick up the theme of the Body of Christ again and again throughout the service.
Then our organist spontaneously added a second anthem during Communion, David Ogden’s
“Christ has no body now but yours…”
and I found myself placing pieces of that body in hand after hand after hand.
And it was very good.