This month’s Vicar’s Viewpoint is a strange imposter. As I write, I am conscious that the edition into which this will be posted and you will receive will effectively be the ‘Easter edition’, but as I write the good Lord sees fit to demand editorial processes that have to be completed before Holy Week even begins. I could, therefore, extol the joys of the coach-loads of you who came to church over an Easter that hasn’t yet taken place, exhort you to attend services that will have already taken place, or find myself – as I currently am – wondering what on earth to write that avoids politics or the pressing issue of the value to the natural world of wasps.

I suppose this is a bit how the disciples felt about now in the chronology of the Cross. Jesus had told them, over the first century equivalent of a Girasole latte, that he was going off to be killed. They had followed this religious rebel hither and yon across Galilee and it is reasonable to suppose they may have worried a great deal about what would happen to them. Would their fate follow that of Jesus? Is that what the jobbing cod*-farmers signed up to? By any measure, a worry.

So as I contrive to draw false and clumsy parallels between my current editorial consternation and that of the disciples I am left with Jesus’s own words of comfort to his friends as reflected in St John’s Gospel: “do not let your hearts be troubled; believe in God and believe also in me”. It comes down to that in the end – despite what I write that may or may not be accurate or timely. And so I close in hope that you will have or have had a blessed and sacred Easter and in hope that our paths to the Tomb of the Resurrection will pass soon.

*There are no cod in the Sea of Galilee, only tilapia, sardines and barbels – just so that we are clear!

Amen

Father David Cloake