Rev’d Marcus Walker returns to his pulpit: “Here I stand!
by Archbishop Cranmer:
“We are back!” exclaims the Facebook page of Saint Bartholomew the Great, London’s oldest extant church, founded in 1123 as an Augustinian Priory and which, they say, “has been in continuous use as a place of worship since at least 1143”. Continuous, that was, until the coronavirus pestilence, when worship was interrupted by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as it was throughout all the churches of England.
“After three weeks of exile, a traditional Anglican choral Eucharist is once again being celebrated”, the Rev’d Marcus Walker explains. “There shall be a Choral Eucharist for the First Sunday after Easter”, he proclaimed, throwing down his stole in defiance of the archiepiscopal edict.
The “exile”, of course, went further than the Government had ordered: the Archbishops not only closed England’s churches to their worshipping communities over Easter, the most sacred period of the liturgical year; they closed them also to their own priests. No Eucharist could be celebrated at any altar; no liturgy enacted in any nave, and no prayers uttered in any cloister. Priests were barred from entering their own churches even if there were a connecting door from the rectory, and even to broadcast a service via the Internet. If the people may not gather for worship, then priests and vicars were obliged to refrain from entering their church buildings in exemplary sympathy, the Archbishops decreed.
But the Rev’d Marcus Walker had higher priorities. In his sermon (@ c10mins), he explains:
May I speak in the name of the Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
And so we’re back.
Back here in this ancient church after an exile of three weeks.
It’s worth saying a few words, now, on why we’re back.
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