Beckenham Baptist Church

Dear Friends,  In Daily Prayers for the Coronation of King Charles III published by the Church of England, a short daily reflection and prayer is offered in the month leading up to the coronation this coming Saturday, 6 th May. Each day focuses on themes as diverse as service and dedication, charitable work and the environment, anointing with oil and the coronation regalia. In this last week before the event each day focuses on one of the Fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23, with (30 th April) being ‘Patience’. Beginning with the reference, ‘I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry’ (Psalm 40:1), we then read ‘we have all been reminded to be patient many times throughout our lives. Living in patience and peace with one another is not always easy, and is a discipline that, appropriately, takes much practice to cultivate. Nevertheless, patience is among the Fruit of the Spirit listed by St Paul, and something we should aim to embrace whenever w...

Dear Friends,  Happy St George’s Day! I was interested to read this week on the English Heritage website the history of St George whose Feast Day we celebrate today, 23 rd April. You are probably familiar with the mythical story of how the heroic knight slayed a fire-breathing dragon who had been terrorising the local villages demanding sacrifices thus releasing them from their bondage, but did you know that St George wasn’t English – he was born in Cappadocia (modern day Turkey) in the 3 rd Century AD; and that he wasn’t a knight either – he was most likely to have been an officer in the Roman army. England also isn’t the only country that has St George as its patron saint – others include Venice, Genoa, Portugal, Ethiopia, and Catalonia. He was canonised by Pope Gelasius in 494AD who claimed he was one of those ‘whose names are justly revered by men but whose acts are known only to God’. When I think of the knights of old I’m reminded of a hymn that I first encountered at sc...

Dear Friends,  One of the great Easter hymns is The strife is o‘er, the battle done . American hymnologist Leonard Ellinwood traces the origins of the hymn to a book of compositions in 1695, and John Mason Neale, a British translator of Latin and Greek hymnody, included the Latin text with his translation, whilst it was Francis Pott, a hymnwriter and priest in the Anglican church in the late 1800s who translated the hymn as we know it today and was included in the hymnal Hymns Ancient and Modern .                 The strife is o’er, the battle done;              The powers of death have done their worst,             the victory of life is won;                             but Christ...

Dear Friends,  Jesus Christ is risen today! Alleluia! Happy Easter! The long Lenten fast is over for another year and now we celebrate the good news that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and the Season of Easter begins. We hear now the post-resurrection encounters in the gospel stories of how Jesus meets with his friends and shows them his wounds as they marvel at this wonderful news. Perhaps one of my favourite encounters is of the two followers of Jesus who were walking on the road to Emmaus, away from Jerusalem. Luke’s gospel records that ‘they were talking with each other about everything that had happened’ (Luke 24:14). It had been a momentous week and Jesus, who they had put so much of their faith in to bring them relief and rescue from Roman occupation, had been a failure. He had died an ignominious death – crucifixion – perhaps the cruellest mode of execution ever invented and now they were loss and confused. In her Lent book Failure by Emma Ineson, she writes, ‘I...

Dear Friends,  I’ve just finished reading the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell’s book for Lent and Holy Week entitled Godforsaken, The Cross – the Greatest Hope of All . It focuses on Jesus’ cry of dereliction from the cross, ‘ Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? ’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mark 15:34), and which are the last words of Jesus in Mark’s gospel. They are a direct quote from Psalm 22, a psalm of David, which has been described as a prayer that carries us from great suffering to great joy, and that despite the apparent rejection of his friends and God, David believed that God would lead him out of despair, and in that sense Psalm 22 is a psalm of hope. That hope today we find in the person of Jesus Christ and the events which we will remember this Holy Week, particularly his passion and death. The Biblical account of Jesus praying in Gethsemane, before Pilate, his crucifixion and being laid in the tomb are known as his passion . The dictionar...