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For our Safeguarding Policy please see:
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/47923/view/

For Safeguarding information please see:
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/47925/view/

07/03/2026

10.00 am Sung Eucharist, Sunday 8th March 2026, The Third Sunday of Lent
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

Ho, everyone who thirsts.

The image is Jacob’s Well as it looks today (well, February 2017 when the Rector was on pilgrimage in the Holy Land). This is Jacob as in ‘Jacob and sons’ (think Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat) which means this is a very ancient site indeed, and also the location of the encounter between Christ and the woman at the well.

Today the well would be described as being on the outskirts of Nablus, which, in 2017, was still a very vibrant Palestinian town, sadly more recently bedevilled with violence between the ancient Arab community and Israeli settlers. The water was very refreshing; the well is deep, drunk by pilgrims from all over the world, regardless of any doctrinal differences there may be between them and the present-day custodians of the site, the Greek Orthodox.

This place, established by Jacob, a common ancestor of the Jews and Samaritans of Jesus’s day is still a place of tension. Jesus’s wisdom and authority then as now transcends all this, as it does everywhere. It illustrates that the way forward is sometimes to follow the examples of those who are outside the restrictive ‘clicks’ of the established/official religion of the day.

Fr A

05/03/2026

The latest Lent podcast, "Living Water" is up as of yesterday 6..00 pm. Using art and music we look at the Old Testament reading, "Moses strikes the Rock at Horeb", and the Gospel reading "Jesus and the woman at the well".
https://youtu.be/AtD2KxearGg
Each new episode 'drops' on Wednesdays at 6.00 pm.

27/02/2026

Sunday 1st March 2026, The Second Sunday of Lent
10.00 am Parish Sung Eucharist
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

What's my line?
I think we can all have some empathy with Nicodemus. After all it must be baffling to be on the receiving end of all these riddles. I don’t think St John intends to be unkind in using him as a ‘fall-guy’ for the Pharisees and the religious establishment which seeks to do away with Jesus. He appears twice more in benign roles and participates in a respectful and generous way after the Crucifixion. Maybe had had been born a second time, from above, after all.
Tearing up the rule book or instruction-manual is a radical act. Where do we go for guidance? It’s our faith in God and obedient response to God’s word when God speaks to us, which is one way of describing our conscience or our psyche. However, we’re not Abram/Abraham or St Paul.
Those of you who have been in plays will know the panic that can set in during the technical and dress runs when there are no scripts, let alone on the opening night. There is the comfort of the prompt who can get us back on track. However, life is not the reiteration of a fixed script, and is more like an improvisation which is underpinned by some principles with generosity built in. If we forget these, for whatever reason, our prompt comes from prayer, and thus from above. Fr A
Image Christus und Nicodemus, by Fritz von Uhde (1848–1911)

It's not too late to see the podcast which talks about images associated with 'from on high'. Just follow the link: https://youtu.be/6DcKVc0qaBE

25/02/2026

Dear Friends,
The first episode of our Lent Course 'drops' this evening at 6.00 pm. The theme is "It comes from above". I hope you enjoy it. The first episode is my first attempt at video-editing, so please be kind!
To accompany the series on YouTube there is a panel on A Church Near You, which will be updated each week. A synopsis of the podcast will be available as a pdf, including thumbnails used of the images on screen. The text of the synopsis is also available in the description box of the video.
I hope you enjoy them. I enjoyed editing the first one, and I will get quicker at it!
The link to A Church Near You is here: https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/98040/view/
The link to the video is here: https://youtu.be/6DcKVc0qaBE
Many blessings,
Fr A

20/02/2026

Sunday 22nd February, The First Sunday in Lent
BCP Sunday
9.00 am Holy Communion (said)
10.00 am Holy Communion (sung)

https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

Always let your conscience be your guide?

The Old Testament reading and Gospel were written long, long before the “invention” of psychology, but they give a very good account of what underpins the human condition, and an indication of what conscience is. Adam and Eve gave in to temptation; the Second Adam, Jesus Christ does not. Elsewhere, Paul highlights the good that we want to do but don't. What is it that causes that block? Is it the Devil? Is it evidence for Original Sin. I don't often use this question, but sometimes it’s a useful one: when faced with a dilemma, what would Jesus do? Evidence suggests it would be to seek the most just outcome even if it’s at great personal cost. How sacrificial are we prepared to be?
Fr A.
Image C12 mosaic, St Mark’s Venice

18/02/2026

Late call with apologies!
The Eucharist with Imposition of Ashes
7.30 pm this evening, Ash Wednesday

14/02/2026

Sunday 15th February, The Sunday Next before Lent
10.00 am Parish Sung Eucharist

https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

As good as it can be. Work needed.

The Sunday before Advent is the splendour of Christ the King; before Lent it is the ‘Wow’ and mystery of The Transfiguration. You have had twelve years of sermons from me on this. It is with very mixed feelings I say that this year there is even more need to bring to earth something which is as good as it can be, which is pretty much what ‘transfiguration’ means. It also means even more prayer and a very busy Lent in that department.
I hope you can make some time to engage with the themes of Lent ( see p 15 ) so that we too can be transformed and transfigured in our faith.
Fr A

07/02/2026

10.00 am Sunday 8th February 2026, The Second Sunday before Lent
Parish Sung Eucharist
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

Would you Adam and Eve it?

Adam and Eve occur a little later in the Book of Genesis, and I hope you’ll forgive the Cockney Rhyming Slang.
Do you suppose the wonderful account of creation was ever intended to be understood literally? Given Israel/Gaza, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Epstein fallout it is possible to talk about creation “groaning” without its being meant solely poetically.
Yet, there is still our appreciation and awe at the miraculous beauty of land and seascapes, flora and fauna which must be more than by-products of billions of years of impersonal evolution?
Just what do we make of the world around us, and what is our part in it? In evolutionary terms, given the late arrival of the human species to the planet, we are anatomically the same creatures as those who began, in awe and wonder, to write down their ideas about how things came to be. Our responses to the world around us might differ in some details. Even as increasingly urban creatures, our ability to feel awe and wonder—and fear—is the same and equally primal.
God in creation is that change and continuity. However, surely, just now our response is more in sorrow than in joy. Find that joy. Fr A

30/01/2026

Sunday 1st February 2026, The Presentation of Christ (Candlemas) (tr)
10.00 am Parish Sung Eucharist
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

Peace in the middle of hubbub.
If you’ve been with us for a while, I hope you recognise the image. There is a gentleness and intimacyabout it which are comforting. Images like this abound and which reflect these moods. Some teaching last week made me reflect on what it was actually like. I can safely say that Joseph and Mary, Simeon and Anna came together in ‘quiet spot’ in what would have been the hurly-burly of a very vast and busy building. How did Simeon recognise ‘The Holy Family’ from the rest of the hoard? Or, how did the Holy family come to know the right place where they would meet Simeon. Clearly this is another instance of divine intervention.
Duty and joy come together on this day, and I pray we will remember our duties to and before God and one another. Together we are stronger. What we pledge today is for life because, as God’s children and co-heirs with Christ, like it or not, we are all bound up with one another.
The Holy Family reminds us of the beauty of duty in giving thanks for we received and the assurance of continual blessing on us now as witnesses to The Lights Simeon holds the Christ-child in his arms: the ‘light to lighten the Gentiles.

Fr A.

24/01/2026

Sunday 25th January 2026 Conversion of St Paul (BCP)

9.00 am Holy Communion (said)

10.00 am Holy Communion (sung)
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

The Parish Safeguarding Policy can be found here:

https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/47923/view/

Image: Conversion of St Paul. Sculpture by Bruce Denny, St Paul’s Covent Garden.

Private and public

The Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways, as one of the Persons of the Godhead.

Contrast the public and violent way it works on Saul (Paul) in today’s reading from Acts, and the enclosed yet dramatic action of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. There were obviously people around when Saul had his episode: “he saw no man; but they led him by the hand”.

You’ve heard it before from me, and you’ll hear it again that modern psychiatry suggests Saul may have suffered a temporal lobe epileptic fit. The Holy Spirit works with and through ‘disordered’ brain chemistry in the ‘ill’ as well as the ‘order’ of the ‘well’. Some of the most profound theological insights have resulted from what, today, we might consider mental illness. When we’re mentally unwell, sometimes we’re less filtered, and stuff just pops out. Sometimes these are called visions. Think of Teresa of Avila or Julian of Norwich, and in more recent times William Blake and Christopher Smart. I commend his poem Rejoice in the Lamb to you.

I pray we all remain well, and that this does not preclude our being witnesses to the Holy Spirit in what we say and do.

Come Holy Ghost,
our souls inspire,
and lighten with celestial fire.

Fr A

16/01/2026

Sunday 18th January, The Second Sunday of Epiphany
10.00 am Sung Eucharist

https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

Behold, the Lamb of God

Week by week after Christmas we are presented with people and elements that are integral to Jesus’s ministry, culminating in the events of Holy Week. We witness these as the baptised.
Baptism, this re-orientation towards God, and our being marked out for God’s work, is to the fore again here. We have John, Jesus, Andrew and Simon, who was to become Cephas, described elsewhere as Peter, the rock upon whom Jesus would build his church. A look from Jesus is enough.
Andrew makes the introduction and his brother is transformed. Simon becomes Peter, petros, the rock; but the rock that was to deny Christ three times. On such as him the church is built: a person inclined to mess up and fail, just like you and me. What do we think about this, so early in the Jesus story?
In St John’s more “mystical” presentation of John the Baptist and Jesus today we have another insight into both their relationship—over and above being cousins—as well as our relationship with the Word made flesh.
The Evangelists wrote with different purposes to different audiences, impelled by the passing of time and inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Our understanding is unique because the Holy Spirit speaks to us as a Church and as individuals. Listen and respond. This Epiphany, and beyond, let’s make our faith manifest.
Fr A

10/01/2026

Sunday 11th January 2026, The Baptism of Christ.
10.00 am Sung Eucharist

https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/page/76853/view/

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves…” but what about Jesus?

Epiphany seasons: Jesus the infant; Jesus at twelve years old, separated from his parents in the Temple complex; and here he’s thirty or so; next week, similar age, then at Candlemas, a babe in arms again. (We take a break from the Jesus sequence on 25th to celebrate the Conversion of St Paul.)
Does the lectionary sequence, different across years A, B and C, tell us something? For me, each year the readings for the The Baptism of Christ are an early punctuation point in the Christian year when we consider what baptism means, and especially what it means for us, as we reflect on those who support us in baptism, whenever it was, and support us in our formation as human beings. So consider this: why should Jesus seek baptism? After all, we believe Jesus is without sin. Thus, there’s nothing to wash away. Jesus is also the Son of God.
It is essential in our understanding of Jesus, as it appears in all four gospels, each with their different theological slants. We might infer that it is an expression of Jesus’s humanity and a desire, in God, to identify with the human form we share. Also, that in this physical and symbolic gesture we are marked out and made separate and holy as God’s children; unique but united as creatures of the same heavenly Father, mindful of our connections, human and divine
Fr A

Image: from The Baptism of Christ, Giotto, 1305, Scrovigno Chapel, Padua

Address

Manchester
M401LR

Telephone

+441612191807

Website

https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15869/

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