On this day, we gather around Jesus, in whose body is named all the violence of the world. Human suffering cries out to us in many forms; for me, it is summed up at the gates of a refugee camp I visited a few years ago, where nothing since has got better, and everything has got worse-more crowded, more squalid, more dangerous. I am both implicated and powerless in its face. … More Holy Week Reflections: Good Friday

Many of us are unable to eat with others at this time. Our thoughts and senses may well go to memories of special family meals, or of wonderful hospitality offered by new friends. And on this day when we cannot celebrate with others the last supper Jesus ate with his companions, we may also remember other Maundy Thursdays. … More Holy Week Reflections: Maundy Thursday

I couldn’t help noticing last week that the first four doctors who died in the UK as a result of the coronavirus were all from an immigrant background. We in Glasgow know very well how much we depend on immigrants from all parts of the world in our health service, not just as doctors, but as nurses, porters, auxiliary staff, pharmacists, carers. We have often treated them in a less than gracious fashion, as the Windrush scandal demonstrated. Nor do we always admit the wider economic realities which brought them here in the first place. This too is a kind of betrayal. … More Holy Week Reflections: Wednesday

According to United Nations statistics, women do two-thirds of the world’s work. Most of this work is invisible to us; either because it’s far away in fields and factories on the other side of the world, or because we are so used to it that we simply take it for granted. But the coronavirus crisis has made much of this work more visible. Suddenly, we notice the work of carers, cleaners, health workers, teachers, shop assistants, mothers, precisely because their presence, or their absence, has brought home to us how much we depend on them. Unnoticed, their work poorly recognised; we can assume that this was the same in Jesus’ time. … More Holy Week Reflections: Tuesday

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. … More Holy Week Reflections: Monday

Holy Week …comes to gather us around the one true holy place of the Christian religion, Jesus himself, displayed to the world as the public language of our God, placarded on the history of human suffering that stretches along the roadside. This is a week for learning not management, bargaining and rule-keeping, but naked trust in that naked gift.  (Rowan Williams) … More Holy Week Reflections: Palm Sunday