My dear friends,
As you may have heard, the Diocese of Chichester is to appoint me as Rector instead of Priest-in-Charge of Catsfield and Crowhurst. There will be a special service on Monday 22nd June at 7.30pm at St Laurence’s Church, Catsfield, at which the Bishop of Lewes (who is the acting Bishop of Chichester during the vacancy) and the Archdeacon of Hastings will officiate. If you are free, we would love to see you.
I am sometimes asked: ‘What is the difference between a Rector and a Vicar?’ The answer is: ‘Not very much now-a-days.’
We are all ordained priest – just the same as in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. In the past in England, parish priests had different titles depending on how they were paid their stipend or living allowance. In medieval times, most of the stipend came from the tithe: one-tenth of the produce of the land given by parishioners to support their parish priest (and sometimes stored in special tithe barns). If the priest received the whole of the tithe, he was styled the Rector.
Sometimes the tithe was ‘appropriated’ by someone such as the local lord of the manor or the patron of the living (an individual, or perhaps an Abbey or a College at Oxford or Cambridge with the ‘advowson’ or right to nominate a priest to the parish). In such parishes the ‘appropriator’ kept much of the tithe. The parish priest received only a small portion – the ‘lesser tithe’ – supplemented by a cash payment from the ‘appropriator’. Such clergy were styled the Vicar, because it is said they only enjoyed the tithe vicariously. Generally speaking, Rectors who kept the whole tithe did rather better than Vicars who did not. Tithes, I am pleased to say, have long been done away with in the Church of England.
With my love and prayers,
Father Robert.
Easter 5 – 3rd May 2026
I telephoned my bank’s helpline last year and got through to an operator. There was a delay while we were waiting for my details to come up on a rather slow computer – and, to kill time, the operator began chatting away to me. ‘I see you are a Reverend,’ he said. ‘Ye-s,’ I replied, wondering slightly anxiously where this was leading. He began talking about the ‘Religions of the Book’ – but before we could get properly going, his computer sprang into life and gave him my details, and our business was soon done and the call ended.
That expression, the ‘Religions of the Book’ stuck in my mind. It was coined by a scholar to describe the three great Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three religions have their holy books: Judaism has the Hebrew Scriptures – what we call Old Testament; Christianity has the Bible, containing the Old and the New Testaments; and Islam has the Koran.
I expect the academic writer who first came up with the expression, the ‘Religions of the Book’ probably meant well. I am all for academic freedom and for members of different religions studying each other’s belief systems: indeed, many years ago, I studied Islamic theology. I would add that I think it is important to look for the good inside individuals of other faiths and beliefs and of none.
I have to say, however, that from a Christian point of view, the expression ‘Religions of the Book’ is a mis-perception of our Christian faith. Christianity is not a religion of a book. Christianity is a religion of a Person, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the only Son of God. Christians believe the Bible to have been wonderfully and uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit; but the Bible should rightly be understood as a tool, or perhaps better, as a witness, pointing towards the greatest work of the Holy Spirit: the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born an ordinary human baby of the Blessed Virgin Mary, perfect God and perfect man, to share our life, to love us and save us. This truth is made clear in today’s Gospel reading from St John.
The setting is towards the end of the Last Supper. Having washed his disciples’ feet and instituted the Eucharist, Jesus now settled down and gave what we call his ‘discourse,’ his teaching to prepare the disciples for his separation from them. Not surprisingly, they were dismayed at such a prospect and Jesus sought to reassure them using the beautiful words which we are all familiar with from the funeral service: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many dwelling-places … And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.’
Then, in response to a question from Thomas, Jesus said something about himself of great significance: ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him, and have seen him.’
‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’ Not ‘I am a sign, or a guide, or a guru.’ Instead, ‘I am the way.’ Jesus Christ is himself the way to God the Father. God hasn’t sent us a map or a law, but a Person: our way is to follow him. Indeed, the first generations of Christians sometimes referred to Christianity itself as ‘the Way’ because of Jesus’ use of that word.
‘I am the truth.’ The fullness of truth is to be found in Jesus Christ. I remember many years ago when I was a young and still somewhat green priest, a Frenchwoman – not a churchgoer – asked me about my work as a priest and why I had been ordained? She was older than me, very much a child of the 1960s, and I don’t think she could understand why anyone would want to be ordained. I said that being a priest was a vocation from God, and often quite a challenging one as I saw rather more of the world’s pain and suffering than many people probably guessed, but that I was inspired by the Gospel of Christ and by the belief that in the Gospel we had the truth. The woman became very angry, raised her voice, and said that she expected to spend her whole life in search of the truth and still probably not find it. I must record that she sought me out the following day and apologised for her behaviour.
Well, with hindsight, I might have expressed myself differently – but I would still want to affirm that the reason I am a Christian and a priest is because I believe the Gospel to be true. Curiously, despite her angry outburst, I remember quite liking the Frenchwoman; and of course one has to remember that one doesn’t know what other people have experienced – or had to endure – in the past.
However, no Christian believer can ever say they expect to spend their whole life searching for the truth and still not find it. Nor less can we say that I have my truth and you have your truth. Something is true because God makes it true, and for no other reason. Something does not become true just because a lot of people believe in it, however fervently.
If the child born at Bethlehem really is the incarnate Son of God, who rose from the dead in the Resurrection on the third day, then, Jesus Christ really is the fullness of divine truth, revealed to us by God himself. We must take his life and words with the greatest seriousness.
Lastly, Jesus said ‘I am the life.’ True and eternal life is to be found in Christ Jesus: he grants meaning and significance to our lives, relationships and work in this world, and he prepares us for eternal life in the world to come. We see a reflection of this in the life of St Stephen, in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Stephen was a deacon and was the first Christian martyr. He accepted martyrdom by stoning because he came to believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and realised that true and everlasting life is to be found in our relationship with Jesus. Stephen was not prepared to abandon Christ, and he paid the price and became our first martyr. There have been many other Christian martyrs since.
Back to Jesus’s discourse to his disciples in the upper room. Another of the disciples, Philip, said ‘Lord, show us the Father and we shall be satisfied.’ Jesus answered him, ‘have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say “show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.’
Here is the central point of Christianity. If we want to know what God is like, we must look to the Son of God. He is the image of unseen God. Reflect for a moment on the great love Jesus must have had for humanity to allow himself to be crucified to save us from our sins. If we ponder these things and pray about them, we will begin to glimpse just a little of the nature of God Himself. As Jesus himself said, ‘Believe me, that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.’
I end, as I began, by refuting the idea that Christianity is a religion of a book. Our book, the Bible, is sacred and special, but because it leads us to a Person, who uses it to speak to us. That Person, Jesus Christ, is the way, the truth and the life.
As St John Chrysyostom once wrote: “Walk by the Man, and thou wilt arrive at God. For it is better to limp on the right way, than to walk ever so stoutly by the wrong (way).”