Letter from the Rector, February 2009
January 26, 2009 by Andrew
It has been a sober start to the new year for our church family. The sudden death of John Knight after the Lord Mayor’s Carol Service was a great shock to us all and warm tributes to John, who was our organist for 28 years, appear later in this edition of the Fisherman. We have also held funerals in recent weeks for other long-standing members of the congregation: Dr Jennie Tisdall who was greatly loved and respected by many; Robin Lumley-Harvatt, a great character in the St. Katherine’s congregation; and Len Brimacombe, whose 96 years were spent within the life of St. Andrew’s. There are those who are severely ill in hospital, and the new year has brought worrying diagnoses for two or three other members of our church family.
We have also hosted in January the funerals of two Plymouth servicemen killed in Afghanistan, Sjt Chris Reed who was to have been married here in September and Travis Mackin of 45 Commando. The church was full on both occasions of young people and military personnel deeply saddened by the loss of friends and colleagues at such a young age.
So this is a good time to remember that the Christian faith was founded on the triumph of life over death in the resurrection of Jesus. The New Testament resounds with hope, with the confidence that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The reality of heaven is not speculation or wishful thinking but the considered teaching of the New Testament and the true significance of the events we shall celebrate at Easter.
This humble confidence in the face of the death has always been a mark of Christian believers since days when the early church “outlived, out-thought and out-died” the pagan world of their day. We all know the pain and separation death brings, and the depth of grief that follows the loss of a loved one. But, in Paul’s phrase, we do not grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thess 4:13). In fact he could even write, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.”
In contrast to the despair of much of society, the Christian hope gives us an underlying assurance in the loving purposes of God even in the face of this last enemy. We are to believe our beliefs. A Christmas note from a close friend diagnosed with cancer wrote to us, “The consultant estimates that I have one or two years to live (although obviously all such estimates may be wildly wrong). I assured him that I see this as a sentence of life and not of death, as a beginning and not an end.”
Nick McKinnel