Crumbs from the Table

In 663 a church council was held at Whitby in the kingdom of Northumbria to determine which customs should prevail in the nascent church in what is now England: the Irish or the Roman? The spokesperson for the Roman side was a young priest called Wilfrid, who had been brought up in Irish monasticism, but then travelled to Rome and elsewhere to further his education.  When challenged on their traditions (eg the date of Easter, and also the form of monastic tonsure), the Irish side, represented by bishop Colman, objected: "Are we to believe that our most revered Father Columba and his successors, acted contrary to the Holy Scriptures when they followed these customs?" Listen to how Wilfrid responds both graciously but also firmly:  " Concerning your Father Columba and his followers, whose sanctity you say you imitate, and whose rule and precepts confirmed by signs from Heaven you say that you follow, I might answer, then when many, in the day of judgement, shall say to our

At my first church, St Paul's Brussels, and the churches where I served for 15 years in Russia, Communion was celebrated with proper wine, as was the custom in the Old Testament, and is the custom in Judaism.  I cannot remember when I first participated in Communion and it was grape juice. It came as a bit of surprise. The taste is much more watery, and the experience likewise. As I will argue below, almost inevitably the change in the element (from wine to grape juice) changes what is communicated.  I do understand that many brothers and sisters in our churches have a history with problem drinking and risk a relapse if Communion were celebrated with alcoholic wine. Some American missionaries I encountered in Russia actually considered it an issue of conscience NOT to celebrate communion with wine.  My Protestant/evangelical instinct on these things is to go back to the Bible. What was used to celebrate the Passover and later Communion?  Clearly, the "fruit of the vine" w

Our family recently visited Ripon in Yorkshire, an historic town associated with a figure called Wilfrid. On our visit to the Cathedral, it turned out that there was no biography available in the Cathedral shop, so I am minded to write my own. While this history is full of unfamiliar roles and concepts, nevertheless, these were our, albeit imperfect, Christian forefathers. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3, warns of "boasting in men" and then goes on to say, "All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future -- all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's." It is in that spirit that I have penned the present brief life of Wilfrid of Ripon. The 600s is a long time ago, and at that time the map of our country looked quite different to the way it looks today. Just 200 years earlier, settlers (the Angles, Saxons and Jutes) had sailed across the North Sea from what is now Germany, Denmark and the