Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 April 2012 20:30:27
We arrived to see a most wonderfully decorated church, full of Easter flowers, eggs, chicks and bunnies - I felt as if I'd walked into a flower festival! The vicar was in Jazz mode when teaching us a new Easter song ('Have you heard what happened to the Son of God?'). It caused fierce debate in the choir vestry - some who liked Jazz thought it was quite acceptable, others didn't like it at all, and yet others thought Jazz was fine for foot-stomping tunes, but spiritual words set to such tunes sounded rather naff. I belonged to the third set, in case you were wondering. The children enjoyed racing through the church, outside and back in to church through the vestry, demonstrating (as a sermon illustration) that 'God is a fast God and you never know where he is going to pop up next'. After all this excitement, what else could we sing but Handel's 'Hallelujah Chorus', the 18th century version of foot-stomping, no doubt.
An altogether more peaceful end to Easter Day, with Festival Evensong, although we were quite capable of giving some welly in appropriate places during the Sweeney responses, Stanford in C canticles, and anthem ('This Joyful Eastertide' - Wood). I was amazed to see that there were still chocolate eggs hiding among the flowers - what a well-behaved lot of churchgoers we are!