St. Paul's Church, Coven, Staffordshire, Diocese of Lichfield

St. Paul's Church, Coven, Staffordshire, Diocese of Lichfield St Paul's is a traditional Anglican church under the Episcopal oversight of the Bishop of Oswestry.

14/06/2026

ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Year A
14 June 2026

Today’s readings can be summed up in three sentences: God calls us to be his people; he strengthens us by the Holy Spirit; and he forms us into a community to proclaim his kingdom in the world.

God calls us to be his people, just as he called the people of Israel into a special relationship with him in our Old Testament reading today. The people have come out of Egypt, and have arrived at the foot of Mount Sinai, where they will receive the Law which God will give them before they continue on their journey.

So Moses prepares them for that moment by repeating to them what God has commanded him to say: If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

And the Old Testament is the story of how the people of Israel tried to live out that vocation, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, but always conscious that they were different from the nations around them.

In this morning’s Second Reading, Paul speaks of how, having justified us and granted us his peace through Jesus, God pours his love into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit, giving us endurance and hope in our struggles, and forming in us the image of Christ who offered himself for us even while we were still sinners. And, he says, it is this same hope that is a sign of the grace we have received and the glory that still awaits us.

Finally, our Gospel recounts how Jesus commissioned twelve of his disciples with the special title of apostle, a word that means messenger, and sent them on ahead of him to proclaim the kingdom.

Often we use apostle and disciple interchangeably, but while the apostles were all disciples, just of each of us is a disciple, a follower of Jesus, it’s clear that Jesus calls the Twelve to a special role of leadership among his followers: a rôle they themselves clearly understood when they realised how after the Ascension they had to find someone to replace Judas Iscariot, and chose Matthias.

What is important in all this is that Jesus doesn’t try to go it alone, as it were, or encourage his followers to go it alone, but forms them into an organised community, giving them detailed instructions for their mission. And like the people of Israel, we are called to respond to God in obedience and trust, as his treasured possession, a kingdom of priests and and a holy nation. The Spirit comes to help us in the calling, not alone, but as part of the community founded by Jesus, the community we call the Church.

Sometimes people say, I can be a Christian without the church, but that’s not the way of Jesus. We need one another to help us interpret God’s will for us; and we need one another as disciples of Jesus because it is the will of Jesus to gather his followers into one community. Even John Calvin, the great 16th Century Swiss Reformer, father of what we would now call Presbyterianism, wrote in his monumental Institutes of the Christian Religion, No one can call God his Father who does not have the Church as his mother.

But there is another aspect to Jesus’ calling of the apostles we should not overlook: it is a response to need. Jesus has compassion on the crowds because, as Matthew puts it, they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. It is then Jesus calls his apostles and sends them out with his authority, to meet their needs.

In the same way there are many people in the world today who are harassed and helpless, lacking direction in their lives. And it is the task of the Church, the community formed by Jesus to proclaim the kingdom, and to go out with his authority and meet their needs, setting them free from all that binds them.

Interestingly, when Mark recounts these same words, like sheep without a shepherd in his Gospel, he places them not before the call of the apostles, but before the story of the feeding of the multitude – a reminder that the Church is called to respond to physical need no less than spiritual, and must therefore be concerned for fairness and justice, that all may enjoy the good gifts God provides.

It is with the same authority of Jesus that we preach the Gospel and reach out to those in want: they are two sides of the same coin, as Jesus makes clear when he tells the apostles not only to proclaim the Good News, but also to Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers [and} cast out demons. That is part of our task too, and the justification for all Christians do in the secular sphere.

God calls us to be his people; he strengthens us by the Holy Spirit; and he forms us into a community to proclaim his kingdom in the world. May he keep us faithful in his community and one in his Spirit, and may we always respond to his call in obedience and trust.

07/06/2026

CORPUS CHRISTI Year A
7 June 2026

‘The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.’

The night before he died the Lord Jesus took bread and wine, blessed them, broke the bread, and shared them with his disciples, telling them that they were his Body and Blood. Just as Moses had sealed the Old Covenant with the blood of a bull sacrificed at the foot of Mount Sinai, so the New Covenant would be inaugurated by Jesus’ death the next day, of which this meal was both fore-shadowing and perpetual memorial.

Precisely what form of words Jesus used we will never know. He would have spoken them in Aramaic, which was then translated into Greek by those who recorded them for us. And so each of the four accounts we have, in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, is subtly different.

But what is clear is that from the very earliest days of the Church, Christians understood that Jesus’ actions at the Last Supper were to be repeated, and that his words were a command: This is my body. This is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me. And every time we obey that command, we are joining an unbroken thread linking us across the centuries to the first Christians and to the Apostles themselves in the Upper Room. This is our Communion not simply with God but with the whole Church in every time and place.

Sadly, Christians have not always agreed on what Jesus meant by, Do this, and have come to different conclusions about how often the Eucharist should be celebrated, as they have about the precise meaning of, This is my Body. This is my Blood.

Some traditions acknowledge the significance of Communion by arguing that is should be celebrated rarely and only with great preparation: a position which has integrity. That same impulse is reflected in our own tradition by the strict emphasis in former times on fasting before Communion.

More worrying is the argument you sometimes here that the Eucharist is somehow too complicated for ordinary people, an obstacle to Church growth; as a consequence of which the Eucharist has become marginal to the life of many congregations even in our own Church of England.

And then there is the practical argument. In my last parish we maintained a genuine daily Mass, without even a break for the Vicar’s day off; an increasing rarity outside cathedrals and larger parish churches. But on weekdays attendance averaged only about five people, like our mid-week celebration here at Saint Paul’s. With fewer and fewer clergy to go round, is it really worth the effort?

Let me offer three answers.

First, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we are acting not for ourselves alone but on behalf of the whole Church, renewing our participation in the New Covenant inaugurated by Jesus’ death, as Paul reminds us in our Second Reading today, and sharing in his Body and Blood under the forms of Bread and Wine he left us. Through this meal God’s people are restored to holiness and right relationship with him.

Second, we are giving thanks for all we have received at God’s hands, our creation, preservation and all the blessings of this life, and all that he has done for us in Christ. The Eucharist is literally our thanksgiving – that is what the word means – our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, to use a liturgical formula. And as Christians who are called to make thankfulness the hallmark of their lives, it is indispensable to our spiritual lives.

And third, we are following that thread back to the Last Supper; or perhaps at the risk of mixing my metaphors, we are immersing ourselves in the flood that flows out from that one event in that Upper Room two thousand years ago, just as the prophet Ezekiel did when he saw in a vision the water flowing out from the side of the Temple bringing life and health wherever it went.

Whenever we are discouraged by low numbers in church we need to hold that vision of joining with the whole Church in every time and place before our eyes. And all this happens every time we take bread and wine, bless them, break the bread and share them in obedience to Jesus’ command, whether there are five or fifty or five hundred or five thousand present.

And that is surely worth the effort: not just my effort but that of all who faithfully make the effort week by week, to be share in the meal he left us, and to know ourselves restored to holiness and right relationship with God.

‘The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.’

31/05/2026

TRINITY SUNDAY Year A
31 May 2026

When we talk about the Trinity, what are we actually talking about? At one level, we're obviously talking about doctrine – the way in which the Church formally express what she believes. And doctrine is important. It forces us to be precise; to say, This is true; but that is not true. And a religion without doctrine very rapidly descends into nothing more than unexamined feeling.

But we're also talking about God. And there we run into a problem, because when people use the word God, while they often assume they mean the same thing, they may mean very different things. For some the word is little more than a shorthand expression for whatever impersonal force created the universe in the first place: a remote, distant entity who, whatever he (or it) did in the past, has no ongoing interaction with his creation, or with us his creatures today. This is the view known in its purest form as Deism.

On the other hand, for others, the word God is really just a synonym for creation itself, equally impersonal, but somehow part of every rock, tree and flower, an attitude we call Pantheism, meaning God in everything. And sometimes it can become very sentimentalized: some of you no doubt know the poem I occasionally have to grit my teeth and read at funerals, about nowhere being closer to God's heart than a garden.

But if that's so, what does it say about people in inner city housing estates, or the victims of floods or famine? Are they less close to God’s heart because they don't have the luxury of a neat English garden to potter about in? Of course not. If anything, it is the consistent biblical witness that it is the poor and needy who are closest to God's heart, and the poem is sentimental nonsense.

But it is illustrative of what many people mean when they use the word God – someone or something who makes us feel good, but who is on the whole as remote from the concerns of the world as his deist cousin.

So what we mean by God is also important, because it has implications for what we believe about the world we live in, and how we will act in it. After all, if God is no more than an absent landlord, as in the first example, we can do pretty much as we please; and if we really are closest to God's heart when we feel good about ourselves, as in the second, then why should we exert ourselves for the less fortunate?

Of course, both these ideas of God represent extreme positions. But they also represent a polarity that is at the heart of any attempt to talk about God, the polarity between what theologians call, immanence and transcendence – between the idea that God is completely beyond us and inaccessible to us; and that he is so close to us as to be inseparable from his creation. And the problem is, both are true – God is both immanent and transcendent, both out there and in here, if you like – but neither is true on its own.

And when you leave one part out of the equation, you end up with distortions like those I have just described, distortions that arise from not taking doctrine seriously. Which is why the doctrine of the Trinity, that we worship One God in Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is key to getting the rest of our Christian faith right. Because we can see in each of the Divine Persons a different aspect of this complex relationship between God and creation.

In the Father, we see the One who created all that is, seen and unseen, to whose full glory our sin blinds us. In the Spirit, we know the voice of God speaking within us, the One whose presence sustains all things like a breath, blowing where it will like the wind. And in the Son, Jesus, we see God's commitment to his creation, sharing in its joys and sorrows, and bearing all our burdens; especially the burdens of those who, like him, are despised and rejected by others.

Now this is a gross oversimplification. The Father is no less committed to his creation than the Son and Spirit he sends; the Spirit no less with us than the Father and Son from whom he proceeds; the Son no less to be worshipped and adored than the eternal Father and the Spirit who is One with Both. And when we as Christians speak of God, this is the God we mean; a God at once transcendent, immanent, and committed to all he has made.

One last warning, however. To talk about the Trinity is indeed to talk about God. And it is important that we get our God-talk right. But at the same time we must remember that God is ultimately a mystery beyond the limits of earthly language. We see now, as Saint Paul reminds us, through a glass darkly, dim reflections in a mirror. And there comes a point at which all God-talk must cease as it leads us simply to adoration.

But one day we will come to that place where, as Saint Augustine puts it in the closing words of his great work, The City of God: ‘We shall be still and see; we shall see and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise. Behold, what will be, in the end, without end! For what is our end but to reach that kingdom which has no end?’

24/05/2026

PENTECOST/WHITSUNDAY Year A
24 May 2026 – Vicar’s Annual Report

It it my practice the Sunday of the Annual Meeting, to deliver my annual report in place of the sermon, so that those who are unable to stay for the meeting itself are able to get a picture of our life over the year that is past – specifically the calendar year that is past, 2025, however remote that now seems! And there can be no better place to start this year than with Paul’s words to the Corinthians in today’s Second Reading:

‘There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.’

… a reminder that we all have our own particular gifts from God and a part to play in the life of the Christian family. And I am grateful to all who exercise those gifts for the good of our parish family, whether in an official role or simply through their presence and support, and whose faithfulness enriches our common life as we seek to make the Good News of Jesus known in our community.

That being said, the most significant development in 2025 was undoubtedly that Saint Paul’s has had a resident Vicar since January, for the first time in several years. There is of course an important caveat to that. The position of Vicar of Coven is not a full-time position, nor even a paid one. It is what the Church of England calls a ‘house for duty’ post, meaning that in return for accommodation in the vicarage a priest provides Sunday services and two days a week of other duties.

It is a mutually beneficial arrangement for many newly-retired clergy and smaller churches, one Darquise and I decided to explore as I approached pension age; and a stray conversation with Bishop Paul led to an invitation to apply for the vacant post here. For me it is a happy halfway house between the demands of full-time ministry and complete retirement; and it allows Saint Paul’s, which does not justify and could not afford a full-time vicar of its own to benefit from a resident priest rather than relying on cover from outside.

Already, by general consent, that arrangement is bearing fruit. A regular face at the altar Sunday by Sunday has led to a steadier congregation, typically hovering around twenty but often over twenty-five; and those seeking the pastoral offices in baptism, marriage, or arranging a funeral, have someone to whom they can turn – even if the part-time nature of the post is perhaps not always clearly understood by funeral directors!

Within the constraints of time it has also strengthened our links with our parish school; and I had Saint Paul’s reception class in church only this week learning about what happens in church as part of their curriculum.

As ever, worship is the heart of parish life; and my goal has been to offer unfussy, dignified, Eucharistic worship reflecting Saint Paul’s Catholic tradition within the Church of England, so that people know what to expect week by week, and we are seen to have something distinctive to offer.

The Church of England is a broad church, offering a wide range of worship styles. But no church grows by being a pale imitation of the one down the road, and congregations need to concentrate on what they can do best. In that area I am grateful to Darquise and those she has formed into a choir to sing on special occasions. Our carol service was a particular success with attendance of over 100, double 2024’s.

The wider life of the parish in 2025 also included one baptism, one wedding, and one full funeral in church, as well as six interments of ashes; and we should note the death of Alan Badger late in the year, even though his funeral took place only this past January.

Financially we ended the year with a deficit of £898 and a bank balance of £6,937; but that was achieved only by falling short on our full parish share. Our fundraising activities have been an important part of our income, as well as of our outreach; but clearly we face a challenge if we are to meet our commitments. It should be noted, however, that 2025 included some expenses such as the decoration of the Vicarage, which will not recur; also that the closure of the new churchyard will transfer maintenance costs to the local authority.

Looking forward to 2026 (even if we are almost half-way through the year already), I am pleased we shall welcome Bishop Paul for Confirmation next month: please make every effort to be here both to support our candidates – and to impress the bishop!

Lastly, thank-you for your welcome and support throughout the year. Darquise and I are well-settled in Coven, even if it took a while to sort out some of the issues resulting from the Vicarage having been empty for so long, and we are enjoying the very different pace of life from greater London and the life of the parish.

‘There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.’

I pray that each of you may continue to exercise those gifts of the Spirit God has given you; and that together we my make known the Good New of Jesus in our community.

17/05/2026

SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER Year A
17 May 2026

What did Jesus do between the Resurrection and the Ascension? It’s one of those questions that is difficult to answer, and to which the written records in the New Testament give few clues.

That’s because the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry are not so much biography as theology; and the point the writers wanted to make above any other was simply that Jesus had risen from the dead, and revealed himself on a number of occasions to chosen witnesses, as recorded in the four Gospels and a handful of other references in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul, and summarised in the opening chapter of Acts: He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them ... and speaking about the kingdom of God,

We do have to acknowledge, however, that the precise details the different New Testament writers give us about events between the Resurrection and Ascension do not always agree: When was it that Peter saw the Lord, let alone James, both appearances mentioned in the New Testament? The Evangelists don’t give an answer to these questions, nor do they mention the occasion Paul tells us about when Jesus appeared to more than five hundred believers at one time. Even the forty day period between the Resurrection and the Ascension are mentioned only by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles.

But these are not questions we should allow ourselves to get hung up on. Whatever the precise details of the story they tell, all the evangelists agree on the key point that Jesus was seen alive after the Resurrection.

The Gospels also agree that one of the things Jesus did was prove his Resurrection by physical signs, including showing the disciples his wounds and eating and drinking in their presence. And they all agree that Jesus commissioned his disciples to spread his message to the world. And so they did, or we would not be here this morning.

In fact, only the Resurrection explains our presence here today. The transformation of the apostles from the frightened and cowardly bunch, all but one of whom forsook Jesus and fled on the night Jesus was betrayed, into the bold evangelists we have been reading about throughout the Easter season in the Acts of the Apostles, can be explained no other way. If they had not been transformed by some extraordinary event, then the Christian message would not have spread as it did, and become the dominant force in the known world within a matter of three centuries.

It is important that we remember this. When people are inclined to doubt or mock the Christian Gospel, there's no point trying to argue with them on the basis of scriptures they will simply dismiss as pious legends or forgeries. But ask them if they have any other credible explanation for the simple fact of the existence of the Church, and of a faith for which men and women have been prepared to endure all for two millennia. As it has been said, The Resurrection explains the Church, not the Church the Resurrection.

There is another point that needs to be made as well. The discrepancies between the different Resurrection accounts are actually a witness to their credibility. After all, if the Gospels were forgeries, you can be certain the perpetrators would have gone to great lengths to make sure their various stories agreed, like crooks sorting out their alibis. On the other hand, when you consider the state of mind the various witnesses to the Resurrection must have been in, the fact that their stories differ in detail makes sense.

I know this from experience. When I spoke to our insurers following a minor car accident some years ago, they asked me all sorts of questions I couldn't answer. Was the car that hit us a Ford Mondeo? How should I know? It was off white in colour – that was all I could remember.

But for all the evidence we marshal, we must never lose sight of the even greater truth, that the Resurrection is more than simply an historical event, however remarkable; it is the event that makes sense of everything else, because it reveals our destiny under God – to live this life so that into endures into eternal life ... life in all its fulness, as we hear Jesus call it in our Gospel a few Sundays ago.

Life is meant to be lived for God and with God; and the Resurrection of Jesus tells us that when life is lived for and with God, nothing can defeat it, not even death. Instead, even death itself is transformed from curse into blessing, and becomes through Christ the gate of new and everlasting life for all.

What did Jesus do between the Resurrection and the Ascension? Today is effectively our celebration of the Ascension, which fell on Thursday this past week; but what Jesus did in the forty days before isn’t what matters: what matters is that he rose and is risen still. And just as he chose the apostles and their companions as his witnesses, so, we are his witnesses today, commissioned to proclaim the good news of the Resurrection to the people of our day.

10/05/2026

SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER Year A
10 May 2026

If you look at the top of your notice sheet today, as I’m sure you always do, you’ll see that in addition to telling you that today is the Sixth Sunday of Easter, there is also a rubric advising you today is Rogation Sunday; and you may be wondering what that’s all about.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing. It is the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before Ascension Day – Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week – that are the traditional Rogation Days, and the Sunday has acquired the same title by virtue of its proximity to them. And the word rogation, like many of the words we use in church, has a Latin origin, the verb rogare, meaning to pray or to ask. So Rogationtide, to use a closely related word, is a time of prayer … but for what?

At one level, of course, it is simply a time of special prayer, in the past often accompanied by fasting, in preparation for the celebration of the Ascension on Thursday, with roots in the former Gospel for this day, which began with Jesus' words to his disciples, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. But if we go further back in time, we find Rogationtide is related to the pagan Roman festival of Robigalia, which celebrated the planting of the seeds for the coming year's harvest.

Over and over again, the early Christian Church took local pagan festivals and tried to give them a Christian slant; so just as the Winter feast of the Unconquered Sun, was adopted by the Church as a good date to celebrate the birth of the true Light of the World (Christmas), so Robigalia became the Rogations, and a time to pray for God's blessing on the fields, and for deliverance from perils and calamities.

And Rogationtide was traditionally observed by going solemnly around the parish, singing the Litany, and marking its boundaries, a practice known as beating the bounds; a practice which might well have been observed here in the past, even if as I remarked on this Sunday last year, the modern A449 might pose some obstacles to a procession. But despite that, the Rogation Days still have something to teach us.

First, they remind us of the importance of Ascension Day itself – a day which is increasingly overlooked or completely ignored. But the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, and of the forty-day period following the resurrection,during which, as Luke puts it, He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them ... and speaking about the kingdom of God,

… is a significant event which ought to be properly prepared for. And the liturgical colour for the these days used to be purple, as in the church’s two other great periods of preparation, Advent and Lent.

Secondly, as traditionally celebrated, Rogationtide is inextricably tied up with the parish system. Of course the parish system as we have inherited it, is not an unmixed blessing. The rules it imposes, for instance, on those who want to marry, are increasingly out of touch with a world in which people no longer live in communities where everyone knows everyone else, remaining in their parents' home until they marry.

But at its heart, the parish system reminds us that we are not here only for those who come to church Sunday by Sunday, but for everyone in the community, even those who are not members of the Church of England. And it means that wherever you are in this country, there is a parish church, and a priest, to whom you can look.

That has some odd consequences at times. Once upon a time most people were baptised, and so the right to marry in your parish church was not a problem; but now my duty to marry residents of the parish sometimes comes into conflict with the Church’s under-standing that baptism is a prerequisite to the sacraments. But while the Church needs regulations for its members, it is not a members-only club, but exists for everyone. As Archbishop William Temple famously put it, The Church is the only human institution that exists primarily for those who are outside of it.

And thirdly, Rogationtide, like Harvest Festival, reminds us of our ultimate dependence on God’s bounty in the created world, and of our duty to care for it. Concern for the environment, for a responsible use of the earth’s produce, and for a sustainable future, must be an integral part of Christian living and inform our way of life.

While once the ancients would have prayed the Litany for deliverance from plague and pestilence, as Christians today we should be concerned for climate change, sustainable development, and forms of energy that will not do yet further harm to the environment.

The Collect for this Wednesday, the third of the Rogation Days, runs like this:

‘God our Father, you never cease the work you have begun and prosper with your blessing all human labour: make us wise and faithful stewards of your gifts that we may serve the common good, maintain the fabric of our world and seek that justice where all may share the good things you pour upon us; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.’

We pray that we may take its words to heart.

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Church Lane, Coven
Wolverhampton

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Wednesday 9:45am - 12pm
Sunday 10am - 12pm

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