The following address was delivered by the Rt Revd Vivienne Faull, Bishop of Bristol to the Diocesan Synod that took place at STEAM - Museum of the Great Western Railway, Swindon on Saturday 22 March 2025.
I begin with a story from some years ago. Retiring bishops inevitably take the long view. On the first Sunday in Lent in 1983, I preached one of my early faltering sermons as a Deaconess, beginning with a question. St Matthew and St James Mossley Hill was and is a large church with an expectation of interactivity, though heckling wasn’t encouraged despite the training many of the congregation had on The Kop. So to the question. Do you notice anything different about the church today? Expecting that someone might just notice that the coloured hangings had changed from green to purple, or that there were no flowers.
Straight back came the reply from one of the new arrivals in the children’s group: "You’ve put the cushions on the floor!"
I wonder how you ‘dress’ the church for the seasons of the church year? I wonder how you enable those who gather for worship week by week (and many in our churches still do) to learn the story of our salvation not just by hearing the words of that story but by living the drama through sight and sound and smell and sometimes also touch and taste. I wonder, for example, how you observe Palm Sunday. Processions? Donkeys? Many of you will have a Palm Sunday donkey story… Last year Bishop Neil tells me of one Benefice, bereft of a donkey, dressed a horse up to look like a donkey… for all sorts of reasons the impact, I suggest, wasn’t quite the same.
That sense of the stories of our faith, and our formation in faith as we live it out over time through weekly and annual rhythms is fundamental to Anglican being, and every so often the Liturgical Commission looks at how we observe those times and seasons. This week the House of Bishops—which does talk about things other than money, sex and power—discussed a particular proposed addition, the addition of a festival of God the Creator, which fits rather well with our own Transforming Church. Together strategy as we work to reduce our carbon impact and work towards A Rocha Gold Eco Church award.
The proposal was put in the form of an invitation in 1989 from the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch to the entire world that every year there should be a day of prayer and supplication in thanksgiving for God’s gift of creation and in petition for its protection and salvation.
This year, as Fr Toby reminded us last time we met in Synod in Swindon, marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, and remembering the first clause of the creed which emerged from that Council we believe in one God, Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible. That word ‘all’ does some heavy lifting. That 'all' means each one of us, those we love and those we find it difficult to love and the missions we have never met, those close to us and those on the unseen edges. It means the whole of creation, animate and inanimate. We are all of God’s making and all gathered together in this utterly inclusive train of thought.
The proposal for a new festival has been received warmly by Orthodox, Reformed, Lutheran, and Methodist churches worldwide, by several catholic bishops’ conferences and by provinces of the Anglican communion.
Simultaneously in England, there has been a renewal of observance of occasions still observed in farming communities, Plough Sunday, Rogationtide, Lammas and Harvest. Alongside the publication of the Encyclical Laudato Si by Pope Francis which has become influential and inspirational way beyond the Roman Catholic church, a further invitation came from the Ecumenical Patriarch in March 2024 to explore the deeper embrace of creation care in the words and drama of the liturgy. This has already had an impact in this diocese as parishes observe not just a day but a Season of Creation from September into October as, in our part of God’s earth, we experience an ending of summer and the preparation for newness to come. There is now a formal proposal, to come to our General Synod, and so discussed by your representatives, that, as a focus within that season, a festival of God the Creator should be observed on the first Sunday after 1 September. I hope it will be well supported,
Alongside that addition to the church calendar, the Liturgical Commission is bringing a second proposal to the General Synod to commemorate the 21 martyrs of Libya ten years after their deaths, the earliest moment at which they could be included in our calendar.
This is their story. On 15 February 2015, 21 Christian men were martyred by militants of the so-called Islamic State (IS) on a beach near Sirte, Libya. This bloody event, documented and broadcast by the perpetrators, has since been recognised as a profound witness to Christian faith. The men were migrant labourers from impoverished Coptic Christian village communities in Egypt who had travelled to Libya seeking work to support their families. They were explicitly targeted for their Christian identity. Their execution, the martyrs dressed in orange jumpsuits and kneeling in front of their executioners, was intended as a message of terror, to warn and cow Christians in north and east Africa. Yet it became an extraordinary testimony of obedience to Christ unto death. To the end, the men refused to renounce Christ despite the threat of death and affirmed their faith with the words ‘O my Lord Jesus’ as they met their end.
With them was a West African, a Ghanaian who was working alongside the Coptic Christians as a labourer, and had recently, because of their witness, been baptised. His captors offered him release if he would deny that Jesus Christ was his Lord and Saviour. He refused to be parted from his Egyptian companions and was decapitated alongside them. He had taken the baptismal name Matthew. His own country refused to repatriate his body, so he is buried and honoured alongside Coptic Christians.
So as we remember the 21 Coptic Martyrs this Lent, we pray too for all those caught up in the many many conflicts across our world perhaps particularly in Africa and the Middle East.
Almighty God,
The strength of the weak,
Who have called to eternal glory the twenty-one martyrs of Libya
While they fixed their eyes on Jesus Christ,
And confessed His Holy Name in the power of the Spirit,
Grant that the blood which they shed
May be the seed of the Church
And the source of its unity
So that the world may believe
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.