Bishop Richard’s Weekly Video Message and transcript for 12.11.2026

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.  I’m recording this from the Giant’s Causeway on the north coast of Northern Ireland after a couple of days at the 24/7 prayer conference.  It’s a conference I love, mainly because the stories of God at work around the world are an annual reminder of why I got into ministry in the first place. You may remember they were the group that inspired our week of prayer back in September. I’ve only been to Belfast once before. Earlier in the week I was in Dublin for a couple of days. Its fair to say this island is thick with history. Its impossible to understand the current political situation without acknowledging the past. By that, I don’t just mean the troubles that were bought to an exhausted truce by the Good Friday agreement, but the deeper history going back to a pagan and Celtic past lost in the mists of time.

We are clearly formed by our parental upbringing, culture and background. Unexamined, the mistakes and failings of the past are easily repeated.  Unhealed hurts are perpetuated and break out in current bitterness and recrimination. In this country there is a history of violence begetting further violence, with outside actors exploiting religious feuds to further their own agenda. Sometimes the history with a real power over the present is long forgotten. What is seen on a large scale in nations can work itself out in similar way in local communities.  Think parishes that retain a degree of hostility because they were on opposite sides in the English Civil war!

There is an exhibit in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin of bog bodies, human remains excavated from peat bogs where they had been deposited at various points in the pagan period.  All had been ritually killed, either as sacrifices or as the victims of one tribe’s victory over another. The Christian faith swept this away as the gospel spread through the ministry of Patrick and others.  We tend to project a lot back onto the early Celtic church for lack of real evidence.  However, it does seem clear they were much less culturally imperialistic than some other missionary movements. They appeared able to baptise aspects of the culture whilst stamping out the more barbarous practices. The church has been at the centre of redeeming and transforming culture as well as individual lives throughout history. Sadly, in Ireland, churches have been both pawns and actors in sectarian conflict, something churches here are acknowledging and seeking to rectify.

Last weekend we remembered important events in our national history, paying tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our way of life. This annual reminder has exerted powerful influence on the national psyche.  It is hard to see the gung-ho enthusiasm prior to the First World War (until that is the true costs became apparent) being repeated today. There is a learning from history. History taught us that the mistakes of the Treaty of Versailles shouldn’t be repeated after World War 2. It is arguable that the Marshall plan laid the foundations for the decades of peace we have enjoyed since.

But there is also a specifically Christian remembrance. When the Israelites finally crossed over into the promised land, they made a cairn from stones gathered from the Jordan river. It was to remember not their own actions but God’s.  This was reinforced by numerous Jewish festivals throughout the year like Passover. Even the weekly sabbath meal was a reminder of how they got to be where they were. In extremis, the Israelites looked back to God’s actions in the past as a basis for hope in the present and the future. In Habakkuk 3:2, the prophet prays, “Lord, I have heard of your fame, I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord, renew them in our day, in our time make them known”. Christian hope is not a matter of blind optimism, but a quiet confidence in the actions of God in the past being repeated in our day. Every time we gather on a Sunday, we do this in remembrance of me. Our eucharist isn’t just an act of memory. In it we appropriate afresh the benefits of God’s action in Jesus Christ.  We gather around a table to celebrate the new community of which we are apart; we look forward to the completion of God’s redemptive action in the future. The new creation is revealed in the resurrection and grows (albeit imperfectly) in our own lives through the action of the Holy Spirit.

We live in difficult and troubled times but because of remembrance and memory we are people of hope. Habakkuk’s prayer bears repeating as we look to the future of our church.

“Lord, I have heard of your fame, I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord, renew them in our day, in our time make them known”.

+Richard