The Rev'd John Richardson
The Vicarage,
St. Peter’s

Dear Friends in Christ,

I suppose my Net letter after the August break ought to be titled, ‘What I did in the summer holidays.’ Do you remember returning to junior school after the holidays and almost the first task assigned to you was to write about your summer activities? Well, I am going to tell you (some) of the things I did in the summer holidays. But not just yet.

A few years ago a film came out called ‘Demolition Man.’ The two principals were Hollywood hard men, Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. Don’t worry if you haven’t seen it, because the plot wasn’t that complicated (well, there’s a surprise!) It was the explosive special effects, which carried the day. The film was set in the future, with Stallone playing the good guy and Snipes, by a process of elimination, playing the bad guy. Both characters had been cryogenically frozen as punishment for misdemeanours, to be unfrozen at some time in the future … I suppose it’s another spin on ‘a spell in the cooler.’ An interesting and, I felt, amusing sub-theme was that whilst both characters were in a state of cryogenesis, they were fed information – a sort of deep freezer brainwashing. Snipes was fed a load of information about computers - how to use them and hack into them. (I wonder if I should step into our freezer for a while? Difficult, as it’s a small cabinet model, but it would be an easy ways to become computer literate.) Stallone, by contrast, was fed information on knitting patterns. Yes, seriously! Knitting patterns! For me, that was probably the principal redeeming feature of the film. Anyway, to cut a not very long or complicated story short, they both get unfrozen, battle commences and at the end of the film, there is a huge explosion and a vast building is demolished. As you can appreciate, subtlety of plot was not part of the filmmaker’s remit.

One of the jobs I did during the summer holidays was to demolish (not with high explosives, which would have been quick, but somewhat unsettling for our neighbours) the Vicarage garden house. My original plan had been to take out the rotten wood, replace and make good. Like so many stories of renovation, once you start dealing with dilapidated areas, you discover that there is much more work to do that you had at first anticipated. I knew that the front of the roof needed replacing – you could see the sky through it. No, that’s not true – you could see the ivy through it. I also knew that a couple of the roof joists were rotten and that some of the 3”x3” posts on the front needed replacing. However, when I began taking some of the summerhouse apart, more and more needed to be stripped off. All the front roof joists were rotten; the two main down posts (old tree trunks) had rotted out of the ground; the front main cross beam was rotten and so it continued. The edifice had been principally supported by a huge amount of ivy, some as thick as small tree branches. By the time all the ivy was stripped off and rotten wood uncovered, I realised that the Vicarage summerhouse was but a shadow of its former self. I also recognised that the proposed renovation work was moving beyond my technical abilities.

In order to keep the original structure, I would need to do so much remedial work, not least of all to build a new front and somehow let it into the existing structure, which, without the support if ‘King Ivy’ was proving somewhat shaky. Or should I call in Demolition Man? You guessed it – I called in Demolition Man under the guise of my second son David who, in the space of a Sunday afternoon, demolished and broke it all up. (Oh, to be 25!) Anyway, good old David got it all down and I spent the next two days sawing it up and taking it to the tip. The good news was that the base was a solid concrete foundation that, with a bit of work (just the 31 bags of concrete) could be made sound for a new building to go on. By the time you read this letter (written of 14th August) there should be a new garden house at the Vicarage, built on foundations now strong enough to support a small skyscraper, which leads me finally to reflect upon building work and firm foundations.

The teaching of Jesus and the writings of the New Testament are quite clear about the laying of firm and appropriate foundations. Jesus, in his parable of the house built on rock (Matthew 7: 24-27) speaks of the firm foundation of the person, “who hears these words of mine and acts upon them.” Hearing and action are the hardcore and concrete of the Gospel. The Letter of James speaks about faith and works being bound together, “Be doers of the word and not merely hearers … faith by itself, if it has not works, is dead.” Faith and action (in the light of that faith) are firm foundations of the Christian life. The first letter of St. Peter talks about Christian building principles. “Come to Jesus, the living stone … and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house … built on the chosen and precious cornerstone of Jesus” (1 Peter 2: 4-8). My favourite building image in the New Testament is taken from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, “the foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw – the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day of the Lord will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.” (1 Corinthians 3: 10-17) In other words, whatever happens, God’s love in Christ, is a constant foundation wherever we are … even in a Vicarage garden!

With love in Christ, Father John.

P.S. The next Vicarage Garden Quiet Day is on Tuesday 8th September, 10.00am – 3.30pm. You are welcome to come and use the garden and the new garden house, but if you burn it down, the ‘Day of the Vicar’ will come down upon you!