Does Licking it Count?

It’s been blimmin ages since we were last able to celebrate Holy Eucharist in one of the University Anglican Chapels. Ok, I did a naughty live stream from St Luke’s on Corpus Christi, but it felt lonely. At present, I’m looking out of the window of my home office and I can see the stone bellcote of St Luke’s Chapel. Actually, that’s a lie, I can see a rapidly rising construction site building luxury flats, but I know from experience I’d be able to see said bellcote if it wasn’t there. I used to be able to see the clock tower of Northcote House from my back window, and could imagine the identical red brick of the Mary Harris Chapel beyond and below it. But there are student flats in the way of that now too. Ho hum, people have to live somewhere. And perhaps the tantalising glimpses of forbidden fruit are best avoided at present.

Yes, as I write my Chapels are still as off limits to me as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were to the primary human couple. Gosh, saying my Chapels is pompous isn’t it? They both belong to the University really, one being on a long loan to a charitable Foundation. But I’m the licensed Priest, so I feel some sense of responsibility. I feel like the only Priest in the Church of England not to be furiously cordoning off pews to maintain social distance, or erecting hand sanitising stations, posing for Facebook pictures with an outstretched wafer and a visor. Of course, I’m not the only one. Plenty of Priests are self-isolating or shielding family members, and some won’t be imminently opening their Churches for public worship or even private prayer because the congregation are too vulnerable, the rules too plentiful and the resources too scarce. And then there are Chaplains like me who dance between the rules of the Church and the Institution. So for now I’m like a small child in a psychological experiment. “If you don’t eat the marshmallow when I leave the room, you can have two in 5 minutes time.” Or like Adam and Eve with a juicy pomegranate. Does licking it count?

(Note – I don’t want to lick either Chapel. That’s definitely not recommended under the current guidelines. I’m indulging in metaphor).

I do understand the University’s approach. Universities are complex places with resident and non-resident students, employed and associate staff doing all manner of tasks from complex research in labs, to office work, to portering stuff around multiple campuses, to thumbing through literally millions of books. And sites as eye-wateringly lovely as ours have thousands of visitors too – to walk and do sculpture trails, to visit the libraries, the museum and the exhibitions, to relax in coffee shops and take in the views. Added to that, most staff can work remotely, and of course summers are quiet anyway. This slow, cautious moving walkway is the one I’m on. So Chapel doors remain closed, candles untrimmed from when they were extinguished in March, and I sit here and do ministry online, slowly expanding through a combination of pregnancy and snacks (realistically, it’s quite a lot of the latter).

I’m reassured by that bit of the Bible where the disciples said “hey look at the Temple and its cool stones” and Jesus responds by going “yeah, fair enough, but the stones will fall down at some point, and then what?” (Luke 21:5-6, paraphrased obvs). I know he was preparing his friends for the Romans literally pulling the Temple down, which I assume isn’t something that’s imminently going to happen to either University Chapel, but it’s a good point that faith is housed in more than stones. At the moment I’m finding it in the Bible, in the ancient Collects and Canticles of daily prayer. Even in Zoom. At least, the familiar faces I see on Zoom.

Resist temptation! Keep those keys in your pocket! For everything there is a season, and a time for everything under heaven. And don’t eat the marshmallow!

Ok, I’ll be good.