Lent Groups

During Lent 2005 five groups in St. George's Church have been following a course called People of the Passion. Each week saw one character associated with the death of Christ be introduced during the Sunday morning sermon. This theme was then taken into the groups for further reading and discussion. The five People of the Passion were Peter, Herod, Pilate, Mary and Judas.

The following is a report from one of the groups. You can see comments from other groups pinned on the church notice boards.

Staple Close Group has now finished the course; the group expressed much appreciation regarding the course material, its presentation and pace. Our craft skills were taxed in week 4 by the making of small rosaries but the end result brought a lot of pleasure - the variety of crosses was all extremely attractive.

We have greater sympathy for Pilate on two counts: his line manager, the Syrian Governor, Lucius Aelius Lamia was not on site, the emperor Tiberius requesting him to remain in Rome. Pilate thus had to be self-sufficient with no mentor on hand. Secondly Jesus‘ suffering under Pilate is contained within the Creed so Pilate's (infamous) role is repeated year by year. Although word processors have their place, to an aggrieved party, they can be devastating since lazy journalists bring up old copy without looking for anything positive in a new situation. If you have a bad name, it is difficult to lose it. Our empathy is with Pilate.

The Group was ashamed of the Apostles' treatment of Judas Iscariot. Like the others he had been chosen by Jesus to be one of his companions to preach the Gospel. He also had an additional task of Treasurer, a label linked to money and may have been automatically called a thief in the same manner as tax collectors were scorned. Judas was not a Galilean, whereas the other eleven were. Could it be that he had no immediate Buddy with whom he could share ideas and at least refine them before he acted upon any? Judas backed his own judgement. For us, we have the benefit of distance to analyse his motive; it was clearly misdirected. Of course we had to agree his central role was that of betrayer, despite having been chosen; however we are drawn closer to him by his remorse but it was too late to undo his misdeeds. The buzz word is team player be it office based, sport or voluntary body; it is important to work as a team and not to leave someone behind or out, however inviting it might be to move forward. We felt Judas was wronged by his colleagues and left out."