What an image! Grunewald's picture of the Resurrection from the Isenheim Altarpiece. I wanted to see this for myself when passing by Colmar in 1978, but the others in the car said we hadn't got time to stop -- we had to get on to Switzerland. But the car broke down in Colmar, and as we had to kill two hours I got to see it. It was a great experience.

The thing I love about this picture is the lightness and glowing airyness of the Risen Christ, but also his real physicality -- the wounds in his flesh. I wrestle with that tension between the scriptural understanding of humans as holistic beings, body and soul absolutley indivisible (so that Jesus has to rise in his body or he he cannot live again) and the Greek understanding of the body as a case for the soul (of little value, a workhorse cast aside when death releases the imprisoned soul) which so influenced Christian understanding as it moved out into the Graeco-Roman world. However much the latter idea seems to have soaked into Western understanding, I find the ancient Jewish insight more compelling -- not least because new understandings of disease and health and what it is to be human seem to resonate more with that holistic view, and less with a mechanistic view. What do you think? But for me it makes it easier to see the Risen Christ and to accept the physicality of the resurrection.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Things have been a bit hectic lately, what with Easter. I had my 50th Birthday too, which was a bit of a landmark. Friends at church gave me a pen and a cheque -- all a great surprise. I wondered what to get with the cheque, but I've decided to put it towards a new cassock (priest's robe, as in the picture -- that's not me, by the way).

The routine wearing of cassocks is something that seems to have faded out during my lifetime. I grew up in churches where priests always wore their cassocks on Sundays, and on many other occasions; my curacy was that way, and so was my last parish. I was rather flummoxed to find that turning up at church in St John’s in a cassock on my first Sunday morning seemed to be a matter of surprise and (from some) unfavourable comment. It made me think hard about something I’d taken for granted, and to consider my practice. So, as I’m about to splash-out a considerable sum of money on a new one, let me share one or two thoughts with you.

It is a sign to the world. In a culture that accesses an increasing amount of information through images a form of dress that points to something ‘other’ is not to be lightly dismissed. And in a multi-cultural society a style of religious clothing that rings a bell for those of other faiths is a valuable sign of common tradition and experience; indeed, I know a priest in a parish with a large Muslim population who wears his cassock out and about for that very purpose, and is appreciated by them for it.

It is a discipline for the wearer. As with a clerical collar, it makes us realize that our words and actions will be under scrutiny – and perhaps we need that!

It is an absolutely universal garment. I cannot think of anything else that would be equally appropriate in so many different and varied settings: from the sickbed of a hovel, to a reception at the palace. It could be worn all day every day and be suitable for practically every occasion.

But is it a barrier to others, old-fashioned and anachronistic? I take that to be the sort of reason why many clergy have dropped the ordinary wearing cassocks – they think it separates them and makes them seem unapproachable, holier-than-thou, and touch-me-not. I have never felt that to be the case. Occasionally people have crossed the road when they’ve seen me coming along wearing a clerical collar; I can’t imagine that that number would have increased dramatically if I’d been wearing a cassock as well. On the other hand I have found that a clerical collar or a cassock has often opened up conversations I’d never have had if my clothing hadn’t been a sort of advert or initiation to others. My experience is that the plusses far outweigh the minuses.