20 Apr: Selected War Cry articles

Lionsgate

20 April 2019 • WAR CRY • FILM 3 Joan denies doing anything wrong when she was younger (below)

BLAST FROM THE PAST

Bygones do not always stay bygones, writes Linda McTurk

F

OR decades, retired nuclear physicist Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) has remained under the radar as a suburban wife, mother and grandmother. But in the film Red Joan, released yesterday (Friday 19 April), MI5 suddenly takes an interest in her when one of her former colleagues dies and suspicious files are found, linking her to a secret society of spies.

Joan denies doing anything wrong – but cinemagoers may be wondering whether she is telling the truth.

Her story began in 1938 at Cambridge University where, as a first-year physics student, the young Joan (Sophie Cookson) was persuaded by a friend to go along to a Communist Society meeting. There, Joan met Leo (Tom Hughes) from the Soviet Union. She found him dangerous, cunning and endlessly fascinating, and they became a couple for a short time.

After graduating with a first-class physics degree, Joan was recommended to join a top-secret research scheme to build an atomic bomb in Britain. While on a working trip to Canada, she again encountered Leo, who wanted her to give him the secrets of the atomic bomb to pass on to the Soviet Union. Horrified by the suggestion, she refused.

But when Joan saw film footage of the devastation caused by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she started to reconsider Leo’s proposition.

Guilt and shame caused her to wonder whether her actions on behalf of the British government were going to save or destroy lives. She took matters into her own hands, with far-reaching consequences.

In the present, Joan’s son Nick (Ben Miles) is disturbed by the knowledge of his mother’s secret life.

He confronts her, saying: ‘It’s like I don’t know you.’

She tries to explain her actions, but he is furious at her

for deceiving him. Seeing the hurt that she has caused, Joan feels a sense of sorrow.

Many of us know what it is to be haunted by the past.

We may even regret some of the things we have said or done long ago or more recently and would like to turn back the clock and do things differently. Sometimes those regrets can make it hard to enjoy the present.

But we do not need to be defined by our past. Instead of dwelling on our mistakes, we can ask Jesus to give us a fresh start full of hope. The Bible writer Paul made

Regrets can make it hard to enjoy the present many harmful decisions, but when he decided to follow Jesus he was able to put them behind him. ‘Anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person,’ he said. ‘The past is forgotten, and everything is new’ (2 Corinthians 5:17 Contemporary English Version).

We do not need to live in regret. If we turn to Jesus and admit our wrongdoings, he will forgive us. And if we dare to trust him, he will reveal to us the secret to lasting peace and joy.

8 INTERVIEW • WAR CRY • 20 April 2019

n i y r o t s i H g n i k a b the alcrow H ip il h P s ll te A V L SI E D STEPHEN e home of why St Albans may be th n the original hot cross bu OT cross buns are in supermarkets, corner shops and H bakeries here, there and everywhere. They’re two a penny (or, if not, one a penny). It may seem that they have

cornered the market, but in a corner of the café at St Albans Cathedral in Hertfordshire, customers are being offered a different Easter bun – one that some people believe was the original hot cross bun.

Whatever the mix of history and legend behind the buns, they are sitting on the table in front of cathedral guide Stephen De Silva as he tells me about the series of events that gave rise to them.

The truth is that St Albans can lay claim to a number of significant firsts. Stephen explains how the city owes its name to Britain’s first recorded saint and became ‘the earliest place we can trace the Christian faith taking root in some way on British soil’.

He says: ‘The earliest version we have of the story of Alban was written down in the 5th century, but the story goes back to about the year 300.

Alban was a Roman citizen who lived in the city here, which was then called Verulamium and which was the third largest city in Roman Britain.

‘It was the period just before Emperor Constantine decreed that Christianity was to be tolerated, so it was still illegal to be a Christian – and it was at this time that Alban gave shelter to a wandering Christian priest.

‘The story is silent on why. We know only that Alban was Stephen De Silva

compassionate enough and brave enough to take the priest into his house.’

Stephen tells how the authorities came looking for the priest.

‘But Alban, who had been so impressed by the man he had been sheltering that he had adopted the Christian faith, enabled the priest to escape. The legend goes that they exchanged cloaks and the priest was able to get away wearing the clothes of an everyday citizen.

‘Alban, though, was arrested and taken before a judge – probably for two reasons.

First, he had been helping a subversive.

Secondly, he seemed to have taken on the subversive’s beliefs.

‘The judge gave Alban the chance to renounce his Christian faith, return to worshipping the gods and burn some incense to the emperor to show that he was a loyal Roman

Turn to page 10

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20 April 2019 • WAR CRY • INTERVIEW 9

It is the earliest place we can trace the Christian faith taking root on British soil

PHILIP HALCROW

St Albans Cathedral

10 INTERVIEW • WAR CRY • 20 April 2019

From page 8 citizen. But Alban declared: “I am Alban.

I worship and adore the one true and living God.” And, in a sense, with those words he condemned himself to death.’

Alban was beheaded – the method of execution suggesting that Alban was a high-ranking citizen.

‘He was buried on a hillside outside the town,’ continues Stephen. ‘We believe it’s the hillside directly under where we’re sitting now. We know that beneath here there’s a Roman burial ground dating back to the right period, and I would expect that from about the year 313 – when Constantine published his edict that Christianity should be tolerated – public worship would be taking place around Alban’s grave.

‘We don’t know when the first church was built here, but by 429 there is an eyewitness account of a thriving pilgrim church here, and it wouldn’t have just sprung up recently.

‘From 429 onwards that church is rebuilt and rebuilt and becomes the earliest home of Christianity in Britain.’

An abbey was born on the site in 739. And, if the stories are true, a few centuries later, so was the hot cross bun.

Stephen has been trying to uncover the history of the bun.

‘We’re told that in 1361, on Good Friday, one of the monks here in the abbey, Brother Thomas Rocliffe, decided to bake a spiced bun marked with the sign of the cross and to give it to the poor and pilgrims at the door of the abbey refectory.

‘But one of the challenges is that there are 500 years between the story and any evidential documentation.’

Stephen points out that a local newspaper report in 1862 and a separate mention of an 1851 advertisement produced by a baker both cite the story of the monk as being the origin of what became hot cross buns.

‘In 1851 there was a baker in London called Collier,’ he says, ‘who bakes some buns and says that his recipe is an ancient one that comes from the abbey of St Albans, where Brother Thomas Rocliffe first baked them.

‘So the question for us is: Has Collier dreamt this story up in his head or does he know something that we don’t?

‘We want to trace the story further back, but at the moment we can’t go back earlier than 1851.’

Stephen describes the lack of written evidence of the Alban bun as frustrating. ‘Collier says that the bun was so appreciated as a tradition in St Albans that it spread. When you look into the history of hot cross buns, rather than specifically the Alban bun, you can trace them back to the

Jesus’ crucifixion depicted in a wall painting in the cathedral

1500s. In the 16th century there is a phrase in a children’s rhyming book which says: “Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs, with one or two a penny hot cross buns.”

Then there’s an act of Elizabeth I that forbids the selling of hot cross buns except on Good Friday, Christmas Day and at burials.

‘So between 1361 and the 1500s, hot cross buns had become well established. It would be

Perhaps Brother Thomas baked his bun as a piece of good PR lovely to identify a thread to connect the Alban bun, as we now call it, and the hot cross bun.’

Stephen acknowledges that some people reckon the St Albans story is half-baked – simply a piece of marketing by the baker Collier.

‘But I’m one of those who think there may be some truth in the story,’ Stephen says. ‘It fits the medieval world well in a number of ways. First, it seems to show one of the monks carrying out an act of Christian charity in

giving food to the poor, which is what you would expect.

‘Secondly, it would have been an act of Christian teaching, because the bun has the cross incised into it. By distributing the bun to an illiterate population he was reminding them that the day was special and that Christ had died on the cross for them.

‘A third reason why I think it may be true is that at that time there had been moments of tension between the abbey and the town.

The people of the town had wanted some civic control of their lives, whereas in truth they were feudal tenants of the abbey. They had even rioted and stormed the gateway. So perhaps Brother Thomas baked his bun as a piece of good PR on behalf of the abbey. One of the monks was doing something kind for the townspeople.’

Stephen even detects a hint of the truth of the St Albans story in one of the ingredients associated with the bun.

‘Traditionally, it would have been flavoured with an unusual spice called grains of paradise, which got its name because in the Middle Ages the spice sellers said that the grains had been collected on rivers, having floated down from the Garden of Eden.

‘I love the idea of grains of paradise because it fits with the story of Good Friday when Jesus said to the penitent thief hanging on the cross next to him: “This day you will be with me in paradise.” I can imagine Rocliffe standing at the door of the refectory, giving the buns to people and telling them about Jesus’ words and about how the buns contained grains of paradise.’

The buns being served in the cathedral café in the 21st century, which are made by a local family bakery, do not necessarily contain grains of paradise, says Stephen, but they do have a different flavour from conventional modern hot cross buns.

‘The Alban bun is less fruited than a modern commercial hot cross bun and has more of a cardamom rather than a cinnamon flavour. It is also different from many hot cross buns in that the cross on the top is slashed rather than piped.

‘The recipe is secret in the sense that we don’t publish it or share it, though it has been around in St Albans for some time, and, before

PHILIP HALCROW

20 April 2019 • WAR CRY • INTERVIEW 11

Alban buns for sale in the café

In the cathedral people can encounter the Easter story it was revived in the past 20 or 30 years, people may have made the buns in their homes.’

Served from Lent to Easter Monday, the St Alban bun has become a feature of the cathedral’s life in the period leading up to Good Friday and Easter Day, a time of year marked by special services reflecting on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

And, however the bun may or may not have been used for PR in the 1300s, Stephen is glad if it serves as a piece of modern marketing and ‘brings people into the cathedral where they can encounter and hear bits of the story of Easter’.

He says: ‘All year round the cathedral aims to be a welcoming place for everyone. People have told us that they feel it is a place where, whether or not they have a faith, they can come

and be still – and we believe that perhaps God will speak to them in the stillness.

‘God’s welcome to us is unconditional. That’s how we should welcome people too. No conditions.’

And the cross on the Alban bun still carries a powerful message.

‘Those moments when Christ is on the cross,’ says Stephen, ‘are the ultimate picture of God’s love for the world.’

20 April 2019 • WAR CRY • EXPRESSIONS 13

NOW, THERE’S A THOUGHT!

by Justin Reeves

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Hunt holds great eggs-pectations GGS-CITEMENT will be running high in our family on Easter E Sunday, not only at the thought of what treats the Easter Bunny (aka Mum and Dad) might have left for my three daughters, but also

at the prospect of Grandma’s Easter egg hunt later in the day.

With its slides, sandpit, Wendy house, windmills and various toy vehicles to ride on, Grandma’s garden is a child’s paradise at any time.

Throw in an abundance of egg-shaped treasures and our children, along with their cousins, will be chomping at the bit to get outdoors and get hunting.

Eggs-perience has taught Grandma not to hide chocolate eggs in the garden, but instead to conceal tokens that can be eggs-changed for the real deal once the hunt is over. Because Grandma has no favourites, everyone – from the tallest to the – receives a fair share of the Everyone receives smallest spoils.

There was no such sense of a fair share of expectation as the women made their the spoils way to Jesus’ tomb to pay their respects two days after his crucifixion. To make matters worse, when they arrived at his tomb they discovered that the treasure they sought – Jesus – had gone.

Thankfully the story doesn’t end there. When we read the gospel accounts of the moments and days that followed the women’s discovery, we see how their grief turned to joy as they learnt that Jesus was alive.

Just as the real joy of Grandma’s egg hunt isn’t in finding token eggs, the real treasure of Easter isn’t in simply knowing that Jesus lives. It’s only when my girls tuck into their Easter eggs that they get to savour the real joy of their chocolate treats. And it is not until we accept Jesus’ love and choose to live life his way that we truly experience the joy of his resurrection.

The Bible issues the invitation: ‘Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see – how good God is’ (Psalm 34:8 The Message). The great news is that God has no favourites and there is enough of his goodness for everyone.