On Maundy Thursday (2 April, 2026) over 300 members of the diocesan-family gathered in Rochester Cathedral for the annual Chrism Eucharist with Renewal of Commitment to Ministry.
At the service, the oils used in the life of the church were blessed and made ready for collection for use in parishes.
The oils include the oil for signing the cross at baptism, the oil for anointing the sick and the dying, and the oil of Chrism, which is used to anoint people and things to a particular service in the Church.
During the service, all those present were invited to recommit themselves to their calling - bishops, clergy, lay ministers, and the whole congregation.
In his sermon, Bishop Jonathan offered his thanks and appreciation to everyone engaged in ministry and leadership - both lay and ordained - in parishes, chaplaincies, schools and other roles across the Diocese.
Drawing on the readings within the service (1 Samuel 3.1-10 and Revelations 1.5b-8), Bishop Jonathan encouraged everyone to remember their moment of calling from God and the responsibility we all have - lay and ordained - in recognising and nurturing the vocation of others:
"Remembering that sense of calling is so important. It is what keeps us going when things are tough, when we seem to be fighting endless battles and facing repeated disappointments. I am here because God has called me."
While revisiting our own memory of God's call in our lives is part of what can sustain us, the heart of faith is in the person of Jesus and what he has done for us - he is Alpha and Omega.
"...it is on him that our hearts and minds must be fixed and to him that we must turn afresh each and every day, and most of all when ministry is tough and life is so very painful and unfair."
Finally, drawing on the Gospel of Luke and the story of Jesus, Simon the Pharisee, and the sinful woman, Bishop Jonathan emphasised that importance of grace in helping us and others to flourish:
"Our ministry is rooted in grace and unless it is renewed by grace day by day and year by year, it will in the end dry up and become hard and brittle, like Simon the Pharisee.
"So please remember, ministry begins, continues and ends with grace – and that grace is just as much for us as it is for those whom we seek to serve."
Read his sermon in full below:
Bishop Jonathan's Sermon
Chrism Eucharist and Renewal of Commitment to Ministry (Rochester Cathedral)
Just think back for a moment: can you remember how God first called you to ministry, whether as a lay person or as a member of the clergy?
For some of us it will have been a gradual process, probably with encouragement from others and being given the opportunity to have a go at doing something or other, up front in church or maybe as part of a small group of some sort.
For others, there may have been a more specific moment at which we sensed God’s call on our lives, maybe even as a result of sensing that we had heard God speak to us in one way or another.
For me, it was a gradual sense of realisation that I could no longer imagine pursuing the kind of career I had always envisaged, which would have meant following my father and brother into the world of industry and commerce.
In fact, a particular moment was when my mother spotted an advertisement in the news sheet at my student church – an advert for a job at a church in Paris, working with students and young adults – and suggested that I should apply.
It wasn’t the kind of thing she would normally have said, but I got the job and the rest, as they say, is history!
That sense of calling is so important. It is what keeps us going when things are tough, when we seem to be fighting endless battles and facing repeated disappointments. I am here because God has called me.
That was how I have felt in each of the roles in which I have served over the last forty-four years, from starting at St Michael’s in Paris in 1982 to serving in Stalybridge, Basel, the Wirral and West Yorkshire, before being called here to Rochester just over four years ago.
I am here because God has called me.
That of course is the message at the heart of our reading from 1 Samuel and the call of Samuel. His life has been dedicated to God by his mother Hannah, he is serving in the Temple, but it is on this day that he first hears the call of God, and it is through the help of Eli that he begins to recognise and respond to that call.
So, there are at least two things that each of us needs to hear from this story today.
The first is that we need to revisit and reflect on our own sense of calling, our own memory of how God has led us to the place where now we are serving him, and today maybe we need to pause and listen and say afresh to him: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
Please do make the time to do that here today, or else in the quiet later on or over the next two or three days between now and Easter morning.
Because we cannot, we dare not, seek to minister in the name of God if we do not have that inner conviction that we have been called by God to speak and act in his name.
If you do not have that inner sense of God’s call, or perhaps it has grown cold through all the ups and downs of life and ministry, then can I please encourage you to seek prayer and counsel, beginning perhaps with the simple act of coming forward for anointing at the administration of communion later in this service.
Let’s pray that God may rekindle and fan into flame that gift of the Spirit which he has placed within us, because we serve in his strength and not in our own.
The second thing that we need to hear from this passage is the role we can play in discerning and nurturing the vocations of others. Eli was a faltering, frail servant of the Lord, in terms of character as well as of age, but God used him to help call Samuel into God’s service – and each of us can help do the same.
We all know that the Church of England faces many challenges, but whatever the controversy around “The Quiet Revival” report, it is quite clear to me that God is doing a new thing, calling a new generation of young people to himself, and our job is to help nurture their sense of God’s calling on their lives and to help discern not whether but how God is calling them to play their part and to serve him.
How can each of us, lay and ordained, fulfil our role, our responsibility, to help discern and nurture new vocations to ministry, both lay
and ordained?
Let’s offer ourselves to God afresh today for this vital task in which we can all share, praying, “Lord, please use me to help discern your calling in the lives of others.” Because everything starts with God’s call on each of our lives.
But of course, that sense of God’s call is only part of the story, and sometimes that sense can be dulled by what life throws at us, including at times by the outrageous slings and arrows fired at us in the course of our ministry!
I know, from my own experience and from the things that come into my Inbox all too often, that ministry can be very tough indeed. I can remember a time when as a young incumbent I sat curled up in a ball in our kitchen, barely able to speak, because of the pressure I was being put under by what was going on in our church community.
Now part of the answer to this is to do with the need to build better ways of supporting people when they are going through tough times, and that is very much part of what we are seeking to do through our emphasis on growing safe and healthy cultures in all the churches and places of our diocese.
But there is another dimension to this, which is to do with what we heard in our second reading from the Book of Revelation: “I am the Alpha and the Omega”, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come.
If our faith is based entirely on our personal sense of calling, then there is a real danger that this may not be enough to sustain us at times of real stress and pressure.
We can begin to doubt our sense of calling – we perhaps hear those subtle, insidious words whispered in our ear, “Did God really say…?”
Yes, a personal sense of calling is very important indeed, but in the end our faith is not in our calling, it is in the Lord Jesus Christ, in who he is and in what he has done for us and for all of creation by his death and resurrection.
Our faith is in the one who is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega, who was and is and is to come.
The heart of the gospel and the heart of our ministry is the person and work of Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, and it is on him that our hearts and minds must be fixed and to him that we must turn afresh each and every day, and most of all when ministry is tough and life is so very painful and unfair.
We need to remember who Jesus is and to refocus on him, first and last, every day of our lives. Because it is as we fix our eyes on him that we find hope in the midst of trouble and light shining into our darkness.
It is to him we turn afresh above all in this Holy Week, at the foot of the Cross, with all its grief and pain, and at the empty tomb, where we meet the risen Lord. Jesus, the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega: let us keep our eyes fixed on him.
Finally, we turn to our gospel reading and to this wonderful story of Jesus’ encounter with a sinful woman and a Pharisee. I am not going to dwell long on this, though I would encourage each of us to revisit and dwell in this story in the days ahead.
I simply want to stress what this passage tells us about the nature of Jesus and the nature of ministry in Jesus’ name.
In the end, it is all about grace: for grace makes it possible for this woman to find forgiveness and healing, and grace trumps all the rules and regulations by which the Pharisees sought to define who could and who could not be accepted and received into
the household of God.
It’s not that character and morality and our actions somehow do not matter – of course they do – but this story is a recognition that the starting point for our becoming followers of Jesus and children of God is his compassion and forgiveness and not our self-made righteousness, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that means all of us and not just others –
whoever those others may be.
And one very important thing that we need to bear in mind, as we gather today especially as ministers and leaders of one kind or another, is that grace means it’s OK to look after ourselves as well as to expend ourselves in the service of others.
To completely misappropriate what happens here, it’s OK for us to let our hair down at times (maybe not in quite this kind of way!), to relax and be refreshed– as I hope many of you will be able to do in the coming days after Easter.
Our ministry is rooted in grace and unless it is renewed by grace day by day and year by year, it will in the end dry up and become hard and brittle, like Simon the Pharisee. So please remember, ministry begins, continues and ends with grace – and that grace is just as much for us as it is for those whom we seek to serve.
So, thank you again for the ministry that you exercise within the life of this Diocese, whether lay or ordained and in whatever context and capacity you serve. I am so deeply grateful for you and for our partnership in the work of the gospel.
Remember your calling from God. Remember Jesus Christ, the Alpha and the Omega. Remember that ministry begins and ends with grace above all else. So, to God’s gracious mercy we commit you, may his face shine upon you and may you know his blessing and his peace this day and always.
Amen.
Bishop Jonathan Gibbs
Bishop of Rochester
2 April 2026