Appointment of Anglican Minister to Christ the Cornerstone

On behalf of Bishop Dave, the Diocese of Oxford and all those involved in the recent appointment process, I am very glad to be able to tell you that, following a rigorous interview day, the Bishop has offered the Anglican Incumbency of the Parish of Christ the Cornerstone, Milton Keynes, to Revd Sarah Eden-Jones, subject to the satisfactory conclusion of the normal DBS process; and I am even more glad to tell you that she has accepted the post.

She will join the Ecumenical Team here at the end of September, as Lara Dean, who was ordained Deacon yesterday (Saturday, 4 July 2026) in Christ Church Cathedral, starts her Curacy here. Together with George, who has stepped up so wonderfully and willingly over these last months, and Father Francis, they will be an Ecumenical Team of four ordained Clergy, as the Episcopal Visitation Report recommended, committed to working together with all of you for the Mission and Ministry of this Oasis of Hope.

Sarah comes with her husband Nick from Reading, where they have both lived and served for many years. She was ordained ten years ago and has served in three parishes: two in Reading and one in Marlow, South Bucks. The have two older children, Isobel and Fergus, and, as Sarah puts it, ‘feel called by the Spirit to come and serve with you in Milton Keynes’. They are clearly excited by the prospect, and are inspired by St Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian Christians that we might all know the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ. Please hold them in your prayers as they prepare to move here, just as they are holding us in theirs.

Bishop Jonathan Meyrick
Pastoral Accompanier to Christ the Cornerstone, Milton Keynes

Sermon for Sunday, 5 July 2026 – 6th after Pentecost

Zechariah 9: 9–12, Matthew 11: 16–19 & 25–30

By Rt Revd Bishop Jonathan Meyrick

Some of you have been in Christ Church Cathedral yesterday as Lara, your Curate-to-be, was ordained Deacon. A Curacy is a part of the training process, particularly in the first year or so and so Lara would start hers here with Sarah, your new Anglican Priest, who will be in place in the Autumn, but Lara was ordained, along with her fellow deacons in the Diocese, yesterday.

On Wednesday just gone I remembered my own ordination as Deacon in this Diocese fifty years ago. The deacons’ ordinations were done by area back then, so mine was taken by the Bishop of Dorchester in St Luke’s Cowley, along with the other deacons serving in Oxfordshire. Last week my wife Rebecca were in France, having just married the son of an old friend, and we got back late on Thursday. To my complete astonishment our local Vicar had organised for Friday Evensong and drinks afterwards to mark the occasion. One learns that surprise parties can happen occasionally. I had no idea I might be given a surprise Service!

The Church of England always ordains its clergy as Deacons first, and as Priests in a separate ordination, usually a year later. Liturgically, a deacon is given authority to take some services, and to assist at Communion services – often by inviting us to make confession and by reading the Gospel. It will be important over the next year that Lara does rather more of reading the Gospel than your clergy normally do. Deacons take funerals, and often Baptisms, but they aren’t given sacramental authority, so they don’t preside at Communion services, or bless, or absolve, or officiate at marriages. They preach, and they offer pastoral ministry. Above all, they serve – you may remember the first deacons were appointed by the Apostles when the Church was still very young, and largely based in Jerusalem: there were seven of them and they included Stephen, who would be the first Christian Martyr. The emphasis was on service and witnessing.

The diaconal year is therefore more than the year in which one does one’s final piece of preparation for ordination as a priest – it is the foundation of everything that will follow. Why? Because of the emphasis on service. Service is the foundation of Christian ministry, as Jesus makes clear:

‘I am among you as one who serves,’ he says in Mark’s Gospel; he acts that out as he washes the Disciples’ feet in John’s Gospel; and in Matthew’s Gospel, as we have just heard, he says that he is there for the weary and heavy-laden, offering a yoke of rest because ‘I am gentle and humble in heart’. In Christian ministry, leadership, service and humility go hand in hand. That was why I was so pleased when Sarah said that she and Nick feel called ‘to come and serve with you’.

Whatever specific responsibilities we may be given, and whether one or two further ordinations follow, we always remain deacons, with service and humility at the heart of any ministerial leadership.

Service is an easily understood concept – it’s about putting others first, having their well-being front and centre, and giving generously of oneself. And humility? Both our readings today refer to it: Zechariah – one of the two prophets encouraging the exiles as they begin to settle back in to Jerusalem and the land from which their grandparents had been forcibly and morale-shatteringly ejected three-quarters of a century earlier – imagines a new king, whose keynotes will be righteousness and humility, entering his city on a donkey to symbolise the humility.

Jesus will deliberately echo that on his Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem. Here in today’s passage, Matthew recalls Jesus referring to humility as part of his encouragement of the weary in heart, those conscious of the weight of the burden they carry. By contrast, his yoke, for those who put it on, is easy – because he himself is gentle and ‘humble in heart’. Not the Uriah Heep kind of cringing and sycophantic humility that Charles Dickens lampoons so brilliantly, but the humility that goes with the leadership and service that this country’s monarchs have demonstrated so well from George VI onwards. Humble leadership is leadership that serves and cares for those for whom the leader is responsible; it is leadership by example; it is leadership that is inspired by and is infused with the qualities of love and mercy; it is leadership that knows how to be vulnerable – think of the little David against the giant Goliath, or the small number of troops Gideon is told to lead against the large and powerful army of the opposition; it is leadership that knows how to be ‘humble in heart’ – with the ability to see beyond one’s own conviction about what is right.

And it is leadership that understands about serving with others. Your new Sarah clearly gets that too: she tells us she is excited about serving with you all – with her ordained colleagues: yes; but also with all of you. May God guide and bless your joint ministry of service together.

Amen