A TRADITIONAL Whitsun sermon was given by a serving Bishop of Gloucester for, perhaps, the first time in living memory.

A number of retired bishops have given the Whittington Purse sermon at St Briavels in which a cleric is rewarded £1 6s 8d if he or she is cheered by the crowd – as laid down in the 1625 will of William Whittington.

This year’s guest preacher was Rt Rev Rachel Treweek, the Bishop of Gloucester, who asked the question: “where is God?”

Bishop Rachel preached the sermon after a period of reflection after the tragedies in London and Manchester.

She said: “If we are not followers of Jesus Christ, we might look around at our country and our world, we look at what was happening yesterday and perhaps we wonder where is God in the midst of all this?

“Deep down we know politicians and leaders cannot fix our broken world. Perhaps we want God to be that person who will make everything right, to be the pusher of buttons and puller of levers to make the world all come right.   

“Perhaps when life doesn’t taste very good it is very easy to blame God and that is because, like so many of the crowd in Jesus’s time, we have failed to understand who God is

“He is not some world manager in the sky who moves us around like chess pieces on a board, who pushes a button when something goes wrong. God is love and because God is love he has given us choice. 

“Love wouldn’t be love if it wasn’t that we chose to move towards people in friendship and love. If we were programmed to do that, it would not be love.

“God has given us a choice to choose love or to choose evil. God took the risk of creating each of us to live in perfect relationship to God and one another and with our world.

“We can each make choices which lead to destruction or lead to love and life. 

“It’s not about life being perfect in material terms, not about never having pain or struggles but it is about discovering that we can each be free to be the people God has created us to be, to know that even in places of pain and darkness, God’s hope and life and light and love will always have the final word.”

Following the sermon there was the annual dole of bread and cheese which has been a tradition in the village since the Middle Ages.

The bread and cheese is thrown to the crowd from high up on the Pound Wall by Keeper of the Wood Gerald Creswick and his sister Margaret Saunders.

Earlier, Bishop Rachel joined in a few steps with the Forest of Dean Morris Men who had been performing as part of a celebration day in the village.