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We offer daily services and a creative programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
Sunday 6 April 6.30pm St Pancras Church
Join the music scholars of St James’s, Piccadilly as they celebrate women composers throughout the ages.
Wednesday 16 April 6:30pm
In this special collaboration for Holy Week, St James’s Piccadilly brings together the music of composer Rachel Chaplin and spoken word presented by The Revd Lucy Winkett.
St James’s hosts inclusive services and a cultural programme. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
St James’s is a place to explore, reflect, pray, and support all who are in need. We are a Church of England parish in the Anglican Communion.
We host a year-round creative programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word.
We offer hospitality to people going through homelessness and speak out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
St James’s strives to advocate for earth justice and to develop deeper connections with nature.
We aspire to be a home where everyone can belong. We’re known locally and globally for our unique history and beauty, as well as faith in action, creativity and the arts, and a commitment to social and environmental justice.
We strive to be a Eucharist-centred, diverse and inclusive Christian community promoting life in abundance, wellbeing and dignity for all.
St James’s Piccadilly has been at the heart of its community since 1684. We invite you to play your part in securing this historic place for generations to come.
The work of St James’s, it costs us £5,000 per day to enable us to keep our doors open to all who need us.
New walkways, a restored courtyard and re-landscaped gardens will provide fully accessible, beautiful spaces for everyone to enjoy as well as improving our environmental performance.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
Directions on Google Maps
The Revd Lucy Winkett reflects on Ash Wednesday as a profound ritual of mortality, humility, and connection, inviting Christians to embrace Lent through ashing, prayer, and spiritual practice—reminding us of our dependence on one another, the earth, and God.
A week today is Ash Wednesday 5th March. The beginning of the fasting season for Christians.
Come to St James’s at 1pm or at 6.30pm for the Eucharist and receive the sign of the cross in ash on your forehead. Or come at any time during the late morning and afternoon in the courtyard as our public offer of ashing will be offered again this year. Details here.
And join Green Christians at St John’s Waterloo at 11am on Ash Wednesday for ‘No Faith in Fossil Fuels’ prayers before a 24 hour vigil outside the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero in Whitehall. More details can be found here.
Ash Wednesday ashing is a curious ritual in some ways, but the words that are said as the ash is placed on our heads are both bracing and inspiring: “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return”. A ritual to remind us of our mortality, that our life will at some moment, come to an end. That there will be a moment when each of us breathes out and does not breathe in again. The only uncertainty is when and how.
As many ancient rituals, this act of ashing (the ash is made from burning the palm crosses from last year’s Palm Sunday procession, mixed with olive oil and blessed) is an imaginative and practical attempt to talk about some complicated aspects of being human. About the mixture we are of love, hope and sadness. About the joy of living and the fear of dying. About our connection to the earth, and the deep knowledge that we carry all our lives that we will return to the earth when we die.
Ash Wednesday is at its heart an attempt to express a risky love that endures and survives even death. It’s is a way of saying together that we are not, although we might think we are, at the centre of the world. By receiving ash, we human beings remind themselves that we’re not actually autonomous, self-directed, uninvolved individuals. We are very often caught up in the dynamics of relationships and histories that we don’t understand and can’t control. We usually live in buildings that we have not built, next to people we have not chosen in the context of a beautiful Creation that we have not made. We are to a large extent at the mercy of one another, and for us as Christians, at the mercy of God.
The Bible story that’s traditionally read on Ash Wednesday is of a hostile crowd rather feverishly throwing a woman in front of Jesus who they say was caught in the very act of adultery. It’s a stormy and perilous scene. And Jesus is shown to demonstrate what you might call in modern parlance unanxious leadership. He refuses to engage with the hysteria, bends down to write in the dust on the ground and, having told the crowd a few home truths, eventually addresses the woman herself with both compassion and direction.
It’s a small incident in some ways – although it undoubtedly saved the woman’s life. She is seen by Jesus as she is and the politics and inequality of the situation are overturned by his non-violent refusal to join in.
But by reading it, and reflecting on the inequalities revealed by the story, one of the contentions of religious practice in Lent is exposed and emphasised. Which is that daily actions by individuals are sort of rehearsals for and contributors to the big collective decisions. If I have practised courage in my daily life, then I will have developed a habit of courage when it comes to the big life changing moments. The principles of Lent can be truly life changing, encouraging me not just to wait until I feel free enough to act, but to reverse that; to act today in order to practise being more free.
Spiritual practice in Lent faces us not so much with our helplessness but reminds us of our power and agency, which sometimes is more uncomfortable, given the mistakes we make and the pull we very often feel that turns us away from God.
What will you do this Lent? Perhaps take up something or give something up? Not for self improvement, but for the sake of your deep connection to the earth, to other people, to all Creation, to God? What distractions could you remove? What life-giving choice could you make? What rest could you invite your soul into, whose words or music might you read or listen to? What silence could you introduce into your daily life? Some interpret fasting in terms of social media or television, not just alcohol or meat: but in all these practices, our choices are to return to God, to the earth, to our deep connection with all that lives and has lived. For each of us it will be different, but a determination to remove vacuous over-activity, or distraction or fruitless and worrying rumination begins with the beautiful words on Wednesday: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.
