Unfortunately, due to technical issues, today’s service from St Bartholomew’s was not available via the livestream. Sadly, the separate recording also failed, so this is not available either! Hopefully we’ll have more success next week!
So, no online Communion service today but you can still join the Zoom service from 11am if you wish:
During the period of Lent, Rev’d John is encouraging us to think about fellowship. This week we will be thinking about the HOLY SPIRIT. You can watch the fourth of these reflections by Rev John using this YouTube link: https://youtu.be/tVROdKme8zI
Although we can’t all physically meet together currently, you’re welcome to join us on Sunday Evening at 6pm to virtually meet together on Zoom to reflect, pray, share thoughts, and ask questions. You can join via the link below: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88042509598?pwd=dTQxV05KSHM4SFhjejkzanRBQVNldz09
Meeting ID: 880 4250 9598
Passcode: 641431
You can also read the transcript here, or print out to pass on to those without access to the online video.
Join us for worship as we celebrate Mothering Sunday and give thanks for our Mums, Grandmas, Nanas, Aunties and anyone else who cares for us. Two of our church buildings will be re-opening for worship:
9:30am – Holy Communion at St Bartholomew’s* led by Rev’d John Dracup 9:30am – Informal Mothering Sunday Service at St James’ led by Nigel Priestley 11:00am – Mothering Sunday Service on Zoom** led by Jacqueline France
Would you like to paint some pebbles for the next part of the ‘Real Love’ project?
The completed pebbles will be placed as a cairn at both ends of the Greenway and underneath the cross which will be in St. James’ churchyard.
Andy Pearson has the pebbles.
You can paint your own heart design. Enamel paint would be ideal, but any paints can be used and then the pebbles will be varnished by Andy.
If you can help it would be great if you could collect a bag (or more) of stones (about 6 in each bag) from outside Andy’s house. If you need the stones delivering, then please email me: alisonwhiteley@ntlworld.com
We would like the stones returned by Friday 26th March so there is time to varnish them if needed.
The weeks leading up to Easter seem to be flying by. We are halfway through Lent and discovering something about the more obscure characters mentioned in the New Testament. We only have time and space for seven characters at a rate of one per week. There has been a positive response to the content and style of the material we are using which makes me wonder whether it would be beneficial to cover one or two more or all the remaining stories after Easter.
Opening Prayer
Lent is a time to learn to travel
Light, to clear the clutter
From our crowded lives and
Find a space, a desert.
Deserts are bleak; no creature
Comforts, only a vast expanse of
Stillness, sharpening awareness of
Ourselves and God
Uncomfortable places, deserts.
Most of the time we’re tempted to
Avoid them, finding good reason to
Live lives of ease; cushioned by
Noise from self-discovery.
Clutching at world’s success
To stave off fear.
But if we dare to trust the silence
To strip away our false security,
God can begin to grow his wholeness in us,
Fill up our emptiness, destroy our fears,
Give us new vision, courage for the journey,
And make our desert blossom like a rose.
From – ‘Waiting for the Kingfisher’ – Ann Lewin
Simon Iscariot
Simon Iscariot (John 6:71,13:2,27; see too Matthew 27:3–10)
His name appears only as the father of Judas, the thief, the betrayer. It places Judas the Everyman in a time and a community, a man with a family, perhaps one that loved him. Judas was not like Barabbas, the ‘son of a father’, the anonymous troublemaker who gained his freedom at Jesus’ expense, the Everyman without the family that gave a person identity, belonging.
Was Simon Iscariot, named three times, a follower of Jesus, sympathiser, even, later, a witness? Was he a man visited, prayed with, by the more patient, large-hearted followers of Jesus? Did they include another bereaved parent, Mary, mother of Jesus? Or was only his name known, this man who had lost his son to a life on the road with an itinerant preacher, and then lost his reputation with a son branded as thief, traitor, and suicide?
Did Peter seek out Simon to tell of his own failing, and the meeting that followed? In the turmoil around the teachings of Jesus, Simon lost his son. When an adult child goes wrong, there may be regret, grieving and attempt to reason, a determination to stay by them, whatever trouble they bring upon themselves. Judas was not a disowned Barabbas. He’d fallen in love with the words of a wandering preacher, and died a lonely death, cast aside, betrayed by the godly people who had used him.
What can we say to a parent whose son has taken his life? That earth has no sorrow heaven cannot heal? That God understands, encompasses all? That it is a tragedy, whatever someone has done, however their life has spiralled beyond control? However much others tempted and taunted him and will not take their share of blame?
Did the parents ask if God betrayed him, though the manipulation of the priests and handwashing more rigorous than Pilate’s?
What can we say to the grief for a life cut short in loneliness, by one for whom the burden of life had become too heavy to bear alone? What do the parents say of those who let their son lose hope and left him to his pain? Is God there in the small hours, when the world sleeps and the grieving wake, remembering the boy who will not wake again? When they ask if there was something left unsaid, some way to reach him, to say that there is always a way out, a way round the hardest fear, a way home. ‘And always a place for you here. If Jesus wears you out, take respite here. If love has worn you out, rest your wounds here. If you took the wrong path, we too will share your shame, and be with you as you turn.’
After you died, trapped in cold metal tubes, machines and staff who saw the science not the soul; when your thwarted breath slept forever your story took its route, for good or loss. And though it took a time as you got used to having died, I sensed that somewhere far you lived a while the life you never had, and live also in all the love you left and all the loss.
Belfast Covenant, 1988
That dark Good Friday with the heavy air
beating our anger as the gutters poured,
soaking the poisoned streets, the extra mile
torn to harm, our arms scarred vision stained,
souls drained, our feet leaked blood that streamed,
streamed on the pavements with no hope spared;
that afternoon with faith subdued,
price paid, spirit dulled in the trickling lull
of dank chapels dripping psalms, we came,
under iron cloud, lifting eyes to the hills
where, sudden, full, unbidden, three rainbows showed,
grew, glowed, bowed over the city waste.
We give thanks …
For the friends and families who stay by people in pain, all the way.
For those who support the sinner, the criminal, the social pariah, opposing the actions but regarding the humanity.
For those who work in the emergency services and deal with the aftermath of violent death, for the Samaritans and other organisations that seek to help people avoid suicide and self-harm.
We pray …
For all families who have lost a loved one by suicide, those whose loved one has harmed themselves alone, and those who have taken others to their deaths.
We pray… for all those caught up in war and violence, in the troubled places of the world and in our own land.
For those entrapped by addiction and the lifestyle that drives people into darkness, debt, depression and disordered values. For those who feel their life has no value, that others suffer from their living, that they may find again the
value Christ places on them.
We pray… for those in the hardest situations, who believe that the only way to keep their integrity is to end their
lives. We pray for all those caught up in war and violence, in the troubled places of the world and in our own land.
During the period of Lent, Rev’d John is encouraging us to think about fellowship. This week we will be thinking about sovereignty or democracy. You can watch the third of these reflections by Rev John using this YouTube link: https://youtu.be/mLOUWsNJbjc
Although we can’t all physically meet together currently, you’re welcome to join us on Sunday Evening at 6pm to virtually meet together on Zoom to reflect, pray, share thoughts, and ask questions. You can join via the link below:
Scripture tells us almost nothing about Simon. In the Gospels, he is mentioned in three places, but only to list his name with the 12 disciples. In Acts 1:13 we learn that he was present with the 11 apostles in the upper room of Jerusalem after Christ had ascended to heaven. Church tradition holds that he spread the gospel in Egypt as a missionary and was martyred in Persia. Like most of the other apostles, Simon the Zealot deserted Jesus during his trial and crucifixion. Clearly there must be more to the man who was referred to as a Zealot.
Opening Prayer
Lent is a time to learn to travel
Light, to clear the clutter
From our crowded lives and
Find a space, a desert.
Deserts are bleak; no creature
Comforts, only a vast expanse of Stillness, sharpening awareness of
Ourselves and God
Uncomfortable places, deserts.
Most of the time we’re tempted to
Avoid them, finding good reason to
Live lives of ease; cushioned by
Noise from self-discovery.
Clutching at world’s success
To stave off fear.
But if we dare to trust the silence
To strip away our false security,
God can begin to grow his wholeness in us,
Fill up our emptiness, destroy our fears,
Give us new vision, courage for the journey,
And make our desert blossom like a rose.
From – ‘Waiting for the Kingfisher’ – Ann Lewin
Simon the Zealot
Coming down from the hills changed me. I met him first in that desert, where I’d bloodied and battered and been bloodied and battered, on the steep road to Jericho. We’d both known the force of the law, the brutality, the demands of the military, and the homes smashed during so-called searches, and the homes destroyed as punishment. A cowed people nursed their bitterness in strong community, closed against the other. It was during my second time in prison, when my body ached from the beatings and the years stretched out ahead, that he visited, and brought cold water, clothing, food, and dignity.
I fell in love with the romance of faith in a different journey, the knowledge that the hills where we trained were the hills where he prayed. I could see why I needed him but not why he wanted me. In the years of the dirty war we’d lost sight of what we were fighting for: it was more tit for tat, keeping up the fear so we might survive. But he brought me back to the centre, to the goodness and truth and different way to live that I’d known as a child, then a youth. He refreshed my soul.
But follow him? Ex-taxmen, small business-folk, women with histories, there was a place for everybody in his company, I found. And being with him made us start to be kind again. Soldiers have bonds – we look out for each other: this was deeper. We gave without counting the cost, without hope of return. Not just to each other, but we turned aside mistrust and took the risk with strangers. And enjoyed the results. We laughed on the road. Yet I wasn’t much good at the end. I wasn’t the hand-to-hand combat type, more the bomb-maker at a distance. I’d given up on hurting people but it was bombastic Simon Peter who was better at security guard roles. I’d seen so much pain: I was scared at the thought of what it would be like. Going all the way with him. I’d seen my mates executed: even the toughest fall apart. In those hours, those days. That’s the point: it doesn’t pay to cross authority. I did not think, my friend, that I could love so little, or could be so self-absorbed I could not see your body on the other tree, that I could miss in this, my life’s extreme, your living company. You did not love the loud thief less then, love, though he could only hear his groaning anger at the world in pain which you have held so dear. So, Christ, if we should turn from you at last, you are forever near.
Afghan sacrifice 2001
The mild-mannered man on the city council declared himself a former soldier and an atheist. He’d seen too much in Afghanistan. Then he told a story, just one.
They had been far out in the lawless areas, to the north. They scurried to leave the hostile village as tempers flared. All got in and, the door still open, the helicopter took off. At that moment, through the crowd two women ran and each threw something through the door.
‘We thought we were done for.’ But the explosion, their lives’ final sound, did not come. The pilot flew upwards. There were two bundles, each a desperately ill baby. ‘What mother could do that, so desperate she risked her child with strangers?’
They cared for the two as best they might. One died on the flight, the other lived and was taken to hospital and then to an orphanage in Kabul.
We give thanks …
For those who can change their way of life and show us the humanity within the enemy.
For those who recognise their own failures and return to show us how to be braver than they.
For those wars that have ended,
For unseen acts of gentleness or of withholding from slaughter, expected or ordered.
We pray …
For an end to violence, and a recognition that speaking at the table earlier rather than later saves much suffering.
For child soldiers and all they have seen and been brought to do.
We pray for those who have suffered at their hands, and for all who seek to work for the future of all.
For the places in the world where violence dominates; for an end to suicide bombing and for an understanding of the cost and casualties.
For a just, peaceful, rapid and lasting solution in Israel-Palestine, the lands where the soles of your feet have touched the earth.