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Online Service – not available

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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:

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85714599574?pwd=dmpVZGpyUkRESGlVMVlyOEk5M0d4QT09

Meeting ID: 857 1459 9574

Passcode: 074789

Lent Reflections – Part 4

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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.

Lent-4-Transcript Download

Services for Mothering Sunday – 14th March 2021

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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

*You can join us in church or via the livestream on YouTube
https://youtu.be/HYDk3_ulMzw

**You can join this service via this Zoom link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85714599574?pwd=dmpVZGpyUkRESGlVMVlyOEk5M0d4QT09

Christ Church – Helme and St Mary’s – Wilshaw will re-open for worship on Sunday 28th March.

Heart pebbles

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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.

Andy’s address is: 53 Bishops Way HD9 4BW

Thanks.

Alison

MCT LENTEN REFLECTIONS WEEK 4 8 MARCH

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Hello everyone

LENTEN REFLECTIONS —WEEK 4

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.

Our own prayers …….. Lord’s Prayer ……

KEEP SAFE …. KEEP PRAYING……

Peter

Lent Reflections – Part 3

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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:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83096392884?pwd=bHBkTGcyV2h1ZDdMYUQ2dUp6akM1Zz09

Meeting ID: 830 9639 2884
Passcode: 489476

You can also read the transcript here, or print out to pass on to those without access to the online video.

Lent-3-Transcript Download