Sunday 20th July 2025

Reading: Luke 11.1-13.  Jesus’ Teaching on Prayer

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

He said to them, “When you pray, say:

“‘Father,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.

And lead us not into temptation.’”

Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

 

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Sermon on Luke 11.1-13

In our services I introduce the Lord’s prayer each week by saying:  “We say together the prayer that Jesus taught us.”  

But actually from researching this sermon it seems Jesus may have had in mind not so much a set prayer but rather a formula or some key headings to help us pray, rather than a prayer.  

So if I were being pedantic it may be more appropriate to introduce the Lord’s Prayer with the phrase:  as our saviour taught us, so we pray.  

But before we start looking at what those headings might mean, let’s remind ourselves: Why do we pray?  

I’d like you to turn to your neighbour and talk for no more than two minutes about:

What is Prayer? 

and  

Why do we pray? 

[The answers given were as follows:  

• Ask for forgiveness.
• To say thank you. 
• Ask for help for self/others/friends/world.
• For inspiration. 
• To nurture your relationship with God – have conversations with God.  
• To pray “Thy will be done.”  
• To pray for those who don’t know the Lord.  
• Arrow prayer – praying on the go as things arise.  ]

Teresa of Avila said:  

 “Prayer is nothing more than a friendly conversation with the One whom we know loves us.”  So it’s first and foremost communication with someone we love.  

We heard that the disciples had seen the way John the Baptist and his disciples prayed and they wanted Jesus to help them to pray as they did.  We don’t know what the disciples liked about John’s method, and we don’t know what Jesus thought about John’s style of prayer ….. he doesn’t mention John…..instead he says pray like this.     

Jesus starts his prayer “Father.” 

 

So when we begin our prayers, the first thing we do is remember for ourselves that God is ‘our Father’.  He is not some distant divine being.  He is not a tyrant.  He is not a light or some sort of force without feelings.  This is a relationship of love, care and support, dependency, acceptance and communication.  

Jesus addresses God as Father, because he relates to God as Father as well as us.  

So Jesus is drawing us in to the relationship that he has with God.  

It’s significant that Jesus does not say “My Father” although he Jesus’ father and each and every one of us’s father and so the version of the Lord’s Prayer that we’ve adopted begins “our Father”.  

 

We are part of a relationship that is simultaneously both exclusive and universal, cosmic and intimate.  

Jesus is acknowledging that God is the Father of us all.  And so when we address God as “Our Father” we are acknowledging our siblings in Christ the world over.  

The most common way the early church described themselves was as a family and so when we become Christians we’re called into a new family centred around God who is the Father.  

So we have commitments to our brothers and sisters in Christ.  

 

Theologian Paula Gooder once said that she was approached be a newish convert who had said that he had come to faith and joined a church.  He said that he thought he was joining was a family…. but what he experienced was meetings!  So churches don’t always get this right – churches don’t always look enough like families.  

 

Next heading! 

“Hallowed be your name.”  

This is why we sang At the name of Jesus at the beginning.  Because when we pray “hallowed be your name we are looking ahead to the time when “at the name of Jesus every knew will bow” or in other words, when everyone will understand who God is, and worship Him as Lord, and Jesus as our Saviour.  

It’s hard to believe in this day and age, that this time will come…but it will.  

Hallowed means holy, so we are calling to mind and heart the holiness and goodness and righteousness of God and looking forward to when that will be at the heart of everything.  

This time will be when the Kingdom comes and God’s will, will be done!  So the three ‘looking to the future parts’ of the Lord’s Prayer will happen together…..God’s name will be universally hallowed, the Kingdom will come and God’s will, will be done.  and things on earth are as they are in heaven.  

 

So what will the Kingdom coming look like?  

In a very inadequate nutshell when the Kingdom comes, 

As I said everyone will be a Christian and recognise his death on the cross and his overcoming of death in the resurrection.  

But not only that…..when our love for God and our dedication to Christian siblinghood is so strong is that we won’t harbour hate and unforgiveness in our hearts.  When we see one another as God sees us and our behaviour to one another is truly Christlike. 

Embracing reconciliation, sacrifice, giving up our own power.  

The only solution to wars and poverty and hatred is to allow the forgiveness of Christ to override our human cries for justice, restoration, power.  To put our siblinghood in Christ above all other concerns and priorities.  And if every knee bows towards Jesus, God will achieve the impossible. 

So we all have a profoundly important but miniscule part to play in this.  

We need to look to Jesus for signs of the Kingdom. 

We have to make Kingdom decisions individually in our lives to the little things we can more easily control are a bit more Christlike.  And we should seek and pray for it as part of humankind for the whole world for all of time.  

 

Next phrase:  “Give us this day our daily bread.”

It’s ok to ask for help and the things we need ….and God wants us to do this and come to him for help. 

The translation of ‘daily’ is rather unreliable.  

God is not a genie in a bottle ready to grant wishes.

When the words was translated into Syriac, it was translated as “the thing that helps us to flourish.”  

There is a resemblance here to the Israelites in the desert receiving the manna from heaven, where they were told not to take more than they needed for the day.  So, Jesus is encouraging us to ask God for what we need for each day.  We’re not praying for luxuries.  It’s the things we all need.  

 

Next phrase:  Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.  

How often do we un-noticing recite this prayer?  Without thinking what we are saying?  

If we’re honest with ourselves, we are going to constantly fail in this, that’s why we need to say this prayer and mean it again and again and again. 

We may be completely genuinely sorry when we say our prayers and then we go out and into our lives and we’re going to fail and mess up and so we need to go back to God and say sorry again and again and again.  This is why we come back to the Lord’s prayer over and over again.  

 

Jesus’s forgiveness of us is one of the most important things in Christianity.  And our forgiveness of others is probably the hardest thing Christianity requires of us.

God freely forgives us and wants to do so.  But most of us find forgiving and moving on really hard.  It’s difficult to put our grievances aside and focus on our relationships with others but this is what we should try to do.  

In an another inadequate nutshell forgiveness is about going on loving, or being loving, in spite of the hurt, pain, fear, loss that you feel.  

 

Try not to need understanding, contrition, repentance or an apology from the other party.  

To try to loose the power the hurt has over you.  

Try praying through it when you feel overwhelmed by the hurt.  

Try not to let feelings of hate, inadequacy, hopelessness take over.  

 

If it’s possible begin to see the situation from the other person’s perspective and what good they might have been trying to do.

As I said I haven’t begun to do justice to forgiveness.  And forgiveness should be done within appropriate boundaries, such as it may be necessary to never see the person you are trying to forgive again for your own protection, wellbeing or the wellbeing of others.  And counselling may need to be sought alongside trying to forgive.  

Matthew’s words are much more serious than Luke’s….  Your heavenly father’s forgiveness of you will depend on your forgiveness of others.  God’s forgiveness of our sins will mimic how we forgive others.  I like to think Matthew’s misheard here, because I think God’s infinitely merciful, - this may well be wishful thinking on my part.  

Whatever it makes you think…how would it be if God’s mercy only reached the level of mine.  

 

“And lead us not into temptation.”  

Another prayer we need to pray over and over again.  

Help us as we try to avoid things which are bad for us, others or creation.  

And of course, there’s too much chocolate, cake, alcohol and not enough exercise are all features of our lives.  The opposite of give what we need for this day.  All these taken to a level can cause us significant harm to different extents.  

But there’s a darker side.  

There’s a phrase that’s often quoted in Christianity:  “God does not give you more than you can cope with.”  I don’t think it’s God’s fault, or that God’s to blame in any way, but I believe that life certainly throws a minority of people more than they can cope with.  People have a tendency to use this phrase because all of us overcome huge hurdles and obstacles in life with God’s help.  That doesn’t mean that every hurdle will be overcome or every burden is carriable.  

And so that’s even more reason to faithfully pray: Lead us not into temptation.  Or to put it another way:  “don’t let us be taken to something that’s too much for us.”  “Please God, don’t let us face something that is going to destroy us.”   

 

As we said, prayer is first and foremost conversation with God who we love.  God wants us to devote time to our relationship with him.  

He wants us to bring our lives to him, with the joys and troubles we face.  

He wants us to notice what’s gone well and what hasn’t gone well and tell him.  

He wants us to spend time remembering that he is our loving Father and that we’re called to love our siblings in Christ as ourselves.  

He wants us to reflect on his promises, that, as unlikely as it seems, they will be kept and that God will bring a better future.  

He cares that we want to play a part in bringing about his Kingdom.  

God cares that we have what we need and laments when there is scarcity in the world and when there is a lack of sharing and care amongst God’s children.  

God understands how difficult it is to be human, and he forgives us willingly.  

He claims his flock who’ve gone astray.  

He wants us to say I intend to live a better life with your help.  

He wants to make your broken relationships whole - another promise for the future.  

 

When you are struggling to pray you might like to try praying the Lord’s Prayer slowly.  

Unpick it and consider how it is true in your life.  

What would you like your future with God to look like?  

Think about what you’re struggling with and how God’s promises are for you his child, but also part of much bigger canvas. 

When you haven’t a prayer – pray this one. 

 

Amen.  

Rev Larissa Trust

 

Sunday 8th June 2025

Acts 2: 1-13.  The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” 

Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

Sermon on Acts 2: 1-13

A man fell in love with a beautiful woman.  She was beautiful on the outside, and on the inside.  She was lovely, she was kind, she was considerate, she was patient, she was thoughtful, she was delightful.  

The man desperately wanted to ask her out, and indeed make her his wife.  

But when he looked in the mirror, he did not like what he saw… on the outside or on the inside.  Alas, his face was hideous and his heart was cruel.   

How could he make himself lovely to her? he thought.  

He went to a mask maker who made him a mask that transformed his appearance.  When he approached the woman, wearing the mask, she found him a pleasant looking man.  

Pleased with this result, he tried to summon a character to match his outward appearance.   

The relationship progressed and blossomed.  They married and lived in wedded bliss for 10 years.  But as time past, he felt he could not live with the deceit.  One day he took a deep breath removed his mask, and waited for his wife’s reaction.  

But to his surprise, there were no expressions of revulsion.  

He looked in the mirror and was overjoyed - his face was now as handsome as the mask!

He returned to the mask maker.  

How did this happen he asked?  

The mask maker replied:  

“You have changed!  

You loved a beautiful person… 

…and you became beautiful too.  

When you love someone, you become like the face of the one you love.”

When you love Jesus, this is what happens.  

What happens is we start to look more like him and indeed become like him.  

The Spirit makes Jesus present in the world and we are changed by him. 

The Spirit communicates to us, either through head or heart.  

It’s up to us how we respond.  

It’s up to us how seriously we receive and absorb that message.  

It’s up to us how seriously we take being changed, contradicted, chastised.  

But also made happier, lovelier, excited, enriched, equipped.  

The Holy Spirit is how we come face to face with God.  

The book of Acts is the story of how those first Christians, were transformed to look more like Jesus.  And it all started at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down from heaven and God became present in a new way. 

It wasn’t an accident that so many faithful people were gathered together in Jerusalem that day.  Jesus’ death and resurrection coincided with Passover.  God’s two great rescues of his people, first from the Egyptians, and then from their sins.   And now 50 days later, Jews and Christ followers from across the nationalities were congregating in Jerusalem to celebrate Shauvot.   Shavuot was a Jewish festival when the harvest was offered to God, as the community gratefully commemorated Moses receiving the law at Sinai; when God offered a new way of life to his people. 

Something similar was happening again now.  

At Pentecost God gave his followers what they needed to live between his first coming and his second coming.  Offering believers a new way of life and help to live it faithfully. 

This time God’s law will not be written on stone slabs as it was on Sinai.  

It will be written on our hearts.  

In our daily prayers we pray: “may the light of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with love for you.”  

And we must invite the Holy Spirit in.  

[PAUSE]

Whilst we long for those intense experiences of the Holy Spirit, someone reminded me this week, that these tend to be quite few and far between.  And the process of transformation may feel quite ordinary at times.  

The important thing is that the Spirit is active.  

We don’t need to be constantly having exciting experiences for the spirit to work in and through us.  

The important thing is that the Spirit is active.  

When the spirit does its stuff, that creative energy from heaven, comes and makes its home in our hearts and catalyses us to live for Jesus.  

And we will be transformed to look more like him … but it may not always be with the intensity of the Pentecost experience at Jerusalem.   

And we need to look more like Jesus together.  That’s the beauty of being Church.  

There are three arenas for spirit activity. 

In Christians.  In non-Christians.   And in creation.  

We are or should be the first place that the Spirit works.  In the hearts and actions of individual Christians.  And collectively as Church.  

The Spirit marks us out, stamps us with God’s official seal, as the people in the present, who are guaranteed to inherit the new creation. 

This is why there were so many faithful people from different backgrounds in one place at one time, to receive together the sign that God is renewing the whole cosmos.    

And the whirlwind came on all of them.  

Pentecost brought unity but not uniformity.  We all need to participate in bringing in that new creation with those who are alongside us but different to us. 

There are many times, when the spirit works quietly and gently and unfussily in our lives.   

But when God truly equips, he is unstoppable and we with him.  

Even though most of the disciples died along the way, their mission was pretty successful.  

God built through them a church that survives 2000 years on, based on faithfulness and mutual care.  When political empires and dynasties succumbed, the church for all its many faults, survived, grew and continues to grow today.  

Think how wobbly the disciples were before the Spirit came – even with Jesus alongside them.  They didn’t have a clue!  

And now the Spirit has their backs. 

They became accomplished communicators, miracle workers, diplomats, justice campaigners, utterly brave.  They were transformed. 

In the Spirit, God breaks through to us.  

So, we need to receive and be transformed by the Spirit.  

This is hard!  

In all honesty a lot of the time I’m looking at my feet or out of the window when I should be noticing what the Holy Spirit was doing around me and bringing it to God and listening to his voice in it all. 

It’s hard to put our personal agendas aside.  To look beyond our own preoccupations and fears, and to empty ourselves so we can receive from God.  

We need to give Jesus 1-1 time, and let the Spirit fill us up.  

Then we may find that we look more like Jesus.  That we’re transformed.  

I’ve found Melvyn Bragg’s post World War two novel, A Soldier’s Return, helps me think about the Holy Spirit and how we might receive from him.  

Sam is a lieutenant in the British army recently returned from Burma.    

Sam visits the parents of his fellow soldier, Ian, who was tragically killed in the war.  Sam’s presence makes Ian more real to them and brings alive his memory.  

Sam brings them comfort by telling them their son died a brave death, for a noble cause, in solidarity with his comrades.  

They feel that his death contributed to a just war, defending the weak.  

Sam brings reassurance and peace to Ian’s mother, telling her Ian was killed by a sniper in battle.   

Instantaneously.  Free of suffering.   Noble.  

Sometimes the Holy Spirit works by giving us what we need to get through the day. 

When they are alone, Ian’s father, who fought in the trenches, asks Sam for the truth.  Sam tells him that Ian did not die in battle, but well away from the front line, whilst on cleaning duties, accidentally pulling the pin out of a grenade while cleaning it.  

There were others around and so Ian flung himself on the grenade.  

An accidental, self-inflicted, pointless, agonising, drawn out death.  Not part of winning of the war, but an act of clumsiness.  

Yet his quick thinking saved others.  

Ian’s self-sacrifice brings a sense of worthiness, safeguarding his fellow soldiers’ lives.  Possibly he could have got away but he chose to save them.  

In this story Sam’s role helps us to understand some of the things the Spirit does.  Sam makes Ian present for his parents.  Through Sam they are helped to understand Ian’s life as a soldier and the period of time prior to his death.  Through Sam they receive comfort.  But the Holy Spirit also brings truth, that is painful sometimes.  

Sam and Ian’s father are the only ones who know the truth about Ian’s death.  Some truths cannot be shared because they cannot be understood, appreciated or honoured by others; but are known to God and it’s with him that we share them.  

Sam helps Ian’s Father to live with his grief.  

What revelation does God want you to come face to face with?  

What truths does God want you to address?

Does God want you to understand someone differently?

Is God looking for some sort of change? 

Or does God simply want you to tell you or remind you, that you are his beloved child.  That he thought you were worth dying for and that he wants the best for you.

At Pentecost we see that God was not prepared to be distant or unreachable.  

And that the Spirit does not give up on God’s people, nor let us be defined us by our mistakes.  

We see that the Spirit does not observe norms, limitations or boundaries.  

Nor does it give up on justice and peace.  

And finally, Pentecost revealed that the Spirit does not accept absenteeism when God has set a place at the table for his loved ones.  

Like our besotted man, the day of Pentecost starts with what was wrong with God.  Jesus was absent.  But when the Holy Spirit came down, it took Jesus from Ancient Palestine and made him present in every other place and time. 

Making God visible and audible in ways we can understand – but which perhaps we do not always notice because we are preoccupied.  

We need to be committed to making space for Jesus in our hearts, our heads and our schedules so that we can receive from him and come to look more like him.  But we also need to bear the family resemblance.  If we’re not embracing all the people, we are not embracing all the gifts.  We are not looking as much like Jesus as we should be. 

We need to receive the Holy Spirit.  

We need to be transformed by it.  

And we need one another.  

Amen.  

Rev Larissa Trust

 

Sunday 1st June 2025

Reading: Acts 1  Jesus Taken Up Into Heaven

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.”

Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Sermon on Acts 1

Saying ‘goodbye’ to someone is something we all do on a regular basis. We’ll be doing it this morning after the service as we head home for lunch, and then countless times during the week as we meet/bump into others or after sharing a coffee or tea with them. However, the gap between saying goodbye and then seeing friends or relatives again, can vary enormously. I have an older sister in Yorkshire with her husband and Hazel and I try, despite the long drive, to go up a couple of times a year, but the eventual goodbyes lately,  at the end of a visit are increasingly infused with a bit of uncertainty about the future. Neither of us is getting any younger. But goodbyes can have an even deeper impact of course if the prospect of meeting friends or family again has a longer uncertainty about it because of age and distance. What words do we use then? What assurances can we give? What will be our final words of goodbye ? For our generation  we would have used words like ‘Don’t forget to write’ or ‘ we will be praying for you’. Today, for generations it might be ‘ send us an email’ or ‘When you ring use facetime’. 

As today we remember the Ascension of Jesus, we are given a picture with words, of Jesus saying goodbye to his disciples. What an experience the years have been for those disciples. An intensive 3 years of teaching and growth through their relationship with this man. So what is it that Jesus wants them to remember most of all in these last minutes ? What does He want them to hold onto as He leaves ? What is it  that is vital for them as they face the world without Him ?

V8 in these last few minutes scripture gives us the clear answer very succinctly with two distinct promises.

1.You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

2.You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

The force of the second one about being witnesses, depends of course totally on the first promise. In other words, the ability to be witnesses can only happen after the Holy Spirit has been received. Next Sunday we celebrate the Pentecost event when Jesus’s first promise was fulfilled.

So we have the farewell words Jesus gave to his disciples, and the future testimony of the disciples is that, in the power of the Spirit, they took the Gospel message to all who would hear and respond to Jesus, and they were only able to do it because they received the promised gift at Pentecost.

But the message of the Ascension doesn’t stop there, does it.

As the disciples were watching this incredible event, with Jesus rising up into and then being hidden by the clouds, all of a sudden, as if all that wasn’t enough, v10 suddenly two men in white (that’s Bible speak for angels), stood beside them. So this unwelcome parting facing the disciples, with their teacher leaving them, also  needed one more element. The message they needed now, as well as the promises of Jesus earlier about what to expect,coincidentally, was exactly the same message that you and I also need. Q ? What was the message from the angels ?

HE’S COMING BACK YOU KNOW !!!

The two angels were a bit more matter of fact about it. Having made that statement they went on” Why are you standing around?” It’s clearly implied to the disciples that you now have your task, so best to get on with it which for them meant praying. The other snippet we get, but a very important bit of information from those angels, is that Jesus’s return will be in similar fashion to his departure. Other scriptures bear that out, such as :-

Matthew 26;64  Jesus said “But I say to all of you, in the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the mighty one and coming on the clouds of Heaven”  OR

Luke 21:27  Jesus said “At that time they will see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory”.

There’s no doubt in my mind that these words at the Ascension of both Jesus and the angels are just as appropriate to us as they were to the disciples. As the promise of the Holy Spirit was kept, so will the promise of His return, and in the meantime we are in the same boat as the disciples. The gift which came, was to help both them and us in our witnessing, because as Christians that is our task. Also the reassurance of His return is the inevitable fact for the future which we  can also anticipate with confidence. As we wait for this and maybe question why is it taking so long……..

There is just one other important bit of information we get from V’s 6+7.where Jesus gives both the disciples and us a clear idea as to how much we can expect to be included in , and know about  God’s plans  The disciples asked Jesus “ Lord are you going to restore the Kingdom of Israel ?”

It’s an understandable question with Israel still under Roman control. His answer covers not just their question, but any questions we might have about the future.  Jesus said

“ It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority”

So in similar fashion we are not included in the timing of Jesus’s return. ‘It is not for us to know’. 

So just in case we should ever need any reminders that God’s message to us throughout Scripture is about witnessing, we have :-

Isaiah 43v10 You are my witnesses declares the Lord. Which Jesus now echoes at the Ascension.  Isaiah 49v6  I will make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.

Matt 5v16  Let your light shine before men. And many others!

When Jesus said to the disciples that they were to be witnesses for him in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth he was writing the contents page for this book of Acts which Luke has followed. So the witnessing in Jerusalem comes in Chapters 1-7. Witnessing to Judea and Samaria is covered in Chapters 8-11 and from chapter12 onwards it covers witnessing to the wider world.

The witnessing message always has an urgency about it because there is work to be done and we don’t know when Jesus will return. We today may feel a bit daunted by the prospect, as no doubt  those 11 disciples did, and their response we are told later, was v14, they all joined together constantly in prayer.

I would not be exaggerating at all to suggest that there are many thousands of people living in Hutton and Locking alone who need to hear about God’s love in Jesus and yet how easily we can become embroiled in discussions and disputes which take up our time and  effectively prevent us from looking outwards.

Many years ago, I invited a mission team from Lee Abbey to come to our parish. On our first evening together with the team, the leader asked us all to form one big circle right around the inside of the church. We stood in the circle holding hands and facing each other. The leader then asked us all to turn around again holding hands and face outwards. A simple exercise to illustrate where our emphasis should be as a church. That has stuck with me over the years. 

Those first disciples were ordinary men. No qualifications to speak of, no computer technology, no football stadiums for large rallies like Billy Graham, and yet despite all that, they were entrusted with the birth of the church and to take the Gospel to the whole world. The task ahead for them, as it is for us , was beyond their capabilities, and that’s why the final statement of Jesus to them and to us, includes the coming gift of the Spirit. Rather than being an extra something/someone to tag onto our Christian lives, that  gift is essential to us being willing  and able to face outwards rather than inwards in our worship and service within our churches.

Celebrating the Ascension of Jesus doesn’t have the pull of a Christmas or Easter perhaps, but it does contain those final words of parting from Jesus which are so essential for the future of our faith in these challenging days.

Rev Geoff Hobden

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Sunday 25th May 2025

Acts 16: 11-15. Lydia’s Conversion in Philippi

From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day we went on to Neapolis. From there we travelled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days.

On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

Sermon on Acts 16: 11-15. 

Lydia lived in Philippi, which was one of the first places Paul visited in Europe.  Lydia was one of the first people Paul met when he arrived, and so, she was probably the first convert to Christianity in the whole of Europe!   She came from a non-Jewish background.  So she didn’t have the benefit of knowing stories about God.   She didn’t know about his faithfulness in the past or his promises. 

But she was a seeking, listening, discerning person.  She had a sense of God’s spirit.  And everything fell into place when she heard Paul’s words about Jesus.    

Lydia traded in purple – so she was influential.  Important, rich people wore purple and she would have had a business relationship with high status people.  She was from Thy-a-ti-ra, which was a little bit like the Saville Row of the ancient world.  It was synonymous with purple dying and production.  Lydia probably had a lot.  She had a sizeable household, so she was probably quite rich.  

But it’s likely she was born poor.  Lydia is a nickname that was usually given to slaves. So she may well have been born a slave and for some reason given her freedom. This would explain why she was running her own business as a single woman, founded on her personal skill and expertise.  She had other things too: colleagues, influence, opportunities, autonomy and - perhaps most important of all - her house.  

 She heard Paul’s words and she was baptised. And then she went and brought all those she was responsible for, to faith, and they were baptised too.She used what she had to serve God and spread the Gospel.  Lydia realised that the fledgling church would be more stable and established with a base in her house.  There were a lot of advantages of this arrangement. Not least that it was safer for Paul and his companions.  So she threw open her house and her resources to the church family in Philippi.  

Lydia gave the Philippian church a focal building – that’s her great legacy.  Lydia seems to be head of the household.  She was gifted with a level of independence, and she took advantage of it. Her business background would have made her a good co-worker in Paul’s church planting.  We hear that she persuaded Paul.  It sounds like her influence extended beyond providing hospitality, to contributing to a mission strategy.  She was a patron and benefactress, and matron of the Jesus movement in Philippi.  

I don’t know if any of you are familiar with The Apprentice on the BBC.  When the show first aired, Alan Sugar devised a process of business challenges to recruit an apprentice. But then the prize changed and he offered a business investment and mentorship.   And since this change, Lydia’s role is really quite similar to Alan Sugar’s!  She invested her money in the work of Paul, Silas, Timothy and the rest of them.  She used her contacts to support and inform their work.  She offered them a house as a base to go out from.  Her workers helped them.  

As patron she would have had a place at the table when decisions were made, and as business woman probably had something of a critical friend role.  She made the most of the unusual circumstances she was in, with its advantages and privileges, and used these to extend the reach of the Gospel. 

Whilst we’re thinking about work and business, what might be a job description be for someone who serve the church, as a witness to God.  This job description will include “Showing love and kindness to your friends, colleagues and neighbours.”  

Do you represent yourself well in your work? Your leisure activities?  Amongst your friends and neighbours?  Do you give being Christian, a good name or a bad name? Do you pray for particular people?  Anyone can do that.  

Perhaps particular people who, like Lydia, are seeking and searching and waiting for the message to land.  

Have you thought of 5 people to pray for during Thy Kingdom Come?  Who don’t know Jesus yet but could have an important role in serving and leading the church? Are you open about your Christian routines?

Do people know you’re a Christian? Or do you pretend you’re not going to church or homegroup?  Do you tell people you’re going somewhere else instead.  Can people approach you about something spiritual?  Or something difficult? Are you able to say a little about the difference God makes in your life?  Why is God good for you?   

If you think God is wonderful but can’t say how … that’s probably an area to work on.  Be ready to talk about how God has brought you comfort at a particularly sad time in your life?Did something work out for the best when all seemed to be lost and you think God had a hand in it?  Has God brought a person or activity into your life that has really helped or comforted you? How could you describe God’s impact and help in your life?  

Having said all this…. in Paul’s letter to the Philippians Lydia isn’t mentioned.  In many of Paul’s letters, he sends greetings to particular allies, but he doesn’t mention Lydia in Philippians.  She’s done all this for Paul…and he forgets her…or so it seems!

Maybe she’s died – that’s a possibility – she was an influential woman - and first century Christians were disposed of on a regular basis.  She’d probably be a threat to the fledgling church’s opponents.  Or she might have died a natural death.  We don’t know why she is unmentioned but we all face being forgotten sooner or later – quite often God calls us to move on.  

Some of us live all our lives in the same place.  Others move around a lot.  But sooner or later we’ll be forgotten but the fruits of our labour live on. When Lydia chose baptism, she chose the path of being a Christian for God, with a particular calling to witness to the business community of Philippi.  

We are the baptised people of God in Hutton.  We are God’s ambassadors.  Yes probably with fear, doubt and confusion ….But nevertheless we are witnesses.  It’s not something that we decide to do when we are feeling particularly holy.  Being a Christian does not require a particular skillset or a defined mission field.  But neither can we exclude a particular part of our lives.  

It’s who we are.  It’s who we become at baptism. At baptism our task becomes the same as Lydia’s. To use what we have, the gifts, the knowledge, the relationships to be God’s ambassadors.To proclaim God’s love and Jesus’ work in thoughts words and deeds.  In work and in play.  

In purple making, in business deals, in the playground, in the classroom, in Messy Church, in Mustard Seed, in the clubs and societies we belong to. Whatever God has given us, wherever God has placed us.  Our task is to open our hearts and respond to God’s message. 

Amen.   

Rev Larissa Trust

 

Sunday 18th May 2025

Acts 11:1-18.  Peter Explains His Actions

The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”

Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles and birds. Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’

“I replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’

“The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.

“Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’

“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?” 

When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

Sermon on Acts 11:1-18

The vicar in this story is a friend of mine….it isn’t me …but it could have been.  This story is all about my friend’s assumptions and pre-judgement of people.  

He’d been asked to take the funeral of a man whose heavy drinking and addiction to alcohol had contributed to his sickness and eventually death.  He visited the family.  He met the wife and adult children.  They chose the hymns, they’d gone for a nice uncontroversial Bible reading.  He’d listened to the sad story of the deceased being unable to stop drinking.   He sympathised with the worry, the financial difficulties, the hospital visits.   

A family friend was to give the eulogy…The vicar presumed this family friend was skilled at diplomacy or perhaps he knew the deceased before he started drinking and could say some nice things about him.  He presumed that the funeral would be a quiet affair, family only probably.  He was prepared for a depressing one!

Yet what greeted him was a revelation.  The crem was packed.  The deceased was spoken of as a man of compassion, love and care.  There were many people who shared about the deceased’s gifts of encouragement, wisdom and insight in the face of adversity.  There were a good many people present, who themselves had struggled with their own addictions and testified to the difference the deceased had made in their journey to recovery.   That he had been an inspiration to them and convinced them to be brave and carry on when they were at the end of their tether.  

My vicar friend expected to be the one who would bring the hope, the positivity, the new life to the funeral service.  He had expected to be the glue that would hold everything together.  And yet it was the Vicar being ministered to in the testimonies, the fellowship, the togetherness. From beyond the veil, the deceased, and his friends were showing the vicar what love looks like when things are difficult. 

As we say at Christmas, the light was shining in the darkness and the darkness was not overcoming it.  The vicar was underestimating the power of love, the strength of the holy spirit and the possibilities of transformation.  We assume things about people who are different to us.   

We know the theory that Jesus would have made a beeline for people on the margins and those going through a tough time.  But we still manage to right off people who are different to us.  We still assume that it is those with privilege, or respectability, who reveal Jesus in the world rather than the other way round.  

Walter Bruggemann said that the Church tends to resist the trance that inspired and changed Peter.  Or to put it another way, the church resists the invitation to imagine God working in a different way.  

In this incident and in our reading from Acts we are shown that God has been working all along it’s just we’re seeing the church through a lens of what we’ve always known. Peter and the other disciples heard the command of Jesus to be “witnesses” in Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.  Yet they had not imagined that this commission to share the good news might mean they’d have to share food with the Gentiles.  

Peter and the other disciples had been brought up to obey the Jewish food laws and to keep those traditions which had shaped their spiritual lives.  As Peter later reported to the disciples in Jerusalem, even when commanded in a dream to “Kill and eat” he had stood firm, responding:  “By no means Lord”.  Yet when prompted by the Holy Spirit, he soon found himself proclaiming the message to the Gentiles, and rejoicing as they were baptized and accepted as brothers and sisters in Christ.  

God has promised down the generations to reach the nations.  Ther prophet Malachi had proclaimed the message from God:  “My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets.” (1:11.)  But this was a very difficult truth for those from a good Jewish background to accept.  

So when the new Christians from Jewish heritage learned that Peter had been staying at the house of Cornelius, a centurion, they were shocked.  This was in the chapter 10 of Acts, the previous chapter.   It was one thing to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to Gentiles, but quite another to sit at table with them.  But what about us, we too fail to learn the lessons, which should be clear from our Bible reading.   Too often we are inclined to accept only the parts of God’s word that appeal to us and support our thinking, our life lifestyles, our conveniences.  

We ignore the parts of the Bible that don’t resonate or that we outright don’t like.  I tend to be aware when I do this over matters of theology, but I can be very blinkered when I do this about people.  

What does welcoming the uncircumcised mean for the Church today?  What might this look like in our context today?We need to be prepared for the transformation of all people and not right others off.   We should not be surprised at the powerful working of the Holy Spirit. 

The Gentiles lives had been changed and that was all the evidence that was needed. Peter recounted his experiences, perhaps they realised that genuine love will always draw us out from ourselves and enable us to reach out to others in ways that we would never have imagined.If we make assumptions about people who we label as “the other” we also make assumptions about the incapability of the Holy Spirit too.  

How does the church need to shape itself to include those God welcomes?  

In many ways this is an impossible task, but if we, like Peter, inspired by the Spirit, are challenged to let go of some of our long-held views, and embrace the equality of forgiveness we all receive from the cross, we might just catch a fresh glimpse of the height, depth and breadth of God's love.  These two passages are connected in that they both show us that through sharing a meal together Jesus demonstrated to those present and Christians today what love looks like.  The gifts are the same but the people are different – and all loved, chosen, saved and used by God. Amen.  

Rev Larissa Trust

 

Sunday 20th April - Easter Sunday

Reading Luke 24:1-12 - Jesus Has Risen

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” Then they remembered his words.

When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Sermon on Luke 24:1-12 

When you read Luke’s account of the resurrection after having read either Matthew or John’s, the words disorganised, frustrating, disappointing or anti-climax might spring to mind.  It feels as though none of our Gospel characters have done their job properly!   That no one really acquits themselves well in this scene. And that includes Jesus – he doesn’t show up!  Not tomb-side or anywhere else in the garden in Luke.  And this is supremely frustrating if you’re hearing this Gospel on Easter Day. You have to wait for next week to hear about Jesus turning up on the road to Emmaus or to Doubting Thomas before you actually get to experience the resurrected Jesus.

Both Matthew and John do things properly!  In Matthew everything is well organised.  The chief priests and pharisees try to be organised and post guards on Jesus’ tomb so there’s no uproar.  But God out-organises them and sends an earthquake and angels that scare the guards to petrification, nicely supporting the case for Jesus’ rising.  The angels give the women a nice clear instruction to go and tell the disciples.   And they dutifully do so, showing an appropriate balance of fear and joy.  And then Jesus makes his appearance right on que.  Hooray!  

In contrast John focuses on relationships.  In John we see the third male/female partnership in a garden in the Bible.  Mary Magdalene and Jesus succeed Adam and Eve and the Song of Songs lovers, showing that God’s love transcends evil and the world’s brokenness.  In the Easter garden men, women and God were confirmed as inseparable.  Again….Hooray!  

But in Luke’s Gospel we have to contend with so many questionmarks.  An empty tomb, possibly some angels, disbelief and puzzlement.  No heroics, no great faith, no instant sense of things clicking into place.  And worst of all  - no Jesus.  

The women weren’t believed for one reason or another.  Maybe this was because they were women.  Maybe it was because they were gossipy or incredulous and so mistrusted.  Maybe the disciples thought they’d got their theology completely wrong…that resurrection will only happen at the end of time… when God will raise all people to share the new heaven and the new earth. There was nothing to suggest that God would bring men or women back to life now.  (“This is precisely why we don’t teach women theology.” They might have said!)Whatever the reason, the women weren’t believed – they were considered unreliable.  

Why does the Gospel writer only identify the shiny men as men?  Why does he not identify them as angels as Matthew does?  And the angels don’t direct the women to go and tell the twelve (eleven now that Judas is dead).  They seem to just terrify the women;  they don’t give them a nice clear instruction about what to do next. And it feels as though Peter falls short too.  He runs to the tomb and sees the strips of linen, but it doesn’t seem to take him to the conclusion that Jesus is alive – just a state of wondering.  Wondering why the linen cloths are lying on the ground and where Jesus’ body has gone.  

We hear the word “wondering” another time in the passage.  The women wonder who rolled the stone away and they wonder where Jesus’ body is.  And wonder they might.  If we witness and believe the tomb is empty, it is still a big jump to say that Jesus has risen from the dead.  Clearly something very odd has happened but what?  So they wonder uncertainly. These words don’t speak into the glory, the triumph, the making of history, the correction of injustice.  We’re not quite taken out of the fear and confusion zone.  This Gospel leaves us wondering rather than believing at least for now.  

But maybe Luke’s resurrection best represents the situation we’re in now. The shiny men tell the women “He is not here!  He has risen!”  And as Gospel readers we simply have to rely on the words:  “He is not here!  He has risen!”  That’s the predicament we are in.  

Unfortunately we cannot rely on an explicit message or instruction from angels either.  These angels give the women a message that only God can give…“He is not here!  He has risen!”  but they don’t tell them what to do with this knowledge or what to do next.  They let them work it out for themselves.  They’re probably accused of silliness or hallucinating or being spooked or maybe even drunkenness or making things up. 

Likewise we have to work out what to do with our Christian knowledge ourselves.  We have to work out whether we believe Jesus rose from the dead or not and what it means if he did.  Like the women, maybe we’re not the best witnesses to the risen Christ either.  

Often Christians are not regarded as plausible.  People will look at us doubtfully when they hear us speak about our walk with Jesus.  We don’t usually bump into the risen Jesus or angels.  We simply have to believe (or not) the words:  “He is not here!  He has risen!”  

Peter’s actions are also a helpful example to us.  An example of discipleship for prospective followers.  What Peter did, said and thought is quite a realistic one for people hearing the Easter story for the first time, both then and now.He heard the women’s words and went to the tomb to see for himself.  He neither trusted immediately nor disbelieved too quickly.He went to look for himself.  

Throughout Jesus ministry he was asking the disciples to notice the people and the world around them, to think, to observe God working, making a difference.  Assess what you think and learn for the future.  Discipleship is about constantly learning new things about God and discovering him afresh.  Perhaps at long last Peter has learnt that’s what he needs to do as a disciple and follower of Christ.  Luke’s resurrection probably isn’t going to be your favourite.  Most people are going to prefer the passion of one of the other two Gospels depending on your personality type.  

But we should bear in mind that the people who heard this much less polished resurrection story… the people who Luke ministered to and lived among and read or heard his words…..they went on to be the people who would feature in the book of Acts, which is the other book of the Bible that Luke wrote.   These folk were some of the earliest examples of Christian discipleship for us today.  Who ultimately spread the Christian message swiftly through Jerusalem and across the whole of med and passed it down the generations to us today.  The book of Acts is working out what to do next after those two greatest events in history….the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  They turned resurrection into a way of life.  They showed us not to search for meaning among the tombs.  That everything in this life has its limits and it is only God and the power of his Spirit who can transcend those limitations.  And that our hope is ultimately based on the power that raised Jesus from the dead. 

Christian hope comes from the journey we take with God and his working in our life.  When we base our lives on the good things of this life, God’s good gifts but nevertheless limited things, we’ll be left looking in the wrong place – among the tombs among limited things that will ultimately die.  We don’t get our meaning from this life, neither past, present nor future.  Sooner or later these things lead to loss and grief. Ultimately the only thing we can depend on is God and our life with him and our forever life with him……. And the knowledge that death did not defeat God’s son and does not defeat us either.  

We have a future with God beyond death itself. We belong to Christ.  We are his and he died and rose for us.  

Alleluia, Alleluia.  Christ is risen. He is risen indeed alleluia!  

Rev Larissa Trust

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Sunday 13th April - Palm Sunday

Reading Luke 19:  28-40 - Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King

After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”

Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They replied, “The Lord needs it.”

They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”  “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

Sermon on Luke 19:  28-40

On 14th February this year, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said to Ukrainian President Vlodomir Zelensky.  “I want to tell you and your people, you’re the ally I’ve been hoping for all my life.  Not one American has died defending Ukraine.  You’ve taken our weapons and kicked their !!!!!!  And I am very proud to have you as our ally.”

Two weeks later, following the infamously hostile meeting between Trump and Zelensky’s in the Whitehouse, Graham said of Zelensky:  “What I saw in the Oval office was disrespectful.  I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelensky again.  He either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with or he needs to change.”  What a difference a fortnight makes!   

One day, Zelensky was lauded as the charismatic leader, guiding his brave country fighting the more powerful adversary.  A David figure doing his best, and fairly successful, against the brutal Goliath.  The next thing we know, is that he’s being derided as an ungrateful and entitled despot, undemocratically holding on to power, and lacking a commitment to peace.  Irresponsibly risking his people’s lives.  As Trump put it “Gambling with world war three.”  

In the research I did for this sermon, it’s very depressing at how many people seemed to share this view on social media.  How quickly the tide can turn against you, when you appear to be in a weak position, or losing an argument, or not giving people what they want.  This change of heart towards Zelensky reminds us how drastically and quickly popularity and good opinion can be lost, particularly when events are turning against you.  

The prevailing question of Palm Sunday is: “What happened to the crowd?”

On the first Palm Sunday, when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, people were excited about Jesus.  They were aware he was fulfilling the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9: “See your King comes to you, righteous and victorious and riding on a donkey.”  

Jesus’ death took place at Passover. God delivered his people from evil and oppression at the first Passover in Egypt, and now He is doing the same again.  But with Jesus as the Passover lamb, sacrificed to deliver his people.  Jesus will emerge from all this victorious, as Zechariah predicted, just not in the way the crowd expected.  The crowd had seen or heard about Jesus doing spectacular things, and they expected more of the same.  And they expected a Messiah who would overthrow their enemies and bring freedom, justice and peace overnight.  

We could translate the crowd’s joyful shouts as “Long live the King!”  Ironic, considering that in a week they would be calling for Jesus’ death.  This wasn’t the first time the people of Israel had got Kingship wrong! Generations before, the people of Israel wanted a human king to lead them and they chose King Saul for the throne by casting lots.  Even though God had been faithful to them and guided them, the people rejected God as their true King and crowned Saul instead.  That didn’t end well!

And once again Israel is misunderstanding the role of King. The people had seen him do spectacular things, but Jesus wasn’t going to perform any more miracles now until Easter morning (save for in Mark when Jesus restored the high priest’s ear cut off at the time of the arrest).  Peter wasn’t supposed to do that!  Matthew, Mark and John record the crowd shouting:  “Hosanna” which means “save us”.  So, we can be confident the people had connected Jesus with their salvation and had recognised him as the one who’d fulfil prophecy. 

But Jesus’s ideas of Kingship and deliverance are different to the preconceptions of the crowd.  The people who were praising God and delighted to see Jesus, had the wrong idea about who Jesus was and how he’d save them.  They thought this saving would happen by military force.  And the peace would be accomplished by Jesus restoring the nation’s former glory.  But when it becomes apparent that Jesus was not going to fulfil their hopes, most in the crowd would turn against him.  

But it’s not just a misunderstanding of Jesus’ mission that causes the crowd to fall away. With thousands of people descending on Jerusalem for Passover, it’s likely that their minds turned to finding a room for the night and getting some food.  That took priority over being in Jesus’ presence.  They were drawn to Jesus, but they became distracted by sorting out their practical needs…..

……. “I’ll go with Jesus when it suits me, but now I need to check into my digs for the night.” …….“My people have been waiting for this man for generations, and I’ve had the privilege of putting my cloak down in honour of him…..but arggh look at the time …must go!”  Human nature is fickle.   

We struggle to withstand the pressure from cancel culture, to disown and punish those who popular opinion is unhappy with.  And then there are those personal distractions – the things we feel we must do, but which get in the way of giving our attention and time to God.  When the way of life we are following is demanding of our time, our attention, our money, our comfort…we lose commitment, we make excuses, absenteeism sets in as far as our walk with God is concerned. And in so doing we disown Jesus and leave him to his suffering. We call these events the “triumphal entry”, but really this is an ironic description, at least from Jesus’ perspective.  

One little bit of triumph…one little piece of very good news in this challenging passage is the final verse, verse 40: The Pharisees and teachers of the law appeal to Jesus to rebuke his followers.  They thought the crowd’s shouts were sacrilegious and blasphemous.  But they were also fearful of disorder or a full revolt or a threat to their power.  And for the Romans suppression of hostility which quite possibly might involve the Romans removing their power.  

Jesus responds to their indignation with:  “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”  Truly faithful followers of Jesus Christ will always praise him and proclaim the Good News and share that with others.  

On Palm Sunday my heart goes out to the disciples and the true followers of Jesus there that day.  They must have looked around on that first Palm Sunday and thought:  “This is going rather well.”  But what a difference a week made?  They could have scarcely believed what they were seeing on Good Friday, how could this have happened?  

The test for them and for us as Christians is to keep proclaiming Christ’s love – whatever the popularity of Christianity in the culture in which we’re living.  So let’s be faithful to Jesus’ Passion.  Let’s remember, and follow, and reflect on his suffering and sacrifice in these coming days and be thankful.  And let’s try to be like those few, those very few of his followers who made it all the way to the foot of the cross, and heard in that place of unmatched cruelty, those words of inestimable comfort, ‘Father, forgive.’  Amen.  

Rev Larissa Trust

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Sunday 16th March 2025

Reading Philippians 3:17- 4:1 - Stand firm in the Lord

Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!

Sermon on Philippians 3:17- 4:1

What makes you really smile ?  I’m not referring to jokes here, but just in ordinary daily life, what are the things, or experiences that can bring a smile to your face? The kind of smile that says you are at peace with yourself.  In which case it’s the kind of smile that can even, at least temporarily, overcome any negatives that may be uppermost in your mind. We all know what I mean by that, don’t we? Health issues, the news, relatives, other folk we know who are struggling, etc, etc. There are always going to be challenges that confront us, no matter who we are, but  the frown that this can cause, which is quite understandable, surely  must be subject to, and balanced by that inner smile.

We know what good a smile on your face can do to those we meet, friend or stranger, but more often than not, as you walk around the town, you see mainly dour faces. I suppose it’s a measure of the way things are. We live in a pressurised society with so much information about what is happening in the world. Reports of fighting, bombs and death, of yet another teenager being arrested for murder. There is more than enough to be miserable about especially  including the future for our children and grandchildren. As I say this, you are not smiling now !! Generations in the past didn’t have access to all this information, but we do, and it’s a challenge, and it’s even more reason why we need to be sure about our faith, because that is the place, our faith, where we are given so many reasons to smile.  We heard some of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. He would have been well aware of problems and challenges in his day, so he uses these words in chapter 3 to give a real and powwerful sense of how we can as Christians, despite all the negatives, have a very positive view of our lives and especially of our future. 

In building up to the passage we heard, Paul reminds them and us about the central factor of Jesus in our lives and says:-

V 8 “ I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”.

He continues V 10,” I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

And it’s this last point especially, about us, you and me sharing in the resurrection, that Paul wants to flesh out in our reading this morning. This is where my reference to smiling came from, because to have the kind of confidence in the future that Paul talks about here, which is there for every Christian to have, is worthy of a smile, not necessarily constantly on our faces, but something that can well up from within us, a smile that can help us as we, like everyone else, digest the challenges of life in the 21st century.

In these verses Paul points out the huge difference between firstly, an approach to living in the world as Christians on the one hand, and secondly, living as those who reject God on the other. I can’t improve on Paul’s words so V18+19   “For, as I have often told you before and now say again, even with tears, many people live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.

These are stark statements about rejecting God and a massive contrast to what comes next about us. So again using Paul’s words V20  “But our citizenship is in Heaven. And we (that is all follows of Jesus) we eagerly await a Saviour from there , the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body”. That is a fantastic statement of reassurance for us.

And Paul ends Chap 4V1  “Therefore, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord dear friends.”

This is a statement that is wonderful beyond words. The question for us is, do we believe it ? Have we really understood and grasped its significance  for our future ?  Paul is writing this because it is vitally important for us in how we live our daily lives . To grasp this truth is key to giving us the confidence God wants us to have in our daily lives. That despite all the negatives that can so easily bring us down, there is this underlying promise from God, a truth that can bring a  confidence to our faith and a smile to our faces .

As Christians, all of us, with our failings and weaknesses, all of us can nevertheless, because of these words, know for sure that the promise of God to us is that life for eternity in Heaven is a guaranteed promise. And if anything ever deserves a WOW it is that !! It doesn’t mean that we skip through life without a care in the world. Quite the contrary, because firstly, our call is to be servants as Jesus came to serve. Secondly, our call is to share this reason to smile with any who will listen, because Heaven has room for everyone who will respond to the fact of the death and resurrection of Jesus Finally, our call is to worship our creator and show the love He shows to us, in forgiveness to others.

It seems that Paul’s reason for writing so strongly was his understanding that all was not well within the Christian community at Philippi with factions and disputes. He was aware that some were losing sight of the basic fundamentals of their faith and needed to be reminded. The temptation for us all is to compromise, to relapse into a secular frame of mind. The temptation is to sidestep the command to love and forgive and to  let go of the standard God asks,  is never far away, and can subtly erode our aims and relationships. That inner smile of confidence in God’s promises can so easily turn into a frown. 

Paul knew the importance of working, worshipping and loving together. V17 “Join with others in following my example and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.”  That advice hasn’t changed. That is the way to help ourselves in living lives that reflect our Heavenly citizenship.

So Paul’s clear intention  is to give some clarity about some vitally important basics about our faith as a reminder that there are standards. SO…..

Reminder number one. As Christians we are citizens of a world to come, a future eternity in Heaven.

Reminer number two. We can eagerly anticipate the return of Jesus.

Reminder number three. We need to stand firm on the promises of God whilst we still here.

Reminder number four. We need each other.

Paul’s conclusion. 4V1 “Therefore my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends”.

To use a word we are familiar with, we are like expats from Heaven, having common standards and beliefs, a common hope through the resurrection of Jesus which means that one day we will be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait and it brings a smile to my face !!!

Rev Geoff Hobden

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Sunday 16th February 2025

Reading Luke 6:17-26  - Blessings and Woes

He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.

Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you  and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.

Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, or you will mourn and weep. 

Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets".

Sermon on Luke 6:17-26

We have just been reminded of Luke’s version of the Beatitudes and I’ve got what I hope are some interesting observations on how they reveal to us the challenge we have today of sharing our faith with others. Let me tell you first of all that Luke’s version is basically the same as Matthew’s ,  but he also, in addition, uses different words which I find helpful. For example, Matthew uses the word ‘Blessed’ throughout whereas Luke, changes the approach by starting with Blessed but then adding a section beginning with the words ‘Woe to you’.So  Luke’s version is not an exact take on what Matthew records. One rather humorous difference is that Matt says that Jesus spoke to the crowds on a mountainside, whereas Luke says that Jesus went down with them and spoke on a level place ! Typical of two people reporting the same event with some differences. What is identical is that Jesus is speaking to a large crowd plus the disciples and is giving some in depth teaching about faith and what it means to be a believer in God.

So, holding that in our minds, I need now to change the scene and ask you to  think  about how you communicate with others.  Imagine, that you are a volunteer in some charity, be it church or elsewhere. You have been doing the job for quite some time but it’s time to hand your responsibilities on to someone else. However, the role is quite time consuming and you worry that it might be difficult to persuade someone else to take it on. As a result, your approach to asking someone may easily go down the route of trying it make it sound so much less demanding than it actually is. So,  “It’s very straightforward really, there’s plenty of help, not too time consuming, just counting the cash on a Sunday”  What is the job, oh didn’t I say, it’s church treasurer. Wow, that is certainly not an accurate description of the duties of a treasurer. You get the idea?

Maybe you’ve done something like that in the past to hand a job on to someone else?

I suppose that in the main we start with the assumption that no one will actually want to take it on. We assume that the answer is likely to be ‘NO’. They know what we are doing though, and we know they know what we are doing. It’s a bit of a game !

Do you see where I am taking this in relation to the challenge of sharing our faith and the good news of Jesus, with others? If we find ourelves with the opportunity to share, there is a huge temptation to either oversimplify or more likely to avoid it altogether . Why? because we probably feel inadequate and also that they might be reluctant to listen. This is quite understandable and affects all of us, you are not alone. Let me at this point introduce the word ‘Paradox’.

A paradox is a statement which appears to be contradictory or absurd but is nevertheless true such as:-

1)The only rule is that there are no rules.

2)I can resist anything except temptation. 

3)The more you know the more you know you don’t know.

You may not realise it, but the Christian Gospel is full of Paradoxes, not least in The Beatitudes. The teaching of Jesus in the Beatitudes is still very early in his ministry. He already has his 12 disciples, has performed miracles and been rejected from his home town. Who Jesus actually is has so far only been eloquently described by  a demon possessed man in Chap 4 “I know who you are, the Holy one of God”. Absolutely right !

Where we are now in Chap 6 Jesus is faced with the opportunity to reach a huge number of people, possibly the largest crowd so far, people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon. Many of them in coming to hear Jesus, had experienced some kind of healing and so the stage was set for Jesus who took a line of approach which, in this evangelistic opportunity, could be considered surprising.

To summarise Luke’s first set of Blessed’s, he says

If you are poor, hungry, weeping, hated , insulted and rejected, that’s something to rejoice about because you are blessed. Really?

But He goes on, If however you are rich, well fed, laughing, respected, flattered, and welcomed that’s awful because you are to be pitied. Woe to you . 

Can you imagine the reaction of the crowd? What does He mean? Is it really better to be poor, and hungry and is it worse to be rich and respected ?   In these words of Jesus we have two Paradoxes, that opposite as those these statements  sound, they are nevertheless true for  followers of Jesus as they respond to what God asks of them.  What we as Christians see as good things, are different to the world. Jesus elaborates from V27.

I tell you, love, do good to, bless and pray for those who treat you like dirt. Don’t retaliate , release possessions and money and finally, Jesus says “You must live by the code you would like them to adopt towards you, not what they actually do”. That’s what brings blessings.

What Jesus is saying to this large crowd is dynamite. It’s nothing like the approach we might take in persuading someone to follow Jesus. We would much prefer to take John3 about God loving the world so much that he sent his son, or possibly using Revelation chap3 with the picture of Jesus standing at the door of our lives and asking to come in. So why did  Jesus take this rather strong approach ? Well, he is certainly not resorting to a softly softly approach in sharing what being a Christian means, and do you know, neither should we.

If we approach sharing our faith worrying about how they might consider us to be religious fruitcakes and how they might switch off if we talk about spiritual issues and  Jesus, then we are going to avoid explaining what is really involved and end up watering it down to make it more acceptable and hopefully more attractive.

On the contrary, we need to be bold enough to take courage from the approach of Jesus and not assume that they don’t want to hear it. If we are going to water it down to make it more acceptable,  we are almost guaranteeing that they will not be challenged to see the major message in the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Our hesitation is very understandable but we do know that every single person needs Jesus, whether they realise it or not, that their eternity depends on it.

Jesus gave his hearers on that day the full picture. He didn’t set out to make it attractive. He chose, to much rather show how the paradox of unselfish obedience and service is a perfect match with being blessed and loved by God. And when it comes to Paradoxes,

Let me remind you that the sacrifice of Jesus dying on the cross to give us life is a Paradox. Death leading to life is a strange concept  but nevertheless true .

We have another greater Paradox in that our all-powerful, self-sufficient God asks for our worship.

There is of course a difference between us and Jesus. When he was preaching to this crowd  he was a living, perfect example of what he was saying. His life completely backed up what he said. Our lives don’t always conform do they ?

We still at times long to be rich, happy, and respected and so it seems have a natural reluctance to speak up for our faith. That leaves us with both good news and bad news. The good news is that God understands us and forgives, knowing that we can’t shake off our tendency to sin. Repentance leads to our forgiveness. The bad news is that we aren’t let off the hook when it comes to witnessing to our faith. We may not live a perfect life as Jesus did, but we are as Christians, living examples of God’s love and forgiveness with a real testimony about heaven.

None of us are ever going to feel good enough. But we can help ourselves daily by drawing closer to God and reading His word which gives us life. God wants the challenge to us to witness and give our testimonies, to change from being something scary to being a real joy. May that be our story of faith for as long as we have left, and God’s blessing will be the result.

V23  Rejoice in that day and leap for joy because great is your reward in Heaven

Rev Geoff Hobden

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Sunday 2nd February 2025

Reading 1 Luke 2:22-40 - Jesus Presented in the Temple

When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”,  and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation,which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

 When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.

Sermon on 1 Luke 2:22-40 

I wonder if you have a personal bucket list?  A list of once in a lifetime moments or experiences that you particularly want to fit into your time on earth.  Jack Reynolds was still ticking things off his list when most of us would be putting our feet up.  At 104 years old, he became the oldest person to get his first tattoo.  He broke another record by taking a rollercoaster ride on his 105th birthday.  A year later he marked his birthday by doing a zip wire.  At 107 Jack got himself a cameo part in the soap opera Hollyoaks, making him the oldest person to perform as a supporting artist on TV.  He died in 2020 aged 108!  It’s never too late to have new experiences. 

Our Gospel reading is about more than an ambitious bucket list.  Of things we might fancy doing or even things which will bring us very significant fulfilment.  It’s the culmination of Anna and Simeon’s lifework after years and years of waiting.  You could call this scene Epiphany 2!  

A few weeks ago I explained to the children in Locking School that “Epiphany” comes from a Greek word which means “reveal”.  If you say “you’ve had an epiphany” it means things suddenly make sense, my ideas have finally fallen into place. Have you ever had a Simeon and Anna type epiphany?  

When something you were so sure about has been found to be true?  This is particularly important if others seem to be against you.  So Anna and Simeon’s epiphany is where we see their expectations justified and their hopes vindicated.How might we have a similar experience of vindication?  

Maybe because something that you were so sure about, that others doubted, maybe the whole world doubted, has been proven true.  You might feel a huge relief, a huge burden lifted off you.  Grateful that you weren’t going mad, if everyone said you were wrong, misguided, deluded, pig-headed.You may have seen others give up when you’ve stayed clinging on.    Maybe you stayed firm, when others counselled you to give up and move on for your own sake.  Maybe your dearest wish has finally come true after many years of waiting and hoping, bringing lasting happiness.  The truth is finally revealed and you can move on.  Move on to the next life in Simeon’s case. God’s enacting of the world’s salvation has begun with the birth of His son, and now his servant can depart in peace.   

As I said vindication is a wonderful thing and in this lovely scene we see many expressions of vindication.  Simeon, Anna and perhaps most importantly Israel.  And so too are Mary and Joseph.  Although scripture doesn’t definitively say that Simeon is an old man, we presume he is.  The Holy Spirit told him that he would not die before the enacting of God’s promises to secure salvation for the world in “God with us”.  

Simeon has been waiting a long time to see this, and he says he can now die unburdened because God’s salvation plan has begun, and we get the sense that the release of death will be coming relatively soon for him.  Interestingly Simeon talks of “a light for revelation to the Gentiles”, so he was way ahead of his time, he was confident that God’s Messiah would unite both Jews and Gentiles with himself.  We learn Anna, the 84 year old prophetess, has been a widow for many, many years.  Widows were people looked down on by the society of the time.  They were usually considered not worth listening to.  Widowhood was probably a tragedy for Anna, and she may have gone to the temple because she had nowhere else to go, but whatever she was steadfast in her devotion to God.  The temple priests probably would not have recognised her as a prophet.  But Anna’s exuberant response is an example of evangelism to all and also mimicked the praise  offered up by her predecessor prophet Hannah for her son Samuel, another child promised by God.  

Israel is vindicated because the Messiah has come and exile is gone.  In Jesus God is with us.  The people of Jerusalem receive the news from Anna that the Messiah has come on behalf of all Israel.  Israel is vindicated for her patient if imperfect faith that the Messiah would come to save her.  For her belief that her people would be freed from their enemies power and that God’s justice would reign. They’d be confirmed as God’s chosen people and that he’d been faithful to the covenants made between them.

If I were Mary or Joseph, I probably could not get enough signs to reinforce my vindication and my calling.  Angels, shepherds, magi and now Simeon.  Mary arrives at the temple only able to afford the cheapest sacrificial offering.  She has to give two turtledoves or pigeons because she cannot afford a lamb.  She is of course unmarried and probably to some extent shunned, but Simeon confirms what has already been revealed to Mary, identifying and receiving Jesus as the Christ.  The temptation to doubt her vindication must have been all around her.  Mary travels to the temple also in the footsteps of Hannah.  

Hannah’s vindication came hundreds of years before Mary’s.  Like Samuel, Jesus was taken to the temple to be presented to the Lord.  Samuel was to be used by God for a special kind of service, different to other baby boys.  And the same was true for Jesus, in the temple for the first time …. but not for the last.  

And on that day Simeon prophesied Jesus’ future.  But Mary was to hear that heartbreak is on the horizon.  That the Good News is not exclusively good news as far as Mary is concerned. There are consequences when you are the Son of God and his mother and father.  Simeon speaks of the division that Jesus will bring. There will be no neutrality with Jesus.  There will be a shift in authority and power, and this is already being demonstrated, with God choosing the weak, the old, the widowed, the poor, the marginalised to reveal his work.  And conventional forms of power would fall.   The light of the world was coming into a world that had been the location of so much fighting and violence and power struggles and oppression.  And not much has changed.  The shadow of the cross was present even here when Jesus was a newborn.  

Anna and Simeon show us how to live in the now but not yet.  They believed God had given them a role to perform in the future and they waited patiently for God’s sign.They show us how to live with uncertainty in our lives.They never lost hope of seeing the Messiah, though they had to wait for many years to see God’s promise to be fulfilled.  Their faith remained strong in spite of the disappointment of widowhood, old age, waiting and the subjugation of Israel.Both lived their lives dedicated to worshipping God and pointing others to him.  Simeon was given special insight by the Holy Spirit so that he would recognise Jesus as God’s son.   And guided so that they could come upon the infant Christ at just the right time.  

Like a glitter and glue picture, where you paint with the glue and then pour the glitter on, mid project the picture doesn’t seem recognisable at all.  But when the glue dries and excess glitter is shaken off, the picture becomes clear and the truth is revealed.  Anna and Simeon revealed God’s glitter glue picture to the world, identifying God’s truth revealed in the most unexpected of forms:  a tiny baby.  

Anna and Simeon show us that waiting will not be forever and that vindication will come for those waiting for God.  The truth will become clear when we shake off the glitter of hopelessness, faithlessness, defeat and doubt.  And wait for the epiphany moment when truth comes, the ultimate bucket list is fulfilled, the faithful servant’s work is done and they can depart in peace.  

Amen.  

Rev Larissa Trust

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Sunday January 26th 2025

Reading 1 Corinthians 12 12-31 - Unity and Diversity in the Body

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by[a] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.

Sermon on 1 Corinthians 12 12-31

When I was a child in the 60’s we played a favourite game called Misfits. It consisted of 60 cards with hats, faces, body and legs. 7 cards per person were dealt and then, starting with a hat, bodies were formed.  The hats, faces, bodies and legs did not have to match but to win the legs had to be a matching pair. The winner was the one who completed the most bodies. Such fun we had with that game.  But I hadn’t thought about it for years until I started preparing for this service and re-visited this part of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians entitled ‘Unity and Diversity in the Body or ‘One Body, Many Parts’. Not sure that Paul would approve of the connection but here are my thoughts.

Last week in the first part of this letter we heard about Paul writings about the gifts of the spirit. ‘There are different kinds of gifts, but same Spirit’ . These gifts include the message of wisdom, gifts of healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues. But Paul makes it clear that ‘All these are the work of one and the same Spirit’. That Spirit gives those gifts to each person as he determines. And that includes us. Everyone has been given gifts: think of those you recognise in others and don’t be afraid to acknowledge the gifts you have been given. The gifts are shared around so that they can be used at different times, different ways and in different situations. Furthermore, in today’s part of the letter Paul tells us that we were all baptised into one body by the Spirit and as a human body is made up of different parts so ‘you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it.’ A body can’t be all hands; the eye can’t say to the hand ‘I don’t need you’. Paul writes ‘there should be no division in the body but that that its parts should have equal concern for each other.’ Different people are given different gifts and different roles and they should all work together. That’s us too. The body of Christ, filled with the Spirit, should work together, , all the parts doing their bit for the good of the whole. And the body of Christ, of which each one of us is a part, has a greater gift which all should desire. Paul finishes the chapter with the words ‘And now I will show you the most excellent way.’  And then comes 1Corinthians 13 and the power of love which underpins, holds together, inspires and will not let us go.

The bodies that were created in playing Misfits looked odd: a top hat, a policeman’s head, a banjo players body, a pair of trousers with clogs. Fortunately no-one here is dressed so bizarrely. But it was a body.  All human beings are different to each other: no two people are completely alike (identical twins do not have the same fingerprints). Gender, race, wealth, health, age show our differences but we are all human. God created humans and wants his creation to acknowledge him and to love each other and his creation. In love he gives each human being gifts that will enrich, develop, cherish, protect and respect each other. God sent his Son, his greatest gift, to remind humanity of God’s purpose, to challenge humanity about the way people were being treated and to show them the way: the way based on love. 

As we look at the world today we can wonder where that love is. We look at the situation in the Middle East; we wait to see what the new President of the United States will do next; we mourn the death of a 12 year old boy stabbed in a park in Birmingham by a 14 year old boy. We look at the Church of England which has not dealt well with those within it who have abused their status; we look at the homeless: the lonely; those who feel all hope is gone. We remember the horror of the Holocaust. We look at the issues around climate change, the threats to our planet and the ways of life of so many and wonder what we can do about it. And how.

Well, we should look to Jesus, our Lord who knows what it’s like to be human. From Luke’s gospel we hear that Jesus, ‘full of the Holy Spirit’ was led into the desert where he was tempted by the devil. We can usually recall what the temptations were, but let’s focus on Jesus’ responses: “It is written man shall not live by bread alone’; ‘worship the Lord your God and serve him only’; ‘Do not put your God to the test.’  Jesus, full of the Spirit, knew what was right, knew what God wanted. He drew on that knowledge and resisted the temptations of the devil. How strong are we in our faith, in our knowledge of what God wants.  Do we go out, as Jesus did, in the power of the spirit? He went out to teach and preach. In his own home, Nazareth, he read out Isaiah’s words to show who he was:

‘The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,  because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.’

Jesus’ mission was ‘to proclaim the good news to the poor’, not just those who lacked wealth or opportunity but to challenge those who were poor in their lack of love for God and his purposes. Jesus came to get people to re-examine their lives, their attitudes to others, the way they used their talents for the good of others. And it was a message for all: the young, the old, men and women, the powerful and the powerless, the marginalised and the complacent. When Jesus spoke to huge crowds he would have seen a range of people, misfits in the eyes of many, and he would have been speaking to each one of those directly, telling them that everyone has a place in God’s family, his love and his blessings. 

Jesus  could do all of this because he was filled with Spirit. And that Spirit is available to all of us too, we misfits here today and in our church family.  Christians and the church may well been seen as irrelevant or odd nowadays so we have to stand firm in our faith and united in our fellowships. The Spirit comes to us through our worship, through our fellowship, through our reading of the bible, through our prayers. It guides and inspires us, comforts and encourages us. Each one of us is given a talent and the means of how to use it. As the body of Christ now, we have to work together in love, thinking of the needs of others, reaching out to others, challenging our own preferences and judgements, having ‘equal concern for each other.’ And when we get downhearted, let’s think about Jesus and his first disciples, the fishermen, the tax collector, old and young, the women. They would have been seen as misfits by many: but look at what they achieved.

On the lid of the box that held the Misfits cards were the words: ‘A game full of fun for children of all ages and the family circle’. Life isn’t a game and it isn’t always fun, but God’s love and the Spirit are available to all.  Being brought together in the body of Christ we are the family circle of faith. It is up to us to share that good news with others: let’s draw on all that God has given each one of us, using our talents and working together, with ‘equal concern for each other’, just as God intended.

Jane Barry (Reader)

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Sunday 5th January 2025

Reading Matthew 5:13  - Salt and Light

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Sermon on Matthew 5:13

Turn to your neighbour for two minutes and see how many things we can think of that we use Salt for.   With a little help from Google I came up with:

- Put on your chips/food (taste)
- Salt to grip on the road 
- Kill Slugs 
- Preservative 
- Bless/curse/sacrifice
- Currency/payment   
- Mouthwash – relieve sore throat/clean teeth.  
- Prevent infection
- Cleaning 
- Exfoliate your skin
- Extinguishing grease fires

Salt is used for all sorts of things.  Back in the day it was perhaps more important than it is today because, before the days of fridges, it was a preservative.  It was used to keep food from going off so quickly, which was really, really important for daily living.  Today we’re more likely to add it to our food for flavour, so you add salt to your bag of chips. But the key thing about salt is that it has an effect on the things around it.   In flavouring.  As a preservative.  To stop you skidding on the M5.  To kill a slug.  

So when Jesus tells his followers they should be like salt….he’s saying they ought to have an effect on the world and the people around them.  In other words – a Christian's life is not just personal for us alone.  Of course, a life of faith is there to help us personally by bringing us closer to God, and giving us comfort and hope and encouragement … that is good in itself. . . But our life…. like salt; should have an effect on the people and the world around us.  

So, in the same way as it makes your chips taste better, if you’re a truly salty Christian, your faith should make your life taste, feel, sound, be better.   It should add flavour to your life.  It should have an effect because the salt is there to have an effect.  

As Christians, Jesus is saying, we are there to have make other people’s lives better!  Jesus says:  "you are the salt of the earth”.  So it should change who you are for the better.  And it’s not something we reserve for special occasions – no – it's there for the everyday as well as you feel in a particularly holy mood.  Jesus said these words during the Sermon on the Mount.  When he told the crowd what they had to do, to be his followers.  This isn't some special teaching reserved for Jesus closest or most experienced disciples – this is for everyone.  It’s a key part of every Christian’s identity.  "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?"  

Most of us will know the salty sea foam we can see around on Weston beach.   Which is a bit yucky.  I understand this would also have been present around the edges of the dead Sea in Israel, where there are salty foamy mineral deposits round the edge of the water.  And if the salt itself was washed away  . . .you will be left with a sort of mush!  That's quite a challenging thing to say for any Christian – that if there's no sense of us being a positive influence on our things around us – if the salt has been washed out of our Christian life – all we are left with is some foamy mush!! 

Being like salt is intrinsic to being a follower of Jesus and – it's the "living it out" of loving God and having faith. To mix my analogies…as Salty Christians, we’re called to be big flashing neon signs for God or an equivalent.  Maybe that’s why we’ve got those great big noticeable, attractive, noticeable buildings that people have an affection for – to be noticeable, to make a difference, to be a beacon.  To have an effect in people’s lives.  

And similarly, that’s why God provided our villages with all of you.  You can be salty around your neighbours in Hutton and Locking and Parklands and wherever you go.  You are called to point people to Jesus.  You are family members of his church and you’re called to welcome more siblings to God’s household.   To reach out to our friends and neighbours. So I want to us to return to the strapline I introduced when I arrived here:  “In friendship, In fellowship, In Christ.”  

I think folk in our churches are really good at friendships, and we need to use those friendships and relationships to bring the people we are friends with and care about to Jesus.  Jesus commanded remain in my love.  

We need to persist in our relationships.  We need to invest in our friendships.  We need to go out and be salt and light to our friends.And pray for an effect.   We need to really feel and believe in God’s love for us and to believe and feel that love is extending wider to all those around us even those who know nothing about him or who have rejected him.  

So how do we do this when the truth is that the majority of people we meet in our lives and in our community are good people who live good lives and often do really good things.  (And of course, we should be good people too, but if that's all we are, then it's unlikely to be that effective.) This teaching about being salt and light is part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus describes a Christian life as being of goodness that far exceeds the norm.  In other words – showing such grace and kindness and love that would be beyond what any of us could achieve of our human nature. 

So, for example – if we're just kind to those who are kind to us, that's no big deal…. Jesus says our goodness should exceed that: In Matthew 5:23:  ‘You have heard that it was said "love your neighbour and hate your enemy".  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’   In Verse 46 “If you love those who love you what reward will you get?  Even the tax collectors doing that and if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?”

Our society and everyday life can be full of backbiting, worry and selfishness.  But supposing we could be people of such mercy and joy and peace and generosity and love . . . . that we stand out. I  think that’s where living out:  In Friendship, In Fellowship, In Christ begins.  

Our society is full of selfishness and worry.  If we are unnaturally graceful and hopeful and joyful... we will be different and hopefully others might observe that and be interested in that difference.  We’ll be salty if you like, and others may start to notice it.  

The difference a relationship with Jesus Christ makes is a distinctiveness in loving and caring for others … so that others start to notice it.  And want some of that too.  That’s how we go from friendship, to fellowship in some sort of joining in, and then to faith in Jesus Christ.  What if we could be people of unusual amounts of grace, far beyond what others might expect.   Wouldn't it be lovely if villagers said that of people from Locking church or Hutton Church… that they show unusual amounts of love!

Many of us will have heard this teaching about salt and light before. Probably all of us would agree it was a good thing  …but secretly when we think about our lives we wonder “is this beyond us?” Well, if you’re overwhelmed by the scale of the task, and feeling you're not up to it, remember that we don’t do this in our own strength.  In fact, it’s impossible to do this in our own strength.  God helps us.  Just before Jesus talks about being like salt, he talks about certain people who are blessed.  The first of the Beatitudes is this: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  

A Christian who is humble enough to realise they are spiritually poor  . . . .who painfully knows the limits of their ability to love . . . . you may be surprised to hear is blessed!  You’re blessed when you ask for God’s help.  "The Message" paraphrases this verse as: "you're blessed when you're at the end of your tether.  With less of you there is more of God and his rule".  

God helps those who know their need of him. Are you humble enough to realise that when it comes to being salt and light in the world, you can't do this by yourself?  That is the very point God will help you  . . . . .if you pray and ask for his help. 

Do you feel like you may be "at the end of your tether" in terms of these challenges? Then ask the help of God's holy spirit and, if you’re willing, he will fill your life with his fruit. – Of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and self-control. Ask God and he will fill you to the measure that will overflow to others – and you will become like salt. Because of God's work inside you.

And also we are here in church to encourage each other to be salty in our lives. That's one of the main reasons we meet together is to help each others live out our lives during the week as Christians.  To get the information, encouragement, strengthening to go out and be salt and light in the world.  

I hope that as we journey together, as two churches, we will find more and more ways to live out our faith.  And church should act as a springboard to help each of us do it.  I'm sure this is something many of us know and realise but I hope and pray for a renewed understanding and enthusiasm for doing it.

The opportunities to be salt and light for Jesus Christ are all around us in each and every one of our networks – whether it is work, family friends, activities, neighbours.  In all the interactions and relationships there is the potential to show unnatural grace – to be salt and light in the world.  And we invite God in to help us to be truly people living out and responding to God's amazing love.  Amen. 

Rev Larissa Trust

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Sunday 15th December 2024

Reading Luke 3 - John the Baptist Prepares the Way

 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:

“A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord,  make straight paths for him.
Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all people will see God’s salvation.’”

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

 “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”  Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”  He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.

 But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.

Sermon on Luke 3

Did you know that John the Baptist and my son had one thing in common ?  They were both raised in a vicarage !

There the similarity ends. You will remember that John’s dad Zechariah had a rural ministry as a priest and we know the story of how John’s birth came about.  We will shortly be reminded of Mary turning to John’s mother(who was also pregnant) for support and travelled to her ‘vicarage’ to stay for 3 months. No doubt between the two of them there would have been a huge sense of expectancy. We know from the Old Testament that God had already given prophecies about both these births. The angel said to John’s father “He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight  of the Lord. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth”. And of Jesus the angel said to MARY, “He will be great and will be called the Son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his servant David. His kingdom will never end”.

There aren’t too many babies born with those kind of expectations are there? These were messages that both families would need to hold on to in the future as events developed.

It would be interesting to know what kind of conversations Zechariah and Elizabeth would have had ? They had no idea as to what course their new baby’s life would take. I wonder how much they told John about the unusual nature of  this prophecy from the angel ?

Similarly for Mary and Joseph of course, a statement about the birth which was mind blowing and once Joseph got over the shock, no doubt they talked about and wondered.

I think that we can confidently say that both boys would have been aware of the prophetic nature of their births at an early age, and as a result both would have lived with a high degree of expectation about the future. So both households would have moved into the future with the promises of God ringing in their ears.

It would be good to remind ourselves at this point that both John and Jesus had the free will to refuse the ministry allotted to them, just as Judas had the choice of betrayal and you and I also have the choice of how we serve God.

In our reading from Luke 3 we see from verse 15 that John had already taken on his role with gusto and was making an impact with many sections of the population. He knew that he was to be a voice calling in the wilderness and that’s what he did. We are also told that the people were waiting expectantly and were wondering. Question ? was it a coincidence that both John and Jesus began their ministries at the age of 30 ? In the days when the Ark of the Covenant containing the ten commandments, had to be carried around from place to place on poles because of its weight, there was a rule that the men carrying it had to be from priestly families and had reached the age of 30. You know we do worship a God of order who likes things to be done properly.

The people were expectant because they knew the scriptures. They were acutely aware of the prophecies about John and Jesus and it’s not surprising that they weren’t sure if they listening to Jesus or John. So we shouldn’t be surprised that when John began, that crowds came to listen. Luke calls them crowds, in Mark we read that it was the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem. These really were momentous days. John didn’t need a poster campaign or facebook to get the word around. Was he a gifted orator who flattered and entertained them ? Quite the contrary. In fact his words were more likely to put them off. V7 You brood of vipers v3 You need to repent and be forgiven. V9 Your religion is in danger of being cut off at the root. In the style of the Old Testament prophets his message was clear. What he had read in the Old Testament gave him the content. In short, God hates Sin !!! and that hasn’t changed.

John’s message was straight and direct because it was clear that the Jewish religion had become nothing more than words and symbolism. So despite his words and accusations I ask again, why did they continue to come? I have two suggestions. Firstly I feel sure that they knew that it was the truth. Certainly not a new truth, as they knew their scriptures and therefore had heard it from the prophets of old. Like them, John was calling for repentance, a turning away from disobedience, and because they knew that it was true, many of them were ready to respond. My second suggestion as to why they were so attracted to listen and respond centres around a word I have already used several times is the word ‘expectancy’.  Just as the two mums were waiting with expectation for their babies to be born, so the whole Jewish nation lived in the expectation of a promised Saviour. We’ll be having these readings over Christmas. So to summarise, the Jewish history included……Expectation of freedom from slavery in Egypt, expectation of the Promised Land, expectation of a Messiah. These were all integral aspects of their faith in God. Two of them had already happened, but  now it was for them, waiting to be released from slavery to the Romans. Remember too that for them, nothing had been heard from God for about 400 years. From the time of the prophet Micah God remained silent. Their expectancy was, as a result heightened. Despite John’s tough words, they listened. V10 What shall we do then? Followed by the tax collectors asking V12 What should we do ? and in V14 even the soldiers asked and what shold we do ? There was a consensus that change was needed. Could it be possible that this man John was either the Messiah or telling us about him ? Perhaps as individuals they were hardly daring to voice this age old promise and control their sense of excitement.

Let me stretch your memories as I have stretched mine to think back to the time when as a child you were approaching Christmas hoping like mad that what you had asked for was going to happen, but not daring to ask in case you are going to be disappointed ?

V15 tells us that the crowds came out to hear John and “were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ”  and in 

V16 they get the answer “But one more powerful than I will come….”

It wasn’t long before, perhaps many of the same crowd , witnessed the baptism of Jesus which included, as we know, the voice from Heaven conforming who Jesus was.

For us now, with these well known stories of long term promises of God being realised and expectations being fulfilled,we as Christians, also live with the same kind of long term expectancy that the Jews lived with. We too, as followers of Jesus, have long term promises regarding both our individual futures and the future of God’s creation. We too can have the same thrill of knowing that God is faithful, even though the wait seems so long. We can allow that firm expectation to fuel our daily lives and service. I believe that God can do so much more when he is working alongside people who have that same sense of expectation. The season of Advent can so easily be swallowed up with preparations to celebrate the birth, that the promise of His return is hardly mentioned. It will happen and we are called to wait, but if we become apathetic or indifferent and lose that sense of expectation there’s a chance that that we may be blocking our witness of God in our lives.

The days in which we live and practice our faith now, are not dissimilar to the period of Jewish history when John arrived, but because of the past, because of the birth, life , death and resurrection of Jesus and the words in this wonderful book, we have every reason to live in expectation of the promised return of Jesus and, as Christians the prospect of our own secured future in Heaven. So this Christmas, as we celebrate the birth, lets live expecting God to keep His promise, that for all who follow Jesus our eternity is assured and that the best is yet to come. Alleluia !!

 Rev Geoff Hobden

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Sunday 24th November 2024

Reading John 18: 33-38 - Christ the King

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

“Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

 “What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.

Sermon on John 18: 33-38 and Rev 1: 4-8

A light depiction of apparent good leadership in recent years has been the Love Actually prime minister’s speech, where the prime minister, famously portrayed by Hugh Grant, refuses to let the UK be pressured into decisions by an American president who uses and abuses the UK/US special relationship, not to mention the prime minister’s PA, for his own and America’s betterment.  Hugh Grant’s character refuses to be bullied and demands equal status within the partnership.  But the Love Actually prime minister is a long way from the kind of leadership that we see from Jesus in these two readings. 

Today is the feast of Christ the King.  It was established by the Pope in the mid 1920s as a reaction to the first world war.  While the fighting had stopped, earthly governments had failed to stop nationalism and solve the class divisions.  Christ the King falls on the Sunday before Advent, a time when we think about the future, to Christ’s return and the coming of his Kingdom.  Today we recognise that Jesus responds in a way that human leaders cannot, and consummates the work that is beyond earthly leadership.  

We hear Jesus say to Pilate: “My Kingdom is not of this world.”  And the words from Revelation, give us a sense of this world beyond.  “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is,  and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”  (Verse 8). 

We hear words that describes eternity.  Language that transcends the world’s limitations telling us Christ’s power will last forever.  With these words we’re simultaneously taken back to Eden and transported forward to God’s Kingdom.  We regain the purity and simplicity of creation.  And we experience the consummation of Christ’s Kingdom in spectacular fashion God taking control over nature, specifically the clouds.  God will be supreme over every evil humans can devise.  And he will overcome death.  And he will capture every heart and mind, convincing even those who put him to death.  

At Christ the King we particularly think about power and specifically how earthly power is at odds with divine power.  Whilst the point of Christ the King is to acknowledge that human leadership is never going to match up to God’s standards,  we are called to  ask:  How can earthly power be exercised in a Christlike way?  Our readings hold human leaders to account and projects Kingdom values into our world.  

Our Gospel passage is an account of Jesus’ meeting with one of the most earthly powerful people alive at the time.  And Jesus appears powerless before him.  By most earthly standards, Pilate is powerful and assumes the power lies with himself.  But Jesus refuses to let Pilate get himself off the hook by saving Jesus life, and so denies Pilate his power.  When Jesus speaks about the Kingdom, he’s speaking to Pilate and every other tyrant, saying:  I am powerful, yet you are incapable of seeing my power.  My power is beyond your heart and your understanding and values.   I have the power to get out of this situation, but I won’t, because I won’t capitulate to the power of evil.  And I don’t recognise your power which is the power of saving oneself.  I will de-centre the power of Rome.  My Kingdom will transcend human power, earthly power, here concentrated in you.

Heavenly authority does not come from tyrrany or indeed an election, or an appointment or war.  Whilst Jesus is standing there in human frailty, his authority is fully divine, and is not accountable to Pilate and his questioning.  But neither does give self protection from human powerlessness.  Jesus’ approach to power isn’t the same as ours. Jesus’ power came through the cross.  Before, during and after Jesus’s lifetime crucifixion equalled powerlessness.   In 30 AD crucifixion was a disaster.  It was not a Tale of Two Cities honourable, worthy death.  It was the death for the lowest of the low.  It was a disgraceful death for disgraceful people.  In submitting to crucifixion Jesus was saying I don’t care about disgrace, shame, loss of reputation.  I expect to be abandoned and misunderstood.  And I refuse to use my power to avoid that.  

The early Christians were really unsure and embarrassed about the crucifixion.  The didn’t know how to deal with it.  They didn’t like to think about it. Let alone wear a cross around their necks.  But the cross was the means by which God triumphed over everything and made himself Kingly.  It was the means by which he will convince everyone in the end.  By the cross he could, reject all human power.  

The most Christlike way of exercising power is to be faithful to what you believe to be true. It’s important to remember the truth of the cross is beyond the good opinion of our or any generation’s contemporaries.   A much better judge of power is how you’ll be judged in 200 year’s time, than what seems reasonable or approved of now.  

Jesus’ power brought the freedom to the world.It brought life to all who follow Jesus.   The power of the cross will last forever.     As we know, Pilate’s oppressive power didn’t last.  Pilate will be judged eternally by the earthly power he misused briefly. Jesus’ Kingship is found in his faithfulness, constancy, truthfulness, goodness and his enduring love and this will last forever.  And instead for Pilate, the eternal judge of Pilate will be his poor character. 

In life we gain glimpses of heavenly power.  We live in earthly time and circumstances.  And it’s so difficult to throw off our earthly values.  But fortunately God was able to do this where we fail.  

Pilate was consumed by his failures.  He is forever associated with cowardice and weaseliness.  But he Pilate brings us closer to understanding the forsakenness of the world and how much we need Jesus, who we know never fails and will never fail us.   The reality is we share some things in common with Pilate we fail regularly and choose the easy option.  We are complicit in the decisions he made and the actions he took when we choose our own security over justice.  When we wash our hands of the injustice of the world and pretend there is nothing we can do.  

At times we betray Jesus.  Failure, failure, failure.  We want Jesus to use his power and take away our failure.  We want him to be strong and Kingly.  We want his reign to begin.  Righting wrongs, ending pain, correcting injustice, sending the wicked away empty, setting the record straight and making all well with the world.  And we tend to think of power in Pilate terms rather than Jesus on the cross terms.  Even now, as Kingdom people, we think of the majesty of Kingship and the bang, crash, wallop of the end times.   But the ultimate truth of Kingship is that at the end of time, the face that we will see on the throne will be the same face we see on the cross. 

When Christ sits on his throne, we will see the vindication of the oppressed.  All pain sorted. Everyone and everything healed forever.  Death and sin will have failed.  The scars of the crucifixion will still be there but their ability to harm us and dominate us, will be gone.  Truth, love and God’s kingdom …these are the only things that will last forever.  And God’s mercy is the only thing that has never failed.  

In this Kingdom season and as Advent comes in let us put our hope at the foot of the cross ....the one thing that has never and will never fail us.  

Amen.  

Rev Larissa Trust

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 Sunday 10th November 2024   REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

Reading  John 15: 9-17 -  Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.

Sermon - John 15: 9-17

In all wars, countless servicepersonnel on all sides put their lives on the line for the good of their country and to save the lives of their comrades. 

There were two friends in World War One who were inseparable.  They had enlisted together, trained together, shipped overseas together and fought side by side in the trenches together.  During an attack, one of them was critically wounded on no man’s land, and barbed wire was preventing any likely return to the home trench.  The entire area was under constant enemy crossfire and any attempt to reach him was certain to lead to the death of any rescuer.  Their sergeant forbade his friend from going after him, saying: “It's too late, you’ll only get yourself killed.”  But when the sergeant’s back was turned, his friend went over the top onto no man’s land to rescue his friend.  

A short while later, he staggered back, mortally wounded with his friend in his arms.  The sergeant was both angry and deeply moved:  “What a waste he blurted out.  He’s dead and you’re dying.  It just wasn’t worth it.” With almost his last breath, the dying man replied:  “Oh yes it was Sarge.  When I got to him, the only thing he said was:  I knew you’d come.” 

Second Lieutenant John Robert Fox was an African American artillery officer fighting the Nazis in Italy during the second world war.  In December 1944 he was commanded to stay behind in the small village of Sommocolonia, in Tuscany.  The village had been overrun by the German side, and his comrades were in retreat.   Fox found a house to hide in and, from the second floor, he used his radio to contact his commanders.  He called for artillery fire to be directed at the village in order to give his comrades time to retreat, regroup and then launch a counter-attack. Fox even specifically ordered a barrage of fire on his exact position. The gunner who received the message assumed it was some mistake.  Fox, simply said: “Fire it.”  

His act of self-sacrifice was not in vain. Just as he’d planned, the artillery barrage did indeed give his comrades the chance to regroup and launch a successful counterattack. In April 1982, Fox was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.  In the early 1990s, the US Army determined that black soldiers had been denied consideration for the Medal of Honor in World War II because of race discrimination. In 1996 ten African American veterans of World War II were awarded the Medal of Honor including Lt. Fox.]

And I am grateful to Steve de Bruin for sending me this final story, taken from the pocket sized John’s Gospel, distributed to soldiers on active service, during the Great War, which we have placed on the altar. 

A young soldier on the front line, developed a love for singing hymns to keep his spirits up.  He became known as Singing Jim. During a reconnaissance mission, a young soldier from his company was wounded between the trenches.  A volunteer was asked for, to recover his body, and ‘Singing Jim’ stepped forward. He reached the man undercover of darkness, and began crawling home with his friend on his back. Then a flare burst overhead, revealing their position.  A single sniper shot rang out and Jim was killed outright.  

The stories that we have just heard show us what redemption means in the face of the horror and devastation of war.  In our Bible passage we hear part of Jesus’s farewell message to his disciples and friends, just hours before his own death.   Jesus was worried and concerned about the danger and difficulties the disciples would face in the future.  Jesus died at the hands of an evil regime, and he knew that was also the destiny for most of his friends too.  And he wanted to prepare them for what lay ahead.  

The service personnel who we heard about, made the ultimate sacrifice, showing us the path Christ walked before them.  Whilst they faced death, all around them in battle, Jesus also willingly walked into the place of enmity, carnage, and horror, carrying his cross on his final journey, just as terrified as any combatant on the front line of war.  

Throughout history, service personnel in all conflicts lost their lives responding in love, obedience and compassion for one’s friends.  Fox was obedient to his duty and the other two were obedient to his friend. The soldiers in the stories we heard walked the way of the cross; Their broken bodies are witnesses to Christian self sacrifice.    In the midst of utter darkness hope is found in their friendship, duty, bravery and loyalty.   Like the three hero soldiers we heard about, Christ could have stayed in the place of safety.  But instead he chose to go into the heart of the danger zone to defeat evil and to protect his people.  When God became man in Jesus, God accepted that he would encounter the worst evil that humanity could experience.  

On the cross Jesus confronts the hate and anger and divisions of the world. And he does it with love. He receives the worst the world can give. And he goes on loving.  He lays down his life for his friends in the face of evil.  He asks us to do the same.

When we pray the Lord’s prayer we beseech God to deliver us from evil.  God did not grant this request for himself.  In war yesterday, today and tomorrow, God accompanies the service personnel of every nationality and faith into battle.  He weeps for the lives lost and seeks to comfort those who mourn.  He comes alongside terrified civilians caught in crossfire and those survivors for whom the psychological traumas cannot be shaken off.  

On the cross God faced evil head on, and did not turn away.  God does not guarantee us a happy ending in life.  In war, He does not promise to preserve lives and protect bodies, but on the cross he protected humanity’s destiny, which was to be WITH HIM in his eternal kingdom, where justice and peace will reign forever, and there will be no more fighting or war or tears or pain.  

On the cross God was prepared for whatever his enemies could do to him in order protect his friends and followers.  And today we remember those who did the same for our freedom.  Amen.  

 Rev Larissa Trust

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 Sunday 3rd November 2024

Reading  Colossians 3:1-17 - Living as Those Made Alive in Christ

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your[ life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Sermon on Colossians 3:1-17

If we were to gather all the clothes we have ever owned and worn, we could paint a picture of ourselves and how we have become who we are now.   We would see moments in our lives marked out by outfits worn on particular occasions….maybe the stand out moments in our lives. The garments might remind us of formative experiences, good and bad.  The garments would likely speak about changes in our personal development and our changing attitudes and wealth. Our clothes might reflect mistakes made or lessons learnt.  Damage to the items might say a thing or two.  A rip or a bloodstain might be a reminder of an accident or a trauma. 

Some items of clothes speak into our sense of identity. Women often keep their wedding dresses, though they will never wear them again.  Some people keep school ties or sports uniforms as mementoes of our younger days or group wear which forever links us to a particular group. Perhaps a gaudy T-shirt or sombrero, (which let’s face it you wouldn’t be seen dead in, in public,) preserves the memory of a precious family holiday; acting as a souvenir to be worn, or at least stored sentimentally at the back of the wardrobe.  Some women keep pieces from their maternity wardrobe as reminders of their journey towards motherhood , which hopefully hold joyful, happy memories. Baby clothes are often kept to remind parents of how small and cute their now 6 foot tall ‘child’ once was.  Those bereaved often hold on to the sweater or jumper of a loved one, preserving their smell as long as possible.  The item might be worn or hugged by the grieving person; a link to the intimacy of the relationship.  

So our clothes do more than just cover us, they reflect our history, our identity, the ups and downs of life, what’s important to us and how we have lived and loved.  And to use this idea, Paul seems to be saying that when we become Christians, the change in us should be very visible, similar perhaps to changes in our dress sense over time.  

And I chose these two passages this morning to help us think some more about our strapline:  In friendship, in fellowship, in Christ, which I feel God is saying will help us to think about our Christian witness as two church families, working together, loving God and loving our neighbours.   Visibly “Putting on love” in these two villages.  

Thinking like this can help us to avoid the mistakes the church in Colossae was making, that the apostle Paul was trying to fix.  The Colossians were in many ways Christians who were doing quite well.  But they were getting a few big things wrong.  The Colossians didn’t fully understand that Jesus was and is God.  And they hadn’t quite understood that Jesus was and is the source of salvation.  They hadn’t quite got that Jesus died on the cross to forgive us, from our sins, through his mercy.  They thought salvation was through special knowledge, gained by the person, and that Jesus was the intermediary who can help us gain this knowledge to save ourselves.  So on some level they thought that they could earn forgiveness and saving.  And Paul was absolutely refuting this in his letter to them. Paul told them things are more clear cut than that.  

It’s as simple as getting dressed in the morning. There’s no cleverness or earning involved.  Salvation is through the cross.  And we’re called to turn from sin and accept the love and forgiveness that Jesus offers. And then try to be good and kind people.  When we become Christians, says Paul, it’s like changing out of dirty, old clothes, into clean new clothes.   This is a major change in life and so people should notice a difference in us by observing us.  A major change has occurred, and that means we have to change how we appear to others. Much like the sorts of life changes evidenced by our wardrobe evolving with us. 

These new clothes should makes us feel different in a positive way.  Just as we put on new clothes after having a bath, when you put on fresh clothes and launder the old ones it makes you feel good.  You feel fresh and uncrumpled and you appear differently.  We have new attitudes and new behaviour so that people can see a positive change in us.  We should now represent a different Kingdom, a different way of life to the society around us.  We are to drape ourselves in new values and in different personal behaviour and we put on a new way of being alongside others.  Whether that's our family, our church, or our community.  If our faith means anything, then we must demonstrate that a Christian lifestyle looks different.  Christ has changed us and that must be reflected in how we behave.  

I’ve said this already to you as Vicar, it would be so much easier if God were to Zap us into faith, believing in him, and all the Christian values that come with it. But actually God gave us, his local disciples, the very ordinary everyday tasks of showing love to one another.   

Paul tells us:  “Our values are to be compassion, kindness, meekness, humility and patience.”  They are to be like clothes to us.  We can’t opt out of putting clothes on, thank goodness, and we can’t opt out of putting on our Christlike attire.  We have to put on these values in the same way we put on all our other clothes, and wait patiently for God to work.  These spiritual clothes should flatter us.  With our spiritual clothes on, people should observe in us, what’s at the heart of Jesus’ Kingdom.  We should appear spiritually attractive.  Being seen in these spiritual clothes - is like helping us to move from friendship, to fellowship, towards faith, belief, and Christ being part of our lives.  That’s our witness to those we live among.  In a world of pain and material values, we’re to be a group of people who seek gentleness, meekness, the well being of others. 

The Colossians didn’t like the idea of God being human and having a physical body.  And they’d also got in a tiz about sin. They thought God was too good to have anything to do with sin and they thought knowledgeable humans could deal with their own sin, through gaining more and more knowledge.  But Paul is using this very physical image of getting dressed to tell us that God is quite happy with physical things when our hearts are directed towards him and our goals are Kingdom focussed.  So what does daily dressing, as Christians look like?  

Firstly, we need to think intentionally about what God wants us to look like everyday.  Paul says:  “Over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”  (v14.)I need to not just put on a loving persona, but care for all those I meet, whether they are my first choice of company, or not.  

Secondly be aware God preserves our modesty every day.  We hear Paul say “you life is now hidden in Christ in God.”  So our sins our hidden, concealed, covered.  Those things that you don’t even want to think about, let alone that others should know about, are dealt with, lovingly, compassionately by Jesus.  Your relationship with him counts for much, much more than the things you’re ashamed of. And thank you God, we can move on in life, knowing God’s more than capable of dealing with the messiness and un-pleasantness and has dealt with our pasts.   And so we need to be thankful for the forgiveness that God offers.  And forgiveness is held up by the belt of binding love.  We have received God’s love and forgiveness, and we need to forgive others too.  And live as a forgiven person not self-righteously. 

Thirdly, we need to think what are the specific clothes I need to wear today.  Is there anything special or different that God is nudging me to put on today. If you’re dealing with a difficult situation you might need to be firm, along with all the compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. If you’re doing a job where you need to be confident you need to show this balanced with a spirit of humility and a thankfulness that God equips; not be boastful or arrogant. When we become Christians we can keep good things from our pre-Christian life we don’t need to get rid of these.   But when things hinder us spiritually and take us away from God, that cause us to be unloving towards our neighbours, that’s when worldly things become incompatible with our Christian clothes. What good do we want to take with us and what bad do we want to divest ourselves of?What new clothes do we need more of and put on all the time?  

So let’s return to Paul’s list.  

“Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility,  gentleness and patience, forgiveness, peace.  (v13-14).  We are here for the long haul!  We need to avoid getting scruffy, and the way to avoid getting scruffy is through love!  Love is the finest garment we wrap around us, every day.  We need to allow God to envelope us in his love Of course we’ll fail some days, we’re human, we’ll fail, but we ask for forgiveness pick ourselves up and go back again.We can only have these gifts in Paul’s list if we have love.  We can only keep going as Christians if we embrace God’s love constantly and repeatedly.  We can only do In friendship, In fellowship, In Christ if we accept and try to imitate and model Jesus’ love.  It’s only because of God’s love that we have anything to share with the world. We need to be renewed daily by God's spirit of love wrapping around us to renew, equip and sustain us.

If we are sentimental types, who keep things, the clothes in our wardrobes, are artefacts testifying to our life story.  If we get our spiritual wardrobe in order we’ll dress our lives with the values of Christ’s Kingdom, with an attitude of love, compassion, thankfulness, peace and forgiveness.  All of us have a role to play, dressing our lives with Christlike apparel.  As we go out from here, let’s walk the catwalk of the Kingdom.  Amen.   

Rev Larissa Trust

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 Sunday 27th October 2024

Reading  Mark 10: 46-52 - Blind Bartimaeus Receives His Sight

Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”. So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

 “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

Sermon on Mark 10: 46-52

For me one of the pleasures of winter is a cosy Saturday night at home. Sausage, egg and chips for tea, Strictly Come Dancing, then some other entertaining programme (not Casualty) finished of by Match of the Day (oh, that tune!).  And this year Strictly has been particularly entertaining and particularly moving (emotionally). For those of you who are not Strictly fans, this year, for the first time, a blind contestant is taking part.  Chris McCausland, a well-known stand up comedian, is dancing with professional dancer, Dianne Buswell. Chris lost his sight at 22 due to a hereditary syndrome. However, this has not stopped him performing a variety of dances with Dianne with remarkable skill and enthusiasm. His first dance, the cha cha cha, moved me to tears, as it did many. Not only must it take a huge amount of trust in his partner, Dianne must be inspirational and wise about teaching a blind man to dance so well.

And then I remembered that the gospel for today is about Bartimaeus, the blind beggar who Jesus encountered on his way out of Jericho. We all know that in Jesus’ time (and now) people with disabilities could find themselves ostracised, neglected, out on the street. Bartimaeus is such an example, another beggar on the roadside who others don’t see. When Bartimaeus realises that it is Jesus walking by he shouts out “Jesus, Son of David”. These words show that Bartimaeus knows that Jesus is the Messiah.  It would come as a surprise to many that a blind beggar had just knowledge and understanding of the prophesied Messiah.  In Isaiah 11 we read the words

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; (who was David) from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord— and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears;
but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.

Bartimaeus knows who Jesus is and wants him to notice him. So he ignores all those who tell him to stop shouting: he just shouts louder: “Son of God have mercy on me.” And Jesus responds: ‘Call him’. In his joy Bartimaeus jumps up, throws away his cloak (probably all he owns) and goes to Jesus. When Jesus asks him what he wants, Bartimaeus’ answer begins with ‘Rabbi’. He wants to learn more about Jesus, he wants to be taught and guided by Jesus. As he says, he wants to see.

Jesus’ response underlines Bartimaeus’ faith: he is healed. And Bartimaeus actions also underline his faith: he follows Jesus along the road. And that road is the road into Jerusalem.

Bartimaeus’ faith is an example to us all. It shows us that faith is open to all. It is a faith that trusts in in Jesus’ power to rescue, to change, to understand. It is a faith that shows more understanding than some of that of the disciples. In the previous part of Marks’ gospel, when asked by Jesus what they wanted him to do for them, James and John had asked for prestige and glory. It is faith that recognizes who Jesus is, what Jesus can do and it is a faith that won’t be quietened.

The story of Bartimaeus is worth visiting again and again. We can look at it from the crowds point of view: seeing a beggar, a nuisance, hearing him call out again and again to Jesus, being irritated, even scared by him. And then we see Jesus engaging with him, talking to him kindly and then walking with him towards Jerusalem. Why didn’t Jesus do that with us? Why didn’t we shout out in faith? What stopped us?

And we can experience it from Bartimaeus’ viewpoint. We all have things that get in the way of us being what we’d want to be, what God wants us to be. Do we know his teachings well enough? Do we learn from him day after day?  When we know Jesus is near to us, do we call out to him? Do we respond to his call to follow him? Are we prepared to follow Jesus wherever he leads us? Bartimaeus is someone who is worth using as an example because of the strength of his faith that overcomes things put in his way.

The reading from Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is our Great High Priest appointed by God. This Great High Priest knows what it’s like to be human: he is human and divine. He can sympathise with us; he can understand the challenges that life brings, he can see the potential in us. We, in our turn, must remember who he is: the Jesus who loved us enough to die for us and who will be there to guide us, guide, keep us and feed us when we turn to him in faith. So we should not be afraid to stand up for our faith, to speak out our faith. We must see each other through Jesus’ eyes, supporting each other, seeking out opportunities to support others, to see the potential in people and situations and to share what Jesus offers, to put aside the our preconceptions, our tunnel vision and to work for the kingdom of God.

Every one of us here today has challenges in our lives in a variety of ways. Every one of us will have a different ways of coping with those challenges. In challenging time, it is good to find joy in the company of friends and family, in the beauty of nature, in quietness, in worship and prayer. It is also good to watch Strictly Come Dancing and watch a blind man dance with such joy with his teacher who understands his needs so well and to see the trust between them. There is much to learn from others: how can each one of us help others to learn about the greatest gift: the support, joy , comfort and wisdom of Jesus Christ, our master and our friend. We must never stop learning, we must never be afraid to speak up for our faith, we must never ignore Jesus when he calls us to do something which we might see as too much of a challenge.  We must trust in ourselves, our own potential, whatever age we are; we must trust each other to work together for the spreading of the word and most of all we must trust in Jesus, who knows each one of us and who will never let us down.

Jane Barry (Reader)

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 Sunday 20th October 2024

Reading  Mark 10: 35-45 - The Request of James and John

Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”

“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked. They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” “We can,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with,  but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”

 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Sermon  on Mark 10: 35-45.

James and John remind me of some of the characters in the famous Blackadder Goes Forth series, set in the trenches of World War One.  

Firstly, there’s hopelessly naïve Lieutenant George.  There’s danger and death all around him.  The probability of death for him and his men is extremely high, yet he treats the war like a game of cricket and the consequences of losing like a sports thrashing.  Like George, and in spite of having just been told the exact opposite, James and John believe that Jesus is mounting a Messianic coup, and it has never occurred to them that there could be anything other than a completely happy ending.

Then there’s Captain Blackadder.  The main plot line of each episode involves Blackadder positioning himself to be elevated to an exclusive specialist role in the war effort, that will gain him praise and honour; but which will also coincidentally take him out of the trenches and away from the danger zone.  Inevitably Blackadder’s plans never quite work out, and he ends up back in the trenches again.  Until eventually his ingenuity can delay the inevitable no longer, and he has to advance over the top, where he meets his tragic death! 

Then there’s Captain Darling who has landed a desk job, well away from the front line.  He is aid to General Melchett, and believes their close relationship will protect him from the fighting.  He lauds it over Blackadder and uses Melchett to preserve his own life.  Sadly for Captain Darling, his relationship with Melchett doesn’t keep him safe, and he ends up on the front line anyway where he also perishes on no man’s land.    

There are similarities between James and John and all these characters.  They are all using some avoidance strategy to keep them from danger or at least from thinking about the danger. 

Like George, James and John, cannot envisage anything other than a straightforward happy ending ahead.  They believe Jesus will emerge victorious, and that they will be rewarded for their loyalty, and like good politicians, are now jostling for the best positions of significance in the new Messianic world.  

Like Blackadder, James and John believe they can earn their way out of danger.  Blackadder’s believes his cunning and cleverness will get him out of the trenches.  And the Zebedee boys believe they should get praise and credit for their discipleship, and are in fact at that moment, using Jesus to gain a position of significance.

And like Darling, James and John believe their devotion to Jesus will elevate them and secure them a clear reward.  That Jesus will emerge victorious and that he will protect them.  

Blackadder is quite honest with himself really, he’s clear he wants to save his own skin, he doesn’t really want to be a hero. 

At this point I want to say that I find James and John incredibly honest too!  James and John demand that Jesus gives them whatever they want and then they ask to be elevated and rewarded.  We think they are incredibly cheeky.   But actually if we’re honest, we also tend to tell God what he should do too.  We think “What a cheek” and “how childish” about James and John, but actually, a lot of the time we want God to do what we want him to, too!  We have a very clear idea of what is right, and we demand in our prayers that our plans are enacted.  Sometimes our ideas of what are right and wrong are pretty reasonable!  

That someone should be healed.  

For just decisions.  

For the welfare of others. 

For more good things.   

But at other times what we perceive to be right, is about gaining what we want.  Rather than think God might be doing something special from an unlikely place.  That’s why it is good to pray humbly, knowing that God knows the future and that he might have other plans. 

Jesus tells the Zebedee boys … and us actually… we have to be different.  “Not so with you.”   We have to be prepared not to dominate but to serve and suffer at Jesus’ side.   James and John lived in an honour and shame culture where it was natural to increase your own honour, or raise yourself up the pecking order, and conversely lower others or shame them.  That’s what everyone did!  And in their culture, Roman rulers did not care for their own people, let alone those they were subjugating.  

Jesus warns those present that if they are going to be his disciples they must be different to the leaders around them and must get away from the mindset of reward, and instead be ready to serve.  

Far from being those rewarded, the supreme irony in this passage is that the author reveals that those on Jesus’ left and right, are those who will die or certainly suffer with him, and eventually James and John do sit in those places of suffering, sacrifice and certainly in James’ case martyrdom.  

It’s worth mentioning that the lectionary cuts off three very important verses prior to the start of our reading:

“32 They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid.  Again he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him.33 “We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law.  They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, 34 who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.”

So James, John and the rest of the disciples were warned.  Clearly some people have heard correctly because we hear they were afraid.  Jesus told those travelling with him that if they want to follow him, they have to head to Jerusalem.  To take up their cross and follow him!  

But it’s often so difficult for us to hear what God wants us to hear.  To be satisfied with God’s timing.  To be satisfied with God’s weaker position.  This is a particular challenge to us as the Christian narrative becomes more and more unfamiliar outside and sometimes inside the church as well.  To be patient and work with God’s plan when our plan is a much quicker fix and a much happier ending.  

A memorable recurring theme of Blackadder is that every week the dogsbody Baldrick, tries to devise a cunning plan to deliver them all from harm and to gain them something better.  The plan is always straightforward, usually absurd and always ends in disaster….Fortunately, God had a cunning plan too, which he was already enacting.  But unlike Baldrick’s, cunning plan it did not fail!  And that was to face evil on the cross.  

The difference between God’s cunning plan and Blackadder and Baldrick’s is that God’s plan, didn’t involve getting out of the trenches.  As we heard, Jesus was telling his friends that he was heading for Jerusalem.  And was saying that if they wanted to continue to be his disciples they’d need to walk into the heart of danger with him.  

Later between 1914 – 1918 God was walking across no man’s land, shoulder to shoulder with his young men disciples of that day.  He may not have protected their bodies, but he was determined to protect their destiny, which was to be WITH HIM in his kingdom, and he was prepared for and ready to accept whatever they were going to do to him.  Amen.  

 Rev Larissa Trust

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Sunday 6th October 2024

Reading Ephesians 3: 1-21 - God’s Marvellous Plan

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—

Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you,that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. n him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Sermon on Ephesians 3: 1-21

This is quite a well known story, so apologies if you’ve heard it before. A girl was adopted by a family.  But she, and they, never quite gelled.  After a couple of difficult years, the adoption was dissolved, and she was adopted into a new family. 

For one reason or another, whenever the first family holidayed in Disney World, they left their adopted daughter behind with a family friend.  Usually — at least in the child’s mind — this was because she did something wrong.  So when her new family announced they were visiting Disney World she expected to be left outside the Magic Kingdom, though they did not initially realise that this was her expectation!  

The family were confused when the prospect of visiting this dreamworld, produced a stream of challenging behaviour, a month or so prior to their visit. She stole food when a simple request would have gained her a treat.  She lied when it would have been easier to tell the truth. She whispered particularly hurtful insults to her siblings - and, as the days on the calendar moved closer to the trip, her mutinies multiplied.

A couple of days before the family headed to Florida, her Father talked through her latest incident. She responded:  “I know what you’re going to do - You’re not going to take me to Disney World, are you?” The thought hadn’t actually crossed her Father’s mind, but her downward spiral suddenly started to make sense to him.  She believed that she would be excluded from the holiday.  And it was a lot less scary to believe she was being punished for her bad behaviour, than she was unloved by her new family.  She was making doubly sure that her behaviour was the deciding factor, rather than consider the other possibility.  

Her Father asked her, “Is this trip something we’re doing as a family?”  She nodded, her eyes tearful.  “Are you part of this family?”  She nodded again.“Then you’re going with us. There may be some consequences to help you remember what’s right and wrong — but you are part of our family, and we’re not leaving you behind.”

You might think her behaviour immediately got better.  It didn’t. Her choices spiralled out of control at every opportunity.  But the family headed to Disney World on the day that was promised.  And the family experienced all things Disney. Overpriced tickets, overpriced meals, and lots of lines, mingled with just enough manufactured magic to consider maybe going again someday. But by the end of the trip, a very different child emerged. She was exhausted, pensive, and a little weepy, but her month-long facade of rebellion had faded.  On the last night her Father asked “How was your time at Disney World?”She reflected “Daddy, I finally got to go to Disney World. But it wasn’t because I was good; it’s because I’m yours.”

I’ve chosen these two readings for my first sermon with you, because the starting point for everything we do, needs to be because we belong to God and that we are loved.  And these two readings show us how much God loves us. How much he forgives us. And how desperate he is for us to accept his love. 

As Vicar, my prayer for the Hutton and Locking church families needs to be the same as St Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians:  I pray that you:  “being rooted and established in love,  may …grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses [all] knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God”.  

Our first task as Christians is to know how good God is … and that he is watching for us coming home.  To be God’s children before anything else.  We need to know we are all lost sons. And that our only hope lies with our Father.  Just like the lost sons in the parable, we are lost in different ways, different places, at different times.  Some of us are at rock bottom.  Others fail to realise how good God is.  Either way, we miss out on an abundant party.  If we know how good God is, we shouldn’t have an aloof relationship with him.  We cannot negotiate a middle point through our own merit.  We are lost without the Father and homeless without a place in his family.    We must recognise and confess that we go astray at times and betray our Father’s embrace.  But our un-lostness is found in the Father’s arms and the curtilage of his household.  We need to work on our own relationship with God before we start worrying about anyone else, partly because it’s by knowing God really well ourselves that we will point him to others. By being really at home with God that makes us big flashing neon signs for him.  

Turning to Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians.  Firstly Paul prays “for the strengthening of their inner being.  In other words for Christian maturity.   We don’t do things in our own strength.  Without God’s love we are lost like the older son.  We can’t fruitfully or authentically act alone.  God goes with us and helps us.  It’s not going to be me… or you…. who brings about renewal to Hutton and Locking …it’s God.  When we forget Jesus, when we are busy running around serving him, it’s quite easy to forget to love him!We need to stay grounded, and rooted in Jesus’ love!  Immersed in prayer, living and breathing the Bible, taking in God’s word.  

Secondly Paul prays for the blossoming of faith through a loving relationship with God.  With God, everything is ultimately about relationship.  Paul paints this wonderful picture of dwelling together, living with one another.   Making a family with.  Sharing a name.  Passing down a good inheritance to loved ones.  It’s important for how we understand our own relationship with God and it’s also important for our coming together as a church family and for our mission to people who don’t yet know God.  God claims us for his own.  He wants to be part of our lives and for us to belong to him.  mAnd he wants that from all people.   Those that attend church, and those who don’t. We all want God’s family to be bigger. To welcome more people into God’s household.    

Thirdly Paul prays that his church family will know God’s love which surpasses knowledge.  Cleverness doesn’t count.  Service doesn’t count.  You are loved, honoured and cherished by God… and responding to that love is what makes a difference.  Saying yes to God when he claims you for his own.  Thanks to God’s love and devotion, you and I are fully known and accepted.  God knows all the things that we’ve got wrong in our lives, whether we pray about them or never acknowledge them, he knows about them and still loves us.  Once we’ve grasped how loved we are, we need to share God’s love with others.  God’s love needs to be front and centre of our ministry here in Hutton and Locking.  

The best thing that we have received and the best thing that we can share is God’s love.  We want every person in Hutton and Locking and Parklands to receive that love and be a part of that family life.  We want our church families to be a dwelling place for God to be found in our communities.  But in doing this we must be rooted in God’s love and motivated by God’s love.  Our motivation cannot be about more bums on seat, healthier finances or better building maintenance.  Our motivation needs to be more people knowing God’s love for them and more siblings in God’s family for us to dwell with, love and cherish.  And I am preaching to myself here as well as you.  I have only been a rector for 3 days, but I suspect it’s easy to slip into this mindset! 

And finally, our heads need to follow our hearts.  Our heads need to understand our own limitations.  To comprehend that God’s love drives everything.  When we stay rooted and abiding in the love of Jesus, he is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine.  But this ability lies with the Holy Spirit not with us.  God’s love surpasses all knowledge.  I know you’re excited about having a new vicar but any clever ideas I or anyone else can come up with are not ultimately going to make a difference.  It all comes down to God’s blessing in love.  And we need heads, hands and habits that allow our faith to flourish.  We need to remember to be persistent in prayer and persistent in loving God and neighbour and ask him to work, maybe using us.  We need to be observant and attentive to what God is doing in the world, pray about it and discern God’s nudging, bidding, moving.  

Ephesians is an attempt by Paul to encourage the fledgling church to love God and neighbour and to stay on track in this.  And I want this sermon to encourage you too!I think you are probably already salt and light in your neighbourhoods and we need to work out how to be renewed in this new season.    I think you already love your neighbours and are already serving them well.   And we need to ask God’s help, anoint, and bless our attempts to serve them even better.  

Let’s pray for that and for our faithfulness. We want more family members including some younger ones.  And just like the church in Ephesus we face some challenges – telling the Good News of Jesus Christ into a culture that is really unfamiliar with things Christian.  Our task is to be the body of Christ alongside people who are different to us … who don’t have a Christian background.  Ephesians offers us a vision of God’s hope for the world, to a church with all the same problems as us, except that the Ephesians live under fear of persecution and Paul was under house arrest, expecting execution, when he wrote this letter.   

Preachers often preach the message that they need to hear.   And in his imprisonment, Paul needed encouragement for himself.  And he also wanted to offer encouragement to his fledgling churches.  And I suspect many of you may need a bit of encouragement too.  

I am really excited to be here and I take seriously the need to love and care and cherish the congregations that you are.  Next week I want to talk more about God’s mission going forward and I’ve spoken about how I see this in my pastoral letter:  “In friendship, In fellowship, In Christ.”  The role each of us is going to have in the homecoming party the Father’s hosting.  Welcoming our fellow siblings who need the Father’s hosting.  Welcoming our fellow siblings who need the Father’s love. 

But I want to leave you wallowing in God’s love for you. God calls us into his household not because we’re good but because we’re his. God has chosen us and made us his own.  For our neighbours who don’t know him - HE WILL chase them to the ends of the earth to discover his lost child, and nothing on earth can stop him.  Throughout history, God’s grace has been revealed to the world, and he has used the lives of ordinary people like you and me to show his love to the worlds and welcome our brothers and sisters to the party.  Amen. 

Rev Larissa Trust

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Sunday 4th August 2024

Reading Ephesians 4:1-16 -  Unity and Maturity in the Body of Christ

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: “When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.”

(What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions[? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Sermon Ephesians 4:1-16     

Our Ephesians passage this morning is all about unity, as in V4 “Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace”. Before we dig into this important issue, I want to start with a quote from Checkov. Oh dear your thinking, who’s he ? He was a Russian playwright also writing short stories like ‘Seagull and Cherry Orchard’. Ringing any bells ? No matter, because he had quite a thought on the question of unity and wrote this “ Love ,friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something’.  Repeat.  We experience that kind of unity in our society all the time. Protests about the environment, strikes for more money, pressure groups on racial issues, opposition against building schemes and Far Right now !etc. All evidence that what Checkov said is true. The old maxim ‘United we stand, divided we fall’is part of the American declaration of independence but first coined by Aesop as part of a fable. All these expressions involve people who are united but against a common enemy.

The Christian response about unity is to paint a completely different picture, because to follow Jesus and his teaching  is to see that LOVE is a far more powerful uniting factor than hatred.

The Psalmist wrote 33v1 ‘How good and pleasant it is when people live together in unity, it is like precious oil poured on the head’. Luke wrote at one ppint, that all the believers were one in heart and mind. The significant difference between the protester and the Christian ideal of unity is that the unity for the protesters is held together with usually a degree of anger and often revenge whereas Paul describes the uniting factor as v.3 ‘ Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace’. In other words the glue that leads Christians to unity is the peace given by the Spirit. So Checkov’s observation was correct from a human perspective. We are more easily united when we have a common enemy. The unity we crave as Christians however, can only come as we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit.

As we look back over history, what are the signs we see of spirit led unity amongst the Christian church ? Well I have to say that it’s difficult and discouraging to be sure about many. In fact signs of disunity were in evidence right from the word go amongst the churches Paul was writing to. Which isn’t to say there weren’t positives because there were. In fact the first two chapters of this letter are full of Paul’s thanksgivings  for the Christians. But we don’t have to move too far into history to find disunity. The Council of Nicea in 382 formed our Nicene creed purely to state the basics of our faith as against the welter of other ideas and the canon of Scripture.(382)

You only today have to look at the huge variation of different denominations to see that unity is a struggle. There are attempts to help with organisations like ‘Churches together’, but in truth unity is in theory not in practice. So we have Methodists, Anglicans, Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, open Brethren, strict Baptists, Roman Catholics, free evangelical churches, black churches, Seventh Day Adventists,  and many more. Each resolutely maintain their individualism and there is very little contact, with exceptions. In an attempt at unity we come up with words like ecumenical and when a new area is being built or extended like Worle 30 years ago we discovered ‘Local Ecumenical Projects’ which then was Anglican and Methodist agreeing to share leadership on a rota basis. Both St Martins, Worle and St Marks are both now Anglican parishes. 

Locking Castle was formed on the basis of 4 denominations sharing leadership. I think that only Baptists and Anglicans are still involved. In practice it’s difficult. Another phrase comes to mind. ‘The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’.

The challenge of unity was as much an issue in New Testament times as it is for us now. We remember now that in the (19 the church didn’t speak up against slavery and it took Christians like Wilberforce and others to campaign for a united view.

Paul, in this letter is making the principal  of unity as a matter of urgency and perhaps his words can help us understand what Christian unity could be like and how it might be achieved. Yes it’s tricky and difficult which the past of the church shows. Yes we all end up with preferences and fixed attitudes which we all have , including me, but because it is such a strong Scriptural emphasis, we do need to persist in being open to some things that need to change. Paul says in v3 Make every effort. Perhaps this whole unity thing begins with us. So what is it., Well?

Is it losing all our denominational  structures and becoming one big amorphous whole ?

Is it simply worshipping in each others churches ?

Is it accepting the pope as a kind of universal head of the church?

Is it enough simply to work together on local projects?

Lets go back to Paul where in v 4 he reminds us of some central truths. 

V4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. What a fantastic statement that is.

 There is also the phrase ‘When you were called’. So our unity begins once we are individually called to take up God’s offer of forgiveness and become one with God through Baptism and receive His Spirit.

Yes,  there is a richness in our differences but the key to unity is in our attitudes to each other, to all those who take both the Bible as their handbook, and Jesus as their Saviour. There can be no compromise on that. 

Q Have you ever had that feeling on meeting someone new that they are Christians? When that happens, it doesn’t matter where they worship because you have a distinct sense of unity with them and it’s a great feeling.

Paul, towards the end of this section gives a description of how unity could work. Listen again:-

V15 ‘Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is Christ.

V16 From Him, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.

So Just drawing to a close, and aware that there are so many other   issues, Paul highlights that in our relationships with each other he wants to encourage us to v2 be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love.

It would perhaps be a sobering exercise to know how others would mark you and me in these areas. I guess that most of us struggle to some degree, but unity and the fruits of the Spirit go together in a natural way.

Perhaps the whole challenge of unity is so hard that we are tempted to give up, but to do that would be to ignore God’s perfect plan for us. He has designed that as Christians we should live together in the unity of the Spirit and in the bond of peace, so that the world may look at us and say “See how these Christians love one another”. 

 Rev Geoff Hobden

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Sunday 28th July 2024

Reading John 6 1-21  - Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand

Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover Festival was near.

When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?”He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.

Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”

Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many? Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.

When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, where they got into a boat and set off across the lake for Capernaum. By now it was dark, and Jesus had not yet joined them. A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water; and they were frightened. But he said to them, “It is I; don’t be afraid.” Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.

 Sermon on Reading John 6 1-21 and Ephesian 3 14-21 

I love words. I love reading them, I love hearing them, I love singing them. Most of all I love the power of words, how they can be put together for so many purposes, so many reasons. I love how a single word can evoke memories (Exmouth), can conjure up flavours (chocolate); can summon up emotions (Trump). They can be used correctly, they can be used ambiguously, they can be used derogatively, they can be misused and misspelt. The meaning and interpretation of words, signs, and sentence structure can be different from one person to another: the phrase ‘it’s just semantics’ is often heard about political arguments. But this morning we can concentrate on two wonderful pieces of writing that remind us very clearly about the importance of the use of words in our understanding of our faith.

The feeding of the five thousand appears in all four gospels: today we have John’s version. Unlike the other three, John doesn’t start the account with the disciples telling Jesus to send the crowds away: instead we see Jesus seeing the great crowd and then asking Philip the question: ‘Where shall buy bread for these people to eat?” Unlike the account in Mark , it’s a personal challenge: John tells us ‘He asked this only to test him as he (Jesus) already had in mind what he was going to do’. And Philip was from nearby Bethsaida, so would know where to shop. Philip’s answer shows his concern about what was possible: eight month’s wages couldn’t cover the cost. In Mark’s gospel that’s what all the disciples say to Jesus. And it’s Andrew who finds a boy with five small barley loaves (small number, small size, poor quality) and questions how far they would go. John is personalising these reactions to emphasise the response of individuals within a group reaction. John’s purpose as he states in John 20:31 is ‘these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.’ By choosing his words carefully, drawing our attention to individuals he is making us think: what would I have done/said/felt?

We also see Jesus’ command of the situation. He is calm, in charge. ‘Make the people sit down’. And they did. And when everyone had had plenty to eat, he calmly commands that the leftovers be gathered up and nothing be wasted. The amount that was gathered emphasised the enormity of this miracle and the power of Jesus, his care for all and understanding of indviduals.

And that power, that calm is shown again that evening. Jesus walks on the water to the disciples who were in the middle of rough lake. When they saw him they were terrified (Mark and Matthew say they thought he was a ghost). What does that tell us? Why were they terrified by someone they knew well and who had just fed 5000 people? Where was their faith in him? Again, he knew what they needed: ‘It is I: don’t be afraid’. Words of reassurance, words of comfort.  And when they let him on to the boat, immediately it returned to the shore: another miracle. We can align the experience of the disciples in that event so clearly told with the times when we’ve felt ‘at sea’ ; when we are frightened; when we fail to see Jesus in the midst of our turmoil. It’s when we hear his voice, however it may come to us, with those reassuring words: ‘It is I: don’t be afraid’. And we are brought safe to shore.

No matter how often we read or hear the accounts of Jesus’ ministry, his miracles, his teachings and his care for all, the words strike us in familiar and different ways. We are challenged, as Philip was, to examine our attitudes, our outlook and our faith and to be reminded how wonderful our Lord is. The gospels, written so long ago, still have the power to meet us afresh as we read, listen, interrogate them. 

And then there are Paul’s letters, which challenge, explain, argue, compliment, admonish, confess and guide. Today’s reading from his first letters to the Ephesians is the prayer for the Ephesians, which I think is one of the most powerful prayers for us all. Hear it again: 

‘For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’

Paul prayer makes it clear how much God can do. Part of us cannot grasp how much God can do; part of us is terrified of that power just as the disciples were when they saw Jesus walking on the water towards them. God’s generous love can change the world and if we grasp that we can be part of that change.

Paul’s passion, his faith and his words in this prayer are for us all. How can anyone not be moved, made curious, want some of this ‘fullness’?

Paul’s doxology: 

‘Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.’

reminds us that we are one of the generations who are glorifying the God. Those words remind us that we should be rejoicing always, through our words, through our prayers and through our actions. Let’s always keep the words of Psalm 19 v14 in our lives:

‘May the words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart  be pleasing in your sight,  O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.’

Jane Barry (Reader)

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Sunday 16th June 2024

 Reading 2 Corinthians 5: 6-10 and 14-17 

⁶ Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. ⁷ For we live by faith, not by sight. ⁸ We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. ⁹ So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. ¹⁰ For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

¹⁴ For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. (Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life.) 

¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 

Sermon on 2 Corinthians 5: 6-10 and 14-17 

Do you need new glasses? I keep getting reminders from Specsavers that my sight test is overdue! But how is your sight at present? Of course, I don’t just mean physical sight but your spiritual sight or insight? How are you seeing the world at present? What do you see that God is doing and what is your vision for your life at this season? Vision is so important. Getting the right perspective on life and the world is vital to help us live joyfully and effectively.  Are you a ‘half-full’ person or a ‘half-empty’ person? Do you see mainly the positives and things for which to be thankful or do you see mainly the problems and challenges and disappointments and discouragements? Our news media tends towards the latter, so how can we correct our vision?

In our New Testament passage today, Paul is seeking to ‘correct the vision’ of the disciples in Corinth, who had welcomed some false teachers who were dismissing Paul as their founding Apostle and causing all sorts of divisions and problems in the church. After his first letter, which taught on many subjects, in response to their questions to him – such as the place of spiritual gifts, sacrifices to idols, the importance of the resurrection and the primacy of agape love… Paul is now defending his ministry against his opponents but is teaching us to get ‘new glasses’.

In Chapter one, he testifies to the help of the ‘God of all comfort’. In Chapter two, he describes believers as the ‘aroma of Christ’. In Chapter three, he describes believers as ‘living letters for Christ’ who are in the process of transformation by the Spirit. In Chapter four, he describes believers as ‘cracked pots’ – treasure in jars of clay, seeking to preach Christ as Lord and as servants.

Twice he says ‘Therefore we do not lose heart… give up’ 4v1,16 Why? Because of having a new pair of glasses –  God is gracious and merciful and we can see life from God’s perspective; we have an eternal home and a heavenly body. So, Look Up to a wonderful future life with God.  With a heavenly perspective then, we can be of great earthly use.  And the Holy Spirit is a deposit and guarantee for this future hope.

THE VISION FOR NEW LIFE. V6-10

In Chapter five, Paul continues to contrast being Home or Away, in this ‘Tent’ or putting on our new ‘Heavenly Body’.  He is ALWAYS confident, even while still living on earth in this increasingly frail human body, because he lives by faith not be sight – that is by believing rather than just by seeing. But whether at Home (in our human bodies) or Away (with the Lord), his goal, his vision, his desire is to ‘Please the Lord’, to honour and bring glory to Him alone.

As the Euros started on Thursday and we watch and wait to see how England will do in this football competition, we wonder who will be the top goal-scorer. Goals are what it is all about!  But what is OUR goal in life? What is our vision? Do you have a personal ‘mission statement’? 

For us personally, we were given at various stages of our life, some pictures or prophetic words to guide us – Bridge, Plough, Surfer….word pictures that describe our calling and ministry…

Bridge – work in partnership, seek to bring people together (reconciliation ministry), also point to ‘The Bridge’ between God and humans – Jesus
Plough – prepare the ground for sowing the seeds, hard places, need for perseverance and ‘yoked to Jesus’, who gives us the strength to keep going
Surfer – catch the wave of where the Spirit is already working and join in. Less work but more allowing ourselves to led by the Spirit  to people and places where He is working.

Short family mission statement ‘Blossom where you are planted’. What about you? Do you have a personal or family mission statement, vision?  Westminster Confession: ‘To glorify God and enjoy Him forever’. YWAM – ‘To Know Christ and make Him Known’. Why is this important?  Exam or Inspection day is coming.

‘ALL appear before the judgment seat of Christ…. Receive what we deserve for what we have done on earth, whether good or bad’.
This could cause us to be anxious and fearful. It should certainly spur us on to seek to please the Lord in all that we do and say, but other scriptures remind us that God has in Christ already taken the judgment which we deserve for our sin and wrongdoings. But Psalm 139v23,24 are still so relevant to us today, as we seek to please God…. ‘Search me O God and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts and see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.’

A regular life of confession, seeking God and listening for his correction and His word of forgiveness and cleansing is so important as we seek to grow more like Him and follow His ways.

Paul continues to defend his ministry and says that he desires to persuade all people of the good news, because he recognises it as his fearful responsibility to the Lord and he is seeking to live a life of integrity and an ‘open book’. He is even willing to look crazy to some people if that means he is obeying God and pleasing Him. He was willing to take risks – for example by open air preaching in the market places!

THE WAY TO NEW LIFEv14-17

But what motivates Paul and us in our ministry? Why do we do what we do?  Is it guilt, fear, pride, ambition, insecurity? What are our DRIVERS?

v.14 ‘For Christ’s love compels us… controls us, motivates, energises, urges or drives us on…. Paul’s motivation is LOVE from Christ. That’s what we need more and more… an overflow of the Love of Christ within us and from us to those around us. It can be so attractive….

Paul is convinced and has a deep conviction that ‘ONE DIED FOR ALL’ or in the words of the writer of Hebrews ‘ONCE FOR ALL’.

ONE – There is Only One who could be good enough to pay the price of sin, to unlock the gate of heaven and let us in
FOR – in place of, on behalf of, substitute for (as in football and other sports)
ALL – whosoever will may come. No-one too far gone that God cannot change them

‘We also believe that we have all died to our old life NLT = ‘Therefore all died’ Death to sin, symbolised by baptism, ALL who are aware of their need for forgiveness, cleansing, mercy and grace 

V15 ‘He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves… but for Christ who died and was raised for them.’ NLT.  So, we no longer live for ourselves but for Christ.

Cf. Phil.1v21 ‘For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.’ Gal.2:20 ‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, who loved me and gave himself for me.’

V16 Stop seeing people and evaluating them only from a human or worldly point of view but see them through the eyes of faith. See their potential as a new person in God’s family?

We need divine revelation by the Spirit of God of the full nature and identity of Christ as Son of man, Son of God, Lord and God…both fully human and fully divine!

v.17 ‘Therefore (with new spectacles of faith, receiving a heavenly point of view), If ANYONE – note the conditional IF but the invitation is to ALL. Is – that is remains in, stays, abides, connected with.In Christ – New identity of a believer. Paul’s favourite expression. Eg. Col.3v3 our life is hid with Christ in God…. Illustration.

NEW CREATION, new person – There is often a gestation time, like the life-cycle of a butterfly from caterpillar to chrystallis to butterfly. And there is an ongoing process of transformation and renewal of the mind Romans 12v2 ‘Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your minds, so that you can discern the good, acceptable and perfect will of God.’ This takes time, but the spiritual birth can happen in a moment!

The Old has gone – old life, the bad, the old master, expelled, out, gone. The New has come – new life, the good, the new master, welcomed, in, the Spirit.  Story of the New Landlord….

THE RESULTS OF NEW LIFE  V18-21

V18 Ministry of Reconciliation – enemies becoming friends

V19 Message of Reconciliation – God reconciled world to himself in Christ. ‘For God was in Christ…’

Imagine the potential for reconciliation in the Middle East, as there has been in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants. Pray that God will raise up true peacemakers who can bring people to the Cross where true reconciliation can take place.

V20 Christ’s Ambassadors – God makes His appeal through PEOPLE, though He can speak directly or use angels at times. ‘Come back to God’ 

-Get connected, be forgiven, join the family, receive His mercy, gain new spectacles, new compelling love, fear the Lord, desire to please only Him, go on being transformed. “I am a new creation, no more in condemnation, here in the grace of God I stand. My heart is overflowing, my love just keeps on growing, here in the grace of God I stand. And I will praise you Lord… and I will sing of all that you have done… A joy that knows no limit, A lightness in my spirit. Here in the grace of God I stand.’

V21 The divine exchange. Jesus who had NO sin BECAME sin for us, so that In Him, we might BECOME the righteousness of God.

Hand/book illustration by David Watson. Ministry explanation:

• God’s part – together first, sin separates, spoils & spreads, Christ came, died, buried, rose, took our sin

• Our Part – acknowledge sin, confess & repent, believe & trust, receive and thank.

6v1 Final Appeal, conclusion:  Don’t receive God’s grace in vain. So, make your life count, make a difference.

V2 Do it NOW. Time of God’s favour, grace and salvation.  He has helped many in the past and He can help you now, if you just ASK Him.

NOW is the time… Don’t waste it or let the moment pass you by.  Call to rededication to the Lord.

 Rev Smon Holloway

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Sunday 9th June 2024

Reading : Mark 3: 20-35  - Jesus Accused by His Family and by Teachers of the Law

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come.  In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.  Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter,  but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 3Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Sermon on Mark 3: 20-35 

You must be mad! You’re out of your mind! Has anyone said those words to you or something similar? Have you ever said them (or thought them?) about someone else? What bizarre behaviour, what lack of judgement, what potential trouble, what threat can cause these thoughts? And how could anyone level that at Jesus, especially his family?

Let’s put this in context. From v9 of Mark 1, Mark writes about Jesus’ ministry. By v21, Jesus is driving out evil spirits; by the end of Chapter 1 he has healed many (including Peter’s mother-in-law’ and people are gathering to receiving healing.  By v7 of Ch 2, he is upsetting the teachers of the law because when Jesus saw the paralytic man being lowered through a gap in a roof for healing he uses the words Son, you sins are forgiven.’ And he challenges them when they challenge him.  In v13 Jesus calls Levi, a tax collector, and then eats with him. The Pharisees aren’t happy with that. They continue to challenge Jesus behaviour but he always has answer which confounds them. By Ch 3 v 20, Jesus is well known, mobbed, in demand and a thorn in the side of the authorities. 

This renown and challenging to the usual order get back to Nazareth about 30 miles away, back to Jesus’ family. His mother and brothers (and sisters) must have been worried to death about him and the consequences of his actions. So as any good family would they rushed to try and sort things out, him out. We’ve all been there haven’t we: running to help those we love when we perceive a threat to them. As they are arriving at the house which is packed with people,  Jesus’ integrity, his truth, is also being challenged by the teachers of the law, who had travelled from Jerusalem, a journey of about 120 miles.  They accuse him “He is possessed by Beelzebub! “By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.” Jesus returns the challenge: ‘ How can Satan drive out Satan?’ That is madness: once a house, a family, start fighting among themselves that’s the end.  No, Jesus’ fight is against Satan and his power. Jesus has come to overcome Satan, to fight sin and to render it defeated, bound up. And those who continue to remain in sin, who reject the Holy Spirit, who continue to see Jesus as evil, will be lost. 

It’s at this point, this tense situation, that Jesus’ family arrive and send someone in to get him out. His family are afraid, they want him to get out of this situation, they want him to go home with them to safety. Jesus is told: Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you. ”But he stays inside. It  seems to me that if Jesus chooses not to go out to his mother and brothers who – understandably – come looking for him, it is not because he has stopped loving them or caring about them, but because to return home with them would be to take a step backwards. It would mean returning to the old value system and the divisive and unjust rigidity of its traditions and boundaries. In the ancient world, a son was expected to live in obedience to his father and follow his father’s trade. This signified his acceptance of religious, social and cultural norms, and his willingness to conform to the status quo. But the purpose of Jesus’ ministry was not to support the status quo, but to proclaim the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of his heavenly Father. Jesus asserts that he is called to confront and overcome the power of evil in all its guises. A return to the old life-style is impossible. 

 “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Jesus asks and then looks around. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus was speaking to those who were sitting around him. As we sit here, he is saying them to us now.  Just as Jesus refused to be turned from his course by those who thought he was off his head or in cahoots with the devil himself, we too are challenged to stay true to Kingdom values. Jesus wasn’t rejecting his family but he knew what he had to do. We are called to follow in his footsteps to challenge injustices, inequalities, ignorance, prejudice to bring healing, hope, refreshment, friendship and peace. I’m sure that some people think we’re mad, turning up here every Sunday, singing hymns, saying prayers, affirming our faith in someone we have never seen. We may feel unworthy, we may feel we can’t make a difference. But we need to speak out, to work for the Kingdom. Many fears, hatreds and divisions tear our world apart, while new forms of slavery never cease to rear their heads. But as followers of Christ today, and as members of God’s family charged with doing his will, we are called in our turn to recognise where evil is at work and to commit ourselves to ‘binding the strong man,’ to overcome.  The challenge for each one of us is to discern how and where shall we speak out? What action shall we take? 

Mary and Jesus’ family and followers grew to understand what Jesus had to do, even to the end, when Jesus through his death and resurrection overcame sin and death. Like them, have his example and we know what he would have us be and do. He knows what each one of us is called to do and as we do God’s will we are family. So let’s get on with it! We’re not mad: we are loved. 

Jane Barry (Reader)

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 Sunday 2nd June 2024

Reading : 2 Corinthians 4: 1-6  - Present Weakness and Resurrection Life 

Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

Sermon on  2 Corinthians 4: 1-6 

I have no doubt that every one of us could instantly recall Corporal Jones’s  catch phrase when faced with a challenge.  “Don’t Panic Mr Mainwaring, Don’t Panic"

When we hear statistics about numbers of people now going to church and huge reductions, especially in the C of E after Covid, we might be tempted to use Cpl Jones’s  phrase. Along with the facts, come the predictions about the future, and it can make sombre reading.

It seems that the church in Corinth may have been having a similar challenge because Paul, in writing to them said in the reading we had a moment ago:- “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God”

The fact is that there are other forces at work and I think that we need to treat statistics and predictions with a cynical respect. Come back Cpl Jones and heed his call not to panic.  WHY ??

Because we have a much better source of advice and assurance. It comes right at the end of our reading where Paul says to Corinth, as he says to us. V16. Therefore we do not lose heart.  How does he reach that conclusion ? 

I suggest that this advice to the Corinthians, not to lose heart, must have come from Paul himself having been tempted at some point to lose heart over where this church was heading. WHY did that happen ?  

We need to remember that the founding of the church at Corinth was Paul’s baby, and it’s become clear that the church has developed some problems. They are being misled by some alternative teaching. Some, it seems were even turning against Paul himself through misunderstandings and misrepresentations, and was proving to be quite hurtful. His letter is in effect an attempt to sort things out and is a loving attempt to restore things. He needed to let off some steam and perhaps we can relate to that at times can’t we ? But he didn’t leave them and  go off in a huff or panic having been offended and hurt.

It seems to me that the way that this country is wandering away from God is frustrating and I would add is hurtful, but Scripture guides us in how to respond. After all, God didn’t reject Adam and Eve in the garden after they disobeyed, and in the same way he doesn’t reject us when we continue to let him down, offering us love and forgiveness.

At the very beginning of this chapter Paul begins:- “Since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart”. As a Benefice we have a ministry to our villages.

So, do we, sometimes lose heart? Do we feel like giving up ?  In the context in which we live here in 2024 why might we feel like losing heart? (1) Maybe our own perception of unanswered prayers. (2) There could be a persistent sin that we struggle with. (3)Maybe life is hard with lots of knocks, or (4) even a realisation that clergy are not perfect !!

Why might I lose heart ?  Lack of impact in the community , occasional offices, disappointment when some folk slip away from their faith without asking for help , an impression that some have stopped growing as Christians.

But Paul says to us all ,”Don’t lose heart”. Now this is important. In V2 Paul tells us that to lose heart is to allow temptations to creep in. V2 speaks of “secret and shameful ways “ which includes thoughts and actions. It also includes V2 “deception” i.e. reaching out to others but  deceiving people and holding back on our Christian motives. I can give a personal example. In developing the idea of Hospicecare there was strong pressure from some parts of society, to water down our Christian driving motive. We had to take the brickbats and stand firm.

The 3rd temptation from losing heart in  V.2 Paul  uses the word ‘distortion’, that’s in the context of distorting the word of God by watering it down so making it more acceptable. He says “ by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God”

This is so important and any distortion of truth is to be avoided as a temptation for us, and those over us, in our context today. If that should happen, losing heart can  become a reality for many.

Now consider ,have you ever had the experience of sharing the Christian truth with someone and then come away thinking “Why don’t they see it, it’s so obvious !”

Paul explains V4 “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers”

It is the same now. When Jesus was alive the Jews were blinded by generations of false teaching and they were unable to recognise who he was. So it is today because in our Western culture especially , the trappings and aspirations of success with, for example the idolising of people in the media is so great that there is no room for words like sin, repentance,love, eternityand thruth. They are blinded, the veil covering their eyes is solid.

It is so easy to be trapped by consumerism for those  with disposable incomes and affluence. OR for those trapped in poverty with despair and addiction.OR yet others trapped in living just for today with no hope for the future.

Paul says, and I’ll say it again “Don’t lose heart”.

In history there have been some really black times for our Christian faith not least prior to the Reformation.  Times when it was a miracle that it survived, but it did, for which we praise God.

This is now our generation and it is our privilege to follow Paul’s advice and to set forth the truth. We are those who are to V6 “Let light shine out of darkness”.

We all know that whatever the disappointments, however hard things seem to be, regardless of statistics and predictions about the future, that what we have is the truth that God has given to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

We also know V14 “the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us in His presence”

Therefore,again V16 “We do not lose heart”. How do we help encourage each other ?

We do that by meeting together to worship, to pray , to listen and to seek God’s help. However the future develops we need to hold to the truth and not lose heart.

So in a strange way Cpl Jones and Paul had the same message,

DON’T PANIC   and   DON’T LOSE HEART. God will not desert us. That’s a fact.    AMEN

Rev Geoff Hobden

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Sunday 5th May 2024

Reading John 15: v9-17 - Joy Through Friendship with Jesus.

 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.

Sermon on John 15: v9-17

Introduction:   JOY AND FRIENDSHIP

JOY & Friendship are promised to the followers of Jesus in these words which he spoke to the 11 on their way from the Upper Room Passover Meal to the Garden of Gethsemane.

They have passed the great entrance gates to the Temple which were embellished with an amazing golden Vine and Jesus has spoken to them about the importance of Abiding or Remaining united to the Vine in order to bear fruit in Christian character and more fruit of new shoots and vines. He has spoken about the importance of Pruning, both the removal of dead branches and also even removing healthy ones which may prevent more fruit. Such pruning can be painful and it is in this context that Jesus then promises JOY, to those who remain, abide, stay connected to Him and receive His amazing love.

THE PROMISE OF JOY

But what is JOY?  Is it the same as happiness?  Happiness depends on good things happening to us, but Joy is something much deeper and can sustain us even during dark and dangerous times. Jesus knew such Joy and as Nehemiah wrote ‘The Joy of the Lord is your strength”. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer also know such joy, even during the dark days of the Third Reich in Germany and he wrote in his final circular letter in November 1942 to the Finkelwalde community (Underground seminary) from prison and focused on joy, showing the difference between counterfeit and real joy.

‘Joy abides with God, and it comes down from God and embraces spirit, soul and body; and where this joy has seized a person, there it spreads, there it carries one away, there it bursts open closed doors.’

He also wrote earlier in ‘Life Together’, his reflections on living in a Christian community: ‘the physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer’.

CS Lewis was ‘Surprised by Joy’, something that he was looking for all of his life and yet only found when he came to know Jesus as His Lord and Saviour. In His biography, he recounts how it was in Jesus alone, not religion or ‘Christianity’ that His source of joy was found. 

That is why Jesus refers in this passage to MY JOY, a gift from the Father to sustain Him as He came to face His testing in Gethsemane and then His death on the Cross.  Hebrew reminds us that  it was ‘For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, scorning the shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God’ (Heb.12:2)

However, we cannot have the joy of the resurrection without the suffering of the Cross. So, that is why William Blake also wrote about the balance and existence of both Joy and Woe in his famous poem, ‘Auguries of Innocence’ 

“It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The Apostle Paul wrote about Joy a lot in his letter to the Philippians and he exhorts them ‘Rejoice in the Lord, always and again I say rejoice!’  He exhorts them to rejoice in the midst of pain, suffering and disappointment. Paul is in prison himself, yet still finds cause for Joy – in fellowship, in answered prayer and God’s wonderful faithfulness. Instead of being angry and fearful and anxious, he choses to abide in Christ, knowing and depending on Him. He urges unity and the practice of joy in suffering, serving, believing and giving.

Do you know and experience such Joy in your life at present. Is it an undergirding to the trials and tribulations that you experience?  We can know this quality of Joy both within the fellowship of believers and directly from the risen Christ as His gift to us. The Holy Spirit is the author of such Joy, given as part of the wonderful fruit of the Spirit which grows in us even through times of pruning, pain, disappointment and woe.

THE PROMISE OF FRIENDSHIP.

Also, Jesus promises that His disciples will now be His friends. They never call Him their friend, but rather their Lord, Master, their Rabbi or Teacher. And yet now Jesus is passing onto them what He has received from the Father and treats them no longer as servants but true friends.

But what is a FRIEND? How many friends do you have?  Not just Facebook friends, who are really just acquaintances but those with whom you have done life and can count as true friends.

Proverbs 17v17 ‘A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.’ Not only in good and easy times, but a true and genuine brother shows true love in hard times also.

A true friend sticks by us even in hard times. Jesus even called Judas ‘friend’ and entrusted to him the common purse. A true friend will also challenge us when we are going off in an unhealthy direction. We ALL need such friends.

Jesus showed us the true nature of friendship. He was willing to lay down his own life for his friends.  Epitaph for students of my old school who died during the two World Wars : ‘Greater love has no man than this that he lays down his life for his friends’ John 15v13. And a second epitaph quotes the words of Mr Valiant-for-Truth on the completion of his Journey, like Christian in Pilgrim’s progress, to the Celestial City.

‘My sword I give to him who will succeed me on my pilgrimage and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles, who will now be my rewarder.’ …. So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s progress. Part 2. Christiana’s journey.

What a Friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear,
What a privilege to carry,
Everything to God in prayer.

O what peace we often forfeit
O what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry,
Everything to God in prayer.

Can we find a friend so faithful
Who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness,
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

 Prayer: Thank You, dear Lord, for your promise of Eternal Life to those who believe and trust in You. We thank you also for your gifts of Joy and Friendship to those who know you, love you and obey you. Help us experience more of this quality of life, joy and friendship and pass it on to others also. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, AMEN

Rev Smon Holloway

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Sunday 14th April 2024 Evensong

Reading Luke 24: 36-48 - Jesus Appears to the Disciples

While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.

He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

Sermon on Luke 24: 36-48

Last week we heard from John the appearance of Jesus to the disciples after his resurrection (and his appearance to Thomas one week later). This week we have the same occasion as written by Luke. In each text Jesus appears to the disciples; they are afraid and unbelieving; and he convinces them that he is indeed their teacher and friend raised from the dead, and that they, believing in him, are to continue his mission in the world. 

Now, before this appearance, in his gospel Luke records the encounter on the road to Emmaus, where Jesus met with Cleopas and another, who didn’t recognise him but through the encounter, they realised and went off to tell the disciples of their news. But even after the eleven disciples had been told by Cleopas and friend, the disciples were ‘startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost.’ All of these encounters show how difficult it can be for humans to believe what seems to be impossible, even when provided with such proof and reassurance. So what chance do non-believers and believers have now?

These two stories each follow a similar pattern:

Encounter—failure to recognize

Explanation—interpreting the resurrection through the lens of the scriptures

Eating—Jesus breaks bread or eats fish

Enlightenment—the disciples’ eyes are opened, their hearts burn, and they recognize

Exit—Jesus departs

The disciples initially fail to recognise Jesus, even though they really knew so much. He offers them proof of who he is through showing them the marks of his crucifixion. Even then, because of their ‘joy and amazement’ they still didn’t believe, he eats with them. Ghosts don’t eat! Then he opens their minds, through references to the Law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms, for example Deuteronomy 18:15 ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him’; Isaiah 53; Ezekiel 34: 32  ‘I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd’. Then he reminds them of what he taught them as recorded in Matthew 16; 21 ‘From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.’ It’s all there; deep in their hearts they know it, they have seen it and so they go out and share it.

It is here that we are able to enter the story. We come with our doubts, confusions, fears, and misunderstandings. We, each week, through worship can encounter the risen Christ. In the reciting of the scriptures and the preached word we are offered explanation, proclaiming the good news of what God has done and is doing. We may eat with Christ, breaking the bread of the resurrection in the Eucharist. The Spirit brings enlightenment, opening our hearts and minds, setting our hearts afire. Finally, the exit should be ours, for Christ has sent us out into the entire world to be witnesses to this amazing news. We may not have the experience of seeing the risen Lord but we can hold the word in our hands when we read and study our bibles. And we have his faith in us. In John’s gospel Jesus tells Thomas:  “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

 So, as this week we prepare to leave this place as an Easter people, rejoicing in the resurrection and all it means to us, for us and for others, let us take strength from the examples of the those first disciples: their doubts, their fears, their shortcomings and their burning hearts response to the Jesus who will come amongst us to reassure us, to teach us, to inspire us, to show us the way. Let us also take time to read the gospels to remind ourselves of what Jesus tells us, to guide us and inspire us. He wants us to be sure of him: his words are there in the gospels for us, whatever the circumstances. In both of the accounts of this meeting, Jesus begins with the words: ‘Peace be with you.’ May that peace be with us all always, as we go out as Jesus’ disciples in this world as an Easter people with burning hearts.

Jane Barry (Reader)

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 Sunday 31st March 2024 - Easter Sunday

Reading Mark 16:1-8  - Jesus Has Risen

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

Sermon on Mark 16:1-8

A couple of days ago I picked up the latest copy of my Radio Times and saw that there was an Easter article by the archbishop of Canterbury. As I read it, it seemed appropriate to read it out this morning morning because he is stating very clearly something  we all believe. I quote:-

“It is my strongest belief that Easter day speaks directly to our lives and deaths. Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus because it is the ultimate good news. If this event didn’t happen, then every church building, all Christian worship and ministry, is in vain. But because we are convinced it did, this news is too good to keep to ourselves.”

End of quote. When you think about it the resurrection is probably the most incredible fact of history  that the human race is asked to believe. In the world of nature we are faced with some fantastic things that we see on our screens with animals and plants. When we consider the world of space and distance and time, it stretches our imagination, especially when we are treated to an eclipse or an  aurora borealise. We are told that there are mountain ranges in the sea higher than the Himalayas ! Not content with all that, we humans then go on to invent monsters. However I can assure you that having sat for 30 minutes overlooking Loch Ness,  Nessie does not exist.

But measured against all the wonders we know about, the bodily resurrection of a human being is in a realm of its own. There is nothing in history to compare with this claim. And yet despite its uniqueness in every way, it is in truth the absolute cornerstone of our Christian faith. It is the very essence of the Gospel story because without the resurrection, we have no Gospel. Question? Might we be tempted to think that God made a mistake in planning something so unique? 

It would be easy to think that the incredible uniqueness of the resurrection of Jesus could so easily be a stumbling block when it comes to other people finding faith. I am going to suggest to you that yes, there will be some who find it beyond belief, but that in all my years of ministry and before, I have hardly ever found that the resurrection has been a problem. When facing questions from non- believers I cannot recall a single occasion when the claim for resurrection has been raised as an issue. The issues are much more likely to be suffering issues, natural catastrophies, other faiths, religious wars like the crusades, and also including people they know who go to church but behave badly. The resurrection just doesn’t figure, despite its incredible nature.

So rather than the subject of resurrection being a negative, preventing others from coming to faith, I have to say that it is much rather a strength. Why do I think that ? Firstly because it’s true. It is’nt some fanciful sci-fi story that is the product of someone’s imagination. There is evidence that it is an historical fact and over the years , all the possible objections  have been dealt with. There is a book  entitled ‘Who moved the stone’. It is the account of a man setting out to disprove the resurrection and ending up as a Christian ! The angel at the tomb said to the two women “Don’t be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here." We also know about the subsequent appearances to the disciples. So fantastic but true, and truth always has a ring of truth about it. It is a truth to be shared and in the early days after Pentecost, we do need to note that the apostles ,in preaching and evangelising, made no bones about proclaiming it openly and at every opportunity. For them it was a positive truth.

In Acts 2, Peter’s first sermon made a big point of it. V24 But God raised Jesus from the dead because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

V32 God has raised this Jesus to life and we are witnesses of the fact. Psalm 16 states ‘You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.

No opportunity is missed by those early disciples to point to the resurrection. It is therefore within our brief to continue to proclaim it boldy, just as the archbishop has done in that article, and so can we, not holding back from declaring the truth.

We need to remember and be aware of an important fact, that no other faith claims a resurrection. It is a unique and bold claim as part of our faith and setting us apart from others and giving us credibility in God’s plan for salvation.

There’s also a strength in the fact of the resurrection, in that everyone is made in the image of God. There is something within everyone that wants to believe it. Yes we are broken images of God because of our sin, but despite the brokenness, folk are drawn towards God. However, within the confusion of life and often out of ignorance, many seek spiritual support in other directions and appear to turn their backs on God, finding temporary benefit in other forms of spirituality. People, as spiritual beings, but without God , have a vacuum which needs to be filled.

Having been so positive about strength in the uniqueness of the resurrection which we rejoice in today, the question is, why are we so singularly unsuccessful in bringing others to faith ? Are you aware of the derivation of the phrase  ‘Shooting yourself in the foot’? It comes from a wild west shootout between an outlaw and a marshall. The law officer is really quick but in his anxiety he pulls the trigger before the gun comes out of his holster!

Especially in the wealthy west, the church shoots itself in the foot time after time with its multiple divisions and variations so that the world is left confused. The church ends up being dismissed as irrelevant. The early Christians majored on the fact of the resurrection because it was true. If we agree with the archbishop and his statement, as I do, perhaps we should be more ready to introduce the truth of this amazing fact. The early church began as practically nothing with just a handful of people. But through their message the church grew both within Judaism and also throughout  the gentile world, and their proclamation of what we celebrate here today, was, I believe a major factor in the growth of the church.

For the sake of the Gospel we need to be clear ourselves about this vital part of the story. The whole Jesus story in the New Testament  is full of the traumas of life, such as the death of John the Baptist. It includes stories of strong personalities like Peter. It includes greed and temptation with Judas, but especially the story emphasises the love and sacrifice of Jesus showing God’s victory over Satan and death becoming a path to Heaven because of the resurrection. There is absolutely nothing to compare with this story and it seems incredible that so many folk hide from, ignore , resent or are too busy for its truth.

For our part we must avoid at all cost any temptation we might have to water this story down  to something that we might feel is more acceptable to the society we live in and therefore more appealing. However, the fact is that people are much more ready to hear it than we are to proclaim it, and that is really sad. Like the early disciples, so now the whole church, including us, needs to be bold and confident, without compromise, holding firm to the authority of Scripture.

God raised Jesus from the dead and through His resurrection we can all have new life for ever.

THE LORD IS RISEN     HALLELUJAH.

Rev Geoff Hobden

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 Sunday 10th March Mothering Sunday

Readings Corinthians 1: 3-7 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

Luke 2:33-35  

The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Sermon on Corinthians 1: 3-7 and Luke 2: 33-35

We all know that it’s never too late to learn and that’s been true for me in the last few weeks when I’ve re-visited my knowledge about Mothering Sunday. Does the name Constance Penswick Smith mean anything to you? Well, here is a quick resumee  of the history of  celebrations on the fourth Sunday of Lent and her part in it.

In the 16th century, Mothering Sunday was less about mothers and more about church. Back then, people would make a journey to their ‘mother’ church once a year on the fourth Sunday of Lent, also known as Refreshment Sunday This might have been their home church, their nearest cathedral or a major parish church in a bigger town. The service which took place at the ‘mother’ church symbolised the coming together of families. 

Another tradition was to allow those working in the fields on wealthy farms and estates in England to have the day off on the fourth Sunday of Lent to visit their mothers and possibly go to church too. This was a variation on the theme of visiting the 'mother' church and was a move towards a more family focussed occasion. 

In the early 20th Century there was a movement in the USA to establish a Mother’s Day to honour mothers (it is held on the second Sunday of May each year.) Reacting to that movement, in 1913, Constance Penswick Smith created the Mothering Sunday Movement and published booklets, the most influential being The Revival of Mothering Sunday (1921).This book has a series of four chapters outlining the different aspects of motherhood that the day should honour beyond a strictly biological one:

• 'The Church – Our Mother'

• 'Mothers of Earthly Homes'

• 'The Mother of Jesus'

• 'Gifts of Mother Earth'

There is a Blue Plaque for Constance Penswick Smith, 1878-1938 located on Church Walk, Newark on Trent, England, with the words ‘who revived Mothering Sunday’

And so here we are today, thinking about all the aspects of motherhood which link us all together. We are here in our church, which is the mother church for some where many have wonderful memories and where many feel at home and safe. We are here to give thanks for our earthly mothers (we’ve all had one) and to give thanks for all we have received from them. We are here to give thanks for the example of Mary, mother of Jesus, who reminds of the joy of love but also of the struggles, challenges and pain of motherhood. And we give thanks for creation as a whole, for mother earth and all that is provided for us.

But in our rejoicing and giving thanks we also need to acknowledge the challenges that mothering brings. In the readings today, we are reminded about how all of us we should think about caring for each other, about mothering. 

Life wasn’t easy for Paul or the early church in Corinth but he writes about the example and support Christians have. 

‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.’ There will be troubles for us all and in learning of God’s love for us all in those times, we will be able to support and comfort others. Paul says ‘And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.’ That is what families should do: join together in all the good times and the hard times, sharing, caring and mothering.

Later Paul writes to the early church and wants them to change their behaviour so that it is honouring to God. In Colossians he says “therefore as God’s chosen people, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” These are characteristics which we should be living  each day, but just as a mother encourages a child and redirects their focus so the church should redirect our attitudes. In the church family we are to be a body of people: they say you can’t choose your family but as a family of God we can choose how we behave. Ultimately that behaviour is to be anchored in love. For love, as Paul says, binds us all together in perfect unity. And that love goes beyond the church’s doors. The life of the church is to be one of encouragement and direction sought from the word and the Spirit. And it mustn’t stay in the church: it should be taken out of the church into our families, friends, communities, into nature and into the world.

Then in the reading from Luke, we are reminded of the responsibility that Mary takes on because of who her son is. Let us also remember that, at the same time that Simeon says these words to Mary, he is blessing her. And he is not just blessing her, he is blessing Joseph as well. Mothers cannot mother alone: mothering is not confined to women. I am sure that the majority of us, regardless of our individual circumstances, have at some time or another, received a form of ‘mothering’ from someone who was not our biological mother. It may have been a stepmother, foster mother, a childminder, an aunt or grandparent, or a wife, or a sister, or a teacher, or a friend. It may have been someone much older than we are – or someone younger. It may have been someone who is male rather than female which, interestingly enough, has good biblical precedent: after all, it was Jesus himself who wept over Jerusalem saying: ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings’ – a wonderful, and expressly maternal image.

At the heart of mothering is love, the love that Jesus so clearly showed through his life, his teaching, his death, his resurrection, his promises.  Mothering love is a love that is realistic, is forgiving, helpful, unselfish, frustrating, is a love that encourages, teaches, rebukes. It is a love that encompasses every aspect of life and generates responsibility and care, extending beyond our own churches, families, communities and countries. It takes in the environment, equality, justice, fairness and needs. And underpinning it all, surrounding it all, there for all, is the love of God for his creation, embodied in Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit. So, as Constance Penswick Smith thought we should, let us celebrate Mothering Sunday with open hearts, grateful thanks for all of God’s love and provision for us and a promise to share the love of Christ with all. 

Jane Barry (Reader)

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 Sunday 3rd March 2024

Reading John 2: 13-25  - Jesus Clears the Temple Courts

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts, he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves, he said, "Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father's house into a market!" His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will consume me."

The Jews then responded to him, "What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?" 

Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."

 They replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then, they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people.He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.

Sermon on John 2: 13-25

This story that we heard from John’s Gospel about Jesus, is a bit of a teaser for us, especially bearing in mind the old chorus, ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild’  with Jesus apparently losing his temper and causing havoc with a whip! What are we to make of this ? I remember once seeing an artist’s impression of this scene with animals scattering everywhere, people cowering and Jesus as a wild eyed man in the middle flaying a whip. I suppose it’s easy to see why this scene could be interpreted in this way.

V.15 So Jesus made a whip out of cords and cleared everyone out including animals, and money was scattered all over the floor.

We often say that actions speak louder than words but in this case the words of Jesus are vital to understanding what drove him to take this action. But first we must also take note of v.14. where it says :-

‘In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money’.  So now  imagine, Jesus arrives at the Temple, has a wander around, observes what is happening and as a result is filled with a righteous indignation. Two key words here are ‘selling’ and  ‘exchanging’, both of which involve money. Now the people who were at the temple would have comprised two groups. On the one hand the stall holders, i.e the sellers of animals, exchangers of money and local Jews. The other group would have been the pilgrims who had travelled especially to come to the temple in order to make a sacrifice under the Jewish law and know God’s forgiveness. This is why they had come, it was a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey. The reality for them was that they needed to buy an animal to sacrifice, maybe a simple dove or even a sheep. You need to know that the Temple had its own currency and these pilgrims would have needed to exchange their money before they could buy. Even today the exchange rate when you go abroad always favours  the foreign currency. You buy at one rate but when you sell the rates are lower.

As Jesus looked around he would quickly have worked out that both the sellers and exchangers were out to fleece the pilgrims. The prices of animals and exchange rates were heavily weighted in favour of the Temple authorities. It is estimated that the Temple had an annual income of around £75,000 with the men doing it earning about £9,000. Quite a business, but as we know, fleecing tourists is still an issue !

For Jesus however, these pilgrims were not simply tourists, and where this was happening was not in some market in the city, it was happening in the Temple courts. For Jesus it was a case of Righteous indignation verses Gross Irreverence and extortion on the part of the religious authorities. Why did it mean so much to Jesus? We do need to remember that Jesus was both fully human and fully God. His justified anger was on behalf of the pilgrims. They had travelled some distance in all sincerity to worship at the Temple, which was the only place where God was present in the Holy of holies. So to offer a sacrifice was not an optional extra, they just had to buy. They were taken advantage of and this was one reason why Jesus was so incensed. God’s plan for people to be able to know forgiveness does not involve others getting rich In the process. 

Can I remind you of the key part of the build up to the Reformation, that was when the Church of England split from the Roman Catholic Church, saw Martin Luther objecting to the church selling indulgencies, that is, people having to pay money for a piece of paper stating they were forgiven so filling the coffers of the Roman church

God’s promise to us through Jesus is that forgiveness is assured simply when we sincerely say sorry. For the Jewish nation at that time God had provided a physical place, the Temple where they could go for that assurance. Jesus was also  incensed because the Temple, which was a sign of God’s passionate love for his people, and was provided as a symbol of that love, was here being turned by  the authorities  into a money making opportunity. The Temple, over the years, became a focal point of prayer and worship. A place where God’s justice was exercised. It was a place of repentance and of forgiveness. It symbolised God’s continued willingness to have a relationship with his people based on the 10 commandments which were in the ark in the Holy of Holies. By their actions the authorities were compromising the very credibility of the Temple being there. So the two reasons why Jesus was angry are:- 

1..The abuse of the pilgrims  2. Misuse of God’s provision of theTemple.

It is no wonder that Jesus, having personally witnessed what was happening, allowed himself to do something which would be a shot across the bows of the leaders.

I need to say at this point that we must not confuse this incident with someone losing their temper. Jesus was always fully in control and knew exactly what he was doing. In those days the whip or scourge was an accepted symbol of justice and judgement, as it was used, if you remember, on Jesus, and so for him to take a whip, was a symbolic gesture which everyone would have understood and we don’t need to have a picture in our minds of him flailing it wildly around. Animals are very skittish and would soon have assisted with the upset of tables with money falling to the ground.

Interestingly this same story appears in both Matt and Luke, but for them  it comes at the end, whereas John has the story right at the beginning as if to highlight the bigotry and selfishness which was rife among the authorities. By making this point, Jesus was ensuring that he would be rejected. What happened next is that the Jews demanded an explanation from Jesus, but his answer was beyond them. He said, V.19 Destroy this Temple and I will raise it again in 3 days. They could only think in physical terms whereas Jesus was predicting his death and resurrection. Jesus was going to be the new Temple. He was to become the means whereby anyone could know God, Jew of Gentile. His act on this day was, in effect, to seal the end of the need for a Temple. On the day of His death on the cross, when the curtain in the Holy of Holies was torn in half, that signified the end and changed the covenant relationship between God and us. So now, rather than a physical Temple, Jesus has become the perfect expression of God’s love for us, and so gives each of us the way to draw close to God.

I would like, from this incident, to highlight one very real lesson we need to be conscious of in our approach to God through Jesus. We each need to ask the question, are we, am I, taking Jesus for granted?  Are we, am I, allowing our approach to God, and our approach to worship of becoming merely a ritual, a form to get through on a Sunday? It’s clear that the Jews had forgotten how much of a gift it was that God had provided the Temple out of His great love, and the result was that they abused it. So for us, we must never forget how much it cost God to come as Jesus and be subject to death on a cross. It was a sacrifice beyond anything we can imagine. The world in which we live has a history of not learning from past mistakes, but as Christians, as people who claim to be forgiven through the blood of Jesus, our prayer must be that we will forever worship our marvellous God in sincerity and thankfulness with humility and confession.

 As God considers our activities and shares in them with us, as He hears our conversations and sees how we treat one another, let us be sure that nothing which Jesus saw in the Temple that morning finds any parallels with our lives, worship and witness today. Amen

Rev Geoff Hobden

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Sunday 4th January 2024

Reading Colossians 1: 15-28  - The Supremacy of the Son of God

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,  and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of[a] your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—  if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.

Amos 8 - A Basket of Ripe Fruit

This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit.  “What do you see, Amos?” he asked.

“A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered.

Then the Lord said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

“In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!

Sermon on Colossians 1: 15-28 & Amos 8

If there’s one thing I don’t like seeing it’s a  bee, butterfly or moth trapped in our conservatory ! I will do my best to open doors and windows, but their level of cooperation is very frustrating. I can make the exit so obvious but they keep banging against the glass ! I’m sure you know what I mean. I usually eventually manage to release them, especially with my new machine that sucks them into a tube. This is a simple illustration of the message of Amos the prophet to the Israelites, and picked up by Paul in his letter to the Colossians which I will explain later.

Amos is one of the really early prophets in the life of the Jewish nation and what we read is that the Lord showed Amos a basket of ripe fruit. Although it was obvious what it was,  God asked Amos ‘What do you see’ and Amos simply replied ‘a basket of ripe fruit’. You know sometimes it’s quite good to actually verbalise what we see even though it might be obvious. Remember the time when  Jesus asked the blind man, what do you want me to do for you. Again, it was obvious, but the man had to respond, ‘I want to see again’. There’s something important about putting a situation into words, however obvious it might be. It’s taking a thought and giving it more weight. You might think ‘that person needs help’ but if you actually say it, actions are more likely to follow. This has a bearing on our prayers, of putting into words our thoughts, concerns and failings.

Any basket of ripe fruit needs to be eaten soon otherwise it deteriorates very quickly. It’s time has now come to be eaten. God’s point to Amos in asking the question is in v 2 “The time is ripe for my people Israel. I will spare them no longer.” The ripe fruit is running out of time, as is God’s patience with Israel.

Amos is being given this message so that he can warn the Israelites about what the future holds if they don’t turn from their sinful ways. It’s a final call to repentance. Amos had already been given the illustration of a plumb line showing that the nation was out of line with God’s direction for them. They are being given every opportunity to escape from the things that will happen if they don’t listen to the warning. Like the bees, butterflies and moths the nation seem intent on ignoring the way out . The warnings are clear, there will be wailing and financial ruin, there will be floods and unusual weather and famine. There will be no escape. This is to be Amos’s message and the future was certainly going to yield evidence of all this happening. Remember that Amos comes well before the northern kingdoms being taken over by the Assyrian empire and later on the rest i.e. Judah also taken captive into Assyria.

Later on in the history of the Jews there comes a space  of 300 years between the Old and New testaments when God’s voice was absent from the Jewish nation. Listen to this…

v.11 The days are coming declares the Lord, when I will send a famine through the land, NOT a famine of food or water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

It happened !!  You see, prophecy is rarely instant and can spread over a long period of time

So to end that 300 year period of silence, between the testaments,  comes Jesus who will bring God’s complete answer to the challenge of human sin. We have recently celebrated his birth,and rightly so because there is nothing that is more significant than the birth of Jesus in the history of creation. Paul, in his letter to the Colossians is quite clear about the massive importance of Jesus, but as we know, that  as far as the Jews were concerned , Jesus was rejected. Despite the quality of his life, the truth of his words, the evidence of the miracles, Jesus was seen as a threat and had to be eliminated. Jesus reached a few to become disciples, but the vast majority refused to see the truth. It’s a bit like those bees, butterflies and moths ignoring the escape route, blindly going in the opposite direction. Isn’t that what people are doing now? Isn’t that what people have always done ?. Avoid the obvious truth, latch onto something else or simply stick your head in the sand. When it comes to spiritual issues people can’t see for looking. It’s so frustrating because as Christians, it is so obvious. Like those early disciples, including Paul, as Christians, we have each of us, found the open window and escaped to freedom.

Just imagine that you were leading a person, who had been blind from birth, into the world for the very first time with sight restored.  What would you show them first? People….themselves……sky….nature…..buildings ?

In the New Testament that is exactly what is happening as those who have seen the light of Jesus, the disciples, attempt to share it with us through their writings. They are painting pictures in words, almost too much for us to grasp, as they explain how         the life , death and resurrection of Jesus offers the gift of forgiveness now and the promise of eternity later. The important thing is for each of us to know and be sure that we have found that open window of new life because of Jesus, and that we can then add our witness to that of the Bible to help others also find that open window.

In the Colossians passage we had this morning, it is headed in my Bible “The supremacy of Christ”. Paul, in trying to describe Jesus to help us understand how unique he was, uses words and phrases about him that do not, and have not ever applied to anyone else. Paul wants his readers to grasp the magnificence of Jesus and as a result to open our eyes to the sheer wonder of God’s offer of forgiveness and eternity.

Some years ago the Sun Alliance Ins coy rebranded themselves “More Than”. Presumably attempting to persuade us that they offer something more than all the others. In Paul’s writings both here in Colossians and elsewhere he is describing Jesus as  “More Than” anything we can imagine or know. In other words we can never plumb the depths because Jesus is More Than. What do I mean by that?  That he was there at creation. That he is the image of God. That he is the supreme being. That he is our Saviour. That he was and is the long promised Messiah.

Whatever we discover about Jesus in our lives , there will always be more. Paul in Colossians, shares his objective in putting his views down on paper . So v26 He says he wants to open up the mystery which has been hidden for ages, and then v27 to reveal the hope of glory in Christ, and  v28 to proclaim Jesus so that many may have confidence in eternity, and stating his own intention  v29 to work hard to share this powerful truth.

This was Paul’s life’s work. With his help and the rest of Scripture, we too can 1 open the window for others to find true freedom which is more than we or they deserve, but which is nevertheless offered freely through the death of Jesus.

A bee trapped in my conservatory faces certain death unless I help it escape . In the same way, each of us has the capability of opening the window for others to discover the truth about Jesus. May we pray for the willingness and the opportunity to play our part in opening that window for them.

 Rev Geoff Hobden

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Sunday 28th January 2024

Reading Mark 1: 21-28  - Jesus Drives Out an Impure Spirit

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”

“Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!” The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.

 The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.” News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galile

Sermon on Mark 1: 21-28

I was brought up to respect authority. Parents, elders, teachers, the police, the vicar, the BBC, anyone with a posh accent. So of course I did. Or in reality, of course I didn’t! I pushed against authority, I questioned the authority, I challenged authority. Ironically the success of my chosen career depended on being able to maintain authority but they do say that ex-poachers make the best gamekeepers. 

What does having authority mean? Does it come automatically with a given title: police officer; politician; vicar? Or does it mean wisely using the authority that the post provides to gain trust, to reach goals and to meet the needs of all. When we look at those in authority now, do we see integrity in the Post Office which is owned by the government, do we see compassion in world leaders, do we see an understanding of the ways in which authority can be used for the good of many instead of the few? Do we see actions backing up promises and do we recognise the results?

Jesus came to a world that was waiting for the promises of God to be fulfilled. Their usual teachers, priests and scribes, the literate ones, always told them what ‘Moses said’ or what Rabbi so and so said. But things weren’t happening. However, on this particular morning here was a man, a man who began to tell people in his own authority what God’s will is: to love him and to love each other as he loves us.

Imagine the scene. Imagine the questions people might have. Who was Jesus anyway? He was an unexpected guest speaker, in the teaching seat, unlocking the scroll and whatever he was saying, was fresh. He was speaking with authority. The synagogue listeners – including four visiting fishermen whose whole identity has been left behind for one of discipleship – were shocked. There was tension, drama, astounded people. Something about Jesus had interrupted the mental to-do lists. Eager ears and bodies began leaning in – what was he saying? He was changing the world with his words. 

And then, there was the public moment every speaker dreads. The possessed, unclean-spirited person raucously shouted out, interrupting with excruciating tortured words: the shout of pain and plea. The man was not unclean, he was possessed by something evil that has ‘swallowed him’ from the spiritual realm. His shouts identified Jesus: ‘What do you want with us? Do you want to destroy us? I know who you are ... I HAVE SEEN WHO YOU ARE...THE HOLY ONE OF GOD.’ In this moment, evil was seeking to name Jesus and gain power, doing what it does best, breaking in to create chaos; spread anxiety; warp goodness, But, in that moment, evil declared something true. Jesus is the holy one. Not a, not one of, but THE. 

Imagine the gasps? How might those around him have reacted? What would happen next? 

And then the voice. The voice of authority.

 ‘Be quiet. Come out of him!’ The rebuke was sharp, concise, and uncompromising. The evil spirit was addressed and conquered. Jesus demonstrated there, in that worshipping place, that he was who he is. The best answer to ‘have you come to destroy us’, if the ‘us’ in that sentence is evil, darkness, chaos-creating, pain-giving spirit – the best answer is yes!

The people present then saw that the man, now dispossessed, was juddering, convulsed. But then he was free, released, liberated, clean, empty of evil, free to be fully himself – his life, reputation, community restored. The evil spirit didn’t go quietly of course, but it DID GO.  Everyone there really had something to talk about! This man, who seemed already to have authority in what he said, also had it in what he did. His authority was rooted: when Jesus the Word spoke, it came to pass. The people were amazed by him and the word spread, mouth by mouth, door to door. Jesus’ authority and his use of it not only freed that man, it freed and empowered others.

So what does this story mean for us? As disciples, we follow Jesus. He has authority, and he comes to set people free. He’s profoundly good news and his being, his life, his teaching and his actions remind us that ‘God reigns, God is here.’ 

The idea of someone who would speak with authority stayed in people’s minds: it is what they recognised when Jesus started teaching. Right at the beginning of his ministry, according to Mark’s Gospel, people were astounded by his words, because they had that ring of truth. Wherever he went, troubled spirits were overcome, people were healed, hypocrisy and exploitation were challenged, and the most unexpected people responded to his call. 

All through his ministry, people asked: ‘Is he the prophet, the one we are waiting for?’ The answer was ‘No, not quite.’ Jesus was something more than that: he was the true mediator between God and human beings because he was God, here in human form, speaking to people face to face. 

Moses and the prophets spoke God’s word, often with great wisdom and courage. But Jesus embodied the Word of God. He not only spoke about God’s justice, but also stood up to a mob of men who wanted to stone a woman to death. He told brilliant stories about care for people who were outcast and vulnerable, and then healed a group of lepers. And always, always, he transformed people’s lives if they would let him. 

These people whose lives Jesus touched were facing just the same kinds of issues that we face today: anxiety about health, or about loved ones; coping with unfair systems; how to tread the pathway between right and wrong in working life where it’s not always clear; how to find forgiveness or deal with regret when things go wrong; living day by day in this rather messy, confusing world, a world where human authority is being used for misplaced power or not used to put things right. Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day, remembering the six million Jews killed by the Nazis. Yesterday the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said “'Never again' is every day. January 27 calls out to us: Stay visible! Stay audible! Against anti-semitism, against racism, against misanthropy and for our democracy.” We see the horrors in Israel and Gaza; the way women are treated in Iran; the way men working on buildings for the World Cup in Saudi Arabia were exploited. In Jesus’ name we have to work for justice. We have to stand up to challenge the misuse of authority, drawing on the authority of Jesus, we have to do something.

We know what Jesus wants us to be and to do. First of all, we have to deal with our demons: the ways we judge others, the ways we make excuses, the ways we speak when we should listen, the way we decide to do noting, to keep quiet.  We have to be ready to challenge evil, unfairness, abuse of power, inequalities, in whatever way we can, not because we know better but because Jesus wants things to be better and wants his word to be better known. We can change things bit by bit, prayer by prayer, action by action.  It will not be easy, it will take time. But we do it, not in our own power, but in God’s power and authority. We are his children and he has passed the knowledge of the power of his authority to us. Let us remember that the evil spirit that possessed the man recognised Jesus as the holy one of God and was defeated by him. Let us in confidence play our part in bringing the good news of Jesus and his authority into the world in which we live, the authority that was steeped in the love of God and everyone and every part of his creation.

 Jane Barry (Reader)

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Sunday 14th January 2024

Reading John 1: 43-51

The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.  “Come and see,” said Philip.

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.  Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”

 Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Sermon on John 1: 43-51   ‘Come and See’

Question: what do we know about Nathanael from the bible?

Nathanael is mentioned only twice in John’s Gospel: in the passage read today and John 21:2 where we learn that Nathanael came from Cana in Galilee. Nathanael is also known as Bartholomew, which can be a bit confusing. But Jesus wasn’t confused when he saw Nathanael under that fig tree.

It must have been ordinary day for Nathanael who was taking some time to sit under the cooling shade of a fig tree, a place where someone could reflect, pray, meditate. And then he was interrupted by Philip who bustled in telling Nathanael ‘’We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” This suggests that Philip knew Nathanael knew the prophets. Philip certainly did: he’d just responded to Jesus’ simple invitation of ‘Follow me.’ But Nathanael wasn’t quite so keen: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” It was Philip’s invitation that made him move towards Jesus: ‘Come and see’. And so Nathanael did, maybe out of curiosity, maybe to please his friend, maybe because he nothing better to do now his peace and quiet had been disturbed. 

As he approached Jesus, Nathanael must have heard his words “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” How must he have felt: he was the one who’d just declared nothing good could come from Nazareth! How could Jesus know him? Jesus’ answer “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” must have stunned Nathanael, disconcerted him:  how could Jesus have noticed him? In that moment, Nathanael knew the truth: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.” It all came together and Nathanael believed.

Jesus, the Son of God, had seen Nathanael at prayer, knew his longing for truth. Nathanael was known by God, just as we know from Bernadette Farrell’s version of Psalm 139  that God knows us all and is calling to all.  He wants us to ‘Come and See.’

When Jesus saw Nathanael, he also saw into his heart. . The good. The bad. The ugly. Jesus knew Nathanael’s heart. He knew his passion. He knew his prejudice. He knew that he had longed to know God, sitting alone under the fig tree to study His Word.

Despite his flaws, if there was one thing Nathanael wasn’t, it was a hypocrite. He hadn’t put on a show or pretended to be something he was not to impress anyone, let alone Jesus. In Nathanael, Christ had found a genuine and authentic believer. There was nothing fake or insincere about him. What you saw was what you got.

Despite Nathanael’s initial prejudice, Jesus saw through the sinful, the imperfect, and the ordinary to the eager heart of one who was willing to leave everything behind to follow Him. This was one Jesus could transform and equip for His glory.

By the grace of God, Nathanael was chosen to follow Christ. The most remarkable thing about his calling was that he had simply said yes.

Jesus gave Nathanael an Epiphany promise that he would see greater things, something of the glory of Jesus: ‘the heavens open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’ (v51). Well, Nathanael was still there after the resurrection, one of those for whom Jesus made breakfast after the great catch of fish (John 21). He saw the risen Lord. We don’t know what happened to Nathanael/Bartholomew after that. It is accepted that he went to India to spread the word and was eventually martyred. But from his brief appearance in the gospels, we can learn much: that we are known; that we are wanted and that if we respond by saying yes, we will be able to follow Christ in faith and trust.

And there is one other important thing to be learnt from this part of John’s gospel: the importance of Philip’s words: “Come and See’. We too are called to offer that invitation to others. We worry sometimes that if we do offer, the invitation will be rebuffed. Nathanael’s ‘ can anything good come from Nazareth?’ could be compared to the cynicsm we sometimes encounter. Philip’s gentle ‘come and see’ enabled Nathanael to take those first steps and look what happened! 

Of course responding to God’s call may not always happen as quickly as it did with Philip and Nathanael. Remember Samuel: three times God called to him in the night; three times Samuel thought it was Eli. It was Eli who realised that God was calling Samuel and so told Samuel, ‘Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”’ And so Samuel did and God did speak to him and the rest, as they say, is history. God will find a way and that can be though anyone of us. 

As Eli said later to Samuel “He is the Lord; let him do what is good in his eyes.” We have to keep on seeing people, situations, ourselves through God’s eyes. We may feel that we aren’t worthy enough, clever enough, strong enough as his disciples but He knows us and knows what we are capable of, what is good in his eyes and what he desires for all. As believers, we must continue to ‘come and see’ Jesus for ourselves in our reading, our discussions and our prayers. And we must be ready to invite others to come and see the love that is there for them through Jesus Christ. That is what Jesus did and what he wants us to do.

 Jane Barry (Reader)

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Sunday 7th January 2024

Reading Matthew 2: 1-12  -  The Magi Visit the Messiah

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.  “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

“‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; f or out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

Sermon on Matthew 2: 1-12 

What quickens your pulse ? What gets you really excited ? As we look at society as a whole it seems quite clear that we live in an age of the celebrity cult. I can easily feel a bit negative about that but at the same time have to admit that actually meeting a celebrity is something that can excite us. I can confess that I have a very nice picture of me standing close to Jill Dando. She was a fantastic patron of Weston Hospicecare and visited frequently. I guess that most of us might have some story of a brush with a celebrity. Our story this morning is about some celebrities, be they Magi, or Wise men or even Kings who would take some stories back to their homeland.

On a Bakers coach journey into London quite a few years ago now, as Hazel and I entered the city we became aware of a buzz of excitement and above that buzz rose the phrase “It’s the Queen”. Sure enough as we looked out there was the instantly recognisable car with crest and pennant with the Queen in the back. The atmosphere in the coach was electric which was an understandable response. There is a story I must tell you of a lady  in the States, on a hot day fancying a Hagen Daz icecream cone. As she turns from the counter with the cone, she came face to face with (pause) Paul Newman. He said Hello and her knees turned to jelly. Outside the shop and regaining her composure she realised that she didn’t have her icecream cone. Heading back to the door she again met Paul Newman coming out and he asked if she was looking for her icecream cone. She nodded, unable to speak. He said “You put it in your handbag with your change!” An example of someone finding themselves in the presence of acting royalty. God doesn’t want us to feel like that with him, but nevertheless I wonder when was the last time that being in God’s presence quickened your pulse ? When did you last feel emotional when singing some of the words in our wonderful hymns and worship songs, or sharing Communion with the fantastic underlying truth of forgiveness and eternity. 

Matthew reminds us that the Magi , when they arrived in Jerusalem as part of their search, made no secrecy that their objective was v2 to Worship Jesus. The intent is carried out in v.11. ‘On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother, and they bowed down and worshipped him’.

For the Magi, after a long and no doubt tiring journey across country, I have no problem in anticipating that their pulses were quickened .From whatever old manuscripts they had read and from a long journey planned, they followed the star and found God’s promised Messiah. A physical bowing down simply paid tribute to who they believed Jesus to be. There was no set form of worship for them to use, it was an act of the heart which included some thoughtful gifts.

I have a few brief observations to add which I hope might be helpful. Firstly, who were these Magi ? What we glean from other parts of the Bible is that they were set apart as wise men who were religious and also astronomers. However the most important information is that they weren’t Jews, they were Gentiles from the east. Their pilgrimage to worship the new King is quite simply a confirmation of the Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah was for ALL people, Jew and Gentile alike, and that the nations of the world will come to His light. Read  Isaiah 11…Jeremiah 16…Malachi 1…. And later, the song of Simeon proclaims Jesus as the light for revelation to the Gentiles. So Jesus was visited, firstly by lowly Jewish shepherds and later on by these highly respected Gentiles.

We might ask, where were the Pharisees and Saducees, the Jewish teachers and experts in the law who knew their Scriptures.  When asked by Herod where the Messiah was to be born, they were very clear. They directed the Magi to Bethlehem. That’s where it will happen. So it begs the questions, where are they?  What are they thinking?  Why are they waiting ? We are aware of how the story unfolds and that for the leaders both fear and jealousy take over, guaranteeing their opposition to Jesus. These learned Jews were so familiar with the prophecies  and yet strangely, when the Messiah arrives they both failed and refused to accept it. Their familiarity with the story did nothing to aid their enjoyment of the event. Is it possible do you think that we too might just be a little subject to that danger of familiarity? Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Harvest are all so familiar and for myself having prepared services around those themes for over 30 years now I recognise that it’s easy for that familiarity to dull our senses of the magnitude of the truths we are celebrating. The Magi were undoubtedly putting the Jewish leaders to shame and their negative reaction creates a shadow over the ministry of Jesus which leads to the crucifixion. 

Our familiarity with the story must not blind us from  a heart response every time we come to worship. Whilst 2000 years of worship is a cause for celebration, it must not weaken our grateful appreciation of God’s love and promises. When the Magi reached Jerusalem they asked questions and had also been following the star which marks them out as being both observant and determined. With careful observation they had concluded that this star was indeed unusual and worth studying. Despite the challenges, the inevitable expense and danger they embarked on a journey into the unknown because the prize was life changing. So it is for us. As Christians we need to be observant about the world around us, aware of the pressures and tensions, aware too of the shifts in standards and behaviour but at the same time ready also to be the voice of God in our daily lives and words. As God guided the Magi to the baby Jesus so he guides us to be his disciples each and every day.

Drawing things to a close let’s take a re- run of v11 .  ‘On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh’

What this verse tells us is that the Magi had found what they were looking for. Just imagine for a moment their meeting with Mary and Joseph. It would undoubtedly have included conversations between them and a sharing of their stories . The result was that they were convinced as to the truth of the birth of the Messiah. The story points us to a great God who can do things his way, perhaps when we least expect it. As the Magi were convinced and returned home with a story to tell , so we too can be convinced about the continued relevance of God’s message of love, forgiveness and eternity through the life and death of this  baby who grew up. The story both for the Magi and the story for us is so tremendous, that for  them and us the response can be none other than to worship our God . They brought gifts of value and symbolism. For us, the Christmas carol askes ‘what can I give him poor as I am’ and gives the answer ‘Give my heart’. We can do that again today.

The Magi had 4 characteristics. We have already seen 3, that of observation, determination and conviction, but finally they were also obedient when a dream warned them about avoiding Herod on the way home. We need those all those characteristics as well and more so in the current and deteriorating climate of the world in which we live. God will help us, and as we worship, may our pulses quicken with the same determination and conviction to serve Him every day.

Rev Geoff Hobden

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Sunday 31st December 2023 - New Year Benefice Songs of Praise

 Jane Barry (Reader)

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Sunday 10th December 2023 - 2nd Sunday in Advent

Sermon on Isaiah 40:1-11 & Mark 1:1-8

How are you Christmas preparations going on? So much to plan, so much to buy, cards to write, presents to wrap, services to prepare, Christingles to make. Everyone says what a busy time the run up to Christmas is. So in this busyness how do we prepare ourselves for the birth of that baby and the second coming of our Saviour at a time we know not? And how do we share the great gift that God has given for all? Where do we get our guidance?

Well, let’s think back to the reading from Isaiah. First of all, God’s people are comforted. They have been going through difficult, challenging times but there is help coming. The people are called to ‘In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert; a highway for our God.’

We all know about preparing roads, repairing roads! Over the last few months we have had mixture of all of those pictures locally and on the M5 and M4. What these pictures remind us of is that building new roads, repairing existing roads, diverting the flow from the usual is not easy. It takes planning, ingenuity, resources and above all patience! Road building, literal or metaphorical, is not straightforward and it cannot be done by one person alone: it takes teams of people working together. 

In a metaphorical way Isaiah draws on the convention of the time that meant roads were made good when important people were expected, because the way God’s people were to make the way clear was to be through their words.

A voice says, “Cry out.” And I said, “What shall I cry?”

The answer is: ‘say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!”  He comes with power and 

He tends his flock like a shepherd:

    He gathers the lambs in his arms

and carries them close to his heart;

 he gently leads those that have young.

What a gift. That is the good news that needs to be spread. And that is the good news that John the Baptist was spreading at the beginning of Mark the ‘voice of one calling in the wilderness, Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’

It must have been God who prompted John to begin his ministry at the right time to prepare the way for Jesus for we know from Luke that John’s father Zechariah was told by an angel that the unexpected baby as a man would ‘go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’ And so he did, appearing ‘in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and telling them‘ I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with  the Holy Spirit.’ All were welcome, all could be prepared

God had a purpose for John and he has a purpose for each one of us in the spreading of the good news. We might feel that we are in a wilderness of non-believers, those who think there is nothing worth listening to. Why is that? Is the vocabulary not right? Is the tone not right (Isaiah uses the words ‘speak gently’). Is it because the message seems to be for ‘some people’, not all. Is it because the message has been unclear? Do we have to dress in funny clothes or stand on the top of Hutton Hill to gain attention? How do we play our part in preparing the way?

First of all we need to keep challenging our selves about our faith. We prepare for Jesus’ first coming quite easily every year but we have to be prepared for his second coming. In his second letter, Peter writes ‘Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position.  But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.’

We have to keep growing, learning through our experiences, our mistakes, our wilderness times, our triumphs, our relationships. We have to challenge the way we think, act, see others. We have to strive to be more like Jesus, to live in the ways he has taught us. We must not be complacent about ourselves: coming to church once a week is not the be all and end all. We have to live for Jesus in our communities.

That message was reiterated by Bishop Michael, our bishop, on November 9th at a Deanery Synod meeting. Churches were invited to share what they are doing, which they did. Here is part of his response as recorded by our Area Dean:

‘What stood out was the determination of Locking Deanery churches to go to where the people are, rather than expecting them to come to you. The shared stories revealed a commitment to go beyond the traditional Sunday morning offerings, embracing diverse expressions of our Christian faith such as Messy Church, chaplaincy, drop-ins, and opportunities for Bible discussions over an evening meal. All were inspiring to hear.’

Sounds to me that this these are forms of road building, roads which lead to the truth of the good news. Wherever we are, who ever we are there will be opportunities to lay new roads. They might be small lanes, they might be motorways, but they will be built with love and the desire for people to get to know the good news.

So as we prepare for Christmas, trusting in God’s words, let us prepare to be road builders for the good news of Jesus, for ourselves, for others and for the coming of the kingdom. May the road to our hearts be clear, so that when Jesus comes he will find the highway into our hearts and on our journeys may we guide others to build their own roads to Jesus.

 Jane Barry (Reader)  Read out by Warden Dave Bradley

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Sunday 3rd December 2023  - 1st Sunday in Advent

Sermon  on 1Corinthians 1:3-9 and Mark 13:24-37

We call this ADVENT SUNDAY and in our calendar and with the lighting of candles, it marks the beginning of our countdown to Christmas and the birth of Jesus. However, I feel very strongly about the importance of the meaning of Advent itself, not as a prelude to Christmas but as a vital part of our belief as Christians. We are soon to celebrate the first coming of Jesus but Advent is about rejoicing in His promise to return. Our readings reminded me of a song I remember from the past which I haven’t heard for some considerable time. Each verse ends with the words 

‘ Is what’s turning the world upside down‘ Remember it?  I asked Eric if we could possibly ask the choir to sing a couple of verses

O Lord all the world belongs to you
And you are always making all things new
What is wrong you forgive, and the new life you give
Is what’s turning the world upside down.
The world’s only loving to it’s friends
But your way of loving never ends
Loving enemies too, and this loving with you
Is what’s turning the world upside down.
That is what our faith can do!

If we genuinely take on board the fact that Jesus is returning, and celebrate Advent for what it means, then we are aligning ourselves with a creed that wants to turn the world upside down. That is not what the world, in which we live, believes. We are part of an alternative society. To believe the Advent story  marks us out as distinctly different from everyone else. It is not the world view, it is specifically the Christian view. In summary, as Christians  we have a clear concept of past, present and future. Our past is rooted in God’s creation of ourselves and where we live. Our present is an acute awareness of our need for forgiveness from God and to follow the example of Jesus, and our future is one of anticipation because of God’s promise of eternity with him after Jesus returns.

If everyone believed this it would lierally turn the world upside down. Everything would change.

In Pauls letter v4 he writes ‘I always thank God for you because of His grace given you in Christ Jesus’. The past is significant for every Christian because we know that it has changed us. We would be different if we hadn’t become Christians. Wouldn’t we ?  Because of that we can anticipate the promise of Jesus returning which will be even more dramatic than the past. This is what these 4 weeks of Advent are about and we shouldn’t rush past it eager to reach the birthday celebration. Why do I say that the second Advent will be dramatic? In history at the first Advent of Jesus, much of the world was either unaware or chose to ignore it with the exception of some who just wanted to stamp it out and kill him. When the second  Advent happens we are told quite clearly that absolutely everyone in the whole world will know that it’s happening. Mark reports Jesus as saying v33 ‘Be on your guard.  Be alert. You do not know when that time will come’. 

Matthew reports Jesus as saying Chap 24v 30 ‘The Son of man will appear in the sky and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory, and his angels will gather the elect (that’s Christians) from the four winds from one end of the heavens to the other’. That is the equivalent to the angels visiting the shepherds many times over and would include Hutton and Locking !!

That for me is the point at which Christians will stand up tall , looking up, with hands raised, as that scenario should hold no fear for us. We know that we are justified through the sacrificial death of Jesus. We can look forward to His return with no fear because we are confident in the promises of God. We have no reason to be proud as only the death of Jesus made it possible for us.

That is what the future holds out for us. What does the future look like for those without faith in God ? How do they face death? I must confess that I have no idea how they do. I remember a report of a discussion between a Christian and a non-believer, where the Christian ended it by offering to continue the discussion after death. Having seen quite a few people who had died in my time, I cannot believe that the spark that made them who they were and which has so blatantly disappeared, was down to a heartbeat, blood cells and brain function. Scientists will never be able to produce a person with character and personality. That is God’s work, that is Spirit, that is unique and indestructible . The humanist sees nothing beyond the grave. Reincarnation is only attractive to some faiths because it avoids the finality of death.

One of our hymns includes ‘We have a faith that is steadfast and certain, gone through the curtain and touching the throne’. This is a statement about the death of Jesus and His resurrection and it also will be true for us. At our homegroup only this week, when thinking about the death of Jesus, we were reminded about the curtain separating the Jews from the holy of holies, a curtain which was torn in two from top to bottom at the moment  Jesus died, so opening up access to God  by all of us.

The Advent truth is a massive encouragement and is, in a way a test of the strength and clarity of our faith. As Christians, having been changed by the past through coming to faith, by being confident about the future, so we can be positive about the present. Paul in that short passage in 1 Corinthians has so many positive things to say. V3 Grace and Peace to you. To live as a disciple is to have access to that grace and peace. To be peacemakers and gracious in our relationships comes from the example of Jesus in a world where it seems that to get anywhere you have to be a bit pushy or even rude. That is not what God wants for you and me. Paul also says v 5 that we are enriched in every way. That sounds pretty positive but there’s more v7 you do not lack any spiritual gifts as you wait and V8 we will be kept strong to the end. V9 gives the final and eternal truth that we need to hold onto which is that ‘God who called you into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is Faithful.

My uncle who died two years ago aged 94 proclaimed to us every time we visited him. God is Faithful. May that be our sure faith, and may we not rush through Advent.

 We can yet turn the world upside down if we live that out until either we die or the Lord Jesus returns. Amen

Rev Geoff Hobden

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Sunday 12th November 2023

Remembrance Service

As a child, my friend would not turn the clock back until she woke up the following day, thus ensuring she ‘could really enjoy that extra hour in bed!’ If only we could turn the clock back. If we could turn back the clock of history perhaps things might be different. No Covid! No war in Ukraine. No war in Gaza and Israel. No wars at all.

If we could turn back the clock on decisions made, the outcomes might be different. There might be no conflict, no wars to remember here today. If we could turn the clock back, we could perhaps avoid so much loss of life, so much suffering, so much pain. 

We cannot turn the clock back. But we can remember. Because all too often it’s too easy to forge the price of peace. Remembrance Sunday gives us time to stop, to remember. We stop the clock. Not literally. But for two minutes in the year, we have the opportunity to reflect. To be still and remember the significant loss of life that conflict and war have caused. We come together as a nation and silence gathers us into a shared emotion which, for those who have lost loved ones, is almost unbearable. And it is those we loved and all those lost that we remember today. 

Jesus taught us a lot about love. In the reading from John’s gospel we hear him saying: ‘Love each other as I have loved you’. Jesus loved us so much that he came to teach, to give us examples, to die for us and by rising again, showing that he keeps his promises and that he will always be with us. He says: Greater love has no-one than that he lay down his life for his friends.’ That is not just in times of war but also in times of peace. Serving our country, our communities, our families and our friends means putting ourselves aside, no matter how young or old we might be, giving of our time, our talents, our patience and our love. And it is those offerings of ourselves that the future is built: one of hope, of neighbourliness, of compassion and of peace.

We are surrounded today by poppies which are the symbols of remembrance. Unlike a poppy flower, which will fall to the ground, wither, and decay, God’s love for us and our love for all those we remember today will not fall, wither or decay. Love will endure. The two minutes of silence we will observe is barely enough time for the chatter of our minds to settle, but all the same, as we sit or stand together, we have an invitation to find space in the busyness of our own lives, for a silent opening to all that war has meant for our country and for those who have suffered and died fighting for it. As we join in that collective silence, what we do is stop our own clocks and become quiet just for a moment to bear witness to what happened. And after this service and after the silence at the war memorial, let us all remember Jesus’ words: ‘Love each other’ and do our best to create a better world in the future, learning from the past, determined to serve others in the present and to work for a fairer, peaceful future for all.

 Jane Barry (Reader)

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Joint Benefice Memorial Service 4pm Sunday 29th October 2023

When we were putting this service together, Eric reminded me of The Byrd’s song “Turn, Turn, Turn’. Now, as this was released at the end of 1965, many of us here don’t remember it or may never have heard it, but it is a song that used the words of Ecclesiastes 3 1-8 and begins: 

‘To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under Heaven.’

This song was released at a time of upheaval in America. In 1965 America sent troops into Vietnam; the civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King as one of its leaders, was challenging discrimination. Looking at a summary of events in 1965, there were many conflicts that happened across the world: I do remember Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) declaring UDI from Great Britain (not that I understood much). It seems that humankind has always been struggling with itself, internationally, nationally and individually and trying to find ways of understanding how to deal with the challenges that life brings.

The reading from the book of Ecclesiastes, chosen in memory of Timothy Porter, reminds us of the reality of life. The unknown author of Ecclesiastes does not attempt to paint a perfect picture, the life of our fondest dreams. Instead, he is realistic, pragmatic, and sobering in his assessment of life. Life is not all beauty and happiness; there is also pain and loss. Life certainly includes laughter and joy, but there is also a heavy side to life. Life includes the whole package of light and darkness. 

And we here today, know of that lightness and darkness as we come to remember those who we love who have died. We know of the darkness of grief, some of it still very raw. We know of the pain of loss, not being able to see a loved one, to hear a loved voice, to be with a much loved family member or friend. But we also know that in our grief, in our loss, we can still find light. There is ‘a time to weep and a time to laugh’ when we remember the good times we had, the good things we are left with, including children, grandchildren, memories and examples. There is ‘a time to mourn and a time to dance’ when we can accept that joy does not die when someone we love dies, for in celebrating that life we find happiness. 

The verses from Ecclesiastes reminds us that throughout our lives and that of humanity the same things happen over and over again: life and death, tears and laughter; decisions to be made. The question that faces us all is how we respond to each of those phases and where our guidance comes from. Our faith teaches us that it comes from God. Often the question is asked: where is God in all of this? Well, our faith tells us that God is in all of this. He weeps when we weep; he laughs when we laugh. He wants us to get rid of things that hurt, damage, destroy: he wants us to build up communities, to bring justice, to bring hope. If we follow his commands, if we accept the gift of Jesus Christ, who came to this messy world to remind humanity of the love of God for his creation, to remind them of his promises and live as and with humans, then we have his example of how to live, how to love and how hope.

Verse 11 of Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that God ‘has set eternity in the hearts of his people, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.’ So God sent Jesus, who lived and died for us, showing us that death is not the end. The reading from John about the resurrection shows us once again that God’s promises are kept and how people learn that through their experiences, through their learning and through their own experiences of God. In times of grief God is with us: we may not realise that at the time but on reflection many have seen how God has been at work in all sorts of ways.

The Byrd’s song finishes with the line:

‘A time for peace, I swear it's not too late’

Tonight is a time for peace: peace in our hearts brought from the love we have for and have had from those we remember particularly tonight. It is a time for peace so we can open ourselves to God’s love for us all and accept the love and peace he gives us which passes all understanding.  It is never too late to ask God for his help to guide us through our lives, trusting that he will always answer our prayers. His Son, Jesus Christ, told his disciples: ‘And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the of the age’. He is here with us now and will be with us as we leave. Let us all turn to Him.

Jane Barry (Reader)

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Reading for 10am service  Sunday 29nd October 2023

Thessalonians 2: 1-16 - Paul’s Ministry in Thessalonica

 You know, brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not without results. We had previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition. For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts. You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed—God is our witness. We were not looking for praise from people, not from you or anyone else, even though as apostles of Christ we could have asserted our authority. Instead, we were like young children[a] among you.

Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well. Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.

 And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe. For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

Sermon on Thessalonians 2: 1-16

Do you remember the Greenham Common protests? It was at an airbase in Berkshire when nuclear cruise missiles were being allowed  to be stored there alongside an American base. It was 1981 when some Welsh women went there to protest. Numbers swelled into thousands and a Peace camp was set up and remained until 2000. They made their presence felt, as do the current Just Stop Oil protesters who are being effective, but I would draw the line at disrupting the snooker final as they did. Opposition groups can cause a huge  number of challenges , and that is exactly what was happening to this new church in Thessalonica. Paul was the founder, and in v2 he says “we dared to tell you the Gospel in spite of  strong opposition”. The opposition went as far as physically hounding Paul out of the city. Paul is writing this letter a couple of years later after Timothy had gone there on a visit and discovered that against the odds the church had survived. However, Timothy left knowing that  during the two years life had been no picnic with opposition that had been constant and organised. Paul was understandably encouraged  with the news but still had concerns. The main opposition were the Jews who were upset at the prospect of this new sect. Their intention was to squash it altogether. One of their ploys was, as in all good courtroom scenes, to try and discredit the main witness. If some doubt can be raised in the character, history or motives of the main witness, then the force or their evidence is reduced or even discounted altogether. The Jews worked hard to raise doubts about Paul, and Timothy may have been concerned that some mud might have been sticking and that even some in the church were beginning to wonder if there was some truth. This still is a frequent ploy of satan  to try to undermine the Good news of the Gospel. We may not be in the same situation as the Christians at Thess but we need to be on our guard against any attempt to undermine our total belief in the message and we also need to avoid being  carriers of some piece of news/gossip about someone/something which is a fabrication of the truth.

When Paul got this news from Timothy about the lies spread around by the Jews ,  now being received by the Christians, it would have stung him to think that they might be willing to believe it. For all his gifts, Paul was human, and it’s felt that these words in chapter two were a response to that. If you simply read through this chapter without knowing the context you might conclude that Paul is on a bit of an ego trip. Let me pick out some phrases:-

We speak as men approved by God.v4

We were gentle among you.v7

We worked night and day.v9

Among you we were holy, righteous and blameless. v10

But this is no self -congratulatory letter. It is a serious attempt to counter the rumours being put out about him by the Jews. Quite simply he is defending himself to this young church of how he and Silas had conducted themselves as they preached the Gospel.

But there is one other area that the Jewish protesters refused to accept about the Christian faith  It is  the suggestion that the  Christian  message they had and we have is uniquely   different from all the other faiths around. It is so easy for people today, as it was then, for folk who have never bothered to explore, to put all  faith groups into  the same bracket . It is an excuse, but it is convenient to take that view, and our enemy the devil, will fan those flames. It seems to me that we are increasingly witnessing  this kind of thinking in this country. The Christian ethos of our country is waning rapidly  and it is quite possible that  the Christian faith may end up as having simply a cult status, as it has been in France for some time.

In his letter Paul is at pains to draw a distinct contrast between his message and that of all of the others. V13 says

‘When you received the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted  it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God which is at work in you who believe,

So those who were preaching then, as we who preach now about Jesus, are quite different from the other faiths. We have a saviour who was crucified and rose again. We have a God who promises forgiveness and eternity. We cannot earn God’s love . Our Gospel is totally different from the others.

In v3 Paul points to other differences. He talks about truth, motivation and methods. He speaks about our faith as the truth, and there can only be one truth. He reminds them of his and our  motives that come from love in response to God’s love for us. He speaks about our methods of reaching out, which do not include being devious or cunning or with pressure. Those are the marks of those who do not have the truth. 

Just towards the end of this section Paul reminds this church, made up of converted Jews, that the very people who are so against them, are the very people who v15 killed the prophets and the Lord Jesus and drove himself and Silas out of the city.

If any witnesses can be discredited, rather than Paul, it is the Jews themselves whose history is damning . Paul’s conclusion v15 “They displease God and are hostile to all men in their efforts to prevent us from speaking to others so that they may be saved.”

More recent generations have never been free of those trying to discredit Jesus and the bible. It can often be subtle perhaps through the media including news, plays and films and the church has not always held to the truth of the authority of scripture which is even being tested at the present time. As Christians we are by God set a high standard for our everyday lives, attitudes and words, and if we step out of line there will always be somebody who will notice, and the gospel we proclaim will be discredited . In v12 Paul speaks of living lives worthy of God who calls you into his kingdom and glory. Are there times when God would be disappointed by things we allow or say ? 

At the very beginning of his letter, what was it  Paul said to this congregation who were under pressure from the world around them? He said V3 “We continually remember your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

It was a tough call for them and it is the same for us. We live in a different world to them, but people are the same, and in the same way our work, our  labour and our endurance need to be produced by faith, prompted by love and inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. The message to us doesn’t change and neither does God’s promise of forgiveness and eternity.

The protests of the world will go on, but so will we with the message of God’s love open to everyone.  Amen 

 Rev Geoff Hobden

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Reading for Sunday 22nd October 2023

Matthew 22:15-22 - Paying the Imperial Tax to Caesar

Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax[a] to Caesar or not?”

But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius,  and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

Sermon on  Matthew 22 15-22

What images do we reflect?

Images. The world has always been full of images. Think of the wonderful paintings you’ve seen during your lifetime: Rembrandt’ s The Return of the Prodigal Son in the Hermitage; Turner’s works in the Tate; Monet;  pre-Raphaelites. Think of images: adverts, photos, films, tv programmes and now the internet which means that images of events can be sent out worldwide within seconds of them happening. We are bombarded, overwhelmed by pictures, images. What sense can we make of them? How do we make up our minds about what is true, accurate, unbiased?

In Jesus’ time (and until the 19th century) most people would never actually see those who ruled over them, those monarchs, emperors, pharaohs, politicians. They would have been kept in order by those who lived in their communities, who had been given authority which cascaded down: the priests, the soldiers, the tax collectors, the landowners. So coinage became not just a way of buying and selling but of also stating who was in charge at that time. When Jesus was asked about paying taxes to Caesar whose image was on a coin of the time, the authorities were trying to trick him. If Jesus answered that the taxes were lawful, he would alienate the people, who hated the tax and the coin. The poll tax had to be paid with a denarius coin, which bore the image of Caesar and the inscription, “Tiberius Caesar, August son of the divine Augustus, high priest.” Jews considered graven images idolatrous and the inscription blasphemous, so the issue had a substantial religious basis. Nevertheless, the denarius was in common use among Jews. If Jesus had answered that the taxes were not lawful, the Romans would have arrested him for sedition. Either way, Jesus would lose and his enemies win.

Jesus’ answer ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s’ amazed the people. It gave them plenty to think about and it should give us plenty to think about too. What did Caesar have? Right and fair taxes have to be paid: Paul tells us that God has appointed higher authorities, and we are obligated to obey them (Romans 13:1-2). He goes on to say, “For this reason you also pay taxes, for (those in authority) are servants of God’s service…. Give therefore to everyone what you owe: taxes to whom taxes are due; customs to whom customs; respect to whom respect; honour to whom honour” (Romans 13:6-7). But Caesar had no right to be worshipped: everything that humans have comes from God. And we are made in the image of God and so we should give ourselves back to God, all that we have and all that we are, because God created us and we are an integral part of God’s realm.

So being made in God’s image, how do we live that image, present that image, share that image? How should we live for God, both as individuals, churches and society. Archdeacon Adrian directed our attention to a couple of the churches in Revelation. The message to the church in Ephesus acknowledged their hard work, their perseverance and their determination. But they are told: ‘You have forsaken your first love’. They had lost sight of the love they had for Jesus and for each other. Stuff was getting in the way. The church in Laodicea was told they were lukewarm, complacent. They were too comfortable. It is here we hear the words: ‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.’ They needed to go back to listening to what Jesus wants, not what they felt was necessary, what fitted in with what they were doing. The seven churches in Revelation were being challenged to re-examine whether they had hearts for Jesus, which is a challenge for all churches now and for all Christians. Does our image reflect Jesus’ teachings, life, death and his promises?

In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul gives thanks for them. ‘We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ’ and ‘you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere.’

The Thessalonians’ lives mirrored what Jesus was pointing out in his answer to the Pharisees in Matthew:  we bear God’s image, and so it is appropriate to give ourselves back to God. Jesus does not divide the world into two equal realms, clearly defining the boundaries between our obligations to Caesar and our obligations to God. Rather, his answer acknowledges our obligation to the state, but affirms our larger obligation to God. Coins bearing Caesar’s image may belong to Caesar, but all things (coins, Caesar, Rome, the planet earth, the universe) come from the mind of God and are under God’s dominion. Caesar’s realm is but a speck within God’s realm. The days of Caesar’s realm were numbered, but God’s realm is eternal. In that we have our great hope, from that we draw our strength and because of that we want to share God’s love for all his creation. 

Two more images to finish with. In Rev 4, John writes that he sees the throne of God. ‘There before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it’. We have to remember that God’s throne is never empty. He is in charge. And in the mess of history and today, he is charge and is in the midst of what is happening. And in his time, there will come the new Jerusalem as described in Rev 21 and 22. Then heaven will come down to earth and all things will be made new, better than we can imagine. God’s promises will be fulfilled for those who have been faithful to him. Those images must empower us to examines ourselves, our actions, our views and the image we present to others, hoping that they will learn from our us of the love that God, through Jesus has for us all. Let’s pray that we have hearts for Jesus, lives lived for him and that we serve the ultimate realm: that of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jane Barry (Reader)

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Reading for Sunday 1st October 2023

Philippians 2: 1-11 - Imitating Christ’s Humility

1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothingby taking the very nature[b] of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 Sermon on Philippians 2: 1-11

Can I begin by putting a fairly wild thought to you? It is this, that if for some obscure reason we didn’t have the whole Bible as it is, that if that were the case then I would propose that this chapter 2 of Paul’s letter to the Philippians would have still given us enough to base our human lives on needing a relationship with our creator God through Jesus.

In the first 4 verses Paul brilliantly sets out  for us, what the marks are, of being a follower of Jesus, a disciple. He does it not by making statements but by asking questions. Questions that are intended to make us think seriously about how we live our lives as professed followers of Jesus.  Each of the 4 question start with the word ‘If ….’ Which then becomes an invitation to individually respond to a very positive suggestion. Let’s take the first one.

‘If…. you have any encouragement from being united with Christ’. That’s got to be a good thing…YES? So do we find that a real encouragement or not , being united with Christ?

The second one….’If…. any comfort from His love ’So  are we comforted by knowing Christ’s love?

Thirdly ‘If…. any fellowship with the Spirit’  Are our lives enhanced with the understanding of God’s gift of the Spirit?

Lastly….’If….. any tenderness and compassion’  Are these strong marks of our lives or are they overruled by selfishness ? 

Believe it or not that’s all in V.1, and Paul continues by making the assumption that we are all on board with positive responses to those questions , that we are encouraged by being united with Christ,  that we are comforted from His love, that our lives are enhanced by the Spirit, and that we are tender and compassionate. So Paul goes on to say V2

If that is the case ‘make my joy complete’ HOW?

By being of the same mind of myself V2
By having the same love, and
By being united in spirit and purpose.

Paul goes on to put some flesh on the bones of what all that means in V3.  There is to be no selfish ambition or conceitedness . I wonder why he puts that first ? I’ll leave that Q in the air. His next point is a vital one as he specifically pinpoints the necessity of humility in our attitudes to others, pursuing their interests rather than our own.

The overall message is one of imitating Christ Jesus, and it was of course His life that was and still is the perfect example of everything that Paul is challenging us about.

The message we get from Paul is that the desire to imitate the Lord Jesus is, for every believer, not an option but a necessity. As Christians, it needs to become part of our D.N.A. and Paul’s inspired words are highlighting to us  the examples of Jesus which need to be imitated in our lives. The questions Paul faces us with can only become a reality for us as we open ourselves daily to Jesus and His Spirit. That is the only  path to becoming imitators of Jesus in our everyday lives. And one word which jumps out at me as a bedrock of that kind of faith is HUMILITY,  because that was a constant mark of the life of Jesus.

Our humility starts with an understanding that we are not perfect and need forgiveness. That lifelong understanding of how we don’t measure up to God’s standard becomes the key to all the things raised by Paul.  That humility leads to love and unity, and living the kind of lives that can only come from the example of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Paul in V.1 links  comfort coming from our understanding of the  love of Jesus, and that comfort is simply a reflection of God’s promise firstly to forgive every time we say sorry and secondly God’s promise of eternity for all believers. We have so many hymns that spell this out to us :-

God is our strength and refuge
To God be the Glory great things he has done
O let the son of God enfold you.

God’s words of comfort to us are legion. We have every reason to be humble in the face of God’s promises. We have every reason to imitate the humility of Jesus in the way we love and deal with each other.                                                                                                                                                                                          How do we measure up to the challenge of humility? I think that maybe it’s a bigger factor than we want to accept. 

Just consider for a moment about the  motives which drive our decisions. Can we always be 100% sure that our motives are always driven by a desire to serve as against wanting to look good in the opinion of others . It’s been said that our motives are always mixed. The only one who could dispute that statement is Jesus and it is his humility that we aspire to. .Humility is not weakness. Jesus was the perfect example and had a strength that shone through him and impacted others.  His humility was a natural outworking of His love both for the world and us as individuals. Perfect love and perfect humility go together and, as the old song goes, you can’t have one without the other. As we respond individually to God’s claim on our lives and the call to imitate Christ, all of us must be ready recognise our need to say sorry for our lack of love and humility. 

As I said at the start, this passage is sufficient on its own in preparing us for God’s call our lives to imitate Jesus so it seems appropriate to repeat  the words used by Paul.V5” Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus, Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself NOTHING, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbledhimself and became obedient to death….even death on a cross!

We are called to imitate Jesus !!! This flawless, sinless character. Now, Imitating a famous person is one thing, copying a regional accent is something that most of us have a go at sometime, but imitating the perfection of human nature knowing that failure is guaranteed is something else. But, however lofty the ideal, however challenging and daunting the prospect, it remains a non-negotiable target, to imitate Christ.

In Shakespeare’s Henry 4th we are all familiar with the speech..’Once more into the breach dear friends’. But do you know how it goes on?

‘In peace there is nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility’.  Stillness and humility, these are the keys to where we begin. This rules out selfishness, mixed motives and lack of love for others and ourselves. The love and humility of Jesus is what we need to imitate His life and sacrifice. With an attitude of servant hood and  opening ourselves to God’s action on our lives, who knows what God can do. 

Out of humility God saved the world through Jesus. We might just  be amazed at what he can still do through us if we will let him.

Rev Geoff Hobden

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Reading for Sunday 24th September 2023

Matthew 20: 1-16 - The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’  So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Sermon on Matthew 20: 1-16

Matthew’s readings over the last few weeks have challenged us about the way we live, the way we respond to others and the way that God works. Jesus was unremitting in challenging people, getting them to re-think their attitudes, their customs, their arrogance, their perceptions that were based on the way they saw things rather than the way God wanted them to see things and act. In John 8 he says: ‘You judge by human standards; I pass judgement on no-one. But if I do judge, my decisions are right, because I am not alone. I stand with Father who sent me.’ 

Are we clear about what does God stand for? What does God want for us, from us. What does his love for his creation offer us that no other love can?

Jesus challenges us once again in the parable of the workers in the field. It’s so easy for us to emphasise with the grumbling workers who had been hired early in the morning, who had borne the brunt of the labour and endured the scorching heat of the day, only to see workers who had worked far less get paid the same as them. But actually the parable is as much about the landowner as the workers. Consider why the landowner kept returning to the marketplace. The potential employees were all there from the very start, but he didn’t hire them all at once – he returned again and again to the same place. He was obviously satisfied that those whom he initially hired were enough for the work. It wasn’t need that brought him back over and over again; it wasn’t necessity that drove him to keep seeking, to keep looking, to keep inviting – so what was it?

Now consider why those workers were still ‘standing around’ in the marketplace at five in the afternoon: because no one else had chosen them! There was something about them that held other employers back from hiring them. For some reason, these workers just weren’t good enough: they didn’t reach the standard, they didn’t live up to the expectations. And so, they were left out and left behind. But time after time, this one landowner went looking for them; he sought them out; he made a place for them; he had a purpose for them. 

These workers in the marketplace had been rejected, overlooked, left behind. They weren’t good enough for anyone else, but they were good enough for this landowner. He didn’t treat them as second class or second best; they didn’t get the consolation prize. Out of his lavish generosity, they received the same reward as their peers. 

And  that’s the economy of the kingdom, of heaven. That is what God’s grace is. It means there’s a place for us.  In all of our unworthiness and inadequacy; in all of our fallen-ness and brokenness; however messed up and mixed up we’ve been, God himself has personally invited us to follow Him and to come and be a part of what He’s doing. He sent his son to remind the world of that. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who goes looking for those whom everyone else has written off; he calls by name those upon whom everyone else has given up; he pulls up a seat at the table for those whom everyone else would leave on the outside looking in. 

It’s because our place in the Kingdom is not earned; it is received. It is not about what we have achieved or deserved, accomplished, or attained. It is about the grace of Almighty God.

Those early workers hadn’t been cheated: they were paid what was agreed, ‘whatever is right’. The landowner was well within his rights to pay whatever he wanted: in this case he paid them all the same. It makes no economic sense but in terms of self worth and affirmation, it must have meant a huge amount to the later men.

Those who were hired early in the day had achieved their desire: to get a day’s work so they could provide for their families. They did not have the worry of not getting paid that day. Those who were not chosen, who were late, felt that they had nothing to do, that they weren’t needed, that they were rejected. They had the worry of not being able to provide a wage for their families. When they were hired they were delighted, grateful. And when they were paid, they were even more so. For the landowner had treated them all the same, paying them the same. Those who had worked longest, grumbled, because they expected more: they’d done a whole day’s work! We can understand that, we can say ‘that’s only human.’ But the landowner challenges their thinking. The owner answered one of them. ‘Friend,’ he said, ‘I’m being fair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for the usual day’s pay? Take your money and go. I want to give the ones I hired last the same pay I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Do you feel cheated because I gave so freely to the others?’ 

Jesus is challenging his listeners again. The parable follows Jesus with the children, telling the disciples ‘ for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these’ and the encounter with the rich young man, which elicits from the disciples the question “who then can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Peter’s response is, ‘We have left everything to follow you! What then will be left for us?’ Peter feels that somehow the disciples should have preferential treatment, or at least a guarantee that God’s grace won’t run out. Jesus tells the disciples that everyone who follows Him with inherit eternal life ‘But many who are first will be last and many who are last will be first’

 Through the parable Jesus is challenging his listeners, us, about our perception of God as our Master and our perception of God’s grace. The point of the story is that what people get from having served God and his kingdom isn’t a wage at all. It’s not a reward for work done. God calls us and then he keeps his promises to us. So if we serve him, he will keep his promises to us, not as a reward, but because he is generous and loves us. Those who have served him all their lives have lived in the grace of God, his love, his protection, his guidance, his support. Those who come to Him later receive that great gift as well: those who have known God for longer should rejoice that others have received that grace. And they should also rejoice in the fact that God is out there looking for people, those people who others have been rejected, welcoming them on the same terms, surprising them and others with his generosity and grace. Jesus was reminding his followers then and is reminding his followers now that in his kingdom there are no ‘special ones’: everyone is special to Him.

 The parable of the workers reminds us to look at people through God’s eyes, not our own. The parable shows the extent of God’s love for each of his people and his desire for them to come to him. The parable shows the wonder of God’s grace. As Paul wrote in Philippians: ‘Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ’. That indeed is the challenge we all face,  that we have to remember and that is what we have to live, through God’s grace. That’s what God stands for.

Jane Barry (Reader)

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Sunday 17th September 2023

Harvest Sunday

Sermon on Luke 12: 16-30; 2 Corinthians : 6-end

It’s difficult to celebrate harvest in a country where most of us aren’t involved in gathering the harvest in – even if we’re dimly aware when driving through the countryside, of combine harvesters in the fields filling the air with dust. So we have turned the celebration of Harvest into other things – a thanksgiving for all the plenty we enjoy, and a reminder of our duty to remember and reach out to those who, at a symbolic time of plenty, have nothing. These are all good things to remember, of course. So how do we do it? What is our part in God’s harvest?

To begin with, we are all sowers. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he is urging them to give generously to a collection for the distressed Christians in Jerusalem. Paul uses the metaphor of sowing seeds, reminding them that God ‘who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness’ Generosity in sowing will bring its rewards to both sower and those who reap the benefit. So what do we sow? I know there are lots of keen gardeners here and those who grow are often generous with the bounty they receive. I know there are people here who help growth of other types through sponsoring Compassion children, through supporting the Food Bank and a myriad other charities. And all of us should be sowing the Word, through our lives, through our love, through our deeds. We should be doing that sowing to thank God for all he has given us, including His Son.

And as things grow and as things develop, we have to sort things out, make decisions, just like the Rich Fool in the parable. He has a wonderful harvest, a good crop. He wants to store it and so he builds bigger barns to keep it for himself and to live an easy life. Jesus’ listeners might have had some sympathy with that: harvests could be unreliable, locusts were a threat. But this man had an abundance which he wanted to keep for himself and God tells him that he will die and then what use are his barns to him? 

Jesus is telling all who hear him to get priorities sorted. ‘Life is more than food and the body more than clothes’. It’s not about greed and selfishness. For Christians, seeking the kingdom is the priority, seeking the spiritual benefits of the kingdom. For the kingdom of God is about God’s sovereignty sweeping the world with love and power, so that all human beings, each made in God’s image and each one loved so dearly, may relax in the knowledge that God is in control, in trust and love. ‘For where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also.’ That’s what should spur us on to bring the values and priorities of God himself to bear on the greed, anxiety and selfishness of the world. We have to sort out what is of this world and of God’s world. We have choices to make about where buy our food, considering the work of Fair Trade for example. We have to think about sustainability, about fair pay, about protecting the environment from pollution, from overuse, from neglect. We have to take global warming seriously.  And we do it because we have a God who we want to thank and serve. Our faith should help us engage more deeply in the needs of the world: there is so much to be sorted.

 So as we celebrate the harvest, past, present and future, we have much to share. Paul writes elsewhere ‘The Love of Christ urges us on, drives us, compels us’. We have brought our harvest gifts here today. We can continue in our givings. We have prayed here today. We can keep on praying, for ourselves, for each other, for the coming of the kingdom. We have considered the lilies of the field today. Let’s keep on considering what God is asking each one of us to do, to be, to say for the kingdom. We have been challenged to seek God’s kingdom: let’s do that by sharing the good news in whatever ways we can. Harvest is a celebration and a challenge: let’s enjoy it for God is in it all.

Jane Barry (Reader)

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Reading for Sunday 3rd September 2023

Matthew 16: 21 - 28  - Jesus Predicts His Death

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life[f] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Sermon on Matthew 16: 21 - 28

Next month on 1st October I will have been ordained for 28 years. I’ve often thought that if I had been shown a film of my life over those 28 years would I have still gone ahead.  And I think the answer would be yes, I would. It’s been a long journey – which Hutton and Locking share a big chunk of.

I was ordained because I had experienced the amazing difference that Jesus can make to your life. How he can bring change, new life, a new start and I knew it to be true – and I knew I must share that with other people. I knew that I wouldn’t have been here without him.  I didn’t want to be ordained so I could wear a dog collar or robes, that I could lead loads of meetings or be called Rev or talk about ancient buildings. No, I knew God was calling me to this ministry so that I could spend my time and energy in sharing the good news of Jesus and in enabling others to do so.  I trained at St John’s Nottingham, which has now closed. Their motto was ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.’

The one thing that I hope that I have left behind is people who have grown in their faith in Jesus Christ and also people who have made a commitment to Christ for themselves. In the reading we heard how Jesus tried to explain to his disciples what would happen – he would suffer, be killed and rise again. That is the essence of our faith. Yet it is not just something we say or believe in, but that we must accept Jesus for ourselves and have that relationship with Him. It is only through Jesus that we are saved.  Going to church, being baptised as a baby, believing in God, giving to charity, being a nice kind person and doing good things, having high morals, being a warden, in the choir, doing the flowers, cleaning the church – does not make you a Christian. Jesus says ‘For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’ He’s not talking about us becoming martyrs but about surrendering our lives to him and in dying to self and allowing Jesus to take control. It is knowing that we are sinners and need forgiveness and a new start. That Jesus died in our place and that our place in heaven is not because we are good people but that we belong to Jesus. It is the person knowing that Christ loves them and loving Him in return and then this overflowing to loving others and being willing to suffer at times for this, If we gain everything in life but do not have Jesus then we are lost. My question to you this morning is – have you given your life to Christ? Do you know you are safe with Him – for now and all eternity. 

Second thing I want to say is that I have written a letter to both churches. 

To the churches in Hutton and Locking

I give thanks for you all.  For your faith, hard work and commitment. Before I leave you, I wish to say some things as you go into the future. Keep Jesus as your focus for everything you do. Never take your eyes off him. Know in your hearts and minds that the church is not the building but that you are the church – you are the body of Christ in this place. As two churches work as one – take down all the barriers that prevents this happening – do not be a stumbling block to unity, turn from your unwillingness to meet together for worship. For together you are greater than individual churches. Remember that church is not what we do on a Sunday but church is everyday – seek to build God’s kingdom wherever you go in the week. You are Christ’s ambassadors. Know that you are not church for your own benefit but for those who are not yet belonging. Put aside your own wants and desires and seek to make church accessible to all people, all ages, all backgrounds. Never be afraid of change or taking risks because it’s through that you will learn to trust God. 

Welcome and love your new Rector – but they do not come to do ministry and to solve all the problems – they come to enable you to minister. Pray, pray pray. Come together to pray about all things. Never underestimate the power of prayer.  Praye people into the kingdom, pray for all people but especially for families and children – for you will never grow without them. Do not think of this time as a time of waiting but expect God to be at work and to work through you enabling you to grow in love and faith for Him and each other. Always be kind – especially when you disagree and feel under stress. Offer forgiveness and say sorry and be reconciled. Stop talking about closing – you won’t. But seek to change your thinking to that of – we will grow. Encourage commitment – to worship (that’s essential), to prayer, to learning, to serving. It is time to stop being lukewarm and half – hearted.  Remember Christ gave His very life for you – may you give back to Him your all. Shine as a light in Hutton and Locking and be different. Rid yourselves of gossip, of being a cliché, of being separate. Instead, be known as a church who serves the community and where God is at work and changing lives. Go out there and make a difference. Thank you for allowing me to lead you. You will always have a place in my heart. I will pray that the Holy Spirit will fill each one of you to overflowing and that you will know the presence of Jesus with you all the way.

Bless you and keep you. 

Rev Anne Wilkins

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Reading for Sunday 23rd August 2023

Matthew 16:13-20 - Peter Declares That Jesus Is the Messiah

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” hen he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Sermon on Matthew - Matthew 16:13-20

Rumours, gossip, chit chat, second hand news, whispers, ‘did you hear the one about? ooh, you don’t say.... It’s easy to talk about people behind their backs, maybe making up things which are only half truths, maybe embellishing a little bit of news to make it juicier. It’s so easy to do this. But there comes a time when the truth comes out, when things come into focus and the subject in question becomes clear.

I want to ask you a question and I’d love you to think about this for a moment and call out your answers.

I’ve been coming to St Mary’s here in Hutton for about 28 years, leading and preaching for the last 13 years.  I’ve been leading and preaching for the last 9 years at St Augustine’s here in Locking.  And also been your administrator for the last 9 years.

I want to ask you the question that Jesus asked his disciples: Who am I? How would you describe me? Physical attributes, personal attributes, relational attributes, child of God? 

In the reading from Matthew this morning, Jesus asked the disciples the same question. Who do people say I am? The disciples must have had their ear to the ground; they had a pretty good idea of what people thought. Their replies though showed that people didn’t really know who Jesus was. It was a bit woolly, sort of on the right track, but not quite. ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’

Jesus is good at asking questions and getting an accurate response. He’d asked a general question - Who do people say I am? This has got the disciples thinking about Jesus’ identity and mission. Now Jesus asks a question which gets to the core of the matter. ‘But what about you?’ he asks. ‘Who do you say I am?’ I want to ask you the same question – who do you say Jesus is?  Please call out your answers.

Jesus asked the disciples. ‘But what about you?’ he asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’ Simon Peter was the first to answer, probably being a mouthpiece for the other disciples, so he was sharing his own and a corporate view from the others of who Jesus is.

This sounds very much like the usual impetuous Simon Peter – the first to answer, the first (and only – apart from Jesus) one to walk on water. Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ The Messiah (or Christ in Greek) was the figure that the everyday Jewish person in the street was looking forward to appearing, someone in the form of a king descending from the line of David whom God would send to restore his people to national independence and to their rightful pre-eminence as the people of God. But Jesus came to inaugurate God’s Kingdom in a completely different way, a completely different unexpected way, a way which led to the cross, with its suffering and death. In Jewish eyes, that was not what was expected. Neither did Simon Peter expect this, as a bit further on in the chapter, when Jesus is talking about his impending suffering and death, Simon Peter says that this shouldn’t happen, to which Jesus rebukes him.

Jesus’ reply to Simon Peter’s description of who Jesus is has a congratulatory feeling. Jesus says that Simon Peter is blessed. One could say that Simon Peter is fortunate or even well off for having this God given insight. It was as if he could suddenly see a spiritual truth about Jesus, that the light had dawned. Yes, says Simon Peter, you are the Messiah, the one who is going to save his people, but as we know, not from the Romans, but from their sins. 

Simon Peter has answered Jesus’ question of ‘Who do you say I am?’ by stating his familial relationship, by saying ‘You are the Son of the living God’. This emphasised Jesus’ relationship to his Father in heaven. Jesus, in the lovely way that his often does, builds on this comment and reflects on Simon Peter’s earthly relationship with his father Jonah, by calling him  Simon, son of Jonah. 

The insight that Simon Peter has made about Jesus though, was not made from a human viewpoint, as most of these views were describing Jesus as John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets, no, Simon Peter’s declaration of faith was revealed to him by Father God in heaven. Simon Peter’s declaration of who Jesus is demonstrated his ability to be a spokesman, a pioneer, a natural leader for the group of disciples and this naturally leads into Jesus’ statement of the role Simon Peter is going to take with building Jesus’ church here on earth. So by calling Simon Peter (btw Peter means ‘rock’) Jesus is saying that his church is going to be built not on Simon Peter’s character (which had questionable stability and reliability) but his function, Simon Peter’s function as a spokesman, a pioneer, a natural leader. This is shown to be true in the book of Acts, how, for example when he stands up on the day of Pentecost, preaches the gospel and about 3000 people believe that Jesus is the Lord and Messiah and are baptised. This is the Good News of Jesus, who died on the cross so that we can have forgiveness of sin, but more than that, we are brought into God’s Kingdom here and now and that death and hell will have no more power over us, so we know that when we die, believing in Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, we will not pass through the gates of hell, but through the gates of heaven to eternal life with God.

So what of the keys that Jesus is pictorially giving Peter? The Rabbis, those learned people who taught in the Jewish synagogues, had legislative power to bind, or forbid and to loose or allow. In the early days of the church, there was debate as to how to allow the gentiles, those non-Jewish believers, into the Christian church. It was through the dream that Simon Peter had, recorded in Acts 10 – 11, which convinced him that it was heaven’s will to allow gentile converts into the church and then he went on and argue this case with the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, where he finishes his speech by saying ‘No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.’ In other words, all people are saved from the effects of sin and the powers of death and hell through the unmerited favour and love of God, rather than family descent as a Jew. So Simon Peter loosed or allowed on earth what he had been shown by his dream from heaven.   

Finally, Jesus ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. This was because Jesus didn’t want a political uprising, that wasn’t the sort of Kingdom he was ushering in, but it was one of love, forgiveness, a change of an individual’s heart and mind, where Jesus was Lord and saviour, ruler and King and where one’s motivation came from a desire to serve God as a response to God’s boundless love and not just to look to one’s own  life and to be only out for one’s own self interests and desires. 

So going back to the beginning, I asked you to say who you thought Jesus is.

You gave some good answers. It is one thing to acknowledge who Jesus is, but I want you to reflect on what difference that makes in your life and what difference does that make in the church. Jesus’ church. The Apostle Paul sums up well how we should live in his letter to the Romans in chapter 12, vs 1 – 2. 

I’m going to read this through three times, slowly, and it would be good to reflect on what God might be saying to you today. So I ask the Holy Spirit to come and speak to each one of us here today. The Message Bible puts it like this:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Amen

 Chris Wilkins (Lay leader)

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Reading for Sunday 6th August 2023

Matthew 14: 13-21 - Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand

When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.

“Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Sermon on Matthew - 14: 13-21

Have you ever been asked to do something that you regarded as impossible? Or even wanted to do something yourself that you thought was impossible – like study or have a particular job? Maybe you’ve been asked to do a particular task, or try something new or do something that is beyond what you feel you are capable of.  And you’ve thought – No way I can’t do that.  That’s ridiculous, who do you think I am? Maybe in church you’ve taken on a new role and thought – I just don’t think I can do this.  I have had this same thought with learning to drive – I can’t do it, it’ll never happen.  And also with being ordained – this is impossible, how can I do this? In this reading Jesus asks the disciples to do something impossible. He asks them to feed 5,000 men plus women and children with just 5 loaves and 2 fish. How would you have replied – maybe laughed like the aged Sarah did when God told her she would have a child. Or maybe said ‘Don’t be silly that’s not possible.’ Or I can’t do that. Or just shook your head.

In our reading Jesus had received some bad news that John the Baptist had been beheaded. Doubtless Jesus was really upset at his cousin’s death and how he had died.  He was in grief and mourning and wanted to get away with his disciples to a quiet place to think and pray. It says a solitary place – he went with the disciples not alone – to a place that he thought they would be undisturbed. I do feel sorry for Jesus as this doesn’t happen as he is mobbed by thousands bringing to him their sick. He would have seen them coming as he approached in a boat.  It would have been very human to turn them away and tell them to come back another day. But he didn’t because he had compassion on them despite his need for quiet and space, he welcomed them. Compassion is not just a nice word about being kind – but it’s that when Jesus saw all these people he had a gut reaction which resulted in action. Many times in the gospels Jesus feels like this for people – when Lazarus died, for the widow of Nain whose son had died, about the crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd, to the two blind men he healed. Jesus is moved to reach out in love – that is compassion.

As the day went on the disciples became concerned that they were far from anywhere and it was getting past dinnertime. The human and logical response was to send everybody away to the villages – to the local Co-op and Spar shop to buy some food. And also implied – then they can go home and leave us in peace. They were using common sense but Jesus had other ideas. They present Jesus with a problem and a solution – but he says no we’re not doing that – you sort it. He was asking them to do something impossible. 

Jesus uses other people to bless others. It reminds me of when the children were young and they said – mum can you do this for me – and I would sometimes say – no you are big now, you do it – it’s how they learn. So, when Jesus says you give them something to eat – their reply is ‘We have only got five loaves and two fish.’  It’s sort of saying – no we can’t do it, we don’t have enough. Have we ever said – no we can’t do it because we don’t have enough. Enough money, space, time, people, skills, energy.  Jesus doesn’t take no for an answer. He works together with the disciples to do what needs to be done – feed the people. When we face a problem, it is so easy to look at it from a purely human and logical perspective. We forget that we have Jesus on our team and that working with Him, he and us can do wonders. Jesus asks them to bring what they have to him and he gets the people to sit down.  And then he takes the bread and the fish. And Jesus does what is done every day in a Jewish home and especially at the Passover and will do again at the Last Supper, with those on the Emmaus Road after Jesus’ resurrection and which we do at every Communion. Take, bless, break and give. And when we do that Jesus provides every need and exceeds it.

So, the next time you find yourself saying we can’t because we don’t have enough – then you need to give Jesus what you do have – let Him have it. Let him take it and bless it – ask Him to bless it. Ask Him to break it – to multiply it. If we are giving of ourselves – our time, energy and skills then be prepared for some breaking – some change and sacrifice. As Jesus gave His life His body was broken. When we give in this way then God can give back to us. He multiplies what we give to Him.

In Ephesians 3: 20 Paul writes ‘Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.’  Small becomes big when we give it to Jesus. So, after breaking the bread He gives it to the disciples to distribute. He involves them in the miracle. He needs them to get the food out to the people. It’s team work again. Jesus gave the food to the disciples and they gave it to the people.

What will you give to Jesus so He can bless, break and multiply it and give it back to you so that you can bring blessing to others? Because it’s not about just fulfilling our needs but the needs of those outside the church. And He gives to them in abundance – they were all satisfied – they had full tummies. God is generous and gives abundantly. He is never mean or stingy. Perhaps we take God’s generosity for granted or maybe we just haven’t truly experienced it because we don’t ask. In James 4: 2 it says ‘You do not have because you do not ask God.’ After the disciples gave what they had to Jesus it was then that they saw the miracle and His generosity. It wasn’t just enough; it was more than enough. How amazed the disciples must have been. When we read this account, it could seem to just be about providing bread – but something a lot more was happening here. There was an underlying meaning to feeding these people. In Exodus 16 when the Israelites were in the desert and were hungry the Lord provided manna, bread from heaven each morning. In 2 Kings 4 Elisha tells the man with 20 leaves to feed a hundred men. He does with some left over. The Jewish expectation was when the Messiah had come then the manna would come. Jesus was the Messiah. Also eating together was a very important thing for the Jewish people as it meant unity. In allowing the crowd to stay and feeding them he was welcoming them into a new unity – the unity of the kingdom of God with Jesus as the head of the family. It also points forward to the time when Christ will return and there will be a heavenly banquet.

Jesus speaks a lot about the heavenly banquet "People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God." (Luke 13:29-30 Matthew 8:11. At the Last Supper he said ‘I tell you; I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” Every Communion looks forward to that banquet.  So this account speaks of Jesus’ compassion and the action that results. May we too have that same compassion. It speaks of giving what we have to Jesus to take bless break and give – for the benefit of others.  It talks of us working with Jesus to do the impossible. It speaks of the crazy generosity of God. It points to the great banquet when Christ returns. Amen.  

Rev Anne Wilkins

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Reading for Sunday 24th June 2023

Matthew 10:  24-39 - Do not be afraid

“The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!

 “So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

 “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven. Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn  a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household."

 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it."

Sermon on Matthew 10:  24-39 

Are you quivering in your boots after hearing that reading from the gospel? If not, I think you should be! But not as much as I’ve been quivering, trying to preach on it. This is Jesus challenging us, telling us about the challenges of following him whilst at the same time telling us about God’s love for all he has created.

Putting it in context, Jesus is preparing his disciples before sending them out, so that they can do everything that he is doing: preaching, healing, casting out demons, preparing the way for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Basically he’s warning them this is going to cause bother. It’s going to ruin their reputations, it’s going to make them fall out with their families, and if you read all of Matthew Ch. 10, you’ll find that Jesus had more to say which is a whole lot worse! 

But stop for a moment and think about which command is repeated most often in the bible? Not a Ten Commandment but a command. Any ideas? It’s the command we heard in v26, 28 and 31 of Matthew 10: ‘don’t be afraid.’ We can see easily enough why Jesus is saying this to his disciples, not to be afraid. After all, he’s warned them that they are going to be at risk from the authorities; that they will suffer physical and emotional violence and now that people will start calling them the sort of names that they are calling Jesus. Plenty to be afraid of but yet he says ‘Don’t be afraid’. 

They shouldn’t be afraid because what they are going out to spread is the truth, even though people can’t see it. Jesus is telling them that the time will come when everything will be uncovered and when their truth, their loyalty and faith will be recognised by all. 

But even though they shouldn’t be afraid, they must be fearful, on their guard.  There were obvious enemies who would harm them physically, but other enemies would harm their souls if allowed to. Call it sin, call it the devil, there are powers of darkness which try to overcome the people of light.

And it’s here that Jesus gives one of his most striking promises about the detailed love and care of God: God sees the little sparrow fall; he knows every hair on our heads. We do not have to fear God: indeed we can trust him with our loves, our souls, our bodies, our everything. Nothing is too great for him to; nothing is too small. God knows and cares about the details of our lives even as we face temptations and dangers and he is stronger than the strongest opponent we will ever meet. 

And some of that opposition might come close to home. In verse 34 Jesus warns: ‘Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ Surely these are not the words that should come from the Prince of Peace. Jesus did come to bring peace between God and believers and peace among humankind. But the inevitable result of Christ’s coming meant conflict between those of light and dark, between those of Christ and not of Christ. Jesus is not saying that everyone who follows him has to cut themselves off from families and friends; he is saying that allegiance to him has to come first. It’s not easy: look at Peter, Judas, the disciples who ran away. But the challenge remains for us all. Jesus came to begin and establish a new way of being God’s people: look at the Sermon on the Mount again. Jesus’ challenge to the disciples, to those in that society and to us now had to be sharp. We have to live for Jesus: whatever we do for Jesus, we do for God. We have to take his message to the world in which we live.

In his commentary on this passage Tom Wright, former Bishop of Durham, writes ‘If Jesus’ people today could learn this simple but profound lesson the church might once again be able to go out with a message to challenge people’s hearts.’ If we obey Jesus’ command to not be afraid, what can we do next? We can start be asking ourselves about ourselves. If God knows us intimately, how much do we really think about his purpose for each one of us? Are we willing to go out and spread the message? What is it that each one of us is afraid of? Are we afraid to tell people that we believe in Jesus Christ, his teachings and that we try and follow him, even though we often get it wrong? Do we tell people about the joy, the comfort, the strength that our faith gives us? Do we wonder why people don’t come to church anymore when we haven’t invited anyone to come with us because we’re afraid of being rebuffed? Do we tell people that we are praying for them? Do we not want to talk to people about Jesus because we ‘re afraid that we don’t have all the answers (of course we don’t!)? Do we not challenge people when they are being unfair, judgemental, prejudiced and in our silence condone those judgements. We are living through hard times for many: we need to be spreading the love, the promises and the hope that God offers to all. We have to take the stance of looking at ourselves, other people, situations, through Jesus’ eyes, through his teaching, through his life. In Roman 6, Paul explains that God’s love and forgiveness are freely offered: it does not have to be earned and it never can be. But accepting it means stepping out of one life into another and the only way to do that is stepping into the life of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.  Jesus tells his disciples, tells us, that’s it’s not going to be easy, but we are not alone and therefore we should not be afraid. 

 Jesus gives us a lot to think about! The challenge might make us quiver in our boots, but we must walk in those boots into the world that so badly needs the good news and love of our Lord, Jesus Christ, remembering that God knows each one of us and will be with us to the end of our journeys. We must not be afraid.

Jane Barry (Reader)

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Reading for Sunday 4th June 2023

 Matthew 28: 16 - end - The Great Commission

 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Sermon on Matthew 28: 16 - end

Today is Trinity Sunday.  It’s the day when most preachers hope that their name is not on the rota.  Christians over the ages have struggled to find ways to describe and explain the trinity – they have come up with things like it being like a 3 leaf clover or 3 legs on a stool.  The one I like is the idea of H2O being as water or steam or ice – they all 3 are different but they are all made of the same stuff.  One I read about recently was of an atom which contains a proton, electron and neutron. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the 3 persons of the Trinity – making one God – not 3 gods.  They each have a different purpose – the Father is the creator, the Son Jesus is the Saviour and redeemer and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings power and life. They all need each other and they all work together.  My favourite image and idea to describe the Trinity is that of relationship as it is one that we can all identify with.  God is a social being –God is like family – God is like a beautiful dance as they each relate to each other.  God as Trinity is dynamic, creative, full of energy and power, pure and holy, but most of all the Trinity as relationship is love.  Love is the force and the lifeblood of God.   I love the famous icon of the Trinity sitting round the table – but the side of the table facing us in the picture is vacant as it is inviting us to join them in their meal, their dance, their relationship of love. So when Jesus was on the earth calling women and men to follow him, He was inviting them to join that relationship – not just with Him, but with His Father and with the Holy Spirit. 

In our reading from Matthew the disciples are drawing near to the time when Jesus’ relationship with them on earth will finish. And what a rollercoaster ride it has been for them.  Seeing miracles and healings, demons being driven out, people healed and raised from the dead, sinners changed, people transformed, the religious people challenged.  They witness Jesus’ arrest, His torture, His death and His end.  In Matthew it is only the women who meet the risen Jesus and He tells them to tell the men to go to Galilee.  Amazingly they do!  And they go to the mountain – where they have been told to go – in the Bible going up the mountain meant only one thing – a special encounter with God.  Moses met God up the mountain, Jesus appoints the twelve on a mountain, Jesus gives the beatitudes on the mountain, the close disciples saw Jesus transformed up the mountain.  It was a place of meeting and encountering God in a special way.  Up a mountain we are away from the normal hussle and bussle of life, it is quiet and we aren’t distracted.  Today we do not need to climb a mountain to meet with God and to deepen our relationship with Him.  We can do this by getting away and having time away from our routine and the distractions of life. We can climb that mountain every day when we take time out to pray, listen, reflect and be still and just be loved by God.  Sometimes he comes to us in a special way. 

Worship and doubt  It says that when they saw Jesus they worshipped but some doubted.  Remember here in Matthew that this was the first time that the eleven had seen the risen Jesus.  They had only heard from the women and then women were not regarded as good witnesses.  It was too much for the men to take in.  Worship and doubt can go together.  One of the doubters would have been Thomas – and remember His encounter with the risen Jesus? The thing is that these doubters did not stay doubters but became believers.  They needed an encounter with the risen Jesus and they needed the empowering and filling of the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus is alive and sovereign Jesus had seemed to be the defeated man on the cross.  All had seemed lost and gone.  But now Jesus is alive and we hear and see that He is sovereign – that He is Lord and King over all. At the beginning of Matthew we read of the lineage of Jesus – he came from the royal line of David. After his birth he was presented by the magi with gold – a gift fit for a king. Later on that first Palm Sunday he rides into Jerusalem as their king.  On the cross he was mocked as king of the Jews and had a crown of thorns put on his head. Now Jesus is truly king and Lord of all.  This had been prophesied ages before – in Daniel – speaking about the son of man it says ‘He was given authority, glory and sovereign power, all peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.’   Notice Jesus uses the word all – all authority, all nations, all things.  When Jesus was tempted by Satan he offered Jesus all the kingdoms – now by suffering obedience Jesus has received more than Satan could ever offer.  Jesus is now Lord over all the earth.  In the light of the things that are happening in the world and our nation at the moment it is good to say – Jesus is Lord.  We need to say it aloud to ourselves – Jesus is Lord of all the earth, He is Lord of Europe, He is Lord of Great Britain.  By saying it we are inviting Him to be Lord.  Jesus is Lord of St Mary’s, Jesus is Lord of my life.  By saying this we are acknowledging that He is in control – He will bring about His kingdom and nothing or nobody – no politics, not ideology, no false religion, no suffering, no death, no terrorist, nobody or nothing in all creation can stop the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord – see Romans 8.  And no matter what is happening now – one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.  Phil 2

Jesus’ command Jesus speaks to the disciples to reassure them – but more importantly he is handing over the baton.  He is giving them a command – to Go.  There are no ifs, buts or maybes.  Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.’ This baton has been handed on down the ages and at this point in time it is in our hands.  In my hand and in your hand.  Go, go, go – he says.  Not sit there and expect people to come to you – a few may – but many won’t.  Go and build relationships, make friends, tell and share your story, build small new communities of faith.  It is not just for clergy or evangelists or preachers but everyone.  If we all did this and one person became a Christian we would double the church.  Pray – Lord who should I go to? Who should I pray for?  If we are obedient in this – as it is a command – then God will honour that.  

Jesus promise  As Christians we are never meant to be on our own.  There is no such thing as a solitary Christian.  Christianity is not a private thing.  For a start we are to be part of the body of Christ – the church family.  We don’t have to be alone in anything.  BUT – also most importantly we have the promise of Jesus that He will be with us always.    Do we know that, do we feel that?  Do we know He is always close to us?  He is with us by the Holy Spirit.  Remember the name He was before at birth – Emmanuel – God with us. Because of Jesus with me then I will never be afraid.  He will walk beside us as a friend. Behind us to protect us.  In front to lead and guide.  This is not picture language – this is real.    

 So on this Trinity Sunday we are called to join in the life of the Trinity – to be in that family, to be involved in that dance.  To be part of that circle of love.  And then we are sent and told to go and get others to experience that and be part of that.  We also do this through relationship and going and getting to know others and sharing our story.  He will help us, empower us and go with us.  Amen. 

Rev Anne Wilkins

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Reading for Sunday 16th April 2023

John 10: 1 - 10  - The Good Shepherd and His Sheep

 “Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.

 Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.[a] They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Sermon on John 10: 1 - 10

I wonder what having life to the full means to you? I guess it means different things to different people. Being happy, healthy, having enough money to pay the bills and also go out socially, having good friends or a lovely family. One person who has really inspired me is the late Dame Deborah James who died from bowel cancer last June. Facing death and all the treatment she had to keep the cancer at bay, she had a remarkable attitude to life. No wonder she was called Bowel babe with her dancing and dressing up.  Her situation caused her to see life and what was important in a new way “I was on autopilot – my career took precedence, my relationships came last,” she said. “Never did I realise more that the life I had been taking for granted would be the one thing I now desired above all else.”  Such inspiring and wise words. It sometimes takes crisis times in our lives to wake us up to what is important in life. This resonates with Jesus’ words ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’. As followers of Jesus what does this mean for us as sometimes life can be a real struggle?  The answer lies in Jesus talking about sheep and the shepherd.

In the reading from John 10 there are 3 images – the gate, the shepherd and the sheep. The picture is of a sheepfold – a place where the sheep are kept together and kept safe.  In this part of the world there was no made sheep pens – like on One man and his dog – no instead the shepherd will make a sheep pen from rocks leaving an entrance for the sheep to get in.  At night – time he would get the sheep inside and then he would lay in the entrance.  So when Jesus is talking about the gate he is talking about this.  He says ‘I am the gate for the sheep.  I am the gate (he says it twice) whoever enters through me will be saved.’ It was essential that the shepherd lay in the entrance to the sheep fold as he needed to protect his sheep.  At night if a wolf or other animal came along it would be the shepherd who came face to face with that animal first – he was putting his life in danger for the sheep.  This is what Jesus means in verse 11 ‘the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’ The gate is the only way that you can get into the sheepfold.  What Jesus is saying is that you can only know salvation, life to the full and eternal life through him – John 14: 6 ‘I am the way, and the truth and the life no one comes to the Father except through me.’ It’s about knowing that we are safe with Jesus the Good Shepherd – He will protect us, give us security by His presence with us – because He has laid down His life for us on the cross. It is that relationship with Him that will get us through the tough times and storms of life. Jesus mentions the thief who climbs in and who comes to steal, kill and destroy. Jesus was talking about the religious leaders, but for us today there are many thieves who would want to do us harm and take us away from Jesus. What things in your life do harm to your relationship with Jesus – what thieves prowl around? 

As well as being the gate Jesus is the good shepherd – in fact the word good means beautiful or excellent – he is the best shepherd ever.  The shepherd’s job is to do all he can to care for the sheep.  Ten years ago we had terrible snow and all the sheep were caught in drifts that were 3- 4 metres high – that’s 12 feet in old money.  The shepherd did everything he could to save them – his dog found 80 of the buried sheep.  It was in March lambing time and many of the lambs were found dead.  That man would not give up though to rescue and save them.  That is a picture of the good shepherd – he loves and cares deeply for you.  Do we really know that deep in our hearts – he died for you.  One thing that the shepherd does is shout and call.  He tells them where to go, he calls them so that they can be rounded up, he knows each of them by name and leads them.  A friend of mine was a shepherd at Lee Abbey in Devon and he looked after his flock – they were Jacob sheep with huge horns.  To me they all looked the same but he knew each one by name and what their temperament was like.  He knows your name and what you are like.  Like in the Narnia stories the 4 children each have their name and their character that Aslan (who is Jesus) calls them.  Lucy the Valient, Peter the Magnificent, Edmund the just, Susan the gentle.  What does the good shepherd call you?  Jesus talks about other voices that are not his and says that these are from strangers who the sheep run away from.  I wonder what voices shout at us – or whisper maybe – the voice of friends, the media, family, neighbours, advertising, politicians – all trying to tell us what to do. All trying to influence our decisions and the way we live our lives.  Our inner voice also can be very loud or voices from the past – words that have been said to us what don’t go away.

 We need to learn to know the voice of the good shepherd which will be different from that of friends, politicians and of our inner self.  We hear that voice through prayer, we also hear it through the Bible.  We need to know our Bibles by reading them every day.  So finally the sheep who are us – I love sheep – they are cute and woolly – but they also like to do things their way.  1 Peter 2: 25 ‘For you were like sheep gone astray’ and in Isaiah 53: 6 ‘We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.’  Sheep get lost easily and get detached from the rest of the flock – they wander off looking for better food or they get spooked and scared or they are just nosey.  But there is no such thing as a solitary sheep – if a sheep is on its own its probably lost.  Same with Christians really – no such thing as a solitary Christian – they have probably lost their way or they soon will.  To stay safe a sheep needs to listen and stay close to the shepherd.  When a sheep does things his way then they are in danger.  When we make decisions either as individuals or as a church based on what we want then we are in danger.  If we don’t keep listening to the voice of the shepherd we will get lost.  We need to keep asking ‘what would Jesus want’ what would he say about this – what does his word say.  We need to remember that Jesus wants the best for us – he wants us to have life and have it to the full.  Jesus is not mean but generous – he wants to bless us, to feed us, to protect us, for us to enjoy life fully and for others to join that flock, so that they may enjoy too. Having life to the full is not about what we own, or what is happening in our lives, but it is knowing that we are in the sheepfold, safe with the best shepherd ever, that he will bring us to good pasture, that He will be there for us always – today, tomorrow and always. Amen.   

Rev Anne Wilkins

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Reading for Sunday 5th March 2023

John 3: 1 - 17 - Jesus Teaches Nicodemus

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Sermon on John 3: 1 - 17

I love the programme ‘Call the midwife’. I’m a bit sad that the last episode of the latest series has come to an end with Trixie getting married, the future looking good for Nonnatus House and also a tragic accident.  I guess I love all things babies to be honest.  When I was little, I was very confused about how babies got there and how they escaped. I used to think it was through the belly button!

In our account from John, we have a man who is as equally confused about birth – but not about physical birth – he’s confused about spiritual rebirth.  Nicodemus is an interesting character.  He is a Pharisee – he is a Jew, is learned, knows the Jewish scriptures and all the tradition and laws.  He is therefore seen as a clever and respectable man.  He wasn’t the normal type of person who was coming to Jesus.  As I said he was a Pharisee and they would come to Jesus in order to trip him up, catch him out, accuse him of blasphemy, get him arrested.  Yet Nicodemus was different. He comes to Jesus at night – not wanting to be seen.  He knows that Jesus is a teacher from God.  He has seen Jesus perform miracles and he is clearly convinced that there is something special and different about Jesus.  It’s not clear what Nicodemus really wants though from Jesus – why  is he coming to him. 

What is clear though is that Jesus knows what he needs.  ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.’ ‘I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh but the Spirit gives birth to Spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying ‘you must be born again.’   Jesus knows that this is what Nicodemus needs and what is lacking despite all his knowledge.  The term to be 'born again' did not come from Billy Graham or America – it came from the mouth of Jesus ‘You must be born again.’  It is not from a certain type of church – those with modern music and loud preaching – it comes from Jesus.  There are not Christians and born-again Christians – to be a Christian you must be born again. So, what does Jesus mean?  Nicodemus took it literally – how can a grown man be born again from his mother?  That’s ridiculous. Jesus is saying that you must be born spiritually – by the Spirit of God.  In the same way that a baby is a brand-new person, when we become Christians we are brand new – it is like we are starting a new life again. 

Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 writes ‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come.’ We need this new beginning because we have sinned and are not in a relationship with God.  It is such good news because us being a Christian is not dependant on what we have done with our lives, we are not rejected if we have messed things up or have regrets and things to be ashamed of, if we feel we have been good , have gone to church and even and have been religious (like Nicodemus was) then the message from Jesus is still the same – you must be born again – being educated, brought up in a Christian home, going to Sunday school will never be enough.  We need to know this new birth. 

So we must firstly repent of all the wrong in our life – like actual birth this can be painful- we have to turn from living our lives our way and from doing it our way and being our own god.  Instead we are to turn to Jesus.  We are then to believe that he died for me and rose again.  Jesus says ‘Everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.’ And in Romans 10 – if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.’  It is then that we are filled with the Spirit because it is the Spirit who brings forth new Christians and we can have that relationship with God as has been intended from the beginning of creation.  It is good news because it is for everyone – we now are able to have a fresh start whatever our age or status in life.  Jesus says it is for everyone – you are never too bad and there is no such thing as being good or OK – the Bible says that all have sinned. 

So if you are not sure that you are born again then you are probably not and you need to do something about it.  If you know that you are then we need to live as new people.  The church is full of people whose lives have been transformed and changed by Jesus – that is what makes a totally different group.  The church is nothing like a political party, a hobby group or even a group of friends – no it is the body of Christ, its members have been saved by Jesus and are full of the Holy Spirit.  It is full of people who live their lives in relationship with Jesus – are guided by Him and who are equipped by Him.  Being a Christian is not about just believing in God and coming to church.  It is about knowing Jesus died for you and He rose again.  It is the difference between seeing and living life in 2D and black and white – and seeing and living life in 3D and colour.  If we have been born again then like babies and children we need to keep growing and changing and becoming more like Jesus.  We are always works in progress – I am simply a saved sinner. 

Where is God at work in your life at the moment?  When is the last time that He spoke to you about the need to change in some way?  When did you last step out in faith in some way that required faith and trust on your part?  Are you different from how you were say 5, even 10 years ago?  It is easy to play church and to be religious like Nicodemus – but Jesus wants to come into our lives and make us new and change us into new people – dynamic and full of His life.  I find that idea so exciting.  With that – with the Spirit in us – then all things are possible – they really are.  We will be on fire for Jesus – wanting to tell others about Him, wanting to pray and seeing answers, seeing signs of God’s kingdom all around us.  All of us have born bodies – but do we all have re-born spirits – that bit of us that makes us – us.  When we are touched by Jesus and become aware of how much he has given to us then we will want to respond. Amen. 

Rev Anne Wilkins

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Reading for Sunday 26th February 2023

Matthew 4: 1-11 - Jesus Is Tested in the Wilderness

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted[a] by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[b]”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”  Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Sermon on Matthew 4 1-11

As well as pondering these very familiar Bible passages as we begin our season of Lent, I was pondering on the recent furore around the changing of vocabulary in the works of Roald Dahl, supposedly to remove words that could seem offensive to some people. Now is not the time to pursue people’s opinions here but thinking about Lent and Roald Dahl at the same time the image of chocolate came into my mind (not that it’s far away for too long) with images of Dahl’s much loved story, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory    Chocolate’. For those of you who don’t know, the story is of of young boy called Charlie who — along with a few other children — wins a Golden Ticket, with the potential of finally owning the chocolate factory. As the story progresses, the children are taken through the chocolate factory and are faced with different temptations, each one giving in to one of them, leaving Charlie eventually securing the chocolate factory as his own. Charlie was focused on the end goal of winning the chocolate factory and the difference that would make to him and his impoverished and unlike his peers, many of whom were affluent, didn’t give in to temptations along the way. 

Chocolate is often something people give up for Lent, among other things, so that they can practise self-discipline. But temptation comes in all different guises, with all sorts of consequences. What is fascinating and frustrating is that humanity has never found a way of dealing with temptation and the consequences of succumbing to temptation.

TEMPTATION IN THE GARDEN 

We find the story of the first temptation recorded in Scripture in the book of Genesis. The picture is painted . . . God has completed His creation and we find Adam and Eve, surrounded by the beauty of that creation, ‘trees pleasing to the eye and good for food’ (v9), ‘a river watering the garden’, (v10), and they are given the simple instructions ‘to work it and take care of it’. They are also told

not to eat the fruit of the trees. Simple? One would have thought so, being in the presence of God and surrounded by the beauty of His creation. But as we know, this was not the case, and they gave into temptation. And not only that, Adam and Eve failed to take responsibility: ‘ the serpent tricked me and I ate.’ And so it continues. That lack of responsibility means a lack of ability to learn from mistakes, to avoid looking at oneself honestly and then to carry on in error. Until we admit to what we’ve done wrong we can’t begin to put things right. So what can we do? We look to God’s words and to Jesus.

TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS 

In the Gospel reading today we find Jesus in the wilderness being tempted. We can imagine, the wilderness: a harsh place, an uncomfortable of place, a lonely place. Yet here we read of how Jesus, in the toughest of places, stood firm and didn’t give into temptation. Surely, when hungry it would have been easy to give in and be fed. Or when being taunted about his authority and position to give in and show the tempter just what power He had. Or when being challenged about what was His by right to give in and show the tempter, just who He was. But Jesus stood firm in the toughest of situations, knowing who He was and whose He was. God’s words of love and affirmation at his baptism were still ringing in his ears. Jesus knew who he was and the Word of God sustained Him in the desert and in his temptations. He was focused on God and was content to be what he is, God’s beloved and obedient son. 

Jesus has solved the problem of temptation and demonstrates that in the Gospel. Jesus shows us how to resist temptation, even in the toughest of situations, by standing firm in His strength and in the Word of God.  But though we are made in God’s image, we are human and often give into temptation. 

So does that mean we are failure, that there is no hope? Not so. In Romans, Paul makes it clear that Adam (and Eve) brought death through their disobedience, but Jesus Christ brought life. God’s grace is infinitely greater for good than is Adam’s sin for evil. Jesus’ obedience to His Father far outweighs that first act of disobedience. If we follow Jesus, his teachings and his example, we will not ultimately fail. Yes, we will get things wrong over and over again, but if we admit our failures, turn to God for help and guidance, learn from our failures, we will be doing what he wants by being the best we can. 

 So as we journey through Lent (with or without chocolate), let us focus on our end goal, of remaining faithful to Jesus and following Him through even the toughest of times, focusing on our end goal, eternal life with Him forever in his glory. Let’s take time to read the bible, God’s words, Jesus’ words, Paul’s letters. Find a version of the bible that speaks to you. Follow ‘Dust and Glory’, which looks at ‘how we can live well with the mess of every day life’ and reminds us that ‘the Christian story is ultimately a story of failings redeemed and of sins forgiven’. Look at Jesus, whose glory was revealed last week, whose humiliating death we are travelling towards now and whose triumphant resurrection  we will proclaiming soon after, the Jesus who promised to be always with us. His words are not to be changed, are words for all time, are words that will speak to all those who want to hear. Let’s take time this Lent to steep ourselves in those words and grow closer to Jesus as we travel through our own journey towards him.

Jane Barry (Reader)

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Reading for Sunday 5th February 2023

Matthew 5: 13 – 20 -  Salt and Light

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Sermon on Matthew 5: 13 – 20

Did you know that for children for every negative thing that they hear about themselves they need 10 positive things to restore their sense of self -esteem to where it had been previously. I think that this number probably doubles for teenagers – they need 20 to balance one negative and then it probably goes back to 10 – 1 again when we become adults.  Call a child or a teenager or adult something like useless, stupid, horrible, ugly, bad, a loser then if that is said repeatedly the child will become what they are being named.  They will believe that they are useless, stupid, worthless etc. and begin to behave in that way.  The reverse is also true – call a child good, useful, dependable, helpful or worthwhile then they will grow into that identity and behave in that way.  It’s quite scary really the power of words over a person’s life and what they become and how they behave.  Many people have grown up never being told that they are loved… even though they know they are… it’s no wonder that people struggle to believe that God loves them. 

Anyway in our reading this morning Jesus says that we are 2 things – ‘You are the salt of the earth’ and ‘You are the light of the world’.  It’s not a command – go and be salt and light – it’s a statement – this is what I am saying about you, this is what you are.  And Jesus is saying something really good here about us – it’s a big positive.  So let’s look at each of these statements to understand what Jesus is trying to tell us about ourselves as his followers.  ‘You are the salt of the earth.’  I personally don’t like salt at all.  I don’t cook with it if I can help it – although every cooking programme seems to put loads of salt into the dishes.  Even on the Great British Bake Off it’s noted when people don’t put salt in the pastry or other bake.  Prue Leith or Paul Hollywood know straight away.  I know straight away if someone has put salt in veg for example.  Salt makes things taste different doesn’t it?  It gives flavour, it stops food tasting bland.  Years ago salt was essential because we didn’t have freezers and fridges and salt was used as a preservative – without salt food would go rotten and be horrible and also dangerous to eat.  So Jesus is saying that Christians in the world help to bring flavour – to bring life to the world and the people around us – they also stop the rot – stop things becoming corrupt, stop the world turning away from God. 

The presence of Christians in a place will mean that the place is changed.  I used to work for Tesco’s – I had a very boring job testing all the refrigeration in a huge store in Watford.  Those of you who know me will think that is funny because I hate being cold – I still get chilblains as a legacy of working there.  The thing is that I worked for every department and over time things began to change – people would not swear when I was around, people would share things with me about what was happening in their lives.  I’m not saying that revival broke out but the fact that I was a Christian in a VERY secular environment made a difference.  Not because I was there as Anne but because I was there as a Christian and therefore, I was being salt there.  So wherever you go in your week then if you are a follower of Jesus then you are being salt there – you are effecting a change in that place.  If you put salt in something it just does its stuff.  There is a warning from Jesus here that it is possible for salt to stop being salty.  Pure salt cannot lose its saltiness but the salt taken from the shores of the Dead Sea was impure and gradually over time it stopped being salty because of its impurity.  Rabbis often used the image of salt when they were talking about wisdom.  In the Greek the word for Lost its taste actually means ‘become foolish’. So he is saying that a foolish disciple has no influence in the world.  Pure salt stays salty – not that any of us are pure, we are all fallen but it’s important that we stay close to Jesus, who is pure.  We need to know his ways, know what it really means to be kingdom people rather than churchgoers, know something of the wisdom of God, to know his word and be steeped in it, to come close to Jesus each day in prayer and just knowing that he is beside us 24/7, to also know the power of the Holy Spirit in us.  Foolish Christians are those who have allowed themselves to become distant from God – they have lost their saltiness.  So we are salt wherever we go and to whoever we meet. By us just being there then something will change and feel different.

 You are the light of the world.  Last week was Candlemas with light as the dominant theme.  Light by definition shines, it can be seen.  Even a tiny candle in the darkest of rooms will fill the whole room with light.  You can’t hide light – it has a habit of poking through cracks and crevices – even if a door is closed you can see if there is light behind it.  The brighter and bigger the light then the bigger the effect.  Apparently the illuminated carnivals around this area can be seen in space – you can see the glow from my house anyway.  Like salt, light will completely change the place where it is.  It is ridiculous to have a light and then cover it with a bowl so that it can’t be seen – that is stupid.  It’s back to that foolishness again.  The thing that you do with light is maximise it – put it in a place where it will give maximum effect and will change the place where it is.  Jesus is saying that as Christians we are different and we are to demonstrate that we are different.  Some people say that they are secret Christians – they keep their faith quiet, they never talk about Jesus or say that they are a Christian, nobody would ever know – and they probably don’t.  In a sense there is no such thing as a secret Christian.  I’m not saying we should all go outside the pub and tell everyone we see ‘Jesus loves you’ but neither should we always keep silent.  Even wearing a lapel cross is a start.  A disciple who is visibly different from other people will have an effect on them.  We are to do good works – not to show off about what a good person we are but to direct attention to God who inspired the good works.  To do things for others – to show practical love and care – to look out for and respond to the needs of others – in such a way that at some point someone will ask – why are you doing this – and then the door is open for you to tell them that it’s because of your love for Jesus and his love for all people.  We are not do – gooders, but we are kingdom people – loving others with the love of Jesus. 

SO you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world.  A phrase that Jesus used of himself. In John 8: 12 he says ‘I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’  So here we have a promise that if we follow Jesus, have given our lives to him, that he will give us his light.  So this week go out and be salt and light – know that just your presence will be making a difference, there may be opportunity to act differently from the rest, there is always the opportunity to speak differently – to speak with love and kindness, to encourage, to be interested in the lives of others, to really listen, to even pray for people.  Who knows what this week will bring…. But go being expectant and joyful, knowing that you carry a wonderful light and that Jesus in you can change the darkest of places.  Amen.   

Rev Anne Wilkins

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Reading for Sunday 29th January 2023

Luke 2: 22 – 40 - Jesus is Presented in the Temple

When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”[a]),and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,  you may now dismiss[c] your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

 When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.

Sermon on Luke 2: 22 – 40

With all the news at the moment being so dark and gloomy the BBC seem to be trying hard to finish the news with a good news story.  The one that really touched me a couple of weeks ago was of this elderly gentleman called Peter Davies.  He had lost his wife 7 years ago and was now going into school as a reading volunteer.  And he is wait for it - 100 years old. 

There is something truly wonderful when older people and young children come together. I think of the special relationship that my children had with their grandparents.  It’s unique and to be treasured. In this reading we have all ages coming together. We have Simeon and Anna – 2 older people – Simeon must have been old as it says that he feels ready to die. Anna we are told is at least 84 – it says she is very old.  Then we have Mary and Joseph – Mary was probably still a teenager and Joseph older than her.  Then we have the baby.  Now the baby Jesus is 40 days old Mary and Joseph take him to the temple to be presented to God.  It was the normal and expected thing to do.  To bring your firstborn son to the Lord.  It was accompanied with the bringing of animals to be sacrificed.  So, in a sense 3 generations all together in this one special moment.  A coming together of ages and strangers and the focus was Jesus. So, let’s begin by looking at Simeon and Anna. I have known several Simeon and Anna’s in my time.  Age was not a hindrance to their ministry. Simeon was waiting for the coming of the Messiah.  We read he was righteous and devout. He took his faith seriously – he was faithful in worship; he had a relationship with God and was right with God and his neighbour. Old age had not meant he neglected his faith or devotion to God.  And also, it says he was filled with the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit in him spoke to him. And remember this is before Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit to all people.  Simeon was filled with God’s spirit. 

Often, we think the filling of the Spirit is just for the young – those who go to events like New Wine and is accompanied with loud modern music.  It’s not for the old and the traditional and certainly not in the Church of England. Wrong!  It is for the old, the young and the in – between.  Without the Spirit we are not fully functioning as Christians.  It says here that the Holy Spirit was upon Simeon, it revealed to Him he would see the Christ and He was moved by the Spirit.  The Spirit spoke and directed him.  Because of this he is able to make this declaration – he knows salvation has come for all people, that Jesus is the light. He blesses the young couple and brings a prophetic word to them.   He is in no way redundant or on the scrap heap.  Never ever think that you are on the scrapheap! Anna is a prophetess – she speaks out God’s word, she is a widow too and has been for many years.  She was committed 100% to worship and to prayer.   She is also a witness and gossips the good news. Anna never left the temple and worshipped night and day, fasting and praying.  Simeon and Anna were committed to the Lord and committed to prayer and worship. We don’t need to live in the church building like Anna did, but we are called to be committed.

I need to share with you about the situation in the Diocese that relates to us and our commitment. I’m not going to talk about money today, but the Diocese are facing huge financial difficulties because of the pandemic and how it has affected people’s commitment.  Many Deaneries are having to cut paid clergy posts.  Locking Deanery, which we belong to, has 15 allocated paid posts (does not include curates or chaplains) and we have 15 paid posts.  We are OK at the moment – but this might not be the case in the future. If the situation continues then more paid posts will be cut.  Our Deanery is putting together a plan to justify why we need 15 posts and each parish is giving figures of regular worshippers, number of schools, population, new housing and also saying how they intend to grow. The important figure is the one for regular worshippers.  That is those who worship once a month or more. For Hutton this is 54 and for Locking this is 45 and 8 children – making 99 for the Benefice. Numbers pre- covid were 55 for Hutton and for Locking 58 and 15 children. For Locking a big drop. What also matters is the number of people worshipping on a Sunday – both churches do not reach 54 and 45. These figures will be looked at. Our commitment (or lack of) may determine the future of our churches.

In Hebrews 10: 24, 25 we read ‘And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.’ Worshipping regularly is not just about keeping the churches open and keeping the post of Rector – it’s about our Christian discipleship, that we worship together as Christ’s body, that we pray together and for each other, that we are fed by God’s Word, that we encourage each other. When you are not there then the body is incomplete. You are also missing out. We need to act now about this and I want to challenge you to become more committed to prayer and worship like Simeon and Anna.  I am setting a goal of 40 worshippers each week.  We will put the numbers in Stay Connected to see how it’s going.  And let’s aim to raise the number of regular worshippers – I’ve been thinking of the 99 and the parable of the lost sheep. So, thinking of Simeon and Anna is the call to commitment.

Secondly God’s kingdom is for all ages. Simeon and Anna were kingdom people – they had been watching and waiting for the coming of God’s kingdom through the Messiah.  Now as the baby is held in Simeon’s arms, he isn’t just holding a baby – but the promise of God’s kingdom that was coming.  Simeon and Anna probably would not live to see Jesus grow up and to die and to witness the resurrection.  Though here they are part of the kingdom coming.  God’s kingdom has also come to Mary and Joseph too – they have witnessed amazing things – seen angels, had dreams, given birth to God’s Son.  God was bringing His kingdom to them and also through them.  God’s kingdom is for all ages and for all people – not just the old.  In Acts 2 when Peter speaks to the crowd, he quotes Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.  Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.’ If the church is the instrument by which God brings in God’s kingdom, then we need to be bringing that kingdom to all ages. 

Since the pandemic the number of children attending church in England  has gone from 95,000 to 55,000. It has been proven that churches who don’t have families will never grow. In the Church of England an initiative called Growing Faith is encouraging churches to put children and young people at the heart of everything we do. That’s not to ignore other ages – but it is vital we focus on families and children. It’s not them and us but all ages together. May we embrace young families and children as Simeon embraced this young family. We have so much potential and opportunity – our schools, Messy Church, the toddler group, Celebration Sunday, Church in the Village Hall. And we are aiming to make Sundays all – age too (Locking Family Service and church in VH.) Finally Simeon declares that He has seen salvation – in fact he has held the Saviour in his arms. And that Jesus came as a light to all peoples – Jew and Gentile alike. I don’t know what light means to you – it gives life, it chases away the darkness, it brings revelation, it guides us, it shows up the dirt. Jesus said of Himself ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’ As we face so much uncertainty and darkness in the world, in the nation and even in the church – may we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.  He is the one Simeon was longing and waiting for. He is the one who Anna gave thanks for and told others about. We MUST remember that what we are about is Jesus and the good news of the new life he offers. In a film we saw last week there was the quote ‘Nothing happens without light’ and so we can say ‘Nothing happens without Jesus.’ So let’s be truly committed to Him and His church, pray for, welcome and invite families and seek Jesus for all that we  need. Amen.

Rev Anne Wilkins

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Reading for Sunday 8th January 2023

Matthew 2: V 1-12, - The Magi Visit the Messiah

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

“‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’[”

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

Sermon on Matthew 2: V 1-12

Happy New Year.  I wonder how you feel about a new year – whether you do feel happy about it.  Perhaps there are things that you are looking forward to this year or maybe there are things that you are dreading and are worried about, maybe it’s all a bit of an unknown – perhaps you have hopes and dreams but you aren’t sure if and when they will work out.  A new year is a chance to take stock I think – to look back at the past year and to give thanks or to learn lessons from it.  It’s also a chance to look forward and to think about the future.  Nobody knows what will be in store for each of us – but we can step into the future equipped and prepared. 

I want us to think about 2 questions this morning – firstly what do I need as I step into a new year?  And then what might God be calling me to this year? I want us to look at the account of the wise men for our inspiration.  So what do I need as I step into 2023?  If this year is like a journey then what must I take with me to enable me to cope with what life throws at me? 

One thing that we need to take is wisdom.  Here we have some wise men embarking on a journey.  It’s hard to find a word to describe them – they are not kings, despite what we sing.  They are a cross between Patrick Moore, the astronomer, Russell Grant the astrologer, Brian Cox the scientist, David Copperfield the magician (the word magician comes from the word magi) and Isaac Newton the chemist.  They are a combination of all these and are therefore very wise in worldy terms. I don’t know if you feel that you are wise.  But wisdom is not about winning Mastermind or University Challenge or having a doctorate – it is something from God.  In 1 Corinthians 12 it is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  I don’t know what you do when you face tricky situations. When I don’t know what to do I found myself praying for wisdom – I then sleep on it and then the next morning I usually know in my heart what to do next.  Wisdom from God about a situation is a valuable gift.  For the magi they demonstrated wisdom in several ways – they showed wisdom in the face of evil. They were faced with a jealous and angry King Herod.  They communicated with Herod but didn’t get sucked into his evil ways. A valuable gift today.

Secondly their wisdom led them to enquire – they weren’t satisfied until they had found out the meaning of the star and who the new king was. Wisdom is not the acquiring of knowledge but about discovering who Jesus is and how we are to follow Him. As we step into 2023 we will need wisdom – we face global challenges, national challenges, the national church faces huge challenges and St Mary’s faces he challenges also.  On a personal level we will need God’s mind on the decisions we make. Whatever your age we all need wisdom every day.  The magi also took determination with them on their journey.  Their journey wasn’t a trip to the shops but probably a 2-year search. It would have been easy for them to say ‘Come on chaps – we could be doing better things – the camels are tired, we’re tired, this has gone on for too long – let’s pack up, turn round and go home.’ But they didn’t.  In Hebrews 12: 1we read ‘Let us run the race with perseverance the race marked out for us.’  It is sometimes so easy to want to give up – we say things like - it’s not working, nobody is coming along, there aren’t enough people to help, we can’t afford it…….

Which brings me to the last thing to take on the journey – and that is faith.  The magi weren’t men of faith – they weren’t part of God’s people – YET they did have faith – faith that there was something worth searching for.  Faith is a gift given to us to use.  It’s not about what we believe but it’s about how we put that faith into action. In James 2: 17 it says ‘Faith by itself, if is not accompanied by action, is dead.’ It is not enough to just believe.  For the magi their faith led them to Jesus and it says that they were overjoyed and they bowed down and worshipped him and then they gave him these amazing gifts.  I do wonder how they knew what to give and what these gifts meant.  Again – it was godly wisdom. 

So what do YOU need as you step into 2023 – I suggest that we need wisdom, perseverance and faith. But you can add your own things to that list.  Then my second question to us – what might God be calling me/us to this year? This links in with what I’ve just said about faith. God is never interested in us standing still as His followers – He is always bringing new things to birth.  It’s never same old, same old with God.  In Isaiah 43: 19 it says ‘See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?’  I long that this year God calls all of us to share our faith with others in some way.  That we build on our outreach to our communities. Building the church and reaching out is a calling for everyone not just for the few. What is God calling you to do this year?  Become wise men and women, keep going and persevere on your journey, put the gift of faith that you have been given into action. Commit to sharing your faith with others. 

What do you need this year as you step into 2023?

 What is God calling you to do? 

Rev Anne Wilkins

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Readings for Sunday  27th November 2022 1st Sunday in Advent

Matthew 24: 36-44,  - The Day and Hour Unknown

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[a] but only the Father.  As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Romans 13: 11 – 14, - The Day Is Near

 And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Sermon on Matthew 24: 36-44, Romans 13: 11 – 14

Last Sunday Anne and I went to see Cloudbusting, a Kate Bush tribute band, at the Macmillan Theatre in Bridgwater. It’s the fourth time we have seen them and we both thought that it was their best performance yet. It was a new song list – some we didn’t know – and also included some iconic music: running up that hill, man with the child in his eyes, wuthering heights, babooshka. Mandy Watson, the lead singer was brilliant; the four musicians were fab as well. It was a really enjoyable evening, playing to a packed house. We booked the tickets back in July. We had to wait over 4 months for the show. Quite a lot of the time we didn’t remind each other that November 20th was getting closer. But just occasionally we’d say something like ‘Do you know what?’, ‘No. What?’ ‘November 20th is getting closer’. It was a wait, but the wait was worth it. Oh yes, definitely worth it!

What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? Christmas, birthday, operation, holiday, birth?....

As Christans, we are all waiting for something, someone and it’s going to happen sometime.

As Christians, the something that we are waiting for is the second coming, the someone is Jesus and it will happen at sometime in the future. But, well, who knows when the time will be? 

This is what Advent is all about. It’s a time of waiting and preparation. Not for Christmas, although it was only up until a couple of years ago that Anne put me straight on this. I always thought Advent was a time of preparation for Christmas and the birth of Jesus. No, the season of Advent is a time of preparation and waiting for Jesus’ second coming. It is a penitential season, like Lent, which is why the altar frontal (in Hutton) is changed to purple. It is a time for self reflection, maybe changing one’s actions and lifestyle, maybe taking up something new or developing an old pattern of life that has been forgotten, which can bring you closer to Jesus and Jesus closer to you. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide and direct you into how she (the Holy Spirit has a feminine pronoun, so ladies, part of God is feminine) would like you to grow and develop in this Advent season. 

Paul, in his letter to the church in Rome, starts the paragraph by saying ‘And do this’. So there is an action to do something. To find out what this something is, we need to go back a few verses. Paul reminds us that we are to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ He says ‘love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.’ This is the law of grace, ‘we love, because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19). We show God’s love to others as a reflection of the love that God has shown firstly to us. We don’t do it because we think we ought to do it, as if we are someone under compulsion, but we show God’s love to others as a natural response to God’s love for us. This is a wakeup call. It is a wakeup call to stop dozing and being oblivious to God and what he’s doing and going to do. Maybe we’ve lost our focus on God; maybe we’ve become lukewarm and forgotten out first love for God. Paul says wake up! Wake up! Does what we do and our lifestyle glorify God, do our actions show his love for us and our love for him? Or do we live one life in church and a different life at home? Paul writes that ‘The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.’ What does he mean by ‘The night?’ The night is the time before Jesus’ return when there is still evil and darkness about. One only has to view the news to know that there is evil about. Yes, we live in dark times, but don’t let that be an excuse to add to the darkness by our behaviour. Jesus is coming back, don’t know when, but it will happen. Paul thought that it was going to happen in his lifetime, which is why he writes that ‘our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.’ Yes, our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. That’s true. So let’s throw off anything which is of the darkness in us, and put on the light of Christ, the armour of light. So what are the things which we should throw off? Well, anything which causes us to not ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ Here I would ask that the Holy Spirit would show us anything that we need to confess to God, who forgives because he loves us and wants us to be whole and know life in all its fullness. Is there anything which is done in secret which is of darkness? Paul lists: carousing, drunkenness, sexual immorality, debauchery, dissension or jealousy. I did have to look up carousing and debauchery, and the definitions are ‘the activity of drinking alcohol and enjoying oneself with others in a noisy, lively way’ and ‘excessive indulgence in sex, alcohol, or drugs.’

I’ll pause here, to give space for God by the power of the Holy Spirit to move and work. So we pray Lord, is there anything you would want us to confess and lay at the foot of the cross for which we need to ask forgiveness? Because as John writes in his letter (1 John 1:9) 'If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.'

That’s a bad list which Paul wrote, a dark list, a list which causes pain and suffering, to oneself and also to others. It’s not of the light, but of the darkness. So let’s throw it off. Throwing it off is one thing. This leaves a gap, a hole where the bad things were, now that these things have been discarded. Paul tells us to put on Christ. Put on Christ’s ways, his way of thinking, his way of working, so that you clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. 

To clothe oneself with Jesus takes time and effort. The best way to start is to do something that is specific, measureable, achievable, realistic and time bound. For those of you who have been in management, you will possibly recognise these words as having the acronym SMART. You need to find something which works for you. Maybe its Bible reading notes and read them before you get up in the morning. Maybe it’s saying a morning office. I use the Northumbria Community form of Morning Prayer. Maybe its lectio divina, where a short Bible passage is read through slowly three times, seeing what words or phrases God wants you to hold onto during the day. Maybe it’s spend time in prayer. Maybe it’s reading a psalm a day, or read through the New Testament a chapter a day. Maybe set an alarm on your watch or phone, to go off at the same time each day, to remind you to stop and say the Lord’s Prayer to yourself. Maybe also when you go to bed at night practice the discipline of examine, where one thinks back over the day and reflects how God has worked in it and give thanks. It doesn’t matter what it is, but please do something and keep it up. This way you will slowly become more like Jesus, as you spend time with him regularly each day. As Paul writes in Romans 12:2 ‘Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ 

So I echo what Paul says ‘Wake Up!’ Put off the deeds of darkness, put on the armour of light and clothe yourselves with Jesus.

My final point is this; only Father God knows when his son Jesus is going to return. Life will be going on as normal, but suddenly and unexpectedly Jesus will return. Keep watch, be ready, keep short accounts with people and with God. Don’t put off till tomorrow what can be done today. Don’t delay in getting right with God. Be ready. The dawn of Jesus’ second coming will come.

So wake up, put off the deeds of darkness, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and keep watch. Use this Advent wisely and as people of the light may God bless you and those with whom you come into contact in this often dark world.

 Amen. 

Chris Wilkins (Lay leader)

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Reading for Sunday 30th October 2022

Luke 19: 1-10 - Zacchaeus the Tax Collector

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Sermon on Luke 19: 1 – 10

Sometimes I call on people unannounced.  When I do I always ask if it is convenient to call.  Often they say yes but please excuse the mess (especially if they have children) or they say – please ignore the washing up to be done or the pile of ironing.  I then always say – I haven’t come to see your house, I’ve come to see you.  When people do know that I am coming I suspect that they have a tidy up.  When people come to stay we always have a big clean and tidy.  If someone really important was coming you would want it immaculate.  I wonder who the most important person is who has visited your house.  Today’s reading from Luke is about someone visiting a home unexpectedly.  It’s the story of Zacchaeus which we know so well and sing songs about as children. But let’s go beyond the familiar and see what’s really happening and what it says to us. 

So we have this man called Zacchaeus. We know quite a bit about him – he is the chief tax collector – the head of the local tax department.  Taxes were as controversial now as they are today. You keep it quiet if you work for HMRC. Zacchaeus wouldn’t have collected taxes for himself but would have employed others to do it. He had a very important role. He was also stinking rich because of it. BUT because of that he was very unpopular, hated and despised even and wouldn’t have had much of a social life or friends. He was rich in wealth but poor in love and friendship. He couldn’t have been very happy at all.  A bit further back in Luke 18: 18 we have another account about a rich man - the rich young ruler coming to Jesus to ask about how he could inherit eternal life. He tells Jesus that he keeps all the laws but then Jesus says to him ‘You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.’ But the man becomes sad because he can’t do this. Then Jesus warns about it being hard for the rich to enter into God’s kingdom.  It’s also interesting to note that at the end of chapter 18 we have the account of Jesus healing the blind poor man who said Lord I want to see and Jesus heals him.  So here now with Zacchaeus we have a bit of a repeat. We have a rich man and we have a man who wants to see Jesus.  Jesus is passing through Jericho not intending to stop.  Word must have got out about this and like when royalty are due to go somewhere the crowds gather in the hope of getting a glimpse of Prince William or even the king. And I can relate to this being short – Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was. I usually use my elbows to get to the front or just push but being who Zacchaeus was and not being liked, nobody would have given way.  Zacchaeus didn’t just want to see Jesus, it says he wanted to see who he was. He’d heard about him and was curious and wants to see for himself. He wants to see physically and I also believe he wants to see spiritually.  Maybe deep down he was very unhappy and he wanted his life to change. So not being able to see he runs on ahead and climbs a tree that was near the road – 10/10 for being resourceful. 

So my first point is – we need to see Jesus. We need to know him, not just know about him.  We shouldn’t rely on the faith of others but should seek to know Him for ourselves. Zacchaeus did all he could to get a glimpse – a grown man climbing a tree was undignified but he was intent on seeing him. I’m just finishing another Alpha group and it is always wonderful to watch people seeing Jesus – seeing him for the first time, seeing him in a new way, starting to see him again. We can’t climb trees but we can see who Jesus is through His word, through prayer and through other Christians. If you or those you know are wanting to see Jesus then come along to Alpha – in fact everyone should do it. No exceptions. So often people have a distorted view of Jesus – they are blind as it were.  I remember vividly having glasses for the first time and the optician taking me to the door and putting on the glasses. I was shocked at the colours and the detail and also sad that I had thought my blurred world was normal. I often wondered why people thought I ignored them in the street and I was amazed I managed to get the right bus. Have you seen Jesus for who He really is? So Zacchaeus was expecting a glimpse but instead he got an encounter, a meeting. A bit like the King coming to speak to you and then saying I’m coming for tea!  He must have been amazed and overjoyed. Then Jesus speaks to him – Come down immediately. I must stay at your house today. Can you feel the urgency and the command?  Not – can I come to your house please – but I must stay at your house. Come down immediately.

So my second point is – Jesus’ call is urgent.  Jesus was only passing through but he saw the need and the opportunity and knew this man’s heart and he stopped and he called him.  If we sense Jesus calling us, do we respond – because when Jesus speaks and calls it’s for now – not tomorrow. Tomorrow may be too late. "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion." Hebrews 3: 15. And in 2 Corinthians 6: 2 Paul writes For God says, "In the time of my favour I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." I tell you, now is the time of God's favour, now is the day of salvation.’ God’s time is now. It’s now for us and also we need to have an urgency in reaching out to others and being willing to seize the opportunity as we are passing through our day. So Jesus goes to Zacchaeus house – I wonder if he’d done the dishes!  The people are cross because they believe that he is a sinner – and he is – and so are they. Jesus had met with Zacchaeus and he came into his house and then immediately Zacchaeus knows what he must do – sort his life out. He is a changed man. We are not saved through good works but when Jesus comes into our lives then things should not stay the same.

We become a new creation – my 3rd point – a new man or woman. Paul says ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.’ 2 Corinthians 5: 17 Zac knew what he had to put right – he had taken people’s money and cheated on them and would pay back more than the law said. He was putting right the sins of his past. Can you see the change in your life? Have you changed your old habits, have you asked forgiveness of people you have hurt, have you paid back anything you owe, have you got rid of all bitterness and malice and gossip, have you broken off your relationship with your addictions – money, drink, food, your phone, possessions, power – whatever it is that binds you? Are there things in your life that you keep putting off changing – because the time is now. If Jesus came to your home today you would clean and tidy – yet if Jesus has come into your life the result should be a clean- up and a throw out. Let’s ask ourselves what still needs sorting. Jesus brought salvation to Zacchaeus – he brought new life, new hope, friends probably, forgiveness and acceptance. Jesus says ‘Today salvation has come to this house. Because this man too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost.’ Jesus would soon go to the cross to bring that salvation and to deal with all our wrong and rubbish. Zacchaeus was rescued by Jesus and he became a son of Abraham – not in that he was a Jew but that he followed in the faith of Abraham. Jesus had brought fresh air to the house, and maybe to the whole family.

4. How has salvation come to your house – what difference does Jesus make to your family life, your single life, your married life and your relationship with your children. This is such a good news story – the whole community would have seen the change and have been affected. Jesus sought out Zac, he called him, he changed him and he brought him salvation. Do we know that for ourselves and do we feel the urgency to share this with others. My Tom loves a band called Foals – he has all their records, been to their concerts and met them. One of their albums is called ‘Everything not saved will be lost.’ They are not Christians but it speaks to me of the urgency to bring salvation to people. So have we seen Jesus, do we know that now is the time, have we allowed Him to change us and have we allowed him into our lives and our homes. 

Rev Anne Wilkins

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Reading for Sunday 23rd Oct 2022 

Luke 18: 9-14 - The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people - robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Sermon on Luke 18: 9-14

A topical question: which people have you made judgements about in the last week or two? An intriguing question: what judgements have people made about you? A personal question: what judgements have you made about yourself? As Christians what have we learnt about judgement? Do we remember Jesus’ words in Luke 7: 

"Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.’

Luke’s parable today continues the questions about judgment and justice raised by the persistent widow last week.  We know that in our legal system there are trials by jury, but most civil cases are heard by a judge, who weighs up the cases presented and makes a judgement. In ancient Jewish law courts, all cases were like that. You had to bring a charge against the person who had wronged you and that person had to argue against your case and the judge decided, vindicating one party or another, deciding in their in favour. And so those listening to this parable of Jesus wouldn’t have been surprised at the Pharisee’s approach to his praying.  He is listing the things he didn’t do things that others did: robbery; evil; adultery, and the things that he did as he should: fasting (actually doing it more often than he needed) and tithing. He is bringing to God’s attention the things that he felt he had got right and compares himself to those he felt were doing things wrong, exalting himself. ‘ God I thank you that I am not like other men… even this tax collector’. 

Some of those listening to Jesus may well have thought that the Pharisee was justified in saying what he did. Didn’t Pharisees live exemplary, religious lives, trying to keep the law as perfectly as possible so as to the usher in the golden age when the Messiah would come to rule the world? We are so used to thinking the Pharisees were awful that we can miss the point that they were seen as pillars of their religious communities. But their approach could become an end rather than a means, a way of doing things rather than being. Listen again to the Pharisees words: he is talking to himself, rather than praying to God, justifying himself rather than asking for God’s justification, God’s forgiveness of his sins that he doesn’t even mention.

The other man however needs few words. His whole demeanour is one of humility, even shame.  He has faced the truth about himself. He won’t look up to heaven, he beats his breast. All he says is ‘God have mercy on me, a sinner.’ There is no list, there are no comparisons. There is the knowledge that God knows all of his life. The tax collectors of Jesus’ time were part of a group who squeezed as much as possible out of people so that they could pay the Romans and still have a profit left over, for they were not paid for their work. They were hated, ostracised. But they had a part to play in society. Earlier in Luke’s gospel some tax collectors had gone to John the Baptist asking to be baptised and they asked him, 'Teacher, what are we to do?' Don't collect more than is legal, he told them." And Jesus saw more than the tax collector role. In Luke 5 Jesus sees a tax collector sitting in his booth and calls to him: ‘Follow me’. Levi does and then throws a great banquet for Jesus. The Pharisees then challenge the decision. Jesus’ answer is  “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” And Levi became known as Matthew, one of the twelve disciples and the writer of the gospel. Jesus had seen what was really in Matthew.

The words of Jesus in today’s parable must have caused real offence to the respectable, pious people who heard him caricature the presumption of the Pharisee in the parable. Luke begins: ‘To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable.’ In this little parable Jesus is once again challenging people’s perceptions and conceptions. The Pharisee’s ‘prayer’ shows his judgement of others and his spiritual pride; the tax collector’s prayer shows that he knows God knows everything about him, that he repents and that he seeks God’s mercy. There is no judgement of others in his mind. The outcome of the prayers of the two men was that the Pharisee, the icon of spirituality, left the same way that he came in, whilst the tax collector, the symbol of sin, left justified before God. In his mercy, God reckoned him to be righteous, forgiven.  Jesus said: ‘I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. ‘For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted’.

Jesus, the Son of God, who was judged by men, falsely convicted and died for us, who rose again to show his victory over sin, was and is exalted and is our example and our guide.

So how do we judge ourselves? Well I would suggest we have to face the truth of ourselves. In our prayers we have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the God in whom we trust. And sometimes, or often, the words ‘God have mercy on me, a sinner’ are a good start! We approach God as forgiven sinners with the certain knowledge that we are loved and accepted by God’s grace alone. We have no claim on God’s mercy except for our need and our openness to receive it.  And having received, we then to listen to what God wants us to do or to be in our lives. That is the truth of our faith, which Jesus showed us in his teachings, in his example, in his understanding of people and through his words in John’s gospel: ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’

And that love and mercy is to be celebrated and to be shared. No matter what life brings for each one of us, God will always be with us. The end of Paul’s letter to Timothy, where Paul views his approaching death as the pouring out of his life as an offering to Jesus Christ, shows us a person reflecting on his faith journey. Paul again uses the metaphors of a race, of a fight for his life as apostle. Paul has done his best for his faith, keeping his faith and guarding the faith too so it might continue to be spread. He looks forward to the ‘crown of righteousness’, the fulfilment of God’s promise to us all, because God is ‘the righteous judge.’ Paul further writes that he was judged unfairly in Acts 28 when he was first imprisoned but was strengthened and saved by God so that he, Paul, could continue his mission to bring the word to others. “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” We may not face the same dangers and challenges that Paul encountered but we have the same God, who knows us and will be with if we open ourselves to Him, and to ourselves, and ask for his mercy, strength, guidance and love.

So do we leave church each time we come knowing that we have been truthful to ourselves and about ourselves as we have come before God, our righteous judge, in penitence and faith? In our prayers do we pray for his mercy because we know how much we need it? And then, having been forgiven, do we live to God’s praise and glory, with a deep awareness of his presence and his love for us and for all of his creation? Do we look for the good in others, for the needs of others, for the ways we can serve others, rather than judging others? Are our lives rooted in our faith, in our experiences of how God meets our needs? 

Let our lives be full of praise for God, our righteous judge of all, knowing that He loves us, He will not fail us and He will always be with us.

 Amen

Jane Barry (Reader)

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Reading for Sunday 2nd October 2022

Luke 17: 5 – 10 - Faith

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”

He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.

“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

Sermon on Luke 17: 5 – 10

This morning I want to talk about faith and obedience. Faith is an inherent part of being a human being.  We exercise faith every day without really thinking about it.  We have faith that the fuel we put into our car will make it work, we have faith that the food we buy is good for us and won’t poison us, we have faith that the medicine we are prescribed by the doctor will make us better and not worse.  In fact if you didn’t have faith you would never leave your house, you would grow all your own veg and be self – sufficient and manage all on your own.  You wouldn’t fare well after a while, would you?

Today’s reading centres around the disciples saying to Jesus ‘Increase our faith.’  We need to look at the verses before this and what brings them to say this. The disciples had seen amazing miracles and had been involved in them – they had seen healings, people fed, people raised from the dead, water into wine, people’s lives transformed immediately.  Yet in all that, not one of them has said to Jesus ‘Increase our faith.’ So why are they saying it now? In the previous verses Jesus says ‘Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come.  It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied round their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So, watch yourselves. If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.  Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying “I repent,” you must forgive them.’ So, Jesus is here talking to his disciples about when they sin or in other translations when they stumble.  When they fall from God’s ways and mess up. Jesus warns against those who cause other people to sin – people who do things or say things that cause another person to sin, to spiritually fall over as it were. Jesus speaks very strongly about such people – woe to them – it would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a weight on them – strong words indeed.

Yet it is all too easy isn’t it to say or do something that causes another person to sin. The biggest culprit is the tongue – one person starts to gossip to another and that becomes a chain reaction and before you know it dozens of people are speaking in an ungodly way. James 3: 6 ‘The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.’ It is far from Paul’s instruction in Philippians 4:8‘Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.’ Jesus warns them to watch themselves – that they don’t cause anyone to stumble or that they don’t be tripped themselves.  Jesus then talks about forgiving others repeatedly. It seems that it is this that causes them to say ‘Increase our faith.’ In conversations with people and in groups people often share how they find it really difficult to forgive others – especially when real wrong has been done against them or a loved one. Yet we know that we must forgive if we are to be forgiven by God.  We pray ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’ When we hold a grudge or do not forgive then we are harming ourselves more than the person who sinned against us.  A saying goes ‘Resentment is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die.’ But it is hard and is an act of the will and an act of faith. 

So, like the disciples you may be thinking ‘Increase my faith.’ Just briefly what do we mean by faith – it’s a huge subject.  Often people say to me – I have faith – and then I ask them to tell me more – to which they often reply – I believe in God. Believing in God does not make you a Christian – it’s said that even the devil believes in God. Being a Christian is about believing in Jesus Christ – that He died for you and your sin – that He rose from the dead to show us that He has defeated death and sin, so that we can have a relationship with God the Father. It is because of Jesus dying for me that I can know Him in my life now and after I die, I will go to be with Him in eternal life – not because of anything I have done – but because I have asked Jesus into my life. Faith is not just about saying the creed – it is about living it out every day. James 2:16 ‘Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.’ We are not saved by our actions but they are an expression of our faith. I pray that every one of you has invited Christ into your life and is living out your faith every day. Maybe you feel that you have little faith or that others have greater faith than you.  But Jesus is saying – it doesn’t matter – what matters is that you have faith at all – even if it is a little – like a mustard seed. A little faith can go a long way – it can do miracles. You don’t have to be a great saint or the Archbishop of Canterbury to do amazing things for God. Faith is like a muscle – it must be used though.  In fact, the more we exercise our faith the more it will grow. It is good to have faith like a mustard seed, but seeds are meant to grow and they need tending to do so.  Leaving the seeds in the packet will do nothing – they need to be planted, fed and watered and when they are a tree or a plant, they need pruning.  I wonder what you are doing in your walk of faith to help grow your faith.  How is your prayer life, are you reading your Bible every day, do you belong to a homegroup – which is the best way to grow and develop your faith. 

In the New Year I am planning to hold an Alpha course here in church – this is a very good way to grow your faith, even if you have been a Christian for years. Somebody from Hutton currently on the course is going to share with us soon about how it has helped them. The next part of the reading – verses 7 – 10 is like a parable. It’s quite a tricky one too. It talks of a master who has a servant who works all day in the fields. When the servant comes back the master wouldn’t say get your meal, but instead would say get my supper and after you have waited on me, then you can eat and drink. Jesus here is talking about obedience. He is saying that we don’t have faith to serve ourselves and make ourselves look good – but that we have faith in order to serve our master Jesus. If we are obedient and serve Christ then He will meet our needs. Matthew 6: 33 ‘But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.’ We do have enough faith but it must not be self- serving but instead we are to use it to serve others and to bring God’s kingdom to others.

So, my challenge to you today is to ask yourself – how is my faith, what do I believe, am I sure of my faith, what am I doing to grow it, how am I using it to serve others. As a church it really is time to change and to stop being self- serving and to become more others serving. It’s about them – those outside the church – and not us. If you want to see this church reach out, if you want to see growth, families and young people here in our church family, if you want to see people become Christians, if you want God to use you in this – remember a little faith is more than enough.   

Amen. 

Rev Anne Wilkins

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Reading for Sunday 25th August 2022

Deuteronomy 26 : 1 – 11  -  Firstfruits and Tithes

When you have entered the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of it and settled in it, take some of the firstfruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land the Lord your God is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name and say to the priest in office at the time, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the land the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” The priest shall take the basket from your hands and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God.

Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to harsh labor. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; and now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, Lord, have given me.”

Place the basket before the Lord your God and bow down before him. Then you and the Levites and the foreigners residing among you shall rejoice in all the good things the Lord your God has given to you and your household.

Harvest Sermon on Deuteronomy 26 : 1 – 11

Harvest is a time to be thankful, to say ‘thank-you’ to God for all the good things he gives us. It’s a time not only for saying ‘thank-you’ but also showing our thanks in practical ways. 

The reading from Deuteronomy reminds us of the history of the Israelites. God gave them laws and commands so that they would not be like the other nations who served other gods. They were to be different, they were to have the one true God high overall, the God of gods as their God. The Israelites were to be set apart from the other races, they were to live by better rules, to have higher morals and embedded care for each other as standard. They were to be an example to the other tribes of how to live.

One of their commands that God gave them was that of the firstfruits and offering some of them back to Him. God is a very practical God, a caring God and a thoughtful God. When he gave Moses the ten commandments and all these other commands, the Israelites were still wandering about in the desert, they had not yet crossed over the Jordan in to the promised land. They weren’t able to fulfil this command as they hadn’t settled down and started to farm and harvest on a regular basis.

By giving them this law, they knew what was expected of them. God says to them ‘When you have entered the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of it and settled in it, take some of the firstfruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land that the Lord your God is giving you and put them in a basket.’ God does not put heavy yokes on his people. This is something that they can easily do. God says ‘take some of the firstfruits of all that you produce’ God says ‘take some’ some, not a fixed amount, some, so that it is a willing offering, an offering from the heart of the good things that God has given. 

What offerings can we give today? We are not an agrarian society, although, yes, some of us have allotments and gardens where we grow things. We can give things like time, through acts of service, using our ability, skills, gifts, which can be utilised within the church and also in the wider community as a witness of our love for God and of the good things that he has given us.  We can give money, and as you have seen, there is a new contactless device where debit and credit cards can be used to give money to the church. Do give it a try, it’s an easy and painless way to give! But also we can give produce – buy a bit extra each week and leave it in the foodbank box at the entrance to church.

So what can we give back to God as a ‘thank you’ for all that he has given us? That’s my first point.

Secondly, so what happens next in the reading from Deuteronomy? The priest shall take the basket from your hands and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God. Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: ‘My father was a wandering Aramean....’ then follows the people’s history of how the Hebrews went to Egypt, how they were oppressed and how God rescued them and brought them out in to a land flowing with milk and honey. 

Brothers and sisters, telling one’s story of what God has done in your life is important. This is something I have learnt to do over the past few years. It felt awkward at first, but the more it is done, the easier it becomes! Write it down as a letter to a friend, read it out loud, share it with someone, make it feel comfortable and understandable, short and to the point. This is witnessing to the love and action of God in your life. Each person’s story will be different, unique to you. So what’s your story? How has God worked, or is working in your life? How can you tell your story to make others want to find out more about our God and their God?

These first and second points go together as forming a platform and structure for mission and evangelism. The first point is about service – what can I give back to God in helping others. The second point is about telling your story – how God has been at work in your lives. This is what is behind the strap line of Bath and Wells diocese, ‘Living the story, telling the story’. So as you go about your daily work, especially when you come into contact with people, look for opportunities to tell your story of God in your life. This is a powerful testimony because it is your story. Ask God to use you for his kingdom and to empower you by the Holy Spirit. Then come back and tell us how it went. Everyone loves a good story!  

For the third point, let’s move to the New Testament and hear what Jesus says. The previous day he had just fed five thousand men, as well as women and children, walked on water during the night and crossed over the Sea of Galilee. Some of those he had fed found him, expectant of more miracles, or if not that, then more free food. Jesus saw the superficiality of their request. They wanted more instant satisfaction. They didn’t understand or realise that Jesus could do so much more for them, not just satisfy them for a day or so, but enable them to be part of something which could start now and would stretch onto eternity. 

Food spoils. I know this: bread if not eaten quickly goes mouldy, fruit over ripens and is only fit for the compost heap and left overs from meals, if not frozen for another day, or eaten quickly, are only fit for the waste food bin. 

Jesus says ‘Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.’

Jesus came from God, is God and also human, and at his baptism was anointed by the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, which marked the start of his ministry here on earth, the ushering in of God’s Kingdom, his rule and reign. One of Jesus’ names is ‘The Son of Man’ he is representative of human kind here on earth, or God in the form of a human.  Only through Jesus, as he has the Father’s seal of approval, can we receive the food that will endure to eternal life. 

The crowd still thought that they had to do something to obtain this food which didn’t spoil and which didn’t last, as they asked Jesus ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’. Jesus replied ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’ Brothers and sisters, this is the good news, there is no work to do to receive this food which doesn’t perish or spoil. Only believe in Jesus, the one whom the Father has sent to earth, as John wrote earlier: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 

The crowd knew their history. In the past, when they were in the wilderness, God had given them manna from heaven, he had fed and sustained them, so was the bread Jesus talking about like that? No, this was different. The manna in the wilderness was like a type, or a foretelling of what was going to happen many many years later. 

Jesus said in response to their talking about the manna in the wilderness ‘Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ 

He has the crowd’s interest. By telling his story, the crowd want to know more, they want some of this bread, not just for today, but on a regular basis. They want it always.

Then Jesus replies with one of his famous ‘I am’ statements: ‘‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty....”

‘I am the bread of life’ Jesus says. The crowd wanted something physical to eat. Jesus offers something more, something different and something much much better. He offers the crowd Spiritual food and Spiritual drink. He offers to satisfy their hunger and thirst with food that lasts for ever, stretching on into eternal life. He still offers this today, the offer is still on the table for us all to accept. It’s a free gift. We don’t have to work for it, we just have to believe in the one, in Jesus, that God the Father has sent to earth, and in believing in Jesus, we will have life and life to the full, not only here on earth, but also we will be with God in heaven for all eternity. 

So to sum up: 

1 What can you offer back to God to say ‘thank-you’ for all the blessings he has given you?

2 What is your story of how God has worked, or is working, in your life? How can these two strands be moulded together in action and words? And finally

3 Jesus offers you the bread of life, spiritual nourishment lasting on into eternity. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God and will you take the step of faith and accept his free gift?

Amen.

Chris Wilkins (Lay leader)

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Sunday18th September 2022

Service to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II

‘See, I am making all things new.’ We live in an imperfect world, where things become worn out and break, where things that used to be bright and shiny lose their sparkle and become rusty and tarnished, where people become older, wear out and sadly, eventually die. We live in a world where there is death, mourning , crying and pain. Pain from bodies wearing out, of relationships falling apart, of hope and ideas being dashed and our environment being damaged through over exploitation and misuse. But as Christians, we have a hope. God says ‘See, I am making all things new.’

We are here this morning to commemorate and remember the life of our departed queen, Elizabeth the second. Her death has brought has brought: mourning , crying and pain. The new Prince of Wales, William, the Queen’s grandson, said that walking down the Mall following the Queen’s coffin brought back memories of his mother’s funeral, Diana Princess of Wales, where, as a young child, he had also publically followed his mother’s funeral cortege. I don’t know what feelings and memories have been brought back to life following the death of our beloved Queen Elizabeth? For me, it was putting together the video for last week’s service and including Paddington Bear having tea with the Queen. This showed the Queen having fun, relating to the everyday world and being herself. In the video, of which I only showed a still picture, the last thing that Paddington said to the queen was ‘Thanks for everything, ma-am’. Looking back on the video, which was only made a few months ago, it was as if it was the beginning of the end. For me, those words also echoed back down through time, being the last words my mum said to me 35 years ago, before she died. Sad, yes, but as Christians, we have a hope. God says ‘See, I am making all things new.’

It is not only mourning, but is also a time of remembering and celebration for a life well lived. There have been lots of interviews in television with people who have met the queen, and there is one common thread that frequently comes through ‘She made me feel special, as if I was the only person there’. She took a genuine interest in people, she listened to people’s stories and she remembered them. 

When Diana died, the queen made a speech to the nation, in it, she showed that she was human,  she said ‘So what I say to you now, as your Queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart....’. She was not remote figure, but one who had feelings, enjoyed walkabouts and meeting people, shaking their hands and wishing them well. 

The Queen ruled for longer than any other Monarch in British history, becoming a much loved and respected figure across the globe. Over the 70 years, Her Majesty was a dedicated Head of the Commonwealth, linking more than two billion people worldwide. She also had a special relationship with her Prime Ministers, meeting with them on a regular - usually weekly - basis. She was famously able to ‘encourage or warn’ whilst always remaining politically neutral. As Head of State, she also acted as diplomat and hostess, welcoming over 110 Presidents and Prime Ministers to the UK on official visits. Her Majesty had links - as Royal Patron or President - with over 500 charities and was Head of the Armed Forces. She also supported and encouraged achievement in many different ways where she conferred titles such as MBEs, OBEs and CBEs on people from all walks of life in public recognition of their merit, service or bravery. There were also Garden Parties at Buckingham Palace and the Palace of Holyrood house, receptions and other awards given in her name. This allowed her to say ‘thank you’ to just some of those who had made a significant contribution to the life of the nation. 

For most of her working life, The Queen was supported by The Duke of Edinburgh who accompanied her on visits in the UK and overseas. Her family were also important to her, but over all this was her faith, her faith in Jesus, which was a subject frequently mentioned during her annual Christmas Broadcasts. For her 2014 broadcast she spoke of what she had learnt from the teachings of Jesus, "For me, the life of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, whose birth we celebrate today, is an inspiration and an anchor in my life. A role model of reconciliation and forgiveness, he stretched out his hands in love, acceptance and healing. Christ's example has taught me to seek to respect and value all people of whatever faith or none." As Christians, we have a hope. God says ‘See, I am making all things new.’

God can make things new here on earth, but this isn’t as good as it’s going to be, at the end of time things will be far better, unchangeably good, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, God will live with us, we will be his children, there will be no more crying, pain, mourning or death. God says ‘See, I am making all things new.’

This new life can start here and now, on earth. The reading we heard from the book of Revelation is about eternal life, which is living forever with God in his kingdom. Can we know some of that new life here today on earth? Yes we can, so that we can know that after death, like the Queen, there will be the certainty of eternal life and the joy of spending eternity with God in the new heaven and the new earth. How can we know? Very simply by asking Jesus for forgiveness for living life our way, inviting God’s Holy Spirit into our lives to change us and then also living to show and tell others about Jesus’ love and forgiveness. Through this change of direction in your life, God will begin to make all things new in you.

As you leave, there are some books called Why Jesus? Please take one and read it and if you believe that God is calling you and wants to start making all things new in your life. In the middle of the book, there is a prayer in it that you can pray to start that journey now, which, like the Queen, will end in eternal life and being with God forever.

God says ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Which can start in you today! Amen.

Chris Wilkins (Lay leader)

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