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Week Commencing 25th April 2021

4/25/2021

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   N.B. There will be no mid-week service this Thursday (29th April).  

   Sermon Easter 4

   At this time of year we hear quite a lot about sheep in the Gospel according to St John.  I didn’t grow up in the countryside, so I know very little about sheep.  The only one I know is Shaun the Sheep.  I don’t know whether you are familiar with him too, but it turns out that sheep are not as dim as we might think, especially Shaun.  He is brighter than his companions and he runs rings around the dog who is supposed to keep the sheep in order.  He also runs rings round the farmer.  It is perhaps a good thing that the farmer doesn’t know the half of what goes on in his farmyard when his back is turned.  In the movie I saw a few years ago Shaun leads his fellow sheep and the farmer as well into the unknown territory of a city and even though they are county folk, they devise some wonderful methods of survival before managing to get back to the more familiar and comforting territory of the farm.
   The thing about those sheep is that they don’t really need a member of another species- a human being- to guide them.  They have one of their own who can do it perfectly well.  When St John’s Gospel speaks about sheep it is speaking of the flock that is God’s faithful people and of the shepherd that is Christ.  He does not belong to another species, but he is one of us.  Jesus appeared in human flesh, but this was not just a trick of the light.  In this person we see someone who is every bit as human as we are.  He became the shepherd of God’s people.  This was not because he was cleverer than we are.  It is true that Jesus impressed people with his knowledge from a young age, but cleverness is not the point about Jesus.  He is our shepherd because of his deep and intimate communion with the one he called his Father and because of his compassion for us.
Shaun the Sheep and his companions were intent on saving their own skins and getting back to safety through a variety of entertaining escapades.  If that is the instinct that sheep have then we could say the same about human beings.  Survival seems paramount and so does the safeguarding of our own interests.  But what Jesus revealed to his disciples was that he was the shepherd who loved his flock to such an extent that he was prepared to stand in the way of danger for them.  He was ready and willing to give up his life for the sake of those he cared about.  When the time of reckoning came, he was quite clear that he would not run away.  He gives them the image of the hired hand who professes to care but who, when it comes to the crunch, will abandon the flock in order to save his own bacon.  For Jesus, there was to be no by-passing of the Cross.  From his point of view this wasn’t just a sad and unexpected ending to the life of a good man, but the choice he himself had made; a sacrifice out of which would flow new and everlasting life.
    The world in which we live is often governed by self-interest.  This can be true of those who lead as well as those who follow.  Sacrifice of any kind can be a rare quality, sometimes seen as inspiring and sometimes as foolish.  But the sacrifice Jesus made was consistent with his entire life: a life of compassion, truthfulness and integrity.  He is the one who can, in all humility, call himself the Good Shepherd.  He can claim the loyalty of those who make the choice to follow his way… the way that leads to the fullness of life.  None of this would have made any sense at all if Jesus had not been raised out of death into newness of life.  Jesus spoke about his life, saying: “No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and as it is in my power to lay it down, so it is in my power to take it up again...”  By reclaiming his own life, he invited believers to follow him so that they themselves can discover a life that is complete.
    Whether we lead or whether we follow, the Good Shepherd is our model for the kind of care and love that God calls us to show to one another.  Christians – disciples of Jesus – do not live for themselves alone but look to the needs of others.  In this we unite ourselves with the Good Shepherd himself, who walks with us across the hills and valleys of human experience and brings us to safe pasture.  Let’s listen to his voice through the words of the Bible and through our prayers; let’s be nourished by the sacraments; and let us then follow him and live as he showed us, as he leads us along the path of eternal life.
                                                                           Father Richard


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Week commencing 18th April 2021

4/20/2021

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Parish News
Forthcoming Services are as follows:
Thursday 22nd April 10am Feria at Eastertide
Sunday 25th April 9.30am Parish Mass
Please be aware Services are still socially distanced, masks are required and congregational singing is still not permitted.


​Sermon: Third Sunday of Easter​   
One of the things about getting older, as I have discovered, is that our faces and our bodies tell something about the story of our lives.  Childhood scars tell the story of mishaps.  Then there may be the traces of surgical procedures.  On top of that there are laughter lines and frown lines.  Maybe if I had more money than sense - as we say in Yorkshire - I might be tempted to visit a plastic surgeon who would make me look a decade or two younger than I am.  Instead, I tell myself that the marks we bear on our faces and bodies are the reminder of an authentic life story.  We are who we are, with all our memories and experiences – all those things that make us real and that give us a personal history.
    The earthly life of Jesus was shorter than I have already lived, but the marks on his body tell a remarkable story.  When Jesus appeared to his disciples, as we hear in St Luke’s gospel today, there was no filling in or airbrushing out of the wounds that he bore:
    “Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed.  Touch me and see; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have.”
   When the disciples first saw Jesus, they were terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost.  But there was nothing insubstantial about his appearance.  The man who stood before them was the man in whose earthly life they had shared.  Now, once again, he stood there and, as we heard last week, said: “Peace be with you”.  Once they recognised Jesus for who he really was, the doubts and agitation that had risen in their hearts were overtaken by an incredible joy.  It was the Lord.
   Jesus, when he appeared again to his disciples, explained the real meaning of the Scriptures to them, just as he had to done on the Road to Emmaus.  It was only through understanding the message of sacrificial love and the deliverance of God’s people that the death of Christ made any sense to the troubled disciples.  God knows that we are not capable of rescuing ourselves from the snares of human folly and certainly not capable of overcoming the power of death.  Therefore, through Jesus, God accomplishes these things and opens up for us the way to new and everlasting life.
   The thing about Christianity is that it is an embodied faith and the Incarnation is central to our understanding of who Jesus really is – truly God and truly human.  It is not just abstract and spiritual, but something that makes a real and physical difference to our lives on earth.
    The man who stood in the presence of his amazed disciples was the same Jesus that they had known, but now he was no longer living within earthly boundaries.  He has been set free from all earthly limits and above all, from the power of death.   As Mary Magdalene discovered, Jesus was not someone to cling to like an earthly possession, but someone whose life was to be shared – and Jesus himself poured out his life unselfishly and completely.  He calls his disciples -each and every one of us – to share his life and to give of ourselves in his service.
    For us, being Christians does not mean losing our humanity.  Far from it.  Jesus was just as real when risen as he was when he first became known to his disciples in Galilee.  In the same way, God does not expect us to play a part but to be transformed by a life of grace.  It means coming before God as we really are, with our life history, and with our faults as well as our gifts.  We still bear he wounds of the lives we have lived and our history is not wiped away.  As Rowan Williams points out, the Resurrection does not mean that Jesus was un-crucified, but that he was raised to new life.
    In the same way, when we become Christians, our lives are not rewound as though we could start over from the beginning.  As Rowan Williams puts it, “The gospel will not ever tell us that we are innocent, but it will tell us we are loved… Grace will remake us but not undo.  There is all the difference between Christ un-crucified and Christ risen.”
    All we have to do is to bring ourselves and our life story into the presence of Jesus.  Through the gospels the words of Jesus come to life in us and we understand just as we ourselves are understood.  We share the presence of Christ in the Sacrament and his love takes shape in our lives.  In this way, the risen life of Jesus is something into which we ourselves are incorporated as sons and daughters of the eternal Father.  By the grace of God, may we live that life always.

                                                            Father Richard

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Week Commencing Sunday 11th April 2021

4/11/2021

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   “Peace be with you.”  Those are the very first words we hear Jesus speak to his disciples as he appears to them in the room where they were locked away for safety.  The greeting “peace be with you” is not really familiar in our culture, but it is used frequently by people in church services.  We wish one another peace because we know that this is God’s will for us.  Normally the greeting would be accompanied by a handshake or even a brief hug, but in these days of limited contact, we have had to make it a more socially-distanced greeting.
   The word used in the original Greek New Testament is “eirhnh” (érené), from which the name Irene comes.  Even so, Jesus being a Hebrew, would probably have used the word “Shalom”.  For the people of Israel, this is not just what we understand by peace, which is probably tranquillity or an end to war.  It has a wider meaning of wholeness or completeness and it would also be used as a greeting for “hello” and “goodbye”.  Jesus is bestowing a peace upon his disciples such as the world cannot give – a peace that would bring wholeness of spirit and bind together a scarred, divided and fearful community.
   Our peace has been disturbed over the past year or more.  As individuals and as a society we have been thrown into unfamiliar circumstances.  Some of the comforts we usually enjoy, such as social contact, sitting in a café, going to a football match, relaxed and lively worship – all these things have been suspended.  In times like this the world can seem an unfamiliar and disturbing place.  Perhaps we can feel at least a certain identification with the disciples who could no longer go about freely, whose lives were in danger and whose hope had been shattered.  It seemed that getting to know Jesus had not brought them in the end to a place of peace.
   But now they meet Jesus again and he breathes upon them the Holy Spirit, the bringer of peace and unity – the Spirit of courage - inspiring enthusiasm and a sense of belonging.  The life Jesus lived on earth was not really filled with the kind of peace that we would normally recognise.  He was frequently in conflict with the religious authorities and his life ended in dreadful violence and suffering.  His followers were scattered and afraid.  But through all of this, Jesus maintained an inner peace that could only come about through deep communion with the Father.  The peace of God really is a peace that the world cannot give.  As Rowan Williams writes in his book “The Truce of God”:
   “He is ‘at peace’ with the Father because he is aware that nothing can sever his anchorage in this root of his existence.”
   
Jesus is anchored in that relationship of true and perfect peace and wants us to share in it.  Just as no worldly events or powers could uproot Jesus from that relationship of peace, if we ourselves put down our own anchor in that place, the waves cannot overwhelm us.  We may not see Jesus in the way that Thomas and the other disciples did, but we can recognise the presence of Jesus through our worship and in our relationships.  In Holy Communion we participate in the sharing of the Body of Christ, who stands among us and speaks to our heart: “Peace be with you.”  Yes, happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.
   One of my favourite prayers is the second collect for evening prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, and I would like to share it with you now:
              O GOD, from whom all holy desires,
             all good counsels, and all just works do proceed;
             Give unto thy servants that peace
             which the world cannot give;

             that our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments,
             and also that by thee, we,
             being defended from the fear of our enemies,
             may pass our time in rest and quietness;
             through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

 Jesus came and stood among his disciples and he stands among us now, saying: “Peace be with you”.

                                                       Father Richard 

            There will be no mid-week service this week.
​            The next service is on Sunday 18th April at 9.30am.
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Easter Sunday and beyond

4/5/2021

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          “What we call the beginning is often the end
          and to make an end is to make a beginning.
          The end is where we start from.” (Little Gidding, T S Eliot)

   At the Easter Vigil, Christ is proclaimed as the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.  It is Christ who is the human face of the creator God, who heals our memories, forgives our sins and raises us from death to new life.
   Today we begin our story at the end.  There is perhaps no clearer image of an ending than a tomb.  Mary of Magdala arrives to pay her respects and to spend time with her personal grief.  The life story of Jesus is at an end and the shared experiences of the disciples now seemed to be in the past.  All they were left with was their loss, their sadness and their memories.
   And yet, on that morning of the first day of the week, nothing was as expected.  Mary is confronted by a stone rolled away and a tomb that was empty.  The body of Jesus was no longer there.  She runs to tell the others, not filled with a sense of joy, but shocked and distraught.  As far as she knew, his body had been taken away.
   In the same way, Peter and the other disciple are confronted by a puzzling scene.  We are told that only Simon Peter went into the tomb and there found the grave clothes.  The cloth that had been placed around the head of Jesus was not just dumped on the ground, but we are told that it was rolled up in a place by itself.  Of itself, there is nothing about this scene that might have convinced the disciples that Jesus was risen.  Even so, John’s gospel tells us:
  “Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in; he saw and he believed.  Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”
   Something about that scene stirred their memories and brought home to them what Jesus had taught them.  Somehow in that moment that same teaching seemed to fit with the stories they had heard related to them through Scripture: the story of our salvation.
   This was a turning point and a new beginning.  Throughout these days of Easter we hear stories of how various different people become aware of the presence of the risen Lord.  In every case it was unexpected and it marked a new beginning, both in their way of seeing things and in their way of living.
   So where do we begin with our own story?  It seems that in various ways we begin with an ending.  A lot of things have seemed to come to an end over this past twelve months.  All too many have died and many people are left mourning their loss.  Even without the experience of physical death, there have been other kinds of endings: jobs lost, opportunities that have had to be laid to rest and plans that have not come to fruition.  Some things may never come back and some changes may be lasting ones.
   Easter does not bring some kind of fairy-tale happy ending, but it does hold out the prospect of a new beginning.  The first disciples would carry with them their story of grief and loss, mingled with memories of their own failure and sinfulness.  But life was no longer the same.  The Lord had risen and was breathing new life into the sad stories of his disciples.  No longer were they prisoners of the past, wallowing in grief and in guilt.  Jesus was with them and was calling them to follow him into a future of hope and of lasting joy.
   This is not just a story of events long ago, because it is our story too.  Wherever there are endings, the risen life of Christ brings new beginnings.  All time belongs to him and nothing in this world can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  In the words of T S Eliot again:
         “We shall not cease from exploration
          And at the end of all our exploring
          Will be to arrive where we started
          And to know the place for the first time.”

  The disciples began again where they started, but this time they knew and understood, they saw and they believed.  This, my brothers and sisters, is a journey of discovery on which we are called to follow in the way of Jesus.  Happy Easter!


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