Parish of Hoyland Saint Andrew
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Week Commencing 27th June 2021

6/29/2021

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Forthcoming Services
Thursday (1st July) Said Mass but at the earlier time of 9.30am.
Sunday (4th July) Parish Mass commencing at 9.30am.

The church is not yet open on Tuesday mornings for prayer or coffee mornings. We are awaiting final advice (along with everyone else) from the Government.


Sundays' Offering

​St Mark’s gospel gives us a picture of two desperate people: one of them a synagogue official with a seriously ill daughter, and the other a woman who was afflicted and who had found no relief.  Parents with very poorly children will almost always reach out for any possibility of a cure.  A few months ago, I heard in the news the story of Tafida Raqeeb, a desperately ill child.  Doctors in this country had said that the child would not respond to further treatment and should be allowed to die peacefully.  Against this, her parents went through a legal route to access treatment in Italy.  They won their case.  For very understandable reasons, her parents refused to give up hope.  Fortunately, their hope did not appear to be in vain because the child is now out of danger and slowly recovering.  It must have seemed like a miracle.
    St Mark’s gospel has quite a number of miracles as we see how the kingdom of God breaks through into our everyday world because of Jesus.  These two people sought out Jesus because they had heard his reputation and because, quite clearly, they were at their wits’ end.  Jairus would perhaps have been unlikely to have approached Jesus under other circumstances, because Jesus was often seen by synagogue officials as a troublesome man.  But desperate people do desperate things, so he pleaded on his knees for Jesus to come and to live up to his reputation by healing his daughter.
    As he is on his way, Jesus is waylaid by another person – a woman who was suffering from a persistent haemorrhage and who had found that the doctors, if anything, had made her condition even worse.  In the crowd she touches Jesus.  We are told that even in the melee of people, Jesus knew that someone had come into contact with him in order to be healed.  So he seeks the woman out and tells her that her faith has made her whole.  In fact, it is really the healing grace of God that has restored her to wholeness, but her faith had proved to be the channel of that grace.  The woman would have been judged ritually unclean because of her bleeding, but Jesus knew that this contact could not make him unclean.  What it would do was restore the woman’s health and allow her once again to be part of her community.
    By now, the daughter of Jairus seemed to be beyond help.  The professional mourners had already arrived.  When Jesus said the child was sleeping, they broke off from their weeping and wailing and laughed at him with scorn.  So, he sent them packing and took only Peter, James and John and the child’s parents in with him.  It is then that he reached out and said some of the very few words of his native language that are recorded in the gospels: “Talitha koum” (little girl, get up).  When the child does get up it seems like a foreshadowing of the resurrection of Jesus, when God would bring new life out of death.  That place of sorrow and death became the place where the power of God was at work.
   If faith is the channel through which God’s healing enters into our lives, then faith is something worth cultivating.  Our contact with the Lord through the sacraments of the Church is the source of healing and of new beginnings.  Into the present moment, the very life of God breaks through into our lives.  Like Jairus and like the woman in the gospel we can reach out and kneel in prayer before the one who can bring healing to the troubled spirit.  No situation is hopeless, even though it may sometimes feel that way.  Perhaps one thing worth remembering is that faith is not a last resort.  It is a relationship in which we come to a deeper knowledge of God’s love for us and in which we can begin to see the way ahead.
    We are not told what happened to the people in the gospel who approached Jesus.  The fact that their stories have been remembered and recorded is likely to be a sign that they came to follow Jesus.  They have become part of our story of faith and we in our turn become part of that story.  Through our lives others too can find the way to the healing and the life which we discover in Christ Jesus.  Thanks be to God.

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Week Commencing 13th June 2021

6/13/2021

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Forthcoming Events
There will be no service on Thursday (17th June) but there will be Holy Communion on Sunday (20th June) commencing at 9.30am.
The church is not yet open on Tuesday mornings for prayer or coffee mornings. We are awaiting final advice (along with everyone else) from the Government.
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Sundays' Offering
  “Small is beautiful”.  I don’t know what first said that, but I for one wholeheartedly agree!  Jesus certainly seems to believe that small things have great potential.  In St Mark’s gospel he used that image of a mustard seed.  He is not speaking about the cress that we normally associate with mustard seeds.  Instead, he means a large and bushy plant that begins life as a small seed.
    Jesus uses this as an image for speaking about the kingdom of God – the way in which God’s reign of justice and peace, compassion and joy enters into our world.  This started in a small way.  Jesus didn’t infiltrate the corridors of power, but allied himself instead to a small number of ordinary people.  It was through the lives of these imperfect disciples that the power and the wisdom of God could be seen at work in our world.    That power to change people’s lives and to challenge the injustice of the world began in a small way.
    St Mark’s gospel highlights the way in which Jesus did not allow anyone to hijack his mission on earth.  For this reason, he swore his disciples to secrecy.  Jesus had not come to enjoy being famous or to wield earthly power.  Just as a seed is buried in the earth and begins to grow in the darkness, so the kingdom of God developed in unseen ways.  Bit by bit it took root and grew, began to put out branches and to bear fruit.  Jesus did not want people to mistake him for a worldly leader.  Instead he wanted them to see how it is God who brings about the growth and the change that makes us into better people and our world a better place to live.
    This past week we have been hosting the G7 Summit of world leaders.  At its best this can bring about much-needed change in our world, promoting a more just and peaceful world order and a better future for our planet.  I pray that these are the things that will emerge from this past week.  The G7 are of course not the smaller, poorer countries of our world, but the rich and the powerful.  We might ask: “Who are we to make a difference?  Surely change is up to those who hold the levers of power.  Looking at today’s gospel passage and at a number of others besides, I think that Jesus would disagree.
    Not long ago I read a little book called “No one is too small to make a difference.”  It was by the young climate activist, Greta Thunberg.  Whether or not you like her style, there is no doubt that she has made her voice heard and through sheer determination her message has got through to some of the people with the power to make a difference. Of course, this can only happen when a large number of other people are inspired and catch the vision.  As far as Jesus was concerned, his life-changing message entered into the hearts, first of just a few people, but then of a growing and far-reaching number of new disciples.  The change has been a lasting one.  Through this the church continues to take root in new places and the message of the gospel still changes people’s lives.
    The kingdom of God enters into our own lives through the quieter acts of prayer; through allowing God’s word to find a place in our hearts; through receiving the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and through living as Jesus showed us.  We might wonder what difference our quite faith and our small acts of kindness can make.  A former Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, put it much better than I could:
“… consider the glory of Christianity is its claim that small things really matter; that the small company, the very few, the one man, one woman, one child are of infinite worth to God… for the infinite worth of the one is the key to the Christian understanding of the many.”
    If Jesus had intended it any other way, then he would not have begun his ministry with a tiny bunch of fishermen.  It is through the lives of ordinary people that the most vital change takes place, often in quiet and unseen ways.  Above all, it is not human power that changes our world, but the power of God working through human lives.  This is the power that enables our little offering to grow and to flourish like the mustard seed in the parable.
    So let’s never say to ourselves that it is not worth trying.  Small acts of understanding, of compassion and of devotion can change people’s lives, even if we never see the results of it ourselves.  The Church of England today seems very keen on results, on numbers, on things that can be measured and compared.  These worldly ways of thinking can seem to be at odds with the way that Jesus worked: changing lives and changing the world through humble and modest acts of loving service.  Small really is beautiful.  Let’s embrace it and invite God to work through our lives, so that the kingdom of God may grow in this place.

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    Saint Andrew

    I am a rather old Saint.

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