Festival Eucharist on the Feast of Pentecost
Show us. Philip asks Jesus in John 14:8-17, show us God and we will be satisfied. Jesus rolls his eyes and shakes his head. You’ve been seeing God all this time when you have been seeing the power of God at work in me.
Jesus asks us to trust in works of love and justice. This is where we see God at work in the world.
This is still where we see God at work in the world. Christ’s promise to us is that the same divine power that lived in him can live in us.
This is the gift of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit.
It comes when we are together, together with one another, together in our concern for those in need in our world, together in our faith that God has the power to change the world in and through us.
Pentecost is our patronal festival at CHS; we are named for and dedicated to the Spirit of God. Today above all days we open ourselves to that unity with God, one another, and the world that allows the spirit to move through us.
Eastertide Parish Eucharist Seventh Sunday of Easter
This Sunday we mark Ascension Day. Our readings give us two accounts. In both Jesus gives his followers a task. It is not the task they had expected or wanted. In Acts 1:1-11 they ask him “is now the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They are still hoping for a victory of their side over and against the other side. Instead Jesus sends them out of their homeland to serve people other than their own. In the gospel version, Luke 24:44-53, Jesus tells his followers, we began in Jerusalem, we began at home, but you are to go to all nations. This is not just a change in scope, it is a change in the nature of their mission. They must let go of previous ideas of who they are (and who God is) and embrace a much broader vision. The image this week expresses something of the surprise they feel.
Eastertide Parish Eucharist Sixth Sunday of Easter
On leaving his disciples Jesus tells them not to be troubled or afraid, John 14:23-29. Easy to say but not easy to do either for them nor for us today. Then as now, however, human beings find themselves able to survive and thrive in the most troubling and frightening of situations. Two things that support such resilience is a sense of purpose and the support of those around us. When we have a sense of purpose, we are no longer passive; we have a role to play. Jesus tells us our role: the peace that he is leaving with us. This is not the peace that the world gives, the peace of the Pax Romana that was imposed by force, but a peace built of justice, a peace in which everyone could be at home in the world. In our first reading, Acts 16:9-15, a foreign woman in a new home does just this for Paul and his companions when they come to a new city. Lydia, having experienced being away from home, opens her home to others. She is, in her own small way, building peace. A peace built by a thousand tiny actions which seek to open the world for others.
Eastertide Parish Eucharist Fifth Sunday of Easter
Today we are holding our Annual Parish Church Meeting. This is the meeting at which we elect those who will serve us and the community for the coming year. We will also be receiving the Annual Report. This is a long old document, but a number of us will be speaking (very briefly) about some of the work undertaken by the church in the past year. It’s a time to give thanks for all that we have done and been together, to show our gratitude for those who have served us, and to commit to supporting and upholding those who will serve us in the year ahead. The reading this week is blessedly short, John 13:31-35. This is part of Jesus’ farewell to his friends and disciples. He tells us that we cannot go with Him; our job is to stay here and carry on His work. We do this by loving one another. The love we have for one another and for the community we serve and the wider world in which we live is not a feeling of warmth or affection. For Christ love is not a noun, a state of being; it is verb, an active commitment we undertake. Getting stuck into the mess and challenge of working together is what builds up this love and gives us the energy and courage to act in love in all areas of our life.
Eastertide Parish Eucharist Fourth Sunday of Easter
Today is good Shepherd Sunday, the Sunday when we focus on what makes a good leader and how we too can be good leaders, nurturing those in need of our care.
The people of Israel always assumed that they were a special flock set apart from others. In our gospel reading, John 10:22-30, Jesus re-defines what it means to be the sheep who belong to God; it means responding to his voice, to listen and discern and then … to grow into being shepherds ourselves.
This week Good Shepherd Sunday falls during Christian Aid week: a good time to remind ourselves that we are not called to stay in the safety of our own flock, but to follow the voice of the one who calls us to embrace and include, to nurture and feed, to seek and to find, all God’s children, that all may be gathered into one flock.
In our fist reading, Acts 9:36-43, we hear the story of Tabitha, not an apostle, not a deacon, just part of the flock whose life was spent shepherding others: providing for those on the margins, drawing the most vulnerable into the family of God.
Eastertide Parish Eucharist Third Sunday of Easter
Both of this week’s readings are about the perpetual hope of a new beginning, a starting over, life springing forth anew. In Acts 9:1-20 we hear about Saul, a fierce persecutor of Christ, who turns around and becomes Paul, giving the rest of his life taking Christ to others. But Paul’s change is a painful one, he is thrown into blindness and dependency. New life is not without cost, letting go of our old life can feel like loss. We can only let go if we take a risk; in our gospel, John 21:1-19, we witness the disciples struggle to trust that the one who greets them and feeds them is Christ. Around the fire Christ asks Peter three times whether he trusts him, echoing the three times that he denied Christ around the fire before Christ’s death. Our weakness & our failure do not need to be the last word. However many times we fall, the call will come again.
Eastertide Parish Eucharist Second Sunday of Easter
“Fear has never been a good advisor” Angela Merkel. Despite the resurrection in our gospel today, John 20:19-31, are still paralysed by fear—literally locked in. Today fear still locks many of us in. Breaking out of the tombs we create for ourselves and one another is not always easy. Fortunately, Christ is able to pass through the locked doors of upper room and of hearts and minds.
Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday: the day of resurrection. We have a tendency to skip the hard bits and go straight to the happy hope filled parts, but our readings slow us down. Before we can grasp the hope we need to trust that it is true. In our gospel reading, Luke 24:1-12, the women who witnessed the resurrection are not believed, their truth is dismissed. Peter was one who scoffed at them yet he had the courage and the curiosity to go and see for himself and, by the time of Acts 10:34-43, he has found the truth for himself. Today there are many stories competing for our attention, there is so much information and so much disinformation. Like Peter we need to see for ourselves what holds true for us, to test what we can trust. The ultimate test is always this: is it life-giving? Does it increase love? If the answer is yes, we have found our truth.
Palm Sunday
Today marks the beginning of Passiontide: 7 days in which we follow Christ’s last days on earth and enter into the mystery of the passion. This is a time when we reflect upon the difference between our expectations (of ourselves, the world and God) and God’s expectations— always surprising, always unexpected, creating possibilities we never dared hope for.
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Today is the last Sunday of Lent. Next week is the start of Holy Week and the journey to the cross. In our gospel today, John 12:1-11, we see a woman anointing Christ’s feet with ridiculously, excessively, expensive perfume: responding out of love; pouring everything out at the feet of the one who pours everything out for us.
This story tells us that our faith, our lives, are not transactional, not about costs, or what could have been bought with the money. It is relational. It is about devotion and love; the recognition that all that we have is a gift, and the only appropriate way to respond is to give ourselves. The beautiful Old Testament reading, Isaiah 43:16-21, reminds us that God is a God of abundance not scarcity. Life may sometimes seem like a desert, but God makes rivers to flow even in the desert.
Fourth Sunday of Lent (Mothering Sunday)
Today is Mothering Sunday, the day in which we give thanks for our Mother the church, celebrate those who have mothered us, and respond to Christ’s call to offer a mother’s love to others.
Our readings explore how mothering is always done in community and is a task for all of us. In 1 Samuel 1:20-28, Hannah is desperate to be a mother and yet it is Eli, the old, blind, priest (who has done a shockingly bad job at raising his own children) who is given the job of raising Samuel.
In the gospel, John 19:25-27, at his death, Jesus hands his disciple to his mother and his mother to his disciple to become a family for one another. The Christian community is a family defined not by blood or birth but by a love that calls us to mother beyond the boundaries.
Mothering Sunday
This mothering Sunday as we honour our own mothers and carers with stories, music, prayers and daffodils we also remember those doing the hard work of mothering in conflict.
Junior choir will be singing a song they have written for their own mums and a cake sale after the service will raise money for Ukranian refugees.
Third Sunday of Lent
If only life were fair. If only good things happened to good people and bad things to bad people. In Luke 13:1-9 Jesus firmly rejects the concept of fairness. People do not get what they deserve. Jesus follows with the story of the barren fig tree which has borne no fruit for 3 years. The owner wishes to cut it down but the gardener pleads to be able to nurture it for a further year. In God’s economy generosity always outweighs fairness. Yet we often fail to enjoy this generosity because we are so wedded to a transactional approach to life. As Isaiah 55:1-9 exclaims, we would rather strive and work for the good things in life than receive them as a gift, because we want to believe that all that we have is down to our merit. It isn’t. If we could appreciate how much of what we enjoy is a gift perhaps we would be minded to share more of it with others.
Second Sunday of Lent
Lent calls us into the wilderness to discover who we are and what we were made for.
This week our readings move from the margins to the centre: we begin, in Genesis 15:1-18, with Abraham’s nomadic journeying far from home to a place where God tells him he and his offspring will be aliens and strangers. By the time we reach our gospel reading, Luke 13:31-35, Jesus is speaking to the offspring of Abraham in the centre of their world, in the temple, in the city of Jerusalem. He reminds them that they have forgotten who they are and what they were made for: not to bargain for power with those who are in the centre of things, but to travel out to the margins and take God’s blessing to all people.
First Sunday of Lent
Lent poses a question for us: who do we think we are? What lies at the core of our identity? In both our readings for the First Sunday of Lent we are taken into the wilderness. In Deuteronomy 26:1-11, the people of God, now settled in the Promised Land, are asked to remember their time in the wilderness and to use that memory to determine who they are and how they should live. They are to give, to offer hospitality, to welcome the stranger and the foreigner because they too had experienced being foreigners and strangers. The time in the wilderness has taught them that they are not to be defined by what they have or where they live but to whom they belong; God. Jesus’ time in the wilderness, Luke 4:1-13, mirrors this experience. It is here that Christ must claim his identity, what kind of leader, what kind of servant will he be? Again and again he returns to scripture and finds the answer: I am who I am because God is who God is. There are many people, many ideologies, many institutions that want to tell you who you are and how you should behave. Lent is a time to stop listening to them and listen again to the voice that tells you “you are my beloved child, on whom my favour rests.”
