Author: Worth Parish

Pewsheet for week beginning 10th April 2016

Pewsheets

Click here for the pewsheet for the week beginning Sunday 10th April 2016, Palm Sunday.

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The Rector Writes…

Clergy

Do you believe in the transforming power Jesus can have for people’s lives?  Paul’s life changed in the moment we read about in our Acts reading.  So has Peter’s – a fortnight ago he was denying Jesus three times before the cock crowed, today he has answered “yes” three times to the question we are each asked by Jesus – “Do you love me?”  John’s Gospel records Jesus’ final words to Peter: “Follow me” – Matthew tells us Jesus’ first words to Peter: “Follow me”.

As the new edition of the Parish Magazine (thank you Elizabeth!) makes clear the next month or so of our common life will have a significant focus on discerning what it will mean for us to follow Jesus as individuals and as a parish.  This week the first sessions of the “Everybody Welcome” course will be held.   If you want to come along, please do so – details here.

Whether or not you are able to take part in the sessions, it would be wonderful (and potentially transforming!) if the whole church community could be praying daily:

Heavenly Father, you have welcomed us into your kingdom and your heart’s desire is to draw every human being to yourself.  Grant us clear eyes to see people as you see them, sensitive feet to stand in their shoes, and warm smiles to welcome them in your name.  Give us such generous hearts that our church becomes a foretaste of heaven where every soul you send us finds a loving home in the community of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.  Amen.

The Curate Writes…

Easter

Doubting Thomas who appears in our readings today gives all of us hope.  In his doubts the writer of the Gospel is telling us that doubts are OK.  For sometimes doubt can do good in us.  It can motivate us to study and learn.  It can purify false beliefs that have crept into our faith.  It can humble our arrogance.  It can give us patience and compassion with other doubters.  It can remind us of how much truth matters.

Martin Luther, who was a champion of the importance of faith but wrestled with doubt himself, insisted that pride—not doubt—is the opposite of faith.  Faith without a shade of any doubt quickly becomes fundamentalism. Fundamentalism in Christianity as well as Islam has led to the Crusades, sectarian violence or the atrocities of ISIS.  So to have questions is natural and it is the role of the Church to create safe spaces such as home groups and services where these doubts can be expressed and explored without judgement or fear.  There is a phrase in the Alpha Course Leaders booklet that states: there is no question that is silly, stupid or that has probably never been asked before. Questions are good for they test our faith and make us humble.  Let us at times be doubting Thomas and at others as sure in faith as St Paul.

Blessings Steve

 

Pewsheet for Week Beginning 3rd April 2016

Easter, Pewsheets

Click here for the pewsheet for the week beginning Sunday 3rd April 2016.

Tip: If this, or any other, PDF document opens at too large a size, here’s what you do:

  1. Open Adobe Reader, for example, by opening a *.pdf document you have on your computer.
  2. From the Edit menu, click Preferences.
  3. With Page Display selected in the left hand list of Categories, on the right hand side of the window, choose a Page Layout and Zoom level that suits you, for example Single Page and Fit Page.
  4. Now any time you open a PDF, it will open at this zoom level.

From the Curate…

Easter

Lent is over and Christ is Risen! Happy Easter! Rip open the chocolate eggs and carve the leg of lamb. Is that all that Easter is now? Just a 2000 year old quaint story – a myth that has little meaning. Obviously, given my profession, I don’t think that is all it is. The eggs, family meals and lamb are all an added bonus.

However, what we celebrate today is the single most important date in history. In short it is a game changer. It is what we celebrate in the baptisms of Renex, Noah, Stanley and Lucy and with Alex, Christian, Lily and Andy taking their first bread and wine at the Eucharist. For in Baptism and the Eucharist we enter into a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ who was the game changer.

Humanity is built with an awareness that it is cut off somehow from God through its ability to continually mess up and every other religious code starts from a position that humanity will try to bridge the gap to God in its own efforts. Christianity rather looks to God to help bridge the troublesome chasm between humanity and God. God bridged the gap by sending his only begotten Son because he loved the world so much – who opened his arms on the cross and breached the gap between us and God – then, now and forever. That is what we celebrate. Happy Easter

Steve

One Parish or Two?

Pewsheets

“One parish or two” is one of the questions raised about Worth Parish in the recent Crawley Review.  We currently have two churches in the parish – St Barnabas’, Pound Hill, and St Nicholas’, Worth.

We’d like your views on whether we should split the parish or remain as one.  This page details all the ways you can contact us and please give us your views by 22 April.

The April/May edition of the Parish Magazine will have a short piece on arguments for and against splitting into two.  There will be a report back to the annual meeting on 27 April and the responses will inform discussion at the Away Day on 7 May, to which all are invited.

Correction to Service Times/Venues

Pewsheets

Please note that the Dawn Eucharist at Worth Park Lake on Easter Sunday (27th March) Morning will begin at 6am not 5.30am as was previously advertised in the magazine, and will be followed at am by a breakfast at St Barnabas’.

Also that the 3 hour meditations will be held on Good Friday from 12-3pm at St Nicholas’, not St Barnabas’ as was erroneously stated in the magazine.

The Rector Writes…

Pewsheets

Palm Sunday has a bitter-sweet atmosphere. The crowds welcome Jesus into Jerusalem with the kind of fanfare we can expect for the English rugby team after their Gland Slam victory last night.

The Gospel from the Liturgy of the Palms makes it clear that Jesus no longer tells his disciples to remain silent – the time for decision has come: Jerusalem must crown or crucify her king.  And we know, as we continue through Passiontide into the events of Holy Week recounted in the Passion gospel, that that crucifixion awaits.

In our common life we have a bitter-sweet time after the Nic’s service when the regulars (all welcome to join in!) have a (possibly indoor) picnic to say goodbye to the Moulder family as they make final preparations for a move to Africa.  We wish them the very best and look forward to their return.  May we, with them and, indeed, St Paul strive to confess in word and deed, that “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”. Luke’s account of the Passion offers us a catalogue of those who avoid or deny this truth and condemn Jesus to a horrid death.  Time and again Jesus is let down, but even in the bitterness of his death we are able to keep an eye on the good news of what that death means for us. Nothing less than our salvation.

Have a blesséd walk with Jesus as you share again in Holy Week .

Anthony