Magazine letter October 2022
I write this on Friday 16th September, I give the date because our thoughts this week, a week of mourning for our late Queen Elizabeth II, can’t help but be dominated by Her Majesty’s death and the response to it.
Coffee Morning
Coffee Morning – St Matthew’s, Otterbourne, 10am Monday 10th October
Morning Service for Trinity 17 2022
It’s all about response. How do you respond? So much of our life is deciding our reaction to something. We aren’t in a position to dictate, we can only respond to someone else’s move.
Harvest
2nd October Songs of Praise for Harvest
6pm St Matthew’s, Otterbourne
Morning Service for Harvest 2022
Some of the Jews of Jesus’ day meditated upon the account in the Torah of the children of Israel’s escape from Egypt and their wanderings in the desert until they reached the promised land. They saw in it the roots of possible deliverance from the problems of their own time. Their saviour, God’s anointed one, would be a new Moses who would lead them to a new promised age, where their oppressors would perish and the world would acknowledge their God as the Lord of all the earth.
Morning Service for Trinity 15 2022
Today Jeremiah demonstrates the well known phrase, ‘putting your money where your mouth is’. We are very familiar with Jeremiah’s prophecies of doom and disaster, we’ve been hearing them for weeks now, but we are apt to overlook his more hopeful and encouraging pronouncements.
Today we heard a dramatic example of Jeremiah’s faith. Even with the enemy laying siege to the city, and Jeremiah himself imprisoned, even then he shows his faith in the future of his nation by buying his cousin’s field – keeping it in the family, as was his moral duty.
Morning Service for Trinity 14 2022
We are all possessors, not owners. It has troubled faithful Christians since the time of Christ how to account for that which through inheritance, good fortune, or the sweat of their brow they have managed to gather together. This parable says use it generously, for the real treasure to be had is to come. It also says that in the forgiving of debt, life disabling, fear promoting debt, there is reward – be generous and generosity will be shown to you – not pie in the sky, but now among our neighbours and fellow men and women.
The Funeral of H M Queen Elizabeth
We shall be screening this service in Compton Church from 10.30am Monday 19th September.
Special Evening Service
There will be an evening choral service beginning at 6pm Sunday 18th September at St Matthew’s, Otterbourne to give thanks for the life of Queen Elizabeth II and pray for His Majesty King Charles III.
Everyone is most welcome.
HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II
We are all deeply saddened by news of the death of Her Majesty the Queen. For seventy years she has dedicated her life to the service of her country, the Commonwealth and the church.
At the churches of our benefice we recognise the sadness and loss that many in our community will be feeling at this sad time.
Should you feel the need for prayer, or just quiet reflection, the churches will be open every day as usual. Please feel free to use this place of peace and tranquillity.
Our Sunday services will continue to be held at the usual times and all are welcome to attend, there will, of course, be prayers for the late Queen and our new King. We will have a special service on Sunday at 6 pm – see notice opposite.
Anyone wishing to sign a book of condolence may do so at Winchester Cathedral.
God Save The King
Morning Service for Trinity 13 2022
So we heard Jeremiah again this morning, being Jeremiah – utterly depressing and doom laden. He sees all creation unravelling before him because of the disobedience of Israel. YHWH has lost patience, creation is turned back and chaos is allowed to return. The world becomes unglued and it is all caused by Israel’s disobedience – it has all been for nothing. But amidst the doom and the destruction, even yet, Jeremiah hears ‘yet I will not make a full end’ – here is Jeremiah’s slight ground for hope, the door of doom is held, ajar, but only just.
Magazine letter for September 2022
This Sunday (as I write) I have the enormous privilege of baptising my eighth grandchild, Norah. We inevitably ask ourselves what world she has she been born into, and what faith will she be taught to help her to cope with such a world.
It’s very physical this Christianity thing. Sometimes I like to pretend it’s all rather esoteric, and spiritual. But then I realise that Christianity is all about incarnation, about God alongside us… in this world and with this world – a part of this world. Christianity is not about ethics, it’s not about being good boys and girls, keeping to the rules, avoid doing bad things and you’ll be a good person, and God will think you’re just great. Jesus did not die on a cross to tell us that.
Morning Service for Trinity 12 2022
It has been said many times over the last 10 years or so that we’re in a post-Christian era, that the Christian age is over. Christianity no longer defines people’s moral values just as it no longer defines how most people spend their Sunday mornings. A majority of the population do not now come to Church in order to get married or when their children are born. We are left to take some of the funerals – perhaps as some great symbolism of ushering out an age that has passed.
And yet when we read that passage from St Luke’s Gospel, and others which have the same message, I wonder whether we were ever a Christian nation. It seems to me that the sort of demands that Christ is making have never been contemplated seriously by more than a few individuals in any generation, let alone the whole of a nation’s population.
Morning Service for Trinity 11 2022
Charlemagne was the greatest Christian ruler of the early Middle Ages. After his death a mighty funeral procession left his castle for the cathedral at Aix. When the royal casket arrived, so the story goes, with all pomp and circumstance, it was met by the local bishop, who barred the cathedral door.
Morning Service for Trinity 10 2022
I guess it’s all about what we think God wants from us – or perhaps what we want to give God. That was the problem that Jesus had with this leader of the synagogue. He was well versed in the way of the commandments and the practice of their interpretation, after all, hadn’t he grown up with them ringing in his ears. The commandments were, for him, the voice of God, the very will of God. Had he not been taught that when they were flouted disaster always followed – for the individual, the village, the nation? To heal was defined as work, it was not permitted on the Sabbath – it was not what God wanted, it would be against his commandments. It was in black and white what you could do on the Sabbath, if not in the Torah then in the Mishnah, the practical application of the Torah.
Morning Service for Trinity 9 2022
I found today’s readings disturbing. That is, of course, no bad thing, disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed is what the Bible is all about. It is certainly what Jesus seemed to spend a fair bit of time doing – we have this picture of him bringing peace on earth and indeed he did offer peace to many, on many occasions, but that wasn’t the whole story, certainly not according to our reading from St Luke this morning.
Magazine letter for August 2022
We have been witness to a deal of dreaming recently, people dreaming of becoming Prime Minister, for instance. But we all dream, and there is nothing wrong with dreaming. Dreams carry ideas and hopes. Visions to guide our lives; aspirations, longings, and imaginings of a different future, of the way things might be.
Morning Service for Trinity 8 2022
‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen.’
So wrote the author of the letter to the Hebrews – not St Paul as some say. At least that is the translation we have in the lectionary, which is quite well known and rolls off the tongue quite well. However, it isn’t what he wrote.
Magazine letter for July 2022
There seems to be an increasing appetite to concentrate power in the hands of a few individuals. The current desire from government to increase the numbers of city mayors, for instance; and the demise of cabinet government to one far more centred in the office of one person with a large politically appointed staff.
Morning Service for Trinity 5 2022
Poor old Martha – there she is working away, in her own home, trying to be the perfect hostess, and no one will lift a finger to help, not even her own sister. She makes a very reasonable appeal, ‘Lord don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’