Morning Service for Epiphany 4 2024
So here we have a gospel passage we can all relate to. It’s all about Jesus going to church, or at least the Jewish equivalent.
Morning Service for Epiphany 3 2024
We use symbols to show things that we may not say; do the Christmas presents we have received and given recently say something – as a child I used to receive knitted woollen light grey socks each Christmas from my aunt who was well off – but did the socks say I like you, my only nephew, so much that I will spend hours knitting for you? For some people, who could not see beyond the physical, they would only be socks.
Morning Service for Epiphany 2 2024
Today is about introductions, it’s also about change and revolution. Samuel is introduced to God, or I suppose I should use the name that is written in the Hebrew, YHWH (generally given as Yahweh), because that was what the writer used – not some generic term ‘god’, but Yahweh, the sacred, special, and very personal name given to Moses when he asked the voice at the burning bush who he should say had spoken to him. In fact the incidents aren’t all that different so far as Samuel didn’t recognise the voice that called him any more than Moses did.
Morning Service for Epiphany 2024
That remarkable piece from Isaiah is worth pausing to notice. It is easily overlooked on a day so full of obvious sermons about Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, Wise Men, Stars and the like. They are stirring words of hope to a people reluctant to hope – a people whose hope has been squeezed from them by poverty, by homelessness – by being strangers on a foreign land.
Morning Service for Christmas 1 2023
There will be some men and women here who like me are labelled colour blind. (It really is a misnomer -more like atypical colour vision) Many, many years ago, I said to a colleague, who asked where someone was, he is over there by the green curtains which covered the whole length and height of the large hall – only they were not green but red – making for some confusion.
Jigsaw Festival
St. Matthew’s Church, Otterbourne will be holding a Jigsaw Festival on Saturday 10th February between 1 pm and 4 pm. People have been busy completing puzzles to make sure all the pieces are present. These puzzles will be on display and available for you to purchase to make again at home. Why not come to […]
Morning Service for Christmas 2023
Religion is the communication of an experience; call it a feeling, call it an expression of something that can’t be defined or explained. Because we are human beings we try hard to shape the experience, the feeling, with our minds. We can say what it isn’t, we can guess at what it might be, but like many really important things, in the end, you just have to stay with the feeling. Today is about that feeling.
January Magazine Letter
This poem by Al Zolynas seems appropriate when there is so much to cause us concern this new year, from the ever present threat of global warming to the dreadful wars in both Israel and Ukraine, not to mention the endless conflict in Iraq and Yemen.
Benefice Service , Sunday 31st December
Please note that the service on Sunday will now be held at All Saints’, Compton at 11 am. The Service will take the form of a Shorter Communion. Please inform anyone who may be intending to join the Service this week of this unforeseen change.
Family Carol Service
The Family Carol service will take place on Sunday 17th December at 9.30 am in St. Matthew’s Church, Otterbourne. Everyone is welcome to join us.
Wishing you a very Happy Christmas from our three congregations.
Christingle
Services will be held in Compton and Otterbourne on Sunday 10th December. Take a look at the ‘Services’ page on the website for times. Please also note that the Christingle service will replace the 11 am Family Service at All Saints’, Compton.
Chistmas Tree Festival
The annual Christmas Tree Festival will be held in All Saints’ church on Saturday 9th December. Come along from 10 am for some tinsel, glitter and festive cheer.
Magazine Letter for December 2023
December 3rd is Advent Sunday. The season of Advent is all about waiting. But there is more than one sort of waiting – there is the kind of waiting when you know something’s going to happen and you know when it’s going to happen. Like Christmas, we all know when it is so we know how long we have to wait; and there are things that you wait for that you don’t know quite when they going to happen just that they will. Like catching the ball, you know that someone’s going to throw it to you, but you don’t know quite when so you have to stay ready, just in case – fielding in cricket is exactly like that. And we all know that life is like a game of cricket.
Magazine letter November 2023
I write this on 19th October, given the need for submission deadlines it has to be rather ahead of publication date. Usually such a lead time would be no difficulty, none of our three parish magazines is designed to convey national, let alone international news – and certainly not the Rector’s letter. Yet as the world stands at the moment I can’t help thinking that the context of all our thoughts is desperately subject to change in disturbing ways.
October 2023 Magazine letter
There is a parable that could have been written specially for a post-Covid church. It goes…
‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”‘
Magazine letter for September 2023
There are many opinions on prayer, but long gone is the idea that it matters what the proper physical attitude is. In fact, it is probably true that prayer is little thought of at all, even by those who do it! We who do pray tend not to think too much about the why or the how, we pray because we pray, for us to stop praying would be like removing a leg from a three-legged stool. Do we get answers to our prayers? It would be impossible to say empirically, but then it is not at all about getting answers.
Magazine letter for August 2023
This is the month of the great British get-a-way. The children have broken up and the family holidays begin. Whether it is to accompany a long flight, or for something to do by the poolside – many of us will take a novel to accompany our travels. I love stories, I can’t get enough of them – short stories, long stories, stories with a moral, stories without a moral, stories on the radio, stories on television, stories in a book. I don’t think I’m alone, human beings just respond to stories, made-up sequences of events, made-up characters, pure invention or supposed reality, it doesn’t really much matter, we just like stories.
Magazine letter July 2023
Despite being in midsummer there are many reasons to be feeling low. You only have to listen to the news to become depressed about the state of the world and the nature of mankind. Psalm 77, for example, makes that very clear, but also suggests a remedy. Read it for yourself, it’s not long – just type Psalm 77 into Google if you haven’t a Bible to hand.
Magazine letter June 2023
As I write, parts of northern Italy have been struggling under almost unprecedented levels of floodwater. We can recall the appalling floods in Pakistan last year, and in other places across the world in recent years.