Holy Week and Easter services...

Services for Holy Week and Easter:

7pm, Thurs 29 March, Maundy Thursday: 

A short service, around the communion table, as we remember and reflect on the Last Supper. We will share the bread and wine of communion together

7pm, Fri 30 March, Good Friday*: 

'Tenebrae' service, in the style of Taize. Through readings and Taize music, we remember the events of that first Good Friday. 

10.30am, 1 April, Easter Sunday:

We'll be celebrating the Resurrection and resurrecting our 'buried' Alleluias at our all-age-friendly Easter service 

*All services will be held in the Parish Church in Abington this year....

[due to Lamington Chapel refurbishing works] 

Psalm 23 series: windows 'Living on the Land'

Some photos ... of photos!


Our series on Psalm 23 was accompanied by decorated windows, featuring photographs by Carol Taylor and poems by Dee Yates, from their 'Living on the Land' exhibition.
Huge thanks to both of them for permission to make use of their work.

Palm Sunday to Easter services...

Services from Palm Sunday, through Holy Week, to Easter:

Sun 25 March: Palm Sunday

10.30am: 'Palms to the Passion' - a service of readings and reflections walking from the palms, to the Passion.

At the Parish Church in Abingon

6.30pm: 'A journey with Jesus'. Informal evening service in which we'll share a simple communion

7pm, Thurs 29 March, Maundy Thursday: 

a short service, around the communion table, as we remember and reflect on the Last Supper. We will share the bread and wine of communion together

7pm, Fri 30 March, Good Friday: 

'Tenebrae' service, in the style of Taize. Through readings and Taize music, we remember the events of that first Good Friday. 

10.30am, 1 April, Easter Sunday:

We'll be celebrating the Resurrection and resurrecting our 'buried' Alleluias at our all-age-friendly Easter service 

Sermon, Sun 18 Mar: wk6 - 'surely goodness and love...forever'

The last in our shortened series [due to snow!] on Psalm 23.

READINGS: Ps 23; Matt 7:7-12; Rom 8:18-39

SERMON
Let’s pray: may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

‘Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’

He’s known as the ‘trickster’.
He’s a maker of mischief,
a bringer of troubles.
He’s cunning and clever and always comes up with new ways
in which to embarrass and annoy folk.
He’s always looking to amuse himself at the expense of others.
He can’t be trusted:
he’s shifty –
quite literally –
he can change his shape.
He’s a giant, he’s a joker,
...he’s a god.
Specifically, he’s Loki,
one of the gods from Norse mythology and, his character is such that,
even his fellow gods get a bit fed up.
Eventually, so the story goes,
Loki is banished to a cave and is faced with a fairly nasty punishment.
And, if you’ve seen any of the ‘Thor’ Marvel movie series,
you’ll know that Loki is not a good god.
Run into him, and you do so at your peril.

In the world of our psalmist, there are varieties of nations and
peoples surrounding the nation of Israel.
There’s also a variety of gods –
so many different gods to choose from.
What makes the god of Israel the one to pick?
And so the psalmist draws up a list of
character traits to encourage the Israelites to stick with their particular god.
This is a god who is like a shepherd:
he doesn’t just sit detached looking down on us and leaving us to our own devices –
he looks after us;
he makes sure we lack for nothing;
he ensures we are fed and nourished;
he leads us, guides us –
rather than just let us fend for ourselves;
he takes us to places of refreshing and rest;
he walks with us in the dark places –
and doesn’t abandon us...
with him, we come through the dark places and out to the other side;
he cares for us, even when we are surrounded by enemies;
he shows us that we matter, are special,
by the pouring of oil upon our heads – he treats us like royalty;
he blesses us with his goodness and loving-kindness all our lives –
‘loving-kindness’ a word which we often translate as ‘mercy’.

But there’s more, says the Psalmist, it doesn’t end there –
God’s love and care for us stretches beyond our finite space and time.
It stretches beyond the grave, for, when our days on earth are done,
God invites us to live with him forever...
In life and beyond our earthly life,
God is with us,
and God is loving us –
God’s love never ends.

This is our God, says the psalmist.
Our God does all of this, for us.
And he does all of this because at the very core of his being is love – loving-kindness:
everything stems from God’s great love.
The whole of creation was created in, and with, love:
and God saw that it was ...good.
Good, because it was created in love by the One who is the source of all goodness.
And, here’s a thing:
the great God who made everything –
the Ruler of the heavens and the earth –
is not too grand to stoop to loving us mere mortals.
This is the God who’s worth sticking with;
this is the God who is worth choosing.

This theme is taken up in the New Testament.
In a world surrounded by a variety of gods to choose from,
we find in our Gospel reading that this particular God hears:
ask – and you will receive;
seek – and you will find;
knock – and God will open the door to you:
not with an arm twisted behind his back, but cheerfully, willingly;
delighted that you are asking, and seeking, and knocking –
delighted that you are coming to him,
and no good thing will he withhold.
In Romans, Paul also picks up on this sense of God’s love and goodness:
‘And we know that in all things – all things – that God works for the good of those who love him.’
Paul also understands that God’s goodness, God’s loving-kindness,
is a past, present, and future thing:
God loved us before we were even created;
God loves us here and now;
God will love us for eternity.
Time can’t separate us from God’s love –
God has loved,
God does love,
God will continue to love.
God’s ongoing, consistent love, born out of his sheer goodness,
is...and always will be.
If time can’t separate us from God’s love, what can?
Death can’t.
Life can’t.
All the spiritual powers on heaven and earth can’t.
Nothing we have done, nothing we will do can separate us from God’s love.
In echoes of Psalm 139, we can’t go anywhere without being in God’s loving presence –
whether we’re on the highest of heights,
or in the deepest of depths,
no matter the distance –
there is no distance in God’s love:
we are not held at arm’s-length...
we are held close,
close to the very heartbeat of God.
And there’s nothing in all of creation that can ever separate us:
God, our Shepherd,
looks out for us,
and looks at us with extravagant love.

God has more than enough love to go around –
God’s love is not like pie that needs to be portioned into set bits and kept:
God has enough love to go around with plenty to spare besides.
That is our God.
In amidst the many gods that vie for our attention here in the 21st century,
the god of goodness and loving-kindness is the God who we choose –
or, more to the point, is the God who chooses us.

My Gran, was one of those people everyone should have in their life:
probably the funniest person I’ve ever met,
filled with goodness,
filled with love –
and, standing in her stockinged feet at all of her 4ft 11inches,
she was a fierce fighter on behalf of underdogs everywhere.
When she wasn’t telling stories, or off helping others,
she’d have quieter moments where she’d think about her life: not an easy one.
Occasionally she’d tell me about different people,
or different situations in her life,
and end with saying:
‘Y’know, God plays funny tricks.’
It made me think of Loki – the trickster god, the maker of mischief.
But, our God is not the Loki-variety kind of god:
no shifting sands,
no amusing himself at our expense.
While God does have a sense of humour –
after all, where do you think we get it from? –
God doesn’t amuse himself willy-nilly at our expense.
Our God is not capricious,
is not a will-o-the-wisp,
who messes with our lives based upon a whim:
our God can be trusted.
Our God is entirely consistent.
And we come right back to love and goodness:
it is because God is entirely motivated by love that God is not a god who plays funny tricks.
Probably one of the rare times I disagreed with my gran on something.

Held in God’s love, and, trusting in that love,
we find incredible freedom to let go of all that would stop us from being
the people that God created us to be:
and, as God loves,
so God calls us to love.
As God loves unstintingly, generously,
so we are called to love in that same manner –
to spread God’s love,
not hoard it and hide it away.
Nothing is stronger than God’s love.
Nothing can separate us from God’s love.
We see that, in a journey made by God into the territory of human beings:
we see God’s love...in the flesh and bone of Jesus.
We see love lived out by him as he challenged the powers that be to be loving, not oppressive;
in him, we see love lived out in service of others – and especially the least, and the lost;
we see love moved to journey to the Cross –
travelling into the darkest of valleys...
and love conquering death:
love showing us the way through that valley,
and into the hope of redemption and resurrection,
love that held nothing back:
goodness and loving-kindness without measure.
We see love –
found in the One who is with us –
not against us.
This is the God the Psalmist sang of to his people,
the God that Matthew wrote of,
as he told the story of Jesus telling stories
of asking, seeking, and knocking –
and of the God who responds;
this is the God that Paul spoke of, in a letter to a community of believers in Rome,
faced with persecution at the hands of a ruler who believed himself to be a god...
yet was merely human,
and narcissistic and toxic.
The God of the psalmist, of Matthew, of Paul...
is our God,
who loves us
and whose goodness and loving-kindness is with us all our days,
and who, in his goodness and loving-kindness,
brings us, at the last, to live with him forever:
where there shall be no more tears,
no more pain...
where there shall be:
a place of rest,
a place of joy,
a place of perfect love,
a place promised to us, and in which we hope,
for Jesus has gone before us and shows us the way –
for he is the Way.

What makes the god of the Psalmist,
the god of Matthew, and of Paul,
the god we pick,
the god we choose to stick with?
It’s simply this:
it's because...
1 The Lord is our shepherd, we shall lack nothing.
2     He makes us lie down in green pastures,
he leads us beside quiet waters,
3     he restores our souls.
He guides us in paths of righteousness
    for his name’s sake.
4 Even though we walk
    through the valley of the shadow of death,
we will fear no evil,
    for you are with us;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort us.
5 You prepare a table before us
    in the presence of our enemies.
You anoint each of our heads with oil;
    our cups overflow.
6 Surely goodness and love will follow us
    all the days of our lives,
and we will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever. Amen.

Sermon: Sun 11 Mar - wk5 Ps23 series: You prepare a table before me

Communion Sunday...
READINGS: Ps 23; Luke 22:7-27

SERMON
May the words of my mouth, and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

‘You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.’

Over the last two weeks around the UK, a variety of activities have been happening to highlight Fairtrade fortnight, which ends today.
Given ‘Snowmageddon’ the week before in our own area, I’ve been busy catching up on school assemblies this week, where we’ve had some fun, and thought about food, and fairness.
Or, more to the point, unfairness.
At each school assembly, the children were divided into two teams and I asked them to choose a team name that was a little more exciting than just ‘Team 1’ and ‘Team 2’.
I was a wee bit alarmed when one of the teams named themselves ‘The Terminators’
and thought to myself:
‘Hope we won’t need any medics, ‘cos this group seem pretty serious about winning!’ 

The object of the game was to collect as many chocolate mini-eggs as possible
from a large glass bowl on a table. On each side of the bowl, there were smaller bowls,
one for each team. Both teams were given a dice and had to throw a number –
which allowed their team champions to come up and gather mini-eggs, one egg at a time.
Meanwhile, the other team would throw their dice so that they could send their
team champion up, while the other team champion had to go sit back down...
And so on.
Fairly straightforward, yes?
But, of course, it wasn’t.
One team was allowed to start first, without having to throw their dice.
That team also had a lovely spoon to help fish out the mini-eggs...
And when they had to throw their dice, they could take their turn
on the roll of a #6, a #3, or a #1.
The other team...
well, the rules were a little different:
they were only allowed to start after their dice rolled on to the appropriate number;
they only got the one number, #6;
and they didn’t get a spoon, they had to use chopsticks.
The looks on the faces of children from both teams were priceless:
you could tell when the penny dropped about the implications of the rules
by either the looks of horror or the big grins.
And the responses from each of the school teams who were on the side with
the harder job of it were fascinating.
There were cries of ‘But that’s not fair!’
or ‘But that’s really hard!’
Some small shoulders visibly slumped,
while some brows furrowed – trying to work out how to best meet this challenge.
All of the teams with the harder task did gamely give it a go:
...after all, chocolate is a fairly strong incentive.
However, I was hugely impressed with one team, who responded by really working together:
as each person on their team came up to try and use the chopsticks
the others would come up too, and try to encourage them, and offer advice:
‘oh, what if you do it like this...or that?’
The difficult challenge ended up turning them into a team,
where all were involved in a common goal,
where all were encouraged,
and where each played their part in helping.
It was wonderful to see.
And, they even managed to get some of the chocolate eggs.

When we finished the game, we talked about how it felt to be on each team:
Who enjoyed the game?
Clearly, the teams that won.
Why didn’t the teams that lost enjoy it?
Clearly, it just wasn’t fair.
How did that make them feel?
‘Sad’, ‘angry’, ‘tired’, ‘a bit hopeless’.
We began to think about what it might be like to live in a country where
the rules for trying to sell your food, or other goods, didn’t seem to be in your favour.
We thought of the head start that some countries had because they had more money:
more money meant more opportunities:
for education,
so that people could learn how to make better equipment to use for working,
or to spend on research to find new ways to have better harvests.
We worked out that the more you had, the more you could do,
and that you had more power to make the rules that would work best for you,
so that you could become wealthier, and get more things.
And we thought of those countries around the world that didn’t have the same opportunities.
It just wasn’t fair –
and, even more unfair was the thought that there were more than enough resources
in the world to feed every single human being:
that nobody in the world needed to go hungry...
but, because of unfair rules,
some countries could stockpile and even waste vast amounts of food,
while others had barely enough to go around.
As we thought about this, we wondered about ways in which we could help
balance things out a little more:
we talked about ways that might help change the rules,
and that this was the whole point of what Fairtrade was about:
that if everyone played by the same rules,
then everyone could eat at the banqueting table where there was more than enough for all.

‘You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.’

Jesus...changes the rules.
All through the gospels, we get glimpses of Jesus heading to a meal, or being a guest at a meal.
His first miracle in the Gospel of John happens while he’s a guest, at a wedding in Cana,
where he ensures that there’s enough wine to go ‘round so that cups truly can overflow.
We see him as host, at meals where many thousands of people are fed;
and here, in our gospel reading from Luke,
we see him as host of a smaller, more intimate meal with his friends,
a meal that has been referred to down the years as ‘The Last Supper.’
It is a meal that is uniquely his,
and yet a meal that has been fashioned out of an earlier meal – the Passover meal –
which looked back and remembered the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt...

Perhaps, the ‘last supper’ might better be named ‘the first supper’ –
for as he shares it with his disciples in that Upper Room, he’s doing a new thing.
As Jesus shapes it, this meal becomes a meal that’s designed to remember:
‘Do this to remember me’ 
he bids his friends, over bread and wine.
But it does more.
This meal is also one that looks forward:
to each time that friends of Jesus gather –
and who, in the Holy Spirit,
and in the meal shared,
are made one in him.
It’s not a meal for individuals – it’s a community meal –
a meal we share in common...
Communion.
It’s a meal that binds us together in God’s love,
it’s about being together,
being Christ’s body:
all playing our part,
all helping one another,
encouraging one another,
as we share in that common goal of living out that love shown to us in the life of Jesus.

Ultimately, the meal that Jesus creates,
and bids us share, is a meal that looks forward to the end of all days –
to that great heavenly banquet.
As we take and eat the bread and wine here,
we remember that this is a meal that symbolises life:
the bread of heaven
the water of life...
nourishment that strengthens us now,
and food that sustains us eternally.

Jesus...changes the rules.
And Jesus is the bread of life.
The meal he creates is not
the sole province of the rich and the powerful;
it’s not to be kept for the select few.
We do know that it’s made for the ones who feel surrounded by enemies –
enemies who would keep them
poor, hungry, vulnerable,
dependent and disadvantaged.
A ‘table in the presence of my enemies’:
a table that makes the statement that
in God, all have a head-start in his love, for all are equally beloved;
a table that has at its centrepiece justice and mercy and reconciliation,
and an understanding of power that is about service –
service to God and to others.

Jesus...changes the rules
and sets before us a meal.
It’s a new meal, a new way:
a feast of shared abundance where all are welcome,
where all are invited to feast upon life as together, we feast upon the gift
of bread and wine,
of forgivenenss,
of liberation,
of justice,
and freedom.
And, having been fed,
we move from the table and go back out into the world
and change the rules, as Jesus did,
and in so doing, bring in God’s kingdom of heaven for all. Amen.

WEATHER AND WORSHIP: UPDATE

Drifts and other unexpected obstacles on the roads. Stay safe, stay at home!

DUE TO SERIOUSLY HOSTILE CONDITIONS...

In consultation with the Kirk Session, worship this coming Sunday has very reluctantly been cancelled due to the extreme winter weather conditions.
The road up to the church is impassable, and will be for some time. With drifts blocking roads around the wider area, best to stay home and keep safe.

Communion will now be on the following Sunday, 11 March