Summertime in Lanarkshire by Isobel Taylor, 1934-2016

This morning we said our goodbyes to, and gave thanks for,
our friend Isobel Taylor.

As part of our remembering,
Isobel's sense of fun and her enjoyment
of poetry were recalled, and the following poem closed the eulogy - summing up her love of the area she called home... no rose-tinted spectacles
here, rather, Isobel's very practical understanding of what it was to live in Lanarkshire:


Summertime in Lanarkshire

It’s summertime in Lanarkshire, in the valley o’ the Clyde,
Wi' rollin’ hills an' heather glens, whit better place tae bide?
But the summer season in thae pairts is a law untae itsel’,
For whit oor weather’s gaun tae be, naebody can tell.
Believe the forecast if ye wish, I mean, it’s up tae you,
But see yon mannie, Michael Fish? He hasnae  got a clue!

Ae day we micht hae poorin’ rain, the next it’s bilin’ hot,
There’s hail an’ mist – an endless list – oh, aye, we get the lot!
We cover up oor plants at nicht, but still we coont the cost
Next day when we discover there’s been five degrees o’ frost!
But sometimes there’s a guid day, when the sun comes shinin’ through,
An’ ye sit oot wi’ yer People’s Friend an' a gless o’ Irn Bru!

But there’s a snag here in the country, when we lie oot in the sun,
There aye comes waftin’ on the breeze the familiar reek o’ dung!
“A fine, healthy smell,” the fairmer says, “It fairly clears yer tubes!”
Says I, “Weel, suit yersel’, but me, I’ll stick tae sookin’ Zubes!”
Weel, there’s no’ much point in worryin’, or startin’ tae complain,
For nae sooner hae ye settled doon than the rain comes on again!

Ye pick up a’ yer stuff an’ hope it’s jist a passin’ shower,
But the first draps fell suin efter twel’ an’ it poored till half-past fower!
Then jist when ye start thinkin’ the sun’ll never shine,
The rain goes aff, the sun comes oot, an’ then – it’s Midgie Time!
They come doon in their thoosan’s – ye dinnae stand a chance -
Thae wee black de’ils aye seek ye oot – ye’re led a merry dance.

Ye never will escape, nae maitter hoo ye duck an’ dive, 
They move that quick, an’ they fairly stick tae yer Factor Twenty-five!
If I kent wha brocht thae midgies here I cheerfully wid shoot him
But I doot they sneaked on Noah’s Ark, when the wee man wisnae lookin’!

Noo, maist o' this has been in fun, it’s no bad a’ the time,
We get some days when it disna’ rain, an’ days when the sun does shine, 
Ye’ll find a welcome here in Lanarkshire, so please, pay us a visit –
But maybe no’ in summertime, ‘cos if ye blink, ye’ll miss it!

But I’m no’ movin’ hoose nae mair, I’ve burnt a' my bridges,
Here I am an’ here I’ll bide – in spite o’ a’ the midgies!
There’s nae ither time or place on earth whaur I wid sooner be
Than summertime in Lanarkshire – that’ll dae for me!  

by Isobel Taylor...
April 22, 1934 - March 13, 2016
Rest in peace, and rise in glory.

Manse musings: 'Early on the first day of the week'

... from our Easter newsletter.

‘Early on the first day of the week...’
The beginning of an old, familiar story.
The beginning of a story that cuts to the heart of the Christian faith. A story of darkness and light, for John’s Gospel account of that story begins in the gloom and dark before dawn.
But we, as his audience, know that light is coming...

Over the last weeks, we’ve been marking the season in the church year we name ‘Lent’. A time in which we symbolically emerge from the
wilderness with Jesus, and travel with him as he turns his face towards Jerusalem and probable death.
When travelling, a good rule of thumb is to travel light;
travelling in Lent traditionally involves letting go of something for a time
to help us focus on the journey. Alternatively, some choose to take on a
particular practice – although, I suspect taking on eating chocolate for Lent
is probably not quite the done thing...!
Regardless of letting go, or taking up, the season of Lent is a time
in which we take time to reflect on what matters in life,
a time we use to refocus upon the One who knows us each by name, and who loves us utterly.

By the time this newsletter is edited and distributed,
we will be approaching the events in that first Holy Week nearly 2 000 years ago.
There will be palms and cheers.
There will be Gethsemane: a garden, sleeping disciples, betrayal with a kiss.
There will be arrest and trial, denial, death.
A time of darkness and waiting.
And, after the waiting, in a garden shot through with
the light of a new dawn, an empty tomb – because you can’t nail a good man down.
The quiet of the garden broken by a question to a weeping woman:
‘who is it you’re looking for?’
In these latter days of Lent, and as we move through Holy Week to death and resurrection,
may we find anew the One who shattered the darkness with resurrection light.
May we find who, and what, we’re looking for at the end of our journeying –
and may we experience the joy of the story of Easter once more.
A happy Easter to you all
Nikki

Holy Week and Easter services 2016

Lunch club - March

All welcome!

Sunday 13 March: Lent 5 - 'Unexpected'

Focus reading: John 12:1-8

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

Picture the scene:
you’re at home with friends and family – 
and a particularly dear friend has come to visit:
you’ve gathered around the dinner table.
The conversation has flowed, 
as has food and wine.
Stories have been shared:
joys, sorrows, hopes for the future.
You sit, enjoying this special time,
relaxing in each other’s company...
and then, something odd happens –
something    unexpected.
One of your number takes a pint...
a whole pint of perfume,
opens it,
and pours it over the feet 
of that dearest of friends.
The room is heavy with the scent of spices –
pungent, intoxicating...
Silence.
All eyes are fixed on the woman 
as she kneels at his feet,
anointing them with costly perfume,
wiping them with her hair.

A shrill and brittle voice breaks the spell,
irritation oozing in each syllable uttered:
judgement pouring into that room, 
tainting with scorn
what had been a strangely beautiful act of love...
But bringing with it a conversation about values,
about real cost,
and, again, unexpectedly, 
a conversation about an imminent separation.
This dearest of friends, having challenged the one complaining of waste,
makes the link between perfume and burial,
tells you all that you will not always have him with you.
And as you sit, taking in his words 
in the same way that you’d taken 
in the smell of that wondrous perfume,
you hear others outside...
others curious to see this friend of yours –
some who are not best-disposed toward him...

I confess that while I have been to some very odd dinner parties in my time – 
‘Famous Five’ theme, or a ‘wear a Onesie’ party –
that I’ve never been at a meal where someone has done anything 
remotely like Mary did in the house at Bethany:
Bethany, less than two miles to Jerusalem...
Over this long season of Lent, we have walked with Jesus, as he’s journeyed.
Listened to stories of temptation,
of sin, guilt, repentance...forgiveness: 
of God’s great and extravagant love.
And, here, in our gospel story this morning,
we see extravagant love enacted –
selfless giving, 
costly giving,
by Mary, as she worships this  beloved family friend
and washes his feet with perfume.
The friend who not so long ago had brought her brother, Lazarus,
back from death.
The friend who, in heading for Jerusalem,
is very likely heading to his own death.

Unexpected.
It is the word that seems to be at the heart of this particular story.
Expensive perfume being unexpectedly used to wash feet;
an unexpected display of love –
Mary breaking with cultural tradition
and touching this male friend in so familiar a way; 
and, unexpected anointing:
for, that is what Mary is doing, in washing the feet of Jesus,
and in doing so, breaking again with tradition:
for usually, men anoint men.
And then there’s an unexpected conversation: 
of a feast unexpectedly taking a sombre mood, 
becoming more like a wake...
Unexpected.

The story reminds us that we follow the One 
who tends not to do things in the way we might expected:
in his birth in a manger, the expected Messiah arrives unexpectedly;
in his life as a carpenter, 
in his ministry to those on the margins,
in his challenging of the religious authorities –
the longed-for Messiah never does quite conform 
to the expected way of doing things.
The Lord doesn’t Lord it over others – rather, unexpectedly, 
he comes to serve all of humanity –
humbly offering himself in love.
Power turned unexpectedly to sacrifice.

As we journey with Jesus, we are now less than two miles to Jerusalem.
Soon, we enter that great city:
the city that kills its prophets;
the city that will see Jesus enter the gates,
sitting not on a battle horse, but riding on a donkey –
the prince of peace,
not an avenging warrior-messiah.
The crowds will see him.
Will cheer him.
And eventually, will turn on him,
calling for his crucifixion.
...A crucified Messiah.
That’s very unexpected.

As we follow Jesus, what do we expect of him?
Are we prepared to be surprised – 
to allow the God of unexpected things turn our expectations upside-down?
As we think of his extravagant love, what is our own response to him?
Might we see his extravagant love 
mirrored in our own acts of love as his body here on earth?
Dare we choose to meet those we encounter in our daily living 
with the unexpected response:
to meet fear with faith;
to meet cynicism with boundless imagination
to meet selfishness with selflessness;
to meet hate with love?

God shows up in ordinary and unexpected places,
uses ordinary – and – unexpected people...
people like Mary to anoint his Son;
people, like us, to love generously and fearlessly 
in a world unwilling to share, 
a world holding on to what it has, out of fear.
So, be who you are called to be:
unexpected messengers of God’s love –
using your faith, and your gifts ... your costly perfume...
to share God’s love that is free and without measure.

There’s a song, written by Sydney Carter – the chap who wrote ‘Lord of the Dance’. 
The words are in your order of service...
And, as I play the song, why not listen, 
why not follow the words,
and why not use the time as space to reflect upon 
our response to the God of the unexpected....
[music is played]     

‘Said Judas to Mary’
Said Judas to Mary, "Now what will you do 
with your ointment so rich and rare?"
"I'll pour it all over the feet of the Lord, 
and I'll wipe it away with my hair," she said, 
"I'll wipe it away with my hair."

"Oh Mary, O Mary, O think of the poor. 
This ointment, it could have been sold; 
and think of the blanket and think of the bread 
you could buy with the silver and gold," he said, 
"You could buy with silver and gold."

"Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll think of the poor; 
tomorrow," she said, "not today; 
for dearer than all of the poor in the world 
is my love who is going away," she said, 
"My love who is going away."

Said Jesus to Mary, "Your love is so deep 
today, you may do as you will. 
Tomorrow, you say, I am going away, 
but my body I leave with you still." he said, 
"My body I leave with you still."

"The poor of the world are my body," he said,
"to the end of the world they shall be.
The bread and the blanket you give to the poor 
you'll know you have given to me," he said, 
"You'll know you have given to me."

"My body will hang from the cross of the world" 
Tomorrow," he said, "and today. 
And Martha and Mary will find me again 
and wash all the sorrow away," he said,
"And wash all the sorrow away."

Writing Group: wield your pen...or pencil...or crayon

CALLING ALL THOSE WHO CAN WIELD A PEN (OR TAP A KEYBOARD).

Have you ever had a desire to write ... stories, poetry, articles for the newspaper, pieces for the church magazine perhaps?
Maybe you've 'dabbled' in the past and need the incentive to do more. Maybe you've never tried but would like to have a go. Maybe you think you've nothing interesting to say ... nonsense! We are all unique and so are the lives we lead.  We may have climbed Everest ... or we may have had an interesting conversation with someone sitting next to us on a bus.
We are thinking of starting a writing group  for anyone who would like to come - no experience necessary! 
If you are interested, please contact Janet Telfer on 01864 504265.

UCPC Guild news

The members have been enjoying their meetings since last you heard from us.
In November 2015 sixteen members travelled to Dunfermline Abbey for the Guild Big Sing. 
What a great day! Over two hundred and fifty voices singing many favourite hymns.
We got the New Year off to a good start with our Afternoon Tea, which was well attended by 
members and congregation. Tony, from our own Wanlockhead, entertained everyone and was 
a massive success. Many thanks to him, and also to Biggar Flavour and the ladies who served 
the food provided by them.
The syllabus has had to be rearranged, so the Revd Nancy Norman will be with us at our 
February meeting.

Please come to our OPEN MEETING ('open' means everyone welcome) on: 
Wed. 9th March at 2pm in Upper Clyde Church. 
The ladies of the Bells of St. Ninians are so looking forward to coming to perform on that day.

Aileen Gemmell, on behalf of UCPC Guild

Sermon, Sunday 6 March: Lent 4 'All is discovered: flee!'

READINGS Psalm 32 and Luke 15:1-9

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

There’s an urban legend variously attributed to writers
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mark Twain...
One version of the story goes that, apparently, Doyle...
or Poe... or Twain – take your pick..
had been involved in a rather heated dinner conversation
in which the writer had categorically stated that:
‘there was no man, who, having reached 40, didn’t have a skeleton in the closet.’

Deciding to test out the theory in the cold light of day,
the writer concerned thought up a prank involving 5 friends –
all who had been at the dinner party,
and all who were due to dine together again the following week.

The prank involved sending each of the five a message which:
bore no signature,
contained no information.
and was comprised of just four words:
‘All is discovered. Flee!’ 

The following week, when the writer and his friends gathered for dinner,
the table conversation was abuzz with the news about one of their number who
had disappeared quite suddenly, and who hadn’t been heard from since...

Guilt.
It is a hard thing to carry the weight of things done
– or not done – that you later regret.
At some point or other, because we’re human and not yet perfect,
we      mess     up.
We say things,
we do things,
that, at the least, aren’t best helpful,
and, at the worst, are seriously hurtful and harmful to others.
And then, we have to live with ourselves,
and with the knowledge of what we’ve done.
Guilt coories in and makes a home in our heart,
gnaws away at our soul.
And guilt – the heaviness and the horror of it –
is what the Psalmist is writing about in Psalm 32,
and, especially, the importance of letting it go.

Now don’t get me wrong:
I’m not saying that our Psalmist is suggesting that,
when we mess up, we should sail blithely through the situation
and not acknowledge what we've done – far from it:
not recognising the fall-out of what we've said or done and ignoring it,
well, that’s verging on pathological behaviour.
Having that sense of knowing that we’ve done something wrong,
is about being a responsible human being...
and in that sense, guilt is a useful tool to make us re-examine
what we do and why we do it –
it provides us with the opportunity to reflect, to grow, and hopefully,
if what has been done has involved others –
it provides a spur to reconcile and build bridges...
But...holding onto guilt,
holding onto the situation that’s caused it,
and revisiting and revisiting it
is unhealthy and possibly verging on narcissism. ...

We’ve all heard the phrase:
‘I can never forgive myself.’
Some of us here today may even have said it on occasion.
For those of you who have,
and even for those of you who haven’t:
read this psalm –
take it to heart –
follow the example of the person who has written it.
Here’s why:
For the Psalmist, living with guilt –
living in guilty silence –
has had a profound effect on his or her well-being:
the Psalmist claims that guilt was the cause of physical illness –
in verse 3, there’s a description of bones being ‘wasted away’,
this, caused by ‘groaning all day long’ –
the inner conversation and turmoil produced by living with guilt.
In verse 4, there’s a sense of heaviness,
of strength being sapped –
guilt using up and wearing out the Psalmist’s energy:
guilt sucking the very life out of the Psalmist.

If our gospel reading concerns lost things –
a lost sheep,
a lost coin –
our psalm concerns a different kind of loss:
loss of peace,
loss of quality of life,
loss of joy.
But it doesn’t stop with that -
the Psalmist doesn’t just go
‘well, guilt pretty much stinks and that’s all there is to it.’
It’s not all there is -
and so, another kind of loss is offered up for our consideration:
the loss of guilt – a way of letting it go and getting our life back on track.
What’s suggested is turning from our introspection
and from picking away at the scab of guilt –
to changing the focus and looking out and up -
handing this thing that is a blight on our life over to God.
Instead of hiding away in a closet and hanging out with the resident skeleton,
the Psalmist urges us to open the door of our heart,
to acknowledge the skeleton,
and let God be our protection and hiding place.
If we do that, suggests the Psalmist,
we’ll regain our peace,
find our joy,
find life in all its fullness.

Forgiveness,
and freedom from the soul-destroying,
life-sapping weight of guilt,
is central to what the Christian faith is about.
Each time we have our quarterly formal service of communion,
as God’s people, we make an affirmation of faith
that has been handed down through the centuries: the Apostles’ Creed.
The Creed is a shorthand way of gathering together
the most important aspects of the faith – of what we believe.
In amongst the various doctrinal statements
that make up our faith-in-a-nutshell, is:
‘we believe in the forgiveness of sins’...
We affirm that we believe in a God who forgives –
who doesn’t hold a grudge,
who doesn’t keep a tally...
All we have to do is turn to God and say
‘I messed up. I’m sorry. Help me.’
And because forgiveness is at the heart of our faith,
and is what is in the heart of the God who we worship -
because we believe in the forgiveness of sins,
we let the burden, the weight of the guilt go
as we turn to God and no longer remain silent
about what it is that we’ve done.  ...

While the psalm talks about guilt, and the effects of living with guilt,
essentially, Psalm 32 is a psalm about joy –
the joy of forgiveness
the joy of living free from guilt
and the joy of being able to
share the joy – the good news:
that our God is not about constant recriminations,
but that our God loves us
loves us so much that he’ll go looking for us
like that lost sheep or the coin in our parables...
that our God loves us with an everlasting love
and wants us to live in the freedom of that love...
this day and always.

In a wee while, we’ll be sharing in bread and wine –
it is the meal of forgiveness,
the meal symbolising the great and merciful and loving heart of God,
who takes away our guilt if only we turn to him.
The God who already knows our heart –
a heart where all is discovered,
but where, unlike the chap in our Conan Doyle story,
the only place we need flee when all is discovered,
is straight into our Father’s arms. Amen.

March Communion

Join us as we share in bread and wine as God's beloved people.

Sun 6 March, 10:30, in the parish church, Abington

Sermon, Sunday 28 Feb: Lent 3 'It's the way you see a thing'

READING Isaiah 55:1-9; 1 Cor 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

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

Sometimes, it’s the way you hear a thing:
My much-loved, and much missed, grandmother had a raft of stories
that she’d tell me when I was growing up.
One such story involved ‘a very bad German’.
Over the years, when I’d visit Nan, invariably,
the treasure-trove of family stories would come out,
and at some point, the story about the bad German would be dusted off, and re-told.
And I would listen,
and wonder,
and, truth be told,
puzzle quite a bit over the story of this German –
for you see, according to Nan’s story:
‘once, when you were very little, 
there was this very bad German - nearly killed ya’
I never understood why the German wanted to kill me:
had I done something terrible?
Committed some outrageous act that had driven this German
into a frenzy?
Which, frankly, seemed bizarre, for, as Nan said, I had been ‘very little’.

As I said, for years, I puzzled over this story –
and had a healthy respect of Germans!
And then, one day, over dinner at Nan’s, the story was once again shared.
The story that I’d grown up with all    my    life.
The story about the fearsome German...
And it was as if I were hearing it for the first time,
for what my Nan had actually been telling me down through the years
was not a story about some bad German with murder on his mind,
but something completely different.
You see, my Nan had a habit of running her words together;
what she’d been saying to me, for years and years was that:
‘there was a bad germ...and it nearly killed you’...
Ah.
Well, that certainly changed my perspective on Germans, at least!!
As I said, sometimes, it’s the way you hear a thing.

And sometimes, it can be the way you see or understand a thing:
for my Nan also had a particular saying that, in a nutshell,
showed her understanding of God -
when hard times came, when bad things happened, she’d say:
‘Ah, Nik, God plays funny tricks’.
In our gospel passage for this morning, there’s a wee bit of a
variation of that understanding of God going on.
Jesus is amongst a crowd, teaching, and within the crowd,
there were some who decided to tell Jesus about the latest outrage
that Pilate had committed.
Apparently some Galileans had gone on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem –
to go to the Temple to make their sacrifices.
However, for this band of pilgrims, the visit didn’t end well:
Pilate, wanting to show the locals who was in charge,
had decided to demonstrate his power by not only killing these pilgrims,
but also, compounding this, by tainting the purity of the Temple itself:
the blood of the pilgrims was mingled with their sacrifices.
Basically, Pilate was desecrating the Temple.

We don’t know why the Galileans were killed:
they may have been radicals,
or they may just have happened to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But, their story was being told to Jesus – by this small group within the crowd...
what would he say?
What would he think?
Would he call for insurrection?
Instead, Jesus calls them out, by picking up, and challenging,
a prevailing attitude - and turning that attitude,
that way of understanding God and of how God worked,
completely on its head.

It’s the way you see a thing:
and the prevailing culture held to the conviction that
if good things were happening in your life –
like being married, having lots of sons, being wealthy –
then all of these were signs that God was pleased with you.
All of these blessings were your well-earned reward for good behaviour.
God’s magic abacus of measuring up was going your way:
Awesome.
But the flip-side to this understanding, this way of thinking about God,
and how God worked in the world,
was that if bad things were happening in your life –
such as being single or widowed, being childless, being ill, or being poor –
then really, you were just reaping what you deserved for obviously living
a bad and unholy life.
God was punishing you because you were clearly not toeing the line.
...And so, when this small group in the crowd almost breathlessly
can’t wait to tell Jesus the story of the murdered pilgrims,
what they’re really doing is pointing their fingers at those same pilgrims and saying to Jesus:
‘so, see those pilgrims: they can’t have been that good or holy then, 
given that God saw fit to kill them. 
So, what do you think they did to be punished eh, Jesus?’

You know, we have a term for this, for what this wee group was trying to do:
we call it ‘victim blaming’ –
and Jesus is having none of it.                                                                
‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners 
than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no!’
And he turns it back to them.
Shows them their focus, their attitude, is all kinds of wrong –
they need to rethink,
refocus,
...repent:
for repentance is just that:
a change of heart, a change of mind –
a change in the way you see God at work
in yourself and in the world –
a change that is so deep and profound,
that you can’t help but be changed.

Jesus is telling these folk, with their view of the God
who gives out milk and cookies and gold stars for good behaviour,
or who mercilessly beats folk down for bad behaviour...
that they’re wrong – and that they need to view God in a decidedly different way:
while victim-blaming may be the way of the world,
it is not the way of God.
He challenges his listeners to see the God who is merciful and compassionate
and who, if he were a gardener,
would be doing his darndest to do all he could for a fig tree that was seemingly
not really up to much.
As Jesus says elsewhere, God did not send him for the righteous,
but for the sinners, for the least, for the ones on the edge, for the marginalised:
to be on the side of the victims...
so much so, that he turned his face towards Jerusalem,
and to the Cross:
to death...
and, to resurrection.

It’s the way you see a thing, the way you understand a thing:
and here, in the midst of what is a very rich passage to be digging into,
we could spend quite some time exploring that great ages-old question:
 ‘why did God allow this bad thing to happen?’
But we see from Jesus’ response, that the question has a faulty premise –
a faulty notion of the nature of God –
It’s less about pointing fingers at others,
it’s less about pointing fingers at God...
What’s happening in this text is that, in a sense,
Jesus is saying ‘yes, bad things happen’ – Pilate is a cruel and tyrannical ruler;
the tower at Siloam may have been built with human error...
[as for natural disasters – tectonic plates move and shift
and happen to send shivers along the earth’s crust where people choose to build.]
Bad stuff happens.
What Jesus is doing in this passage is acknowledging that it does,
and challenging those listening to him about how they respond –
and reminding them, through the story of the fig-tree
that God is there in the midst of the bad stuff,
at work, bringing light, and mercy,
and the grace of another chance –
That, rather than focusing upon the bad,
to look for God, and perhaps,
even to be agents of God through their response to the bad stuff, to tragedy.
As the prophet Isaiah reminds his listeners:
they are 'to seek the Lord while he may be found’
and, that 'the Lord is near.'
It’s in that seeking of the Lord, that we understand that even in the valley of death,
yet he is with us.

Being a Christian is no magic guarantee that we’ll sail through life
untouched by some of the harder things.
It also doesn’t mean we don’t experience joy.
What this particular bible passage teaches us is that we don’t get a free pass –
and, that, bluntly:
‘The idea that only good things happen to good people should have been 
put to rest when Jesus was nailed to the Cross’ [Amy Richter]

Good stuff happens.
Bad stuff happens.
And in all of it,
in the midst of what it is to be human,
God is with us.
In that knowledge, how do we see God,
and how will we respond as those who walk in faith:
by pointing fingers at others, or at God?
Or, by reflecting upon our own relationship with God;
by following the One who showed us that God is nearer to us than breathing;
and responding to others with that same grace, compassion,
mercy and love that God, in Jesus, has shown to us?
Amen.

Sermon, Sunday, 21 Feb: Lent 2 'Feel the fear and do it anyway'

READING Ps 27; Philip 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

SERMON ‘Feel the fear, and do it anyway’
Let’s pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

An old black and white photo:
The scene is a shipyard.
The city: Berlin.
The year: 1936.
A crowd of workers pack together on the dock, 
clad in overalls and some in suits.
It’s the launch of a new naval training vessel, 
and the occasion has brought 
with it a special guest.
The workers are standing, 
all looking in the same direction – 
towards the front, and their right.
Their faces are filled with joy and elation
as they cheer the object of their attention –
a man, who is off-camera.
But, given what they’re doing, 
the identity of their special guest is clear:
for, each worker has a hand outstretched in the NAZI salute:
Hitler is visiting, and they’re thrilled 
to receive him.
...But stop. 
On the back of your service sheet is the photo,
which I’d invite you to have a look at...

In the midst of the crowd
you might notice something unusual.
Each worker has a hand 
outstretched in the NAZI salute
Each worker...bar one.
In a sea of salutes, stands a lone man,
arms firmly crossed against his chest.
In the upper middle of the photograph, 
August Landmesser makes what is a 
lone, quiet act of protest amidst the crowd.
He is the quiet conscience of the picture –
a witness, demonstrating that not everyone 
is toeing the line of Chancellor Hitler and his National Socialist party.

Landmesser, had, in 1931, joined the party. 
Like many others around him, it was a pragmatic decision, 
in the hope of landing a job in the Depression and 
post-war time of economic meltdown in Germany. 
But pragmatism gave way to matters of the heart: 
August met Irma.
They were engaged in 1935.
But they were forbidden to marry.
You see, Irma was Jewish and the government had been busily bringing in 
a swathe of racial laws.
Non-Jews could not marry Jews.

Although Irma and August were two little people 
caught up in a greater political machine, they didn't let it stop them.
Their hearts were very much committed to one another:
faithfully, and firmly, they stood together as a couple despite horrendous pressures.
In 1937, a year after the photograph at the shipyard, 
August was arrested for ‘dishonouring the race’.
Acquitted, he and Irma very publicly continued their relationship.
August was arrested again in 1938, and sent to a concentration camp 
for 2 and a half years, and was later conscripted into a 
penal army regiment to fight in the war.
Irma was held by the Gestapo, spent time in several camps, 
before finally arriving at Buchenwald.
Neither survived.
The photo, however, does: 
It stands as a testament to utter courage –
the courage to look squarely into the face of a regime,
and challenge a system of power that was corrupt;  
and in their so doing, 
to act as a community conscience.

Our gospel reading this morning is about types of power – 
systems of governance, if you like – 
and of courage:
of One who looked each type of power squarely in the face 
and chose a different way – a different kind of power.

At the beginning of our passage in Luke, 
we see religious power embodied in the form of some Pharisees.
Whether for good or for ill, they come to Jesus 
to warn him off doing what he was doing – teaching and healing; 
to warn him to leave the area.
And here’s another layer of power:
these representatives of the religious establishment w
warn Jesus that the local political establishment is after him,
for Herod, son of Herod, is seeking to kill him – just as he’d killed John the Baptist.
But we know that Jesus is leaving the area –
he’s passing through, and, although he is ministering to people as he travels, 
his face is firmly turned towards Jerusalem...
where he’ll encounter first-hand the other power player in this story –
for Jerusalem is under a different jurisdiction;
the province of Judea is directly under Roman rule, with Pontius Pilate as it’s prefect.

So, we have several layers of power here in this passage, 
and it would seem that, in a couple of cases at least, 
they’re beginning to get a little bit twitchy about this wandering rabbi.
It’s not a coincidence that the verse immediately 
preceding our gospel text has Jesus saying:
‘there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.’
Such words are guaranteed to stir up the powerful to action –
such words are guaranteed to move those in power - those who are used to being ‘first’
to do all in their power to make sure they remain in poll position,
to keep their power and to ensure that those who are ‘last’ 
stay right where they are – at the bottom.
And here’s the thing:
with his words, and in the manner in which he lives out his life and calling, 
Jesus is challenging the default understanding of power.
Herod is referred to as a ‘fox’.
And I suspect that there are those of you who've kept chickens, 
who know first-hand just how utterly destructive a fox can be.
A fox almost seems to make a sport of killing everything in sight...just because it can.
Similarly, Herod, like his father,
seemed to take delight in killing –
to hold the power of life and death in his hands,
to use his power to instil fear;
to take what he wanted whenever he wanted it.
He was a weak, corrupt, puppet king, using what little power he had, 
to serve his own ends, and to prop up his particular insecurities.
He used his power to bring advantage to himself and his cronies, 
rather than to serve all of his subjects.
In modern terms, he was all about favouring the one percent.
For everyone else, the 99%, 
Herod’s power brought only hardship, misery, occasional imprisonment, and death.
In calling Herod ‘that fox’, Jesus was calling out the abysmal leadership that Herod displayed.
And, the message Jesus gives to the Pharisees to take to Herod,
is one that demonstrates a different understanding of power and of kingdom:
in contrast to Herod, Jesus, through his ministry of teaching and healing,  
is bringing life, and hope, and liberation – 
a kingdom in which those on the edges are brought into the centre...
in fact, a kingdom of the least, the marginalised – the ones who are powerless.
A kingdom where, unlike the favoured few of Herod’s, 
all are beloved and protected.

In contrast to ‘that fox’ Herod,
Jesus puts himself on the side of the vulnerable, the oppressed:
he portrays himself as a ‘mother hen’ –
but this mother hen is ready to gather up his people under his wings; 
to love, to care for and to tend them.
In Jesus’ way of looking at the world – 
while the fox may seem the more powerful, it doesn’t win;
ultimately, the chicken does for this is the topsy-turvy kingdom of God –
where real power is seen as vulnerability –
to be real,
to be authentic...is an immensely powerful thing.

And it’s what gives us the strength to turn our faces toward Jerusalem -
or, our equivalents of Jerusalem -
it’s what helps us to take on systems of power single-handedly, 
by using the power of love and of sacrifice.
To be prepared to be vulnerable is to have courage by the bucket-load.
And it’s what we’re called to.

As we walk the road to Jerusalem, each of us is faced with choices – 
each of us, no matter what we may think – has some small modicum of power.
How we live our lives can affect the lives of others, for the better, or for the worse.
We may never be faced with the kind of near-impossible situation 
that August Landmesser found himself in...
we may never face institutions of power in the same manner that Jesus had to...
But... how do we use our power wisely and well, 
and with courage to further God’s kingdom,
to show God’s mercy and justice,
and to demonstrate God’s love for the least, the most vulnerable?
Some of us may very well challenge corrupt institutions – 
governments and organisations – that choose to mis-use their power ...
we may find ourselves writing or speaking to political representatives
asking just why there’s been such a marked rise in poverty in the UK, 
and a rise in food banks...
or we might use our power to challenge the ‘powers that be’ 
concerning the high proportion of homeless veterans, 
given the sacrifices they’ve made in serving the country...
we might choose to use our power by boycotting multi-national companies 
as a challenge to unethical business practices – the use of child labour, for example.
Alongside that, we might choose to source out more local food, 
and items that we need – as a way to help our local economy, 
and as a way to help the environment.
At a different level, we may choose to use the power we have to be kinder to one another...
perhaps to visit that neighbour in our village that nobody really bothers to talk to 
because he or she is deemed to be a wee bit odd...
or we might use the power of our imaginations to walk a while 
in someone else’s shoes, rather than to criticise them without thinking – 
for none of us really know what burdens others may be carrying: 
in this, how do we use the power we have, 
in our small corner, to help share one another’s burdens?

To walk the road to Jerusalem is hard, for it involves sacrifice,
moving from our comfort zones.
At times, it’s about feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
But, we can take courage –
for the One who calls us, protects us, holds us close –
gathers us up...
and it is in his love, that we find the courage to continue 
walking with him, and where we also, oddly, find our joy. Amen.

Lunch Club - Feb

All welcome!

Sermon, Sunday 14 Feb - Lent 1/ 'Marked as God's own'

Sermon for the first Sunday of Lent

Readings: Ps 91; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

SERMON/ 'Marked as God's own'

I don’t know about all of you, but it feels as if we’ve only
just finished with Christmas...and yet, here we are, moving into Lent and the journey towards the cross, and onwards to the resurrection hope of Easter:
so, in the interests of good community and family relations, I might as well make the following public service announcement and warn you that - you’ve only got 313 shopping days left until Christmas.

On Wednesday evening – Ash Wednesday -
a small group of us gathered here to mark ourselves with ashes.
Before we made the sign of the cross on our palms,
we were reminded of life and of mortalitywith the traditional words:
‘from dust we come, to dust we return...’
And, as ashen crosses were etched onto each outstretched palm,
or on the back of the hand, we were also reminded of whose we are
as the following words were said:
‘you are marked as God’s own’.

Marked as God’s own...
Identity is a powerful thing.
Have any of you ever watched the T.V. show ‘Who do you think you are’?
For those of you who haven't, the basic set up is that
you watch some famous person delve back into their family history.
Often there’s some interesting twists and turns,
and always, throughout each episode,
an outline of a family tree is shown, and is added to over the course of the show.

And it’s as if Luke, writing the story of Jesus,
is creating a bible version of ‘Who do you think you are’ 
for Jesus in the verses immediately before our text this morning -
it's always interesting to see what comes before and after a
passage, so we can see a bigger picture, or have a better sense of the context.
Here, Luke’s setting out Jesus’ credentials, if you like –
pre-empting any questions from his readers along the lines of
‘So who does this Jesus think he is then?’
There, in the gospel, Luke shows us in a long genealogy
Jesus’ family tree which runs from Joseph of Nazareth,
through 74 other names, stretching finally all the way back to God.
Son of Joseph...
a whole lot of names...
Son of David...
even more names...
Son of God...
In this long, long family tree, Luke demonstrates where Jesus comes from,
who Jesus is, and shows that he is marked as God’s own -
God’s son.

Having established Jesus’ identity, Luke then moves the story:
family tree gives way to barren wilderness.
Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert where he stays for 40 days –
40 days, echoing the 40 years that the children of Israel
wandered with Moses in the wilderness after their liberation from slavery in Egypt.

We heard in the reading that Jesus’ time in the wilderness was a time of testing:
we know that there are temptations put before him by the devil.
To avert his hunger, he’s challenged to turn stones to bread;
in his weakened state, he’s challenged to take control over all the kingdoms of the world;
to test God’s protection, he’s challenged to leap from the highest point of the Temple.
These are the obvious temptations outlined in this passage,
however, the greatest temptation that Jesus is faced with is much subtler:
and it concerns his sense of identity.
Probably the most powerful word in the whole story about the
temptations in the wilderness is the word ‘if’.
‘If’
Such a little word, but so much hangs upon it.
As the devil places the various temptations before Jesus, he states:
‘IF you are the Son of God...’
The devil is daring Jesus to prove that he is, in fact, God’s Son.
And of course, were Jesus to accept the challenge
it would demonstrate the seed of a doubt:
is he marked as God’s own?
Is he God’s Son?
If he takes the challenge, then, he fails –
for he has lost his integrity, lost his sense of identity:
but Jesus rises above the challenge put before him,
he quotes scripture and leaves well enough alone.
He doesn’t need to prove who he is: he already knows.

Of the bread into stones: ahhh, how tempting it would be to
not only stave off his own hunger,
but alleviate the hunger of the world...
all who are starving would have bread from stones:
it seems right,
it seems reasonable,
and yet, it’s a quick fix –
it doesn’t address the deeper issues of why folk are starving in the first place;
it side-steps the systems that cause poverty.
In going for the quick fix, while initially folk would be fed, it would prop up unjust and corrupt systems: the poor would remain poor,
the rich would continue to exploit.
To go for the quick fix would undermine
God’s justice, and in the end, not bring about God's kindom for all
in a way that was fair and right.

Of controlling all the kingdoms of the world:
this is very much tied in with identity,
and at the heart of the temptation is a great lie:
a lie about the nature of power,
and a lie about ownership:
Jesus, as Son of God, is already ruler of all –
he does not have to bend the knee to gain control...
But, also, the kind of control implied in the temptation is of power being dictatorship –
power being taken, and used as a weapon to crush and to subjugate.
That kind of power is rejected by Jesus:
that kind of power is not the way of God.

And of testing God – again, identity is at stake here:
is God faithful? To test God would imply that perhaps God is not...

Overall, then, the passage is very much concerned with testing Jesus’ identity:
with the devil, through the challenges, saying:
‘Go on then, just who do you think you are?’
And not in a friendly, enquiring way, but in a way aimed at completely
undermining the mission and ministry of Jesus before it even gets off the ground.

The wilderness is a testing place, a place of transformation;
a place, too, of insight.
From the wilderness, Jesus emerges,
stronger, perhaps with a deeper sense of who he is:
a sense that he is indeed marked as God’s own –
is God’s Son.
Unique and loved by God and called for a specific purpose:
to show, in his life,
in his encounters with people,
in his arrest, crucifixion, and death...
and, in his resurrection
what it is like to be fully alive in God –
and to show humanity a glimpse of glory:
the kindom of heaven on earth.

Identity is a powerful thing.
And we, as followers of Christ, are marked as God’s own.
As we follow the cycle of a church year which is designed to reflect and follow
the story of Jesus, we arrive, every year, at this time of Lent –
where we move into the wilderness,
where we ponder temptation and our identity,
where we re-orient ourselves to God a little more consciously,
as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
Who do we think we are?
The apostle, Paul, reminds us in his Letter to the Romans:
it is as we confess that ‘Jesus is Lord’
that we acknowledge and own our identity in Christ –
it’s the simple, yet profound, statement of faith
which identifies us as marked as God’s own –
‘All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’
And, in this season of Lent, we have the time and space
to reflect on that identity and how we are living as those who are God’s own.
What are those things in our lives that cause us to become distracted –
that make us turn our focus from God?
What does it mean to be a follower of Christ?

In the story of Jesus’ temptation, we read that,
having faced the challenges put before him:
bread
power
faith
and, having stayed true to who he was –
affirming his identity,
keeping his integrity,
that he went out from the wilderness and began living into his calling,
calling disciples, exercising his ministry.
From the wilderness time of reflection, he is moved to action.

Marked as God’s own,
as we move through this season of Lent,
let’s allow ourselves to take up the gift of time –
to reflect on whose we are,
to listen to the still, small voice of God,
to re-orient our faces toward the One
who loves us and who has called us into being.
May this season of Lenten reflection
help us grow in faith and in the knowledge of the One who loves us;
may it move us to live into our own calling,
as we take up anew our identity of Christ’s body in the world.

Writer and social activist, Edwina Gately wrote the following poem,
entitled ‘Called to become’, which I share with you for further
Lenten reflection about your identity as one of God’s own:

You are called to become
A perfect creation.
No one is called to become
Who you are called to be.
It does not matter
How short or tall
Or thick-set or slow
You may be.
It does not matter
Whether you sparkle with life
Or are as silent as a still pool.
Whether you sing your song aloud
Or weep alone in darkness.
It does not matter
Whether you feel loved and admired
Or unloved and alone
For you are called to become
a perfect creation.
No one's shadow
Should cloud your becoming.
No one's light
Should dispel your spark.
For the Lord delights in you.
Jealously looks upon you
And encourages with gentle joy
Every movement of the Spirit
Within you.
Unique and loved you stand.
Beautiful or stunted in your growth
But never without hope and life.
For you are called to become
A perfect creation.
This becoming may be
Gentle or harsh.
Subtle or violent.
But it never ceases.
Never pauses or hesitates.
Only is—
Creative force—
Calling you
Calling you to become
A perfect creation. 

Identity is a powerful thing:
As you travel through this wilderness season of Lent,
remember that you are marked as God’s own,
and He will never leave you, nor forsake you.
And may you have a blessed journey as you seek God, and live in his love.  Amen.

Sermon, Sunday 7 Feb: Transfiguration Sunday

A sermon for Transfiguration Sunday...

Readings: Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Cor 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-43

SERMON ‘Glimpses of glory’
Let us pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts,
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Smoke...
and cloud
and bright, dazzling light.
The glory of God revealed:
shimmering upon the mountain top -
mysterious majesty.
Awe - full...full of awe - in what is the original intent of that word.

To see God, face to face, leaves its mark upon Moses:
when he comes down from the mountain
his face glows with the fire and fabulousness
that is God,
and the people wonder, and are afraid,
and yet, are compelled to listen to him as he shares with them
the conversations that he’s had with God.

To see the glory of Jesus revealed leaves its mark upon Peter, James, and John:
dazzled by the divine identity that is their rabbi, Jesus,
seeing his true glory revealed, and told to ‘listen to him’,
when they come back down from the mountain...they’re reduced to stunned silence.
And even while on the mountain, Peter is reduced, in his shock, to babbling nonsense.
Amazed with what he’s seeing - though not quite comprehending -
he wants to hang on to this experience, this ‘wow’ moment;
to set up tents and stay there:
to hold the moment forever...which is not possible.
And once this fleeting glimpse of glory has gone,
Jesus gathers them up and takes them back down into the valley,
back down into the hustle and bustle
and noise and need
of a different reality.
When they come down from the mountain they’re met by a large crowd,
and the pleas of a father for the healing of his son -
who is presumably living with epilepsy by the description given.

Our mountain top passages are strange:
sometimes, there’s a temptation to skip over them entirely,
to find passages that feel...a little safer, a little more...normal.
How  are we to make sense of them?
...Do we need to make sense of them?
Can we just accept that there is mystery here,
and that, this side of heaven, we can’t ever fully comprehend?
So, I could just finish the sermon here,
and we could get our cup of tea a little earlier than planned!
But given I’ve been away for a few weeks, perhaps that’s cheating.

‘Transfiguration’ - the name given to what happens to Jesus on the mountain top;
the name given to our gospel passage;
the name given to the Sunday before we begin the season of Lent in our church year -
well, if you’re Protestant, at least.
‘Transfiguration’ - What is meant by the word?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as, to:
‘Transform into something more beautiful or elevated’;
while the Mirriam Webster Dictionary states that it’s
a :  a change in form or appearance :  a metamorphosis
b :  an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change
And both make reference to the Christian feast that marks this account of
Jesus on the mountain top with his inner disciples -
Peter, James, and John.

Often, when the account of the Transfiguration is preached,
it’s preached as a corrective to folk who, to use that old saying:
‘are so heavenly-minded, that they’re of no earthly use.’
It’s preached in a way that says,
‘okay, you’ve had your five seconds of ‘wow’, now, best crack on
with bending your shoulder to the wheel of Christian duty.’
It’s preached as if there’s an either/ or:
sometimes discounting the mountain top entirely.
And it’s important that we do take on board that we can’t just pitch our tents
on the mountain top of glory and stay there...
it’s important that we do take on board that, as followers of Jesus,
yes, we do have work to do...
But...
This is not a passage that’s meant to be used as a tool for beating ourselves up,
nor as a long, unending list of ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’,
nor as a tool to measure our spiritual worth by the things we get out and ‘do’ -
It’s not an exercise in holy productivity.

I think the passage is less ‘either/or’ and more ‘both/and’.
The passage is about balance -
about taking time to delight in and be amazed at the God of glory...
about seeing things in a different way because we’ve seen what could be.
It brings focus and meaning to the way we follow in faith
as we move from mountain top to daily life.
Sure, we get a spiritual recharge,
but we gain an understanding of who we are,
and of our calling and mission as the people of God.
In seeing God, face to face,
we see the world,
we see our reality,
and we see the reality of our neighbours
for what it is...
and it motivates our response to bring in God’s kindom.

Reflection on God’s glory evokes glory-inspired reaction... or, it should do.
We need both mountain top and valley, reflection and action;
we need -
to fall on our knees, and worship,
and to get up and stand with our dispossessed neighbour -
to live in the glory of the sacred
and in the good news of the kindom.
And in it all, God is our source, our centre - the ground of our being.
And from that centre, from being grounded in God’s glory, all else flows:
Our ‘doing’ isn’t about gaining gold stars or merit points so that we get to heaven...
our ‘doing’ comes from already ‘being’ -
in God.

On the mountain top - God’s glory was revealed.
Jesus’ divine identity was made known in stunning, eye-splintering light.
Transfigured.
Transformed.
And in the light of God’s self-revealing glory,
both Moses, and the disciples were made more fully aware of themselves -
of the content of their character -
to borrow a phrase from Martin Luther King, a man who had also
been up to the mountain, and seen a vision of God,
and a vision of what God’s kindom looked like.

In the light of God’s self-revealing glory -
in our own glimpses of glory on the mountain top,
what do we see revealed -
of God,
of God’s created world around us,
of ourselves?
Transfiguration?  Transformation?
Romans, chapter 12, reminds us that we're
not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed -
and to be transformers, as we share the light of God’s glory all around us -
for the light of God’s glory is for all:

Preacher, Mary Luti, notes that:
The merciful pleasure God takes in Jesus, 
the joy of God’s goodness that glows 
like a million suns, 
is Peter’s origin and destiny too. 
It is the origin and destiny of the whole creation. 
It is our destiny.
We were all made in ecstasy 
and intended for ecstasy. 
Glory, and its lovely twin, Joy, 
is the permanent subtext of our lives. 
We were called and gathered for praise, thanksgiving, and freedom – 
for visions, for dreams, and for ...worship [Mary Luti]

Filled and inspired by the fire of God’s glory,
our call as followers of Jesus, as God’s people,
is to show, in word, deed, and in awed silence,
that God is at work saving the world.
It is to ‘testify... that grace is even now sparking in the stubble, 
glory is already lighting up the mountain, 
and all people, strangers, kin and enemies, 
are even now being plucked from death, 
included in the sweep of mercy, 
and brought home to sit at the table of peace.
Our calling is ... to see beyond ordinary sight. 
To see the world’s suffering unflinchingly, 
exactly as it is, and to see God already working...
and by our fearless announcement 
bring hope to everyone who swears 
all hope is lost.’ [Mary Luti]

Paraphrasing Martin Luther King, in his ‘Mountain’ speech:
Our calling is to point to ‘streets flowing with milk and honey’
as we witness God’s glory,
and because we have witnessed God’s glory, we are moved
‘to be concerned about the slums down here,
and his children who can’t eat three square meals a day.’

Our calling means we must open ourselves to fire.
To be transfigured, transformed,
as we remember God’s glory and generosity
in the face of a world which tells us that
God’s people are diminishing, failing,
and will soon be a rare, exotic, and possibly, extinct, species.
Our calling is to stand as God’s people and not be afraid -
for we have been to the mountain top, and we have seen God’s glory -
and we are not ashamed of the gospel - the good news.
Good news that transforms the
law of finger pointing, death-giving judgement,
which crushes all, into lives lived fully;
good news where we see glimpses of glory -
where we see what could be and where we work towards
the fulfilment of all things as a community of hope..
Good news that shouts out in joyous proclamation and in quiet whispers,
that God’s love is for all,
that God’s love transfigures and transforms
both the sinner and the sinned against,
mends the broken-hearted,
lifts up the oppressed:
Good news that is life-giving and life-changing -
for it is the news that cries out that
God’s grace abounds.

We can’t stay on the mountain.
But we can’t not go up to the mountain - for there, the glory of God is revealed;
for there, we see God face to face, and hail the power of Jesus’ name;
for there, we are reminded that we are God’s own -
...  God’s own for the world,
called to share in the bringing in
of God’s marvellous light of transformation.
Thanks be to God.

Let’s pray:
Loving God, whose love we live to serve,
so that all the world may see the wonder of it,
take hold of us again as we worship here,
and give us the mind of Christ,
so that we may rediscover your presence
in the community around us,
and recognise your Spirit at work
in every act of human kindness,
in every plea for justice,
in every call to service
and in every challenge to our complacency.
Take hold of us again,
fill us with love for each other
and our neighbours,
and by our faithfulness, let your justice,
joy and peace extend to more and more,
so that the thanks and praise we offer now
may increase, to your glory and our delight,
now and for evermore. Amen.

Pancakes, pancakes, everywhere...

Kicking off Lent with suitable pancake panache, at the manse on Tuesday the 9th of Feb.
Some rather scrummy fillings, and later, some good blethers by the fire.

Reflection Zone: Ash Wednesday

'If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptism on one end and our funeral on another, and we don’t know the distance between the two, then Ash Wednesday is a time when that fabric is pinched in the middle and the ends are held up so that our baptism in the past and our funeral in the future meet. The water and words from our baptism plus the earth and words from our funerals have come from the past and future to meet us in the present. And in that meeting we are reminded of the promises of God: That we are God’s, that there is no sin, no darkness, and yes, no grave that God will not come to find us in and love us back to life. That where two or more are gathered, Christ is with us. These promises outlast our earthly bodies and the limits of time.'

(Nadia Bolz Weber, in 'Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People')

 Just a reminder: a short service,
including musical meditation and the marking of ashes,
will be held in the church at Abington this evening at 7pm.
All are welcome.  

Ash Wednesday 2016

Our Ash Wednesday service will be held in the church at Abington from 7pm, Wed. 10th Feb.
A quiet, reflective time in which to prepare for the season of Lent.

Come, begin the Lenten journey to Jerusalem...

It's Pancake Day...

Pancakes at the Manse... 

between 7 and 9pm, Tuesday 9th Feb.

Come on over, you know you want to :)