Flower Festival: Words in Bloom

Last minute touches being made to some of the floral displays at St Catherine's Wickford in preparation for this weekend's Flower Festival. Open from 9.30 am tomorrow, with cream teas served on Saturday. Displays from Hilltop Infant School, Wickford CofE School, Runwell Art Club, Floral Art, and Parent & Toddlers, among others.

Words in Bloom: A Literary Flower Festival, 14th, 15th, 16th July, St Catherine's. Featuring local clubs, schools & a display of work by the Runwell Art Club. Why not visit the Flower Festival and then go to the Hall for refreshments? Cream Tea Day, Saturday 15 July from 9.30am.

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For The Beauty Of The Earth.
 

Flower Festival: Words In Bloom and Cream Tea Day

 

Words in Bloom: A Literary Flower Festival
14th, 15th, 16th July
in aid of the St Catherine's Tower Restoration Fund

Featuring local clubs, schools and a display of work by the Runwell Art Club.
Donate a pew end in memory of a loved one for £5. Contact Caroline 07821 195388.

CREAM TEA DAY
SATURDAY 15TH JULY IN ST CATHERINE’S CHURCH HALL from 9.30am

Rodda’s clotted cream, Tiptree jam, freshly baked scones and tea or coffee for just £5 (Other cakes will be available)
All proceeds to St Catherine’s Restoration Fund - donations can be made via the QR Code below:

Why not come and visit the Flower Festival in the church and then come to the Hall for delicious refreshments?

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Julie & Buddy Miller - Holding Up The Sky.

Come as a child

Here is the reflection I shared in today's Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford:

The poem called ‘Song of Childhood’ by Peter Handke which features in the film Wings of Desire captures, for me, something of the openness of childhood when the world lies open before us and we encounter it without cynicism or prior knowledge. The big questions of life are in front of us but we have yet found answers or the pretence that we can know all the answers.

In the poem the child has retained that openness to life and existence as she or he has grown but in our gospel reading (Matthew 11. 25-30) today we hear of people who have not. When Jesus speaks about the wise and the intelligent, he is speaking of those who think they already have knowledge of what God wants. They are those who cannot receive the new thing that God wants to give because they think they already know all there is to know. As a result, they are closed off to what God wants to share.

Jesus says that those able to receive are like children. They are not worldly wise or information wise and, as a result, they are open to what is new and what is revealed. This is how we need to be if we are to receive what God has revealed to us in Jesus.

Tom Wright says this: “Jesus had come to know his father the way a son does: not by studying books about him, but by living in his presence, listening for his voice, and learning from him as an apprentice does from a master, by watching and imitating. And he was now discovering that the wise and learned were getting nowhere, and that the ‘little people’ – the poor, the sinners, the tax collectors, ordinary folk – were discovering more of God, simply by following him, Jesus, than the learned specialists who declared that what he was doing didn’t fit with their complicated theories.”

Sister Corita Kent has described the way in which children look and learn:

“Ask [a] child to come from the front of the house to the back and closely observe her small journey. It will be full of pauses, circling, touching and picking up in order to smell, shake, taste, rub, and scrape. The child’s eyes won’t leave the ground, and every piece of paper, every scrap, every object along the path will be a new discovery.

It does not matter that his is all familiar territory – the same house, the same rug and chair. To the child, the journey of this particular day, with its special light and sound, has never been made before. So the child treats the situation with the open curiosity and attention that it deserves.

The child is quite right.”

Sister Corita went on to argue that through practice adults can learn once again to see as children do. She suggested that the kind slow looking practised by children, like prayer and art, enables us to view life without being distracted and allows us to put all our attention on a special area for a time. When we slow ourselves and focus our attention in this way we begin to receive what the world around has to show us; we notice things that others don’t and come to see that ordinary things are wondrous. The art historian John Ruskin claimed that the power of seeing in this way is ‘the teaching of all things,’ and that ‘To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion – all in one.’

This is a form of prayer taking us to a place and space full of delight and wonder; prayer, poetry and prophecy. Children naturally see this through the attention that they pay to the world around them, until we, as adults, teach them otherwise. Like the poet Thomas Traherne, we need to unlearn the dirty devices of this world in order to become, as it were, a little child again that we may enter into the Kingdom of God.

Unless you come,
come as a child,
not grasping but trusting,
not arrogantly but humbly,
not resisting but accepting,
not feebly but vigorously,
not giving but receiving,
not self-centred but God-centred,
not teaching but feeding,
not gaining life but losing life,
not leaving but returning,
not closed, but open.

Unless you come,
come as a child,
you cannot enter
the kingdom of God.

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Van Morrison - Song Of Being A Child.

Restful service

Here's the sermon I shared at St Catherine's Wickford this morning:  

A yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to the plough or cart that they are to pull. It doesn’t sound like something which is light or easy to wear, so in what sense might Jesus be using this farming image to talk about rest for those who come to him (Matthew 11. 28 – 30)?

Jesus would have been very familiar with ploughs and yokes as both are implements made by carpenters. Two animals, usually either oxen or donkeys, would wear the yoke and pull the plough guided from behind by the farmer. Their task was to break up the ground for sowing.

Jesus was speaking in a context where the Pharisees took the 613 commandments in the Torah – the Law of Moses – which were to do with all aspects of life - shaving, tattoos, clothing, work, food and drink, farming, money and so on – and multiplied these commandments by creating detailed instructions about the ways in which each of these commandments was to be kept. Keeping all of these additional rules was indeed a heavy burden for all who tried to do so.

Jesus, by contrast, taught that love was the fulfilling of the Law. Instead of keeping the endless detail of the regulations created by the Pharisees, Jesus said that we should simply love God, ourselves and our neighbours and that all the Law of Moses is actually designed to that end. This was liberating teaching which brought rest for those weighed down by the burden of trying to keep hundreds of commandments and thousands of additional regulations. On the basis of Jesus’ liberating teaching, St Augustine was able to write: ‘Love, and do what you will’ because when the ‘root of love be within’ there is nothing that can spring from that root, but that which is good.

I wonder whether you are ready to leave behind the heavy burden of rules and regulations in order to be accepted or justified and instead open your life to the liberating and restful law of love.

The oxen or donkeys undertaking the ploughing were guided by the farmer using the yoke. As they followed that guidance the yoke sat lightly on their shoulders and the ploughing proceeded apace. If they ignored the guidance of the farmer and pulled in different directions then the yoke would feel heavy and would chafe the neck causing sores or other injuries.

By using this image Jesus is arguing that we have choices about the way in which we live life. We can go off in our own direction pulling away from other people and from God but, when we do so, we are pulling against the way of life for which we have been designed and created. It is when we submit to God’s way of life – the law of love - that we find rest through being in the right place at the right time and living in the right way. When this happens we have a sense of everything coming together and fitting into place which is both profoundly satisfying and restful.

I wonder whether you are prepared to surrender control of your life to the one who created you in all your uniqueness and explore instead how to live in the way for which human beings were created; to live according to the law of love.

Finally, there is the task to which we are called. This image of pairs of oxen ploughing with the use of a yoke fits closely with the task Jesus gave to his disciples when he sent them out in pairs to go to villages and towns ahead of him in order to prepare people for his arrival when he would sow among them the seed of the Word of God.

He said, therefore, that this task - the role of a disciple – although it seems challenging to take up, is actually hugely rewarding as well as being restful in the sense that we are doing God’s will and it is God who does the work, not us. We read in Luke 10, for example, that the seventy disciples Jesus sent out in pairs returned from their mission with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!”

I wonder whether you are prepared to undertake the challenging, yet strangely restful, task of a disciple of Jesus; that of preparing the ground by sharing the message of love, so that others might receive the Word of God?

Jesus said: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” 

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Andre Crouch - The Promise.

Windows on the world (433)

 London, 2023

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Ed Kowalczyk - In Your World.

You'll never walk alone

Here's the reflection I shared this morning at St Andrew's Wickford:

You’ll Never Walk Alone, along with other songs from musicals, has been included as a hymn in the BBC’s hymn book. Ian Barclay commenting on this in The Guardian wrote that the Songs of Praise programme producers had come to realise that secular songs from shows have taken on some on the status of folk hymns, addressing the spiritual and pastoral needs of many people. Taken out of its context in Carousel, where it is sung by a dead father who has returned to life for one day to the daughter he never knew, it can be sung as a statement of belief that, as Psalm 23 states, God will be with us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death or through the storms of life.

"When you walk through the storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark

Walk on, through the wind
Walk on, through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone"

Our two readings today (Genesis 21.5, 8-20 & Matthew 8: 28 – end) speak about two storms and the different ways in which God is with people in those storms. The storm in the story of the two men in Gadara is not external but internal. Many of us experience periods of mental ill health when we feel overwhelmed by feelings and emotions, fears and anxieties which rage inside and threaten to overwhelm us. For some of us, the storm of those emotions becomes a more permanent feature of our lives and begins to affect the way in which we relate to others and the extent to which we are able to participate in society. For some, too, the things we use initially to bring some relief from those emotions – drink, drugs, sex, violence – also end up controlling our reactions and responses and ultimately change who we are as people. The two men in this story seem to have been experiencing that kind of internal storm.

The storm for Hagar is firstly an experience of rejection, as Abraham sends her and her son Ishmael away from the family and secondly of wilderness, as the two of them wander in the desert with no help and increasingly little chance of survival.

But in both stories God was there in the storm. The men in Gadara are released from their internal storms, while Ishmael and Hagar find water and a new place to live. God goes with us through the storms of life until we find ourselves on the other side. That is the promise of You’ll never walk alone and of Psalm 23; even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for God is with us; his rod and your staff, they comfort us.

God can release the internal storm from with us. In times of crisis and distress we often keep our emotions bottled up inside us until eventually they explode in anger and violence. God can be the escape valve, the person that we can always turn to, the one who is always there to listen and with whom we can pour out all those pent-up emotions releasing the storm within.

God can be the one who leads to refreshment and new possibilities when it seems as though everything around us is barren and wherever we look there is no sign of hope on the horizon.

We may be in the middle of some storm ourselves today as we sit and listen. We may need the internal storm in our lives to be released in peace. We may have come through storms in our lives but still be bearing the scars or wondering where God was at that time. We may need to take this message to our hearts now because there are storms on the horizon. If that is so, we need to know in our hearts that we do not walk alone. That if we look for him we will see God going with us through the storm. That if we trust him we will come to that place of peace where the storm clouds have blown over and we see the golden sky and hear the sweet, silver song of the lark.

Let us pray that we will recognise God with us in the storms of our lives asking for the faith to come through the storm, for release of our internal storms, and for the stilling of our external storms. 

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Katherine Jenkins - You'll Never Walk Alone.

Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome

Here's the sermon I shared at St Catherine's Wickford this morning:

Hospitality is a bedrock of cultures and countries across the Middle East. Everywhere travellers go in the Middle East, they are overwhelmed by hospitality. This culture derives in part from the experience of nomadic peoples in desert landscapes where one had to travel significant distances to find water. To refuse travellers refreshment in such places would have been to let them die which would have threatened the openhandedness that nomadic peoples must depend on to survive. For Jews, Christians and Muslims, the story of Abraham receiving three travellers who turned out to be divine was key, as he was seen to have entertained angels unawares. This story is then contrasted with the sinful response of the people of Sodom to the same three travellers; instead of offering hospitality, the people of Sodom seek to abuse them.

The rabbis teach that Abraham left off a discussion with God to greet these guests when they arrived at his camp. He ran to greet them during the hottest day on record and served them the best food he could put together. Based on this example, the rabbis say that taking care of guests is greater than receiving the divine presence. The fundamental wickedness of Sodom was their hostility to vulnerable strangers and the violence they enacted on the innocent. The people of Sodom had a moral responsibility to offer protection and hospitality to vulnerable strangers, as all the ancient laws of the East demanded, and they stand in scripture as an example of extreme wickedness because they attacked and abused those they should have protected.

Jesus called his 12 disciples to an itinerant ministry which involved going ahead of him to prepare people for his coming and his message. As a result, they took nothing unnecessary with them, they weren’t distracted by small talk along the way, and they welcomed hospitality when they received it but simply moved on to the next place and the next person whenever they were not made welcome. We’ve been listening to and reflecting on the instructions Jesus gave to his disciples in our Gospel readings for the past couple of weeks (Matthew 10). This passage (Matthew 10.40-42) comes as the conclusion to Jesus’ teaching. His concluding words are all about the importance of welcome and they are, therefore, based on Middle-Eastern understandings of hospitality.

Before the disciples go Jesus warns that those who fail to welcome them are not only turning God’s messengers away from their homes and lives but God himself too. As he says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me” and earlier, “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” When the disciples return to him, he rejoices at the welcome which they have received and the sense that the Gospel has been received from “the diverse and motley group he has chosen as his associates.”

The emphasis in these passages is on the hospitality provided by others to Jesus’ disciples. We tend to think of ourselves as being called like them to take the good news of Jesus to others, so we naturally identify ourselves with the disciples in the passage and think about the response we receive from others when they know that we are Christians. But to really get the force and challenge of what Jesus is saying in this passage we have to put ourselves in the shoes of those the disciples went to and ask ourselves how well do we receive others? The challenge in this passage is about the quality of the welcome provided to others. The great sin here is to be inhospitable and to be inhospitable is actually to reject the divine in our lives.

So, how do we rate on that basis? We think of ourselves as a friendly, welcoming church but it’s important not rest on our laurels and instead ask ourselves how we can be more welcoming, more hospitable to those who come for the first time and those that we don’t know well. When we are here in church, let us make those people our priority, always seeking to speak first to those we don’t know, don’t know well or haven’t spoken to for some time.

Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York has written: "Nurturing a generous attitude of welcome to newcomers is something that needs to be worked at over many years … Welcome is not just what we do when someone comes through the door. It is an attitude which seeks to get inside the shoes of the other person so that they can be welcomed and accompanied at every point of their journey."

We get six mentions of welcome in the three verses that form today’s short reading which suggests the importance that welcome of others held for Jesus. We see this, too, in his teaching that we should love our enemies and bless those that curse us. We see it in his statement that those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked and visit those in prison are doing those things to Jesus himself. We see it, too, in his concern to be with those who were excluded from worship and society; those with disabilities, tax collectors, publicans, prostitutes and others. In Jesus, God became one with those who are rejected by others, but the rejected one became the cornerstone of our faith. The experience of Jesus provides a model for ministry. In Jesus, we see that God is most clearly seen among those who are marginalised or rejected (whether by Church or state) and, therefore, those on the edge are the gifts from God which have the most potential to renew us.

Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields says: ‘In his crucifixion [Jesus] was rejected by the builders – yet in his resurrection he became the cornerstone of forgiveness and eternal life. That’s what ministry and mission are all about – not condescendingly making welcome alienated strangers, but seeking out the rejected precisely because they are the energy and the life-force that will transform us all. Every minister, every missionary, every evangelist, every disciple should have these words over their desk, their windscreen, on their screensaver, in the photo section of their wallet, wherever they see it all the time – the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. If you’re looking for where the future church is coming from, look at what the church and society has so blithely rejected. The life of the church is about constantly recognising the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrating the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives. That’s what prophetic ministry means.’

Whoever welcomes, welcomes Jesus and welcomes God. If we truly want to see and hear God, then all we need to do is to welcome those we encounter as we will see the face of God in them. God calls us not just to be those who follow him but also to be those sent out to prepare the way for him to come into the lives of others and challenges us, too, to be those who are always welcoming, always hospitable towards others.

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Little Richard - Great Gosh A'Mighty.