Weekly Bulletin for St Mary's and the Villages

Collect for St Luke’s Day

Almighty God, you called Luke the physician,

whose praise is in the gospel,
to be an evangelist and physician of the soul:
by the grace of the Spirit and through the wholesome medicine of the gospel,
give your Church the same love and power to heal; through….

Collect for Trinity 20

God, the giver of life, 

whose Holy Spirit wells up within your Church:
by the Spirit’s gifts equip us to live the gospel of Christ  

and make us eager to do your will,
that we may share with the whole creation the joys of eternal life; through….

Additional Collect

God, our light and our salvation: illuminate our lives,
that we may see your goodness in the land of the living,
and looking on your beauty may be changed into the likeness of Jesus Christ our Lord.  

Today:St Luke the Evangelist/Twentieth Sunday after Trinity
Principal Readings 

St Luke: Isaiah 35.3-6 or Acts 16.6-12a Ps 147.1-7 2 Timothy 4.5-17 Luke 10.1-9
Trinity 20: Isaiah 45.1-7 Ps 96.1-9  1 Thessalonians 1.1-10 Matthew 22.15-22  

Barton

8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 Parish Eucharist
6.00 Said Eucharist  

Villages

9.30 Morning Worship at Bonby

11.00 Horkstow Harvest Thanksgiving

Monday

9.30-11.30 Toddler Time (St Mary's Hall)

7.00 Barton PCC (St Mary's Hall)
Tuesday

6.30 Horkstow PCC (Horkstow Grange)
Wednesday

9.30 Eucharist (St Mary's)

2.00 MU Meeting (St Mary's Hall)
7.30 Ladies’ Group (St Mary's Hall)
Thursday
2-4 Sewing Bee (St Mary's Hall)
Friday
7.00 Choir Practice  (St Mary's Hall)

Next Sunday: 

Last Sunday after Trinity/ Bible Sunday

Principal Readings
Last Sunday after Trinity 

Leviticus 19.1-2, 15-18 Psalm 1 1 Thessalonians 2.1-8 Matthew 22.34-end 

Bible Sunday: 

Nehemiah 8.1-4a [5-6] 8-12 Psalm 119.9-16 Colossians 3.12-17 Matthew 24.30-35  

Barton

8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 Parish Eucharist 

3.00 Civic Service
6.00 All Souls' Tide Memorial Service

Villages

11.00 Eucharist at Worlaby

Reflection: Pigments of the imagination

Ah, St Luke. ‘The Beloved Physician.’ Companion and biographer of St Paul. Evangelist and author of ‘The Acts of the Apostles’. Oh, and artist.

How’s that again?

I’m part way through a fascinating book (John Barton, ‘The History of the Bible, Penguin, not a technical read, but not bedtime reading either). It reminds us that some of what we take as Gospel isn’t in the New Testament at all - Joseph the old man. Mary on a donkey. Three Kings. 

It looks as though in its early decades, Christianity took a much freer approach to what we now call the New Testament than we do. Lots of highly respectable early Christian writers happily quote from all sorts of sources outside our Bible’s pages (thus placing a stick of dynamite under slogans like ‘Scripture is infallible’ – and no bad thing, either).

But back to Luke the Dauber.

So far as I can tell, the tradition comes from the same sort of stuff as gave us those beloved features of the Christmas crib, the main claim being that Luke painted the first ever portrait of Mary the Virgin. And yes, it’s sentimental tripe –  and something else as well.

Early Christians seem to have valued art. Some has survived to our day - paintings in the Catacombs,  mosaics in Roman England. It includes (unlike the art of our Jewish parent and our Islamic sister) the human form. When the Eastern Churches fell out in the eighth and ninth centuries over icons, being able to claim that one of the four Evangelists had been a dabbler in oils must have been a handy bit of ammunition for those in the pro-icon camp.

‘A picture tells a thousand words,’ they say. It’s not a bad jumping-off point for understanding why art’s important. It can get things across which a word description can’t. You can be given a different view of a subject – not necessarily a pleasing one or an easy one, but certainly different.

The artist says to us, ‘Look at this’ –and invites us to see things a bit differently. Think how we say that a good portrait has ‘caught the person’ – there’s a harrowing photo of Josef Goebbels taken by the Jewish photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt (look for it online). It speaks volumes.

Art is the place where imagination and insight look at the world and sees within it hidden beauty – and hidden menace. It’s not all chocolate-box. It’s true of the Arts generally – drama, music, dance, poetry, the lot. It looks thoughtfully at the world, and asks us along to look closer too, perhaps seeing a bit of ourselves reflected in it. Sometimes it will be with delight - and sometimes it will be with uncertainty, or trepidation, or sorrow.

St Luke’s Day is an invitation to us to take seriously art in all its forms as part of the Christian journey. It urges us to see the world’s half-hidden beauty – and where we have marred it. It’s incarnational, about God in the created order and our ambiguous place within it. It doesn’t turn its back on creation, or try to turn human life into a long essay. It was said that if John’s Gospel proclaimed the The Word became Flesh, an awful lot of Christians – in one or another sort of puritanism – tried their best to turn the flesh back into words again. Attitudes like that don’t half concentrate power in the hands of the professionally long-winded!

It’s not just  for theatre critics, or fans of Sister Wendy Beckett, or concert groupies, endlessly talking about it. It’s an invitation, from God, through creative human beings, to use our imaginations, to look properly, to be curious and inventive, to search out the hidden and easily missed places where God and truth and beauty are to be found, even if it starts in something as simple as a good surgical-appliance-pink sunset  (It worked – in the Lakes – for Turner, after all).

The legend of Luke the Artist encourages all of us to live with insight and imagination and appreciation, to allow ourselves to be moved by things which don’t boil down to a couple of dry paragraphs in the style of a health and safety document on scouring powder.  We’re asked to risk becoming more whole, more aware.

If Luke was a Doctor then being a Doctor is about wholeness and human flourishing in all its forms, physical, emotional and spiritual. So, what better day than this to receive God’s gift of both God’s Creation and Human Creativity – and see, not just with the head, but with the heart. Witness what God (and humanity) is up to through new eyes and new ears, including someone else’s – and never forgetting our own.  

For our prayers

Church:

The Anglican Church in Canada. 

On St Luke’s Day, we remember artists, and also all who work in the healing professions and ministries, especially for hospital and hospice chaplains.

Mission to Seafarers.

World: 

Those in authority. 

Those who seek to sow division and mistrust.  

Lebanon, Gaza, Iran, Israel and all the lands of the Middle East. 

Ukraine. Sudan. 

Our Community: 

Parish cycle of prayer:  Voluntary organisations. The Red Cross, and Hospice shops & Sally Anna’s. Voluntary workers in our community. 

Diocesan cycle of prayer:  Lincolnshire Community & Voluntary Services. 

Those in need.
Especially, please pray for:

All who are fleeing war, poverty or climate change. 

People living under the shadow of fear, deprivation or illness; 

the anxious, the lonely and mourners. 

Those struggling to make ends meet. The homeless. 

Those in hospital or who watch with them. 

The Departed. 

Notices.

Horkstow's Harvest Thanksgiving is today at 11.00

PCC's 

Barton Monday 7.00 in the Hall

Horkstow Tuesday 6.30 at Horkstow Grange.

St Mary's Monthly Evening Eucharist: 

Please note that this will be today, 18th at 6 (because of the All Souls Memorial Service the following Sunday).

A reminder that British Summer Time ends on Sunday morning at 2.00. Please remember to put your clocks back an hour, otherwise you could be hanging around outside for the best part of an hour.....  

St Mary's Weekly Envelopes and Gift Aid contact changes.

When Michelle and Dean McManus moved to the depth of Staffordshire back in June Michelle handed all the Gift Aid files and envelope information on to me(Terina otherwise known as Teri). This includes the responsibility for the new weekly envelopes (starting 1 Nov 2026). I have received the new 2026/2027 weekly giving envelopes and after looking at the files popped the boxes with peoples names on them on the table at the back of church.

A lot of you will have already collected your new envelopes, but there are a few on the table at the back of church with names on. Please have a look and collect yours. If you give by envelope and have not found a box with your name on or you wish to start to give by weekly envelopes then please let me, or the treasurer Alan Mabbott know. 

If you have changed your address or tax situation since you signed the Gift Aid form please contact me and I'll sort out updating the files. Alternatively if you have had to start paying tax, and pay an equivalent of at least 25% of your giving please consider Gift Aiding your donation. Just drop me a note/email and I'll get a form to you. This is free to you, no additional payments, just the church being able to claim back an amount from the tax man. 

I attend the 9:30 service mainly and can be contacted on email through stmarysmoney@gmail.com

Terina Hurley