Weekly Bulletin for St Mary's and the Villages

Collect

Almighty God, 

whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace; 

through Jesus Christ your Son….

Additional Collect

Eternal God, 

give us insight to discern your will for us, 

to give up what harms us,
and to seek the perfection we are promised in Jesus Christ our Lord.  

Today: Lent 3

Principal Readings: 

Exodus 17.1-7 Psalm 95 Romans 5.1-11 John 4.5-42
8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 ParishEucharist


8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 ParishEucharist

6.00  Evening Prayer

Barton  

8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 Parish Eucharist
11.00 Together@11
6.00  Evening Prayer 

Monday 

9.30-11.30 Toddler Time (St Mary'sHall)
10.00 Diary Meeting (Vicarage)
Wednesday

9.30 Eucharist (St Mary's)
7.00 Ladies’ Singing Group (St Mary's Hall)
Thursday

2-4 Sewing Bee (St Mary's Hall)

Next Sunday: Lent 4/Mothering Sunday 

Principal Readings 

Lent 4: 1 Samuel 16.1-13 Psalm 23 Ephesians 5.8-14 John 9.1-41  

Mothering Sunday: Exodus 2.1-10 or1 Samuel 1.20-end; 

2 Corinthians 1.3-7 or  Colossians 3.12-17; Luke 2.33-35 or John 19.25-27  

Barton

8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 Parish Eucharist

6.00  Evening Prayer 

Reflection: ‘You’re nearer to God in a…..’

The writer/musician/comedian/hillwalker Mike Harding has made many a wry reflection on human oddities – like why men are obsessed with gadgets – but one which stuck particularly in my mind was his bewilderment at the ‘picnic in a lay-by’. 

He describes the scene as traffic vibration brings about ‘lemon meringue collapse,’ diesel fumes cause everything ‘to taste like an oil-rigger’s glove’ and (best of all) the slipstream from HGVs sends ‘the contents of the luncheon meat sandwiches disappearing down the hard shoulder like a flock of pink bats.’ Delicious….

When push come to shove, the lay-by or supermarket car park can be used for a meal break, and – diesel fumes notwithstanding – food is food, but generally speaking it’s going to be easier to enjoy a meal alfresco without a 44 ton side serving of frozen chips hurtling past.   

When the woman at the well asks Jesus where the proper place to worship God is, there’s a few possible answers. As a Jew, Jesus might be expected to answer ‘The Temple in Jerusalem’ – a ‘rival’ Samaritan Temple had been a bone of contention for centuries, for the official line was that only the Jerusalem Temple was the real thing. 

However, though Jesus does say that salvation comes from God via the Jewish people, he doesn’t actually give a straight answer. Instead he talks about a time coming where the Temple – whichever one is chosen – will be irrelevant, for then people will worship

‘in spirit and in truth’.

Folk have sometimes seized on this line to bolster an argument that ‘God can be worshipped anywhere...’ (which is true, of course) ‘...so all these religious buildings are a waste of space’(which is a bit more questionable). So what is Jesus on about?

John’s Gospel is infuriatingly enigmatic a lot of the time, and this passage is no exception. A line like ‘The time is coming, and is now here’ will tie our brain in knots if we’re not careful. However, what John seems to tell us is going on is that standing before the woman is the One in whom all the promises are fulfilled (there are other passages which do the same sort of thing). It’s bound up with both the present moment and the future – the Passion and Resurrection. 

Caught up in Christ, the people of God get to grips with what the worship in the Temples*promised and pointed towards. It helps explain up that puzzling line‘Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up’ in John 2, for just as the Jews believed it was in the Temple that they drew closest to God, so in Christian thinking, Christ is the Temple par excellence where people draw so close to God he can be touched and, especially in the Eucharist, encountered.

So the Temples (and by extension, places of worship) are now redundant? Well, no.

The late Rabbi Lionel Blue tells how he met and had a conversation with a woman in Gatwick Airport, at the end of which, she suggested they go and pray in the airport chapel. Lionel Blue replied loftily ‘God doesn’t need a chapel’ to which the woman (shades of another woman at the well) retorted, ‘No, he doesn’t – but I do’. That nails the issue to perfection.

Just as Mike Harding observes it’s possible to have a picnic in unlikely places, so God can be talked with in even more unlikely places – on battlefields, to take one example perhaps quite close to our minds at the moment. The Place Set Aside isn’t to protect God from the world, it’s to make the desperately difficult business of praying a little bit easier for us, a few fewer distractions, or (as the poet TS Eliot puts it) simply that sense of being somewhere where ‘prayer has been valid for centuries’. Praying feels like talking to a brick wall from time to time for everyone – at least if we can feel that the stones which surround us are a place where others have thought it worth giving prayer a go despite everything, it might encourage us, too.

And yet more. We thought about how in the Middle Ages and before, human beings could look at the world and see it as a place where God spoke to them, not just in words, but in the glories of creation. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’  Why have we become so allergic to the idea that the very stones of our world, the things which surround us, can speak to us of another dimension? 

The great NT scholar and Methodist minister CK Barrett observes of today’s Gospel that it’s most certainly not about us reaching some ‘higher level of worship’ so that ‘the material aid of Holy Places can be dispensed with.’ It’s about our meeting Truth as found in Jesus Christ and to digest what that means and live it, we need all the help we can get. 

Sometimes we may have to ‘talk with God in a lay-by’ – but never spurn the quiet place round the corner where we might just find it easier to make out what he’s saying.

‘Temples’. 

It may come as a bit of a surprise to discover that's not a typo. 

We know of at least three, a Samaritan one, referenced in this story, the one in Jerusalem whose remains can be seen to this day, and yet another near the present-day Aswan dam in Egypt. 

Diplomatic letters from the Persian Empire tell us it was burned down round about 510 BC, possibly at the instigation of the priests of a nearby Egyptian temple. This might add up, since they were worshipping Khnum, the ram-headed god, and might have been just a little bit narked at what the Hebrews were sacrificing down the road.....

For our prayers

Church:

The Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East. 

On this Feast Day of Bishop Edward King, 

we remember our bishops and our diocese.
Parish cycle of prayer:
Christian stewardship. Our treasurers and Gift Aid co-ordinators.
Christian Aid.

World: 

Those in authority. 

Iran, and all the lands of the Middle East

Ukraine, Sudan. 

Peacekeepers and Peacemakers. 

Those leading in the protection of our planet 

and the resolution of the issues surrounding migrancy.

Our Community: 

Diocesan Cycle of Prayer: The Finance sector

The world’s half-forgotten troubled lands:

Afghanistan, Myanmar.

Those in need. 

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. 

Especially, please pray for: 

Those on our Parish prayer boards

The Departed. 

Notices.

Diocesan Strategy Meeting

You may recall this was postponed because of a bad weather forecast. It’s now hoped to hold it in St Mary’s Hall at 7 on March 16th.

St Mary's Intercessions sheet for March/April– 

There’s a new blank at the back, please fill it in and it will come into use over the next couple of weeks.

Access to St Mary's Hall 

If you're a user, the electronic system for access is now live, and all group leaders have an access fob. 

The door will lock automatically behind someone going in or out. This greatly helps us with conforming to the requirements of Martin's Law in terms of keeping the building secure while it's in use. It also makes it easy to lock yourself out, so fob-holders, don't be tempted to put your fob down inside while you nip out to get something from the car!

To leave the building simply press the green exit button by the side of the door. Do not use the emergency button which has a plastic cover, since that would mean someone coming out to re-set the system before anything can lock again!