Weekly Bulletin for St Mary's and the Villages

Collect

Almighty God, whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life:
raise us, who trust in him, from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,
that we may seek those things which are above, where he reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Additional Collect

Risen Christ, faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock, 

to the glory of God the Father.  

Today: Easter 4
Principal Readings 

 Acts 2.42-end Psalm 23 1 Peter 2.19-end John 10.1-10  

Barton

8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 Parish Eucharist

6.00  Said Eucharist with hymns

Monday

9.30-11.30 Toddler Time (St Mary's Hall)
7.00 Deanery Synod, Scawby
Tuesday

2-4 Bereavement Group at Val Dukes’ 4a Caistor Rd
Wednesday

9.30 Eucharist (St Mary's)
Thursday

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

7.00 Choir Practice (St Mary's Hall)

Easter 5
Principal Readings 

Acts 7.55-end Psalm 31.1-5,15-16* 1 Peter 2.2-10 John 14.1-14   

Barton

8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 Parish Eucharist 

6.00  Evensong

Reflection: Riggwelted

Real Ale drinkers will almost recognise the word from the Black Sheep Brewery’s list of delectable beers, and, such are the glories of the English language, that the word isn’t actually English at all, but the Old Scandinavian, ’Rigg’ meaning ‘back’. (Up in our part of the world there’s lots of words inherited from Scandinavia, like ‘stee’, ‘ladder’ and ‘gate,’ ‘road’ – but I digress.) 

However, sheep farmers in the Yorkshire Dales are likely to know the world quite well, since a sheep who is ‘riggwelted’ has somehow got onto its back, and, rather like a beetle, cannot get right way up again without assistance.

Today, in case you’d not guessed, is ‘Good Shepherd Sunday,’ and the Gospel reading makes it perfectly clear why. But let’s step back for a moment from Jesus’ role in this, and ask what we make of the sheep?

They get a bad press in some ways – silly, walking disasters, always wandering off and getting eaten (well usually only once per sheep). To be called ‘sheep-like’ is hardly a compliment, is it, and many of us have passed sad little piles of bones and rotted fleece up in the hills and mountains of Britain.

I can’t help but feel that the sheep is being rather talked down here. They can survive bitter weather out in the open, have the wit to gather together to keep warm and find shelter in foul conditions.  They may never win a Nobel Prize, but the average nuclear physicist wouldn’t last long on his or her own on the winter fells. The Herdwick is so attuned to its environment that it even knows its own area of the hills like the back of its… foot?

Except when they’re riggwelted, legs in the air, helpless and defenceless.

The sheep/shepherd image is a strong one in Scripture and the Christian tradition ‘ Pastor,’ after al, means ‘shepherd.’ However, if we have distorted ideas about either the shepherd or the sheep, the consequences aren’t helpful.

For example, if we have an idea of sheep as helpless, daft and generally in need of firm handling, then we’ll probably get a shepherd who is most definitely in control, has very firm ideas about what the sheep need, and will have a few well-trained dogs around to make sure they know their place. We don’t have to look far in the Church to see examples of this ‘heavy pastoring’ (yes, the churches which encourage it do call it that!). The sheep must be controlled, confined, told where to go and what to do, ‘for their own sake’, to ‘keep them safe’.

The problem is, if we take that on board, the pastoral relationship is wide open to abuse, where the voices of the ones being pastored are always to be ignored because ‘the shepherd knows best’. In that sort of set-up, which we’ve seen in denominations mainstream and oddball over the years, the flock must remain docile, incurious, unquestioning, without opinions, and the power of the shepherd is everything. And even more worrying, because the shepherd of that particular flock claims that they’re acting as Jesus’ under-shepherd, then Jesus presumably must want us to be docile, obedient and never have a thought of our own too.

If we return to our Herdwick sheep, though, and start from a real animal, not one from a story-book, we meet a creature capable of looking after itself most of the time, one at home in its environment, meeting the challenges of its life without being mollycoddled or penned it. It roams widely because it’ knows its countryside,. The shepherd’s job becomes one of keeping an eye open for those things which are too much for the sheep – the predator, or illness, or just finding itself knocked off its feet and unable to stand upright again.

If that’s the sort of sheep to be shepherded, there’s a different type of shepherd needed, one who knows that there are things the sheep are perfectly capable of managing on their own. Guidance, intervention, help, support – yes, they might be called for from time to time, but never forgetting that, by and large, they manage pretty well exploring the world around them without being told what to do.

Again, if that’s the way we look at how we pastor people, we end up with a different sort of Church, where help and support is given when it’s needed, not because the shepherd feels like throwing his weight around. Going further, if that’s what the under-shepherd looks like to us, so then will  the Good Shepherd - not an overbearing control-freak, but one who, yes, knows our weakness, but also our strengths, abilities and gifts, and encourages them.   

We’ve all been riggwelted, and know how much we need that sort of shepherd to come along and help us back on our feet. Christ does for us what we cannot manage to do for ourselves – but the rest of the time he rejoices in our curiosity, in our adventure and in our exploration of the life we have been given. Most of the time we’re for roaming the hills, not shut up in the sheep pen.- that’s what Good Shepherding looks like.

For our prayers

Church:

The Church in Nigeria  

Christians in the Middle East. 

Our keeping of the Easter season.  

Our new PCCs and churchwardens

World: 

Those in authority. 

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

Ukraine, Sudan, Mexico. 

Peacekeepers and Peacemakers. 

Those leading in the protection of our planet 

and the resolution of the issues surrounding migrancy. 

Our Community: 

Parish cycle of prayer: 

Emergency services. Those who serve in the armed forces. 

Diocesan Cycle of Prayer:  Social Services

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.

Bereavement Group

Our meeting this Tuesday will be at Val Dukes’ house, 4a Caistor Road, the Hall being not ideally suited to any sort of quiet reflection at the moment!

Deanery Synod meets 7 tomorrow evening at St Hybald’s Church, Scawby.

West Lindsey Open Churches

The weekend of 9th-10th May is the first of the two Open Churches weekends this year – a chance for a pleasant excursion around the Lincolnshire countryside. Not all churches by any means are easy to visit, so if (for example) you want to compare our royal coats of arms/hatchments/rogues’ gallery with that at (say) St Edith’s,  Coates – here’s your chance.