Weekly Bulletin for St Mary's and the Villages

Collect 

Almighty God,
whose blessed apostles Peter and Paul glorified you in their death as in their life:
grant that your Church, inspired by their teaching and example, 

and made one by your Spirit, 

may ever stand firm upon the one foundation, 

Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who….

Collect  (Trinity 2)

Lord, you have taught us that all our doings without love are nothing worth:
send your Holy Spirit
and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtues,
without which whoever lives is counted dead before you.
Grant this for your only Son Jesus Christ’s sake,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Additional Collect (Trinity 2)

Faithful Creator,
whose mercy never fails:
deepen our faithfulness to you
and to your living Word,
Jesus Christ our Lord.   

Today: St Peter & St Paul/Trinity  2

Barton:

8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 Parish Eucharist

11-2.30 Mary Robinson's 90th Birthday celebration (St Mary's Hall)

No Evening Service

Villages:

11.00 Eucharist at Saxby

Principal Readings: 

Acts 12.1-11 Psalm 125 2 Timothy 4.6-8, 17, 18 Matthew 16.13-19  

This Week

Monday

9.30-11.30 Toddler Time (St Mary's)

2.00   Barton Standing Committee (Vicarage)

5.00   Ferriby PCC

Tuesday

9.30-11.30 Clergy Chapter)  (St Mary's Hall)
6.00   Horkstow PCC

Wednesday

9.30 Eucharist  (St Mary's)

Thursday

10.30 Funeral of Peter Evison (St Mary's)

1.30 Sewing Bee (St Mary's Hall)

Saturday
10.30-12.30 Study Group (St Mary's Hall)
4.00   Afternoon Tea (St Mary's Hall)

Next Sunday: Trinity  3

Barton:

8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 Parish Eucharist

6.00 Choral Evensong

Villages:

11.00 Eucharist at Bonby

Principal Readings: 

Isaiah 66.10-14 Psalm 66.1-8 Galatians 6.[1-6] 7-16 Luke 10.1-11, 16-20  

For our prayers

Church: 

The Church in Myanmar (Burma).  

The Churches of the Middle East. 

Our parishes deanery & diocese at this time of change.  

World:

The governments & peoples of Gaza, Israel, Iran, Ukraine. 

Peacekeepers and Peacemakers. 

Those in authority. 

Those leading in the protection of our planet and the resolution of the issues surrounding migrancy.

 
Our Community: 

Those undertaking important examinations.

Parish cycle of prayer: New residents. The newly retired. 

Diocese: Young Peoples’ uniformed organisations

The world’s half-forgotten troubled lands- 

Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan, Haiti.

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.
 

The Departed.

The dead of the continuing violence in the Middle East.

Meditation: A show of force

The Gospel reading for Trinity 2 – shuffled from view by today’s celebration of Peter & Paul – makes for challenging reading, and any parson sitting down and recommending Jesus’ suggestion that disciples should ‘leave the dead to bury their dead’  would, at best, receive a few words of correction from the Bishop and at worst never be seen in a dog-collar again. Cries of ‘But it’s biblical’  aren’t like to cut much ice, and casual callousness isn’t usually a quality that endears anyone to those on the sharp end of suffering.

But the hard saying squats there, whether we like it or not, and it’s uncomfortable.   

The passage as a whole isn’t an easy one (Luke 9.51–end). Jesus is not welcome among the Samaritans; he tells one would-be follower to expect a life of homelessness; he tells another that to go and say his farewells to his family would disqualify him from following Jesus. This is harsh and unpleasant stuff.

It’s one of the strange things about the popular understanding of Christianity that somehow we’re supposed to believe it will buy us power and privilege, not to mention safety from disaster, be they natural or human in origin. I’ve bashed on before about the willingness of some Christian writers to insist on a link between misfortune and sinfulness, and between wealth and being in God’s good books. TS Eliot exposes that sloppy thinking for what it is when he insists ‘there shall be Martyrs and Saints’ in his poem ‘Choruses from the Rock’:

It is hard for those who have never known persecution,
And who have never known a Christian,
To believe these tales of Christian persecution.
It is hard for those who live near a Bank
To doubt the security of their money….

Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.
She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they would like to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is will shadow
The man that pretends to be.
And the Son of Man is crucified always
And there shall be Martyrs and Saints.  

This Gospel passage sets the scene for the reality of discipleship – that the faith will triumph, not by power, nor by violence, but by vulnerability and humility. The only security Jesus offers is that of being his companion;  when (foreshadowing of the taunt at the Crucifixion “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.’) he is urged to revenge himself against the inhospitable villagers, he simply continues on his way.  

People cannot be strong-armed into faith, nor bribed by false offers of a soft life; nor be reassured that they can continue the old ways as well as taking on the new. It’s uncomfortable stuff which goes against Good Common Sense and challenges just about everything we’ve been taught about power and influence.

In a society where increasingly we’re persuaded that ‘we’re worth it’ –usually designed to sell us stuff we didn’t know existed, that we didn’t realise we needed, and we never imagined that we wanted – this call to vulnerability and self- sacrifice is shocking, even ridiculous. It’s certainly not easy, and I guess that the early followers of Jesus found it hard going too. I’m not very good at it myself, and there’s a fair chance you’re struggling too.

But what may be more important it that, even imperfectly, we stand for a different way of looking., a different way of being. Most provokingly of all, we hold up a mirror to the world not just about real power, but about how God is to be found, not in the big stick, but in the one who refrains from punishment, and walks quietly on. The God who always gives people another chance, another go at being their best selves some other day.  A God who seeks joyful volunteers, not sullen conscripts.  

Jesus doesn’t call us to be callous or cruel – but he calls us to be prepared for the demands of discipleship as we become his co-workers in bringing the world back to God.  

The reward isn’t safety, not recognition, nor prosperity  - it’s to be part of the Good News in the time and place where we are. What, I wonder, does that mean for each of us on a hot June day when the world seems too be going mad?

David

Notices.

Thanks to all who supported and who laboured on the Lydian Choir performance last Sunday  

Study Group.

It’s often not realised that the decisions about which writings were going to form the Christian Scriptures took many decades to be agreed. Our next study session is on July 5 in St Mary’s Hall, 10-30-12.30, and we’ll be looking at the thinking and occasional skulduggery behind the formation of the Christian New Testament. Bring a Bible if you can(language entirely up to you!).

Ferriby PCC meets on Monday evening at 5.00 at Manor Farm

Horkstow PCC meets on Tuesday evening at 6 at Horkstow Grange

Music Together, 7.00 July 12th at St Mary's. A programme of classic Assembly Songs & Hymns – please see the posters for more details.

Revd Julie writes:

​Hi everyone;

Next Sunday 29 June, at about 9am, I will be skipping church to attempt to swim the Humber Estuary supported and in support of Humber Rescue.  I have never done anything like it before having only been open water swimming for a year, so it also quite a personal challenge. In trying to follow the Humber Swim, the tidal waters play a part, meaning the distance is anywhere from 1.5km-3.5km to get across (up to 2 hours in the water without a wetsuit!).  So I could end up in Goole or worse still Holland! If I am honest, when I committed to this earlier this year, it was a way to commit to my personal physical and mental health away from ministry, because I would have no choice but to train, and I needed to be declared medically fit to be able to do it!

Please would you kindly support me in raising money for Humber Rescue, who do an amazing job here on our doorstep, by sponsoring me..   You can give viahttps://www.justgiving.com/page/julie-wearing-1

Afternoon Tea at St Mary's on July 5– there’s a sign-up form at the back of Church.

St Mary's Hall Appeal has reached the Tesco blue token system. Please put your blue tokens in our slot by the end of the month, and encourage other people to do so too.