Weekly Bulletin for St Mary's and the Villages

Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to that which is before,
we may run the way of your commandments and win the crown of everlasting joy;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns….

Additional Collect

God, our judge and saviour,

teach us to be open to your truth and to trust in your love,
that we may live each day with confidence in the salvation 

which is given through Jesus Christ our Lord.  

Today:  Trinity18/Michaelmas

Barton

8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 Sung Eucharist

3.00 Civic Service

Villages

9.30 Eucharist at Ferriby

4.30 Bonby Harvest & Animal Blessing

Readings:   

Revelation 12.7-12 Psalm 103.19-22 Hebrews 1.5-14 John 1.47-51   

This Week

Monday

7.00 Saxby PCC 

Wednesday

9.30 Eucharist  MU Corporate (Barton)  

Friday

12.30 Eucharist with ministry of Healing and Wholeness (Barton)

Saturday

6.00 Barton Harvest Supper

Next Sunday: Trinity 19

Barton

8.00 Said Eucharist
9.30 Sung Eucharist

6.00 Songs of Praise for Harvest

Villages

11.00 Eucharist at Bonby

3.00 Ferriby Harvest

Readings:   

Joel 2.21–27  1 Timothy 6.6–10  Matthew 6.25–33

Meditation: Scandalous Conduct

The News of the World and its regular supply of scandal to lighten our Sabbaths may have gone, but there’s still plenty of it about – whether it’s the Infected Blood Scandal, or the Post Office Horizon Scandal, or any one of a number of other deeply concerning things which have come to light over the past few years. But what exactly is a scandal when it’s at home?  

I raise this because the Gospel reading for Trinity 18 contains a scandal – or rather a warning about scandal (Mark9.42). The translation we have in our Bibles ‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones’ who believe in me‘ (literally ‘If anyone should cause one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble)  expresses a variation on the Greek work skandalon,‘a trap, a snare.’ A scandal, therefore, is something which snares, traps or entangles someone else, denying them freedom, or justice, or their rights. To act in such a way as to trap someone or bring them low is, well, scandalous.

But what about ‘bringing down the little ones who believe’? What does that mean?

For a start, it’s not about the kiddies. It’s not likely Jesus was pointing to small people as the ones who mustn’t have their faith wrecked. (We don’t know much about children within the earliest Christian communities: not even if the first Christians baptised children or not, a lot depends on what ‘household’(Acts 18.8) means when it talks about the conversion of one Crispus ‘and all his household’. Nope, it’s not about showing the Sunday-school class fossils.

There’s a better candidate. There’s a long tradition in the Bible about God’s concern for the anawim - the poor, not necessarily lacking in money but certainly lacking in clout. Widows and orphans are a good example, but the Psalms are full of examples of those who are insignificant and easily ignored getting short shrift from the powerful. The ones who don’t matter. ‘Collateral damage.’  

But what might a scandal or a stumbling-block look like?

When I was teaching RE back in the days of the Regency, I remember frequent runs-in with parents who were unhappy our RE course. It wasn’t because we presented religion as an important part of the human story; what we were doing wrong was failing to fall in with the personal religious views of the parents, like the world had been created in 6 days, or that the Pope was Antichrist, or that women should keep silent in Church

The complaint was that we were causing our pupils ‘to lose faith’ - so the entire RE department of Bishopsgarth School (a potential monk, a potential vicar and a Methodist Lay Preacher) were ripe candidates for the millstone-round-neck treatment.  

But is this really what Jesus was on about? I think not, and for two very good reasons.

First, over the years I bet that most of us have bumped into folk whose problem with Christianity is that they’ve been told it’s an either/or choice. Either Religion or Science. A believer must accept Adam and Eve, and reject evolution,  dismiss the story told in the rocks or an eternity of smouldering awaits (and there’s a particular sort of scientist who thinks like that too, but from the other end –‘how can any self-respecting scientist be a believer?’).

For the life of me, I can’t see how teaching or preaching that God speaks to us through the world of science (and history, and literature, and art, and music and…) is a ‘scandal’. Quite the opposite, it means that we don’t have to live in fear of the next issue of New Scientist, just in case it ‘disagrees’ with the Bible/Vicar/ chap holding a placard in Louth Market Place..  

No, the stumbling-blocks are somewhere else entirely.

We’re all used to being told ‘The Church is full of hypocrites,’ to which I usually reply, ‘Well, there’s always room for one more,’ (and so far I’ve got a way with it teeth intact). If the church is full of people who know their weaknesses and are trying hard to do something about them, I reckon that’s a pretty laudable thing to be about.   

But the comment’s not without a sharp edge: folk recognise if Christians simply aren’t ‘what it says on the tin.’ What offends and causes stumbling is when we pay lip service to a God of compassion, love and justice, and by the way we live, speak and shop witness to something very different. Or, recruiting God to support our own cause, we preach a faith which thinks us better Christians if we (say) believe Elisha made an iron axe-head float (II Kings 6), but allows us to walk by on the other side, or wage war on a neighbouring country, or pick and choose our Scriptures and traditions to our own advantage. Who would want to follow such a pernickety, obsessive, tunnel-visioned God as that?

Today’s Gospel calls us, not to be perfect – that belongs to God – but to be people trying to live the Gospel, to be Good News, to be people of integrity, disagreeing in love, not trench-warfare, and alive to the agonies of the world., demonstrating God to those without clout.

Otherwise, surely the millstone awaits both us and our small-minded, fearful religions….

David

For our prayers

Church:

The Church in Pakistan.

 Our parishes, deanery & diocese at a time of change.

World: 

 All in authority. 

All trying to resolve the crisis, political and humanitarian, in the Middle East. Those leading in the protection of our planet and the resolution of the issues surrounding migrancy. 

The governments & peoples of Israel, Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti

Our Community: 

Our community and our civic leaders. 

New residents. The newly retired.  

Diocese: Young People’s Uniformed Organisations

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 all who mourn. 

Those struggling to make ends meet. 

The homeless. 

Those in hospital or who watch with them.

The Departed.

Coming Up 

Villages' Harvest Thanksgivings

Bonby: 4.30 September 29th  (with blessing of pets: see poster)
Ferriby: 3.00 October 6th
Worlaby 9.30 October 13th
Horkstow: 3.00 October 20th

Saxby PCC meets Monday evening at 7

Barton Toddler Time. 

If anyone can offer a spot of time to assist with tea and coffee on a Monday morning about 10.-11, especially on a moderately regular basis, could you consider signing up on the rota at the back, please?

Focal Ministry:

In the months to come, there’ll be a lot of talk about ‘Focal Ministry’ and how it will work in different parishes. Every parish will have subtly different takes on it, but an introductory leaflet is available – do take one and study it.

It’s also on the diocesan website at
https://www.lincoln.anglican.org/focal-ministry/

Mission to Seafarers Quiz Night and Supper is on October 12th 6.30 for 7.00

in St Mary's Hall More details from Fr David Truby, or drop a line to David R