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articles taken from the parish newsletter The Window (issued most weeks)
© the authors
| 2005
[click here for more recent Thoughts] |
All Saints, All Souls and the Kingdom
of God
 There
has been a flurry of press and media interest over the past ten days or so in
our first Vicar and builder of this church our very own John Henry Newman. The
fact is that there has been a healing miracle in Boston (USA) attributed to the
intercession of Newman. This has not only catapulted Newman into the news, but
it has also provided an opportunity for his followers and supporters to promote
the cause of making him a recognised saint in the Roman Catholic Church. In our
Church of England Newman is commemorated as a saint already (hence the icon of
his image in our church). This simply highlights the fact that not 'all saints'
can somehow be categorised and listed by an earthly institution.
Many,
many are overlooked and others should perhaps never have been included in such
lists. Saints are human beings that have inspired true faith. And they have done
this by being heroic or simply by radiating God's love. In fact I think there
are saints and there is saintliness in every single Christian congregation, past
and present, including our own. Saints or not, we are all striving for and straining
towards God's Kingdom. During the next four weeks (the weeks before Advent) we
will be contemplating those 'last things', which are most important in our lives:
can we discern the signs of the Kingdom? Are we looking forward to our own end,
when, as Newman so unforgettably put it, the shades lengthen and the busy world
is hushed and we finally find our rest in God?
Bernhard Schunemann
|
Selfless acts
 A
young woman sat begging along the road. Dozens of people passed her by without
even affording her a glance. No one even cared to see that she was not even begging
for herself, but for the child that she held tightly in her arms. At last a young
boy passed by and saw the woman. He returned to his house and spoke to his mother.
His mother gave him some food and a blanket. He the returned to the young woman
and her child.
Selfless acts of kindness are the true signs of a spirit
filled life. We can call ourselves Christians, but our actions must verify the
claim. Mary and Joseph begged for help once in Bethlehem. How would we have responded
if they had come to us to beg? How we treat people who are in need is Christ's
criterion for judging how much we love him. In all ways, we should thrive to serve
the poor and needy. We must always remember that we serve Christ when we serve
others. Let us serve gladly, without expectation of reward. We must give to others
as the heavenly father gave to us: His only son our saviour Jesus Christ.
Roy
Phillips (Head Server, Littlemore Church)
|
'Suffer the little children to come unto me'
 Jesus
said 'Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of
such is the kingdom of God' (Mark 10.14). He was admonishing his disciples for
turning away people who were bringing their children to him. This makes me wonder
why the disciples thought the children were not welcome. Were the children too
boisterous, running about and getting in the way? Were they shouting or crying,
making it difficult to hear Jesus's words? Or perhaps the disciples believed children
should be kept out of the way and not allowed to interfere with the adult world.
Whatever the reason, Jesus's view was very different. He treated children with
the kindness, respect and compassion that he showed adults.
In my first
year as a mother I have been thinking about the discipline of compassion that
is parenting. Rearing children makes great demands on your patience, tolerance,
acceptance and love. Before my daughter was born I thought that unconditional
love for a child was like a tap that would be turned on during the birth - a constant
supply of exactly the right kind of love, flowing naturally with no effort from
me. I soon discovered that in fact it was sometimes hard work to put someone else's
needs first, and I was tested by the irritations, frustrations and setbacks in
daily life with a small baby.
One book I read, describing a Zen Buddhist
approach to parenting, suggested that having children was like inviting a Zen
master to live in your house, because it forces you to practise principles such
as acceptance. I thought that this could equally well apply to a Christian perspective,
and then I came across a passage in another book by Naomi Wolf, who is Jewish,
where she says that after having her first child she could suddenly understand
why Christians worship God as a newborn baby. Babies and children demand from
us Christian values in action - ideals and theoretical perspectives are not enough.
If we are willing to learn from them, children can teach us to put our Christian
beliefs into practice.
Guinevere Webster
| |
Until the light came
Until the light came I did not realise that I had become
so accustomed to existing in darkness.
Until the light came I did not realise
how much rubbish I had accumulated about me.
Until the light came I did not
realise how small the dwelling in which I had confined myself.
At first it
was dazzling, penetrating. It wasn't easy to adjust to the light.
Too many
things stood revealed I'd rather not have seen.
Yet gradually, and with fresh
and startling clarity, new hopes, new joys,
new life
stood revealed, waiting for me to grasp them - if I would!
But I did not have
to face such decisions until the light came.
Edmund Banyard
| |
St Francis
Last Sunday we celebrated a joyful Harvest Festival in
Church, a service of thanksgiving for God's overflowing love for us and his whole
creation. We may wonder sometimes what God might want from us in return for all
his love and abundant gifts. Last Tuesday was the day we remembered St Francis
of Assisi, the 13th century monk who left his comfortable life of riches and became
known for his dedication to the simple life, lived very closely to creation. One
of the special readings for his day gives us an answer as to what God might want
from all of us. It is taken from the book of the prophet Micah:
With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old?
Will
the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of
oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body
for the sin of my soul?
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what
does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your God?
(Micah 6.6-8)
Margreet Armitstead
| |
Harvest
 Some
time in the summer, I always try to visit my family, who farm in Leicestershire.
This year I went early in September, just as the harvest ended. Leicestershire
is an untouristy, agricultural county of low hills and shallow valleys, small
towns and unselfconscious villages. The gold that shone on freshly harvested fields
a few weeks ago is now touching the trees. The earth breaks in brown waves where
ploughs have turned in the stubble. In places, sheep are already feeding on the
aftermath, which films the hills green, and trailers heaped with drums of straw
and silage lumber along the lanes. A Roman road shoots past the village, and mediaeval
ridge-and-furrow crumples the surrounding pasture, which is dotted with modern
barns and spare pieces of machinery. If you stopped on any high point and looked
around, you would think this land of fields, hedges and occasional church towers,
reached all the way to the distant sea.
Farming is very hard work, and
farmers' lives are harder now than they have been since the great depression of
the 1930s. Still, our country at this time of year is a glimpse of Eden, a place
where human beings work in harmony with the earth, the weather and the seasons,
and what they grow is good. At harvest, time holds its breath, and harvest festival
is glorious, a day to store in the memory against the winter. We celebrate God's
earth and all it gives us. We give thanks that as God is generous to us, we can
be generous to each other. We pray for wisdom to treat God's earth with respect,
and work with it for the good of all living things.
Teresa Morgan
| St Michael and All Angels
 September
29th is the Feast of St Michael and All Angels. In the Book of Revelation (12)
St Michael is the one who leads God's forces in the great battle over the devil.
At Coventry Cathedral we find this remarkable Jacob Epstein sculpture
of St Michael defeating the devil.
The Coventry Litany:
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
The hatred which
divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class, Father forgive.
The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
Father forgive.
The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays
waste the earth, Father forgive.
Our envy of the welfare and happiness of
others, Father forgive.
Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned,
the homeless, the refugee, Father forgive.
The lust which dishonours the bodies
of men, women and children, Father forgive.
The pride which leads us to trust
in ourselves and not in God, Father forgive.
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted,
forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Bernhard Schunemann
| St Matthew
 September
21st is St Matthew's day.
It so happens that it isSt Matthew's gospel
we are reading during our Sunday Services this year. One of the great blessings
of our faith is that we have four gospels. Four little biographies of Jesus, each
adding substantially to our uinderstanding and knowledge of the life and person
of Jesus.
Sometimes the memories of the gospel writers vary a little,
each one remembering the same aspect of Jesus' life from his own personal perspective.
The truth of Jesus could not possibly have been contained in just one gospel,
the truth of Jesus is so alive that it can only be glimpsed in between the four
gospels.
Matthew remembers Jesus as a teacher, a new Moses. Matthew gives
lots of practical advice about how, as Christians, we should live our lives, but
when you look at this advice it turns out to be hugely challenging (for example
look at the teaching in Jesus' sermon on the mount in Chapter 5). Matthew reminds
us that Jesus promised to be present (really present) when we gather together
for prayer or study and - most encouragingly - when we love those whom we might
find it difficult to love (chapter 25,34ff).
It seems that Matthew has
a question in the back of his mind: how does a good Jewish boy like Yeshua ben
Joseph of Nazareth set out to become the Teacher of Israel, and then he ends up
founding a universal church, making salvation available for all who turn to God
through him?
Bernhard Schunemann
| |
Racial Justice
Today is Racial Justice Sunday. This year it celebrates
its tenth anniversary. Why is this Sunday an important Sunday to observe? Revd
Myra Blyth, Moderator of the Churches' Commission for Racial Justice writes, 'The
human instinct to judge, criticize, scapegoat and stigmatize the other on racial
and cultural grounds is a danger that cannot be ignored. Racial Justice Sunday
is an opportunity for all churches to stress that unity in Christ is not about
everyone being the same but about seeking reconciliation and celebrating diversity
in its widest sense.'
Let us pray that celebrating the Eucharist on Racial
Justice Sunday this year may inspire us to embrace this diversity, beautifully
expressed in the following poem by Yashoda Sutton:
At the banquet we laugh and rejoice with each other
Make a toast to friendship
Give thanks to God.
Together we marvel at the feast laid before us
Sit down in communion
Our meal, a prayer.
Each guest brings an
offering to share at the table
Each plate is different
Each gift the same.
God invites us to share our love and our differences
Embracing our
neighbours
Praising His Name.
At the banquet we laugh and rejoice
with each other
God's gift is diversity
Come take your fill.
Margreet Armitstead
| On peaceful summer days
On
peaceful summer days, I sometimes feel I'm getting a glimpse of heaven. Which
makes me reflect on heaven itself, and the different ways we imagine it.
There
are the heavens where God traditionally is. Then there's the Kingdom of Heaven
that will come with the Messiah, when the blind see, the lame walk, prisoners
are freed and the poor receive the good news. This is the heaven prophesied by
Isaiah and proclaimed by Jesus in the gospels. Then there's the New Jerusalem
as described in the Book of Revelation - the city paved with gold, whose gates
are made of pearl and walls studded with precious stones, where the faithful spend
eternity.
You can combine all these visions, and we often do. But the
differences are important too. In particular, Isaiah's heaven comes about on this
earth, while Revelation foretells a new heaven and earth, recreated after the
last judgement and the end of the world. They are connected, of course. Heaven
on this earth is a preparation and a foretaste of the New Jerusalem. The difference
is that, by loving one another, we can help to build the Kingdom on earth. Jesus
commands us to do so. But the New Jerusalem can only be built by God.
That
affects how, as Christians, we pray, hope and work. We may enjoy the vision of
the New Jerusalem and find it inspiring. But looking and hoping for it should
not distract us from our real business, which is working to create the Kingdom
of Heaven on earth.
The Kingdom will not fully come until the whole world
receives it. But, Jesus said, the Kingdom is also already among us: small, often
unnoticed, but growing. On peaceful summer days, I sometimes feel I'm getting
a glimpse of it.
Teresa Morgan
| Littlemore
Conference - Archbishop's thoughts
We’ve spent this week talking about
imagination, and how on earth the Church re-connects with or inspires people’s
imagination in this country. But ’imagination’ is a slippery word. ‘It’s only
you imagination’ is the sort of phrase that makes us think imagination is something
that takes us away from the real world into the shadows. It’s obviously bad for
us, if that’s what it means.
But when we call a person or a television
programme or a plan for a building ‘imaginative’ we mean something positive. Imagination
here doesn’t take away; it adds. Or better, it shows us dimensions of what’s real
that we’d never noticed. The world is larger and stranger, sometimes more exciting,
sometimes more scary.
In this sense, the Christian faith is all about
imagination. In relation to Jesus, the world is different, and so are we. We are
faced with bits of ourselves we’d never seen, many that we’d rather not see. But
also we see dimensions more glorious, more challenging, joyful, than we could
have dreamed.
Reconnecting with imagination in a society is something
to do with persuading people at large that Christian vision and commitment introduce
you to a bigger, not smaller world. Is this the message our lives generally give?
If you see someone walking through a large room with heads bent and elbows jammed
against their sides, you wonder what their picture of the room must be. And that,
sadly, is what we sometimes look like.
But living (and worshipping) as
if praise, silence, forgiveness and hospitality were the most obvious things in
the world, that might prompt people to ask another sort of question. Can we speak
and act in a way that might spark this wondering? It’s what’s done by the saints,
that’s why their stories have lasted, why we’re thankful for them.
But it’s
not just for an elite. Uncomfortably, it’s everyone’s job. Even an archbishop’s.
+ Rowan Williams
| |
A modern parable
At last August is coming! And with it the summer
holidays! Our thoughts turn towards the seaside, and some of us may even get near
the sea in the next five weeks or so. This reminds me of the story of a man walking
along the seashore. He found a stray dog and threw a stick for it into the sea.
And off the dog went down to the water. But instead of going into the sea, it
trotted across the top of it, picked up the stick, ran back across the water,
and dropped the stick at the man's feet. The man, amazed, did it again - with
the same result. Hardly able to believe his eyes, he called another man to come
and see. He threw the stick for the dog again, and exactly the same thing happened;
the dog walked over the water and brought the stick back. 'That's astounding',
said the second man. 'Absolutely astonishing! That's the first time I've ever
seen a dog that couldn't swim'. What a sad man! His Horizon is determined by the
restrictions of his limited imagination. He perceives the exciting and the miracle
in terms of the ordinary lacking ordinariness. When God with his Holy Spirit is
at work in us, our horizons are lifted and we learn to perceive the extraordinary
and the special, the miraculous and the exciting in the ordinary around us. And
this is our task as Christian missionaries - for that is what we all need to be
- to open our eyes and the eyes of those around us to God's grandeur.
Bernhard Schunemann
| Recapturing the Imagination of the Nation
Canon Samuel Wells and I are convening a small conference at Littlemore of clergy
and academics from August 2-5, on the subject of 'Recapturing the Imagination
of the Nation.' Archbishop Rowan Williams will be with us for that time, and together
we are writing a book that will eventually be published by DLT under the same
title. Although the conference meetings (to be held at Newman's College) will
be closed, everyone in the parish is most warmly invited to join us for our worship
in the church, and I hope that many of you will be able to do so. On the Tuesday,
Wednesday and Thursday evenings there will be a sung eucharist at 6.30 p.m., preceded
by half and hour of silent prayer in the church at 6 p.m. Please join us for the
time of silence if you wish, which would be lovely; or else enter church very
quietly just before the eucharist begins at 6.30 p.m. On the Friday the last eucharist
will be at 12 noon, with Archbishop Rowan celebrating and preaching; we shall
also hope to have a very short silence just before that begins, so please do join
us for that. On the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings Morning Prayer will
be said at the (different from usual) time of 8.15 a.m., starting again with a
brief period of silence and ending about 8.45 a.m. Finally, on the Wednesday evening
at 9 p.m. there will be a short poetry reading in the church by the priest/poet
David Scott, who will also be displaying and selling some of his books of poetry
afterwards. The Bishop of Oxford will also be with us that evening. Again, all
are most welcome to attend that event.
I want to thank all in the parish
who have graciously helped with the planning of the conference, and I do ask for
your prayers for the event and all who are coming to Littlemore that week. My
special thanks go to the Sisters of das Werk who are hosting our conference meetings.
My own hope and prayer is that the visit of the conference and the Archbishop
will a point encouragement and hope for us all - Anglican, Roman Catholic and
Baptist congregations - in our own Christian witness at Littlemore.
Sarah
Coakley
| Silence
Silence
is a mysterious thing: we all say that it is so very difficult to get, and if
we only could have more of it we would be less stressed and calmer. But when silence
actually surrounds us we soon get bored with it or we might even become frightened
of it. Pure silence is in fact impossible to achieve. There will always be noises
ready to distract us: noises of the day, noises of the night, noises of city life
and noises of the natural world and here in Littlemore often the noise of the
ring-road and the not so distant sirens of emergency vehicles rushing off to save
lives. But we can achieve silence within ourselves by becoming still and by not
contributing to the noises around us. The silence of prayer can be the silence
of listening to God's calling. Sometimes it is only when we are prepared to face
the emptiness of silence that God can truly begin to trickle in.
This
church of Littlemore is not always as still and silent as some would like, our
children and our friendly, neighbourly chatting see to that. On these occasions
we must hope that God's voice can be heard as part of the holy noise of the church.
But there are moments when we positively encourage silence even and especially
with people present in the church. These moments are before Morning Prayer on
weekdays and before weekday evening Communion services.
At the beginning
of August the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will join us for four days
(Tuesday 2 August - Friday 5 August) and the silence before Morning Prayer and
evening Communion will be perhaps among the most special moments.
Bernhard
Schunemann
| 'My
Lord and my God'
Today we remember in our church calendar the apostle
Thomas. Thomas stands out in the Gospels. He is totally committed to following
Jesus and he is genuinely willing even to die with him. However, his greatest
asset is that he is uncompromising in telling the truth. For Thomas that sometimes
means airing his doubts about views and situations. When Jesus says to his disciples
that they know where he is going, it is Thomas who speaks out and says, 'Lord,
we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?' When in the Gospel
reading of today Thomas is told excitedly by the disciples that they have seen
the Lord. Thomas says, 'Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put
my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.'
Thomas needs to see, no compromise. This is responded to. Jesus appears again,
Thomas can now see for himself. His renewed commitment is expressed by the famous
words, My Lord and my God.' Thomas has been a great example for people who go
through periods of doubt, for people who refuse to compromise on finding the truth.
Thomas' belief was strengthened because of his honesty to face his doubts. May
Thomas be our example for living a life of total honestly, honesty to God, each
other and ourselves, honesty about our belief as well as our doubts so that we
too may claim from the bottom of our hearts, 'My Lord and my God.'
Margreet
Armitstead
| |
Farewell and Thank You!
This Sunday we are saying farewell to our Licensed Lay Minister (Lay Reader) Richard
Chand who has been with us for three years. Richard will be ordained deacon in
September and he will serve as an NSM curate at St Mary's Barton with special
responsibility for the care of the Asian Christian Congregation based at St James'
Cowley. During Richard's time at Littlemore we have appreciated his occasional
preaching and we have been privileged to get to know many of the Punjabi speaking
Christians in Oxford. We have learned that God in Christ can be worshipped and
praised in many different languages and that God's words word can live and be
proclaimed in all the languages of our common humanity. Richard will be setting
out on a new path of his Christian journey and our best wishes and our prayers
go with him and with his splendid family, Rebecca, Elisabeth and Daniel.
Today we also give thanks for a member of our congregation who completed her journey
some time ago. Alice Stacey died in November last year and her relatives donated
a new thurible and thurible-stand in her memory. Alice was a great High Church
lady who loved the smell of incense; it is in her memory that we dedicate our
new thurible today.
Journeys begun and journeys ended all of it done in the service of Christ, who
alone will help us to make sense of our destiny.
Bernhard Schunemann
| The Longest Day
This week
we will pass through the longest day of the year and our hope is that we will
see the weather improve so that we can celebrate outdoors! In Nordic Europe this
season is even more pronounced because around this time the nights are very short,
in fact it doesn't get really dark at all and celebrations are held lasting all
through the short night. And while these countries are largely Lutheran and Protestant,
they have a special love for the festival of "The Birth of St John the Baptist"
(24 June). This falls exactly six months away from Christmas Eve, for its says
in the Bible that John the Baptist was conceived six months before Jesus (cf.
Luke 1,26ff).
No one really knows what day exactly Jesus was born, we
only know for certain that he was born and that it was around the year zero. The
exact day of John the Baptist's birth is therefore equally uncertain. But I am
glad that we have certain days on which we celebrate these great Christian events,
even if they have become linked to the heathen winter and summer solstice. It
is with these festivals as it is with our faith: we need to link what we know
with what we believe. Our faith is grounded in the certain knowledge of Jesus
walking upon this earth and we know that his most important and earliest witness
John the Baptist pointed to him as our saviour. Our faith is grounded in this
fact of history, but it comes to life through what God helps us to believe: that
Christ died for us so that we can have eternal life.
Bernhard Schunemann
| A crop of righteousness
These
last few months I have not managed to do as much in the garden. After tidying
up the herbaceous border at Christmas, I hardly got out there till May, by which
time the weeds were a foot high. My neglect, however, has had some good results.
There is more wildlife in the garden this year than ever. Four birds have built
nests in the overgrown hedge: a robin, a wren, a blackbird and (I'm pretty sure)
a bluetit. Every day, a thrush comes and sings on my red fence and combs the flower
beds for snails. I hear him as I tap at my typewriter, tapping shells open on
the patio.
Human beings have so much power in the world that we sometimes
forget how well the world gets along on its own. But plants, snails and birds
are also part of God's creation. 'Do not worry about your life,' says Jesus. 'Look
at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and
yet your heavenly Father feeds them ... Consider the lilies of the field, how
they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his
glory was not clothed like one of these ... Strive for the Kingdom of God and
his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.'
As
the Trinity Season and summer begin, relax a little and let God look after you
and your garden. You may get a few more weeds, but you'll also get more birds
and butterflies, and perhaps a crop of righteousness too.
Teresa Morgan
| The Trinity
'Go therefore
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' (Matt. 28.19). The doctrine of the Trinity
has often been thought of as a mere magic formula, or - worse - as an impossibly
arcane theological mystification which most of us can get on quite happily without.
If it were just something for professional theologians to argue about, that would
indeed make it spiritually dispensable! And unfortunately, the readings set this
year for Trinity Sunday do not help us much: they witness precisely to triadic
formulae - for baptism and blessing - that were already established as code-words
for the life-changing experience of God that lay behind them.
To probe
behind those formulae, however, is to ask about the God we encounter in worship,
and about a threeness there that seems to be as distinctive and non-negotiable
as is the oneness also. Maybe you will say that - at best - you only have a sense
of twoness: of mysterious divine source ('Father', Abba) and revealed Sonship
(Jesus)? Yet, if Paul is our guide, all prayer and worship and relationship to
God is really initiated by the Holy Spirit (see Romans 8. 26ff.), without whom
we cannot even properly identify Jesus as Lord in the first place (see 1 Cor 12.3).
So the real challenge in understanding God-as-Trinity is a matter not
of mind-bending intellectual acrobatics, but rather of prayer: of allowing enough
space in prayer to let the Spirit crack open our hearts and pray 'Abba' in us,
and so, over time, to forge us into the likeness of God's Son. Here is the 'Trinity'
reconceived as the whole life of Christian transformation; but it is first prayer
'in the Spirit' that alone makes that possible.
Sarah Coakley
| Trinity
Sunday
 We
have arrived! Finally we have arrived on Trinity Sunday. Over the last five or
six months we have celebrated our way through all the key doctrines of the Christian
Faith. All of these are linked to the story of the Bible. The incarnation at Christmas:
God born in the human form, one of us. Then we celebrated God's humanity revealed
to all at Epiphany. In the fourty days of Lent and Holy Week we learnt about why
Christ should suffer for our redemption. We celebrated our salvation at Easter
when God raised Jesus from the dead. And finally - last Sunday - we celebrated
the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Trinity Sunday celebrates something slightly
less tangible, something that is not immediately associated with an event in Holy
Scripture. It celebrates the mystery that God is. It celebrates the mystery of
a paradox: the paradox that God is at the same time comfortingly close and at
hand as well as disturbingly unfathomable, distant and beyond our reach. The Trinity
speaks to us of a God who is diverse as well as unified, complex and in relationship
with us as well as simple and in relationship with himself. A God who is at the
same time vulnerable and hurt as well as all powerful. A God who creates, saves
and gives life, a loving God whose judgement is full of mercy.
O God
our mystery, You bring us to life,
Call us to freedom and move between us
with love.
May we so participate in the dance of your trinity,
That our
lives may resonate with you,
Now and for ever. Amen
Bernhard Schunemann
| Pentecost
There is
nothing more confusing than the two names that are in use for this Sunday. It
is Pentecost, which is the only Sunday in the year when the Church is dressed
in RED, the colour denoting the fieriness of the Holy Spirit. But in the popular
mind this Sunday is also called 'Whitsunday', which makes reference to the fact
that the newly baptised on that day used to wear white robes! - The spirit of
God blows where it wills, we may hear the sound of it but we do not know where
it is coming from or where it is driving us.
This festival of Pentecost
is a good opportunity for us to remind ourselves that it is God's Holy Spirit
who makes this church come alive, and who lives in us as God's most holy and precious
gift to us and to all baptised people. For fifty days we have now celebrated the
victory of our Lord over sin and death in his glorious resurrection, and we have
made allelujah our song. And with this Pentecost celebration our Easter observance
draws to a close by finding joyful fulfilment in God's gift to us of his Holy
Comforter.
Let us be ready for the marvellous and manifold gift that is
contained in this one gift of life. Come Holy Spirit, Spirit of Love, Spirit of
Discipline, in the silence; Come to us and bring us your peace; Rest in us that
we may be tranquil and still; Speak to us as each heart needs to hear; Reveal
to us things hidden and things longed for; Rejoice in us that we may praise and
be glad; Pray in us that we may be at one with you and with each other; Refresh
and Renew us from your living springs of water; Dwell in us now and always.
Bernhard Schunemann
| Ascension Day
Last
Thursday was Ascension Day, when we celebrated that Jesus was taken up to be with
God. The first thing the disciples do after the Ascension is to go back to the
place they are staying and pray together. A long time, constantly. We are told
that there were about 120 followers of Jesus and they had been summoned to spread
the news of God's love in the world by witnessing to Jesus' life, death and resurrection.
Quite a task ahead... So they needed to be rooted, grounded in God through constant
prayer. But why prayer? Graham Dow in 'Pathways of Prayer': 'What is the fruit
of regular prayer? Thousands of fellow travellers throughout the centuries testify
to its rich benefits. Many experience a growing understanding of life and its
meaning, along with clarity in the decisions they need to take. Different ideas
of life begin to take on a new quality, a purpose, a joy, a beauty that had not
been sensed before.
Even through the times of severe difficulty which
most Christians experience at one time or another, there is often a growing awareness
that God has a purpose in mind for us through the pain, and that keeping going
at the routine of prayer, however short the time, is helpful.' The disciples prayed
long and hard before and during their turbulent lives as apostles. Let us use
them and those thousands of fellow travellers throughout the centuries as our
role models and pray, constantly, together as a faith community and alone in the
privacy of our homes so that we too may be witnesses to Christ in our daily lives,
with joy, gratitude and courage in our hearts.
Margreet Armitstead
| |
'To See Him'
Four children were engaged in the timeless 'my dad' argument. Tim said, 'My dad
works for the largest computer company in the world, and he travels everywhere.'
Mark replied, 'Well, my father owns a shipping company with hundreds of boats,
and even air planes, I get to ride on boats and planes wherever I want.' Peter
replied, 'My father works for the government, and he even gets to talk to the
Prime Minister sometimes. We have security men at our house all the time.' John
stood quietly for a moment, because his father had recently died. Finally he said,
'My Dad is in heaven, and gets to see God every day.' The other boys tried to
think of something to say that could top that, but nothing came to mind.
Nothing can top the Lord our God. He is above all else. Nothing compares to Him.
Therefore, nothing in this world is more worthy of our worship and devotion. Great
is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. His glory endures forever.
Prayer:
Hear our words of praise, O Lord. Search my heart to see the love I
have for you. Bless me with your grace, O God. Amen.
Roy Phillips
| St Alphege
Last Tuesday, 19th April, was
the feast of St. Alphege. Few people today know his name, but Alphege was a Benedictine
monk who became Archbishop of Canterbury almost exactly a thousand years ago.
In 1012, he was kidnapped by Danish invaders who demanded a ransom for him from
the farmers of his diocese. Alphege refused to let himself be ransomed at the
expense of people who were already poor, so during a drunken feast, the Danes
murdered him. He was regarded as a martyr and declared a saint.
In these
days, when religious leaders attract so much media attention, the story of Alphege
is food for thought. It reminds us that people who are famous, celebrated, even
regarded as saints in their own day, can leave little or no trace on history.
(The Pope at the time of Alphege's death was Sergius IV, who has left even less
of a trace.) On the other hand, people who in their lifetimes were ignored or
vilified can have an enormous impact on the future. This Monday, 25th April, is
the feast of St. Mark, who was so unimportant in his lifetime that nothing at
all is known for certain about him. But through the gospel he wrote, Mark became
one of the formative voices of Christianity.
Alphege's story also reminds
us that being famous is not what matters. Alphege was a good man - a good shepherd
who literally gave up his life for his flock. Today, we build our own lives and
our Church on people like him: on every good life that has gone before us, well
known to posterity or known only to God. That's what matters.
Teresa Morgan
| Elections and Christian Leadership
This week a relatively small number of cardinals (senior archbishops) shrouded
in the total secrecy of a 'conclave' have chosen a new Pope, head of the Roman
catholic church and a significant leader for Christians world-wide. In a few weeks
time we will all have the chance to vote on the political leadership of this country,
county and city. 'Leadership' will be on all our minds during these next few days.
Christians have a very distinctive quality to their leadership. In the
Bible we find leadership described in many different ways and many leaders come
in for much criticism for their lack of humility and love. But two descriptions
of Christian leadership are both simple and challenging: a leader is supposed
to 'follow' the example of Christ the good shepherd who laid down his life for
his sheep. A good shepherd recognises the immense value of the sheep that he both
leads and protects, but it is a most unusual 'good' shepherd who would lay down
his life for his sheep. The sacrificial nature of Christ's own leadership must
be reflected in our own Christian leadership. Jesus also said that a leader is
in fact a servant and he most vividly made this point by washing his disciples'
feet.
This idea of being a 'servant leader' is paid lip-service to in
the wider world ('I am proud to be allowed to serve this country as leader...')
but Christians need to think anew what this 'servant-leader' image really means.
For we all have leadership responsibilities in our lives: in our families, in
our workplaces, in our neighbourhoods and simply in how we 'lead' our own lives.
The good shepherd and servant are good images to bare in mind.
Bernhard
Schunemann
| Easter - a new day
Sometimes the greatest miracle is just waking up to a new day. If you have had
a serious illness or an operation, or survived an accident, you will know the
feeling. You see the world with new eyes: everything is still here and you are
in it, and it's wonderful. While the feeling lasts, the simplest activity is a
treat. Stepping outside the door is an adventure. You feel you could do anything.
The miracle of salvation is like that. Human beings have made mistakes
and done terrible evil. On Good Friday, we even tried to kill God in the person
of Jesus Christ. But Jesus and God conspired to turn a disaster into a triumph.
On Easter morning, we find ourselves looking at an empty tomb. A neatly
folded shroud. Jesus was dead, but he is gone. His followers are horrified. What
has happened?
Just this: God has saved us from our own evil. God says
to us, I love you and the world I made for you. My love for you is stronger than
everything - much stronger than the death you tried to put me through. So I am
giving you another chance. The evil you did is undone. Your sins are forgiven.
Salvation changes all our lives. On Easter morning, all the evil we have
done and all the evil we have suffered, are washed away in God's overwhelming
love. God gives us hope and joy. We are new people. Everything is possible.
God
says, Behold, I make everything new.
Teresa Morgan
| EASTER
Risen
with healing in his wings This poetic phrase is taken from the famous Christmas
Carol: 'Hark the herald angels sing', and it neatly draws to our attention how
closely related Christmas and Easter are. It poses the question of how it is exactly
that humanity can be saved through Jesus Christ. Was it because God humbled himself
and heaven touched earth at Christmas the time of the birth of our saviour? Or
was it because this innocent man suffered on the wood of the cross for us, something
we commemorated so movingly only a few days ago on Good Friday. Or was it because
God changed everything at Easter and death is turned into joy?
The truth
is that all these three, Christmas, Good Friday and Easter belong intimately together
as an expression of God's saving love, and it takes us the best part of half a
year to celebrate them fittingly. It will probably take more than half a year
for these to become the real pulse and rhythm of our lives. Our lives need to
bear witness to the world, that God came in Jesus to this world in order to reconcile
the hurts of this world with the infinite love that he has for his creation. And
what better time to re-start this witness than this Easter.
Bernhard Schunemann
| Holy Week
Today
is the start of an intense week's journey. Up to this week Jesus had been in control
of his life, he had had the power to heal others, to teach, to be there as the
one who could make things happen, someone with a closeness to God, a oneness with
God that we can only look at with awe and reverence. This week, however, we see
a Jesus who has things done to him, a Jesus who is hailed as wonderful, but who
is then betrayed by one friend and forsaken by all others, who feels desperately
lonely, who is tremendously frightened, who has to face his death, in short, someone
we can identify with, because most of us know what it's like to be lonely and
frightened. Unfortunately, some of us even know what it's like to face death,
our own death, or the death of one close to us. As we journey with Christ, let
us pray that we have the courage to be with Christ from day to day, enter into
our sadness, but then leave our suffering at the foot of the cross to journey
on to Easter, when we celebrate with joy that Christ is alive, that death is not
the end, not for Christ and not for us.
Margreet Armitstead
| Passion
Sunday
On June 7th, 1917, I was running to our lines half mad with
fright, though running in the right direction, thank God, through what had been
once a wooded copse. It was being heavily shelled. As I ran I stumbled and fell
over something. I stopped to see what it was. It was an undersized, underfed German
boy, with a wound in his stomach and a hole in his head. I remember muttering,
'You poor little devil, what had you got to do with it? Not much great blonde
Prussian about you.'
Then there came light. It may have been pure imagination,
but that does not mean that it was not also reality, for what is called imagination
is often the road to reality. It seemed to me that the boy disappeared and in
his place there lay the Christ upon His Cross, and cried. 'Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto the least of these my little ones you have done it unto me.' From
that moment on I never saw a battlefield as anything but a Crucifix. From that
moment on I have never seen the world as anything but a Crucifix. I see the Cross
set up in every slum, in every filthy overcrowded quarter, in every vulgar flaring
street that speaks of luxury and waste of life. I see Him staring up at me from
the pages of the newspaper that tells of a tortured, lost, bewildered world.
G A Studdert Kennedy (also known as 'Woodbine Willie')
| Mothering Sunday
One of the
passages read in Church will be the birth and childhood of Moses. Moses was put
in a basket in the River Nile by his mother, because all Israelite baby boys were
ordered to be killed and she thought that this might safe him from the soldiers'
swords. Moses was discovered by the daughter of the Pharaoh, who asked his mother
to nurse him until she could take him to the palace and raise him as her own son.
A very powerful story of a mother who made the tremendously difficult choice of
giving up her son in order to save him. We don't know much more about his mother
than this small but significant mention in the Bible.
A parent-child bond
is one of the most forming relationships in our lives. As children we look to
our parents in trying to make sense of our world, they are our examples to work
with. First we admire them, we love them as heroes, but gradually we also become
embarrassed by them and despair of their lack of taste in music and clothes. As
parents we discover a new depth of love and strength we didn't know existed, and
when they are teenagers we despair at their lack of taste in music and clothes.
Jesus brought God into this intimate, and sometimes challenging and complicated,
child-parent bond. He called God, 'Dad', showing that God is the dad who will
travel with us through our confusing lives, whose arms are always open to receive
us and who will never be embarrassed by us.
Margreet Armitstead
| A
new Jemima
Today we are celebrating the holy baptism of one of the
youngest members of our church, Jemima Webster. The name Jemima, of course, has
a deep resonance in our church of St Mary and St Nicholas in Littlemore. When
JH Newman was Vicar here in Littlemore he had many other responsibilities and
so it was that he a asked his mother Jemima Newman to oversee some of the pastoral
work in this parish and in particular to keep her eyes on the building of this
church. Jemima Newman is commemorated with a fine relief on the south wall of
this church, reminding us that she laid the foundation stone. The parishioners
of Littlemore have good reason to remember her with thankfulness in our hearts.
But the name Jemima goes back much deeper into Biblical times. It was
the name Job gave to the first daughter born to him after he had lost everything
and after he had undergone years of suffering and agony. Despite huge and seemingly
insurmountable setbacks Job never lost his faith in God, though he was often overcome
with great doubts and even anger at his great misfortunes. At the end of the book
of Job we read that Job was rewarded with a deep insight: our lives may at times
be very hard, and we may at times even be tempted to give up our faith in a loving
God, but when we look back on the entirety of our lives, including the redemption
that still awaits us, we will finally understand it all. It was in gratefulness
for this insight that Job named his first daughter Jemima which in Hebrew means
'pure', 'fortunate' or even 'day' or possibly 'dove' (Job 42,14).
Bernhard
Schunemann
| |
In The Desert
For the damage I have done;
For the good I failed to do;
For what I am,
have been, and might have been
I come to grieve
Where night relieves
self of itself
And I no longer need patrol my skin;
Desire is dead in my
heart's prison
And every sand-dogged step dissolves
Under its own intention.
Come,
Drop your definitions where
They will not be found, and
wait
Where motive means no more than motion.
Waiting is now our place
Under
the invisible wall of heaven.
Teresa Morgan
| |
Lent
From the
season of Christmas and Epiphany with its focus on Christ as the light of the
world, from the Christmas trees, decorations, presents, fairy lights and delicious
food we have arrived in the season of Lent.
Traditionally, Lent was the
time in the Church year when baptismal candidates entered their final period of
preparation before their initiation into the Church at Easter. Gradually, it became
a time of 'self-examination and repentance, of prayer, fasting, self-denial, of
reading and meditating on God's holy word.' Powerful concepts that have helped
Christians to commit or recommit themselves to Christ in the season of Lent.
The
reading at the beginning of Lent is the temptations of Christ in the wilderness
just after his baptism. At his baptism Jesus had been told he was God's son, whom
God loved. The time in the wilderness was time to think about what this meant,
a time to prepare for his public ministry. Did it mean miraculous power, worldly
power, showing off his uniqueness?
What are our temptations in the year
2005? The chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies in our shops could represent one temptation
for us. If we examine ourselves do we discover a 'go straight to Easter, do not
go past Lent and Good Friday' type, looking at the delicious chocolate and wishing
Lent away? Or would we like to cleanse the shop shelves of all chocolate, forget
about life's joys for 40 days and focus only on giving things up?
Let
us this year rediscover the period of Lent as the tremendously important breathing
space for us to be with God in prayer and preparation.
Margreet Armitstead
|
Ash Wednesday
On Ash
Wednesday this week we mark the beginning of the 40 days of Lent. We do this by
having a visible cross marked on our foreheads in ashes. In the Bible a mark on
the forehead is a symbol of a person's ownership. Having our foreheads marked
with the sign of a cross symbolises that we belong to Jesus Christ, who died on
a Cross. This is in imitation of the spiritual mark or seal that is put on a Christian
in baptism, when they are delivered from slavery to sin and the devil and made
a slaves of righteousness and Christ (Romans 6:3-18).
The ashes we use
are the burnt palm-crosses from last year's Palm Sunday procession. This reminds
us that 'Palm Sunday faithfulness' is not always sufficient, for Jesus on Palm
Sunday was not only welcomed into Jerusalem but also condemned to die by the same
people doing the welcoming. At its simplest the ashes are a sign of a period penance
and fasting, the period of lent that is now to begin. But the forty days of Lent
can become a time of renewal and deepening in our relationship with God and in
that sense Lent will be filled with joy, though it starts with crosses made with
dust and ashes.
Bernhard Schunemann
| Candlemas
This
Sunday we will celebrate Candlemas. Its official day is February 2nd. This Christian
festival is linked to the Jewish rite of purification. Mary goes to the Temple
to be purified, 40 days after giving birth to her baby boy, Jesus. For Christians
this event is celebrated as Christ being brought into the house of God. Therefore
this Sunday the children will decorate candles and will process them into the
church to remind us of Christ as our light.
However, the day is also rooted
in various other traditions. It has long been celebrated as the day between Winter
Solstice and the Spring Equinox, the day when people start looking again at new
life, when fields are prepared for their first planting. In The States it is called
Groundhog Day. People in Punxsutawney look forward with great anticipation to
the appearance of a specific groundhog, who will tell them whether the next 6
weeks will be cold and wintry or mild.
So Candlemas is filled with various
strands of traditions, ancient and more recent, serious and trivial, all expressing
in their own way our dependence on nature, on powers beyond our control, on God.
We can be open to other traditions and learn from them, (I'm not sure about the
groundhog though..) but should always try and see shining through this melting
pot of ideas the conviction and experience that Christ is the light of our world.
Margreet Armitstead
| St Paul
St
Paul is a very special Saint. He is so special that he doesn't actually get a
day for himself in the calendar of Saints. He has to share one with his great
fellow saint St Peter, with whom he didn't always get on well during his lifetime.
But Paul is also remembered on a day this week (Tuesday 25 January), when we specifically
remember just one split second of his lifetime: his conversion.
This 'conversion'
was not only spectacular, but also perhaps the most important event in Christian
history after the resurrection of Christ. Paul suddenly became a Christian after
he had been haranguing, killing and persecuting those very early Christian groups,
that had formed around the friends of Jesus. But Paul did not only become a Christian,
he became a most important leader in the early Christian church. It was his vision,
and he fought for it tooth and nail, that the Christian faith should become available
literally to 'all nations' and to all classes. He wanted the Christian Church
to turn from being a mutual support society for like-minded people to being an
international force for salvation for the whole world.
Naturally such
a radical vision unsettled many and it caused deep division amongst Christians.
But in causing all this division for the sake of truth, Paul also pointed us to
the way in which unity might one day be achieved. He gave us the picture of the
Christian Church as Christ's body, with different parts having different functions
but being dependent on one another. The only thing that really matters in Christian
Unity is that Christ is at the centre and as we draw closer to him, we draw closer
to one another.
Bernhard Schunemann
| Twelfth
Night
The Magi bring their offerings, and I tidy my offerings away.
The shepherds, ox and ass have left the stage; a packing case houses the flock
of Galilean refugees. The star stripped of its radiance is a cross; the choir
of angels in the trees, night birds in winter voice. Please stay a little longer
before the desert and the devil call. Glory burned out my eyes; all I can see
is rain dropping from my Christmas wreath and through the window, thorns. Please
stay a little longer, till my feet find some direction in this January dark. I
stumble on the stony path. The trees stretch down their roods, uplifting me.
Teresa
Morgan | | 2004 | A
Christmas Fable
 "Of
course the turkey is the most important thing about Christmas," said the fox,
"no turkey, no Christmas".
"I think snow is essential" replied the polar bear
"I am always dreaming of a white Christmas".
The deer said, "I need a Christmas
tree, for me it is not Christmas without a proper Christmas tree".
"But, please,
don't have so very many candles" hooted the owl, "it has got to be nice and dark,
romantic with just a few candles".
"But I want everybody to see my new outfit,
it's really shiny in candlelight" interjected the peacock, ruffling his feathers.
At this the magpie could not keep silence "And the jewellery" he twittered "I
always get lots of new jewellery at Christmas, for me a new broach or necklace
is what I most look forward to!"
"It's the sweets actually," growled the bear
"please do not forget the Christmas pudding, the marzipan loaves and the chocolate".
"Why don't you all try and get some more sleep" said the badger, "I always catch
up with my sleep deficit, Christmas allows me to be really, really lazy and just
stretch out and doze in front of the TV".
"I think you have forgotten the
most important thing," said the ox, "there is really only one thing that matters,
and must never be forgotten." "And what's that." asked the donkey. "The booze!"
cried the ox "I am always so very thirsty, and Christmas is the one time... ouch!"
The donkey had given the ox a sharp kick and now he said "You ox, you of all the
animals should know what the most important thing is about Christmas, it's the
baby in the manger!" And at this the donkey's eyes filled with tears because he
remembered suddenly how his great ancestor had stood in that stable and seen the
baby, how he had been rushed into Egypt, and how thirty years later, another one
of his ancestors had carried him into Jerusalem to be crucified. Of course, said
all the animals, that is the most, most important thing about Christmas, and they
wondered whether the humans actually knew about the baby...
Bernhard Schunemann
| Advent
- What are we waiting for?
Advent is a time of waiting, but waiting
for what? Sometimes one feels that one's whole life is spent waiting in one way
or another: waiting to grow up, waiting to leave home, waiting to find a job,
waiting to fall in love, waiting to have children, waiting to have enough money
to go on a decent holiday, waiting to get over a long illness or a bereavement,
waiting just to feel a bit better, and finally waiting to die. Is waiting for
Christ's 'appearance' in Advent like that?
Yes and no. Yes, because somewhere
deep in us is a wellspring of desire that seems to motivate all the other, nagging,
wants we have and that only Christ can fill; so that all the restlessness we feel
in the other longings is underneath a terrible yearning for the One 'in whom all
our desires are satisfied' - the human face of God. But no, too, because this
waiting isn't like the endlessly disappointed gratification of the other longings:
He is always on offer, always pressing on us from unexpected quarters, but - as
today's gospel puts it - always too 'coming at an unexpected hour'. Advent then
isn't just waiting (in the ordinary sense) for Christmas; it's a preparation of
a different order - an invitation to look at all our 'waitings' and wonder at
what desire finally propells them all. If it is truly Christ that we long for,
then He is already standing at the door. Our task, and prayer, is to welcome Him,
to invite Him in.
I wish you all a blessed Advent, and can't 'wait' to
see you on my next visit. Love and prayers,
Sarah Coakley, Boston, Thanksgiving
Day, 2004 | | [click
here for earlier Thoughts] |
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