Usually on Palm Sunday we hand out Palm Crosses and bless them at the start of the service. Whilst some churches are posting out Palm Crosses, we have been advised that this is risky, so instead I invite you to make your own Palm Cross from whatever you have to hand! And don’t forget to have them for Sunday’s service.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfZaD1iSeP8?start=50&end=150
Image by Poppy Thorpe from Pixabay
When you are joining a “Teams” meeting you will get an email with a link to the meeting looking something like this:
You should click on the link to the Teams Meeting and then the screen at the top of the page will appear in your browser.
You have a choice as to which of the three options you should take; unless you have a badshotleaandhale.org email address the bottom one is ruled out. You can then continue to use your browser (the top option, and easiest) or download the Windows application. This will take a little longer, but will then perform better (they say).
Once you have done this, you will be prompted to type your name and “Join as a Guest”, which you click on, and then to “Join Now” – click on that button. You may be prompted to allow your microphone and video to transmit.
At the end of the meeting, hover your mouse over the picture and click the red telephone to leave.
If you are using a phone then you need to download the Microsoft Teams App from the appropriate store. This will work similarly, but slightly differently!
Worship has developed over the years into the form that it has, but now we are temporarily unable to meet there are other ways to express our faith.
Please let me know whether you would like a live service that lots of people can join and join in. Unfortunately we don’t think the technology is up to this for large numbers. We are however experimenting with smaller numbers.
Many of you will have seen the service for 29th March. For future services I would like to enable more people to contribute. So…
Alan can record any comments you would like to make over the phone. Please call the Rectory and arrange a time to do this. It will involve calling Alan on his mobile – and a number will be provided to do this.
If you would like to record a video or sound; make something and take a picture of it; write some prose; share something you found on the web – whatever you have found that has fed you spiritually; please send it to Alan to pull it together.
Large files can be sent to Alan via https://www.filemail.com/
“Click Here” to attach a file.
Click on Files
Find the Video and click on it.
Fill in Alan’s email address: revd.alan@badshotleaandhale.org and your own and an optional message and click SEND FILES.
I look forwards to receiving lots of material.
I am not going to stream a service. Instead I will curate (not as in a curate) one, picking bits and pieces from all over the place! The links are all to YouTube and they will open in another window. Close that window to return here. Some videos have adverts, but there is usually a button at the bottom right that will skip them after about 5 seconds.
Other services do exist! the Church of England among others.
Most merciful God,
who by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ
delivered and saved the world:
grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross
we may triumph in the power of his victory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
OR
Gracious Father,
you gave up your Son
out of love for the world:
lead us to ponder the mysteries of his passion,
that we may know eternal peace
through the shedding of our Saviour’s blood,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
John 11:1-45 – Alan or Rachel
I’m afraid you can have lots of these!
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is,
seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,
was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
Please send feedback on this service to Alan. Also, it is possible that we could hold a live service that anyone with a computer with a camera and microphone can join in along with everyone else. Is this something that you are interested in doing? Please email Alan.
I hope you enjoyed this. If you would like to take part in a future service by contributing a clip, please let Alan know. I am trying to follow the rota, but of course there isn’t one for St Mark’s, and not everyone on the rota has the ability to record a video.
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. Mark 8:35
When I preach I usually preach on the Gospel set for the day, but today I feel called to preach on this passage.
This week has seen a remarkable transformation in our country, and in other countries around the world. At the start of the week most things were happening pretty much as normal. Then things changed rapidly.
On Monday Lesley and I felt ill, and have self diagnosed with Covid-19 (with current advice no one else is going to do so) and are now self isolating.
On Friday two of the boys came home from uni, so we will be self isolating for 14 days from then (unless the advice changes again).
By Friday most things were shut down.
And yet…
What do all these have in common? It is people looking at the situation from only one perspective.
My take on today’s reading is that Jesus is telling us that acting on our own selfish wants is not the way to live a fulfilling life.
It will depend on your definition of “the Gospel”, but I believe that the Good News that Jesus is calling us to is “Life in all its fulness“, and that this is achieved by working towards the Kingdom of God, which is working towards making this world the way that God wants it to be.
As a country and a world we have been becoming more and more insular: believing that we control our own destiny. Death is something which is seen as unnatural for people under 70 (or perhaps older) and has become something we don’t talk about (perhaps we should – note the date of the article – factual information may be out of date). Yet only a century ago the Spanish Flu killed between 17-50 million people; the two world wars killed about 20 million and 75 million respectively. Before the creation of the NHS 6% of children were expected to die before they were 1.
For most of history we have known that life was precarious, and that we rely on each other. We have also known that employment could be precarious, until the rise of the unions, and as their influence wanes we are discovering it again.
And yet this myth persists that we are in charge of our own destiny. This myth leads us away from the Kingdom of God, where we care for each other.
John Donne wrote: No man is an island, and during this pandemic we seem to be rediscovering this, and rediscovering the Kingdom of God (to be clear, I am not saying that God sent the virus so that this would happen, but when things do happen God can find some good in them, however bad they may be, as well as comforting those who are suffering). Let us pray that that sense of the Kingdom of God lasts beyond the current pandemic.
This week’s reading is the Woman at the Well from John 4.5-42. Instead of a sermon we showed this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y2GlmTxpkM. The same script is done in a different way here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFZgvKNWDcw.
Image by Diese lizenzfreien Fotos darfst du zwar verwenden from Pixabay
The reading for this Sunday is about Nicodemus– and yet it is also very tempting to preach on the last two verses! However, I am going to resist and look at Nicodemus.
Nicodemus was an influential religious man, he belonged to the Sanhedrin, which met every day in Jerusalem. And yet he appeared not to understand metaphor! Or chose not to. The word translated “from above” can also be translated “again” – an interesting aside is when Christians ask if you have been born again, do they mean from above?
The imagery of being born again was common at the time in both Jewish and Gentile culture – it was used for Jewish converts (two sources I have disagree about this!) and for various mystery religions.
It perhaps becomes obvious which Jesus meant when he goes on to talk about being born of the spirit (the aside about the wind would have come about because in both Hebrew and Greek the word for wind and spirit is the same), and the similarity of the two is that they are both only visible by the impact that they have.
So, to paraphrase, Nicodemus goes to see Jesus at night (never a good sign in John’s Gospel which frequently compares light and dark, day and night) and says that “we” recognise your signs as coming from God – but when Jesus tells him that he must be born from above, to be born of the spirit, he wavers.
Of course it is also possible that he was fully aware of what Jesus was saying to him, but was unwilling to take the steps required and was replying in kind – a kind of verbal tennis.
The question then becomes “what about us?”. Are we willing to be born from above – to change our lives?
There are long arguments in Christianity about which beliefs are “orthodox” – leading to excommunication for those who do not conform – but in this passage Jesus appears to more interested in “orthopraxy” – right practice. At least with this we can try to do the right thing. I know of no way to force myself to change my mind if I don’t believe something, but I can make myself do things.
So – the last two verses! I couldn’t resist.
John 3:16 is perhaps the most quoted verse in the Bible – it used to make a regular appearance in the crowd at sporting events, but how was it being used? To me it felt as though it was being used to mean: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who does not believes in him may not perish but may not have eternal life”. And yet the following verse suggests to me that this is far from God trying to catch people out, but trying to help us.
Now surely that is a God worth believing in – and a God worth responding to.
We are nearly there! ‘Emily,’ the pipe organ at St Mark’s Church, Upper Hale, is in need of a thorough overhaul – at 106 years old she is showing her age. We need £23,000 to mend her and we are almost there – just £559 to go!
The money has been raised by the generosity of local people, the hard work of fundraisers and those who have put on and taken part in events, as well as funds from grant-giving bodies. Some people have sponsored pipes, others have made donations at concerts, sung, produced art, recited poetry, made cakes, bought cakes, even constructed a model organ and pushed it round two carnivals! Thank you everyone for what you have done.
We are now appealing for the last little bit so that work can begin this year. One easy way is by sponsoring a pipe. Pipes can be sponsored anonymously or not, and if you sponsor a pipe you can dedicate it to a loved one. You will receive a certificate and the church will display all the names and notes that all the sponsors write on a ‘Sponsoring a Pipe’ manuscript. There will be a celebratory concert once ‘Emily’ has been restored to which all those who have sponsored a pipe will be invited.
Rev’d Lesley Crawley from St Mark’s said: “Emily is a beautiful Edwardian pipe organ which is over 100 years old. She is referred to as ‘Emily’ after her benefactor – Emily Mangles. Sadly, she has been used very rarely over the past six years because, after a century of service, she is in need of a complete overhaul. Once she is restored then she will be available for community events such as concerts, and children who are learning the organ will be able to practise on her once again.”
These are the recommended donations:
Choose your level Donation
Stop £100
16ft pipe £60
8ft pipe £30
4ft pipe £15
If you would like to donate, please contact Lesley on
revd.lesley@badshotleaandhale.org
When I was nine years old, I remember having a discussion with my friend, Cherry, at school about how babies were made. She thought boys had something to do with it. I asked my mum and dad about it after school that day and they sat me down in our dining room and told me the biological facts of human reproduction. I burst into tears. It was all a bit too much for me that day, even though, to this day, I remain grateful to my late parents for their courage, honesty and clarity in telling me the Facts of Life.
My mum, Jean, was told nothing at all on this subject by her parents. When she was nine years old and her younger sister, Margaret, was born, my mum looked in the dustbin for the eggshells from the eggs which she thought her mum must have laid when the baby was born!
After my parents’ honest chat with me, they gave me a Ladybird Book called The Human Body which contained the details they had explained to me (plus colour drawings!) and which also explained digestion, respiration etc. That book gave me a lifelong interest in how the human body works in sickness and in health.
Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, was probably only 14 or 15 years old when Jesus was conceived within her by divine, not human, means. Initially fearful and confused as to how this promised baby could possibly be created without the help of a man, Mary then demonstrates an impressively open-minded, trusting and humble faith in the fulfilment of God’s promises to send a Saviour, Jesus Christ, whose kingdom will have no end.
So, what does such a young girl as Mary do in this highly irregular, not to say potentially shameful situation, of being pregnant but not being married? Remember also that a standard human baby would have been enough of a worry, but her baby was nothing less than the Son of God. A pretty tall order for one so young.
As many women have done before and since, Mary seeks female support and travels from the one-camel town which is Nazareth – it possibly only had around 150 inhabitants – for four days into the hill country of Judea to her much older relative (probably her cousin) Elizabeth who is six months pregnant with John the Baptist. Some scholars believe that Joseph may have accompanied Mary on this potentially dangerous and arduous trip at the start of a pregnancy which will also end with an arduous trip but that time to Bethlehem. We can only imagine the conversations between Zechariah, Elizabeth’s elderly husband and Joseph, if Joseph did go along to Elizabeth and Zechariah’s home with Mary.
I wonder whether Mary was sure of the welcome she would receive from Elizabeth? Might Mary have feared criticism or rejection by Elizabeth? Perhaps, just perhaps, Mary was nervous about their meeting. I have no doubt that on her long journey, Mary would have prayed for a happy meeting. Her prayers are answered, if so, in spades.
As Luke describes it, what happens when Mary does eventually arrive at Elizabeth’s home is a wonderful scene, quite rare in the Bible, of a very pure, intimate, domestic demonstration of female bonding, unshakeable faith and mutual empowerment. Though Mary’s pregnancy probably does not yet show physically, Elizabeth, wife of the Jewish priest, Zechariah, knows with eyes of faith that the child Mary carries within her is indeed Our Lord Jesus Christ. John the Baptist, as an unborn baby, moves within Elizabeth’s womb when Mary greets Elizabeth. The Bible states that the unborn John ‘leapt for joy’, possibly a little bit of literary exaggeration but entirely appropriate for such a significant encounter with the divine Son of God.
Elizabeth calls Mary blessed because, she says, the fruit of Mary’s womb is ‘my Lord’ and because Mary believed that she would conceive and bear a Son even though Mary had absolutely no idea how it would happen.
No idea how it would happen……. Do you currently have no idea how you are going to get through a particularly testing time in your life? Do you have no idea where money is going to come from? Do you have no idea how a personal disagreement or problem is going to be solved? Do you feel up against it, muddled, confused, with no idea about something you simply do not understand?
Try singing your prayers, as Mary did in her beautiful, praiseful, worshipful, well-known song called The Magnificat. Singing may relax you enough so that you can start to see God opening a door you did not see before. Keep an open mind and stay humble, believing, as Mary did, that nothing is impossible with God but do also, as she did, seek support and advice from other trustworthy sources. Dig deep within yourself to find the child-like faith Mary had in God who puts to flight proud hearts and stubborn wills, who feeds the hungry with good things and lifts up the lowly. Believe with all your heart, that, as we sing in the hymn Tell Out My Soul, God’s promise to each and every one of us, is firm and his mercy from age to age is sure and unchanging. He will bring us through every time of testing. Tears will last for a night, but joy will come in the morning.
From a sermon by Wendy Edwards, preached at St John’s on Sunday, December 22.
This Christmas, come and join us at services at any of the three churches – St George’s in Badshot Lea, St John’s in Hale, St Mark’s in Upper Hale. For details of services, see here. For details of why you may want to, read on.
Human beings are natural storytellers. It is something that defines us. We love stories, we define ourselves by our stories, in them we find identity. We even turn things that aren’t really stories into stories because everything needs a story for us to find it plausible; if there is no story then we don’t really register what we are hearing; lists of names or facts or equations generally bore us.
More than anything we need stories of hope and stories to unite us. These are the best stories and they are even better if we tell them from one generation to the next, including the children in the telling. I love the Jewish tradition of Passover, with the unleavened bread, the bitter herbs and the four glasses of wine representing hope, and the youngest child asks the question four times in different ways “Why is this night, of all nights, different?”
The story of Christmas is part of the greatest story ever told, and for me it is the most shocking part, that 2000 years ago a baby was born who united heaven and earth, united God and humankind, and this baby was born in humble circumstances. This baby was worshipped by angels in heaven, poor shepherds who lived locally, and rich magi who had travelled from afar. The baby gets a name “Emmanuel” which means “God with us”, and in that name is our hope and our unity, God is with us… Wow…
We remember this each year, we act it out at our crib services, we involve our children, so that we all know the story. We know that Herod was horrible, we know that there was no room at the inn, we know that Mary was a virgin (even if some of us don’t yet know that word means!) and that she travelled a long way on a donkey whilst heavily pregnant. During the rendition of this story some of the women who have given birth smile at the depictions of Mary’s labour, there are usually a few costume malfunctions, sometimes we struggle to find a Joseph (understandable really), and we all sing carols. The story doesn’t get old or tired.
We also remember this story each year at the “First mass of Christmas” – Midnight Mass – when the church is lit with candles and the organ plays the carols we know so well. Everything is more magical at night time, we wait up past our bedtimes with expectation and with joy, joining together as a rather disparate community, all with one intention, to see in this special day where we celebrate the birth of our Saviour. There are some who come to church only once a year to this service, there are some who have come from afar who are staying with friends or relatives, there are some who have just come from the pub; last year we had some who were Muslims and who had never been to a service in their lives before, and there are some who are regulars at that church. This is the magic of Christmas – the ability for this story to bring us all together in hope.
I love the poem “Christmas” by John Betjeman that we hear each year at the carol service at St John’s. It ends with a question:
And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
And is it true? Why is this night of all nights different?
I pray that your Christmas will be joyful and give you hope, I pray that you will find unity and community in your travels this Christmastide and I pray that this will bless you throughout 2019.
Lesley Crawley
The Parish of Badshot Lea and Hale 