Thanks to everyone who contributed to the excellent Advent Calendar windows in Barrowden this Christmas and thanks also to Phil and Sandy Wood for the photographs. Higher resolution photographs of all the windows can be found at https://wellandfosse.org/advent-calendar-2020
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Talk:
Remembrance Sunday this year, along with most of the rest of the way of life at the moment, is very different. This can clearly be seen in this church where there are only six of us but throughout the country people will be making their own memorial and thinking of those who gave their lives in the two world wars and other conflicts. This year we are also aware of the NHS many of whose workers have a given of themselves in the battle against the coronavirus.
This year, in spite of everything, we have seen the 75thcommemoration of VE and VJ day. I found myself very moved by the veterans talking about their experiences, projected on to the walls of Horse Guards Parade. And there was Robin Rowland who lives in South Luffenham speaking about his time in Kohima. And there was pride on all their faces but also much pain.
Remembrance is not a glorification of war but thanks for the bravery of sacrifice. The poppy is used as a symbol of that gratitude as a flower of freedom and hope. They grow best on broken ground. After the poem that has become so familiar to us, ‘In Flanders’ Fields’, was published anonymously in ‘Punch’, women in France began making poppies and cornflowers (which also grew in the fields) to decorate the war graves. A lady called Madame Guerin saw something greater and campaigned to have the poppy accepted as a symbol of remembrance but she had no success in France. She continued her crusade and took it to London. The poppy now unites men and women in Britain like nothing else.
In our reading Jesus knows that he is on course to his death. He knew that he was not the warrior leader which so many of his contemporaries were expecting. That was not God’s way. Jesus told the disciples that the best and only way was the way of love. The disciples were his friends, in spite of everything that they had said and thought and everything that they would do before his resurrection; Peter would deny knowing him and the others would run away. Jesus still loved them and they loved him but that love would be tested over and over again. They would be called upon to lay down their lives but in the full knowledge that Jesus had laid down his life not only for them but also for each one of us. We need to cultivate the friendship of Jesus and it requires hard work. We need to listen to him and follow what he asks us to do. We may not be asked to lay down our lives for others but we need to support those who are.
One of the veterans of World War 1, Harry Patch, said:
I don’t think it is possible to truly explain the bond that is forged between a soldier in the trenches and his fellow soldiers. There you all are, no matter what your life in civvy street, covered in lice, desperately hungry, eking out the small treats – the ounce of tobacco, the biscuit. You relied on him and he on you, never really thinking that it was just the same for the enemy. But it was. It was every bit as bad.’
The opposite of war is peace and the opposite of remembering is forgetting. Only through remembering will peace be achieved. The service at the Cenotaph in London is very different this year with crowds banned and only about 26 people allowed but the symbolism will not be lost. I had forgotten that the meaning of ‘cenotaph’ is an empty tomb. There was another empty tomb near Jerusalem two thousand years ago. After a humiliating, brutal death which he endured as an innocent man, Christ had risen, as we sing every Easter. It is that empty tomb which gives us hope in the knowledge that eternal life can be ours. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the cenotaphs could be a sign of world wide peace and signify the resurrection for everyone?
I’d like to read a poem written by Nick Fawcett. He had visited the war graves in Flanders and found one which had his name on it. He wrote afterwards:
How did you feel that morning
When the call up papers came through?
Did your blood run cold or excitement take hold
At the thought that your country needs you?
How did you feel that morning
When the time came to set off from home?
Did you conquer your fears or break down in tears
With the loved ones you’d soon leave alone?
How did you feel that morning
When you first set foot in the trench?
Did you brush it aside or wish you could hide
From the horror, the carnage, the stench?
How did you feel that morning
When they sent you over the top?
Did you shout with relief or in sheer disbelief
Vainly pray the nightmare would stop?
How did you feel that morning
When the bullets started to fly?
Did you think even then that you might cheat death again
Or did you know you were going to die?
How did you feel that morning
As the life blood slipped slowly away?
Did you try to make sense of these crazy events
Or with one final breath try to pray?
How do I feel this morning
In the face of such slaughter and sorrow?
Do I just stand aghast as I think of the past
Or give all for a better tomorrow?
Only by all of us playing our part will everlasting peace be found.
Prayer:
Lord of peace, send us out to be beacons of peace in a dark world of conflict.
Make us instruments of peace for whoever we meet and wherever we go, in the name of the Prince of Peace.
Amen.
The Welland-Fosse Benefice: Prayers and Notices.
Sunday 8th November 2020: Remembrance Sunday.
SOUTH LUFFENHAM:
Thanks to Sue and Janet for the Remembrance flowers
This Week’s Meditation: Hope: In the last few weeks the fields around us have turned from gold to brown as the farmer puts in the plough and the autumn sun glints off the mouldboard smoothness. Other fields have turned further, from brown to green as next year’s crop asserts its new life.
As soon as the harvest is over the farmers are busy ploughing and sowing, confident that nature’s new year will work its magic and produce our food once more. There is an expectation that nature can be depended upon. Yes, a few weeds might also appear but a fine crop of corn is expected. St. Paul puts this process under the microscope and reports that the crop which is to be will look nothing like the seed which is being sown. It comes to life in a completely new form.
So it must have been with those young men and women who risked all for what they hoped would be a better future for us all. They sacrificed their freedom as individuals so that we might enjoy a greater freedom in the future. (That is precisely what the government is urging us all to do in this latest lockdown: restraining ourselves for a better tomorrow.)
Of course we might have doubts: doubts about the quality of next year’s crop; doubts about the defeat of CORVID -19 – just as those young soldiers may have had doubts about the chance of victory.
Some of us might be airily optimistic but hope rests on more than a whim. Hope rests on the nature of God who brings victory out of suffering. For Christians, hope turns on the resurrection of Christ who brings surprising new life out of a grisly death. In the Lord’s Prayer we hope for daily necessities (“give us this day our daily bread”) and universal redemption (“thy kingdom come”). The trials that beset us now are as nothing to the life which is to come, both now and hereafter if we place our hope in Christ.
See wellandfosse.org for much more information, including contact details for The Very Rev Christopher Armstrong and the churchwardens
We are in difficult times as a community and the wardens and I want to share with you the resources of our church for it is at such times of national emergency and challenge that people fall back on old certainties often overlooked.
Christopher Armstrong. 01572 748634.
Churchwarden names and phone numbers are shown on the CONTACT page
John 19: 25-27(NRSV)
Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.”
27 Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
Let me just check if there is anyone here who really should be here!
If you are a mother, please raise a hand? OK hands down
Anybody here – If you were baptised or Christened at this Church please raise a hand?
So which group is right?
The answer is everyone is welcome and everyone here should be here but Mothering Sunday historically has a special place for those who were christened and who returned and if they were in service as many were when this tradition developed this was the one day each year they might expect to get back to their home church and back then where you grew up was probably where you were christened and in all probability where your parents still lived so you may well see and stay with your mother on your return, if she was still alive. But the mother in mothering Sunday refers not to going home to see your Mum, though chances are you did but going back to your mother church. And this term was used variously to describe the church of your christening and also the diocesan cathedral. So I have seen old church records of bequests from this county made in wills to the mother church which there meant the diocesan cathedral and in view of their age that mother church was Lincoln whose diocese famously stretched from the Humber to the Thames. Often small amounts tuppence or sixpence but they all added up across such a vast area. I have often wondered how many of them ever visited Lincoln Cathedral? I suspect not many. But it was the mother church.
Last year I met a volunteer at our current cathedral – Peterborough and she was passionate about the cathedral, while not declaring any Christian faith, she nevertheless described the cathedral in essentially spiritual terms. It was like a great blanket covering and protecting her she said with the sense of all the souls who have inhabited the Abbey over the centuries. She was passionate about the mother church and because of that passion she gave of her time resource and really loved it. And we like that about our mothers too. Wanting as children to bring Mum breakfast in bed on Mothering Sunday or draw a picture or find some flowers. We need to do something. And Jesus hanging on that dreadful cross as his mortal life sapped from him sees John, the disciple who Jesus loved standing beside Mary and said behold your mother and to Mary; woman behold your son. We know Jesus had a brother James and yet his passion for the wellbeing of his mother leads him to make this statement from the cross. Woman behold your Son. To secure her future care and love and at the height of his passion and pain to focus his earthly passion on his mother. And we see that love and passion for mothers repeated in every generation. Not always – sometimes it is tough, sometimes that love is shattered or abused but generally that parent child love and devotion is echoed down the centuries.
So how do we apply that same passion, that same love to the mother church? Indeed do we? What is our passion? What “floats our boat”? Our favourite football or rugby team? Our favourite TV or film celebrity or band? Our car? Our pet? And how much time and money do we lavish on our passion?
The French writer and aviator Antione de St Exupéry wrote this – strangely about boat building!
“If you want to build a ship. Don’t summon people to be workers, to prepare tools, distribute jobs and organise their work. Rather motivate people to yearn for the wide boundless ocean.”
If you want to grow your Church’s income and resources. Don’t summons them to Church and browbeat them into stewardship but tell them the Gospel and the love that Jesus has for them worked out in His Church. Does that seem a fair comparison with the quote of Antione de St Exupéry? I suggest it might be.
Growing churches often have growing incomes available and resources to deliver mission. Manchester United is a very popular football team far more popular than my local football team, Barnet football club where supporters were known to walk out of the game during the match even when Barnet were winning, which admittedly was not that often! Whereas Manchester United supporters go around in the red and white club strip, travel hundreds of miles to get to Old Trafford, pay extortionate gate fees whether their team win or lose. Because they are passionate about their club. Much the same could be said of passionate collectors of whatever and people passionate about their hobbies. Are we passionate about Jesus and what he has done for us? As passionate as we might be for the wellbeing of our own mothers?
I saw this story in a recent flyer from a medical charity about a woman in Old Fangak in South Sudan, beside the White Nile.
A woman came into the clinic in this remote swampy area. It was the rainy season although it seems that makes little difference these days and the Marram runway was now mud and incapable of being used. The mother was haemorrhaging and losing dangerous amounts of blood. She was a mother and had 5 children in her care. They had come with her but her condition was worsening and in danger. The children were all tested for blood types as supplies were so low and they brought in as many people as they could to give blood if they were suitable and found 3 but it was not enough. The woman needed surgical procedures that would have to be done in the capital Juba but they could not get her flown out. I have driven a car in such conditions and it is pretty scary an aeroplane would be out of the question. It would take days to cross by boat and land to get to Juba and there are no good roads. The woman did not have a few days. Then news came in that a helicopter was passing nearby the next day and they offered to winch the woman up and fly her to Juba. Within a week she had been treated, recovered and that mother was starting her 500km journey back to her family.
There is no suggestion that the Doctor who wrote this account was a Christian but his observation was that it was the generosity, passion and commitment of this mother’s family, friends and professional carers that saved her. That same word again – passion and linked here with generosity. Features we see at this time each year, Mothering Sunday and features we need to see throughout the year for the Bride of Christ which is the Church – the mother church.
I finish with a quote from the Confessions of Augustine – he of Hippo, which was a town in North Africa, not a reference to his horselike features (although photography was pretty useless in the 4th century!) “You called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness, you flamed, you blazed and being led in my blunders you lavished your fragrance – AND I GASPED!”
AMEN
We are in difficult times as a community and the wardens and I want to share with you the resources of our church for it is at such times of national emergency and challenge that people fall back on old certainties often overlooked.
Christopher Armstrong.
01572 748634.
Wednesday 18 March 2020.
