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Confirmation Service at St Mary’s
May 17th, 2012Twelve candidates, including seven from the Richmond Team, were confirmed at St Mary’s last Sunday by the Bishop of Kingston:
Revd David Gardiner’s Induction set for April 30th
April 24th, 2012The new Team Vicar at St Matthias, Revd David Gardiner, will be inducted at a special service to be held on Monday, 30th April at 8pm – all are warmly invited to attend.
Services for Holy Week & Easter
March 30th, 2012Maundy Thursday - 5th April
Liturgy 8pm St Matthias followed by the Vigil. Includes creative prayer & worship for young people, aged 10-18+from 12 midnight–2am. Sign up sheets at the back of each church.
Good Friday - 6th April
Easter Project for children – 10-12 noon in St Mary’s. Includes tent! Contact Sarah Brown Sarah.Howlett2@uk.bp.com 8412 0081 or Fiona Haigh 8948 4644 fiona.haigh@weil.com
The Three Hours, 12noon – 3pm, atSt John’s. Preacher: The Revd Rachel Carnegie.
Good Friday Devotion 7pm. St Mary’s Choir sing the ”Requiem” by Fauré and “The Crucifixion” by Stainer.
Holy Saturday – 7th April
3.00pm A Liturgy for Holy Saturday– St John
Easter Day, Sunday 8th April
6.00am The Easter Liturgy followed by breakfast – St Mary
8.00am Holy Communion – St Matthias
8.00am Holy Communion – St Mary
9.30am Parish Eucharist – St Matthias
9.30am Parish Eucharist – St Mary
11.00am Sung Eucharist – St John
11.30am Matins with Holy Communion – St Mary
6.30pm Choral Evensong – St Mary
All good wishes for a joyful Easter.
PCC Elections
March 29th, 2012Elections at Team’s annual meetings on 22 April for wardens and some lay PCC representatives. Details and nomination list at back of church.
Report on PCC – March 2012
March 29th, 2012A report of the PCC Meeting held on Wednesday, 14th March 2012:
3rd Sunday of Lent, 11th March 2012, St Mary, evening
March 21st, 2012Reading Philippians 3:4b-14
Preacher The Revd Jane Speck – Chaplain, King’s College London
Thank you for having me here this evening! It’s likely that this will be the last sermon I’ll preach for a while, so it feels like a great privilege to be here with you tonight. It won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that the reason I’m stepping back from the preaching is that I’m just over 8 months pregnant. And what a learning experience it’s proving to be!
One of the things I’ve noticed the most is how everything about me, everything that I consider to define who I am, has gradually narrowed down to my physical self. I can’t go through a day without sundry people commenting on the size and shape of the bump; everyone wants to know when it’s due, and my diary is full of appointments with midwives and doctors where I’m thoroughly checked over and given more and more info about the very physical experiences that are to come. Add to that the excitement of the grandparents to be, the complications of balancing both sides of the family when choosing names, and our very real concerns about how we’re going to look after this tiny baby when it finally arrives, and I seem to be living a life that is very physically grounded indeed.
So when Paul starts tonight’s passage from the Letter to the Philippians with a warning to all those who place their confidence too much in their fleshly existence, I do have some sympathy with them – sometimes life is just like that!
Paul begins this section of the Letter by boasting; parodying the Jews who put their bodily ‘badges of honour’ above their spiritual gains. He lists everything from bodily appearance, through heritage, to the keeping of the Law – and remember that the Law for the Israelites was hugely bound up in the physical aspects of life – what they wore, what they ate, who they had relationships with etc. And no one, it seems, fitted the physical model of what it meant to be a perfect Jew better than Paul. He had plenty of reason to sit back and relax, certain that in God’s eyes, he had ‘arrived’.
As I pass each milestone in pregnancy, each check up with positive outcomes, I guess I can sit back too, confident that everything’s going well and I can happily enter that bovine state of goodwill characteristic of late pregnancy, and not worry about anything else.
But then Paul says, unequivocally, that everything is loss compared to Jesus – everything we smugly put in the credit column of our lives becomes an entry into the debit column, when compared to what we have to gain from a life lived ‘in Christ’. In fact, he says, all those things he prides himself on having achieved, are nothing more than rubbish in the light of what we have to gain from true relationship with Jesus.
Well, that’s quite a challenge. On the whole, we like feeling safe, being comfortable, having our health and enjoying our families. So what would we regard as ‘rubbish’ for Jesus’ sake?
* In our materialistic age, we might think first of material goods – the flat-screen tv, the iPod, the jewellery, the watch. All easy enough to live without if we really put our minds to it.
* Or we might take it up a notch to the possessions that mean more: the iphone that keeps us connected to family, work and friends; the photo albums that remind us of the past; the laptop on which we can run our lives or Skype the grandchildren in Australia. Would we regard these as rubbish for Christ?
* What about stepping it up again? Your first child’s first pair of shoes, perhaps? Or your first child? Your wife of 40 years? Your health and wellbeing? Could you consider these as rubbish for Christ?
This is where it bites. Everything, everything that makes us who we are is regarded as rubbish compared to knowing Christ, sharing his suffering and gaining the resurrection from the dead. Status symbols, heritage, family ties, all of it is worth nothing compared to this. Remember Jesus telling his horrified disciples that he ‘had no mother or brothers’ when they were standing right there by him, because he wanted them to understand that tying ourselves too strongly to anything in this world would ultimately mean separating ourselves from God. And yet you can positively feel Paul’s excitement when he talks about what is to be gained! Seems mad, no? How can he be so excited about losing so much?
It’s like the famous job advert that will be familiar to many of you, that was worded like this:
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.
This job advert garnered 5,000 applications for just 28 places and it was, of course, for the 1914 expedition to Antarctica. Now, in the current job market 5,000 applicants for 28 places may not seem that unreasonable (!) – but given the outrageously negative job description this was quite exceptional. And it says something about the human spirit that I find quite amazing. It says that, no matter how comfortable and safe we might think we want to be in our everyday lives, there is some small spark in each of us that’s drawn to the difficult, the dangerous, the downright barmy.
So when St Paul talks about his highest aim being to suffer and die like Jesus did, one part of us might think, ‘He’s mad!’ but another part might think, ‘Hmm. How would it be to follow Jesus that closely? To risk everything for him?’ We are, many of us, drawn deep down to such complete commitments, and it’s often only our fear that stops us from making them. Remember the rich young man? The one who came to ask Jesus what he should do to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? When Jesus told him to sell all that he had and follow him, he ‘went away sadly’, we’re told. We don’t know whether he did do as Jesus suggested in the end, but the initial instinct was there, even if the courage to follow it through was not.
So in order to take even the next small step in following Christ, we have to think seriously about what we would, like Paul, consider rubbish for his sake.
In that sense, I think this is a really excellent passage to be reading during Lent. Many of us use these 40 days to try and let go of something that has us in its grip. Chocolate and sweet things are a popular choice, or alcohol, or caffeine (the one time I gave up caffeine, students at college were begging me to take it up again before the first 2 weeks were up! And they still remember it even now…). These are the things that we are happy to consider as rubbish, for Christ. And deep down, many of us have to acknowledge that the yearly fast from booze or sweets is actually rather easy. We’re used to doing it, and it’s only for a few weeks. But Lent isn’t meant to be easy. It’s meant to be a time of challenge, when we focus on what really matters. When we follow Christ to the cross and engage in his suffering and death.
Do we, like Paul, consider this opportunity to be a huge privilege? Are we in tune with that part of ourselves that is attracted to an all-or-nothing response? Or do we fob ourselves, and Jesus, off, with easy self-denial and a lip-service approach? Do we get so taken up with our physical lives and the achievements and virtues embedded in them, that we lose sight of the spiritual aspect that invites us to overturn our priorities for Christ?
Having started this section of his letter by boasting about his ‘fleshly’ attributes, Paul is careful to end it not by boasting about his spiritual gains, but by encouraging the Philippians – and therefore us – to join him in the attempt to reach the goal of ‘the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus’. Paul is not trying to say that following Christ is easy, or that we are intrinsically bad to get caught up in things that might distract us from that end. But he seeks to encourage us to join him on the journey; to access that part of ourselves that wants to take the risk, rise to the challenge and totally rethink our priorities. This Lent, we are all being invited to ‘press on towards the goal’ of true faith in Christ, because the prize to be won is better than anything we might think we have already gained.
Lent Books
March 9th, 2012Lent books for sale at our churches:
Love Unknown by Ruth Burrows (£9)
The Naturalist and the Christ by Tim Heaton (£7).
If copies sell out contact Alan Sykes
Christian Aid: Co-ordinator Required
February 27th, 2012Christian Aid: Co-ordinator required for St Mary’s. Small time commitment except for Christian Aid Week. Includes cash/banking responsibility. Full back up and guidance provided and a handover from Charles Hessey. Please contact Teresa 8940 0362
admin@richmondteam.freeserve.co.uk
Street Pastors – Now Recruiting
February 14th, 2012Richmond Street Pastors are recruiting candidates for the next round of training, beginning in March,to start joining ourRichmond team from April /May. If you are interested, please contact co-ordinator Gary Flynn by February 17th:gary.streetpastor@hotmail.co.uk 07966275740. Further information: www.streetpastors.co.uk Street pastors are supported by the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police.
Spanish Retreat – led by Fr Pip
February 14th, 2012The Jesus Prayer-What we can learn from the Orthodox tradition – A retreat from 30th April to 4th may led by Fr. Philip Bevan at losOlivos, Spain.