Following the road to Emmaeus (Easter 3 year B)

An unusual week in the lectionary:

1. There are two new testament lessons in addition to the Gospel

2. Those who set the lectionary have decreed that we must use the reading from Acts 3.

3. The Gospel is taken from  Luke while we are in the year of Mark

Why do you think this is?

NB Services at St Andrew’s are currently suspended as a result of the progress of the building works and there will be  joint service at St Mary’s

Acts 3:12-19

When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, “You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?  The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him.  But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.

“And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.  In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer.  Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out.

 

Psalm 4

Answer me when I call, O God of my right! You gave me room when I was in distress. Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer.
How long, you people, shall my honor suffer shame? How long will you love vain words, and seek after lies? [Selah]
But know that the LORD has set apart the faithful for himself; the LORD hears when I call to him.
When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent. Selah
Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the LORD.
There are many who say, “O that we might see some good! Let the light of your face shine on us, O LORD!”
You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and wine abound.
I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O LORD, make me lie down in safety.

 

1 John 3:1-7

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.  And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.  Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.  You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.  No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.  Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

 

Luke 24:36b-48

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.  He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?  Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.  While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?”

They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.  Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you–that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.

Joint service and Annual Meeting at St. Mary’s, 10:30 15th April

This Sunday  (15^th April) we are having a joint service at St Mary’s,  followed by the APCM  (Annual Parochial  Church Meeting) at 11:45 (with refreshments).

The APCM is a forum for reporting on progress made and appointing the new team to address future challenges in the Parish.  As we have so much going on at St Andrew’s (with the Care Team and the Extension project) it would be good to make sure that we have a strong presence at the APCM to explain and promote this activity to the rest of the Parish.

If you have any problems with transport to St Mary’s next week, please let me know.

Chris

Happy Easter

Alleluia, Christ is Risen

He is risen indeed, Alleluia

Wishing you all the blessings of a new life in the Spirit of the risen Christ.

Joint service this morning at 10:30, St Mary’s Headley.

How to pray

It is funny how life has a habit of providing things to us just at the time we need them.

In the course of this Lent I have been thinking about how to pray: thinking about what I am trying to achieve through prayer and how to be more structured about it.

It was for this reason that I attended recently one of the meditation sessions run by Anthony Devin at St. Andrew’s on alternate Monday afternoons.

His message was very straightforward –  keep an open mind and keep it simple.

After about 5 minutes of listening to a recorded chant based on the letters in the name Jeshua (the Hebrew name for Jesus) we sat in silence for a further 25 minutes – together, yet alone with our thoughts.

After a quick stretch we made tea and a wide-ranging discussion ensued.

This approach seemed very refeshing and the session was spiritually cleansing and quite fulfilling, but I was left very much on my own and had been looking for something more in the way of structure and guidance, especially Christian guidance.

It was with this in mind that I picked up a small book called “Christian Meditation” by  Laurence Freeman, OSB (if you look quickly you will still find a few copies at the back of both St Mary’s and St. Andrew’s)

I  took this book home and read it in the days which followed. I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that it has changed my life.

Its thesis follows on from Anthony’s fundamental message of simplicity but puts it into a Christian context.  The  key elements for me at least are as follows:

What is prayer?  The raising of the heart and mind to God

How should we pray?  Be silent, be still, keep it  simple

On Silence:  “Silence in prayer as between two people is a sign of trust and acceptance”

 On Stillness:  Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10)

On Simplicity: We do not know how to pray but the spirit prays within us (Romans 8:26)

On meditation:  ”Between past and future, which are constructs of the mind, you find the present moment which is absolute reality” 

The booklet contains munerous suggestions of mantras or passages on which to focus during prayer.  Personally, in the course of this exploration I have rediscovered the power of the Lord’s Prayer, in traditional language, as I learned it at school, as a way to begin and a way to end.

Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done,
in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that 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.

It has become for me the bookends of my prayer and meditation, the start and the begining and much of the content for the in between.

Its power seems only to grow stronger through familiarity and repetition.

It was after all,  the way that Jesus taught us to pray.

Walk of Witness – Good Friday 2012

Join us at St Andrew’s Box Hill at 12:00 noon for an hour of meditation
before beginning  our walk of witness at 12:45pm
across the heath
to our sister church of  St Mary’s, Headley.

To arrange transport from St Mary’s  email Chris Hancock on cmjhancock@btinternet.com

Sunday 18th March – our preacher is Clive Piggott

The ever popular Revd. Clive Piggott from St James’s Malden will lead worship and celebrate Eucharist at 10:30 on Mothering Sunday

Jan Curtis speaks on “Mothering Sunday”

Mothering Sunday came early to the people of Box Hill today in a non-denominational service organised by The Friends of Box Hill and led by Jan Curtis.

Jan spoke movingly on two pieces of scripture with particular relevance to mothers – the birth of Samuel to the patient Hannah (1 Samuel:1-20) and Jesus’s raising of a widow’s son (Luke 7:11-17).

Jan spoke passionately about the differences between the commercialism of Mothers’ Day and the history and traditions of Mothering Sunday – complete with a Simnel Cake which she had baked herself and in which, as this picture testifies, the congregation was very happy to share after the service.

The service ended with a distribution of a bouquet of spring flowers created by Jane Harding and the playing of the Magnificat from Howells St. Paul’s Service.

This  was somewhat truncated by a technical fault and so I am attaching a youtube clip here so you can hear the whole of this wonderful interpretation of Mary’s joy at her impending motherhood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBw6_dK1yHg

Read on if  you want to know more about Simnel cakes …

This is a light fruit cake, similar to a Christmas Cake, covered in marzipan, then toasted.  On the top of the cake, around the edge, are eleven marzipan balls to represent the true disciples of Jesus; Judas is omitted. In some variations Christ is also represented, by a ball placed at the centre.

The cake is made from these ingredients: white flour, sugar, butter, eggs, fragrant spices, dried fruits, zest and candied peel.

The word “simnel” is probably derived from the Latin word simila, meaning fine, wheaten flour with which the cakes were made.
There is a recipe for Simnel cakes, which have become a traditional Easter food at http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/simnelcake_792

 

What’s the point of suffering (in Lent)? – Chris Hancock on Lent 1 (Year B)

Gospel: Mark 1:9-15

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

So here we are in Lent – a time of preparation – preparation for the great emotional roller-coaster of Passiontide and Easter, when we remember Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection – a time to “repent, and believe in the good news”

Like Advent, Lent marks a transition point in the Christian calendar and invites us to look inside ourselves, to renew, to throw out what we don’t like about ourselves – to spring clean.  (In old English, Lent means spring).  Like the baptism of Christ it marks a new starting point in our spiritual lives.

As we have heard, immediately following his baptism Jesus spent time in the desert – driven there by the Spirit – in preparation for his ministry – where he was tempted by Satan and looked after by angels.

So we have here the association between preparation and temptation, between the wilderness and spirituality, between mission and suffering – this is the essence of Lent, arguably it is the essence of Christianity, especially its  monastic traditions.

In the Old Testament the desert was where man met God –we remember Moses finding the burning bush on mount Horeb, “in the backside of the desert” (KJV).

As we prepare ourselves in Lent we should take time to go into our own wilderness – where there is no noise, no structure, no modern distractions – to be alone with God – to be still and listen to what he is saying to us, listening to the Spirit.

Jesus was tempted by Satan – tempted originally meant tested – tested to see whether he was worthy, up to the job.

So in Lent we test ourselves.  We know that we are not perfect.  Human beings have a strong sense of their own shortcomings (at least the decent ones do) and so we look not just to see whether we are worthy but to make ourselves better.

The Bible tells us that the Israelites were involved in a long-running saga of falling short of the expectations which they were set by God and Moses. As a result the Old Testament is a series of stories of Israel failing, followed by acts of contrition or suffering punishment and then a clean start – we think of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, Noah, the Golden Calf, the destruction of the temple and exile in Babylon, the return to Jerusalem.

The Law of Moses is based on a sense of mankind as flawed – always falling short of God’s expectations – it is full of rules laid down to protect the Israelites from becoming unclean. It also sets out, at length, the procedures required in order to return a sinner to purity.

The way to reach and maintain the requisite purity, or righteousness, was through sacrifice – burnt offerings of animals, flour and oil were made every day and in great numbers on special festivals – the Holy days of God. These procedures are set out in detail first in Leviticus and again in Numbers.

There was even a whole festival dedicated to this purification – the Feast of Atonement in which sacrifices were made to purify the priests, the people, the tabernacle and the holy objects used in worship.  Sacrifice (or suffering) removed sin.

Reading this one can’t help but feel sorry for the thousands of innocent creatures slaughtered in this way. These ideas of animal sacrifice to please God and atone for sin seem pretty alien to us now.

But we do retain a strong sense that crime (or sin) can be wiped out by suffering or punishment on the part of the perpetrator – that the sinner can atone for his sin – this is the central plank of Ian McEwan‘s novel, Atonement.

Moreover, we know that by suffering we do actually improve ourselves – the athlete trains hard to win the race, the student studies hard to pass the exam, the careful saver is able to buy the house or car, pay off the mortgage.

We understand that it is important to “sacrifice” pleasure today for greater rewards in the future. That “suffering” can be good for us, that it can be a necessary step towards becoming more like the person that we want to be.

So in Lent we practice the art of self-improvement through suffering – by self-denial we make ourselves nearer to the people we want to be.

In so doing we also align ourselves with Jesus who made the ultimate sacrifice by dying for us on the cross.

For the early Church (who were Jews before they were Christians) it would have been easy to see the death of Jesus as like one of the purificatory temple sacrifices, or the lamb sacrificed at Passover or even the scapegoat used to carry all of their sins at the Feast of Atonement:

[The Chief Priest] shall bring forward the live goat. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites— all their sins— and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert (Leviticus 16: 20-22)

For us it is more difficult. We are un-comfortable with the death of an innocent creature as being of benefit to other people.

And yet in some ways we still recognise that this happens: every year at Remembrance-tide we celebrate the lives of those who through their courage and defiance in the face of evil paid the ultimate price for our liberty by dying for us in war

In places throughout the world, the Christian messages of equality and freedom from oppression are still being fought for and considered so dangerous to other people that they can cost you your life – in Afganistan, in Nigeria, in Syria.

Through the sacrifice of Jesus we have an example for all those who put their values before themselves.

Principal among these ideas was that everyone is special, everyone is loved, everyone is worthy of God and that everyone can start again – as for Noah after the flood, the rainbow is a gift for all, reminding us all that there is always the chance to start again.

And so we are back to where we began, making a new start this Lent, teting ourselves against the highest standards and spring cleaning our souls.

Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we pray that this Lent we may find time to find you. Help us to make  space to listen to your voice speaking to us.

Help us in our Lenten observances to discipline ourselves to understand and overcome our weaknesses, to make us more like you, the best that we can be.

Renew and refresh us in the power of your spirit to follow in the footsteps of your son, our lord Jesus Christ, to be great witnesses to your Gospel of love and understanding.

Peter says: “He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Peter 3:19).

So let it be with us this Lent – by denying ourselves in the flesh may we be made alive in the spirit.

We ask these things in the name of your son, our saviour, Jesus Christ

Amen

Chris Hancock 26^th February, 2012

Lent 2012

It’s Ash Wednesday and Lent has just begun. It’s a time for giving up and taking up.

Giving up is an easy decision – it’s going to be biscuits again as custard creams are still my biggest weakness.

Taking up is more challenging. I am hoping to speak to at least one person that I haven’t spoken to for over a year, each day of Lent.

I wish you all the best in your Lenten observances.

Olympic Cycle Race Brings Opportunities and Benefits to Box Hill

See the latest news about extended viewing on the zig-zags and a fibre link for Box Hill on the LOCOG website

http://www.london2012.com/press/media-releases/2012/01/road-race-vantage-point-capacity-increased.php