Sunday Worship 11th October
St Thomas' Church welcomes you to our Parish Eucharist at 10 am. Presiding and preaching today is our own Associate Priest, Rev'd David Halford.
We follow all of the guidelines to ensure the safety of everyone worshipping here, and we have ample seating to welcome families whilst maintaining safe distancing.
If, for whatever reason, you are unable to join us in church today, you'll find everything you need to worship from home here on this page.
This morning's first hymn is "Now The Green Blade Riseth"
The Gospel for Today -
The first verses of today’s Gospel tell of an invitation to a feast – refused, with the servant messengers ignored or ill-treated. This is clearly a reference to God’s invitation in Jesus.
The following verses seem rather different – the feast is full, but someone without a wedding garment is thrown out. This could be a problem – how is someone off the street expected to get one? Some suggest they were given out by host. Thus, the refusal to wear it becomes a deliberate insult. Others say clean clothes were expected, as a compliment, and a third group point out that clothes in scripture often symbolise character.
The detail is obscure, but the point is clear: the invitation is free – your great good luck is to get one you might never have expected. But you do have to do something; first of all, go! Even when you get in and are enjoying yourself, respect the host.
Is there anything here for us? I don’t think we’d have much difficulty understanding how unwelcome is a wedding guest who gets drunk while telling stories against the bride; or who arrives in dirty overalls smelling awful! Part of this story is about the consequences of our actions.
In terms of our faith, how do our actions affect our relationship to God, and to other people? You can’t earn a place in heaven, but you can lose it by failing to take the invitation, and following-up appropriately.
If you hope for heaven, then start behaving like it! Not sometime when you get round to it, or if you feel like it. More and more our twenty first century culture wants to tell God how to run the universe. We believe in heaven, not in hell. We believe in being forgiven, but not in forgiving. We believe that someone else ought to deal with young people, the financial crisis, illness and death – so that we are free to do what we want.
And God says, “Once there was a king who prepared a wedding feast . .” Listen to the story. Think it through and take is seriously.
There’s good news – a free invitation.
There’s reality – you need to do something about it, and in time.
There’s a warning – what you do will have consequences.
This morning's prayers -
And our final hymn for today is "All Creatures Of Our God And King"
