This coming week is Hedgehog Awareness Week, and I'm looking at ways to make our churchyard more hedgehog friendly (I may well be after some volunteer helpers sometime soon!) If you want to know more about how to welcome hedgehogs into your own garden please follow this link -
Meanwhile, in church, we're preparing for the Annual Parochial Church Meeting on the 23rd May, where we vote for our churchwardens and PCC members for the coming year. The electoral roll is now open, and forms are available in both churches for anyone who wishes to join.
We're also preparing for our parish confirmation service in July, and Confirmation Classes will start on Thursday 6th May via Zoom. If you are interested in taking this next step on your Christian journey please message this page and someone will get in touch with you.
And finally, this week our Scout Group Leader from St Thomas' celebrated his 50th birthday, and also 42 years since his first cub scout meeting. Since then, Kingsley has run all 3 sections, been the Group Scout Leader, District Beaver Leader, and been the general all round go to for scouting enquiries in the village.
Here are a couple of photos - Happy Birthday, Kingsley!
Welcome to our Worship on the fourth Sunday of Easter. Our Parish Eucharist is at 10 am at St Thomas' Church, and Revd Lyn Woodall will be preaching and presiding. If you can't be with us in person, you'll find everything you need to worship from home here on this page.
Our first hymn this morning is "The King Of Love My Shepherd Is"
The Gospel
John 10:11-18 [NIV]
"I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So, when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. "I am the Good Shepherd; I know My sheep and My sheep know Me - just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father - and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason my Father loves Me is that I lay down My life - only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father”.
Prayer:
Father God, we pray that as we reflect on this; Your living Word, that You will speak to our inner-man and make Yourself known to us in a very real way. Help us to understand Your Word, according to Your will.
Holy Spirit, please interpret these things and bind them to our hearts.
We want to know more about Jesus and we want to do the Father’s will; even as Jesus did the Father’s will.
We ask this, in the mighty Name of Jesus our Saviour and Teacher.
Amen.
Reflection
We are fortunate to live in an area of exceptional beauty and where sheep are commonplace. Some of us might even see shepherds as they tend their flocks. Similarly, in Judea and Galilee, sheep were also commonplace. It is therefore natural that, as Jesus taught His Disciples and His followers, He would use familiar imagery, the better to make His point.
About Himself, He could not be clearer:
“I am the Good Shepherd.” [v11]
Not any old shepherd!
Nor even ‘a’ shepherd…. but THE Good One!
It is abundantly clear, too, that He knows He is heading towards His death as the Sacrificial Lamb. [vv11,15,17,18]
Jesus is both clear and difficult to understand. We have the benefit of the New Testament and hindsight when we read His Teachings…and it can still be confusing at times. But His followers, in the year 33AD, had no such help. As Jews, they certainly understood the concept of the Sacrificial Lamb. It being an important part of the Jewish Faith. The Blood Sacrifice an established ritual in their understanding.
Remember, though, that they were a captive race. They had been invaded by and were ruled by the Romans. They were second-class citizens in their own land and they were definitely hoping for a conquering hero who would lead them out of bondage. They were expectant for a political or military leader. NOT a Shepherd!
And Not only a Shepherd but also the Sacrificial Lamb.
A few weeks ago we read of Jesus’ Baptism where his Cousin, John the Baptist declared, “Behold!, the Lamb of God “, [John1:29] as Jesus approached him in the River Jordan.
To add to the Sheep and Lamb imagery, in the preceding verses of John 10; Jesus refers to Himself as The Sheep GATE! [vv7,9] Commenting that NO-ONE can be saved from Hell and damnation UNLESS THEY COME THROUGH JESUS the SHEEP-GATE.
In John 10:11-18, Jesus warns us about two things:
i)That we should be aware that the hired hand is NOT the same as the Shepherd NOR is he the Owner of the Sheep. He is just someone paid to do a job. This does not mean he cares for his sheep either. (Of course, this can most definitely be Satan.)
ii)That the hired hand cannot protect the sheep from the wolf (You can decide if the wolf symbolises, Satan, life, sin, self or something else).
The mark of the GOOD SHEPHERD is that He knows His sheep by name. Not only that but the sheep KNOW the Good Shepherd.
He likens our relationship with the Good Shepherd (Himself) to His relationship with His Father, God. That short phrase, ‘I know My sheep and My sheep know Me - just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father – and I lay down My life for the sheep’. [vv14b, 15] is so rich and valuable and unfathomable! That we might know God in the same way as the Son of God knows His Father! How amazing is that information?!
Then, almost out of left-field, He tell His listeners that He has OTHER SHEEP. Sheep that are not from the same sheep-pen as us. So, from going from the information that the only way to God is through the Sheep-Gate (Jesus), He tells us that there are some other sheep who belong to Him wo have not come through the same way as us! And He tells us that He MUST bring them! He is COMPELLED! He is clear. They will listen to Him and that though they are a different type of sheep to ourselves, nevertheless, ‘THERE SHALL BE ONE FLOCK AND ONE SHEPHERD’, [v16b]
I leave you to ponder who and what this might mean.
One thing He makes clear, the reason His Father loves Him is because He lays down His life: freely and of his Own volition. Not just that….He lays down His life only to take it up again. He says, ‘No one takes it from Me but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.’ [v18] He acknowledges that this is a command from God and yet He is also saying He is free to choose His path.
Jesus is both God and Man.
He is both perfectly divine and perfectly human.
At this juncture He had walked and talked on this Earth as man and boy for 33 years.
Let me throw this out there…. into the mix….
Can this point be the beginning of His embodying His transition from Mary’s Son to God’s Son? Of course, He is both. But His followers do not know this. As He approaches His Crucifixion He grows more and more obviously divine and God-like. He does this, in part, to gain the superhuman strength He will need for His death on the Cross. In stating that He has the authority to lay His life down and to take it up: He is already publicly making Himself on a par with God. This was MASSIVE. This was so shocking to suggest from a Scriptural (Old Testament) point of view to a Jewish audience.
It could appear that the more we know about Jesus: the more there is to know about Him!
May God and the Holy Spirit help us to open our eyes and heart to find out and know as much as we can about our Jesus.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Jesus and His sacrifice on the Cross, that has given us eternal life.
We thank You for Your Holy Spirit Who reveals Your love and Your Word to us.
Welcome to our Worship on the third Sunday of Easter. Our Parish Eucharist is at 10 am at St Thomas' Church, and Revd Richard Hawkins will be preaching and presiding. If you can't be with us in person, you'll find everything you need to worship from home here on this page.
Our first hymn this morning is "Jesus Stand Among Us & Here Is Bread"
Today's Gospel
Luke 24:36-48
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.
Reflection
"While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?'" (Luke 24:41)
Everyone has gestures special to them, those distinctive little things that they alone do: the raising of an eyebrow when sceptical; holding a coffee cup in a particular way; beginning a question with a certain tilt of the head. These things can be the stuff of both love and irritation, but actually most of them are the kinds of things that you don't really notice on a day-to-day basis.
It’s often only when you haven't seen a person for some time that you suddenly become aware of the little things that they do. Or they catch you by stealth when you're thinking about something else; maybe you are sitting quietly somewhere and you can hear someone approach; they suddenly cough in a certain way, and you know instantly who it is. Everyone has these gestures: the seasoning - the salt and pepper - of the way we express ourselves in the world, but it takes someone else really close to us to know and see them.
Perhaps, with their senses overworked after their post-crucifixion trauma, it was just such a gesture that woke the disciples up finally to the presence of Jesus in their midst. These bedraggled and devastated disciples had been through emotional hell, after all. Their beloved friend, the one who had filled their heads and hearts with such love, such hope of a new world and a new way of life, had been tortured and killed. We can only imagine their helplessness and grief, not to mention regret, failure and fear.
And then there had been these strange incidents. In the verses just preceding the ones we read today, Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James, along with a few others, had reported finding an angel in the empty tomb, who announced that Jesus was alive - and more than that, they received a celestial lecture that this was entirely what they should have expected all along.
Peter had been to see for himself, but couldn't understand what had happened. And then there was this strange appearance to Cleopas and his compatriot on the road to Emmaus. There again they receive a lecture about their failure to understand that all these horrible events had to happen.
But the funny thing is - or perhaps it is not so funny, just normal human behaviour - none of these things seemed to really convince them. In the end it was not the appearances of angels that brought it home, nor the lectures, nor even the presence of Jesus himself. This all seemed to terrify and confuse them.
It was very simple gestures that really identified Jesus for them, that made the Messiah real. In our reading today, it was when he asked for and ate a bit of fish. On the road to Emmaus it was the breaking of bread. Perhaps it was because ghosts don't eat food, but perhaps it was because they were so close to Jesus that they instantly saw that the way he took food was quintessentially him. Suddenly, after all the drama, this simple gesture seems to open the disciples' understanding, and the mission of the Church can begin.
And this mission, of course, is one that we continue. It is a huge task and a daunting one and we spend a lot of time and energy talking ourselves into it. But perhaps we're barking up the wrong tree. The disciples were motivated to carry on their task not by lectures and angelic appearances but by a moment of true recognition brought about by the simplest of gestures. So perhaps we should be looking for the simplest, most commonplace things that will identify God to us. What they will be we don't know, but it's a good reason be attentive, because you don't know when this might happen and we are often so busy.
One of the messages of Easter is the opening of the eyes: the moment of true recognition that enables the beginning of the rest of the story. It is this we are looking for - the gesture that opens our eyes and allows us to claim Christ for our own. That makes us say, "This is the one!" "This is Christ to me!" Whatever it is that brings that moment, it is this that will pave the way forward to a new life and the beginning of the rest of our own story. It's a message of good news that beats the abundance of egg-shaped chocolate any day.
Our Prayers
Loving Father,
we thank you for the sacrifice your son made for us
to redeem the sins of us all.
Open our eyes to your presence in our lives,
Help us to recognise you in the day-to-day activities we experience
And the everyday wonders of the world.
From a simple blade of grass and the song of the birds,
For the love of our friends and family
And the successes in our lives, be them great or small.
Let us be thankful and proclaim the good news
That, "This is Christ to me!"
Amen
Our final hymn this morning is "The Strife Is O'er"
