Malcolm Park Friends Resident Group is working with the local authority to raise money from the Big Lottery Fund to upgrade the equipment in the playground and repair the fence and playing surface.
Support from local residents and playground users is crucial to a successful application. Please consider becoming friends with the Park on Facebook to show your support.
If you would like to join the Resident Group please email.
A summary of the homily at our Harvest Songs of Praise, St John's, NW4, 29th September
When I trained as a priest I did so alongside a load of people who, for some reason, were fans of ABBA. As a consequence, for three years of my life in my early twenties, I was exposed to the output of the Swedish pop legends to a greater extent than is sensible for any human being. The lyrics of most of their songs are etched indelibly into my mind.
This became frighteningly apparent when I was saying Morning Prayer this morning. Because today is not only the day on which we celebrate the harvest here at St John's, it is also Michaelmas - the feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the great archangels we read about in scripture. So there was a lot of stuff in the Office about angels. Suddenly, after one psalm, horribly and involuntarily, the words came into my head, "I believe in angels, something good in everything I see".
We certainly do believe in angels. That is why we celebrate Michaelmas. Do we also believe in something good in everything we see?
The answer should be "yes". We read in the book of Genesis, "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. Everything that exists does so because of God. God is the reason why there is something rather than nothing at all. This is what the Church means when it speaks about Creation - not a rival theory to those suggested by science: of course we should believe our best theories of evolutionary biology and cosmology. No, by "Creation" we mean our conviction that everything, at the deepest level, for every moment of its existence, is loved into being by God. Everything - not just the flowers and trees we sing about at harvest time, not just the rural idyll beloved by Victorian hymn writers, but also the world of our day-to-day life in our 21st century city. The world in which we live, work, and play is created and loved by God. And however much we mess it up with our oppression, our injustice, and our violence, a core goodness remains precisely because of Creation - our Catholic tradition has never been prepared to accept that the blot of human sin can ever fully obscure the goodness of Creation.
The created order is good. And we should give thanks for it.
Harvest supper at St John's
But let's think about what is involved in giving thanks. Part of it is saying thank you, of course. But that's not enough. Suppose you bought me a Christmas present - I merely note that the Season is three months away. Let's say you bought me a bottle of premium gin. I'd say thankyou - I was well brought up. But if I then went straight home and used the gin to unblock my drains I would not be behaving in a thankful way. I would not be receiving the gift in the way it was intended, as a sign of your good-will towards me, intended to be drunk and enjoyed. I would be treating it, and by extension you, in a casual way.
Likewise, it is not enough to say thank you to God for the created order. How we use that order matters, because whether we use it well is the litmus test of whether we are genuinely thankful. And it has to be said that the human race does not use the created order well. We do not, systematically, use it so that we may flourish collectively. It is a disgrace that in a world of plenty people starve. It is a disgrace that, as we will hear later with our Christian Aid appeal, people are denied access to the land they need to live. And it is, I should, add an absolute disgrace that in a country as rich as ours, people are dependent on charity in order to survive.
Sometimes people are suspicious of Harvest being used to promote social concern. They suspect, I think, that it is the kind of thing thought up by trendy vicars in the 1970s. Now I am very much opposed to trendy vicars of all periods, but I think the connection between thankfulness and justice is an important one, and for that matter a deeply traditional one. Do we want to be thankful? In which case, we should pray and work for a world which promotes human flourishing. We have no other choice, because thankful children do not misuse their Father's gifts.
So let's commit ourselves anew to struggling for God's Kingdom of plenty until that Day when justice is done, peace reigns, and we - with all those angels in whom we firmly believe - give perfect thanks to the one Creator God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To him be glory for ever. Amen.
I came across an interesting article at work this afternoon on the Sydney Anglicans web page which explores the idea around structured and unstructured time in Church. Now Sydney diocese might be on the opposite side of the globe and on the othere end of the Anglican spectrum to us at St John's and St Matthias' but this reflection really made me think about how we spend time together as a Church family.
The writer suggests that when we meet in formal gatherings we aim to be organised and disciplined but that we alsoo create a space for unstructured, inefficient time in every gathering so that people can just be humans in company with one another and ensure we help each other to know that such a thing is a great blessing.
For example coffee mornings and tea after church are not just for stocking up on cake and quenching thirst, and church cleaning is not just about making the place sparkle. These are opportunities to build deeper relationships and through those relationships we deepen our understanding of humanity and of God. Perhaps, and just perhaps, then we can learn more what Jesus means about welcoming him as a little child - as Fr John talks about in Thought for Trinity 16.
On Thursday over 500 clergy of the Diocese of
London gathered for a days study summit in Church House Westminster. The
Archbishop of Canterbury gave the opening key note address and in the afternoon
Tim Keller spoke about his experience as a church leader. He is an
extraordinary person who took the job of leading the Redeemer church in New
York city and growing the church from 50 to over 5,000 in a few years.
He spoke about the nature of church being a
community that should be identifiable as “contrasting, serving, unifying, lay
launching, suffering and prophetic.”
In this mornings gospel we observe Jesus with
his disciples and in the few verses we see these “marks” of the church as
identified by Tim Keller.
Jesus is of course trying to get the disciples
to understand that as they journey towards Jerusalem what awaits him, and of
course those who will ultimately follow him, is suffering. The reality of this
suffering is of course contrasting to the popular held ideas current in first
century Jewish messianic hope and expectation. Jesus is having this
conversation as part of his teaching and training of those whom he has called
and will soon send out into the world to continue his work. This need and
desire to teach his disciples is required as part of “lay launching”, and of
course what he is suggesting to the disciples is prophetic for his suffering
will come to shape all that follows in the life of the church.
And what is the reaction of the disciples? they
cannot bear to hear these words of Jesus. They exhibit the all to familiar
behavior of those who have followed in their footsteps up to the present day,
division rather than unity, an attitude of self-serving and self absorbed
behaviour. They get themselves into a bother about who is the greatest amongst
themselves. It is threatening the unity of Christ’s followers, that most
important mark of the church referred to by Tim Keller and prayed for by Jesus
himself. The arguments within the church today over issues of gender and sexuality
are a sign of a church more interested in serving itself than the world in
which it is called share the Good News.
We are living during a time of a passionate and
fearful argument in the life of our own church. Some have left the church,
others are talking about schism, and many fear that those watching our
behaviour are shaking their heads in bewilderment. But what we don't recognize
is that most of us argue the way the disciples did. We are so certain we are
right that we stand ready to condemn those who disagree with us. We want to be
"the greatest." In this kind of argument, love rarely enters, no
matter what words we use to the contrary.
Sex has become the predominant verbal occupation
of the day. Whether in discussion of sin or in the context of sanctioned
blessing, sex has become the central issue of not just the world but of the church.
This episode in Mark cries out for us to notice a bitter irony, to see that
while Jesus is telling us about his death and suffering, we are arguing like
the disciples amongst ourselves.
What Jesus does next is to take a child and
remind us in our own time of the need to welcome those around us as we would a
child. “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever
welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Verse 37
We cannot of course welcome anyone, let alone a
precious child, if we are only concerned with our own selves and being right in
all we say and do within the church.
Scott was baptised at St John's Church on Sunday the 9th of September. We have just received these pictures which we share with the joy of welcoming Scott in to the Christian Church and his family back once again to St John's. It was a wonderful day and thank you to Fr Simon for making this liturgy so special for everyone present
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose
it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the
gospel, will save it.
Mark 7: 34-5
Today our lectionary brings us to the point in Mark's gospel where Jesus turns his face towards Jerusalem, where he will be arrested and killed. At precisely this point in the gospel Jesus is recognised by Peter for who he is - the Messiah, the Christ - and the implications of following Jesus are made crystal clear. The path of Christ is the path that Jesus himself follows, a path of suffering and self-renunciation.
What should we make of this; does God want us to suffer? Is there something good about suffering; is it something we should seek out? Of course not. Sometimes in the history of the Church, unhealthy and masochistic spiritualities have seemed to suggest otherwise. Against these, the gospel is quite clear: God calls us to a fullness and richness of life, as John's gospel has it "to have life, and have it abundantly".
The problem is not with God, but with a world that has a hard time living life in its fullness. That life, after all, is a life of love, and love is a frightening thing. Love involves vulnerability, an opening up of ourselves, and the ending of our fantasies of self-sufficiency and control. And that can be extremely threatening. As a consequence, when we see love, we are constantly in danger of responding not by welcoming it, but by hitting out.
The world hits with its most deadly spite by crucifying Jesus. Those who follow him can't expect to be free from similar reactions. At various times and places the Church has been persecuted. Now, it is absurd - in spite of the efforts of some prominent Christians to the contrary - to claim that the Church in contemporary Britain is in any way persecuted. None the less, we may sometimes be given a hard time for being Christians. We may sometimes give ourselves a hard time for being Christians: at war with ourselves, there are parts of us that prefer that old way of cold invulnerability to the way of love.
Either way, what is going on here is the tension between the reality of God's redemption and the persistence of sin, of the refusal of love. Herbert McCabe put it like this: "if you don't love you will die, if you do love, they will kill you".
We are called to love. We may not be killed, but no authentic life of love will be free from trouble. And yet there is no other way we can be genuinely fulfilled. So, by God's grace, we persist, in the hope that the final victory of love over death, that hard won joy of Easter, may be ours.
