The Month of October is Black History Month. Black History Month aims to
·Promote knowledge of Black History and experience
·Disseminate information on positive Black
contributions to British Society
·Heighten the confidence and awareness of Black
people in their cultural heritage.
The origins of BHM go
back to 1926 when Carter G Woodson, editor for thirty years of the Journal of
Negro History, established African Caribbean celebrations in America. It is still
celebrated there in February each year. In Britain, the BHM has now grown to
over 1400 events.
The focus
on African and Caribbean heritage pre-dates the work of London Strategic Policy
Unit who, as part of the African Jubilee year in 1987, helped to establish the
event.
There will be a form in the back of church for those of us who want to join in this event and take OUR children FREE!
It was a joy to be with the children and staff of Colindale primary school in the parish of St Matthias this morning for their Harvest. They have collected food to be given to Barnet Refugee Service who support some of our poorest families in Barnet. We also work with them at St Matthias in running ESOL Classes twice a week.
But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant andsaid to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it isto such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15Truly I tell you, whoeverdoes not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’16And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
This has been a painful, destructiveand depressing week, I am referring to the three headlines that have dominatedthe news this week.
15 year old Megan Stammers ,5 year old April Jonesand theallegations surrounding Jimmy Saville. These stories have brought back in tothe full glare of the media and the sight of every one of us of the dangersthat our children face.
Hearing Jesus tell us that weare to receive the kingdom of God as a little child, reading how he took themin his arms and laid hands on them to bless them is in stark contrast to somany children’s experiences, maybe even our own childhood experiences.
It seems that with theterrible catalogue of children whose abuse has lead to their death, even with awhole host of new laws seeking to safeguard our children the image of Jesus isone that mocks our own desire and ability to love one another and cherish everyliving person as we know we can.
It was wonderful day togetherin NW4 and NW9! Congratulations to
Gbenga and Mopude on their birthdaywhich we celebrated at St John’s Church and following the example of Jesus laidhands upon them and blessed them anointing them against and asking our Lord toprotect them from the dangers that they face in this world. It was also a joyto meet and welcome Raymond and Deirdre and their two children who havemoved to this part of London from Kingston Jamaica to work for the JamaicanHigh Commission. At St Matthias it was good to see Rae and Nisha and Jasmine inchurch – its been a while so don’t leave it so long! And congratulations toStephen and Eliza who are expecting their second child, a girl in December.
So often we talk about how weneed to believe in this God of love;
but what we celebrate todayreminds us of a different fact, it reminds us that even when we don't believein God,God believes in us.
I am sure most of you have seen WaterfordCrystal.It is
beautiful to look at.The only problem is when you drop it, it
shatters into a thousand pieces and nomatter how hard you try to
glue the broken pieces back together itnever looks as beautiful
as before it was dropped.
Sometimes we get the idea that as humanbeings we are like leaded
crystal.We are lovely until we make a mistake - and we all make
them.Then life shatters into a thousand pieces and can never be
put back together just right - never putback the way God meant
it to be.
But if we are to compare human life to anyobject around us, we are better compared to the children's toy Silly Putty orplay dough than to leaded Crystal.Like SillyPutty or Play dough , we can be pulled apart, rolled into little balls, flungagainst the wall, or smashed flat.
But like Silly Putty or playdough we can always be scraped back together again, forgiven, reworked,remoulded, and reshaped into someone that is even more beautiful than before.
God believes in us,
God believes that we are not beyond help
God loves us,
and God, in Christ, has come,and still comes today,
to forgive us, to scrape usback together again,
and mould us intosomething even better
than that whichwe were before.
It is this that we celebratetoday,
It is this that will givecourage and hope and strength to us and those around us as we struggle to buildand love in the face of destruction and loss.
It is to children that thekey to understanding the kingdom of God is given rather than those who love tobe right and indulge in endless argument and debate about how we should live. Isit of no significance that in response to the debate around marriage anddivorce that those around Jesus seemed most interested in, that Jesus takes achild and commends their dependence upon love and their trust in those aroundthem as a key to the Kingdom of God?
God has made us his family,
a family that stretches around the world,
a family that is called to love as wehave been love,
Just as September is traditionally associated with the Holy Cross, October is traditionally associated with the rosary.
Finding the time, the words, and the way to pray can be very difficult. At the same time, prayer is an essential part of our Christian lives. The rosary is a way of praying which many Christians have found useful over the years. You can find out more about it here.
On Friday 26th of this month, we'll be hosting a talk on the rosary at St Matthias. Deborah, a Roman Catholic Lay Dominican, will be speaking at the the vicarage, 48 Rushgrove Avenue, starting at 7:30. The meeting will take about an hour, refreshments will be provided, and we'll end with Night Prayer.
If you are interested specifically in finding out more about the rosary, or are wondering about your prayer life in general, please come along!
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.
Anthea Chinyama whose is a member of St. John's congregation and attending st Mary's high school in Hendon got 6 A* in her GCSE results. Well done you make us all proud
On Friday we will celebrate the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, usually known just as "Holy Cross Day". And the whole month of September is traditionally associated with devotion to the Cross.
The idea of devotion to the Cross should strike us as strange. Crucifixion was a barbaric form of torture. How on earth can Christians justify our focus on the image of the crucifix? Our churches and other buildings are full of depictions of a man bleeding to death on a crude piece of wood. We walk the Stations of the Cross and sing hymns like the one quoted above, which not only remember the crucifixion, but celebrate it. Doesn't this show that we have a warped view of the world?
A growing number of people draw that conclusion. How should we reply?
I think two things can and should be said.
First, in displaying our crucifixes and walking the Way of the Cross we are refusing to look away from human suffering. We live in a world that increasingly turns from suffering human beings, confining them to the international news reports and the hospital wards, talking about them euphemistically as 'collateral damage', and pushing them to the margins of political debate. In drawing attention again and again to the suffering of the most perfectly human person ever to have lived, Christians are engaged in a perpetual protest against this. We cannot pretend there is no genuine suffering: our liturgy and devotion reminds us constantly that there is.
But we don't just think about the Cross, we celebrate it. Isn't this the point at which we've crossed a line, and become unhealthily morbid?
No. And this is the second thing that can be said. Without denying for one second that the Cross is a symbol of human evil - here we have the political execution of an innocent man, the Son of God - we see at Calvary also the triumph of divine good. Contrary to the claims of some forms of Christianity, God did not actively will the Cross. God, who is perfectly good, does not will evil. The Cross is the work of human beings. The divine Word lived a human life, a life wholly of love, and our response was to kill him. God's response was to turn that low-point of human wrongdoing into a victory. The defeat of the Cross becomes the high-point of self-offering. The decisive 'no' of human beings to God becomes the 'yes' of God, louder and more insistent than our 'no', to the very human beings who killed his Son. This loving response is revealed in the Resurrection.
There is nothing glib or triumphalist about any of this. The suffering of Good Friday was real and horrific, nothing undoes that. But through it all, a painful victory is won by the insistent power of divine Love. And there's an ongoing message here: our defeats, our failures, our lows, the seeming senselessness and frequent cruelty of human life, whether collective or individual, can become the very means by which that life is transformed.
The literary critic Terry Eagleton has described Christianity as a form of 'tragic humanism', valuing humanity but realising that its flourishing comes at a terrible price. That, I think, is the message of Holy Cross Day. We Christians are neither trite upbeat optimists nor grim pessimists. We live in hope, but realise that our hope exists alongside a brokenness which is almost unbearable. And rather than ignoring that brokenness, our hope is precisely in the possibility of its being transfigured. A similar point was made by Leonard Cohen,
There is something shocking about today's Gospel reading. Jesus has gone to Tyre to get some space from the crowds and to 'reboot' after healing, calming storms, feeding the 5000 and arguing with the authorities. Maybe the woman caught him off guard, but there is no doubt that he reacts to her as a 1st Century Jewish man would, by rejecting and insulting her.
One of the really tough things to get our heads around as Christians is this idea that Jesus was both 100% God and 100% Man as is set out in the Creed. Part of being human is learning. Jesus learnt to walk and talk - just as we did. He also learns more about what it means to be God from this woman. Her reaction to his replaying of old prejudices is not to argue with him, or challenge his human preconceptions but reminds him that there is more than enough love and grace in God to go around!
The challenge here in this Gospel passage is the reminder that we all have preconceptions that make us deaf to hear God in others. At the heart of God is an inclusive love that invites all in and can shine through all as God decides - not as human preconceptions allow!
If you want to think more about this, take a look at this short Bible Study by Dr Evie Vernon, a Jamaican theologian. It finishes with this poem that casts the gentile woman as a Jamaican woman reflecting on the experience of the encounter.
Let us hear the words of the foreign woman:
Who you calling Dawg?
Yes, you, preacher man.
I hear you is a healer,
So I push me way through this crowd
Of laughing, taunting men
Who see all like me as dirt;
Bitch and foreign bitch to boot
I snarl and growl me way through
I don’t mind them
I would do anything for me daughter
I force me way to you
And tell you me need
And you look on me and call me ‘Dawg.’
I bark right back,
“An Dawg an all eat the scrapses
from Massa table”
And you look me in the eye
An you laugh and say
“You right. You daughter heal.”
An is true.
And I thank you
and I follow you.
But I still don’t understand
Why you had was to call we “dawg.”
But I glad you tell me I right
Before de crowd of dem.
I have had an extraordinarily fulfilling day today - Sunday the 9th of September. I was not in church this Sunday because I was with a group of 39 amazing people being trained to work as life coaches for young people at risk in West Hendon.
Each one of us had given up our weekend activities, family time, relaxing time, church time, weddings and Christenings and for one a birthday to be trained by Graham from Youth at Risk from Friday evening through until Sunday evening.
This is a new and very exciting project that is being piloted within Barnet in our parish on the West Hendon Estate whereby up to 39 young people who are at risk of making choices that will have a negative impact on their lives and life choices will be given the opportunity of weekly one to one support from volunteers within the community for a year. We were asked to identify one thing that we would take away with us from the weekends training and for me it is the fact that this amazing and talented group of people are prepared to commit themselves with passion to the lives of a group of young people whom they have never met and a community that I am part of and love with a passion.
Youth at risk believes that all young people should have a worthwhile future no matter what has happened in the past or how difficult their current circumstances. "Underpinning their work with at risk young people is recognition of a crucial loss of trust and respect about young people and between young people. Trust and respect are crucial values for all communities to hold and share in order to support community cohesion and individual pro-socail development" ( Joseph Rowntree Foundation April 1999 Social Cohesion and Urban inclusion for Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods)
Please keep us, all of us, in your prayers over the next year as we begin this wonderful and extraordinary journey togther.
I will finish with the words of Marianne Williamson with which we began todays training: Our deepest fear is not
that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond
measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask
ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually,
who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does
not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children
do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not
just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we
unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated
from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
by Marianne Williamson
from A Return To Love:
Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles
