We’re about halfway through Lent and still a week away from Mothering Sunday, or Refreshment Sunday, when the Church used to encourage people working away from home to go back to their families, or to their ‘mother’ church and to take a break from their Lenten abstinences.Taken together, the readings for today urge believers to do the things they know they should do but may have put off, and to stop doing things that don’t matter or that are downright sinful.The prophet Isaiah gives a clarion call to the people not to waste their time, money and attention on things that do not satisfy and ‘feed’ them in their inner beings. ‘Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good.’ Through Isaiah, God is beseeching his people to wake up and seek the Lord ‘while he may be found.’ There is an urgency, an impatience with how people are behaving. ‘Repent’ warns Jesus in the Gospel to the Jewish people listening to him, otherwise, he says, bad things like those that have been happening to others will happen to you! A parable about a barren fig tree seems to imply that, while God is patient, he is getting fed up with his chosen people who are rejecting Jesus’ message and hardening their hearts against him. The Gospel goes on to tell of Jesus healing a woman who had been seriously incapacitated, bent over double for 18 years, only to be criticised by the Pharisees because he healed her on the Sabbath. The people are not understanding what is important in the kingdom of God: loving and obeying God and caring for others is what matters.In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul is distraught at what some of the new believers have been getting up to. They have been behaving as if they had never heard Paul’s teachings on how to live a life pleasing to God. Though exasperated with the people’s wayward behaviour, Paul also tells them that God is with them and will help them to resist temptation, if they trust in God.There is in all three readings a strong sense of urgency: don’t put it off, don’t wait to change and repent and seek after God to another time, because that time may never come. You can’t know what’s around the corner, what’s going to happen in the future, but you can decide to change and you can decide to change right now! Whatever it is that you know you need to do – do it now!Rev’d Christina Rees
Lord, direct our thoughts, and teach us to pray. Lift up our hearts to worship you in spirit and in truth, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.‘Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name’. (Psalm 63:3-4)Hymn: I heard the voice of Jesus say...Isaiah 55: 1 - 9; 1 Corinthians 10: 1-13The Spirit of the Lord fills the world and knows our every word and deed. Let us confess our sins: Most merciful God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that we have sinned in thought, word and deed. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves. In your mercy forgive what we have been, help us to amend what we are, and direct what we shall be; that we may do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with you, our God. Amen.May the God of love bring us back to himself, forgive us our sins, and assure us of his eternal love in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.Prayer for the day: Eternal God, give us insight to discern your will for us, to give up what harms us, and to seek the perfection we are promised in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.Luke 13: 1 - 9Please see the Message from the Minister.Let us join in prayer, asking for the light of the Lord to be known to everyone:We pray for the members of St Peter’s Church, that we will grow in faith and service;We pray for our planet, that all people will thrive and work together in peace;We pray for our friends, families and neighbours - that we may build relationships;We pray for people who are sick or suffering, for God’s healing touch to be known;We pray for the departed, that all who mourn will be comforted.Let us pray as Jesus taught us: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever. Amen.Hymn: Come down, O Love Divine...May Christ’s holy, healing, enabling Spirit be with us and guide us on our way at every change and turn; and may the blessing of God Almighty who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit rest upon us and remain with us always.Let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord, in the name of Christ. Amen.
It was a very special and wonderful occasion this morning at St Peter’s Church as Bishop Jane presided and preached at our service as well as licensing Christina as our Associate Priest. A lovely lunch of soup and pud was shared following the service.The service has been recorded and has been posted on our Youtube page:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SF_T9b7liQPlease keep Christina in your prayers as she takes the next steps of her ministry. Thank you.
SheringhamLicensing Christina Rees; Second Sunday of LentPhilippian 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-endIn the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.We will come back to those words, but first might I say what a joy it is to be here with you and to license Christina this morning. I thank the Vicar for inviting me and also all of you for coming as it’s always uplifting to have a congregation.And now to those words with which I began: Christ ‘will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory’. You might feel that, even in Lent, this is somewhat downbeat: bodies of humiliation? What is all that about? Well, as I was reading today’s lessons and preparing to be with you, it seemed to me that they were about a very important element in human existence – which is: identity.Paul speaks of the body of our humiliation not because he preaches some sort of prudish shame about our physical existence but because we are, as we all know, well, less than perfect. Paul, you see, has two words for body. He has one which means flesh and one which means – hmm, character, inner being, what I am terming identity and it is that word which he uses here. This passage has nothing to do with whether we are fat or thin, tall or short, black or white, fit or unfit, and everything to do with who we are in our inner selves, how Christlike we are and how Christ will draw himself to be more and more like us throughout our Christian lives and into eternity. We will be, in the words of the Diocesan vision, transformed by Christ – transformed from the earthly to the heavenly, the mortal to the immortal, the imperfect to the perfect. Only in a few rare individuals does this transformation reach completeness in this life, but for us all and for this reason, Peter Pan was actually right when he said that to die will be an awfully big adventure.So much, then, for Paul on our transformation from the identity we have in this life to the identity we will have in Christ and to which here, we approach ever nearer. What, though, is this identity? In the gospel, we read Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem, and you will recall that he says this: ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings?’ How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings? Jesus spoke those words as a man around the age of thirty. It is, we might observe, a less than likely way for such a man in the prime of life to describe himself – as a mother hen, shuffling her chicks under her wings, warming them, protecting them. It is a soft image, maternal, not at all the sort of idea we’d associate with a man who walked the villages and towns of his day followed by other young men, at least some of whom carried swords at least some of the time. And yet, it is a very biblical image. God is often described as a bird protecting young – as an eagle in Deuteronomy, as a winged bird in the Psalms. God is described as a mother comforting her child at the end of the book of the prophet Isaiah and as one who taught Ephraim to walk. It is as if the Bible tells us that the identity to which we are being transformed, the identity we have in Jesus, is not one in which our earthly categories subsist. We are not, as Paul says elsewhere, male and female, Jew and Greek; we will not marry or be given in marriage as Jesus says. We are not easily divisible into those qualities which belong to men or to women. We are whole people, humanity, made in God’s likeness and restored through Christ into God’s image. And for that reason, it is not proper to us as Christians to exclude some because in this life, we are gay or straight, male or female, black or white. We are all one in Christ who is all in all and into whose likeness we are being transformed. Which brings me to Christina.Christina has long been at the forefront of moves to ensure that all are welcome in the Church of Christ and the Church of England. She has terrified and shamed many of us on General Synod and elsewhere with her courageous and direct speeches, challenging norms, reminding us that Christian identity is much more than a cosy club of people who are all much like each other and who meet on a Sunday morning in a building that is usually cold and costs a lot to maintain. She has pushed the boundaries of inclusion, reminding us again and again that the role of a priest, the role of every Christian, is to speak of Jesus to those we meet, to draw others into the household of faith and to be, in whatever way we can be, agents of change, the body of Christ in the world we inhabit. I would say, Sheringham, are you ready for this – but of course, you already know and love Christina and I am sure will welcome her anew today.The calling which I have described, the calling to be transformed and to draw others to Christ is a calling which belongs to each and every Christian. We might think, what can I do? I am old, I am young, I work, I am retired. But these are not our identities. Our identity is to be as Christ was, gathering, protecting, kindly. We can all show kindness. We can all welcome others. We can all manage our fear of others who are different from us and every time we do so, we take one step further along the road of transformation from humility to glory. As we come to this most holy Eucharist may it be our prayer that God will give us grace this Lent and beyond to follow the call to transformation and be the people Jesus would have us be, in the name…The Revd Dr Jane Steen, Bishop of Lynn
