Welcome to the newly relaunched Bramhall Parish News.
This publication will be sent out each month via email. For those not on email a printed copy will be included in their weekly Home Pack.
Printed copies will also be made available at church for visitors and those not on our mailing lists.
To read this months edition please continue down the page. If you struggle to view the document in this email you can download it here:
To gain an Eco Church award a church fills in a survey questionnaire covering a wide range of ‘green’ things that are done by it and by members of its congregation. The survey is divided into five areas – Worship & Teaching, Buildings, Land, Community & Global Engagement, and Lifestyle. Eco Church UK then scores the responses to determine whether it’s at Bronze, Silver, or Gold level in each category separately. The over-all Award level is then at the lowest level of the five.
That explained (hopefully!), the easiest way to summarise what St Michael’s and its members have done to gain the Silver Award is to show the completed survey questionnaire, so here it is:
Dear Friends,
On Sunday I mentioned that various changes to our building and worship life would be taking place this week following the government’s decision to proceed to stage 4 of the roadmap. Having spent some time digesting the Church of England guidance I thought it would be helpful to let you know what some of these changes are.
Social Distancing
Yesterday we took out the wooden chairs from church and replaced them with the blue upholstered chairs in the pre-lockdown layout. This has increased our capacity for attendance at services considerably but we are going to continue to remain cautious. For the time being we are going to suggest the use of every other row where possible. We will then also try to alternate which rows are being used at services as well. Social distancing is no longer required, so if you want to sit next to people outside your household there is nothing to stop you. There will be people who want to continue to social distance and there are two options available to you. The first is that you can sit within the main body of the church, and pick up two orange signs on your way in. You will find these located on the tables with the offertory baskets. Place these on either side of the chair you wish to sit on, and this will be a sign to others not to sit right next to you. There are also some individual socially distanced seats placed within the tower. Over the past year we have encouraged people to arrive and leave through certain doors, these restrictions are no longer in place, so you can come and go through the most convenient door for you.
Cleaning and Face Masks
I am encouraging everyone to continue wearing masks when attending a service at St Michaels. As a church we are committed to being inclusive, and for those people within our church family who are feeling vulnerable, knowing that others will be wearing masks is a reassurance to them. I also want to encourage you to continue to clean your hands before you come to church and then to use the hand sanitiser on arrival. We will continue to keep a cleaning regime at church as well.
Track and Trace
The government have advised churches to continue to keep a record of those attending our services and events. Thank you to all the sidespeople and volunteers who have helped with this over the last year. It might be helpful to know that I have been told that we will only have to give Track and Trace the details of attendees at a service should 2 or more people within the same service test positive. They will then issue all attendees at that service with a venue alert. (They won’t tell you which venue it is, but you will probably all work it out). A venue alert doesn’t mean you will have to isolate, but you will be encouraged to get a test.
Holy Communion
We will continue to celebrate Holy Communion on alternate weeks in the manner that we have been doing for some months. At the Sunday 10am service the slight change will be that we will move to having two distribution points on either side at the front of church to help with keeping the service flowing. I would still ask that you come forwards in single-file.
Singing
From Monday congregational singing has been made legal, so on Sunday we will be able to sing for the first time together as a congregation within our church building. Where there is an organist available going forwards, we will sing accompanied by the organ, where this isn’t possible, we will use the recorded music. Louise Richardson and I are in conversation with someone about the Music Director role, please do hold this appointment in your prayers.
Sunday 25th July 2021
This Sunday we will mark, what feels to me like a significant change in our church life, in both our 8am and 10am services. For a number of reasons, the evening service this week has been cancelled – if that is the service you were planning to join us at – please do think about joining us at the 8am or 10am service. As I hear the news and look at the infection rates, I do keep asking myself whether I have made the right decision, making the changes that I have. The answer I am consoling myself with is this: The last 16 months have been long and hard and at every stage I have sought to be as cautious as possible. When these changes were discussed at PCC, one person said that we as a nation are in a place of fear and the church is best placed to lead people out of fear, with hope, with love and with courage, and this is something I will be preaching about a bit on Sunday. So I hope you will understand the changes that have been made, I hope you will continue to worship with me and the wider church at St Michaels, and if you have any concerns or worries please do come and speak to me.
Children and Families Worker
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we have appointed a children and families worker. I want to take this opportunity to inform you that we have appointed Connie Lane to the post and she will be commissioned to the role during our services on Sunday 1st August. Do be praying for her and for the ministry she is coming to equip us in. Connie joins us from working for the Diocese of Derby and before that Bowdon Parish Church. I am really excited about her appointment and about what lies ahead for our church.
Finally, we are slowly working through baptism preparation with numerous families and following lots of people asking, Jess and I are hoping that Samuel will be baptised during the 10am service on Sunday 17th October which will tie in nicely with his 2nd birthday celebrations. We would love as many of you as possible to celebrate the day with us.
Thank you for your patience in reading this rather long update.
Regards,
Calum
Dear Friends,
A year ago we were preparing for the first reopening of our building and gathering together for worship after around 4 months apart. We have come a long way since July last year, and whilst there is still a long way to go, things are starting to feel a lot more normal. With that in mind I wanted to take the opportunity to share some updates and reminders.
Booking for Worship
Following an increase in our seating capacity, it has been agreed that booking is no longer required for services. So you don’t need to remember to go online tomorrow and book your seat, just turn up.
On your way in, you may be asked your name by a Sidesperson as we are still required to keep a list of attendees for Track and Trace. Do be patient with the sidespeople, some of them may not know your name even though you have been coming since the day you were born, they also might not recognise you with your face mask on. One of my flaws is I do struggle to remember names, so if you are asked your name, do be generous and forgiving to the person that asks, they aren’t being rude. To help with this, could I encourage you to try and arrive slightly earlier than 5 minutes before the service, this will take the stress off sidespeople slightly.
Over the next couple of weeks we will continue to monitor attendance numbers and seating and if there are issues the Churchwardens and I will look for solutions.
Roadmap to Normality
A few more changes that are in the pipeline are these:
This Sunday we will be trialling refreshments being served after the 10am service. If you choose to stay for refreshments you can collect these from the hatch and then you will need to go and sit down at a table before taking your mask off. The rule of 6 applies inside, if you choose to go outside the rules aren’t quite so strict.
Providing the government relax the rules in July, the PCC have approved my suggestion that we move the blue chairs back into church at the start of August. When we know more from the government about this, I will let you know when this will happen, and will be asking for help with furniture moving.
From September we hope to relaunch Active Angels, I am meeting with someone from our congregation in a couple of weeks’ time to begin planning this.
Appointment of Children and Families Worker
You may be aware that the PCC approved a few months ago for St Michaels to appoint a Children and Families Worker. Following a number of interviews, today we have appointed someone to the post, and following all the legal necessities its hoped that they will start in post at the beginning of August. As soon as its possible I will look to introduce you to our new staff member. I’m really excited about this appointment and cannot wait to see our ministry to children and families grow as we are all led to join in with this ministry.
Alongside this we have submitted a bid to a charity for funds to support a Youthworker and Community Worker post. We will hear back in October whether this bid has been successful, so I would value your prayers that our application might be received favourably.
Moving Forwards
There are a few of our church family that haven’t felt it safe to return to church yet. Over July I hope to make contact with as many of these people as possible, but if you are reading this and you haven’t returned to worship yet, please know you haven’t been forgotten and the whole church family looks forward to welcoming you back. If you have concerns or fears, please do come and share them with me. We are called to carry one another’s burdens. If you know someone that hasn’t returned to worship yet, please do pray for them, and talk with them about your experiences of worship at St Michaels recently.
I am really encouraged at the moment with all the seeds of hope that are appearing, some even blossoming already at St Michaels. There have been times over the last 18 months where I may have been smiling on the outside but that wasn’t necessarily how I was feeling on the inside. There is lots more I hope to share with you over the next few months which are encouraging me and I believe are answers to prayer, so I hope that can encourage you in your walk with Jesus and in your fellowship at St Michaels.
With my prayers,
Calum
Invasive species – non-native plants, insects, animals introduced into a country accidentally or deliberately are always a problem, as they disturb or destroy the checks and balances of the native ecosystem. Himalayan balsam is one of the worst invasive plant species in the UK. It grows and seeds prolifically, crowding out native plants. When it dies back in the autumn – it’s an annual, despite its size – the ground is left bare and so susceptible to erosion.
It’s of little food value for native British wildlife, but its flowers are very attractive to pollinators. That may sound like a good thing, but pollinators go to Himalayan balsam in preference to native plants, thus further hastening the latter’s decline and worsening the unbalancing of the ecosystem. It’s illegal to plant Himalayan balsam in the UK or let it spread into the wild, and reporting to DEFRA any plants found in the wild is mandatory.
The ‘Groundwork GM’ project, in association with the Mersey Rivers Trust, has organised two days – Saturdays 19th June & 17th July – to clear balsam and to plant native species along the Micker Brook (the Lady Brook, downstream). Meeting will be at 11:00am at the Shiers Drive carpark, Cheadle SK8 1HW – that’s where ‘Cheadle Village’ and Cheadle swimming pool are situated.
To sign up for either of these dates please go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bee-a-pollinator-community-action-day-tickets-156900582867 If you don’t have Eventbrite, or would like more information, contact Francesca Sullivan at francesca.sullivan@groundwork.org.uk 07525 857485
If you would like to find out more about Himalayan balsam – it’s worth knowing what it looks like, in case you come across it and want to report it – there are articles on Plantlife’s website at https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species/himalayan-balsam and on The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales’ website at https://www.welshwildlife.org/wildlifeblog/himalayan-balsam-problems-brought/
Currently we are supporting the foodbank at St Paul's Church of England Primary School in Brinnington, where packs of essentials are made up out of the donated items.
No one should feel forced to donate to the foodbank, but we encourage folk to give as part of the thanksgiving to God for the resources they have. The giving of items to the foodbank is about sharing resources, a biblical precedent set by the early church.
Practically, when thinking about what to donate, please make sure your items are unopened, and that they are still in date too. Donations can be brought to one of our acts of worship or left in or by church throughout the week.
Items to consider in your foodbank donation are:
· UHT Milk,
· Sugar,
· Jam,
· Pasta sauces,
· Tinned fruit & veg,
· Tinned meats & fish,
· Cereals,
· Soups either tins or packs,
· Tea,
· Coffee,
· Cordial juices and
· Biscuits/treats.
· Toilet rolls,
· Shampoo/conditioner,
· Body wash,
· Razors,
· Toothpaste,
· Nappies,
· Sanitary items,
· Washing up liquid.
Plantlife conducts an annual “Every Flower Counts” survey in the final week of May, quantifying nectar sugar produced on lawns. In 2019 the survey showed an average uncut English lawn produced 12 grams/day, enough to support 1,088 honey bees. The data gathered helps understanding of the distribution of flowering wild plants and of pollinators.
If you’ve been taking part in “No Mow May”, please round it off with “Every Flower Counts”; if you have kept on mowing, maybe you could find a patch of unmown grass somewhere to do the survey. It doesn’t take much time, and is easy. There’s more information at https://www.plantlife.org.uk/everyflowercounts/ , an animation about what to do, and the place to enter your survey results. Later, you’ll get a “nectar score” from your own flower count, showing how many bees that patch feeds.
Good Evening,
What are we going to do on Sunday?
I’ve been watching the Met Office forecast for Sunday all week and despite it changing daily it has pretty much stabilised with the opinion that there is a 10% chance of rain at 10am on Sunday morning. The forecast is looking very similar to that of Easter Sunday when it was time to make a call then. With this in mind, the Churchwardens and I have decided:
We will praise our God together out on the field at 10am to celebrate the joy of Pentecost. I hope some of you will be able to join Sue, David and me! Wrap up warm, bring an umbrella just in case, and a flask of something warm.
For those who don’t feel they will be able to join us, a small advert – the BBC will be airing a Pentecost Service from All Saints Church Woodford Wells at 10.30am on BBC1 on Sunday. I have no idea what it will be like but it’s an alternative.
See you soon, stay dry, maybe build an Ark.
God Bless,
Calum
Dear Friends in Christ,
This year's celebration of Easter is like no other due to the pandemic and its devastating impact upon our world, our nation, our very lives. Yet, the Good News of Easter is constant and unchanged no matter the conditions and situations we face. Namely, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who took up his cross and died for us and our salvation, has been raised from the dead. He was not defeated and proved victorious: turning darkness to light; suffering to glory and even death to life.
The Good News of Easter is that Jesus is alive and with us! So through this crisis, we do not fear but rather trust in his power to deliver us. We are not overwhelmed by our crosses but find strength in the Lord to carry them. We do not give up when we sin but trust that no sin is greater than the Lord's mercy. While we mourn the death of loved ones at this time of year, we do not despair but find our hope in the newness and fullness of life that Jesus promises to all who follow Him.
Just like the witnesses of the Risen Lord, we to are called to share the Good News of Easter with others. So, proudly let others see your love for God and your trust in him and your joy and serenity in following his ways. Continue to share your time and resources with others especially the weak, the vulnerable and those in most need. What a wonderful way to bring Christ and his compassion to others!
Dear friends: At this difficult time, how blessed are we to be united in faith and hope. I pray that Our Lord Jesus will bless you and your families with his peace at Easter and always as together we proclaim: "Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and is alive and with us. Alleluia. Alleluia!”
Yours brother and friend in the love of Christ,
Rt.Rev. Oscar Stephen Mnunga.
Bishop Diocese of Newala.
The Electoral Roll was closed on 30th March 2021, you can view a copy of our roll here: Electoral Roll 2021
Documents for the annual meeting can be found below:
Minutes from the 2020 Annual Meeting
If you are interested in standing for election to the PCC please contact the PCC Secretary, Tricia Munn, via the Parish Office.
Dear Friends,
Today marks Maundy Thursday and the beginning of our Easter Services with Holy Communion this evening at 7.30pm. It also happens to be the day I said I would make a decision about what to do over Easter Sunday. The current weather forecast on the Met Office (Which breaks the day down into hours unlike some phone Apps) says the weather will be dry and sunny but slightly cold. So today I have found myself struggling to come to a decision based solely on practical reasoning and have had to lean on prayer and tradition a bit too.
One of the traditions of Maundy Thursday in England is the presentation of Maundy money by the Sovereign to people who have served the church faithfully for many years. If you take time to listen to some of the stories of those who have been nominated, the acts of service have usually been incredibly selfless, not always glamourous, and regularly involved some sense of sacrifice, but all done in the name of Jesus. When we come to worship it is all about and for Jesus.
When we choose to follow Jesus we choose the way of the cross, a way that is not always comfortable, but a way that offers life and joy. The celebration of Easter is a chance to proclaim afresh the goodness of God with all our might. Following the darkness that has been this year we have an opportunity to witness to each other and the wider community, the wonder of the resurrection. It would be easy to say lets call the outside thing off, reduce our Sunday worship capacity to 80 and hide the celebrations inside the building. As I have contemplated that easy decision, I have found my heart troubled.
Now more than ever, I believe we need community. Now more than ever, we need to remain faithful. Now more than ever, we need to be witnesses to the hope of the resurrection. The idea of one service outside on Easter Sunday was not something that would logically be my first thought – the planning and logistics involved requires much more work, and then it all being weather dependent leaves everything far too last minute for me, but it’s something that continually kept coming up in prayer. My first job as vicar is to try to be as faithful as possible to the God who loves me, and then to serve you his people as wisely as possible.
With this in mind, I’ve taken the decision to go ahead with our Easter celebration at 10am on Easter Sunday outside. It might be slightly cold, but with the company of one another, blankets, warm coats (and yes even hot water bottles and flasks of tea) I believe our celebration of Easter will be a moment of great joy and witness.
I hope you will forgive my lengthy email explaining my reasoning, I hope to worship alongside many of you over the coming days and even on Easter Sunday, whatever decision you choose may you know the joy and love of our Lord Jesus Christ throughout these days of Easter.
Calum
(Should the weather forecast change dramatically between now and then, I will be in touch once more.)
The Centurion: Mat 8 v 5-13: Go! ‘Let it be done just as you believed it would’
In the main entrance of the Grosvenor Museum in Chester there is a life size model of a Roman centurion wielding his sword and looking as if he is about to strike somebody down. Centurions were battle hardened veterans responsible for training soldiers, maintaining discipline and displaying bravery and resolution on the battlefield. They had 80 men under their command and generally displayed little subtlety when it came to the aforementioned methods of training, disciplining and fighting.
Whilst the centurion in our passage may well have been serving under King Herod Antipas, Rome’s client king in the province of Judaea, whose forces were organised in line with the Roman army, he was definitely a gentile (Jews were exempt from conscription) and represented, if at one remove, the might and power of Rome. This man was not a centurion because of who he knew or where he came from; he had been promoted because he had proved himself to be an effective soldier. Or to put it another way, he was good at killing people in battle.
He is, then, a rather improbable character to be waylaying Jesus as he enters the town of Capernaum with an urgent plea on behalf of his ailing servant (v 6). Being in actual fact a slave, the servant would normally have been regarded as part of his property rather than a human being. The overwhelming majority of people in the centurion’s situation wouldn’t have cared whether the slave lived or died except for the inconvenience of having to buy another one. The world of the centurion was one of commanding and obeying without question and he himself was one cog in a chain of command which ultimately went all the way up to the Emperor of Rome (v 9). Just as he has to do exactly what he is told so those he commands must do the same. There was no room for sentiment of any kind – when you tell somebody to go, come or do this, they unhesitatingly obey (v 9b). If you were serving under the centurion in the heat of battle and he commanded you to mount an attack in which you would were likely to be killed you had no choice but to do what you were told.
Yet Jesus says that this battle scarred veteran displays deeper faith than he has yet seen in Israel (v 10). What an extraordinary statement! Not only does he display a very personal concern for someone who he regarded as a person rather a piece of property but he also believes in Jesus’ ability to heal him. What this says to me is that in spite of the brutalising effects of commanding men who are killing and being killed by their enemies in battle the centurion had not lost touch with his own humanity.
In today’s world both war and slavery continue to dehumanise many. It is not just those who fire bullets and drop bombs (often by pressing a button in a military complex thousands of miles away from the conflict zone) causing death and terrible injury but those whose homes and communities are devastated and whose loved ones are killed or maimed who face an all-out attack on their humanity. Modern slavery takes many forms such as human trafficking, forced labour, child slavery, forced marriage and domestic slavery. Slavery has not gone away and continues to dehumanise both its victims and its perpetrators.
This comes uncomfortably close to home when we consider firstly that because of our long history of selling arms to Saudi Arabia, many of those who are suffering in the conflict in Yemen are being targeted by weapons made in the United Kingdom and secondly that modern slavery is very much present in our society; in recent years trafficked children have been found in every local area in Britain.
One of the reasons the centurion retains his humanity and can open his heart to Jesus is that he loves the people he is supposed to feel nothing for. In Luke’s version of this story he adds the detail that local leaders come to Jesus pleading the worthiness of centurion’s cause because, ‘he loves our nation and has built our synagogue’ (Luke 7 v 5). Perhaps the real evidence of his faith is that he is able to see over the cultural, ethnic and religious barriers of his time and understand that those living, working and worshipping on the other side of these dividing lines are as important as anyone else.
Jesus uses harsh words for those who wish to restrict the love of God (v 12) because it is not just those who consider themselves children of promise who will be at the feast (v 11). Jesus’ assertion that there will be outsiders present was certainly controversial and yet as the story ends with the healing of the centurion’s servant, we see an indiscriminate outpouring of divine love in perfect harmony with his words.
One key aspect of Jesus’s ministry was that he was able to make people who had been dehumanised feel fully human again. Those he healed of leprosy, for example, were not just restored to health but also to the circle of their families and friends ending for some of them long years of rejection and isolation as outsiders.
For the centurion, the local Judaean people were outsiders, he was not there to make friends but to enforce Roman rule. However he had managed to form a relationship with the local people that was not that of oppressor and oppressed but based on a shared humanity. It is when we think of people as outsiders for whatever reason that we dehumanise them. At the same time we dehumanise ourselves. God is an inclusive God and asks us to make that real in our daily lives and the lives of our churches.
It might be as simple as the outsider being somebody we don’t know. When I was fifteen I started attending a church youth group. Although my elder brothers had previously been members I knew very few people in what was a large group of young people and felt very much on the outside of things. However somebody called Andrew took me under his wing over a number of weeks. He had his own group of friends but would come over and talk, suggest a game of table tennis and basically check that I was ok. As time went by I found my feet, my own group of friends and a living faith in Jesus. I cannot even recall Andrew’s surname and have not met him for the best part of fifty years and yet he did three things for me. He made me feel welcome, affirmed me as a human being and helped me to find faith; I cannot thank him enough.
It’s given me a particular sensitivity to the after church coffee time on a Sunday morning (which will return, post pandemic!). If somebody is left standing on their own while members of church chat away in their friendship groups that person will, very justifiably, feel like an outsider – a horrible feeling. The centurion went out of his way to understand and build relationships with those who were outsiders (and to whom he was very much an outsider) meaning that there are times (Sunday morning coffee being one of them) when we will need to go out of our way to include and welcome somebody new who may have come to church with a specific need. It’s the kind of thing Jesus did both in this passage and throughout his ministry.
Questions: How might an understanding of God’s love as unconditional impact our understanding of the ‘good news’ of Jesus? How can we live that out?
Prayer: Lord, help me to reach out to those who, for any reason, are outsiders and to offer them a welcome in your name. Amen.
The woman caught in adultery: ‘John 8 v 1-11: Go now and leave your life of sin’.
The tabloid press are ever looking for sensational headlines – anything that will sell newspapers. I was listening recently to an interview with Mike Gatting, former England cricket captain, who was asked about how he coped with media intrusion and criticism during his career. Whilst he greatly respected some of the cricket correspondents that wrote about him he did not really have a good word to say for the tabloids. He cited one occasion when an England bowler had performed really well taking eight wickets against the then mighty West Indies. However instead of focusing on a praiseworthy positive, the tabloids gave the headline to an England batsman who had shown dissent when being given out. His point was that an exemplary bit of bowling came second to a sensationalist headline. Don’t get me wrong, the batsman in question should have accepted his dismissal, but it reflects what seems to be an increasingly insatiable thirst for anything with a whiff of scandal to go on the front page. I suspect that many of those who edit such newspapers would not particularly like some of their own mistakes and wrongdoings to become public. The simple truth is that in judging others we are actually, as equally flawed human beings, judging ourselves (see Mat 7 v 1-2) - which is what this passage is all about.
The woman caught in adultery was deliberately brought to Jesus in a very public place right in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles when Jerusalem and its Temple would be full of pilgrims. For her it was humiliating and terrifying, like finding yourself on the front page of the tabloids as well as staring a particularly horrible way to die in the face; only the stone that would finally suck the life from her body would end the agony that was coming her way. Yet given that it takes two to tango, where was the other participant in this adulterous fling? The man she was caught with has got away with it even though the Jewish Law was unequivocal in demanding that he too suffer the ultimate penalty Lev 20 v 10). It is a sad truth that, without in any way condoning her behaviour, her presence and the absence of her lover is typical of the kind of prejudice women have suffered since time immemorial. She, rather than he, is the one being used as a pawn in a cynical game of entrapment intended to catch Jesus out in order to arrest him (see John 7 v 30; 45). The religious teachers demand the ultimate penalty for her (v 5) without seeming remotely to care where he is.
So the trap is set; if Jesus says ‘don’t kill her’ he will be publicly driving a coach and horses through the Law of Moses, but if he says ‘go ahead’, he will be driving another coach and horses through everything that he has been teaching.
Jesus’ response is to write on the ground. Tantalisingly we have no idea at all what he was writing but the fact that he continues to do this after his challenge to any of accusers who are without sin to be the first to hurl a stone (v 7) suggests that it was to give people, including himself, time to think. Once the elders begin to melt away everyone else takes their cue until Jesus is left alone with the woman (v 9b).
It’s important to see that Jesus does not condone her adulterous behaviour; it isn’t the case that he is somehow on her side of the argument and lets her off. But he doesn’t condemn her either. Her other accusers all trudged off because they were made to realise that when you live in a glass house you really shouldn’t be throwing stones. But Jesus, the one whose sinless life does potentially give him the right to condemn her, refuses to do so. Instead he offers her an opportunity to transform her life and make a new start.
It is Jesus’ clear understanding that judgement is meant to be restorative rather than retributive that I think undergirds his words and actions in this story. One wouldn’t be forgiven for thinking that quite a lot of judgement in the Old Testament looks pretty vindictive, the Genesis flood and the wholesale slaughter of Canaanite communities by the invading Israelites are cases in point. But the Jewish people returning from exile in Babylon came to understand that God’s judgement on them and their consequent journey into exile wasn’t a capricious act of revenge because they had turned their backs on him but a ‘last resort’ attempt to restore and renew their vocation as the people of God (Is 48 v 17-20). In our passage Jesus is giving us an example of restorative judgement, in effect saying to her, ‘whatever you have done wrong, learn from it and move on to better things.’ It goes without saying that this would be impossible if she were to end up lying lifeless in the dust.
Judgement is, of course, a key theme in the Bible. Yet there is also a vision of universal restoration present in the earliest Christian proclamation (Acts 3 v 21) as well as the teachings of Paul (Rom 8 v 19-21). Add to that Paul’s belief that God’s intention is that every human should come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2 v 4) and the restorative rather than retributive nature of judgement starts to come into focus. We have to do some thinking about what kind of God we believe in. Is he essentially vengeful, dishing out nasty stuff to those who have offended him even to the extent that exclusion from his light and love is permanent and non-negotiable no matter what the torment involved?
Of course we have to take seriously the concept of God as judge. One of the tenets of the Christian faith is that what kind of person you are, how you treat other people and what you believe to be true all matter very much. This means that thoughts, words and acts which are cruel, selfish, hurtful, careless and hateful, or to put it another way ‘sinful’, can’t just be swept under the table as if they didn’t matter. Yet as we weigh Jesus’ words that he came into the world to save it rather than to judge it (John 12 v 47) we need to remember that Christianity is, at its heart, a faith that rest on love rather than fear. This in turn rests on the fact that although God judges, he does so mercifully, so much so that he gifts his only Son to atone for our sins in a way that is so vast and mysterious that however we describe it falls far short of its full wonder. Which means, taking us back to the woman caught in adultery, that God does not stand with the stone throwers whose idea of judgement is to destroy, but instead wants her, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, to ‘turn from her wickedness and live’. This means living life in all its fullness as a restored and loving human being.
So when you are tempted, with the tabloid press, to throw metaphorical stones at those who fail to come up to scratch just bear in mind that Jesus gave his life for your sins as well as theirs and that all any of us can do is to kneel at the foot of the cross and say, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
Questions: Why do you think people have sometimes found Christians judgemental? How do we reconcile the judgement of God and the mercy of God?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, when we are tempted to judge, remind us of the loving mercy you have shown to us and to all people. Amen.
Thursday March 18th: Zacchaeus: Luke 19 v 1-10: ‘Today salvation has come to this house.’
Zacchaeus was perhaps a bit like the school bully, somebody nobody liked but everyone was afraid of. First and foremost because he was collecting taxes for the hated Roman authorities you had no choice but to pay him if you didn’t want to land in hot water. As a chief tax collector (v 2) he would have staff working under him and would be in an ideal position to cream off whatever he wanted and make himself extremely wealthy; something he took full advantage of (v 8b). He lined his own pockets at the expense of others and, to cap it all, he was not even a Roman, he was ‘a son of Abraham’ which made him, in many people’s eyes, a collaborator.
And yet, if you will pardon the pun, there was something in his life that didn’t add up. He had everything he wanted materially and you would have thought that he would be the last person to show any interest in the itinerant rabbi with his uncompromising views on the perils of wealth. So why is he scrambling up a tree to get a better view (v 4)? None of those who worked for him or were being cheated by him would have known it, but he was a deeply unhappy man. One of very many who have discovered that possessing everything you could possibly want and more does not bring fulfilment or contentment but is actually a road to nowhere.
This story is about how it is possible, whoever you are and however far down the wrong road you have travelled, to embrace change. I always find it inspirational to read of people who have found themselves in the grip of addiction, whether that be to drink, drugs, gambling, food, computer games or whatever, who manage to turn their lives around and get back on track. I wonder how much of an addiction money had become for Zacchaeus and how much of his life he had spent worshipping at the shrine of mammon? And yet there is still hope for him.
As for the locals, they did not share that hope! It’s clear from the text that Jesus’ decision not just to talk to Zacchaeus but to go to his house for a meal (v 5) did not go down well at all (v 7); their unanimous view was that he was the last person whose hospitality Jesus should be enjoying, especially considering the possibility that the food they would eat was paid for with fraudulently obtained funds. They may well have subscribed to the cynical but very often accurate view that people like Zacchaeus are incapable to taking their noses out of the trough for long enough to even notice the pain and hardship they are causing.
But Jesus was able to see not just what Zacchaeus was (a pretty nasty piece of work) but also what he might become. His world was one where anything is possible and where nobody is beyond redemption. We’re not given any details about the meal Zacchaeus and Jesus shared; without doubt they talked about many things. But by the end Jesus was listening to a changed man who had a completely different purpose in life. After a transformative tea Zacchaeus committed to giving 50% of his dishonest gains away and repaying anyone who he had cheated fourfold (I’m sure they very quickly formed a queue). In promising to do this he went way beyond the Law which stated that the amount defrauded plus 20% should be repaid (v 8 see Num 5 v 7). It’s interesting that Jesus accepts Zacchaeus’s offer of restitution and does not insist, as he did in the case of the Rich Ruler in the previous chapter, that he give away every single last penny (Luke 18 v 18-30). Maybe it was the fact that Zacchaeus himself offered to give such a large sum of money away off his own bat (as far as we can tell) that made a difference.
The upshot of all this is that somebody who had lost his vocation as a son of Abraham has been found and saved (v 9-10); the Good Shepherd has found one of his lost sheep and brought him home. In doing so he upset many of the citizens of Jericho and would have become ritually unclean in the eyes of many by sharing food and drink with a collaborator. Yet his core task was to reach out to all those blundering around in a darkness often of their own making and lead them into the light. That is still a core task for today’s church which means reaching out to the kind of people many people would rather not associate with. That is why every prison has a chaplain offering pastoral care and a listening ear to people who, for whatever reason, have made a mess of their lives by committing criminal acts. This expresses eloquently one of the central truths of the Christian faith; that God doesn’t give up on anybody and ceaselessly reaches out in love to everybody. This doesn’t mean that God condones criminal, addictive, abusive, narcissistic or destructive behaviour – very far from it. It was because evil has disfigured the world and couldn’t just be waved away with a flick of the divine hand that God gave his only Son in an act of painful love. The Bible makes it abundantly clear just how seriously God takes the fact that we have all lost our way.
Which people assume, or have assumed, the role of Zacchaeus in our lives? They might be people we know or have known who we feel we have been hard done by, who have upset us in a way that we have found impossible to forgive, who get on our nerves, who we have written off as a bad job or who have done well out of behaving badly. I have sometimes found that when I think about somebody in that way it helps very much to pray for them. If I bring that person into God’s presence and ask for his blessing on them (rather than just saying ‘please make them easier to deal with!’) then I begin to see them more from God’s point of view rather than my own more jaundiced perspective. They may be lost in one way or another but God is reaching out to bring them home and the story of Zacchaeus underlines both the possibility of change and the indefatigable nature of God’s search for all in need of bringing home.
The bottom line is that all of us are lost in one way or another and we need to remember that there may be people who find us difficult! It might be that reading these words brings an awareness that we ourselves are not in a great place. The global pandemic has taken from us much of the fabric that makes up day to day life and many of us have felt a bit lost as we have been unable to go to church, meet up with family and friends or go to work. We have all spent much more time in our own company! Yet the message of the story of Zacchaeus applies to us as well; God is searching for us and every moment reaching out to us in mercy and love did we but know it. There is nothing that we have ever done or could ever do that would stop God loving us. That, of course, does not give us carte blanche to do whatever we like (Rom 6 v 1-2)! But it is the amazing grace of God, undeserved but freely offered, that shapes our lives and calls us home.
Questions: Has there been anyone in your life who has been unfair to you, upset you or made you angry? Have you ever prayed for them? If not, why not give it a go.
Prayer: Lord, thank you that you came to find the lost and bring them home. When we are lost, find us and when we encounter the lost give us your compassionate love. Amen.
The man healed of Leprosy: Luke 17 v 11-19: ‘Were not all ten cleansed?’
These days a journey from Samaria to Galilee would entail crossing the wall separating the Palestinian West Bank from Israel, something that many Palestinians are unable to do. For safety reasons pilgrims travelling from Jerusalem to Galilee have to drive east down to Jericho, near to the border with Jordan, and then turn north rather than take a more direct route.
Even back in the time of Jesus it wasn’t a safe place; the bitter and lasting hatred that could be traced all the way back to the division of Israel into two separate kingdoms over nine hundred years previously meant that this border area was a risky place to be travelling (the context for the Parable of the Good Samaritan). The best part of a thousand years is a very long time to be bearing grudges!
There is a clear link back in this story to Jesus’s earlier parable (Luke 10 v 25 37) because in both cases the unexpected hero is a Samaritan. In Jesus’ parable a member of that community goes to enormous lengths to care for a half dead Jewish man who was supposed to be his sworn enemy and in the real world setting of our passage the only one of ten men healed of leprosy who bothers to come back to thank Jesus is a Samaritan (v 16). This means we have to consider this passage from two different perspectives.
Firstly and most obviously it is about the need to be thankful. We can imagine all ten of those healed by Jesus being caught up in the excitement of being able to return to their families after months, if not years, of exclusion and isolation. The impact of this on their mental health is reflected in the intensity of their pleas for restoration (v 12). And all ten are healed; their healing is not dependent on their returning to give thanks and leprosy does not flare up again because they went straight home. This healing is an act of unconditional love and, as such, is done freely. The fact that it doesn’t seem to have led to spectacular spiritual growth for all but one of the ten might make us doubt their faith. Yet Jesus makes it quite clear that faith did indeed play a key role in the healing (v 19), something which must surely have applied equally to the absent nine. Perhaps it was just that in the excitement of the moment and the rush to get home they simply forgot to come back and say thank you. It may even be that some of them regretted their omission later but felt that the moment had passed. Sometimes when you mean to contact a friend you haven’t been in touch with for a while or write a thank you note to somebody who has helped you the longer you leave it the harder it becomes to actually do it. ‘Do it now or don’t do it all’ is often the way it goes. Their faith may not have been as great as the Samaritan but even a small amount of faith in Jesus can apparently make a difference, something I personally find greatly comforting.
The point for us here is that true thankfulness always includes a response. In the case of this Samaritan it meant coming back to Jesus to let him know how much what was done for him was appreciated. Many people who volunteer to work for charitable organisations such as hospices, mental health charities, cancer care centres and churches do so because they themselves received help when they really needed it and want to give something back as a way of saying thank you. There were a number of cases over the years I was involved in running the Alpha Course when people who had done the course subsequently became involved as leaders and helpers. Other people give financially to charities that have helped them in a difficult time which is another important way of saying thank you. The Holy Communion service is sometimes called ‘The Eucharist’ which derives from the Greek word ‘eucharistia’ meaning ‘thanksgiving’. This means that at the heart of Christian worship is an act of thankfulness for all that Jesus has done for us. Again and again we share bread and wine, tokens of his broken and pierced body, in thankful remembrance of God’s gracious and reconciling love. One significant reason Jesus left us this meal was that we would never take for granted the sacrifice that he made for us; each time the drama of the crucifixion is made real for us in bread and wine it is a reminder that it was for us and for all. Then at the end of the service we are sent out to ‘live and work to his praise and glory’ or to put it another way, to express our thankfulness to God in the way we serve him day by day. It’s why James says that without ‘works’ (which, for him, very much includes caring for those in need – James 2 v 14-17) faith is moribund (James 2 v 26).
Secondly we need to consider the implications of the Samaritan being the hero of the story. It’s interesting that in calling him a foreigner (v 18) Jesus identifies himself with the Jewish race. He doesn’t do this in a narrow nationalistic sense, I think, but to emphasise the omission of the other nine, who we assume to be Jewish, in failing to come back. In affirming the faith of a Samaritan Jesus is actually being counter cultural and ground breaking. We have to wait until Acts 10, when Peter is shown a vision and sent to the house of Cornelius, a gentile Roman Centurion, to find him and his fellow believers beginning to tumble to the fact that, as he puts it, ‘…God does not show favouritism…’ (Acts 10 v 34). Convincing his Jewish followers that God wanted to bless Gentiles as well was always going to be a tough nut for Jesus to crack. Our own age is one in which nationalism, factionalism and populism are once again raising their ugly heads and triggering conflicts in places such as Nagorno Karabakh, Ukraine, Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria, South Sudan and Myanmar. The suffering this has caused to the many victims who have been killed, maimed, bereaved and forced to leave the communities they have lived in their whole lives is such that we often can’t bear to look. Many other regions and individual countries are becoming bitterly divided along ethnic or political grounds – the United Kingdom and the United States of America are two good examples of where this kind of division is on the increase. The message of Jesus Christ is that we have a fundamental unity rooted in the fact that Jesus died for all regardless of race or ethnicity. This grateful Samaritan is a signpost pointing us to truths that transcend the divisions that scar our beautiful world reminding us that love, the self-giving love that we see in Jesus, must and will win the day because the risen Christ has triumphed over hate in all its forms and invited us to be citizens of an eternal kingdom of love, life and peace.
Questions: What do you need to say thank you to God for today? In what ways should living with a thankful heart shape our lives?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for all that you have done for us. Help us never to take you for granted and to respond in the giving of our lives to your service. Amen.
Nature is essential for our survival and is one of our greatest allies against climate change and pandemics, but it is under threat. Join us for #EarthHour o...
To find out more head to https://www.earthhour.org/
This is the DNA of the Earth Hour movement and the easiest way to participate this Earth Hour. Simply switch off all non-essential lights for an hour!
Get some candles ready and whip up healthy and delicious meals that will make your taste buds tingle! Don't know where to start? Check out our list of 50 foods for a healthier planet and a healthier you!
Up for a challenge? Try a zero-waste cookout or put on a blindfold and try and guess what's been cooked up!
From influencer Q&A sessions, to live performances and contests, stay tuned for our directory of live streams around the world you can tune in to on the night of Earth Hour! Bookmark this page for more updates to come.
Note: Our Earth Hour team will not be held responsible for any friendships ruined by a game of Monopoly
Get the popcorn ready and enjoy your most treasured Disney movies or take on those Harry Potter marathons that you've been always wanting to do. You can even watch some spectacular Emmy Award-winning documentaries like Our Planet on Netflix to experience our natural world in all its glory #ShamelessPlug ! No Netflix? No problem! You can even catch one bonus episode for free here - Our Planet: Our Business.
Still can't get enough of nature documentaries? The Environmental Film Festival is showing a large selection of their films for free on their website for a limited time!
Only have a minute? Add your Voice to call on world leaders to take urgent action to protect and restore nature! Our Voice for the Planet petition will be presented at major global conferences later in the year.
If you love the adventure of camping outdoors, we challenge you to turn your back garden or living room into your very own camping space! Don’t have an actual tent? Why not make one with bedsheets, pillows, and other household items!
We've partnered with One Minute Briefs (OMB) to run a competition on the night of Earth Hour! Want to win £100 in cash and a tee from the Earth Hour shop? All you have to do is create a poster encouraging people around the world to take part in Earth Hour, and Tweet your entries to @OneMinuteBriefs and @earthhour with the hashtag #EarthHour! Learn more about the contest here.
Learn more about nature loss and climate change - the biggest challenges of our time - and how we can overcome them together. You'll also discover why the two are more interconnected than you might think! Up your knowledge now
Challenge each other in a game of Heads Up! You can create your own deck of nature or wildlife-related word cards. Have a guesser hold up the cards on their forehead while the rest act out the word.
Want to test your photography skills? Try taking portraits of your family and friends in low-light or candle-light! You can also try out “light-painting” with your camera - we recommend a tripod and a slow shutter speed! Check out this useful guide for more information on how to do this!
Learn what you can do in your daily life to start living more sustainably - even the smallest actions add up! Read how here
A little friendly competition can’t hurt - up the stakes by making the loser do the dishes or any household chore
Feeling funky? You can also try using glow-in-the dark neon paint!
Do you wish to limit your water wastage or purchase eco-friendly goods more often? Why not put all of your sustainability goals into a letter for your future self! It’s a fun way to hold yourself accountable while at the same time do your part in helping our planet!
Turn your living room into a runway and bond with your family as you take on a fun and silly night of dressing up! Unleash your creative side by making your own costume from recyclable materials!
Grab a pair of headphones and groove to your own favorite music! Take it up a notch by battling it out with your family and friends in a silent disco and claim dance floor supremacy.
Need some inspiration for your dance moves? Check out our Earth Hour Tik Tok channel (@EarthHourOfficial) and stay tuned for our dance challenges!
Need a groovy set of tunes? Check out our Earth Hour channel on Spotify! We've got our official trailer music from over the years, as well as a curated playlist of nature-inspired songs!
Unleash the Ed Sheeran or Beyonce in you and sing the night away with your friends and family! For all you shower singers out there - this is your chance to shine!
Want to entertain your young ones? Switch off all the lights and put on a shadow puppet play! Cut out different shapes of animals, set up a stage using cloth and light and let the shadows come to life! Further set the mood by transforming your pillows and blankets into a mighty fortress!
Treat your young ones to a thrilling scavenger hunt! Turn off the lights, and hide items around the house (candy and chocolate are great incentives 😂 ). Challenge your young ones to find all the hidden items within a certain time limit, using only a flashlight!
Every year, Pocoyo and friends turn off their lights during Earth Hour! Learn with your little ones how to take care of the planet by watching Pocoyo’s adventures, playing the Earth Hour game and completing the activity book. There are plenty of activities to be done with Pocoyo here!
4. Create your own tie-dye clothes
If your young one is tired of boring white socks or has too many old t-shirts, get together to tie-dye them! All you need is a white piece of clothing, a bucket or a basin, water, rubber bands, some gloves, and different colored dyes. Pro tip: your tie-dye pattern depends on how you fold and secure the fabric with your rubber band! Check out this useful guide for more information!
Share the wonders of science with your little ones this Earth Hour! And the best part? You don’t need a ton of supplies - you can just use regular household items! Check out this page for some ideas.
Martha and Mary: Luke 10 v 38-42: ‘Mary has chosen what is better.’
I vividly remember an outing with some friends one Sunday afternoon when my children were young. The nearer we got to our destination the more the rain came pouring down and we eventually had to admit defeat. However the parents of one of our party lived quite nearby so plan B was to knock on their front door. We were made to feel enormously welcome and miraculously, as it seemed, food in abundance was placed before us!
Hospitality was, and still is in Middle Eastern culture, a sacred duty. The house that Jesus visits in Bethany belonged to Martha and she would have felt an obligation to provide a welcome and a meal. So we can understand why she gets a little hot under the collar about her sister spending time with Jesus while she is working hard in the kitchen. Households in which one person does all the chores while others do very little to help don’t tend to be happy ones!
However there is a bit more to this than meets the eye. In ‘sitting at the feet of Jesus’ (v 39) Mary was both occupying a male space within the house (women lived in the more private rooms, such as the kitchen) whilst also assuming a male persona as, effectively, a trainee rabbi. Paul uses the same expression to describe his own rabbinic training under Gamaliel (Acts 22 v 3).
This means that a kaleidoscope of thoughts must have been whizzing round in Martha’s mind. Everything from ‘who on earth does she think she is, we’ll never live this scandal down’ to ‘how many arms does she think I’ve got!’ The result is that she became thoroughly distracted (v 40) and was unable to embrace the moment. Jesus was not going to be around for all that much longer, Jerusalem and a Roman cross await him, and it is Mary who has made the better choice on this particular day (v 42). I suspect that for most of us life pootles along from day to day without the kind of great excitement or drama experienced by Martha and Mary when Jesus came to visit. Yet the message of this passage is that even when life seems uneventful Christians are called to live attentively, sitting at the feet of Jesus with open hearts and minds listening for and to his voice.
Many Christians find a method of reflecting on each day called ‘The Examen’ very helpful in this regard. It is a way of prayerfully reflecting on the day just past and discerning whether God is speaking to us through some of the emotions we have felt, which may include anger, disappointment, love, gratefulness, envy, anxiety or optimism. It also encourages us to reflect on one event that took place that day, examples of which include a significant conversation, a task performed, a change of plan, something that went wrong, a surprise, an opportunity taken (or missed), a misunderstanding or a new insight gained into something. Then, whether the day was really good or pretty lousy, we share our thoughts, including what we might have learned, with God. It may be that we will be giving thanks, saying sorry, praying for somebody, offering praise or asking for God’s help. It’s really about understanding that God weaves his presence through the fabric of our day to day lives and that nothing that happens to us is bereft of meaning. It’s clear that on the day of Jesus’ visit Mary understood that better.
Martha was distracted because of her worry and anxiety (v 41). In today’s world there are many distractions which, sometimes in ways that we are barely conscious of, shift the focus of our lives away from the call to sit at Jesus’ feet. Many today, (myself included!) need to reflect on the amount of times a day we consult our mobile phones and tablets. So, we think, I’ll just check emails, WhatsApp messages, the news, Facebook, the weather app, how many steps I’ve done today and on and on it goes. None of these activities are at all wrong in themselves; it’s great that we can, for example, communicate so easily with one another, share photos and videos and check our fitness levels. During the pandemic the internet has provided churches with the ability to stream services online and Zoom and other conferencing apps have enabled families and friends to keep in touch with one another in ways that would have been impossible a few decades ago. The problem is that not only is it possible for phones, tablets, laptops and computers to gobble up time without us noticing, they can also fill us, along with Martha, with worry and anxiety. It has been well said that the last thing you should do to try and diagnose a medical condition is go on the internet. It reminds me of the opening chapter of Jerome K. Jerome’s comic novel Three Men and a Boat in which the narrator, having been looking through a medical encyclopaedia, decides that the only condition he doesn’t have is housemaid’s knee!
What this kind of distraction does is shift the focus of our lives away from a securely anchored relationship with God. When we are distracted (whatever is claiming our attention) it is very often spending time with God that is the casualty and it won’t be long before a sense of unreality, that God if he’s there at all is a long way away, permeates our being. This is particularly relevant to our use of social media. Facebook and other platforms are not evil in themselves, one Facebook group I belong to is dedicated to old photos of Chester, the city I grew up in, and many of them are fascinating. But it’s clear to many now that they are also being used to manipulate the way people think about important issues by spreading falsehoods such as the allegations of fraud in last year’s presidential election in the USA which, as far as I can see, have no basis whatsoever in reality. If we’re spending hours and hours on our devices and little or no time with God our spiritual lives will inevitably be out of kilter.
But with Martha, there was a further element to her distraction that we have already alluded to. Jesus’ approval of Mary being a de facto trainee rabbi represents an enormous challenge to her worldview according to which this was a role most definitely reserved for men. ‘Martha, Martha’, says Jesus as he encourages her to see how the listening Mary is doing as the one thing needed at that moment (v 42). Being a disciple of Jesus, now as then, involves being open to change in every part of our lives including our beliefs, our lifestyle, our relationships and our values. Change is difficult, especially as we get older, and it is tempting to draw the comfort blanket of familiarity around ourselves whilst looking the other way. Yet we live in a fast moving world that is facing enormous challenges and this will involve new ways of being church, presenting the good news and caring for the planet. It is this need to spend time at the feet of Jesus, learning from him and asking the question ‘what would you have me do?’ that is the reason why, in Martha’s house that day, Mary chose what is better.
Questions: What are things that distract you most and prevent you from spending more time with God? What things do you feel most anxious about and how often do you share your worries with the Lord?
Prayer: Lord, forgive us for being so distracted. Help us to sit at your feet daily and learn more about you that we may better serve you in a changing world. Amen.
