22 June 2021
Dear Friends
This Sunday we will celebrate our fifth anniversary as a church. It has felt so natural to be together as one church that I was surprised when I did that maths and only needed one hand to count it up. We did originally have big plans to always have an invited preacher on these occasions, but the uncertain nature of the last year has meant that we haven’t been able to plan that far ahead, so you are going to have make do with me this year. Hopefully we can begin to look further ahead now and you can begin to plan who to invite in forthcoming years. Thinking about pulpit supply matters, Isabel is putting together a worship plan to lead the weeks I will no longer be here and then we have an offer of someone willing to take over. We thank them both, but if you are aware of people who you believe would be good at leading worship at Ansty Road, please let Isabel know and she will add them to the potential invitation list.
There are many skills we need to keep a church running, another is people who can clean. We are creating a cleaning rota, so as to save us having to employ anyone. At the moment there are 4 volunteers, but another two would mean that the frequency was less often. If that is something you can do please speak to Isabel.
At the last Church Meeting we decided that we wanted to restart our Quiz Nights. So the first of the new season will be Craig’s Last Quiz Night on Friday 16th July, 7pm. Teams of no more than 6, on socially distanced tables answering the usual mix of easy questions. £5 per person, and an indication of who will be coming to Isabel please.
Hymn
Blessed be Your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be Your name
When I’m found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be Your name
Every blessing You pour out I’ll
Turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in Lord
Still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name
Beth Redman | Matt Redman
- © 2002 Thankyou Music (Admin. by Integrity Music)
CCLI Licence No. 1280770
Prayer
God of lakes and landfalls
boats and beaches;
we gather around your presence;
intrigued, enthralled, curious.
God of named and un-named
led and followed
we fall pleading at your feet;
craving, pressing, hoping.
God of parent and child
healthy and ailing;
we seek the life you provide;
flourishing, thriving, savoured.
God of patient and physician
seen and hidden;
we press against you in the crowd
silent, noticed, touched.
God of powered and disempowered
released and recharged;
we feel your energy within us
tender, merciful, beautiful
God of knowing and unknowing
faithfulness and trust
we sense your glance upon us
peaceful, transforming, easy.
God of receiving and sending
encouragement and forgiveness
we taste your zest for life
risen, resplendent, wellspring.
God of teaching and troubling
hearing and noticing
we fear your assured pace
unwavered, untroubled, certain.
God of belief and disbelief
questions and quietening
we scoff with misunderstanding;
opened, taught, gentle.
God of dawn and dusk
midnight and midday
you take our hand and raise us to life
restored, rejuvenated, rejoiced.
God of kitchen and bedroom
study and nursery
You feed us with goodness
replenish, rework, reseed.
Craig Muir based on Mark 5:21-43
Commitment
We come to worship
All that we are will flow into and out of our worship of God
Like Martha, we come to welcome and seek welcome
We commit ourselves to create welcome, hospitality and friendship
Like Hannah, we come to pray and share prayer
We commit ourselves to put prayer at the heart of our presence in this place.
Like Mary Magdalene, we come to witness to God’s good news
We commit ourselves to seek ways in which we witness to Jesus
Like Mary of Bethany, we come to disciple and be discipled
We commit ourselves to learn and worship at the feet of Jesus
Like Barnabas, we come to encourage one another
We commit ourselves to create moments of reconciliation and peace.
To find God’s Spirit in one another and care for the most vulnerable
Like the Dancing One, we come to celebrate life’s moments.
We commit ourselves to celebrate a love shared and find reasons to dance.
When we go our separate ways
We will do so by taking our worship into our daily lives of welcome, prayer, witness, discipleship, encouragement and celebration.
© Ansty Road United Reformed Church
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name
Christ alone cornerstone
Weak made strong in the Saviour’s love
Through the storm He is Lord
Lord of all
Edward Mote | Eric Liljero | Jonas Myrin | Reuben Morgan | William Batchelder Bradbury
© 2011 Hillsong MP Songs (Admin. by Hillsong Music Publishing UK) CCLI Licence No. 1280770
Celebrating like the dancing one: Acts 3:1-10
A man’s life is turned around when he meets the risen Christ through Peter and John. His reaction is to dance with joy and amaze those around him. We need to celebrate life’s moments, celebrate the good news of Christ, celebrate a love shared.
When we were thinking about the way we wanted to develop the new church Dorry Dear told us, “These moments are like a comma changing the flow of a sentence.” I loved that image, and the way a well placed comma makes such a difference to the way in which we understand text. There is a story told by Oscar Wilde that he had spent the whole day waiting and when asked what he had done said “I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.”
However, what language shall we use? We have in the past referred to this encounter as Celebrating like the dancing Cripple. Now cripple is a perfectly correct word from the Old English crypel, “one who creeps, halts, or limps, one partly or wholly deprived of the use of one or more limbs.” The problem is that like so many of these words it has been abused and it has been abused. Some will use it of themselves, “Crip” is a term used by people who are disabled – but it’s not a term that is regarded as acceptable for those of us who are not particularly disabled to use. So what might we say instead, could we refer to the dancing paraplegic or person of disability? We could and many of those who are disabled in some way prefer that term, yet still I hesitate to describe someone by what can not be done rather than by their achievements.
So for the moment, until someone suggests something better, I’m going to refer to the Dancing One. It is a bit gneric, perhaps too bland bland, yet it puts our focus on the dancing and perhaps we can then associate this moment with others who dance …Miriam, Psalm 30 149, 150 , Jephthah’s daughter, David, Thessalonians – “We ask you—urge is more like it—that you keep on doing what we told you to do to please God, not in a dogged religious plod, but in a living, spirited dance.”
Sometimes, moments of celebration will be immediate and unexpected. At other times we need to plan ahead, make the date, form plans, send out invitations, prepare the food, arrange the music, agree the outfit, greet the guests, surprise the one whose achievements we are celebrating and then relax and enjoy the day. It is good to celebrate together.
This is our 5th church anniversary a time celebrate all that we have done over the last five years.
- congregations come together, support one another and become one body.
- CRCW post and called Kirsty,
- redevelop the building whilst also making plans for Ball Hill. We have met the disappointment of those plans not coming to fruition by reimagining how we can concentrate our work at Ansty Road and I know that you will produce good projects.
- We have registered for equal marriage and celebrated a number of weddings. If you want to see the impact that can have read this story https://metro.co.uk/2021/06/15/pride-week-nigerian-man-who-sought-asylum-because-being-gay-is-a-crime-14769294/ Victor was one of the people whose wedding we celebrated in May, growing up in Nigeria, it was beyond his imagination. I’m so pleased that we could be with them in that moment.
In our story at the Beautiful Gates, the begging one – did not wake up that morning imagining that he would be able to dance into the temple that afternoon.
He came expecting charity and discovered it was time to walk!
He came into the hour of prayer – with dancing feet.
Sometimes God’s grace is beyond our imagination and when that moment happens we have to take it and dance with it. We have to give thanks for the goodness that we have experienced or witnessed. We need stand with those who celebrate and against those who want to belittle everything or strain the joy out of those dancing feet. It means that some times we need to adapt, be light on our feet and always open to saying “Yes” to the moments God offers. For it may be in such moments that God’s Spirit creates new commas that change the flow of the narrative.
Thanks be to God, whose Church on earth
Has stood the tests of time and place,
And everywhere proclaims new birth
Through Christ whose love reveals God’s face.
Thanks be to God, whose spirit sent
Apostles out upon his way;
From east to west the message went;
On Greek and Roman dawned the day.
Thanks be to God, in whom we share
Today the mission of his Son:
May all his Church that time prepare
When, like the task, the world is one.
© Caryl Micklem
Loving God,
We live in this waiting time,
Wondering what will happen next.
Asking, questioning, searching.
Will we return to the old normal?
What new things do you have in store for us?
Creator God, grant us hope in the midst of a confused and troubled world.
Redeemer God, pour out your gift of love, that our lives may bear fruit.
Sustainer God, free us from fear about what the future might hold
and give us power to live whole-heartedly for others and all creation.
Amen.
Revd Dr Elizabeth Welch, member of St Andrew’s URC in Ealing
https://urc.org.uk/general/3729-prayers-during-the-pandemic.html