Hello everyone,
Welcome to the latest issue of our church newsletter. I hope you are keeping well and staying safe. Our newsletter is sent out regularly to share reflections from services, Bible readings and church news to our church family.
You can find previous issues of the newsletter on our church website at www.christchurchuxbridge.org.uk We would love to hear from you and are looking for uplifting and encouraging content to share in future issues of this newsletter. If you have any ideas or content that we can share, please do email them to Louise (publicity@christchurchuxbridge.org.uk)
We start with our opening prayer:
Lord, I come into your presence.
I come just as I am.
I bring everything I have experienced this past week – the things I’m proud of, and the things I wish had been different.
I bring the people that enriched my week, and the people I found it hard to share my week with.
I bring the moments of joy, peace, pride, sorrow, frustration, regret and pain.
I bring my hopes for next week.
I lay all of these things at your feet, and rest in your loving presence.
Amen.
(Adapted from The Vine)
Reflection from 10 July
Reading: Luke 10:25-37
We’re all very familiar with this story of this guy who goes on this road to Jericho. A very, very rough road; very steep and hilly with lots of rocks alongside and places where nasty people can hide and rob those travelling along the road, like the man in our reading.
The people who come by seeing him lying there in the road. The first two you might think should take some notice. The first person is a priest, a person from the church of the time, who you would think would have done something about it but he passed by. The second, the Levite, was a person who worked in the church. Not of the priestly class, but who would help with services and functions in the church. They too passed by and didn’t do anything. Lastly came the Samaritan who did stop. We heard how he bandaged the wounds and how he then took the man to an inn. He had to go on for his business, but he took the man to an inn, and he gave the innkeeper some money to look after the wounded man until he came back and you might have heard the word denarii.
Denarii is a bit of an odd word to us now, I suppose, but it was the penny of the time. If you’re very old, like me and you can remember the days before we had decimal money, we used to call our pennies ‘d’ from denarii still, so it just shows how old we were, doesn’t it?!
That’s the story that Jesus told us, but remember at the start of that reading was about this lawyer, as he’s called, testing Jesus. The lawyer wasn’t someone who appeared in court; a lawyer then was a person who was an expert, so they believed, in the laws of God that they believed people should follow and they were a bit upset by Jesus coming and saying different things and talking about a God of love. They wanted to find ways of tricking Jesus into answering questions so they could then say that he really couldn’t be from God and this was of the times.
So the lawyer asked the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” because Jesus was talking about this life which goes on, not only or for us here, but forever into our futures after our human deaths. He wasn’t the only one who had asked Jesus that. If you remember the story about the young man who was very rich, who came to Jesus and asked exactly the same thing, and Nicodemus, the temple official who came to Jesus at night and asked exactly the same thing.
Jesus’s answer was to ask this guy what he thought the law, which this man represented, said. The man came out with that passage about loving God and loving our neighbour as ourselves, which is an older statement, but it was the man who thought he knew the law who said it at that point.
Why did Jesus tell this story, do you think? Why was Jesus telling the story at all? He was responding to a question that came from that lawyer. He asked, “Who is my neighbour?” Why do you think he asked that? The answer wasn’t obvious to him and he seemed to want to divide people up into those who were considered to be his neighbour and those who weren’t, trying to find out who he needed to apply this to and who he didn’t. He seemed to have this idea that some people were, you know, people you should deal with, and some were people he shouldn’t, and the story was Jesus’s answer to his point.
Why did Jesus choose this particular answer? Why did Jesus choose this place in the story? Well, the road to Jericho was a very dangerous place and people there would have known it was a very dangerous place. It wasn’t a place they would had gone at night to walk down that road because they would have expected to get mugged or even worse.
But why did he choose the people in the story, do you think? The man is the object of the story, isn’t he? So he had to be there. Why do you think he chose a priest and a Levite and a Samaritan? Well, the priest and the Levite worked in the church, so people would have thought that they would have been the helpful ones. But the Samaritan was from a group which the Jewish people really disliked and didn’t have anything to do with. They had different beliefs, they worshipped in different places, and really, the Samaritans were taboo and they didn’t have anything to do with them.
So Jesus chose these characters to put into the story. And did you notice in the lawyers question that the neighbour is someone else. The neighbour is the person to whom you do the good deed. The loyal asked, who’s the neighbour? Who should I do this for? Who should I do this to? But Jesus’s answer made the neighbour the lawyer. He made each one of us the neighbour.
The neighbour isn’t the person we’re doing things to or for. The neighbour is us doing those things.
You and I are called to be good neighbours to the people around us, whoever they are. It doesn’t matter whether they’re like us; it doesn’t matter whether they’re of our faith; it doesn’t matter whether they’re of our nation; it doesn’t matter whether their skin colour is. It doesn’t matter at all. We are called to be neighbours to everyone; to be neighbours, helpers, carers, sharers, friends to everyone we can and everywhere we can.
Graham Hinton
Readings for 17 July
Luke 10:38-42 (NIV)
At the Home of Martha and Mary
38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Further readings from the lectionary this week are as follows:
- Genesis 18:1-10a
- Psalm 15
- Colossians 1:15-28
Our worship
We meet at 11am for our Sunday services, which are also live-streamed on our Facebook page. If you wish to view our services online, you can find them at www.facebook.com/christchurchuxbridge. You do not have to be a Facebook user to watch them – our services are publicly viewable. You can also view a recent service on our church website. Our service this week will be led by Methodist minister, Revd Andrew Pottage. You can find the order of service here.
If you are unable to join us in person or online for our Sunday services, but would like to receive a recording of them on a memory stick to watch at home, please let us know.
Forthcoming services
17 July – Revd Andrew Pottage (Methodist minister)
24 July – Graham Hinton (URC lay preacher and member of Christ Church)
31 July – Revd Bridget Powell (URC minister) – communion service
7 August – Cathy Smith (Methodist local preacher)
Church charity news
Our next coffee morning in aid of HALO will be on Saturday 30 July. Please come along and support our church charity.
If anyone has any ideas for fundraising events for the autumn, please let Louise know.
You can find more details about HALO Children’s Foundation, our church charity for 2022 at:
www.christchurchuxbridge.org.uk/activities/churchcharity2022/
To make a donation to our church charity online visit www.justgiving.com/fundraising/christ-church-halo2022
Christ Church 50th Anniversary
Dates for your diary
Sundays, 12.30pm – 2pm (approx.)
Rehearsals in the chapel for Hopes and Dreams: Moving Forward. Please contact Jean or Louise George for more details.
Please note there will be no rehearsal on 14 August.
Saturday 6th August, 10am – 12noon
Sewing bee for the community anniversary commemorative wall hanging. Please contact Joanne for more details.
Tuesday 16th August, 12noon – 2pm
Bunting making worship. Please contact Denise for more details.
Saturday 3rd September, 12noon – 2pm
Bunting making worship. Please contact Denise for more details.
Saturday 24th September
All day – Exhibition
10am – 1pm – Fete
3pm – Thanksgiving service
7pm – Quiz supper
Sunday 25th September
11am – Communion and covenant service
1pm – Bring and share lunch
3pm – Hopes and Dreams: Moving Forward
Saturday 8th October, 10am – 12noon
Sewing bee for the community anniversary commemorative wall hanging. Please contact Joanne for more details.
For more information about our anniversary events, please visit our 50th anniversary page.
Church café – can you help?
The church café is in need of a volunteer on Thursdays from 12.30pm – 3pm to help with washing up and clearing up after the café closes. Please contact Joanne Mackin if you are able to help on any of the following dates: Thursday 21 July or Thursday 28 July.
Greenbelt – bunting needed
Each year, URC members who aren’t able to join us in person at Greenbelt have connected with us through creating and sending in knitted items, handmade postcards, and through prayer. Each of these small offerings has found a place with many others sent from across the country to create a wonderful reflection of the creativity and diversity of the URC family. And at the end of each festival, people have been queuing up to take a little piece of the display home with them as a lasting reminder of precious times at Greenbelt.
For 2022, we are inviting you to create bunting to display in the tent at Greenbelt. This can be individual triangles or made into a 2-metre length! The bunting can be made from paper, card, cloth or whatever you happen to find around the home. Your bunting triangles can include images of revolting Christians, symbols of faith or just multicoloured patterns and shapes that are beautiful to look at. You could create a representation of your congregation or church building or your neighbourhood or something celebrating the 50th year of the URC. Let your imagination fly!
Please pass on your finished bunting to Joanne Mackin by 22nd August.
Children’s Corner
Can you find these Biblical women in the wordsearch below?
| ABIGAIL
BATHSHEBA DEBORAH DELILAH DORCAS ELIZABETH |
ESTHER
EVE HAGAR JEZEBEL LYDIA MARTHA |
MARY
Mary MAGDALENE RACHEL RUTH SARAH ZIPPORAH |
Praying for other churches
This week we hold the following churches in our prayers:
- Ruislip Methodist
- Gerrards Cross URC
Closing prayer
Lord, send us out into the world,
alert to whatever nudges us to hear you calling,
or whatever points us in your way.
Make us bold to resist those who would keep us
in the comfortable well-trodden paths,
so that – like Mary – we can break free from time to time,
to sit at your feet. Amen.
(Taken from Roots)
