Hello everyone,
Welcome to the latest issue of our church newsletter. Our newsletter is sent out regularly to share reflections from services, Bible readings and church news with our church family. You can find previous issues on our church website here.
We would love to hear from you and are always 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)
Opening Prayer
Lord, let our words be instruments of your peace;
where there is grief, let us bring comfort;
where there is sadness, let us bring joy;
where there is discord, let us bring harmony;
where there is ignorance, let us bring wisdom.
Lord, let our words be instruments of your peace.
Amen.
(From the prayer of St Francis, taken from Roots)
Reflection from 1 September
Readings – Romans 12: 1-2 and John 15: 1-10
A few years ago I discovered a rather quirky American novel called “Bee Season” by Myra Goldberg, which is absolutely nothing at all to do with keeping bees. The ‘Bee’ in the title refers to spelling bee contests which were a major thing, and may still be for all I know, in America’s education system. The novel follows the fortunes of a Jewish American 9-year-old called Eliza and her family. Eliza emerges from obscurity after winning local, regional and even state level spelling bee competitions, gaining prestige both in her local community and, more importantly for her, in the eyes of her father who suddenly begins to pay her some attention, which he certainly hadn’t when she was simply an ordinary 9-year-old girl.
The novel looks at the complicated relationships within that family and within their Jewish community and it also looks at the history behind those relationships. Early on in this novel, Eliza becomes increasingly fascinated by letters. She sees the construction of words as if they were a scientific experiment under a microscope. Consonants, she decides, are predictable, but vowels are much more slippery and elastic, able to do different things in different words, and it’s the vowels that come to interest her the most. Eventually Eliza interprets everything in the world around her as if it was either a vowel or a consonant, and so in her mind the predictable things are consonants, whereas the exciting unpredictable things are vowels. let me just read you one very short passage:
“Before the spelling bee, Eliza had been a consonant: slow and unsurprising. With her spelling bee success, Eliza begins to look at life in alphabetical terms. School is a consonant with its unchanging schedule; God, full of possibility, is a vowel.”
Now you may wonder why I’ve started with that. These images might seem a little strange out of their context in the book, but I do think it’s interesting that progress for Eliza meant to move away from what is ordered and predictable and a move towards what is changeable and uncontrollable, and what is more it was in that unpredictable nature of life that she found her image of God, and I believe that’s exactly the image of God that can help us today as we come to renew our covenant.
This is not a service about rules or obligations. This is a covenant service: a service that relies on promises and trust in this year that lies ahead of us, full of unknown possibilities. St Paul seemed to reflect on the very same thing in that reading that we heard from the letter to the Romans. He wrote, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God.”
What is good and acceptable and perfect conforming is like being a consonant. It’s often seen as the right way to live. Conforming means stopping at red traffic lights, wearing the same sort of clothes to work that everyone else will be wearing, not standing out from the crowd by wacky or different behaviour. Conforming is about living according to a pattern: getting up at the same time every day, eating at normal meal times, putting things back in their places, doing what is expected. It’s a safe way of being because it means operating within a set of rules.
A few months before I was ordained, I received a letter from the Methodist Church explaining the expected dress code for ordinance. In my current job I now have the responsibility of writing this letter every year, and the idea is that everyone should would look similar; a uniform group of colleagues entering ordained ministry together. Yet in the year when I was ordained, there were two people who rejected that idea. For them it was much more important that this was a personal, individual occasion so instead of conforming to the greys and the blues and the blacks that everyone else was wearing, they wore bright orange and bright pink, and it certainly made them stand out and certainly got them noticed.
We have this debate every year about whether we should expect people to conform or whether we should allow them to be more individual. These days that rarely happens; people do conform more, but almost everybody finds a little way when they don’t, so they might just have red shoes on, or something in their outfit that is not quite conforming to the standard.
Conforming is safe; conforming allows us to impose some degree of order on what is otherwise a very changeable world, and yet conforming has its dangers. Before long, the rules and the regulations that govern our lives become more important than the reasons that lie behind those rules. It’s like obeying a red traffic light without remembering why it matters. We end up following the herd out of habit without asking ourselves why we’re doing it, and Paul wanted people to think differently.
If I was to ask you what is the opposite of conforming, you might well say rebelling. A rebel is a person who refuses to be controlled by rules or conventions. Rebels are people who are prepared to stand out from the crowd in order to challenge the justice or the fairness of a system, and yet when Paul tells the Roman Christians not to be conformed to the world, he doesn’t tell them instead to rebel. Instead he says, “be transformed”. The discussion for him is not about obedience or non-obedience to rules and systems that are devised by human beings. He moves it all from a debate about what people do to a debate about who people are in their very essence: “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”
Paul is talking about a deep-seated change like the complete metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Whether you are a conformist or a rebel, the person at the centre of your thoughts is still yourself. You conform in order to control life or to put yourself beyond reproach; you rebel in order to stand out and be noticed.
The transformation that Paul is emphasising is moving right away from that self-centred view of the world to a God-centred view of the world and it’s similar to the image of the vine that we’ve heard about this morning from John’s gospel. Being connected to the vine means being connected to God.
In a few moments we will be saying some of the most challenging words that will face us in any part of this year. The covenant service was introduced by John Wesley as an invitation for people to renew their relationship with God, keeping God at the centre of their lives, and at the heart of the covenant prayer we find these words: “put me to doing, put me to suffering, let me be employed for you or laid aside for you.” These words are a challenge. They’re a challenge every year because they sound so stark and can so easily be misinterpreted. It’s as if we’re asking God to make us suffer or make us be laid aside; things that none of us would intentionally choose to happen to us, but this teaching from Paul compels us to look at those words differently rather than seeing them as a layer of demands loaded on to us by God; we can see them entirely as part of our accepting of God’s will for our lives because it means that even when life is unpredictable and we cannot understand why certain things happen to us, all of those experiences are still held within the overall purposes of God.
This Covenant prayer allows all of us to show other people our belief that each one really matters. Many people live very lonely lives, feeling useless, unimportant, and definitely laid aside. They think they are somehow less beautiful, or less clever, or less sociable than others, and life can so easily become one long drudge for them. I imagine that many people who are caught up in a war in Gaza or Ukraine or the Central African Republic or many other parts of our world might feel like this right now; so many are victims who’ve not been involved in the political crisis or terrorist activities or violence that sparked such wars and yet they are the ones who suffer.
I often think of people who live in care homes: people who have lived incredibly strong, resilient lives, endured hardships and tragedies, and who have often been pioneers in many areas of life, and now they sit for hour after monotonous hour. In some care homes, resources are too stretched to be able to offer the residents much in the way of activity, whereas others have keep-fit classes and craft sessions and entertainments on offer. At one Methodist Home for the Aged that I used to visit many years ago, they even held a complete pantomime every year. I remember a 92-year-old Cinderella arriving at the ball in a wheelchair decorated with tinsel. Of course, not all people are able to participate fully in activities later in life but the danger is that they are then treated as if they have nothing left to offer at all, that somehow they’ve become without value, and often I think to myself that this just would not happen in other cultures where the extended family is still strong, and older people are revered and treated with honour and respect.
Through the Covenant prayer, even when people feel they are unimportant and unable to do what they once might have done; even when life is a long drudge, that drudgery is lived out for God. We are saying, “if I have to be laid aside; if I have to struggle with life’s experiences, then let that be done for you, God.” It means God’s love reaches everywhere and is as real in the moments of drudgery as it is in the moments of bliss. So as we come to renew our Covenant together, may God help each one of us to think about how we are living out our lives for God. How are we being transformed? May we learn, like Eliza did, to see God not as a boring consonant, like a list of rules to be kept, but more like a vowel: flexible, changing, full of endless possibilities. Today is about promises and trust with God at the centre. May God help us all to keep those promises and to allow them to sustain us into all of our futures. Amen.
Revd Dr Claire Potter
Reflection from 8 September
Readings – James 2: 1-10, 14-17 and Mark 7: 24-37
“Faith,” says James, in our first reading today, “if not accompanied by action, is dead.” Our faith isn’t just something that stays inside us, within our thoughts. It needs to stir us to react to things, to encourage us to change how we behave. What good is our faith if all it does is stay internalised and nothing comes of it?
So we need to take action. But what kind of action? James suggests that faith should affect how we treat those in need. Not just by being nice, praying or offering a blessing. It’s easy isn’t it, to just offer “thoughts and prayers”, but we need to do more than that. We need to reach out in a practical way.
That could be something immediate – a warm coat, a hot drink, a supermarket meal deal. But the example of need is someone who is without daily food. It isn’t just a one-off, a brief moment of giving money or food, and then forgetting all about it. What can we do to address the causes of the need, so that the person who struggles to meet their daily needs is helped in a longer-term way. One way in which churches are often active in trying to meet that particular need of addressing hunger, is through food banks, and next week at our harvest service, we’ll be bringing our own gifts to help those who are in need of food banks.
Food banks don’t just provide food, they often also signpost to others who can provide debt advice, benefits advice, housing advice, etc. And more recently, the organisations behind food banks have looked further up the chain of what causes hunger and have started lobbying for change. One example is the Essentials Guarantee to ensure that Universal Credit covers life’s essentials.
As Desmond Tutu put it: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”
If we want to stop pulling people out of the river, and instead find out why they’re falling in, we need to look at the causes of food poverty and deprivation.
For many people across the world, climate change has a huge impact in this area. What good is our faith if we do nothing about climate change? We need to do more than just pray for those who are affected by climate change – we need to change our own behaviour – at a personal level, in our churches and communities, in businesses and by our governments. Our faith is alive, it changes our behaviour, and tackling climate change is an expression of love.
James’s reading is intended in love to those the writer loves and cares for; to their ‘brothers and sisters’. Both in warning to those who may be choosing harm for their own world, and to those very same brothers and sisters who can, by response to God’s grace, contribute to healing. James reminds us that we have to ‘love our neighbour as ourselves’ and not show favouritism to those who are rich and well-dressed, to the rich and powerful, the big corporations who have more of a voice. We like our comforts, we like our lifestyles, and it’s all too easy to turn a blind eye to the voices of those who are most affected – those who are often in poorer regions of the world. Our faith calls us to action, to seek justice for others and climate change is one area where there is real injustice in the world – because all too often, those who contribute the least to climate change are the ones most affected by it.
I’ll come back to the theme of environmental justice in a moment, but let’s just take a moment to recap our reading from Mark, which starts with Jesus trying to take some time out and looking for solitude. As is often the case with Jesus’s ministry, solitude proves to be elusive – there always seems to be someone who is looking for help and healing. This time, it’s a woman seeking healing for her daughter who is possessed by a demon. A woman who by all usual practices of the day should not be approaching Jesus. She is ‘a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin’ – somebody living outside the law of Moses. She is a woman speaking to a man without her husband present. She has a demon-possessed daughter – further alienating her from society. She is not the kind of woman one would usually expect to approach a Jewish rabbi. And in this moment, Jesus just wants to be alone, perhaps feeling weary and needing a bit of space to recharge.
We can find ourselves feeling weary in the face of climate change. The work we are called to do to campaign and take action for the environment can seem like a hopeless task – too much for us to feel able to do. Perhaps we just want to switch off for a bit and not have the think about the next thing we need to do to help put the world to rights.
Jesus responds to the Syrophoenician woman. He tells her “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” We should not miss the racial slur here that Jesus throws her way. The children and the dogs in this response would have been clear indicators of Israelites and Gentiles respectively. Jesus is telling her that the healing he can provide is first and foremost for the children of God, the people of Israel. This is hard for us to read in a modern context. How could Jesus say such a thing? Perhaps he is quoting a Jewish saying. Perhaps he is testing the woman to see if she responds faithfully. Perhaps he is behaving exactly how we might expect a first century Jewish man to behave. Regardless, the Syrophoenician woman must have felt some despair in this moment. Jesus the healer she has heard about will not heal her child.
We too might find ourselves despairing when we turn on the news, when we hear about rainforests decimated, wildfires burning, droughts and famines already affecting the poorest in the world. What is it that causes you despair? And yet though the work of environmentalism may feel hopeless, we are never without hope.
The Syrophoenician woman knows this. She is in the presence of God – she will not lose hope. The story – happily for her and her daughter – does not end in the middle of this passage. We could get caught up trying to unpick how it is that Jesus has said such a thing, but that would be to take one verse out of context. We need to read to the end of the story. The woman comes back at Jesus with a clever response: ‘”Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”. In other words, even Gentiles might receive the healing offered to the Israelites. And Jesus tells her that the demon has left her daughter.
The daughter receives the gift of healing – a gift offered to each and every one of us, regardless of our ethnicity, nationality, or background. It is here, with salvation, where the story ends. When we look at our melting world, how easy it is to feel the despair of the mother in the middle of the story. How easy it is to feel the story has ended right in the middle – with no hope of healing, and no sign of a future. How easy it is to feel that God has turned away from us and refused our planet the healing it so desperately needs. And yet – and yet – our story is not ended. God does not abandon us. What’s the end of our story?
Jesus agrees with the Syrophoenician woman that God’s healing power is not restricted to a chosen people. God’s love knows no boundaries. So often we forget this truth. We think that God only works amongst people who look or think like us. We think that God’s grace is reserved for the worthy. We forget that if God’s salvation is big enough for you and me, it’s big enough for the whole of humankind – perhaps even the whole universe.
In the second half of the Gospel reading, as Jesus heals the deaf and mute man in a very down-to-earth manner, we see that the healing Jesus offers people is often much bigger than simply being made physically well. The man, who was alienated from his society, is suddenly able to communicate again with others. He is restored to himself and to his community. Just like our justice priority for this week says – we long to be in right relationship between people, planet and God. And these three are connected – the healing of our selves allows our relationships with others and with our world to be restored, too. If the Gospel reading today, with first the story of the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter, and then the story of the deaf and mute man, teaches us anything, it should teach us that we need to expand our understanding of the realm of God. Because nothing – no group of people, no mountain range, no beehive, no galaxy – is beyond the realm of God’s love and salvation.
We have learned a salvation story that is so narrow. God’s salvation story encompasses the whole cosmos. We need to expand our understanding of the gospel to include all that we too easily disregard and dismiss and exclude. In the scripture today, Jesus astounds everyone by stepping outside of the expectations they had of him. If we too are astounded, then we need to expand our understanding of the reach of God’s salvation. If we too struggle to believe that God loves this blue planet we call home, then we need to expand our understanding of the reach of God’s salvation.
We need to have a little faith, like the Syrophoenician woman, that healing is within reach. Not that we sit back and wait for God to save us from climate crisis, but that we gladly join with God in working for healing and restoration of ourselves, others, and our planet. The transformation we see in today’s Gospel stories occurs because Jesus steps out into a messy world and comes alongside people who are marginalised and excluded. And now we are called to do the same – to come alongside our hurting neighbour, and our hurting planet, and help. Inconvenient, exhausting, and seemingly hopeless though the work often is. Showing our faith through our actions. How might God be inviting us to join in with the work of healing and salvation for the planet?
Louise George (using resources from The Vine and JPIT)
Readings for 15 September
Mark 8: 27-38
Peter Declares That Jesus Is the Messiah
27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”
30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
Jesus Predicts His Death
31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
The Way of the Cross
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
Further readings from the lectionary this week are as follows:
- Isaiah 50: 4-9a
- Psalm 116: 1-9
- James 3: 1-12
Our worship
We meet at 11am for our Sunday services, which are also live-streamed on our YouTube channel. If you wish to view our services online, you can find them at https://www.youtube.com/@christchurchuxbridge
You can also view a recent service on our church website. Our service this week will be a Harvest and parade service, led by Methodist local preacher, Catherine Wells. 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
15 September – Catherine Wells (Methodist local preacher) – Harvest and parade service
22 September – Revd Wilbert Sayimani – Holy Communion
29 September – Claire Gill (Methodist deacon)
6 October – Revd Maggie Hindley (URC minister)
Harvest service – 15 September
Our Harvest service this year will be on 15 September and we will be donating our Harvest gifts to Yiewsley & West Drayton foodbank. If you would like to bring a donation of food to this service, these are the items that they are currently most in need of:
- Jam/Honey
- Rice Pudding
- Custard
- Tinned Fruit
- Tinned Soup
- Tinned meat or fish
- Tinned sweetcorn
- Tinned pulses
- Sugar (500g or 1kg)
- Microwave rice packets
- Pasta sauce
- Tinned Potatoes
- Instant coffee (small jars)
- Long life milk (ideally full fat or semi skimmed)
- 1L Fruit squash
- Biscuits
- Dried noodles
- Tinned spaghetti
- Long grain rice
They are not currently in need of baked beans, pasta or nappies.
Induction service for Revd Wilbert Sayimani
Saturday 21st September, 2.30pm at Christ Church
The induction service for Revd Wilbert Sayimani will take place at Christ Church on Saturday 21st September at 2.30pm. The service will be led by Revd James Fields and refreshments will be served following the service. If you are planning on attending this service, please let Joanne know.
There will be a sign-up sheet available at church for providing food items for the refreshments after the service, please do sign up. We are also looking for a volunteer to manage the kitchen and ensure that the tea and coffee flow and the washing up is done, and a member who would like to read some prayers during the service. Please let Joanne know if you are able to help.
Parking will be limited to the church car park only for those with disabled badges and access needs, or those who are bringing large and heavy items for the event. If you need a parking space at church, please email Joanne. There is parking available nearby in the Cedars, Grainges and Chimes car parks.
Children’s Corner
Dates for your diary
| 2024 | |
| 18 September | Welcome Wednesday |
| 21 September | Induction service for Revd Wilbert Sayimani |
| 2 October | Welcome Wednesday |
| 16 October | Welcome Wednesday |
| 30 October | Welcome Wednesday |
| 13 November | Welcome Wednesday |
| 24 November | Congregational Meeting |
| 27 November | Welcome Wednesday |
| 11 December | Welcome Wednesday |
| 2025 | |
| 8 January | Welcome Wednesday |
| 22 January | Welcome Wednesday |
Praying for other churches
This week, we hold the following churches in our prayers:
- Eastcote Methodist
- Acton Hill URC/Methodist
- Our Lady of Lourdes & St Michael, Uxbridge
Closing prayer
Come, Holy Spirit,
dwell in us and help us to praise you.
Give us words of encouragement
to support those who struggle.
Train our hearts to be generous and kind.
In Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.
(Taken from Roots)
