Sunday
Sunday January 20, 2013
Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings with
thy most gracious favour, and further us with
thy continual help; that in all our works,
begun, continued and ended in thee, we may
glorify thy holy name, and finally by thy
mercy obtain everlasting life, through Jesus
Christ our Lord Amen.
As a newly ordained curate with an evangelical background firmly grounded in
extempore prayer, I listened with curiosity
to older priests ending meetings with a rapidly recited prayer obviously deeply familiar to them. Perhaps my own familiarity
with the BCP was lacking but it was a long
time before I discovered where these
prayers came from. It has to be said that it
would have helped if those using these
prayers had spoken more slowly but I
quickly became captivated by the phrase
‘in all our works begun, continued and
ended in thee’ and began to use it in my
www.churchnewspaper.com
THE SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR
By the Rev Dr Liz Hoare
own prayers.
The prayer for this week is one of a number provided by Cranmer for occasions
when there was no communion and only
the first part of the service was used up to
and including the offertory. It is one of
those 16th century prayers where the
meaning of a word has changed significantly and ‘prevent’ needs explaining or changing for those who think God might be
being asked to put a blockade in our path
to righteousness.
Petitioning him to go before us is a very
different matter and reminds us that Jesus
himself promised his disciples that he has
gone on ahead to help us face the final and
greatest hurdle of all (Jn 14:2) Even better
than this he is at the same time alongside
us to help us with his continual help.
Another prayer, St Patrick’s Breastplate,
describes this all-encompassing nature of
God’s embrace in poetic form: ‘Christ be
with me, Christ within me, Christ behind
me, Christ before me, Christ beside me’
and so on.
The phrase that struck such a chord with
me is redolent of the communion service,
which looks back with sorrow and thank-
SUNDAY
SUNDAY SERVICE
SERVICE
Sunday Readings for 27 January 2013
Epiphany 4 - Year C
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a Luke 4:14-21
The Persian empire defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jews to return to their homeland, and in 445 BC Nehemiah was permitted to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which he
accomplished in just 52 days, as part of the restoration of Israel following the long years of
exile and slavery. As soon as this was done he set about reconsecrating both the city and its
people to God, calling all to gather on the first day of the seventh month, a special day of rest.
Israel’s identity was bound up with the Promised Land, and with the holy city, but much more
so with the law of Moses, the great treasure which God had given to his people. The rebuilt
walls of Jerusalem signified their security after so many years of defeat and destruction, but
the surest way to guarantee Israel’s continued favour in the sight of God was for its people to
return to live under the law of Moses, for the nation and for all its people to abide in all things
according to the word of God. Ezra the priest and the Levites are present, both to read the
law of God to the people and to explain it, so that everyone understands. It is a national act of
worship, and a pattern for worship throughout the ages to come.
The Church founded by Jesus Christ incorporates many people into one body, even though
they come from many places and speak many languages, for the body of Christ is brought
into being by the Holy Spirit, who in baptism cleanses us and restores in us the likeness of
God in whose image we were made. We who were formerly many peoples are now one people, those who have received the Spirit of God and who now belong within the one body of
Christ as surely as all the limbs and organs which make up our human bodies. We are not
homogenised into matching units, but like the different parts of the body we continue to
have our own identity, as we contribute to the well-being and prosperity of the whole. And the
same is true of the spiritual gifts that are bestowed upon us, according to God’s will and calling, to build up the Church in the knowledge and love of God. Not everyone is an apostle, or
called to exercise one of the other ministries mentioned here by Paul, but what is certain is
that all are equally blessed by God and honoured by him as we seek to serve him in his
Church, in which we are united for the common good and for the glory of God.
Ezra proclaimed the word of God to the people in Jerusalem, a people chosen to receive
the law through Moses long before. But that blessing is extended far beyond the walls of
Jerusalem when Jesus, “filled with the power of the Spirit” begins his ministry in the synagogues and arrives in Nazareth, his home town. The year of the Lord’s favour has begun, in
which no distinction is made between the nations: the prophecy from Isaiah 61 which Jesus
announces is now directed towards all who are poor, in captivity, blind or oppressed, whoever they are and wherever they are. Nehemiah’s concern was to rebuild the city, to return his
people to Jerusalem and ensure that they knew the law of Moses by which they should frame
their lives. But at that astonishing moment in Nazareth a still greater kingdom is announced
in which the blessing of God’s word will be poured out upon all who are in need of salvation,
in every nation, for the generosity of God knows no limits, and he has sent his Son into this
world to build the city of God.
The Rev Stephen Trott
HYMN SELECTION
Hymns for Epiphany 4
Christ is our cornerstone
Brother, sister let me serve you
Father, we thank thee who hast planted
Lo! God is here! Let us adore
Lord, thy Word abideth
Hail to the Lord who comes
Come down, O love divine
Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord
The kingdom of God is justice and joy
Christ is made the sure foundation
15
fulness to the cross, forwards to the heavenly banquet when God’s kingdom will
come in all its fulness and strengthens us
with his grace to live in the present
moment. The cross is all-encompassing
and we are covered by God’s forgiving love
shown there. He beckons us forward, conscious of his daily presence so that we are
enabled to see everything in the light of his
saving grace. We dare not therefore begin
any project off our own bat, try to get
through the day in our own strength or
reach the end of a task triumphing in our
own achievements. We have not been left
alone to manage as best we can or to pass
some kind of initiative test. The aim of all
we are and do is to glorify God’s holy
name. If we need any reminder of our
dependency the final words of the prayer
remind us of the promise of eternal life
which can only be received through his
mercy.
Focusing on the family
We would worry less about what to call
same-sex relationships if we were better
able to persuade heterosexuals to stay
married. The real tragedy of family life in
the United Kingdom is not that we can’t
work out the difference between civil
partnerships and marriage but that the
UK has the highest divorce rate in
Europe and UNICEF (2007) ranked child
wellbeing in Britain as the lowest of 21
industrialized countries. Children growing up in the UK, said the report, are the
unhappiest in the industrialized world.
Just 40 per cent of 11-13-year-olds find
their peers “kind and helpful”. One in 10
UK children aged between five and 16
has a clinically diagnosed mental health
disorder (Office of National Statistics).
This situation is a clarion call to the
Church to join in the task of parenting the
next generation. The evidence is clear
that children should, wherever possible,
be brought up by their biological parents,
but parenting is not the exclusive responsibility of the child’s mother and father
and one-third of children are not anyhow
living with both parents. If church discussions about family were to focus on parenting rather than sexuality then
disagreements between liberal, catholic
and evangelical theologies would dissipate in the face of the primary social need
for the well-being of our children and
young people.
My own research work has established
that the most significant community of
which the young people are a part is their
family. The research established that the
( extended) family is as, or in some
instances, more important than friends to
Generation Y. The Church is uniquely
placed to reflect this in its work and to
build up communities of belonging
across different generations. Child Protection issues notwithstanding, a primary
resource that the Church can offer to
young people is the opportunity for them
to build simple, supportive and uncomplicated relationships with adults.
The mission statement of the Church
includes within it a call to unite people
across divisions but this is in contrast to
our consumer-based society, which
encourages social groupings around
peers and interests. Churches are able to
reconnect generations, creating models
of transition between childhood and
adulthood making relationships across
the generations possible so that children
and young people grow up in a context
where they can learn from the life stories
of others.
The commonness of divorce within the
UK has put pressure on the traditional
nuclear family unit but it has also created
multiple different types of family configurations. The nuclear family unit was
shaped during the Industrial Revolution
where the family needed to form an economic unit with one partner (traditionally
the male) earning a wage and one partner ( traditionally the female) managing
the home and family. The vision of this
traditional family ( with the roles of the
mother and father so clearly separated)
represents a middle class 18th century
social structure rather than a Biblical
vision of the family.
The Bible talks of households rather
than families: ‘If anyone does not provide
for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the
faith and is worse than an unbeliever,’ (1
Timothy 5:8) . The contemporary idea of
the nuclear family as an isolated unit is a
long way from the model of the extended
family ( ‘household’) represented in the
pages of Scripture.
New models of parenting, built on the
bones of a divorce, become contemporary models of household with other
adults drawn in to help with the parenting. The breakdown of one set of relationships is not leading to the death of the
family but to its reorganization (Drane &
Fleming Drane ( 2004:32) . The Church’s
commitment to support the nuclear family structure does not mean that we
should underestimate the value of the
energy within a newly constituted stepfamily. There should be no contradiction
in advocating marriage and honouring
the best intentions of post-married people
who chose to form new families. We in
the churches need to recognize stepfamilies as a growing family form.
It is possible to create a new family, a
fluid, extended family that echoes, but is
quite different to the previous family
group. Children can have wider networks, perhaps a range of different siblings, not just full siblings, but
half-siblings and stepsiblings, and a range
of grandparents, step-grandparents and
aunties and uncles. Children can even
gain from having four loving parents
around them. It is crucial both missionally and socially that we work with these
new families and integrate them into the
community of the church.
The Rev Dr Bob Mayo is the Vicar of St
Stephen and St Thomas Shepherds Bush
with St Michael and St George White City
( Follow Bob on twitter @ RevBobMayo)