March 2008
SERVICES
| 2nd Mothering Sunday | 20th Maundy Thursday |
|---|---|
| 8.00 am Holy Communion | 7.30 pm Maundy Eucharist |
| 11.00 am Family Service | Preacher Revd Dr Malcolm Guite |
| Preacher: Revd Dr Malcolm Guite | 21st Good Friday |
| 5.00 pm Meditative Eucharist | 12.00 noon Three Hours Devotion |
| Preacher: Revd Andy Swindells | Preacher Revd Dr Jessica Martin |
| 9th Passion Sunday | 23rd Easter Day |
| 8.00 am Holy Communion | 8.00 am Holy Communion |
| 11.00 am Odyssey (The Cross) | 11.00 am Easter Parish Eucharist |
| Preacher: Very Revd Jeffrey John | Preacher: Revd Dr Malcolm Guite |
| 5.00 pm Meditative Eucharist | 5.00 pm Contemplative Eucharist |
| Preacher: Revd Dr Fraser Watts | (said service with silent meditation, side-chapel) |
16th Palm Sunday |
30th Easter 1 |
| 8.00 am Holy Communion | 8.00 am Holy Communion |
| 11.00 am Passiontide Readings and Music | 11.00 am Mattins & Sermon |
| Preacher: Revd Dr Fraser Watts | Preacher: Mr Steven Mastin |
| 5.00 pm Meditative Eucharist | 5.00 pm Meditative Eucharist |
| Preacher Revd Dr Malcolm Guite | Preacher: Canon Alan Cole |
| 17th – 19th Holy Monday – Wednesday | Fridays (except Good Friday) : |
| 7.30 pm Liturgies & Meditations | 10.30 am: Holy Communion |
| Preacher Revd Dr Malcolm Guite | 5.30 pm: Meditation |
11.00 am READINGS
| Theme | Old Testament/Epistle | New Testament/Gospel |
| 2 Motherhood | A Finn Exodus 2. 1-10 | M Morris Luke 2. 41-52 |
| 9 The Cross | Ordinand 1 Corinth 1. 18-25 | Ordinand John 10. 23-32 |
| 16 Palm Sunday | G Barnes Isaiah 52.13- 53.6 | E Edwards Matthew 21. 1-13 |
| 23 Easter Day | S Mastin 1 Corinth. 15. 51-57 | Chaplain John 20. 1-18 |
| 30 Resurrection | M Lee Isaiah 12 | R Adams 1 Corinth. 15. 1-11 |
Readers for April
6: W Caan & C Martin
13: R Lynden-Bell & S Mastin
20: D Hirst & Chaplain
27: J Adams & C Walker
Odyssey: The preacher at Odyssey this month (March 9th,
11.00 am) will be the Very Revd Jeffrey John
Dean of St Alban’s, one of England’s leading Christian thinkers and speakers.
He will help us to
understand the the cross, especially how to explain the atonement in a way
that doesn't libel God.
Towards Easter with Dante: Malcolm Guite will continue this
personal pilgrimage with on Wednesdays at 5.30 pm: Feb 20th: ‘The way down
in the way up’ - The Journey Begins
Feb 27th: Climbing the Holy Mountain, the art of Virtuous Spiral
March 5th: Crystal Spheres and the Hidden Rose
March 12th: Dream and Waking: Living Dante Now
Holistic Spirituality: There will be meetings on Feb 17th, March 2nd & 16th at 3.30 pm, continuing discussion of spiritual practices with which members of the group have had experience.
Beta Course: The Beta course is meeting on alternate Sundays at 3.00 pm of the Solarium of Queens’ College. Feb 24th: Sin & Atonement; March 9th: Forgiveness and Reconciliation.
Gothic Eucharist: Tuesday March 11th at 8.45 pm. Malcolm
Guite on The Passion of Christ.
Odyssey Special: The 11.00 am service on Palm Sunday, March
16th, will be Readings & Music for Passiontide, with music sung by the
celebrated choir of Queens’ College. From c 10.45 am, Alex Breedon, one of
the Queens’ organ scholars, will play Bach’s cello suite in D minor. Please
come early!
Holy Week: On the evenings of Holy Week (March 17th-20th, 7.30 pm) we will commemorate some of the events of Jesus’ last week: the cleansing of the temple (Monday), the weeping over Jerusalem (Tuesday) and the anointing at Bethany (Wednesday). On Maundy Thursday we commemorate the Last Supper, including both the washing of feet and the sharing of the bread and wine that Jesus said was his body and blood.
Good Friday: As usual, the three-hour service, beginning at 12.00 noon, will be in three sections of an hour each, and people are free to come and go as they need to. The preacher will be the Revd Dr Jessica Martin, Fellow of Trinity College. Her Odyssey sermon was very well received, and it will be good to have her back.
Confirmation: On Easter Eve at 7.30 pm, several members of the congregation will be confirmed at the vigil service at Ely Cathedral. Members of the congregation are very welcome to attend to support them.
Easter Day: The Easter Parish Eucharist will be at 11.00 am and we expect that most communicants will want to come to that service. (There will be flute music played by Martin East from c 10.50 am). There will also be a Prayer Book Communion at 8.00 am, and a quiet Contemplative Eucharist at 5.00 pm.
Chapter: There will be a meeting at 6.30 pm on Monday March 10th in the Divinity Faculty.
Churchwardens: The brief vestry meeting to elect Wardens will be held at c 12.00 noon (after Mattins) on Sunday 30th March. Steven Mastin and Judith Tonry are willing to stand for election.
Patronal Festival and Annual Meeting: The Patronal Festival
will be held on Sunday 13th April. The Churchwardens will be admitted to office
at the 11.00 am service. There will be a parish lunch after the service at
Trinity Hall. It is provisionally proposed to hold the Annual Parochial Church
Meeting at 2.00 pm on that day in church. Applications to join the electoral
roll should be recived by Sunday March 23rd.
From the Vicar-Chaplain: We Belong in the Body
In the days of CB radio, when it was fashionable for every city to have a
‘handle’, Cambridge was known as ‘Cycle City’. It could also be called ‘Cerebral
City’, a place where people are encouraged, almost forced, to live in their
heads, abstracted from abstraction by abstraction. Most of us will have encountered
in the streets of Cambridge a person so lost in thought, or even absorbed
in the pages of a book as they walk, that they stroll right into passers-by,
or more alarmingly, step, oblivious, into streams of traffic. Some of us may
even be that person!
But the church too is not immune from oblivious abstraction, especially (and
ironically) abstraction from the body. So many of our key words, grace, atonement,
redemption, can seem, especially to outside observers, like abstract concepts
from a theological dictionary. And whilst we worry our words, chasing them
round and round our heads, we ignore, or even denigrate our bodies; these
subtle networks of pulsating life and energy, beautifully balancing, strangely
self-healing, constantly changing, organic miracles which we dismiss with
the little word ‘flesh’. Fortunately God sees ‘flesh’ differently. He constantly
makes and re-makes our amazing bodies and sees that they are good. More than
that, he chooses himself to become flesh, to make the body the very place
in which his spiritual being is most radiant and apparent. He calls us back
from our bloodless abstractions to the real mystery of flesh and blood in
which we all participate.
This month we can let God take each of our abstractions gently out of our
heads and put them back where they belong, in our bodies, as we move through
Holy Week and Easter together with Jesus. Grace, will be the gentle touch
of hands washing feet, Atonement will be arms stretched out in love on the
cross, and Redemption will be the taste on the tongue of bread and wine as
we savour the truth that ‘we are all one body because we all share in one
bread’.
Malcolm Guite
Clergy: Revd. Dr. Fraser Watts (19, Grantchester Road, CB3 9ED; 359223, fnw1001@cam.ac.uk); Revd Dr Malcolm Guite (694249, mg320@cam.ac.uk); Canon Alan Cole (892286, alan73@waitrose.com). Churchwardens: Dr. Elizabeth Edwards (313570, elizedwards@waitrose.com); Mr Steven Mastin (361041, stevenjamesmastin@yahoo.co.uk).Treasurer: Mr Geoffrey Barnes; (717757, Geoff.Barnes@cambridgeshire.gov.uk). Reader: Mr. Peter Marshall (564471). Church phone: 362004.
Find us at www.st-edwards-cam.org.uk