June 2011
Services
| Sunday Services | Friday Services |
|---|---|
| 8.00 am Holy Communion (Prayer Book) | 10.30 am Holy Communion |
| 11.00 am Sunday at Eleven | 5.30 pm Meditation |
| 5.00 pm Meditative Eucharist |
|
Sunday at Eleven
July 3rd: Healing Service Preacher Fraser Watts The healing ministry of the church creates rich opportunities, but raises many questions. In this sermon Fraser will focus on how spiritual healing might work, and how we can make sense of it in the modern world. There will be an opportunity for laying on of hands during this service.
July 10th: Odyssey: Healthy Religion Preacher Sara Savage 'Religion' has had mixed results. Opponents point to the harm is has done; advocates point to the good it has done. Dr Sara Savage, who works in the University's Psychology and Religion Research Group, will tackle the question of where to draw the line between healthy and unhealthy forms of religion.
July 17th: Family Service and Thanksgiving for Childbirth Preacher Malcolm Guite This will be a service designed to include children, and built around the theme of play and playfulness. It will also include a thanksgiving for childbirth, marking the several births that have recently taken place.
July 24th: Eucharist: St Benedict Preacher Malcolm Guite At this Eucharist we will honour St Benedict, who played such a crucial role in developing a pattern of monastic life, with a careful balance between life and prayer.
July 31st: Theme: Religious Maturity Preacher Fraser Watts Some forms of religion are criticised as being 'childish'. In this service we will reflect on how to be truly mature in Christ, keeping what is good in a child's approach to religion, but integrating it with adult maturity. The theme will be developed in further sermons in August (see Chaplain's letter). |
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Meditative Eucharist - Sunday at Five
Apostolic leaders
At the start of this Pentecost season, we will have a series of sermons on three of the most significant leaders and thinkers of the early church, how they led the church then, and what we can learn from them now.
July 17th: Midsummer Corporate Eucharist. Preacher: The Bishop of Ely
An annual special evening service when members of the morning congregation are invited to join us. The recently appointed Bishop of Ely, Stephen Conway, will preside and preach. There will be refreshments and entertainment after the service in Queens' College. Faith, hope and charity
Malcolm Guite will preach a series of three sermons on the three 'theological' virtues of faith, hope and charity. Later in the summer he will follow that with a further series on the four cardinal virtues. July 24th: Faith. July 31st: Hope. August 7th: Charity. |
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Wednesdays at 5.30pm.
There will then be a break in the Wednesday evening talks until September 7th. |
Gothic Eucharists: Alternate Tuesdays at 8.30pm. Deep Wisdom in Dark Fairy Tales. Tues 28th June Sleeping Beauty: hate hurts, love heals (Sara Ball). Tue 12th July The wisdom of Cinderella (Malcolm Guite)
Summer Corporate Communion: Following recent practice we have a special 5.00pm Eucharist in the early summer (July 17th this year), to which we invite those who normally come to the 11.00am service. There will be refreshments and entertainment afterwards in Queens' College. It will be a great pleasure to welcome to preside and preach at this service the new Bishop of Ely, Stephen Conway. It is encouraging that he has made time for St Edward's so soon after taking up his post.
Meditation: The meditation group, led by Fraser, meets on Fridays at 5.30pm.
Sunday 8.00am Communion: July 3rd: Trinity 2; July 10th: Trinity 3; July 17th: Trinity 4; July 24th: Trinity 5; July 31st: Trinity 6
Chaplain's Letter (Fraser Watts)
There was much that I found helpful in the sermons at our Good Friday service this year, but also some things that I found that I disagreed with. At the heart of the sermons was Jesus' cry of dereliction My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Our preacher seemed to be saying that in some ways that cry was a culmination of Jesus' life, and something to which we should ourselves aspire. I had not looked at it like that before, and I found it an interesting and in some ways helpful approach. Certainly, there is much in traditional religion that we might be better off forsaking, and Jesus, throughout his life, had been radical in His religious views and unwilling to accept unnecessary restrictions and requirements. If the cry from the cross was the culmination of that, it was indeed a kind of high point, and something in which we should follow Jesus.
However, our preacher seemed at times to be wanting to take it further and to suggest, not only that we would be better off without certain kinds of religion, but better off without God, or at least without a childish sense of dependence on God. Pushed too far, that would lead to a kind of religion without God (or at least without any sense of a God on whom we can depend). Religion then becomes just a mixture of private spirituality and social action, without any real belief in God to hold it together. Actually, I am not sure how far our preacher actually wanted to go in that direction, but at times he seemed more enthusiastic about it than I would be.
I was left feeling that when the opportunity arose I would like to set out where I would differ from him, and explain why. The summer provides that opportunity, and in three sermons, one at the end of July and two more in the latter half of August, I will try to set out an alternative approach. To put it in very general terms, I thought he was tending too often to reject one possibility, and then going to the other extreme. For example, he was right to say that we should abandon a childish belief that God will sort everything out for us, and move to a more adult sense of independence and self-reliance. However, I would say rather that there is something right and healthy about a child's sense of dependence on God, but that it should be integrated with (rather than replaced by) an adult sense of independence. We can bring both together into a mature synthesis of dependence and independence. An either/or approach can be misleading.
One of the underlying issues here is how much Christianity should adapt to cultural changes. For a few hundred years now we have been living with a predominantly rationalistic culture, with the basic view that humans are capable of sorting out their problems. Some Christians have wanted to adjust to that, and to develop a form of Christianity that will make sense to people with such background assumptions; others have wanted to reject secular culture and fight back against it. It seems to me that both extremes are flawed. It is important to have a sense of continuity with the past and to really inhabit our Christian tradition. On the other hand we need to take account of the culture in which we are living when we present the Christian gospel, something that missionaries have always needed to do.
Christian thinkers have been grappling with these issues for several centuries now. It has become too much of a tug-of-war, with some wanting to reconstruct Christian belief in radical new ways that they see as more appropriate for modern times, and others wanting to find ways of defending the old values and orthodoxies. This tug-of-war is getting ever more violent and tearing the church apart. But I feel very strongly that this whole battle is a big mistake. Wise Christians should refuse to take sides in a fierce and unnecessarily polarised debate. Both extremes are unhelpful and misleading, and there is no need to choose between them. In these three sermons I will try to explain why, and to set out and defend the third way, which I passionately believe is the best way, and the path that runs along higher ground.
Clergy: Dr Fraser Watts (359223); Dr Malcolm Guite (694249); Alan Cole (892286) Churchwardens: Mr Steven Mastin (07753 476018); Mrs Judith Tonry (892160). Treasurer: Mr Geoffrey Barnes (362004); Pastoral Assistants: Rachel Blanchflower (07824 380479); Ann Kember (565094) Church phone: 362004