Welcome
Everyone welcome,
no exceptions
Everyone welcome,
no exceptions
This year, we shall be holding our annual summer fair on Saturday 22 June.
This is one of our biggest fundraisers of the year and helps to support the running of our church and enable our work in the community.
Our hamper raffle is always popular so we should be grateful if you would pick up something to put in it next time you are out shopping.
This morning Jesus calls us to be rooted and grounded in him, John 15:1-8, he is the vine we are the branches. Divorced from Christ we can do nothing yet if we abide in him, we must also abide in one another, the branches are all intimately connected. In Acts 8:26-40 we encounter someone who does not feel connected and who experiences the pain and injustice of not belonging. The Ethiopian eunuch is wealthy and educated (he rides in a chariot and reads Isaiah) yet he is enslaved; he has come to Jerusalem to worship yet he is not Jewish and would not have been allowed to enter the temple; he was born male but no longer has the status of a man; and, when Philip meets him, he is travelling the non-man’s land between Jerusalem and Gaza. He feels his outsider status keenly for he recognises in Isaiah’s meditation on the suffering servant, the description of one who, like him, has been “cut off from the land of the living” because he can have no offspring. He is searching scripture for a reflection of himself, for a place where he can belong. We may have many questions for him but he has questions for us: what will it mean for all of us if the gospel is indeed good news for all people, without exception? He holds up for us a mirror and asks us to see if he is reflected there. Is there a space for him in our community? are we, rooted and grounded in Christ, a place where he too can belong?
We’re looking for a new PCC Secretary to help with notices, agendas and minutes of meetings and generally keeping our Parochial Church Council (our board) running smoothly.