The Sixth Sunday of Easter - 9 May 2021 - St Luke's Mosman ...
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We are a beacon of God’s light and hope welcoming all to our table of love and diversity. The Sixth Sunday of Easter — 9 May 2021 UNFURLINGS V Beware acclaim’s warm comfort; seek only to be filled with light, all flame. Never enough for your striving: always enough gift, autumn leaf fall. Study the conflicts within you; know them, be free; flock flying as one. Those failings? Just your clumsy attempts to come home: the door stands open. Miles brings the trumpet to his lips: So What! Some day all will be dancing. Flowers graffiti the pavement. Could our work be to notice beauty? Ian Adams, Unfurling (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2014), p. 8. ✜ READINGS FOR NEXT WEEK 16 MAY 2021 Easter 7 Acts 1:15-17 ,21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19
WELCOME Acknowledgement of Country Nganyi kaaditj Noongar moort kyen kaadak nidja boodja. As we gather for worship, we acknowledge the Whadjuk Noongar people as the original custodians of this land, and their ongoing relationship with it. We acknowledge their leaders, past, present and emerging. A very warm welcome to our service this morning, particularly if you are visiting St Luke’s for the first time. We hope you will join us for refreshments in the Alexandra Hall following today’s service and please be most warmly welcome. Children are welcome at all our services and there is a dedicated play area for younger children at the front of the church with Worship Bulletins and pencils available. Children are invited to join our Sunday School activities on the second Sunday of the month during school term time. If you have any questions or particular needs, please speak to one of our friendly welcomers. We invite you to share in a time of stillness and quiet before the service begins. Our Parish Mission Statement We are a beacon of God’s light and hope welcoming all to our table of love and diversity. Donating to St Luke’s As we move to a more cashless society, you are encouraged to give electronically. Our bank account details are: Name: Mosman Parish Council BSB: 706-001 Reference: Direct Giving Account Number: 3000 3046 Alternatively, you may wish to use our ‘Donation Point Tap’ at the rear of the church by using a contactless enabled card, mobile or wearable to donate. If you prefer to give cash there is an offertory bowl available. Community Garden Op Shop The St Luke’s Community Garden is a means to bring Our Op Shop is open Wednesday, Friday and together members of the local community through Saturday 9:30am—1:00pm. We recycle quality the invigorating and connecting activity of gardening donations of clothes for women, men and children; and is a demonstration site for organic, sustainable, jewellery; homeware items; bric a brac; and books. eco-friendly urban living. The Community Garden is Any excess donations are then sent to Clutterbugs open to anyone who would like to become a General and other charity shops including The Salvation Member or a Bed Holder. More details at Army and Save The Children. www.stlukescommunitygarden.com. PAGE 2
FROM THE RECTOR When I first arrived at the Rectory in Mosman Park, I saw a big garden with lots of potential! There had been extensive landscaping done, with clear garden beds and good paths, and some spaces available. The climate is the opposite to where I have come from (eg. annual rainfall of 2,000mm to ca 730mm in Perth), and the soil is very sandy with little organic matter. Still, having lived in Dubbo, NSW, with similar conditions, I was prepared and thought about how I might begin my gardening here. A year later, some of what I have planted has grown, some have died. Certainly there is an adjustment to lower rainfall and poorer soil! What I had dreamed of has not yet come to fruition and I am glad I didn’t do everything at once. It may take a number of years for my dream to be realised. Life in the Church is like this as well—seemingly complete at times, but not really finished yet, and unlikely to be so until some unknown time in the future. This week we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus Christ on Ascension Day and will soon celebrate the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. On the Feast of the Ascension we remember Jesus’ words to his closest friends before he was taken up to heaven: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.” Today these words are addressed to us as the members of the Body of Christ alive in the world. Jesus’ death and resurrection earned for us a new life and a ‘New Jerusalem,’ but we’re not there yet. Jesus’ ascension and the arrival of the Spirit show us that same thing—where Jesus has gone, we one day hope to follow—but not yet. ‘Already but not yet’ is one of the overlooked paradoxes of our Christian faith. This odd in-between (liminal) time is hard to wrap our heads around. Most of us view heaven as the ultimate and final destination of our souls, but that’s only because that’s what it’s been for 2,000 years. Our grandparents, or even parents, might have had to memorise this answer (or something similar) from the Baltimore Catechism: “God made me known to Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.” But wait—isn’t that the ultimate goal, as recited in the Nicene Creed every Sunday, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come? It feels, sometimes, as if our church has lost that sense of expectation after all this time. Do we, like the early apostles might have, glance up at each passing cloud and wonder, is this the one that is bringing Jesus back to us? When will Christ come again? Is it today? Am I ready? These are the sorts of things we pray over at the end of each Church year and into Advent as well—but this is also the perfect time to reexamine our lives and our faith. Are we ready? How can we be more ready? How can we more deeply ponder these serious questions? Alleluia! Christ is risen. PAGE 3
OUR SERVICE TODAY Our service is in the yellow Easter service booklet. Hymns are in the red Together in Song hymn book. The psalm is on a printed insert. Opening Hymn 371 God is gone up on high First Reading Acts 10:44-48 Psalm 98 Second Reading 1 John 5:1-12 Gradual Hymn 654 When love is found and hope comes home Gospel John 15:9:-17 Offertory Hymn 363 My daughters and my sons hear tell Closing Hymn 530 Now let us from this table rise Recessional Grand Choeur in G Major, Théodore Salomé (1834-1896) For Your Contemplation ✜ In the Acts of the Apostles, “the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.” When has the Holy Spirit fallen on you? ✜ The psalm invites us to “sing to the Lord a new song.” Where is God calling you to newness in the spiritual life? ✜ The First Letter of John declares that “the love of God is…obey[ing] his commandments.” In your relationship with God, do you find yourself focusing more on the love of God or the observance of the commandments? ✜ In the Gospel parable Jesus expresses his desire that “my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” Where do you find your greatest joy at this moment in your life? PAGE 4
PRAYERS Daughter of Jerusalem, sing and shout for joy, for the Lord has risen. Alleluia. Anglican Communion The Anglican Church of Kenya. Australia The Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn: Bishop Mark Short, Bishop Trevor Edwards, Bishop Stephen Pickard, Clergy and Laity. Diocese Diocese of Perth: Archbishop Kay Goldsworthy, Bishop Jeremy James and Bishop Kate Wilmot; Parish of Malaga: Rev’d Joice Rianga, Rev’d Deborah Agok, Rev’d Obede Morgan and people; Parish of Maylands: Rev’d Steve Conway and people; Meath Care: Michael Lee OAM, Chair and Members of the Board. Province: Parish of Newman, clergy and people; Community of Wagin, clergy and people. Partner Diocese, Eldoret: Sinonin, clergy and people. Parishes Seeking Appointment of Clergy Bassendean, Dianella, Floreat, Morley-Noranda, Scarborough, West Perth. Partner Parish of St Luke’s Kaptubei, Eldoret Vicar Rev’d Jonah Tabut and the Parish as they celebrate Easter. Please Pray for Alison, Barbara, Val, Maxine, Kim, the enduring COVID-19 pandemic, the sick, lonely, homeless, refugees and asylum seekers. Prayer of the Week Eternal God, whose Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life: grant that we may walk in his way, rejoice in his truth, and share his risen life; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. Set your mind on God’s kingdom and his justice before everything else. Matthew 6:33 PAGE 5
PARISH NOTICES Book Launch: ‘Who is this Vernon Cornish?’ Wednesday 19 May A biography of this much-loved church leader will be launched at St George’s Cathedral by former Archbishop of Perth, Peter Carnley AC, on the 42nd Anniversary of his Installation as a bishop in the Diocese of Perth following the 11:00am Eucharist at which Archbishop Kay Goldsworthy AO will preside and Vernon’s second son, the Reverend Jonathan Cornish, will preach. Dr Christine Ledger, the author from Canberra will be present to sign the book, which will be available at the special price of $15 (paperback) and $35 (hardcover). Refreshments will be provided and RSVP by 12 May to Christine Ledger, cledger@csu.edu.au would be appreciated. Hot Topics Forum: More Than A Word—Reconciliation Takes Action! 22 May St Anselm’s, 19 Forest Hill Drive, Kingsley, is running a Hot Topics forum on working towards reconciliation with our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. In light of recent events - including the Black Lives Matter campaign, Uluru Statement from the Heart, destruction of the Juukan Gorge sacred site and the 30th anniversary of the Black Deaths in Custody Royal Commission - there has never been a more pressing need to make progress on reconciliation. In the lead up to Reconciliation Week, this forum will provide an opportunity for learning and discussion around tangible actions that can be taken by all of us that will make a difference. After a welcome to country, we will watch a video of National Aboriginal Bishop Chris McLeod’s powerful Black Lives Statement which discusses the key challenges for Australian Anglicans around reconciliation. We will also listen to other Aboriginal voices addressing current social issues affecting our First Nation people and have an opportunity to discuss our own responses to this material and grass roots actions that can be taken in our own neighbourhoods. Morning tea will be provided. Please RSVP to graham.castledine@westnet.com.au or contact him if you would like any further information. Saturday 22 May 10:00am—12:00pm. Pentecost Choral Evensong at St George’s Cathedral Sunday 23 May A special Ecumenical Evensong for the Feast of Pentecost, being the conclusion of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, will be held at 5:00pm at St George’s Cathedral. More information from info@perthcathedral.org or 9325 5766. Annual Meeting of Parishioners Sunday 30 May at 11:00am Our Annual Meeting of Parishioners where reports are received and parish officers are elected will be held on Sunday 30 May in the Church at 11:00am. Enrolled Members may nominate other Enrolled Members for election to the following offices: Warden, Councillor, Nominator of Clergy, Auditor or Independent Examiner. Nomination forms are available in the Narthex. Reports for inclusion and matters for general business must be received in an electronic format by Wednesday 19 May and Nominations for Election must be received by Monday 24 May. PAGE 6
TODAY’S REFLECTIONS REACHING OUT IN THE DARK I remember in my youth, my friend and I, after our first experience of the Orthodox Ascension Liturgy, loudly lamenting, ‘He’s gone! He’s gone!’ There is certainly in Orthodoxy a sense of bereavement when the Easter Hymn and Greeting suddenly resound no more. Of course, theologically our lament was rather unsophisticated. Jesus at his ascension does not simply disincarnate himself and abandon earth for heaven, like an alien visitor returning to his mothership! He declares, ‘I am with you always, to the end of time’ (Matt 28:20). He remains incarnate, taking our humanity into the depths of the Trinity, with consequences we shall later explore. Nevertheless Jesus was no longer present in a locatable way in space and time. He was no longer the companion, conversationalist, collaborator and lover in the way he had been. There is a perfectly straightforward sense in which he was now absent — intangible and incomprehensible — even if in a more profound way he would be even more present — for our bodies keep us apart a well as unite us together, and now he could be present in the mysteries and in the heart in a way in which he was not before. But those are modes of presence we have to learn — as part of our late Easter ‘mystagogy,’ perhaps. To learn them, we have to go through honestly with the pain of loss. C. S. Lewis found in relation to his own loss of his wife: Passionate grief does not link us with the dead but cuts us off from them…It is just at those moments when I feel least sorrow — getting into my morning bath is one of them — that H. rushes upon my mind in her full reality, her otherness. Not, as in my worst memories, all foreshortened and patheticised and solemnised by my miseries, but as she is in her own right. In their different ways, Mary, Thomas and the Emmaus Road disciples show how grief can turn us emotionally and intellectually inward, unable to see the light when it is there. Jesus had to address Mary’s blinding passion, Thomas’ blinding gloom and the disciples’ blinding despair, before they could see him as he is in his own right. As a Church, perhaps in our anxiety to show ourselves to be ‘normal’ happy healthy modern people, we tend to avoid sorrow and lament. As with Christmas, so with Pentecost, we want to get on quickly to the joyful bits. In our desire to be an ‘Easter people’ we tend to want to affirm the continuity between ourselves and the first disciples, as if our spiritual experience of Jesus alive in and among us were exactly the same as the experience of the early disciples at the empty tomb and in the upper room. And the Church has sometimes claimed to be a continuation of the incarnation, being the infallible spirit-filled body of Christ after Jesus' departure. The more PAGE 7
we emphasise the ascension, with Christ now reigning as in one sense Lord of all history, but also in a sense removed now from historical time, the harder those bold claims become. That is of course precisely why the Reformers, challenging the Catholic view, did emphasise it. So for several reasons we often downplay the ascension and the great gulf it fixes between the 40 days of Jesus’ post-resurrection earthly appearances, and our experience of the ascended Lord today. So one thing — the first and seemingly theologically unsophisticated thing — Ascension does for us is confront us with the third great darkness. Early Lent confronted us with our own darkness, the darkness of sin and our inability to set our lives in order. Passiontide showed us the darkness of the suffering and the death it was necessary for the Son of Man to undergo: the darkness located as it were at the place where God and humanity join in Christ. But Ascensiontide confronts us with the darkness of God as such, the unknowable and unfathomable boundless depth and height to which the Christ returns, and to which now, like an anchor held fast in the heights, he irrevocably draws us. Perhaps this season more than any other resonates with our own age and the eclipse of God for so many. That eclipse and darkness is very evident in Scripture and tradition. Job and Ecclesiastes present us with a radically different kind of wisdom from the Song of Songs, one in which despair and the sense of the vanity of all things are the negative side of the knowledge of God. And the Christian mystical tradition speaks of darkness as much as light, the unknowability as much as the knowability of God. According to the fourth-century theologian from Asia Minor, Gregory of Nyssa, God is known only through a longing, a reaching out (epektasis) in the darkness, which — because God is infinite — can never encompass its goal. This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him. But one must always, by looking at what he can see, rekindle the desire to see more. Thus, no limit would interrupt growth in the ascent to God, since no limit to the Good can be found nor is the increasing of desire for the Good brought to an end because it is satisfied. In Matthew Jesus meets his disciples for the last time on a mountain in Galilee (Matt 28:16-20), while in Luke a specific ascension is mentioned as taking place on the outskirts of Bethany (24:50-53). In Acts (1:6-11) the cloud that received Jesus suggests but does not necessitate a high place. But the mountain as the place of ascension is imaginatively rich in its link with the traditions that speak of the ascent to God as being an ascent on the mountain, with — in the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing — clouds of forgetting shrouding the created world, and a cloud of unknowing shrouding God above, and only the dart of love able to penetrate that thick cloud. The ascension, I suggest, leads us onward in that kind of mountain journey. When we climb a mountain we learn soon to respect its otherness, its mystery and its danger. In Asceniontide we learn respect for otherness and mystery in God and in one another. Also on the mountain we can get lost in cloud, and then suddenly we can see for miles as never before. So Ascensiontide is also about allowing ourselves and one another to get lost and confused in what Ruysbroeck called the ‘wayless ways’ of God, but also, at times, to stand before God on the heights in an uncanny new naked clarity. Ross Thompson, Spirituality in Season: Growing through the Christian Year (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2008), pp. 143-45. PAGE 8
SOMETHING DIFFERENT: ASCENSION DAY Ascension Day declares the primary task of every church in Christendom, its true vocation. It is, in its worship and its common life, to acknowledge the authority of Jesus Christ in all things, at all times and in all places, and to spell out the implications of that truth. And to invite all who will hear to turn and discover the new way of life that foreshadows life in the kingdom of God. An immodest kind of agenda, some will think, and I’d agree. But then it’s an immodest kind of claim, that first Easter claim that began to change the world. For it claims that in Christ, God was doing nothing less than re-creating humanity, remoulding human nature, redefining what he has shaped us to be, showing how life may be transformed in the light of what God has done for us in Christ. People like Peter and John, who had known Jesus in the flesh, were in the end persuaded that God was in him in a unique sense. They came to understand that the deepest questions of all, questions about the nature of God and the meaning of our life, our suffering and our death, need to be seen against the background of the life, suffering, dying and rising of Jesus Christ. And in a kind of shorthand summary they began to use the words: ‘Jesus is Lord.’ For people like Paul, who hadn’t known Jesus in the flesh, the experience was different. When he said ‘Jesus is Lord,’ he spoke of one whom he knew as a life-giving Spirit, experienced in the worshipping life of small communities of Christians. And he invented another phrase to describe his experience: to believe and to be baptised was to be ‘in Christ,’ opening your life to him, so that gradually Christ might refashion you in his own likeness. For both Peter and Paul that phrase, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ had huge implications. It meant that his claim on your life was total, that the standards and values by which you sought to live, in your public as well as your private life, were his values of truth and compassion, unselfishness and forgiveness, and generosity of spirit. It still does mean that. To build your life on the values of Jesus is costly and desperately hard — but we are not judged on whether we succeed. We are judged on whether we desire to do so and are not deterred by repeated failure. To build a Christ-centred community in Westminster Abbey or in a parish church — that’s hard too, though most of us have been lucky enough, every now and then, to glimpse it, to know it’s possible. But to have a vision of what it means for public life, the life of a nation, to be based on the sovereignty of God and the authority of Christ, that requires a stubborn and persistent refusal to conform to worldly values because you have glimpsed something different: that redefined and re- created humanity that Christians call the kingdom of God. Is that cloud-cuckoo land? It would seem like it in a world in which horror piles on horror, in which we torture and imprison and kill each other, in which some make unjust laws and others get rich selling weapons of war. Yet there has always been a kind of foolishness about the gospel, which says that the world is not just what it seems; that there is another dimension in which God is at work in his people; that, daily, evil is both challenged and redeemed by countless small acts of PAGE 9
love, courage, goodness and self-sacrifice. So that, for example, even in those long dark years of Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia or the nationalists’ South Africa, the human spirit stubbornly refused to be suppressed, and there was the vital leaven of a powerful and courageous Christian witness by a minority who even in prison cells ‘set their minds on God’s kingdom and his justice before everything else.’ So Ascensiontide sets before Christians an immodest kind of agenda, one that would have been stillborn were it not for one thing: the readiness of those first Christians, in their first glimmering awareness of what God had done in Christ, to wait in the city until the Spirit was given at Pentecost, and they knew they had not been deserted. For they found Christ again, within and among them, only this time as a life-giving Spirit. And that is why we now are able to stand where they stood two thousand years later and, with people out of every nation under heaven, dare to place our trust in the lordship of Christ. Michael Mayne, Alleluia is Our Song: Reflections on Easter and Pentecost, (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2018), pp. 50-52. FRIENDS The union that binds the members of Christ together is not the union of proud confidence in the power of an organisation. The Church is united by the humility as well as by the charity of her members. Hers is the union that comes from the consciousness of individual fallibility and poverty, from the humility which recognises its own limitations and accepts them, the meekness that cannot take upon itself to condemn, but can only forgive because it is conscious that it has itself been forgiven by Christ. The union of Christians is a union of friendship and mercy, a bearing of one another’s burdens in the sharing of divine forgiveness. Christian forgiveness is not confined merely to those who are members of the Church. To be a Christian one must love all people, including not only one’s own enemies but even those who claim to be the ‘enemies of God.’ ‘Whosoever is angry with his brother or sister shall be in danger of the judgement. Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that persecute and speak calumny of you, that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven.’ The solidarity of the Christian community is not based on the awareness that the Church has authority to cast out and to anathematise, but on the realisation that Christ has given her the power to forgive sin in his name and to welcome the sinner to the banquet of his love in the holy Eucharist. More than this, the Church is aware of her divine mission to bring forgiveness and peace to all men and women. This means not only that Christians themselves must bring love, mercy and justice into the lives of their neighbours, in order to reveal to them the presence of Christ in his Church. And this can only be done if all Christians strive generously to love and serve all people with whom they come into contact in their daily lives. A Reading from The Power and Meaning of Love by Thomas Merton OCSO (1915-1968), in Robert Atwell, comp. Celebrating the Seasons: Daily Spiritual Readings for the Christian Year (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2009), pp. 265-66. PAGE 10
RECOGNISING CHRIST We are not to stare absently into an empty sky to look out for those glimpses of glory which reflect the divine majesty and refract God’s splendour. We must look to Jesus, in other words, so that…we too might see the natural world of sea, rock and earth as being redolent with divine glory, and recognise Christ in the faces of friends and strangers. Christopher Irvine, in Celebrating the Easter Mystery: Worship Resources for Easter to Pentecost (London: Mowbray, 1996), p. 112. ABSENCE Christ’s last appearance on earth posed an almost insoluble problem for the artist. For the important thing about this appearance was the fact of disappearance, and…absence is hard to paint interestingly…And since movement is as difficult to paint as absence, most artists continued to show the Ascension as a static scene… Neil MacGregor with Erika Langmuir, Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art (London: BBC Worldwide Ltd., 2000), p. 192. A BIRTHDAY My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot: My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me. Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleur-de-lys; Because the birthday of all my life Is come, my love is come to me. Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) in Janet Morley, The Heart’s Time: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter (London: SPCK, 2011). p. 153. PAGE 11
THIS WEEK IN THE PARISH Monday 10 May 8:30am Morning Prayer 10:30am Mosman Park Communion Service 11:00am Freshwater Communion Service 5:00pm Evening Prayer 7:30pm Parish Council Wednesday 12 May John, Apostle and Evangelist 8:30am Morning Prayer 10:00am Eucharist 5:00pm Evening Prayer Thursday 13 May ASCENSION DAY 8:30am Morning Prayer 4:30pm St Hilda’s Foundation AGM 5:00pm St Hilda's School Council AGM followed by Council Dinner 6:30pm Shenton Christian YouthCARE Council AGM, St Margaret’s Anglican Church, Nedlands 7:00pm Ascension Day Mass, Christ Church, Claremont 7:00pm Commissioning of The Rev’d Wendy Gilbert as Priest-in- Charge of the Parish of Applecross, St David’s, Ardross Friday 14 May 8:30am Morning Prayer 5:00pm Evening Prayer Sunday 16 May 7:30am Said Eucharist 9.30am Sung Eucharist 5:00pm Choral Evensong 20 Monument Street, Mosman Park WA 6012 | +61 8 9384 0108 stlukemosmanpark@gmail.com | www.stlukemosmanpark.perth.anglican.org Rector Fr Matthew Smedley | 0412 468 522 rectorstlukemosmanpark@gmail.com Parish Office Administrator Amanda Mills-Ghani Tuesday/Friday 9:00am–1:00pm, Wednesday 9:00am–5:00pm Wardens Rod Dale, Bridget Faye AM, Gwen Speirs Synod Representatives James Jegasothy, Andrew Reynolds Parish Council Angela Beeton, Anna Goodes Adrian Momber, Kate Stanford Organists Rosemary Cassidy, Don Cook Op Shop Ruth Hogarth, Coordinator PAGE 12 Wednesday, Friday, Saturday 9:30am–1:00pm
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