Vicar’s Notes Feb 2011

From The Vicar

The Revd Bruce Wakeling

A Happy New Year to all our readers! Of course, by the time you read this the New Year will be well and truly underway and the days will be lengthening. Whether the weather will be warmer. we must wait to see – the winter has been cold enough up to now. Any new year looks forward, and now is certainly a time for that. On Sunday 27 February we bid goodbye to Angela, who has been Assistant Curate here since the summer of 2008. She came at the time of the celebrations for the 40th Anniversary of the Dedication of the new end of our church building, and her first service as a very newly ordained deacon was the Choral Evensong at which Bishop Nigel led us in our thanksgivings. It seems like quite a long while ago!

Since then Angela has been learning her ‘trade’, finding out what sort of priest she is, getting to know people and making her mark. Now she is taking another big step along the road of her ministry. Of course, the big step isn’t really a very long journey because she is leaving us to become the Priest in Charge of All Hallows here in Ipswich. It is a church and parish with which many of our congregation have links. But for all that it is a big step, with a massive increase in responsibility. We all want to thank Angela for her time with us and wish her well for her move. Let us all remember her and Matt – who has also played his part in different ways in our community – in our prayers in the coming weeks. Angela is to be licensed to her new parish on Monday 21 March, and I am sure many will want to go to All Hallows for that.

This means that we in Rushmere will also be beginning a new chapter in our life. The week before Angela leaves, we are having a special service on Sunday 20 February at 3.00pm. This will be a sort of ‘Wedding Praise’ to which we are inviting couples who have recently been married here. However, others may well wish to come to this to celebrate their own marriages, even if they were married elsewhere.

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, 9 March, and there will be the traditional Holy Communion with the Imposition of Ashes at 7.30pm. Lent is a time for all of us to make a new start, to spring-clean our lives, leave the past behind and walk with Jesus into the future. Whether we are moving or staying put we all need, in a very real sense, to journey on with Our Lord, trusting that He has new and exciting things to show us all.

Bruce

Vicar’s Notes Dec 2010

From The Curate

The Revd Angela Oakey-Jones

At this time of year, I wonder how many Christmas cakes have been made in homes throughout the parish? I’ve managed to make one and I remember last year getting into a blind panic around 15 December because I’d not bought the marzipan, or set aside the time to ice the cake.

I couldn’t help wondering about the recipe I’ve always used. It’s from an old book which belonged to my grandmother, now long since reunited with God. The recipe doesn’t include raisins – but some always manage to work their way into the bowl, and cherries too. All this led me to think about the fruit in our lives, the results of our efforts in the workplace and in the home.

St Paul talks in his letter to the church in Galatia (modern day Turkey – softy, no seasonal pun intended!) about the fruits given to people by the Holy Spirit. He mentions love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’ and I couldn’t help wondering what our lives might be like if we could work in one or two of these in our lives. Although in a cake recipe we can’t substitute the staple ingredients, like the flour, eggs or margarine, the way we choose to flavour a cake can make all the difference.

When finances are tight, when time is limited and tempers are beginning to fray, wouldn’t it be a super gift to show someone in your family – or a neighbour or friend – some love or joy or gentleness? These aren’t gifts that are going to cost us much in terms of money, but they really are able to give our lives – and the lives of those we love – a special quality which will set them apart; a quality which following Jesus can help us show to one another throughout the year.

The New Year will bring some changes as Matthew and I head off to minister among the people of All Hallows Parish in Ipswich. Although the faces will be different, the challenges may well be similar to those in Rushmere. May your Christmas and New Year be filled with the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Angela

Vicar’s Notes Oct 2010

From The Vicar

The Revd Bruce Wakeling

It is a great privilege for us who are called to be clergy, and to some extent all of us who are members of Christ’s Church, to help people celebrate important events in the lives of their families. It is particularly obvious when parents bring their children for Baptism, because this is usually administered when we gather together on a Sunday morning. But our Parish Church is also there to welcome them, even if many of us are not, when they come to make their marriage vows or bring their departed loved ones to commend them into God’s loving hands. Christians celebrate the wholeness of life, which is God-given, and also the ending of earthly life, because we believe it to be just another step along the road to fellowship with God through his Son Jesus Christ.

But, of course, we also celebrate the day to day events along that road – so we gather Sunday by Sunday to share in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, which Jesus gave to his disciples. And as part of that journey, we bring to our Lord the concerns we have for other people and the world. This naturally includes prayers for the sick and asking for healing. In the last couple of years we have had a few services which have incorporated the laying on of hands for those who are sick. Of course, we all fall short of the health and goodness for which God made us, and the Holy Communion itself is intended to heal us and set us on our way renewed. But sometimes it is a good thing (and it has always been part of the ministry of the Church) to make healing more explicit for those who would value it. Therefore, on Sunday 17 October, the day after St Luke’s Day, the laying on of hands for healing will be administered at our Parish Eucharist for those who wish it.

This time of the year, when days become shorter, and then the clocks change, we are reminded that whether we live or die we are the Lord’s and that his patient love is held out to us for all eternity. And so we will remember our loved ones who have died on Monday 1 November at 7 .30pm (and in this last year we have lost at least six regular members or former members of our congregation – Eric Owen, Gena Clarke, Dick Coe, George Davis, Lily Snowball and Rex Cansdale) and on Remembrance Sunday, 14 November, all those who have died – and are still dying – in war. For, in the words of St Paul, nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Bruce

Vicars Note’s Aug 2010

From The Curate

The Revd Angela Oakey-Jones

Summer is a Comin’ In

I wonder what your first thoughts are when you think of the summer’ Lighter evenings and time spent outside in the garden or at the beach come to my mind’ Perhaps you have children who will be on their long holiday from school, or other mixed blessings.

There is a great deal we can celebrate not only in summer but throughout the year. But, so often, the demands of our day to day living crowd out the simple pleasures. Why is it that a ‘Wii’ is so much more desirable than a walk on the heath, a simple picnic or a gentle day pottering in the garden? The pressures of life encourage us to see everything for what it achieves, rather than for what it is. We focus more on the cost of something than on its value – and I think there’s a danger that we’re losing out on life as a result.

I recently spent some time with some monks in Paris who work with the poorest of the poor in that city. They have so very little by the standards we take for granted. But they have a simple, attentive way of living which looks into people’s hearts rather than their wallets or their homes – because the people they work with don’t have those things.

On the August Bank Holiday, just as the children are preparing to go back to

school we’re having a classic car show outside St. Andrew’s and display of quilts

inside the church. There’s no entrance charge and there’ll be refreshments through the day and a barbecue in the evening. I hope it will give everyone in the parish a reason to get together and spend a little time getting to know one another no strings attached. I look forward to sharing more, simple, celebrations with you.

Angela

Vicar’s Notes Jun 2010

Part of the Vicar’s Address to the APCM 2010

As usual, I want to thank everyone for all the hard work that they have done past in the year, and especially those who have served on the PCC and have now come to the end of their time of service. And in particular, of course, I want to thank Bob Mellor for all that he has done during this year, which has not been an easy one for him. We know that, although he will no longer be churchwarden, he will still be doing a lot here. It is also important to thank Ian Gorham, who has been our Treasurer for several years, and who is giving up that office from this meeting onwards. Workwise and healthwise, Ian has given us as much time as he could, but it has proved impossible for him to carry on with the treasureship together with all the other demands on his time. So thank you, Ian, and thank you Robin Morrow for agreeing to take over as Treasurer and Churchwarden – at least for the time being. Joan Du Boulay is now in her third year as warden, and Dianne Davey has taken on the deputyship, back in harness after a short rest! Thank you to you too. Every Churchwarden and other office-holder brings their own particular gifts to bear upon the task before them and will do it slightly differently. And God bless them for it.

There are, of course, many others who deserve our thanks. They must get on with being the people of St Andrew’s, without title or recognition. people arrange flowers, sweep floors, cut grass, read lessons, read intercessions, sing in the choir, serve at Communion, etc etc, and some just pray and worship Sunday by Sunday and day by day. And without any of you, whoever you are, recognised or overlooked, we would be the poorer. After all, you dont need some kind of ‘badge’ to be a worker in Christ’s vineyard. It is our Baptism that calls us to Christ’s service, not someone else tapping you on the shoulder and asking if you would do something. You all take part in making this church what it is. Long may you continue to do so.

Rushmere Church is a traditional church, in the sense of tradition being something that doesn’t stay the same but slowly evolves from the past to the present to the future. It was for that reason that I began my address with that rather esoteric quotation from the Preface to the Book of Common Prayer:

It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England, ever since the first compiling of her Publick Liturgy, to keep the mean between the two extremes, of too much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness in admitting any variation from it ..

I think that was a rather grandiose way of saying: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t mend it; but if it don’t work, throw it away’.

Parts of the dear old C of E may be churches that seem to change everything and use nothing old, or else those who stick to what they know and avoid the new like the plague. Rushmere, I think, is in the middle there somewhere, and I believe

that’s the right place to be. Our heritage as Anglicans means that we have a glorious history of worship and witness but also that we have to express it in our own day and age. We don’t have to invent everything anew in every decade, but neither do we have to keep everything exactly the same. Our challenge in the coming year and years is to realise what we don’t need to tamper with in our church life because it is fine and what new opportunities we need to seize. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s wrong and just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s right. and vice versa!

If we are to be faithful to the spirit of the Preface to the BCP then we will be careful and prayerful to maintain the faith of Christ without being buffeted about by every modern or post-modern whim, but we will also be careful and prayerful not to become fossilized, to think that yesterday’s solutions are necessarily the best for today. It is by no means a comfortable place to be when you can see the good in the old and the good in the new, but I think that is where our Lord is calling us to be. The One who invites us to sit and sup with Him also calls us to invite others to share in His and our hospitality. This may change us, but Christians are those who are prepared to let Christ change them and help them to reach out to others.

In the words of Hebrews 13:1-2 -‘Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it’. Amen.

Bruce