Mailout for 27 November 2022 (Advent 1, Year A)

Dear People of God

Happy New Year! (Well, today is the start of the new Liturgical Year!)

Parish Council news. At its meeting last Sunday Council resolved to accept a quote for repainting the Beresfield hall and another to make certain adjustments to the wiring in Thornton church to allow the air conditioners to be used properly (if you have ever been there, especially on a Saturday evening, you will know just how hot it can be in there in the summer months! And to think that it’s not all that many years ago that men went to church in suits and dare not remove their coats!)

A report was received on the work required to bring the buildings, especially at Thornton, up to standard for disabled access

Council members were also given a gentle reminder that a list has been circulated of repair and maintenance issues which require attention with increasing urgency and to please come to the next meeting with suggestions for priorities!

Christmas trees: Samaritans “Giving Trees” will be placed in both churches to collect gifts, unwrapped, for distribution to needy people who might otherwise miss out on this part of our Christmas festivity. (If you know of anyone who is similarly in need will you pass their name and contact details to one of the Clergy or Wardens)

A list of suitable gifts ideas prepared by the Samaritans is:

Girls: dress-ups, watch, dolls, doll pram, books, games, textas, craft items

Boys: Football, books, games ,any active sports items, action figures

Teenage girls: gift voucher s (Target, BigW, cinemas, etc), toiletries, cosmetics, beach towel, watch, backpack, purse or bags, hat, CD player, Ipod or MP3 player ,portable DVD player Teenage Boys, Gift Voucher, cricket set or other sporting equipment, beach towel, radio, watch, backpack, hat, CD player, Ipod or MP3 player, portable DVD player,

Adults Toiletries (male or female), towels, hats, socks, bags, ornaments (picture frames, candles) CD player, ipod or MP3 player, portable DVD players etc The Samaritan Elves will wrap the gifts (and accept gifts of wrapping paper!)

Episcopal Visit and Confirmation Bishop Sonia will be visiting the parish on 18 December and will confirm our four Confirmation candidates (Charlotte, Hannah, Matthew and Melissa). Please keep them in your prayers.

There is a notice on the doors of the churches listing service times for Christmas. If anyone knows how to add items to the parish website or Facebook, would you please add them! (I might have to ask my 10yol grandson to help me if I attempt it!) Christmas Eve Thornton 5:30 Pageant and Eucharist, 11:45pm Beresfield Midnight Eucharist of Christmas 8am Christmas Day Thornton

Finally, a reminder that next Saturday is the first Saturday on the month (and also the Thornton Market Day) and the service wil be at 6:00pm, now tat we are in Daylight Saving

mode.

The Lord be with you

Fr George gmainprize@bigpond.com 0410 586 119

Propers for Advent 1

Sentence

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths (Isaiah 2:3a)

Daily Collect for Advent

Almighty God, grant us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came among us in great humility, that on the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through hm who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Collect of the Day

Faithful God, whose promises stand unshaken through all generations; renew us in hope, that we may be awake and alert, watching for the glorious return of Jesus Christ, our Judge and Saviour. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Readings

Isaiah 2:1-5 Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord

Psalm 122 A pilgrim’s Song of Ascents

Romans 13:9-14 The night is far gone and the day is near

Matthew 24:36-44 The Son of Man is coming unexpectedly

Sermon (Fr George)

In the name of God, Amen

I may have mentioned once or twice before (!) that I used to sing in the Cathedral Choir. I learned to “sing my faith” from an early age and music has always played an important part in my faith practice and learning. One service which always sticks with me was the Carols and Readings for Advent

The Advent Carols started in a darkened church and began with a soloist and choir singing the old Vespers Responsory at the west door: “I look from afar: and lo, I see the power of God coming and a cloud covering the whole earth. Go ye out to meeting him, and say “Tell us, art thou he that should come to reign over they people Israel?” The service progressed from darkness to light with appropriate readings and carols until at the end the all the lights were one, all the candles lit, the choir sang “Sleepers wake!” from around the altar and then processed out singing “Lo he comes with clouds descending”

Why do I give you so much detail about it? It gives a very dramatic presentation of our whole cycle of longing and expectation for the coming of God amongst us. It’s a theme which is as old as humanity itself. As soon as people began to contemplate that “something bigger, outside of them” was there, they have been longing for a closer unity with that which they learned to call “God”.

We enact that cycle of longing and expectation as we begin with Advent, through Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Ascension, Pentecost and finally the Reign of Christ as Lord of All. Each Sunday, when we gather for the Eucharist, we are in some measure or another re-enacting that cycle as we too await the summing up of our histories when our hope is final union with God.

Our readings for today all express this desire, this hope for something in which the reign of God is manifest. Isaiah longs for the time when God is enthroned in the Temple and dispenses justice for all the nations the justice of God, a time of peace where swords have been beaten into ploughshare and spears into pruning hooks and there will be no war. For a people who were constantly being over-run by surrounding empires here is a hope of ultimate peace and prosperity.

The Psalmist prays for the peace of Jerusalem, the ideal of the reign of God in which peace and prosperity are distinguishing features. It is one of the Songs of Pilgrimage sung by the people going to the Temple from across Israel for the central temple feasts

St Paul exhorts the Romans to live as people who for whom Christ was imminent because, as he says, “the night is almost over and the day of Christ is at hand”.

But the coming of the Kingdom of God is not purely something for the distant future. Jesus taught us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and says elsewhere “if I, with the finger of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of Gpd come amongst you”. The coming of the kingdom is not “pie in the sky when you die”: it’s as much in the here and now as it will be in all its fulness when we stand united with God at some point to come. We were exhorted last week to “go and turn the world upside-down” when we focussed on the reign of Christ.

You know how something doesn’t quite catch your eye: you get a momentary glimpse of something and say “what was that?” The kingdom is coming in amongst us and we learn to recognise the signs when justice advances one small step; when the hungry are fed and the naked are clothed. It’s not just literally feeding the starving but it’s working for justice, offering the kind word to someone in distress. No, that’s not saying “there, there, it will get better” because sometimes it’s going to get worse: it might be journeying alongside them in their grief, and acknowledging their pain.

Certainly we hope for a Utopian future, but it’s not going to happen unless we co-operate with it. Isaiah had the vision of the Lord enthroned and feeling all unworthy (“Woe is me, for I am man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes of seen the king, the Lord of Hosts” and finally, in response to the call “whom shall I send and who will go for us” can respond “Lord, here am I: send me!”

May our Advent be a time of expectation, of looking for and recognising the signs of the kingdom coming amongst up, and doing something to about bringing it in. And just as we do in the weekly or daily Eucharist, we offer ourselves, souls and bodies, to God that God may transform them, along with the bread and the wine, to be the presence of Christ in the world into which we are sent, and then go out to do something about it.

At Christmas make it a time of renewed adoration when we recognise the continuing presence of Christ amongst us in the radical form of a human being and can make our own gift to him of our renewed selves.

Amen

Intercessions

Holy God, hear us as we bring before you the needs of this world and the issues that press upon us; and in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Remember Lord the leaders of this and all the nations of the world as we give you thanks for some apparent thawing in frosty relationships between nations: we pray for the work of the United Nations and all people who seek to bring peace and reconciliation; for Anthony our Prime Minister, Dominc our Premier, and all Members of Federal and State Parliaments and Local Governments. Imbue them with a high sense of their calling and your demand for honesty and integrity in their considerations.

Remember people whose lives are upturned by natural disasters of earthquake, fire and flood in Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, Pakistan, and Australia and by famine: and open our hearts to provide whatever assistance and support we may give in your name.

Remember people whose lives are torn by war or religious oppression in Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan

Lord, in your mercy hear our prayer

Remember the Church throughout the world, and especially its relationships with other religious traditions who look to you. We pray especially for the leaders of the Christian Church: Popes and Patriarchs, Archbishops and Moderators; for Justin Archbishop of Canterbury, the Diocese of Guadalcanal especially as it ministers amongst people affected by the earthquake in the Solomon Islands: in this land we pray for the Diocese of Bunbury, for Geoffrey our Primate; for this Diocese and Peter, Sonia and Charlie, our bishops; for the parishes of Terrigal, The Entrance, and Toukley/Budgewoi; and the ministry of Anglicare.

Lord, in your mercy hear our prayer

We pray for this Parish; for the members of our Parish Council and all who minister in their several ways in schools, OpShops, food deliveries, craft groups, music, servers, study groups, pastoral care; and we pray for our clergy George and Gail. We pray for Charlotte, Hannah, Matthew and Melissa and their families as they prepare for Confirmation.

Lord, in your mercy hear our prayer

We rejoice that you have called us into that great fellowship which none can number, whose hope was in the Word made Flesh, with Paul our Patron and Mary the Blessed Mother; on the anniversary of their deaths we remember before you John Gregory, Herbert Garred, Paula Murdoch, May Marsh and Lily Winkler; and those whom we have loved and see no more

Bring us with them into the joys of your eternal kingdom and may they dwell forever in joy and light

Almighty God, you have promised to hear us: grant that what we have asked in faith we may, by your grace, receive through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Saints and Commemorations of the Week

Nov 30 ANDREW Apostle and Martyr

Dec 2 Frances Perry, founder the Royal Women’s Hospital, Melbourne (d 1892)

Dec 3 Francis Xavier, priest and missionary (d 1892)

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the saints don’t inhabit stained-glass windows or plaster states: they are generally very ordinary people in whom light of God shines brightly. Andrew was an ordinary fisherman, who brought his Simon Peter to Jesus and although his name does not figure prominently in the Scriptures he was obviously well-known in the early Church as one who was close to Christ. Frances Perry was the wife of a prominent Victorian: an Englishwoman of “gentle birth” she was taken by the plight of marginalised women in Melbourne and strove to provide a “Lying-In Hospital” which has grown into a prominent establishment for womens’ health. Francis Xavier went as a missionary to Asia and was particularly active in Japan.

There’s a rather saccharine hymn which speaks of “the saints of God are just like me, and I mean to be one too”. Does the light of God shine through you?