Weekly for 16 April 2023 (Easter 2)

Fr George Mainprize
Apr 15, 2023
8 min read

Dear People of God

Grace and Peace to you all

Now that the Feast of St Chocolate is past, I guess that we will be seeing fruit mince pies in the supermarkets any day now!

It was very pleasing to see so many people in the church last weekend. The person who had travelled furthest informed me that he was in the area to visit his new grandchild and that he had come from France.

When you see a new person in church how do you respond to them? The worst experience I have had was an occasion when we were travelling in England. There would have been 20 or so people in the church, the service was “done decently and in order” and when we came out not one person spoke to us or even looked in our direction and the priest was no-where to be seen: maybe he had to go to take another service. We reckoned that if we lived in that place we would never go back to that church. At the other extreme you don’t want to make people feel overwhelmed by too enthusiastic greetings – we are Anglican after all! Introduce yourself but don’t give them the third degree of pumping them for information: let them know that you are pleased that they are here and hope to see them again.

ANZAC Day. The parish has again been asked if we can provide singers for the hymns at the Dawn Service, at 5:30am at the War Memorial and additional voices will be welcome!

Parish Council meets this Sunday following the 9:30am service. Next month we will have to change the date of the meeting. Rather than meet on the third Sunday we will meet on the second Sunday (14 May) as Bishop Sonia will be making her Episcopal Visit and, as is the custom, to meet with the Council.

It’s something that we tend to take for granted, but our rituals in worship may seem “strange” to someone coming in for the first time. After Trinity Sunday I intend to spend some time in teaching about ritual and custom, plus the whole sacramental system. A couple of comments I have heard lately lead me to this, including one from someone who, after going to an Easter service in a very different tradition said “I realise just how much I appreciate our tradition” (That, at least, is the tidied up version!)

On a lighter note. Back in the day, when people sent “telegrams” to wedding, one person sent a message reading simply “1 John 4:18” (“Perfect love casts out fear”). In transmission the “1” was omitted and the final message read “John 4:18”, which reads “you have had five husbands and he whom you have now is not your husband”. If you are going to quote Scripture to anyone, just make sure that you have your references correct!

The Lord be with you

Fr George

gmainprize@bigpond.com 0410 586 119

PROPERS for EASTER 2

Sentence

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3)

COLLECT

Almighty and eternal God, the strength of those who believe and the hope of those who doubt: may we, who have not seen, have faith and receive the fulness of Christ’s blessing; who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

READINGS

Acts 2:14a, 22-32 Peter addresses a crowd

Psalm 16

1Peter 1: 1-12 A living hope

John 20:19-31 Jesus appears to the disciples

SERMON (Fr George)

In the Name of God. Amen

For the last week we have been hearing all the Resurrection stories and, like many tales heard over and over again, we can react to them in a number of ways. We can “tune out”, having heard it so often it loses its punch; or we can listen with the same ears to which we have grown accustomed, visiting the same territory again; or we can listen with renewed interest to find in that story depths which we had not previously plumbed. What have you been hearing?

There’s a danger that we leave Jesus in the familiar surroundings. For some people he is forever caught in the manger; for some he’s the miracle worker, healing the sick, multiplying loaves and fishes; sometimes we fail to leave Good Friday and are forever agonised by the cross; or perhaps we encounter Jesus in the Resurrection. All of these are valid images, but they are not the totality of our encounter with Jesus.

It has been said that Roman Catholic theologians focus on the Crucifixion, Orthodox focus on Pentecost, and Anglicans on Incarnation, to which I’d add that Calvinists focus on Judgement. That’s a very simplified summary, but it does underline a basic trend in denominational thought. Contrast that with a fellow I knew years ago, and who has since gone to God. He came to faith in his middle age and said to me “I don’t want the Evangelical wing or the Catholic wing, or the Charismatic wing. I want the whole bird!”

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not knocking “Gentle Jesus meek and mild” or the wonder of the Nativity, and some of the greatest saints of Christendom have carried the marks of the Cross, and the whole Charismatic has led us in a renewal of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the Church. But if, and only IF, our faith is limited to only one of those elements we are missing out on the fulness of the Christian faith.

Last week we heard the deeply moving story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the Risen Christ. You can imagine her joy when she recognised the One whom she so dearly loved standing before her, after seeing him dead. She naturally wants to hold him, almost assuming that things would go on the way they were before. Jesus stops her in her tracks, saying “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father…” Don’t hold onto me: don’t assume things will be just as they were before, because this is a work in progress. Go and tell the story of this encounter and what is happening.

Today we hear as John describes the apostles’ general encounter with Jesus. You can imagine them running around like headless chooks and Jesus calling for order! “PEACE! PEACE! Peace be with you!”, and then doing something new as he bestows on them the radical authority to forgive or to retain sins, an authority passed to every priest as they are ordained by the bishop. It’s an awesome responsibility and definitely not one to be taken lightly. Things are clearly going to be different from here on. Jesus ran into trouble with the religious authorities when he declared to people whom he had healed or restored “Your sins are forgiven” and here he is passing that same authority to the apostles.

Each of the encounters move us a step further along our journey in faith. Nativity leads to adulthood; in the adult Jesus we see the presence of God in restoration and renewal; the events of Holy Week demonstrate a radical concept of servanthood and of absolute obedience to the call of God to give without limit; the Resurrection is not simply a resuscitation, it’s the experience of the eternal breaking through to the temporal; the New Order has begun in earnest, as Jesus points out to Mary Magdalene; in Thomas’ encounter we see cynicism turn into faith. In the closing chapter of John’s gospel we see restitution of Peter after he had denied Jesus.

Perhaps we identify with different parts of this journey, but it’s a journey which we all travel. The great part of it is that we never go on that journey alone: God goes along it with us. We are the people of the Incarnation, of the Crucifixion, of the Resurrection, the Ascension, and we are the people of Pentecost, empowered by God in our various ways, to go and serve the Lord wherever we encounter him.

Amen

INTERCESSIONS (Deacon Gail)

The response to our prayers is: