Services This Week
Dear All,
Happy New Year! Services this week are taking place in person or via livestream through our YouTube Channel. Please find gathering times and service sheet links below:
Friday 5 January
10.30am - BCP Holy Communion (Revd Dr Jeremy Morris)
Sunday 7 January / The Epiphany
9am - BCP Holy Communion
11am - Holy Communion
Sermon: ‘The Magi’s Gifts’
Service Sheet: Here
Other news:
Volunteer Rota: In addition to the sign-up sheet in church, we are making it easier to volunteer by attaching an online rota with the weekly email here. (N.B. There will be an initial delay before access is granted to the form, in order that only church members can see and edit it.) Please do consider if you are able to help out in any of the ways listed – we are particularly in need of regular volunteers to set-up tea and coffee and stay a little longer after each service to wash-up/leave away. If you have any queries please speak to Peter on Sunday. Many thanks!
Scriptorium restarts with the beginning of Cambridge’s Lent Term on Tuesday 16 January and will meet Tuesdays & Wednesdays 9am-4:30pm weekly during term time. For more information either speak to our church administrator, Peter, or visit our website.
Giving: As always we are grateful for all of your gifts! Offerings may still be given during this time via a basket collection during live services, Standing Orders, or one time bank transfer, via BACS [SORT: 20-17-19 / ACCT #: 30851477 – “St Edwards Church Vestry Fund”]. There is now also a SumUp machine by the door of the church, for those of you who wish to give contactlessly: Simply power on, enter the amount you wish to give on the screen, and then tap your card.
Exciting Holiness (Saturday 6 January):
The subtitle in the Book of Common Prayer of The Epiphany, one of the principal feasts of the Church, is ‘The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles’. This emphasizes that, from the moment of the incarnation, the good news of Jesus Christ is for all: Jew and Gentile, the wise and the simple, male and female. Nothing in the Greek text of the gospels indicates that the Magi were all necessarily male: even the idea that there were three and they were kings is a much later, non-scriptural, tradition. The date of this feast goes back to the tradition of the Eastern Church, which celebrated both the Nativity and the Baptism of Christ on 6 January, whilst the West celebrated the Nativity on 25 December. As often happens, the two dates merged into a beginning and an end of the same celebration. The Western Church adopted ‘the twelve days of Christmas’ climaxing on 5 January, the eve of Epiphany, or ‘Twelfth Night’. The implication by the fifth century was that this was the night on which the Magi arrived. The complications of dating became even more confused with the changing in the West from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar, the Eastern Church refusing to play any part in such a radical change. So this day remains the chief day of celebrating the incarnation in Orthodox Churches.
O God, who by the leading of a star manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: mercifully grant that we, who know you now by faith, may at last behold your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
