Services This Week
Jan van Eyck, Hubert van Eyck. (1432). Ghent Altarpiece — The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. [Oil on oak panel]. Saint Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium.
Dear All,
Please join us for services this week, which are taking place in person or via livestream through our YouTube Channel. You can find gathering times and service sheet links below.
Friday 4 September
10:30am — BCP Holy Communion (Revd Dr Matthias Grebe)
Sunday 6 August
11.00pm — Holy Communion
Sermon: ‘The Passover’ (Revd Dr Mark Scarlata)
Service Sheet: Here
Other notices:
Harvest All-Church Meal: Join us as we celebrate the arrival of Harvest as a congregation on Sunday, 27 September. We will gather for a bring and share all-church lunch directly following the regular morning service. Please speak to Elizabeth Bam, Olivia Brooks, or Josey Wright about if you plan to join and what you would like to bring.
Giving: We are grateful for all of your gifts! Offerings may be made via BACS (Sort: 20-17-19 / Acc. No.: 30851477 / Acc. Name: St Edwards Church), for standing orders, or the SumUp machine on the table by the door, for contactless giving. There is also a wall-mounted deposit box by the door for cash and/or cheques.
Exciting Holiness — Birinus
Birinus was born in the mid sixth century, probably of northern European origin, but he became a priest in Rome. Feeling called by God to serve as a missionary, he was consecrated bishop, and sent to Britain by the pope. He intended to evangelize inland where no Christian had been before but, arriving in Wessex in 634, he found such prevalent idolatry that he looked no further to begin work. One of his early converts was King Cynegils and thereafter he gained much support in his mission, as well as the town of Dorchester for his See. He died in about the year 650 having earned the title ‘Apostle of the West Saxons’.
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
by Richard Wilbur
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;
Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”
Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.”
Almighty God, who called your Church to bear witness that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself: help us to proclaim the good news of your love, that all who hear it may be drawn to you; through him who was lifted up on the cross, and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
