2021 Easter Services

Can I ask you to bring a flower with you to our Easter services at St Bart's?

This year our services are both familiar and different. Some of the difference will enable us to follow the COVID guidelines intended to reduce our community's risk. It may help if I set out these changes as you consider how you might join us in the week ahead.  

In addition to our regular services, we have added two services. One at 10am on Good Friday and one at 6pm on Easter Eve. These extra services help us ensure that we manage the numbers of people who attend each service to provide appropriate physical distancing. I highly recommend that you register before attending as we may reach our capacity at some of these services. You can do this either through our website or by contacting the office.  We hope that any visitors who attend Easter services will find that there is space for them.

Easter Eve at 6 pm will be a special service that, through story, music and participation, is particularly suitable for families with children. All Easter services will include Communion and the reaffirmation of our Baptismal Vows.

Over many years now, I have found a sense of joy at Easter by decorating the Cross with flowers that symbolise the new life that resurrection brings. Can I encourage you to bring a flower to whichever Easter service you attend so that you can take part in this expression of new life through the events of Easter?

God's Peace,
Michael Stalley

Chocolate Cake, Floodwaters & Baptism

Dear Friends,

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15). This is a stunning reminder of the meaning of ministry When the kingdom of God breaks into time, the possibility of people being restored to a right relationship with God opens up. Repentance is the act by which this restoration happens. In other words, Jesus was baptised not for himself, but for us.

In the waters of Baptism, God reaches out and tells us, "You are my child; I am your God,"

thus establishing a covenant of mutual loyalty and love. Like Jesus we are tempted, but with the temptation, God provides good news of a means of escape. Even if we sin, God provides the means of escape called repentance.

Saint Paul puts it this way: "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it." (1 Corinthians 10:13).

What is this "way out"? Martin Luther says that when depressions and temptations come, the best way to handle them is to say, "I am baptised." He urges us to tell the demonic forces that tempt us that we are sons and daughters of God through Baptism and therefore those forces have no control over us. In other words, the punishing waters of the flood (Genesis 6:5-7) are reversed in the merciful waters of Holy Baptism.

Canon Gary

Let Your Little Light Shine

Dear Friends,

Since Jesus Christ has come and since he is the light which enlightens every person, we can reflect that light like a mirror. That light of Christ lightens the darkness of this world. 

“In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”. (John 1:4-5).

This light changes everyone it touches. Therefore, we are called to reflect this light as God's transformed people.

John puts it this way:

“The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God”.  (John 1:9-12)

Let me put it-another way. We Christians have been given a gift of light to see beyond what we behold.

We have glimpses of the kingdom of God. Those glimpses need to be shared!

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known”. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Canon Gary

To Be Plugged In

Dear Friends,

The children were putting on the Christmas play. To show the radiance of the newborn Saviour, an electric light bulb was hidden in the manger. On cue, all the stage lights were supposed to be turned off so that only the brightness of the manger could be seen, but the boy who controlled all the lights got confused. You see ALL the lights went out!

It was a pitch black, tense moment. 

Suddenly, out of the dark, the voice of one of the shepherds said in a loud stage whisper "Hey! You switched off Jesus!" 

There was a news clip which appeared in the papers after a blackout in a city. I do not know if it was a misprint, a mistake or if it was true: "During the power failure many people complained of having gotten stuck for hours on escalators."

We cannot go through our everyday life with Jesus or God switched off.

We will not make it. There will not be any power for living. We will be stuck on the escalator of life and will not have the energy to walk up or down. We need to spend time in prayer. Prayer is our connection to the source of power in life, God.

Jesus knew that. And if Jesus, the Son of God, needed to refuel, to reconnect, to plug in and recharge, what makes us think that we can get along without it?

You and I have a source of power and energy just waiting to be tapped. And all you must do is plug in.

Because it is as close and as simple as breathing. Are You Plugged In? 

Canon Gary

The Demons & The Counsellor

Dear friends,

Demons may be very interesting for Jesus' day. But what does it have to do with today? Demons today? Yes, today, according to prominent Christian authors.

A noted Swiss physician, counsellor and author, says:

"In the thought of the Bible, evil - for the devil represents the source of moral evil as well as sickness (Revelation 18:2) - is not the absence of good, or some simple, natural failing, it is an active personal power, with its order of battle and its strategy. Doubtless there are many doctors who in their struggle against disease have had, like me, the feeling that they were confronting not something passive, but a clever and cunningly resourceful enemy."

"The trouble is that we are self-centred," wrote Bishop William Temple in “Nature, People and God”, and no effort of the self can remove the self from the centre of its own Endeavor; the very effort will plant it there the more fixedly than ever." The demon of self-centeredness!

Demons? Today? Yes, today.

Jesus continues to listen and speak today. He does it through his Holy Spirit and through the Church.

"The Word of God cuts through to the heart like a two-edged sword dividing bone from marrow,"

the Bible says, driving out the demons which possess us - loneliness, estrangement, anger, resentment, revenge. Jesus listens and speaks today!

Demons? Today? Yes, today. But Jesus is also speaking today. "Shut up!" He says to the demonic powers at work in our world and in our lives. And then, "Come out!"

Canon Gary