‘Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother.’
30/03/14 MALMESBURY ABBEY
HOLY WEEK FESTIVAL 2014
7th-20th April
Vicar’s blog: fix us On Palm Sunday the guest vicar on BBC Wiltshire’s Sunday morning programme will be yours truly. It’s only taken me 10 years to get invited—clearly we’ve gone quietly under the radar recently here at the Abbey. Anyway, as we’ll be busy with an outdoor Holy Communion here on Palm Sunday morning, we recorded my short segments last week. As well as the general conversation flagging up our Easter Eve service in partnership with BBC Wiltshire (don’t forget to get your ticket), I also had to provide a ‘thought for the day’ and select a piece of music. The ‘thought for the day’ was easy; I have way too many thoughts every day before breakfast and simply needed to extract an intelligible one, if available. But selecting one favourite piece of music — don’t they realise how difficult that is for a musician? My operatic alter ego kicked in, and, although I didn’t for one moment think they’d play one of my old CDs, I thought they might play a track from an old colleague and I could do a bit of former glory basking. ‘No opera’ they said.
That just left me 6 or 7 centuries of classical music to choose from. The Abbey choir know that I have my favourites, and my not favourites, but, just as I was about to select some JS Bach or Olivier Messaien, and lose Radio Wiltshire most of its audience, I heard the words ‘nothing classical, we want contemporary pop please.’ OK. Now the most joy I’ve had with contemporary pop recently, by a long way, was a live performance of Barry Manilow’s Copacabana. But for some reason I couldn’t get the Palm Sunday imagery and ‘the hottest spot north of Havana’ to work together in my brain; it was all going dancing donkeys. So I went for Coldplay’s Fix You. I am sure Coldplay had absolutely no intention of this, but I always hear a lot of Holy Week in Fix You. It’s a redemptive song. The cry ‘Hosanna’, save us, is a heartfelt cry from broken humanity, and God’s captive people, to be ‘fixed.’ Coldplay’s lyrics ‘tears come streaming down your face when you lose something you cannot replace’ always suggest to me the devastation of Mary Magdalene at the loss of Christ, ‘Mary stood outside the tomb crying…’ (John 20:10) And the guitars, just over 2 minutes in, are for me the sunrise on Resurrection morning—Christ appearing to Mary and simply calling out her name. The Messiah is come, He knows us by name, and God’s great plan for humanity is unveiled—He will fix us.
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Abbey Diary THIS SUNDAY: MOTHERING SUNDAY 8am BCP Communion 10.30am Holy Communion 4pm Informal Worship & Junior Church activities EACH DAY TUES 1st WED 2nd THUR 3rd
FRI 4th
9am Morning Prayer 7.30pm Revd Douglas Holt Retirement Service 10.30am Holy Communion 10.30am Time for Chat 4pm Evening Prayer 7pm Choir Practice 10am Malmesbury Primary School Easter Service 10.30am Creative Response in Parish Office
NEXT SUNDAY: APRIL 6th 8am BCP Communion 10.30am Holy Communion 4pm Informal Worship, Junior Church & The Grid 6pm The Mix//Campbells HOLY WEEK DIARY April 7th Labyrinth & Stations begins April 9th Late Night Labyrinth April 12th 10am Meet the Artists 7.30pm Josh Flowers & the Wild//Tristan Cork April 14th Phantom of the Opera April 15th Glory! April 16th God & Dinosaurs 2 April 17th Riding Lights ‘Inheritance’ April 18th Fauré’s Requiem April 19th BBC Wiltshire Easter Service
John 19:25-27 25
Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing near by, he said to her, ‘Woman, here is your son,’ 27 and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
Additional Reading: 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 3
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
daily readings MONDAY Psalm 30 John 10:1-21
TUESDAY Psalm 79 John 10:22-42
WEDNESDAY Psalm 90 John 11:1-16
THURSDAY Psalm 86 John 11:17-27
FRIDAY Psalm 102 John 11:28-44
March 9 March 16 March 23 March 30 April 6 April 13 April 20 April 27
John the Baptist Nicodemus the Woman at the Well Mary, Mother of Jesus Lazarus the Crowd Mary Thomas
John 1:19-34 John 3:1-17 John 4:1-26 John 19:25-27 John 11:17-45 John 12:12-16 John 20:1-18 John 20:19-31
Real Lives small group resource + 1.
2. 3.
4. 5. 6.
What dimension of motherhood and parenting do you see in the John 19:25-27 passage? What dimension of being a child do you see in the same passage? What do you notice about Acts 1:12-14? Read and discuss these short passages: Isaiah 66:7-13; Psalm 131; Matthew 23:37-39. From these texts, in what way would you say that God is like a mother? Read the 2 Corinthians passage, twice, with one minute’s silence in between. How does it relate to the John passage? Give examples as to how God has used your own journey through distress to be a comfort to others? Use the texts in question 2 as inspiration for a time of prayer together.
PCC Meeting The Abbey's bi-monthly Parochial Church Council meeting was held on the 15th March. Matters discussed included: preparations are well under way for both the Archbishop of Canterbury’s visit on 13th September and our Church weekend away in June 2014. Rev Mandy Churcher and team will be running Holiday at Home again this year (28th/29th July). Two External Mission Giving applications were granted, one for Charlotte Price for £720 (Covering annual medical insurance for YWAM/Boardstore Café, Australia) and up to £750 for Dave Bankhead (for a return flight for ministry in Rwanda, Africa). There is now £1030 remaining in the Abbey's External Mission Fund for 2014 which is open to applicants from our congregations. It was stressed that it is helpful to have applications earlier in the year to help budget this money. The focus after coffee was on church growth which referred to a pre-read report from the C of E entitled “Findings from the Church Growth Research Programme 20112013”. You can read it here. Themes that emerged in discussion included: the church’s role is to steward our God-given gifts for mission; the pathway to growth is often about incremental steps; the importance of families, children and young people and their nurture, especially teenagers; how to get better at welcoming new people and how we follow that up. The full minutes are available from the Parish Office.
Vision Sunday/AGM Our annual Vision Sunday and Annual General Meeting will take place on Sunday April 27th. There will be a Festival Communion at 11am, a picnic lunch together and then the Annual Meeting from 1.30pm-2.30pm. During that meeting we will be electing our churchwardens for the year ahead and also seeking to elect 4 people to our Deanery Synod and PCC, and 4 others to our PCC. Please talk to Neill if you are interested in serving for 3 years on this important decision making body for our church.
Douglas Holt Retirement There is a service at the Abbey, led by Neill & Bishop Mike, on April 1st at 7.30pm, to mark Douglas Holt’s retirement. All are welcome to attend and pray for Ann & Douglas as they begin a new chapter in life.
Noticeboard Come to New Wine, 3rd-9th August There are already 20 or so Abbey folk on their way to an inspiring, refreshing and fun week together of deepening friendships with each other, and with God. As an Abbey we want to encourage as many people, young and old, to come and join us. You can caravan, camp, commute, or get accommodation nearby in Shepton Mallet. If you're interested in going, please let me know. To book on-line go to: http://www.new-wine.org/summer/united-2014-week-2 See you there!!! Revd John Monaghan
Join the Postal Service! Get your black and white cats ready and please help us deliver 3,200 Holy week brochures across Malmesbury in the next few days. We’ve found, unsurprisingly, that more people come to events and services at the Abbey when we actually tell them about them. Help us pack the Abbey this Easter and encourage many across the threshold who wouldn’t otherwise feel welcome.
Fauré ‘Requiem’ Bach ‘Come, Saviour, Come’ Good Friday at 6pm
Contact ABBEY OFFICE Mon &Tues (9.30am-12noon) Weds, Thurs ,Fri, (9.30am-2.30pm) 01666 826666 www.malmesburyabbey.com sandie@malmesburyabbey.com Staff members can be contacted by name@malmesburyabbey.com NORMAL CAFÉ HOURS Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday: 9am-3pm Wednesday: 12-3pm Sunday: Closed all day clare@malmesburyabbey.com
Friday e-Mailing If you would like to receive an e-mail every Friday from the Parish Office, with a link to this News Sheet online and other additional notices and links, please contact Sandie Brown at office@malmesburyabbey.com.
10 years On Easter Day, Neill will be celebrating exactly 10 years as vicar of Malmesbury Abbey. At the 10.30am service that day, Bishop Lee will be saying a short prayer for Neill as the next 10 years begins(!) Later in the day, at 8pm after Choral Evensong, Neill, Marilyn and the girls will be at the Whole Hog for a celebratory glass together. All, in party mood, are very welcome to come along.
12th CENTURY BEAUTY 21st CENTURY CHURCH