This morning our service was a Parish Eucharist. and Father Stephen was the celebrant. The Choir sang 2 hymns, and an Anthem, 'A New Commandment I give to you' by Peter Nardonne. This is the last Sunday of Trinity, and now we begin the sundays preparing for Advent.

After the service we held our Annual Parish Meeting. which would normally have been held in April, but was postponed due to the covid outbreak. We were delighted that our two churchwardens were prepared to stay on for the rest of the year, and Father Stephen was able to swear them in having been given authority to do so by the Archdeacon. The annual reports were accepted, and a new PCC elected and immediately met to re-elect the Treasurers. Votes of Thanks were minuted for the churchwardens for their  excellent work in keeping everything going in these difficult times, to Gloria Jupp, who is retiring as our Safeguarding Officer after some 19 years, and to the Website team for their work in maintaining the website and providing the liturgical prayers and readings while the church was shut.

We will not be able to hold our christmas fair this year, due to the pandemic restrictions, but we are going to hold a Christmas Grand Draw. Tickets will be £1 each, and can be obtained from the Church Wardens and we will have books of 5 tickets each for every one to sell. There are lots of lovely prizes, a gourmet hamper, a child's scooter, A magnum of Champagne, and many more, so do buy some tickets! The draw will take place in mid December! 

Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), ‘Jesus and the Pharisees’

Dear Friends

One would think, following a set lectionary as we do in the Anglican Communion, that there would be little doubt as to the readings to use for Sunday service.  Well, most of the time that is true – except for today!  One can use the readings for the Last Sunday after Trinity, or for Bible Sunday, which are nearly the same.  Or one could use those for Dedication Sunday (which are quite different) – that is, if one doesn’t know the actual date of a church’s consecration.  

At Sidlesham, we are tantalizingly close to knowing that the year was 1200, and certainly the chancel was being used by then, but we don’t know the month or the day.  Hence we use the last Sunday after Trinity to remember the dedication – but, as we see, that clashes with Bible Sunday.  You can’t win!

So, I had to make a decision, as it were putting a pin in the lectionary, and chose 

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 and, for the Gospel, Matthew 22: 34-end.  That Gospel contains an almost unanswerable question, put to Jesus by the Pharisees: ‘Master, what is the greatest commandment of the Law?’.  On the surface, it sounds like a genuine enquiry but, in fact, it is the kind of question which is intended to be used as a weapon.  It is one of the oldest techniques in controversy, much beloved of John Humphries on the Today programme on Radio 4, intended to wrong-foot an interviewee, usually politicians, who are treated as fair game.  The person on the receiving end often starts to dig him- or herself into a deeper and deeper hole!  The way to deal with such questions is to side-step them.  It’s a sort of power-game between questioner and the person answering.  And, in this Gospel narrative, of course, the Pharisees are hoping to wrong-foot Jesus into an unwise answer, which would make him lose his popularity among his followers.

But the Pharisees, like the Sadducees, never learn!  Time after time, the questions they put to Jesus with a view to catching him out misfire, and they are left lost for words.  In this instance, Jesus affirms that the law of love – love of God and love of neighbour – are the two commandments upon which both the Jewish Law and the message of the prophets hang.  Jesus then goes on to set his interlocutors a question of his own, using a quotation from Psalm 110, to demonstrate his own role as Son of the Father, and Lord of all, including his lordship over King David.  The Pharisees are unable to reply and the passage records that ‘from that day no one dared to ask him any further questions’.  Once again. Jesus’ deep knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures, and his own conviction concerning his unique role as Son of the Father, together with his insistence upon the universal law of love, prove irrefutable.

Fr Stephen

Blessed Lord,

who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:

help us so to hear them,

to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them

that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word,

we may embrace and for ever hold fast

   the hope of everlasting life,

which you have give us in our Saviour Jesus Christ,

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.  

Amen.

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, 

they gathered together. 

and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

“Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” 

He said to him

“ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart 

and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 

This is the first and greatest commandment. 

And the second is like it: 

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 

On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, 

Jesus asked them this question, 

“What do you think of the Messiah? 

Whose son is he?”

They said to him,

“The son of David,” 

He said to them, 

“How is it then that David, by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? saying, 

“ ‘The Lord said to my Lord:

“Sit at my right hand 

until I put your enemies under your feet.” ’ 

If David thus calls him ‘Lord,’ 

how can he be his son?” 

No one was able to give him an answer,

nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.