06 April 2025
10:30 | 
Posted by
Dr Platts |
A beautiful day. Although we are not allowed flowers in church because it is Lent, the church yard is full of the glory of our Lord, with a lot of help from the church yard working group who were hard at it yesterday.
Fr Chris preached around the gospel speaking of the many ways in which we can pray. There is no fixed way to do it. Be happy with God and speak to him however feels best to you.
A reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
Thus says the Lord,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honour me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.
Philippians 3:4b-14
A reading from the letter of Paul to the Philippians.
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more:
circumcised on the eighth day,
a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin,
a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;
as to zeal, a persecutor of the church;
as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had,
these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.
More than that,
I regard everything as loss
because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things,
and I regard them as rubbish,
in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him,
not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law,
but one that comes through faith in Christ,
the righteousness from God based on faith.
I want to know Christ
and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,
if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this
or have already reached the goal;
but I press on to make it my own,
because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own;
but this one thing I do:
forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
I press on towards the goal
for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
John 12:1-8
Hear the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John.
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany,
the home of Lazarus,
whom he had raised from the dead.
There they gave a dinner for him.
Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.
Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard,
anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.
The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples
(the one who was about to betray him), said,
‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii
and the money given to the poor?’
(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief;
he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)
Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone.
She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.
You always have the poor with you,
but you do not always have me.’
