Well I have been flooded with emails from almost every organisation and company I have used over the last year to tell me how much I have used them and how valuable they are to me and how much I saved by using them, rather than somebody else… so I have set up the church database to project your personal score for engagement with the benefice this year:
Your personalised score is: During 2024 you attend church 34 times; consumed 74.3cl of communion wine and ate 46.3 communion wafers. You confessed 13.8 sins and were absolved 27.1 times. The Holy Spirit inspired you 12.8 times and you won the whiskey on Alan Mayes’s Bottle stall 0.0 times.
Ha ha if only it was that easy to measure! But somehow, I am convinced that each of us have been effected for the good by our encounter with Jesus through each other as we gather together to worship… It’s a mystery how it works, but I am convinced it does…
And talking of mysteries, tomorrow is the Feast Day of the Baptism of Jesus, which to be honest to theologians is a bit of a worrisome mystery, after all we are taught that through Baptism our sins are washed away and a new relationship with God given, but if we believe Jesus to be sinless then why was he baptised. Maybe the clue comes from the image of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descending upon him… the image shows something of our need to recognise him for who he truly is. And that certainly resonates which much of what we do, we don’t worship God because he is so insecure he needs to be kept reminded how great and good he is, but because we need to remember that.
With love and prayers
Fr John