Dear All Saints and St Mary’s
Lolium temulentum, commonly known as darnel, is a real devil of a weed. When it is young, it is very hard to distinguish from wheat. It looks so similar, that it is often called false wheat. However, it has an invasive root system that chokes the plants around it. It cannot be uprooted without pulling out everything else in the area. Even worse, eating it can cause a drunken nausea and can be fatal in larger quantities. It grows just about everywhere wheat does and seems to spring up spontaneously in wheat fields. It is so pervasive that the ancient Greek botanist, Theophrastus, believed that wheat spontaneously transforms into darnel.
This is the image Jesus uses for evil, in our gospel reading this Sunday, Matthew 13.24–30. Evil is an insidious thing that works its way into our lives and our communities. Like the farm workers, we need to be constantly vigilant to identify it when it does start to creep in. But we also need to heed the warnings of the farm owner. Be sure that what you are rooting out is the evil. Sometimes it can be harder to tell than we suppose. Make sure you are not doing more harm than good. Tearing everything apart might not always be the best approach.
I will be talking a little more about this on Sunday at the 8.00 am service at All Saints and the 10.00 am service at St Mary’s. At 10.30 at All Saints, Diane and Kester will be continuing our Café Church series on Jonah. They will be helping us think about the God who relents in the light of Jonah 3 and Luke 13.6–9.
This gives the following services for Sunday 23rd July:
8:00am | All Saints | Holy Communion |
10:00am | St Marys | Sung Holy Communion |
10:30am | All Saints | Café Church |
This coming week we have Holiday Bible Club at All Saints from Monday to Friday. Please pray for all involved, both the helpers and the children, that this will be a fun and safe time and that the gospel light will shine in all we do.
This means that there is no Celtic Morning Prayer at All Saints on Wednesday morning. In addition, Sunday 30th July is a fifth Sunday, so we have a benefice service at all St Mary’s. As such, there will be no 10.30 am service at All Saints on 30th July. This gives the following services for the coming week:
Thur 29th July | 10:00am | St Marys | Holy Communion |
Sun 30th July | 8:00am | All Saints | Holy Communion |
​ | 10:30am | All Saints | Sung Holy Communion |
As we look forward to the coming week, in the light of last week’s parable of the sower, this week’s parable of the wheat and darnel and the parable of the mustard seed in Matthew 13.31-32, let us pray that God will help our faith to grow so that his kingdom may flourish in all we do.
Yours in Christ
Mark
Mark Simms Licensed Lay Minister
Benefice of All Saints and St Mary, Fishponds