Weekly letter from St Luke's - 18 February 2021

Dear Parish Friends

Join us on Sunday at St Luke's for the first Sunday in Lent. The 9am service will also be streamed on Zoom. Attached is the weekly notice paper and the order of service for the 9am service.

Following the 9am service, at 10.30am, we will be holding our Annual Meeting, where we will receive reports on the activities of the parish in 2020 and elect the new Parish Council for 2021. At this meeting we will also launch our Mission Action Plan for 2021-22.

It is pertinent therefore that our bible readings for the start of Lent all talk about new beginnings; and more than that, new beginnings with the promise of God’s presence with us. From Genesis we have the end of the Noah story, a new start for humankind, and God making a covenant to care for the whole of creation. In 1 Peter, the author tells of God’s promise to save us through the waters of baptism. The in Mark’s gospel we see a link between Jesus’ baptism, commissioning and the start of his ministry proclaiming the Good news of God.

In one of the Lent study sessions this week, we observed that Mark’s gospel ends very abruptly with the discovery of the empty tomb by Mary and the other women. It is like a feature film that fades to black immediately after the climax, leaving you to imagine and want to know what comes next. Maybe then the whole gospel is only the beginning of ‘the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ (Mark 1:1), and we are continuing the story with the chapter set in Ekibin in 2021?

Yours in Christ

Rev’d Timothy