WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

29 November 2015 - Advent Sunday

8.00 am Eucharist (NZPB456) Bishop Andrew Hedge

10.00 am Sung Eucharist Bishop Andrew Hedge Preacher: Dean Michael Godfrey

8.00 pm Advent Readings & Carols Bishop Andrew Hedge

Ormond Chapel, Napier Terrace:

No services

Please ensure all cellphones are switched OFF when in the Cathedral; if necessary, adjust hearing aids to the “Loop” system.

A place of resurrection, life, and hope

Today’s events 2

Angel Tree / Peace Prize nomination

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Sentence, Collect & Readings

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Readings Comments 4

From your Dean 5

AdventWord / Advent Art

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St Francis’ stories books for sale

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Hastings Choral Society concert

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CWS Christmas Gift Appeal

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Hospital Chaplaincy Assistants training

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Diary Dates & Directory

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In this issue …

We have low-Gluten wafers (below 20ppm) available - please advise the Presider, or one of the Welcoming team, if this is your dietary requirement.

NOTE: Bell Tower and entrance are earthquake prone as assessed under the Building Act 2004 - use at your own risk!

Prayer Cycles we pray for ...

Anglican Communion

The Diocese of West Malaysia (South East Asia); Bishop, the Rt Rev’d Ng Moon Hing, and Assistant Bishops the Rt Rev’d Andrew Phang and the Rt Rev’d Jason Selvaraj

Anglican Board of Missions

We give thanks for the Christian Care Centre ministry of the Community of the Sisters of Melanesia, and the Community of the Sisters of the Church in Honiara

Diocese, Parish and Community

Waiapu Bishop Andrew Hedge and family

Waiapu Dean Michael Godfrey; Waiapu Regional Deans (Rev’d Adrienne Bruce, BOP; Rev’d Stephen Donald, Eastland; Rev’d David van Oeveren, HB-elect)

Diocesan Theologian, the Rev’d Dr Howard Pilgrim Diocesan Children, Youth & Families Co-ordinator, Jocelyn

Czerwonka; HB Regional Youth worker, Sandi Hall Diocese of Auckland, Bishop Ross Bay, Bishop Jim White,

Dean Jo Kelly-Moore and the Holy Trinity Cathedral team Napier Inner City businesses

Today …

Welcome to all who are worshipping with

us … especially if you are visiting Napier or

at the Cathedral for the first time … you

are invited to join us for morning tea (or

coffee!) served at the back of the cathedral

following the 10am service.

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The Rev’d David van Oeveren (Hawke’s Bay Regional Dean)

Service of Installation on Saturday 5th December at 1.00pm

in the Cathedral, followed by refreshments.

Association of Anglican Women

Cathedral Fellowships

Monday 14 December 2015, 6.30pm Christmas Fun at Judith’s home

44b Riverbend Road, Napier. Partners welcome.

(Please note the earlier start time)

Contacts: Kay, ph 834-4096 or Judith, ph 8433974

All welcome.

Angel TreeAngel TreeAngel Tree Thanks to those who have already been shopping and have brought their gift to be distributed by the “Angel Tree” network into the Cathedral Office - they were due back to-day! However, if you don't have them with you today, don’t panic, there is still time … but please call Jennifer (06) 833-6963 to ar-range collection. Thank you.

Wrapping day for the gifts is 5th December at All Saints Church in Taradale in the Octagon room, 9-12noon.

Tonight Sunday, 29th November, at 8.00 pm

A service of Advent Carols and Readings with Bishop Andrew Hedge.

Tonight’s offertory donations will go towards the CWS Christmas Gift appeal.

Informal Fellowship Wednesday 2 December, 2.00 pm

in the Maori Chapel for Holy Communion

with Dean Michael Godfrey, followed by a

talk from the Dean and a party afternoon tea

in the Parish Lounge. Please bring a small

plate of food to share. Everyone welcome.

Contact: Elisabeth, ph 835-4609.

Peace Prize Nomination

Father Michael Lapsley SSM, (formerly from Napier) a founding member and Director of the Institute for Healing of memories in South Africa has been nominated for the 2016 Public Peace Prize. You can vote on-line to support his nomination … http://publicpeaceprize.org/michael-lapsley/ or through Facebook, www.facebook.com/publicpeaceprize.prixpublicpaix Click on Fr Michael’s photo and scroll to ‘Leave a comment in support of his nomina-tion’ - each comment counts for 3 votes. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Sentence:

Stand up and raise your heads; your redemption is drawing near. Luke 21: 28

Collect:

Come, O come Emmanuel, you are the way, the truth and the life; come, living Saviour, come to your world which waits for you. Hear this prayer for your love’s sake. Amen

Jeremiah 33: 14-16

14The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Psalm 25

1 To you Lord I lift up my soul, my God I have put my trust in you: let me not be disappointed, nor let my enemies triumph over me. 2 For all those who hope in you shall not be ashamed: but only those who wantonly break faith. 3 Make known to me your ways O Lord: and teach me your paths. 4 Lead me in the way of your truth and teach me: you are God my Saviour, for you have I waited all the day long. 5 Call to remembrance O Lord your tender care: and the unfailing love which you have shown from of old. 6 Do not remember the sins and offences

of my youth: but according to your mercy, remember me Lord in your goodness. 7 You O Lord are upright and good: therefore you show the path to those who go astray. 8 You guide the humble to do what is right: and those who are gentle you teach your way. 9 All your ways are loving and sure: to those who keep your covenant and your commandments. 10 For your name's sake O Lord: pardon my guilt, which indeed is great.

1 Thessalonians 3: 9-13

9How can we thank God enough for you in re-turn for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? 10Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith. 11Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. 12And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. 13And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Luke 21: 25-36

25“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. 28Now when these things begin to take

Today’s Readings … from the New Revised Standard Version Bible

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place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

29Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; 30as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. 31So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away un-til all things have taken place. 33Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

34“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunken-ness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, 35like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. 36Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to es-cape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Reading Comments …

Jeremiah 33:14-16: the early Christians found a powerful way to interpret Jesus and all he represented when they turned to these vers-es. Did Jeremiah think he was writing about Jesus or Nazareth, generations later and through a crystal ball? I think not. But by God, literally, the hope of a righteous messiah was germinating, and however much we let Jesus down, the seed flourishes still.

Psalm 25: 1-10: too often we might look as others and assess their short-fallings with de-light, but the psalmist and other biblical writ-ers are all abut unanimous: it is me and me alone who stands in the glaring scrutiny of God’s judgement. Do I mock God with the contrast between my professions of belief and my treatment of others? If so (and if I haven’t so cauterized my nerve-endings of faith that I

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can no longer hear the answer) then it is me who must fall on my knees (yes!) and implore the healing touch of a forgiving God.

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13: to Paul the hallmark of being Christian was thanksgiving. Do I give thanks to God for those I love, and do I demonstrate my joy in them by a spirit of openness and acceptance? What about those I can find little way to love—the hurt and bro-ken and snappy and unglorious? Most of the Thessalonians, unlike the Corinthians and Phi-lippians, could say yes. But God is not a two card trick: they still suffered grief and pain (read the following verses). So will we suffer. Yet amidst all trial we are called upon to stutter our prayers, knowing that the God of the painfilled and lonely cross still hears us.

Luke 21:25-36: here we go: the language of apocalyptic. It is not some kind of Da Vinci Code, but stereotyped language designed to bring hope and faith in trial. It is not like the secretive (“gnostic”) language of a line-out call, known only to the team, but the broader slightly veiled symbolic language of, for exam-ple, a deep-V formation of a rugby back line. This is accessible but lightly coded language of faith and hope and love, and gospel-writer Luke would be pretty darned cross with us if we failed to grasp the promise of eternal hope he is conveying.

From Deanly Delvings

The doctrine of the Trinity is basically what distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God as Christian …

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (1936) Volume 1, part 1, 301

(1909) 35.

From Your Dean…

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As we journey into Advent our liturgical read-

ings will take us deeper and deeper into por-

tents and portents of portents, into the surre-

al and the potentially scary. As we go home in

the evenings (or perhaps as we walk out the

door if we have our smartphones attuned to

media feeds) we will receive news reports of

portents and portents of portents, taking us

into the surreal twilight realms of the poten-

tially scary and even apocalyptic.

Back in another pocket of time, another apoc-

alyptic moment, when (as I said recently in a

sermon) Khrushchev and Kennedy were glar-

ing at each other across the Bay of Pigs, civili-

zation was also dwelling in a twilight world,

under the potential shadow of a nuclear win-

ter, waiting with bated breath and tightened

zippers.

Tightened zippers? Bob Dylan memorably

wrote at the time

You’ve thrown the worst fear

That can ever be hurl’d

Fear to bring children

Into this world.

They were dark times and there really was a

sense that procreation of new generations

should be off the agenda, that this was end-

game in Orwellian times, and humanity was

subsiding into the deepest of doo doos.

Dylan himself has produced nearly as many

children as I have since then, so I guess he

overcame his sense of apocalyptic despair.

Yet we would be fools, as our pockets vibrate

with the latest news from Aleppo or Fotokol,

not to wonder what world we are giving our

tamariki and mokopuna. Is there a future, ei-

ther in terms of clashing religions, ecological

destruction, or economic collapse?

The weird and wonderful biblical language of

portents and portents of portents, or earth-

quakes and famines and insurrections, is not

about Syria, Turkey, Russia, no matter what

the idiot fringes of Christian distortion may

proclaim. It is about ever thus and ever will be

thus, from the time the first amoeba crawled

out of the primeval swamp until the time the

last human dodo, alone and frightened, curls

up in a foetal ball beneath a dead tree.

But it does not end with that. It ends with

hope, ends with the radical in-break of an un-

imaginable New Heavens and New Earth, of

Hope with a capital H. Another prophetic (and

love-struck) song-writer writes of having “self

deception tattooed like a flag across my back /

holding hands with war-mongers I feel I’ve

been betrayed.” That is what our brothers and

sisters who set out in hope to flee apocalyptic

scenes may feel—and what any of us could

feel one day if our small safe worlds were to

turn to custard and to bombs. “I advertise the

scars of middle classness like a shiny piece of

junk mail” continues that prophetic vision of

Greg Arnold. If our small comfort zones of

routine and sameness, nostalgia and myopia

were all we were to cling to then the readings

of the next few weeks would be no more than

a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal.

If though our comfort is based in the radical

promise of Jesus, present in word and sacra-

ment, reaching out to us from God’s eternity

future, then we can look our descendants in

the eye, however scary the world becomes

(and it will) and whisper the words of Jesus-

hope: “I go before you into Galilee.”

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Rosters - for December 2015, (including all services for Christmas) plus January and Feb-ruary 2016 have been prepared, and emailed earlier this week. Printed copies are available from the Office. Please arrange a swap if you are unable to attend to your rostered duty, and advise Margaret in the Office.

And extra ‘Greeters’ will be required for the additional services scheduled for Christmas time, and to cover for those away on holidays over the Christmas/New Year period - if you are available to assist in this way, please talk to Marie (ph 844-3578) or Jennifer (ph 845-1108), or email Margaret in the Office. Thanks.

The Francis Stories The Little Flowers of St Francis

Retold by Rose Christie-French tssf with drawings by John Ngalihesi

Rev’d Dorothy Brooker has copies of this

book for sale at only $10 per copy. Delightful traditional stories of

St Francis of Assist re-told for children.

AdventWord – be part of a Global Advent Calendar

Here’s a fun and reflective way to move through the season of Advent, by being part of a global online Advent Calendar called AdventWord.

How it works is: each morning you re-ceive an email with a meditation with a word and a picture. After reading the meditation, you snap a picture that re-flects the theme, or your response to it, and post it to Instagram and other social media. The pictures combine to create the Advent Calendar in real time, with contributions from all around the world.

The mediations are written by brothers from the Society of Saint John the Evan-gelist, an Anglican monastic community in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Last year over 50,000 people participated and 17,000 pictures were posted – it was cre-ative, prayerful, and challenges us to think outside the box as we are attempt to find a photo to take that would fit the AdventWord of the day.!

Here in New Zealand AdventWord will be launched at 5.00am on Sunday 29th November. Sign up on AdventWord.org for your own Advent Calendar online.

Advent Art: Missional postcards

Are you interested in a reflective activi-ty with a difference this Advent? … 27 artists from across the Province have gifted their talents to bring you a set of postcards that draw on Advent texts to stimulate your missional thinking. Each (undated) postcard is of a different art work and on the back of each are texts and a reflective activity.

A set of postcards ($12/set) can be pur-chased from the Anglican Missions Board Office, ph (04) 473-5172, P O Box 12012, Thorndon, Wellington, or email: in-fo@angmissions.org.nz

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2016 Events - Ahuriri Anglicans Together

24th January - Picnic at Eskdale Church, SH5 Taupo Road at 12.30pm

13th March - a tour of local historical ceme-teries beginning at 1pm

31st July - Ahuriri Anglicans combined service at St Andrew’s Church Westshore at 10.30am

17th September - a social event (quiz or de-bate). More details near the time. Everyone most welcome to attend all events.

Hastings Choral Society presents

Christmas Crackers with Deco Bay Brass

Anna Hansen - piano Dianne Abraham - soprano Directed by Joe Christensen

Sunday 6 December, 2.00pm

St Matthew’s Church, Kings St, Hastings Doors sales: $25 (school students $5)

CWS 70th Christmas

Gift Appeal

The annual Christmas Appeal was launched by New Zealand churches to help rebuild Greece after World War II. Seventy years lat-er, our church is supporting this appeal launched by our aid and development agen-cy, Christian World Service. Your gift will mean more families get the help they need to survive war, recover after disaster and escape poverty. CWS works with local partners to make sure people get the food, water, sup-port and medicine they need. Please give generously to the 2015 Christmas Appeal so more people can rebuild. You can read more about the work or give now at http://christmasappeal.org.nz/

Advent One

At five years old Tarek should not live with such terri-ble scars. Trau-matised by last year’s war on Gaza, he has at last found some relief thanks to the profes-sional help provided by the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees in Gaza. The war affected everyone, but staff are back on the job, providing medical and psychological help to families in need. For Gaza’s residents surrounded by rubble and locked into a small piece of land, DSPR is a living sign of hope. “We are looking for Peace” says Dr Wafa, the Health Programme Coordinator.

Please give generously to the 2015 Christmas Appeal … and Help Rebuild Lives.

Volunteer Hospital Chaplaincy Assistants

A new training course for Volunteer Chaplaincy Assistants will be offered in March next year.

There is no cost for the training but par-ticipants are expected to attend a mini-mum of 95% of the training sessions and meet the required standards of knowledge and skill before they can be commissioned as ICHC Voluntary Chap-laincy Assistants. A Police check is also part of the process.

Application forms can be obtained from the Chaplaincy Department at the HB Hospital, ph 878-8109, ext 2611; and applications close on 20th January 2016.

CLERGY:

Dean: Michael Godfrey 022 342 9977

Assisting Clergy: Dorothy Brooker 843 6779 Erice Fairbrother 021 811 870 Graeme Pilgrim 835 6777 Jon Williams 833 6382 Anne van Gend 027 264 7245

WARDENS:

Dean’s: Martin Williams 835 0666 People’s: Jeanne Ayson 835 1920

DIRECTOR OF MUSIC: James Mist 021 936 810

LAY ASSISTANTS:

Jennifer Harris 845 1108 Elisabeth Paterson 835 4609

OFFICE:

Tues.-Fri. 9.30am-3.30pm 835 8824 Parish Mobile: 021 688 227 Priest-Administrator: Margaret Thompson

Waiapu Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, 28 Browning Street, Napier, NZ Phone 835-8824 ~ PO Box 495, Napier ~ email: office@napiercathedral.org.nz

www.napiercathedral.org.nz

Tuesday 1 December 10.30am - Eucharist (Resurrection Chapel)

Wednesday 2 December 2.00 pm - Christmas Eucharist and after- noon tea for the former AAW Afternoon Fellowship

Friday 4 December 9.15am - Pastoral Companions meeting and morning tea

Saturday 5 December 1.00 pm - Installation service for the HB Regional Dean, Rev’d David van Oeveren

Thursday 10 December Sacred Heart College annual prize-giving; evening Mass

Sunday 13 December 10am - Parish Eucharist and Christmas Pageant

Wednesday 16 December 5pm - Dermot Horne’s piano students’ recital

Sunday 20 December 7pm - Christmas Carols & Readings

NEXT SUNDAY 6 December 2015

Second Sunday in Advent

Readings: Malachi 3: 1-4

Luke 1: 68-79 (for the Psalm)

Philippians 1: 3-11

Luke 3: 1-6

Cathedral:

8.00 am Eucharist (Aotearoa Chapel)

10.00 am Sung Eucharist

Ormond Chapel, Napier Terrace:

No services

COMING UP THIS WEEK … & OTHER DIARY DATES -

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Mid-Week Services (in the Resurrection Chapel)

9.00am - Morning Prayer - Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays & Fridays 10.30am - Eucharist - Tuesdays

12.30pm - Mid-day Prayer - Wednesdays

Prayer during Communion

A member of the ministry team is available in the Resurrection Chapel during Communion at the 10.00am Choral Eucharist service in the Ca-thedral, for anyone who wishes personal prayer, or prayer for a specific purpose, and/or anointing with oil for healing (if required).

If you wish to have someone pray with and for you, please go directly to the Resurrection Chap-el (at the back of the Cathedral) after receiving communion.