The Broomhill Festival is a local community celebration held every June, which brings Broomhill together, raising money for local charities. St Mark’s plays a key part in the festival in a variety of ways, often hosting several different events including concerts and an art exhibition.

For more details see the Broomhill Festival website: http://broomhillfestival.org.uk/ or click on the events below

Events At A Glance

9 Jun   Alan Ayckbourn’s “Woman in Mind”

13 Jun   Library Evening for St Marks Centre for Radical Christianity

14 Jun   “Journeys” An entertainment in Words and Music

15 Jun   The Exhibition of Jane Horton and Mark Wilson

15 Jun   Open Garden

15 Jun   Open Garden

15 Jun   iPad Competition

15 Jun   The David Stoker Photography Competition

16 Jun   King Edward VII School Re-Opening with Emily Maitlis

16 Jun   Fancy Dress Procession

16 Jun   Annual Garden Party with Emily Maitlis

16 Jun   Sheffield Chorale – Midsummer Serenade

17 Jun   Festival Jazz Praise Service

17 Jun   Open Wildlife Garden at Beech Hill Nursery

17 Jun   Sketch Crawl

17 Jun   Local History Walk

18 Jun   Robin Ireland Concert

18 Jun   Schools’ Concert

18 Jun   Beer & Food Night

19 Jun   Organ and Cello Concert

19 Jun   Flower Arranging

19 Jun   Live Band Night

19 Jun   Schools’ Concert

19 Jun   An Evening with Marina Lewycka

19 Jun   History Walk

19 Jun   The Food Of Love – Soprano Recital

20 Jun   Open Garden

20 Jun   Escafeld Brass Band

20 Jun   Monitoring the Aliens: Invasive Bugs in Sheffield

20 Jun   Pub Quiz

21 Jun   Recorders in the Park

21 Jun   Music for a Summer Evening

21 Jun   A Sporting Chance – Sheffield Young Singers Concert

21 Jun   Refresh Poetry Evening

21 Jun   Live Band Night

22 Jun   Gala Dinner

22 Jun   Jazz Cafe

23 Jun   Shepherd Wheel Visit

23 Jun   Northern Lights: Poems about Sheffield & Family

23 Jun   Open Garden

23 Jun   Does politics really matter? – Paul Blomfield MP

23 Jun   Bach Society – Carl Orff: Carmina Burana

24 Jun   Festival Service of Worship

24 Jun   Open Garden

SHAN will be ordained Priest and ANNE will be licensed as a Reader by Bishop Steven at St Mark’s next Sunday, 5.00 pm.  This will be followed by a shared supper.

ORGAN VOLUNTARIES North Wales is in focus this week. Vaughan Williams’s prelude on the hymn tune Rhosymedre (a village near Wrexham) is followed by the 50-year-old Postlude written by former professor at Bangor University, William Mathias, who is buried at St Asaph Cathedral.

CRC SPRING CONFERENCE will be with Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University. THIS SATURDAY!  If you are interested in or concerned about the challenges of creating a pluralist society this day is for you. Details and booking forms are at the back of church on the CRC Table.

FURNITURE We are still looking for a chest of drawers, wardrobe, dining table and chairs for someone who has recently moved into settled accommodation from rough sleeping.  Please contact Anne or a member of the clergy.  Thank you.

CONGREGATIONAL LIST The new congregational list is NOW OUT!  If you are on the list and would like a copy please let Anne know.  It is 50p for a printed version, or it can be e-mailed to you. BROOMHILL FESTIVAL, 14-24 June, is almost here!  Festival brochures are now available – please take as many as you can distribute.  Sign-up lists for events hosted by St Mark’s up shortly.  Also, visit the new Festival website for more information and booking (www.broomhillfestival.org.uk).

GARDEN PARTY on 16 June at 2.00pm -  this year it helps to kick off the Broomhill Festival!  We need your help; volunteers on the day and donations of 2^nd hand books and quality gifts.  This is an event for all the family with music, games, food and drink and market stalls.  Please speak to Caroline F, Peter R or Sue H for more information.

SUNDAY 8 JULY will be a special day: all-age worship (including the baptism of Rose Ilsley … parish lunch … St Mark’s very own Olympics.) More details soon.  Please aim to be there.

PV OUTPUT DISPLAY, showing instantaneous power together with total energy generated and CO2 savings, has been installed in the entrance foyer above the community notice board.

SOUP RUN This is a service that is greatly appreciated by those who turn up, and some of our stocks are getting low. We now have plenty of tins, but if anyone could supply any clothes  - especially men’s socks and jumpers – all donations would be gratefully received. Many thanks. Gary.

ST MARK’S WEEKEND Only 20 weeks to go!  Are you among the 75 + who have already booked?  If not, please complete an application asap so we know how many rooms to reserve.  Don’t forget, there are some great discounts (under 5s – free; 5-18 year olds – £50; students – £50; non-residents – £70) as well as reductions available for all ages if that would enable you to come.  See the stall in church.

ANNUAL REPORT reviewing the life of St Mark’s over the past twelve months is available, as are copies of the Financial Statements for 2011.

LENT & HOLY WEEK Please complete a Worship Review slip and place it in the box at the back of church.  Thank you.

SHAN will be ordained Priest by Bishop Steven in St Mark’s on Sunday 20 May at 5.00 pm.  ANNE will also be licensed as a Reader by Bishop Steven at this service.

CRC SPRING CONFERENCE will be with Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University.  It promises to be a stimulating and  enjoyable day.  Details at the back of church on the CRC Table.

ONE SHEFFIELD MANY CULTURES Celebration of the city’s unity, with multi-cultural acts and dance groups from local schools. Saturday 19 May, 12 noon – 4.00 pm, Barker’s Pool. SUNDAY 8 JULY will be a special day: all-age worship (including the baptism of Rose Ilsley … parish lunch … St Mark’s very own Olympics.) More details soon.  Please aim to be there.

CONGREGATIONAL LIST If you are new to St Mark’s or have changed any of your contact details recently, this is the LAST WEEK that you can fill in a form. If you are unsure if you are currently on the List, please look at the names at the back.

MAY MESSENGER is now out for 60p! Subscribers’ copies are in the pigeonholes.

SOUP RUN This is a service that is greatly appreciated by those who turn up, and some of our stocks are getting low. We now have plenty of tins, but if anyone could supply any clothes  - especially men’s socks and jumpers – all donations would be gratefully received. Many thanks. Gary.

SUNDAY LUNCH Due to falling levels of attendance, Sunday lunch will be served around once a month for the time being.  There will be a Sunday Lunch TODAY. Please contact Alan Yearsley (Alan_yearsley@hotmail.com; 07958 079048) if you may be able to help with cooking or hosting. Thank you.

THANK YOU to everyone who supported the work of USPG by providing or enjoying the Lent lunches. £172 will go to them as a result of your generosity.

ST MARK’S WEEKEND Only 20 weeks to go!  Are you among the 75 + who have already booked?  If not, please complete an application asap so we know how many rooms to reserve.  Don’t forget, there are some great discounts (under 5s – free; 5-18 year olds – £50; students – £50; non-residents – £70) as well as reductions available for all ages if that would enable you to come.  See the stall in church.

From untruth, lead us to reality
From darkness lead us to light
From death lead us to life

(from the Hindu scriptures, ‘Brihadarankaya Upanishad’)

As our sermon series ‘Faces of Inclusion’ begins today, my task is to offer some reflections on the subject of theological and religious pluralism. How are we to relate to people whose understanding of God, The Divine, The Absolute, differ from our own – whether they are part of the Christian family or members of other religious traditions?

Often creating barriers between people are the trappings that grow up around systems of belief, clouding the vision of the One whom they seek to make known. It is a bit like looking through a window at a glorious view but seeing the glass rather than the beauty that lies beyond: Or worse, seeing your own reflection looking back at you. The problem for any system of religious belief arises when it loses sight of its fundamental task to point people beyond itself to the Divine Presence from whom life’s purpose and meaning is derived.

A second and related problem is that God will, by definition, always transcend even our noblest attempts of definition and description. As soon as any religion – or, indeed, any theological strand within a religion – reaches the point at which it believes God has been completely encapsulated in its creeds and doctrinal formulae, it has moved into the realms of idolatry: the deity created in its own image and confined within the limits of human understanding. But God will not be trapped within religious dogmas.

Theological diversity should not, therefore, threaten or surprise us; neither should the fact that within all the major religions God has many names and titles. No single title can be sufficient, and poetry and metaphor inevitably come into play in the human quest to express the inexpressible.

Quoting Belden Lane, Marcus Borg highlights this provisionality of language when speaking of God:

We must speak, yet we cannot speak without stammering . . . [Language about God] stalks the borderlands of the limits of language, using speech to confound speech, speaking in riddles, calling us to humble silence in the presence of mystery.

And yet, so often in the history of the religions – including our own – believers have used their particular orthodoxies to exclude others who do not assent to a particular set of propositions about God. The results have been devastating – with persecution, conflict and appalling acts of terror conducted in the name of religion.

It is with tragic arrogance that religions and intra-religious groups set themselves over and against each other. Tragic because the deep-seated yearning for encounter with the Divine is something that has been evident across the breadth of cultures for as long as humanity has walked on the earth. As the great psychologist Carl Jung puts it:

I cannot define for you what God is. I can only say that my work has proved empirically that the pattern of God exists in everyone, and that this pattern has at its disposal the greatest of all energies for transformation.

Religion, of course, does not exist in a vacuum but emerges from particular contexts. Geography, history, culture, politics, nationalism, patriarchy and power are just some of the complicated factors that shape the way religions develop and also how we see those whose beliefs are different from our own. Yet, when distilled to their essence, the world’s great and diverse religions have much in common and, at their heart, a longing to faithfully serve God and neighbour and build a just and peaceful world. This must surely be of more importance than the external trappings of religious worship and devotion which will inevitably vary according to culture, time and place.

Now what I am not suggesting is that all religions are the same. Religious pluralism is not about removing the distinctiveness of religions by blending them all together. To do so would be to lose the particular contribution that different religions make to our understanding of God and how we should live our lives. It is more about being open to the fact that God will not be confined by the boundaries that religious systems seem compelled to draw. For us as Christians, that means being open to God being at work in those of other faiths as well as our own.

This can be somewhat disconcerting for Christians who feel such an approach to be a denial of the centrality of Jesus Christ, but it need not be so. Believing in Jesus as the one in whom God’s very nature was uniquely revealed in a human life, in whom the kingdom of God was made present and in whose risen life we participate, is the essence of our faith. For many, including myself, this is the bedrock of Christianity and the basis from which our engagement with people of other faiths takes place. But holding fast to our beliefs about Jesus and his teaching does not mean rejecting the presence of God in other faiths.

In the gospel reading we can learn much from Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman about encounter with those whose theological and religious views differ from our own. A key point to bear in mind in this story is the animosity that existed between Jews and Samaritans in Jesus’ day. Their mutual hatred of each other was, like so many inter-religious feuds, based on an historic falling out, in this case a schism that took place centuries earlier. It had festered across many generations.

Here was Jesus, breaking all conventions by not only stopping in a city of the despised Samaritans but also talking with a Samaritan woman. With no love lost between Samaritans and Jews the woman finds herself struggling with this unexpected encounter. Jesus is, after all, a Jew. In the conversation, which begins with discussion about a practical need – Jesus is thirsty and wants a drink – he then connects with the woman’s spiritual needs. She eventually recognises Jesus as a prophet but still struggles with the relationship between the rival claims about religious truth held by Jews and Samaritans.

‘Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem’ (v.20).

‘You’ in this verse is plural so she is stressing the difference between Jesus’ religious tradition and her own as a Samaritan. She sets up a contrast; an either/or situation suggesting that only one of them can be right, and there is an implicit question in her response along the lines of ‘How can God work among those who believe differently from us?’

There is something going on here about the claims of superiority that beset religions. ‘Our places, our practices, our beliefs are better than yours’ are implied by the woman. We could add to that ‘Our theology, our liturgies’ and so on. Interestingly, as a man of his time, Jesus also buys into this to some extent in his response recorded in v.21:

‘Woman, believe, me the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.’

None of us believe in a vacuum, and Jesus was no different. But he was able to see beyond the trappings of religion to what comprises the very heart of authentic religious belief. He continues:

‘But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth’ (vv.21-24)

At the root of much of the distrust and bad blood between religions, and between those with different theologies within religions, is the tendency to compare the best in one with the worst in another despite the obvious fact that no religious tradition – our own included – has an untarnished record of goodness and light. Similarly, there is a common tendency to focus on the differences that exist between religions rather than on shared values and concerns.

There is no denying the reality of those differences. For example, the essential Muslim and Christian understandings about Jesus are not reconcilable. But there are those in both religions who live lives faithfully seeking to worship God in spirit and truth, and therein lies the key to understanding the heart of religious pluralism.

Somewhat ironically, in an age where inter-religious encounter, respect, and dialogue seem to be growing, that cannot always be said of factions within the Christian tradition and not least in our own Anglican Church. Globally, nationally, locally, Anglicans are in disarray. Conflicting and entrenched views produce much heat but little light as protagonists stop listening to each other and resort to animosity towards each other that bears no resemblance to worshipping God in spirit and truth.

I am not for one moment wanting to understate the significance of the debates taking place – all of which can be traced largely to the way in which the Bible is understood and applied – for liberal, conservative, evangelical, catholic, or any other brand of Anglican. But all of us must surely keep before us the need to avoid drawing boundaries or setting limits around God’s presence in those with whom we disagree. It is all too easy to exclude the other in practice while using the rhetoric of inclusivism.

The fact of the matter is that Christians do not always agree with each other, and that has been so since the earliest days of our faith. Just read the Acts of the Apostles to see what I mean. The challenge is to bear witness to the world about living with difference and sometimes having to acknowledge significant disagreement, but at that point doing so with good grace rather than with anger or patronising contempt for the other.

Theological pluralism no less than religious pluralism is an inevitable feature of the human quest do discern the mind of God and how to live faithfully in the world. We can never encapsulate God within a single, unified system of belief, but through the lenses of diverse religious perspectives and theologies we can discover more about the one whom Jesus calls us to worship in spirit and in truth.

Perhaps we would do well to remember the profound truth to which our reading from Ephesians points: our standing before God, our encounter with the Divine is all about God’s grace. God accepts us in our weakness and frailty and keeps on loving us, even when we get things wrong. How different the church would look if its competing factions could appreciate that generosity of God given to all and reciprocate in the way they treat those with whom they disagree. Yes, it would be easy to despair but we are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song. We live in hope.

Having begun this sermon with a prayer from the Hindu tradition, let me now close with something from the Reformed Jewish Prayer Book of 1977:

‘We are children of many traditions, inheritors of shared wisdom and tragic misunderstandings. In that which we share, let us see the common prayer of humanity; in that which we differ, let us wonder at the freedom of humanity; in our unity and our differences, let us know the uniqueness that is God’.

Amen.

The service sheet for the Sunday 10am Parish Eucharist, and the weekly newsletter or ‘blue sheet’, are available for download below:

The Parish Eucharist – 3rd Sunday of Easter, 22nd April 2012 (PDF, 0.2MB)

Weekly Newsletter – 22nd April 2012 (PDF, 0.2MB)

FACES OF INCLUSION Recently, our PCC reaffirmed its commitment to St Mark’s being an inclusive church.  But what does this mean?  A sermon series starting this week will help us reflect and engage.  Please collect a flyer.

CHURCH ELECTIONS for  Churchwardens, Parochial Church Councillors and a Deanery Synod Rep. will take place at the Annual Parochial Meetings.  Nomination forms for the former and a nominations register for the latter can be found on the notice board in  the entrance lobby.  Who would you like to serve as a Churchwarden or represent you on the PCC?  Are you willing to serve?

ANNUAL PAROCHIAL MEETINGS will be held on Wednesday 25 April.  There will be a shared supper at 7.00 pm, followed by the meeting at 8.00 pm.  We will be reviewing the past year and looking forward to the next as well as electing two Churchwardens and up to 18 members of the Parochial Church Council. These are open meetings.  Please sign up at the back if you are able to contribute some food.

ANNUAL REPORT, reviewing all aspects of church life through 2011, is now available, together with papers for this year’s Annual Parochial Meetings. CONGREGATIONAL LIST is to be updated shortly.  If you are new to St Mark’s or have changed any of your contact details, please fill in a form at the back of church.  If you are unsure whether you are currently on the List, please consult the schedule of names at the back.

SOUP RUN This is a service that is greatly appreciated by those who turn up, and some of our stocks are getting low. If anyone was able to pop a few tins of baked beans (ideally ones with sausages in them), or soup – tomato, chicken, oxtail or vegetable – in their trolley when they go shopping, all donations would be gratefully received. Many thanks. Gary.

SUNDAY LUNCH Due to falling levels of attendance, it has been decided to hold Sunday lunches only about once a month at least until the new academic year in the autumn. It is hoped to have the next lunch on Sunday 6th May. Please email Alan_yearsley@hotmail.com or call or text 07958 079048 if you may be able to help with cooking or hosting.

THANK YOU to everyone who supported the work of USPG by providing or enjoying the Lent lunches. £172 will go to them as a result of your generosity.

ST MARK’S WEEKEND Only 23 weeks to go!  Are you among the 70 who have already booked?  If not, please complete an application asap so we know how many rooms to reserve.  Don’t forget, there are some great discounts (under 5s – free; 5-18 year olds – £50; students – £50; non-residents – £70) as well as reductions available for all ages if that would enable you to come.  See the stall in church.

Open to all – everyone welcome!