Today at our churches
St Leodegar's Church
Revd Roger Pullen took our Holy Communion service today at St Leodegar’s. The sermon explored the limits of forgiveness, where the apostle Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive someone who sins against him – Peter suggests forgiving someone “seven times,” which seemed very generous at the time, however Jesus replies “seventy times seven” (or seventy-seven times), meaning forgiveness should have no fixed limit.
Today’ service was also advertised as ‘Primary School Bangers’ whereby Naomi asked us for our favourite childhood hymns, which she played and we sung along to! We had some wonderful choices including my (Barry) favourite ‘When A Knight Won his spurs’.
Today we had 16 people attend our service.
St Stephen's Church
Today’s service was a “banger” indeed! It was great to have Revd Stephen Everard and his wife Jane back with us. He also looked at forgiveness. In the Genesis reading Joseph was very forgiving towards his brothers, for a debt that they could never pay. The first servant in the Matthew reading was also forgiven a debt he couldn’t pay, but then didn’t offer the same grace and mercy to others. Jesus paid our debt – that we could never pay, and we are expected to also offer the same grace to those who have hurt us or done us wrong. We are reminded of this every time we say the Lord’s prayer.
Primary School Bangers
We sang 6 hymns that were nominated by people in the congregation. They told us why they picked each song, which was really nice. It lead to a lot of discussion after the service about how these songs had meaning in many of our lives! Naomi was really great with the accompaniment on the keyboard