Easter Sunday - 13 April 2003
A warm welcome to all today especially if you are a visitor. We trust you enjoy your stay in Brussels and worshipping with us today. Please join us after the morning service for coffee and drinks in the side aisle. You are most welcome to stay around and talk. If you are new please make yourself known especially to the clergy; we would be grateful if you would fill in a yellow card at the Welcome Table.
From The Bishop, The Rt Revd Dr Geoffrey Rowell Easter 2003
It was not many years ago that Bishop David Jenkins, as Bishop of Durham. caused a public row because he was thought to have described the Resurrection of Jesus as 'a conjuring trick with bones'. That was not what he said, it was rather the opposite. The resurrection is not and never was 'a conjuring trick with bones'. The resurrection of Jesus is God's act of new creation, the vindication of a love which in the cross and passion of Jesus came down to the very lowest part of our human need. Easter celebrates the victory in our human nature of the God who created us in love. It is a victory over sin and over death, and to live in the Easter faith in a world in which resurrection has happened is to live in God's new creation.
The Easter stories are mysterious - how could it be otherwise - for what the Gospel writers are describing is something that is new and overwhelming. St Mark may well have originally ended his Gospel with the women on the first Easter Sunday morning coming to the tomb and finding it empty fleeing away in awe and terror. 'And they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.' (Mark 16.8) The tomb is empty. Jesus appears to his disciples and yet, as on the road to Emmaus he can be unrecognised. He is changed, transformed, transfigured - and is to be taken up into glory. The body of the risen Christ has not ceased to be physical but it is now transformed by the power and glory of the Spirit. As St Paul writes in resurrection faith of our Christian hope in death, our bodies in death are sown as physical bodies, they are raised as spiritual bodies (1 Corinthians 15.36-37). There is continuity and change, identity and transformation. Our Christian life is an Easter life. As the First Letter of Peter (1.3) reminds us we have been begotten or born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is that hope which transforms our lives and sets our dying in a new context. The resurrection hope, as the New Testament makes clear, is not just about our individual, personal lives, it is a hope which is ultimately cosmic. The resurrection of Jesus is the first-fruits of God's new creation, and it is as those baptised into the death and resurrection of Jesus that we 'look for (wait in longing expectation for) the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.' We are to live, therefore. In hope for the world, whatever wars and rumours of wars there may be, whatever manifestations of principalities and powers - terrorist threats, political oppression. economic domination - there may be. And we are to live as those for whom death, our own and that of others, is 'the gate of life immortal.'
The composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, was asked two weeks before his death, what the future life meant to him, he replied, 'Music, music. But in the next world I shan't be doing music with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.' That surely captures something of the Christian sense of living already the Easter life into which we are called through our baptism, but knowing that to die in Christ means to enter into that life fully and completely.
May we live in this Easter hope, the joy that no-one can take from us.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
+Geoffrey
TODAY is Easter Day
9.00 Holy Communion (1662)
10.30 Holy Communion Speaker: Nigel Walker, Chaplain: "Christ is risen. Alleluia!'
14.00 Holy Communion Speaker: Isaac Mensah, Assistant Chaplain: "Who will roll the stone for us?'
19.00 The Lord's Supper Speaker: Peter Walley, Assistant Chaplain: "He is not here, he is risen!'
NEXT SUNDAY the Catholic Apostolics have their service after the 10.30 service. This will mean that, weather permitting, coffee and other refreshments will be served in the courtyard.
COMING SOON . . .
Grand Prayer March on Sunday 11 May at 15.00 to pray for Brussels, Belgium and Europe, preceded by Intercession Marches from various points in and around Brussels on Saturday 10 May. More details later.
The Christian Women's Club of Brussels Prayer Connection on Tuesday 6 May at 9.45 at ave de la Pepiniere 19, 1640 Rhode St Gense. 02/381 18 84 for details. A brunch takes place on Tuesday 13 May from 9.45-12.00 at La Chevalerie, ave Brassine 38, 1640 Rhode St Genèse. €10 per person. 02/353 19 23 or chardome@skynet.be for reservations.
Christian Outreach Through Sport Please note our annual Golf Day at Bercuit is arranged for Friday 13 June. Contact Ken Thomas on 02/657 05 57 for further info.
INFORMATION
Ruth and Floris will be getting married at Holy Trinity on Saturday 26 April at 12.00 and they invite the church family to share this celebration with them. They are grateful for all the prayers and support over the past few weeks, and they look forward to seeing you at the wedding.
The coffee team would like to remind you to return the brown plastic holders to the coffee table when you have finished your coffee or tea. These holders are not disposable, and we do not want to spend money on buying new ones! Thank you for your co-operation.
Holy Trinity crosses may be purchased at the Welcome Desk. Profits from the sale of the cross will go towards our Centenary Renovation Project. The silver and the gold crosses are hand crafted. The sterling silver crosses come with a chain are €50 each. Gold crosses must be specially ordered and do not come with a chain. The price for the gold cross is €175. A €90 deposit is required. More information from Pam Mackenzie at 02/717 97 03 or pamela.mackenzie@mail.dss.mil
The Mission focus for this month is on the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators, and our freewill offerings last Sunday will go specifically to support our Mission partners, David and Evelyn Baines, who will be going out to work in Chad in the near future. They are currently living in Brussels, and Evelyn is working as a nurse, while David improves his French, to enable him to train local Chadians in computer skills. You can read about them and the work of Wycliffe on the notice-board at the back of church. If you missed the mission collection, but would like to contribute to this, please put your donation in a sealed envelope labelled 'Wycliffe Mission Focus collection'.
Centenary Renovation Project With the important permission received for the first phase of the building work, and the authority for the rest of the work promised, the first contract is due to be signed on 23 April. And then the real work will begin! By now most of the congregation have collected the letters from the back of Church outlining the final stage of our appeal. If you have not already collected yours please do so immediately after this service. We will invite you to return your pledge form in a sealed envelope at special services on Pentecost Sunday, 6 June. Alternatively you can place yours (also in a sealed envelope) in Andrew Johnson's pigeon hole in the porch. And finally we invite your prayers for the successful completion of this important work to strengthen the work of God here in Brussels.
Help wanted The sacristan team needs two extra helpers; one to wash and iron the altar cloth from time to time, and another to help with very occasional typing. If you could do either of these jobs, please contact Barbara Rundell on 02/762 11 43.
Carols Unlimited are putting on an Easter concert, raising money for the United Fund for Belgium. Find out more on www.carolsunlimited.be.
YOUTH AND CHILDREN
Many thanks to those who are helping us to set up video-viewing in children's rooms. We have discovered we need a UK video-recorder to go with our UK television. Does anyone have one to donate. Please contact Mary on 02/770 77 15.
ADMIN NEWS
We are still setting up the English to French translation team. One or two more volunteers would make it an ideal size. Interested? Then please contact Vicki at the church office.
The Church Office will be closed from Monday 28 April to Friday 2 May. The duty clergyman for that week is Revd Kempton Baldridge from All Saints Waterloo, contactable on 02/384 35 56 during office hours.
Items for the Newsletter Please send these by 9.00 on Tuesdays to the Church Office or by e-mail to David.Iliff@Pandora.be Items for the 4 May Newsletter should be sent in before Tuesday 22 April.
A new "HTB Classified' space will be created on the church website for all those Wanted Needed On Offer ads. you would like to post up. Please send the exact text and format you want to appear to webmaster@htbrussels.com
HOLY TRINITY Rue Capitaine Crespel 29, B-1050 Brussels
Phone: 02/511 71 83 Fax: 02/511 10 28
e-mail: admin@htbrussels.com website: www.htbrussels.com
Staff: Chaplain: Nigel Walker Associate: Peter Walley
Assistants: Isaac Mensah, Jean-Pierre Herman
Office hours: Mondays Thursdays: 9.00 13.00
Sunday services: 9.00 Holy Communion
10.30 Holy Communion Choir, Sunday Club
14.00 African-style Afternoon Praise Sunday Club
19.00 Informal Evening Praise
Centenary Renovation Project account number is 310-4551076-19
HTB Pledge Gift account number is 310-0344153-83