Newsletter for
3rd November
All Saints Day and Music Sunday
Church News
St. Andrew and St. Mary the Virgin
Saint Cecilia, Patron Saint of Musicians
All about us at www.fletchingparishchurch.co.uk and www.fletchingorgan.org
Church Community Library
~ N O T I C E S ~
Remembrance 2024
Fletching’s 1880 Organ Project
Sponsorship opportunities still available
Although the sponsorship scheme has gone extremely well, there are still some it left to sponsor.
Forms are still available at the back of the church, or visit the website fletchingorgan.org for further information.
Please remember in your prayers …
Revelation 21 v 1 - 6a
and the Gospel according to St John Ch 11 v 32 – 44
The book of the Revelation to St John the Divine is a strange book which needs careful handling. It comes from a literary tradition which flourished in the last century before Christ and the first century after ‘Apocalyptic’ literature is the name often given to this tradition. Meaning ‘unveiling’, the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, and the Revelation in the New, are the two best known, biblical examples. Because of its strangeness, there was some opposition in the early church to including the Revelation in the Canon, but it made it’s way into the final listing.
Some people view it as a repetitive text full of extraordinary cruelty and violence, others find it something authentic and prophetic. Either way, and all points in between, Christians are well advised to approach with care.
In today’s passage, the author described the outworking of God’s plan after all that wads evil had been destroyed. It represents one of the few moments of comfort in the book and, the promise of tears being wiped away, makes these words a familiar presence at funeral services.
St John’s Gospel brings us the story of the raising of Lazarus. Lazarus, with his sisters Martha and Mary, seem to be part of the circle of disciples. This story, curiously, doesn’t appear in any of the other Gospels. It is not clear what source St John was drawing on when he included it but, discounting the possibility that he made it up, it was clearly a memory circulating in the early Church.