All Saints Margaret Street.

Dear Friends,

Once global warming has produced a tropical paradise on the banks of the Thames you may become familiar with a common Australian experience, the exploding drink. Let me explain. When a real heat wave strikes and a great thirst comes upon you, warm ale or slightly chilled lemonade become less satisfying. Domestic refrigerators expand to meet this need (a trend to American-style super-sizing already well under way in the UK) and freezer compartments also expand. So you will find yourself, coming home after a hot day, putting tins and bottles of various drinks in the freezer to cool them quickly. You will sit, perhaps, and watch the news, lulled into relaxation by a more typically English cooling breeze. You will retire to bed, forgetful of a small but potent story unfolding in your freezer. There, as you sleep, the beer, Pepsi or even champagne will break out of its bottle or can and provide you with a small arctic scene to defrost the next time you open the freezer. There may be a very small pop or bang when the bottle or tin opens, but you will probably not hear it.

Sunday’s gospel (Mark 5.21-43) is a story bursting quietly but unstoppably out like that. Biblical scholars call this a Markan sandwich, but I think exploding drinks are more interesting. Here, in the story of Jairus’ daughter enclosing that of the woman with the haemorrhage (linked by the age of the girl and the length of the woman’s affliction – both twelve years), we have two examples of the power of God in Jesus, one contained in the other, bursting out despite Jesus’ apparent determination to keep the secret in the bottle, a theme throughout Mark’s Gospel:

            He strictly ordered them that no one should know this.                                                                                                                     Mark 5.43

I like to compare these stories with exploding drinks because one way of looking at this strange theme in Mark, sometimes called the Messianic Secret, is that the ‘secret’ is almost bound to burst forth under the pressure of it being kept in the bottle. It is an image I like for the same reason that I like champagne, because it suggests the irrepressible power of God’s love and his ultimate kingship, the Good News that we are safe in God’s universe, ‘saved’ as some put it. And it reminds us that these teachings and actions of Jesus are all a cause of great joy. Our allegiance to the kingdom should be like that: there are few things less likely to convert the world than miserable Christians.

I once heard Rowan Williams describe this joy as that sense you have with some holy people that they always bring someone else into the room with them. That quality will have been instantly noticeable in the lives touched by today’s stories; we need it to be bursting out of us like frozen champagne on a hot day.

Yours in Christ,

Father Michael Bowie
Assistant Priest
All Saints Margaret Street

Please pray for those who have asked for our prayers: Asia Bibi. Fr. Bruce Barnett- Cowan, Ella Carroll, James Cary-Elwes, Ian Coull, Paul Curno, Helen Everett, Jonty Gordon, Hugo Gralka, Fr Tony Halton, Tim Harding, Yvonne Harland, Lewis Harvey, Maxwell Hutchinson, Alice Jullien, Andrew Laird, Molly Leng, Anthea Lepper, Joshua Levy, William Lightening, Christine Loffty, Simon MacGregor, Sister Martha (SMNC Tanzania), Hilary Morgan, Margaret O’Brien, David Pearce, Nick Russell, Jock Scott, Fr. Nicholas Stacey, Buzz Stokes, Christine van Dyck, Joy Wright and Marc Young.

For the recently departed: Eddie Dirks, Robert Sinclair (Priest), Peter Blackwell, Philip Harland (whose funeral will take place at All Saints on a date yet to be agreed), Betty Faulkner, Agnes Hagan, Monica O’Connor, those murdered at Emanuel Church, Charleston, Monica O’Connor, Michael Pearson (Priest) and Marjory Grosvenor.

Remember past priests, benefactors, friends, and all whose year’s mind occurs this week including: Edith Taylor, Frieda Bailey, Edward Roberts (Bishop and former Assistant Curate All Saints 1931 – 35), Harry Lye, William Roberts, Andrew Barker, Gladys Dare, Richard Price (Priest and former All Saints’ Choir member), Barbara Treadway (Friend of All Saints), Philip Cranmer (former Chorister and Trustee of the All Saints’ Choir and Music Trust Fund), Valerie Southcott, Mary Lightfoot, Kenneth O’Ferral (Priest, Curate of All Saints and Headmaster of the Choir School 1923 – 30), Barbara Brentnall, John Pearce (Friend of All Saints), Emily Davis and Marie Padley.

WORSHIP THIS SUNDAY 28 JUNE – FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
HIGH MASS, 11am
Preacher: The Vicar, Prebendary Alan Moses 
Spatzenmesse – Mozart 
O how amiable are thy dwellings – Weelkes 

Sunday Lunch is being cooked by Stuart Voy. Tickets on sale in the Parish Room before and after Mass – £5.

CHORAL EVENSONG & BENEDICTION, 6pm 
Preacher: Fr Michael Bowie
Service in G minor – Purcell 
Tu es Petrus – Palestrina 

WORSHIP NEXT SUNDAY 5 JULY – FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 
HIGH MASS, 11am
Preacher: Fr Michael Bowie 
Missa Omnium Sanctorum – Hutchings 
Pange lingua gloriosum – Bob Chilcott 

Sunday Lunch is being cooked by Stuart Voy.  Tickets on sale in the Parish Room before and after Mass – £5.

CHORAL EVENSONG & BENEDICTION, 6pm 
Preacher: The Vicar, Prebendary Alan Moses
The Wells Service – Malcolm Archer 
Unser Lieben Frauen Traum – Reger 

NOTICES 

EVENTS AT ALL SAINTS in JUNE/JULY 
Tuesday 30 June, 6.30pm – REQUIEM MASS for Fr Clifford Jones, Honorary Assistant Priest at All Saints 1990 – 1994. All welcome. Refreshments will be served afterwards.

Sunday 5 July, 7.15pm (after Benediction) – ORGAN RECITAL – NICHOLAS MANNOUKAS, Dr John Birch Organ Scholar at All Saints since September 2013. Programme: J. S. Bach Prelude and fugue in B minor BWV544; Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein BWV641; In dir ist Freude BWV615. J Rheinberger: Intermezzo from Sonata no. 6, op. 119. C M Widor: From Symphonie no. 4, op. 13 iii. Dolce, iv. Scherzo, vi. Finale. Retiring collection to support the Choir and Music at All Saints (suggested donation £4). The All Saints Licensed Club/Bar below the Church will be open after this recital. 

Thursday 9 July, 6.30pm – FUNERAL MASS for Philip Harland. All welcome. Refreshments will be served afterwards.

Saturday 11 July, Devotions to Our Lady of Walsingham will take place at 11.30 am followed by Low Mass of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at 12 noon.

EVENTS ELSEWHERE in JUNE/JULY 

Wednesday 1 July, 6.30pm, Farm Street Church Hall – THE CURRENT SITUATION IN SYRIA – a Talk by Fr Ziad Hilal SJ followed by a Q&A session. Syrian Jesuit Fr Ziad works with the Jesuit Refugee Service as Director of the St Saviour Centre in Homs where he lived with Fr Francis van der Lugt SJ until his murder in April 2014. All welcome. Entry free – a small donation is requested for refreshments.

ALL SAINTS’ WALSINGHAM CELL DAY PILGRIMAGE – All Saints’ Walsingham Cell will be making a day pilgrimage to Salisbury Cathedral on Saturday 4 July. This is in the tradition of its highly successful pilgrimages in recent years to other cathedral cities. Everybody is welcome. Please contact Ross Buchanan on 020 7221 1312 if you are interested or would like to know more. 

Thursday 9 July, 6-30pm – 8pm, St Paul’s Cathedral – LEARNING TO WALK IN THE DARK – Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest, Professor of Religion at Piedmont College, Georgia and author of best-selling guides to the Christian spiritual life. Free admission/all welcome.

Friday 17 – Monday 20 July – PARISH PILGRIMAGE TO WALSINGHAM, led by Fr Julian Browning.

ALL SAINTS RESTORATION PROJECT UPDATE

The last of the long-awaited glass lampshades have now been fitted, so that all five pendant lights are fully illuminated. Still to come is the fitting of the specially made light fittings for the choir stalls (to be attached to the wrought iron grilles). When all are in place we will be able to fine-tune the settings of the overall lighting scheme, although some of this work will have to wait until the darker days of autumn.

As well as the lighting, the switchover of the complete new wiring above and below decks to new electric meters has now taken place. The smoke detection system has been installed and activated.

Funds for the project continue to be raised and the total received at the time of writing is now a splendid £408,750.

As this complex project reaches its conclusion, and the final invoices are received, we have recently had a number of generous gifts that have eliminated the loans of £35,000 that we initially relied upon for the project to get underway. Any more gifts will allow us a small reserve against the final cost of the works. If there are any surplus funds when all bills are paid, these will go towards future restoration projects at All Saints.

We are indebted to all those donors who gave so generously to replace the out-dated electrics and to relight the church so that all the achievements of earlier phases of restoration work are now revealed. Thank you! 

HOW YOU CAN HELP………. please make cheques payable to: 

All Saints Church Restoration Appeal and send them to:  
The Parish Administrator, 7 Margaret Street, London W1W 8JG.
Please indicate where Gift Aid may be applied or send in a completed Gift Aid envelope from in church, as it increases the value of your contribution by 25% at no cost to yourself. Thank you!

ONGOING SUPPORT for HOMELESS PEOPLE through:
MARYLEBONE PROJECT run by the CHURCH ARMY – A Day Centre, Residential and Transitional accommodation provider, re-settlement project and Educational and Training Unit for women. The Emergency Bed Unit – for which we have for some years helped to provide the funds for one of the 4 beds – offers a safe haven and refuge for women escaping domestic violence, financial crisis, sexual exploitation and mental health issues.

Seasonal Appeals – The grand total for collected at All Saints for mission activities in 2014 was £6,463 through the All Saints Festival and Lent Appeals. £3,463 went to the Marylebone Project and a further £3,000 to Us (formerly USPG).

Year Round Support – we also support the Marylebone Resettlement Project with non-perishable food and toiletries or household necessities like cutlery or bed linen/blankets.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed so generously recently – a good number of parcels and bags of food and household essentials have been left in Church or handed in to the Parish Office recently and we shall need to arrange a drop off to the Project to deliver them. Thank you!
Please continue to donate these so we can help more people in need.

Day-to-day Support – we respond to the needs of homeless people who visit the church, providing luncheon vouchers for the West London Day Centre for rough sleepers who apply to the office and allowing a few individuals, who need a place to shelter or sleep during the day, to rest in the back of the church. We have created an information resource for Church Watchers, giving useful advice to homeless and vulnerable people seeking particular support or services. In the face of a rising tide of homelessness in London, please help us fund and support people in need through our Mission project.

Want to help someone sleeping rough but don’t know how?
Call Streetlink on 0300 500 0914 and they will get a visit from the local Street Team who can put them in contact with the services they may need.

FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS OR ASSISTANCE FROM ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET:-
* If you would like to encourage others to take an interest in All Saints/keep up with what is happening here, please forward this email on to them, or to people you would like to invite to services or tell them about our website www.allsaintsmargaretstreet.org.uk, which has a full colour 360 virtual tour for viewing the wonderfully restored interior of the Church – see www.allsaintsmargaretstreet.org.uk/history/virtualtour – before a visit or if unable to travel.

* If you know of others who would like to receive this correspondence please encourage them to sign up for the email on the All Saints website – see the tab News & Events> Weekly Newsletter.

* If you would like prayers offered at All Saints, please email the Parish Administrator Mrs Dee Prior at: astsmgtst@aol.com. Or make use of the prayer request facility on the website at: www.allsaintsmargaretstreet.org.uk/prayer.

If you would like any pastoral assistance, please do not hesitate to contact the Vicar, Prebendary Alan Moses: alanmoses111@gmail.com. Or Assistant Priest Fr Michael Bowie: mnrbowie@hotmail.com.

DAILY SERVICES AT ALL SAINTS
On major weekday feasts, High Mass is sung at 6.30pm

SUNDAYS in Church
Low Mass 6.30pm (Saturday), 8am and 5.15pm. Morning Prayer 10.20am
HIGH MASS AND SERMON, 11am and   CHORAL EVENSONG, SERMON and BENEDICTION, 6pm.

MONDAY – FRIDAY
Morning Prayer 7.30am
Low Mass – 8am, 1.10pm and 6.30pm
Evening Prayer 6pm
(Except Bank Holidays – 12 noon Mass only)

SATURDAY
Morning Prayer 7.30am
Low Mass – 12 noon and 6.30pm (First Mass of Sunday)
Evening Prayer 6pm

Confessions
A priest is available for confessions/counsel Monday – Friday from 12.30-1pm and at 5.30pm Monday – Saturday, or by appointment. (Special arrangements apply in Lent and for Holy Week.)

www.allsaintsmargaretstreet.org.uk and e-mail: astsmgtst@aol.com.