NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
The Australian novelist Kathy Lette
followed with a few witty thoughts of her own on the Queen's expenditure which
the puritans had been moaning about. She thought that if you had a monarchy it
should be much more fun. "For example, the Queen spent £24,000 on flowers
last year," she said. "Elton John spent £300,000. You can't have a
queen outshining the Queen." The royal family, she added, think optimism
is an eye disease. "What's the point of inheriting palaces if you can't
throw parties?" She wondered what the Queen could be unhappy about,
"You're on the postage stamp. You get licked all day. Now, that's what I
call job satisfaction. Michael Vestey Spectator 6th
July
PRAYER OF THE WEEK
I pray you, good Lord Jesus, by the love you had for your
young disciple John, to make me thankful for all you have given to me in my
close friends. Bless them exceedingly above all that I can ask or think. Help
me to be one in heart with them through all separations, and to walk with them in
the path of your service. Then finally unite us in the place where love is
perfect and immortal, even with yourself, my dear Lord
Jesus. Amen. Based on a Prayer by William Bright
THE BIG SQUEEZE
A barman was very proud of the fact that he could squeeze a
lemon so that no more juice would come out of it. He made a standing offer of
$1000 to anyone who could get more juice out of a lemon after he had squeezed
it. Every night big, burly regulars at the bar attempted to get more juice from
a lemon he'd squeezed, but no one could produce so much as a drop. But one
night a little bloke walked in and said he had heard of the standing offer and
would like to try. The barman said: "How do you think you could succeed
when all these big blokes have failed?" And the little guy said:
"Just give me a chance and I will show you." So the barman, thinking
his regulars would enjoy the joke, picked up a lemon and squeezed it. After
squeezing all the juice he could out of it he handed the dried rind to the
little fellow and said: "Here you go." The man took the lemon and
squeezed it and managed to get one, two, three, four, five, six more drops of
juice. Amazed the barman said: "Well, here's your $1000. What do you do
for a living? Are you a professional bodybuilder or what? And the little fellow
said: "No, I work for the Tax Department."
CONGRATULATIONS
Congratulations to Eileen Giles who is now a great, great
grandmother. Also to Martin Morse who celebrates his birthday on Mon. the 22nd,
and to Fr Bruce Ellis who celebrates his on Fri. the 26th. Congratulations too
to Kanda and Peter O'Connell on the birth of baby Ryan & to Wyn, a grandmother again..
PEW SHEET ON THE WEB
Extracts from each week's Pew Sheet are now on the Web. To
find the Parish Web Site you can use your search engine with the name
"Diocese of Wangaratta" and then click on
"Parishes" and then on "Wodonga". Permanent parish
information is found on this site. The Parish Pew Sheet, Verse, Articles and
what not, can be found by clicking from that site on to my own personal web
page.
The parish site address is:
http://home.netc.net.au/%7Ebishopslodge/Diocese/wodonga.html
This great annual Parish event is to be held on Thursday
15th, Friday 16th and Saturday 17th of August. The times are 10.00am lunch time
on Thursday, for the Primary School Section, and 10.00am lunch time on Friday
for the High School Section
The Concert starts at
We will gratefully receive any sponsorship donations as well
as offers to help on any or all of the three days.
QUESTIONS ANSWERED
There is a box on the table in the Narthex at
People believe in all different Gods, Christian God,
Buddhist and other Gods. How many gods are there or is there just one? Do they
all live up in the sky?
There is only one God. Different cultures and religions use
their own names for God. Buddhists don't have a name for any god, as they just
believe in ideas about happiness and they have rules for living. The sky is
really outer space. God lives there, but also lives close to us in our world.
How can God listen and watch all of us at the same time?
Nothing is impossible for God. God can do everything. He is
over all the universe, but He also wants to be our
friend.
If God looks like a God what does he look like?
Nobody has ever seen God. But God sent Jesus to the world,
to show us what God is like. If we learn more about Jesus, we learn more about
what God is like... not so much about what he LOOKS like, but about God's
personality. If we learn that Jesus is good, kind, merciful, helpful, truthful
and brave, then we can be sure that God his Father is just like that too.
FISH AND CHIPS
The Fish and Chip evening takes place this Wednesday, the
24th July in the Narthex at
REST IN PEACE TWINKLE
Shortly after we arrived in our first parish in
As she declined into old age she found that she could no
longer negotiate her well worn path up the trunk of an ancient rose bush and
over the wall from the back of the Rectory to the front, and so chose as her
daytime resting place a hollow in the raspberry patch, near the ground level coloured glass windows of the sanctuary. Her cravings for
God and worship were doubtless satisfied, to an extent, by the sound of the
sanctuary gong. Last week her staggering gait and extreme thirst and thinness
made us realise that life was becoming a great burden
to her, so we took her to the vet to be assessed. The verdict was hopeless; shrivelled kidneys, cancer and an imminent and unpleasant
end. So she was given a merciful injection and has been buried in the
The Vet's quick assessment and injection cost $89.00. It
does make you wonder if there isn't a pecuniary interest in Dr Phillip Nitchske's advocacy of euthanasia for human beings. Surely
not, it can only be disinterested altruism! AN
HA HA BONK!
By Steve Tomkins.
From the fascinating
Did you hear the one about the two nuns in the bath? Not if
you're a good Christian, you didn't - or at least, not without a disappointed tut, sorrowful reflections on the state of the world, and
nothing remotely like a snigger. Proper Christians give dirty jokes a wide
berth.
But why, exactly? What's wrong with
dirty jokes - or rather, what's dirty about sexual jokes? Why do faith, sex and
laughter make such an unhappy ménage à trois?
Traditional Christianity has left English without any words
for groin related comedy that don't suggest tight lipped disapproval. "Dirty jokes". "Smutty". For people who
read big newspapers there are "bawdy", "lewd"' and
"ribald", all of which have slunk into the dictionary out of the
backdoor of the brothel. Even "blue" comes from the shameful uniform
that jailed prostitutes once wore - hardly an image that suggests a happy,
healthy chuckle at the absurdities of the horizontal arts. Is it simply because
sex and religion don't mix? Hardly. You only have to
look in Christian bookshops, conference programmes
and bulletin boards to see that the two have an intimate relationship. We are
happy to talk about sex, openly and at length. Most of us are happy to do it
too - God willing - though whether equally openly and lengthily, I couldn't say.
And it's not as if we have a hangup
about comedy in general. Christians are not humourless,
and some are very funny indeed, one way or another. Admittedly, you don't get
many laughs per page in the Bible, and we have the example of sourpusses like
St Benedict who banned all laughter from his monasteries. But most of us are
reasonably positive about both laughter and sex, and enjoy a bit of one as much
as a bit of the other. So why do the two make such awkward bedfellows? It is,
it has to be said, a hard one.
Confusing
What is particularly confusing is that the other big comedy
taboo we have is God. We seem to feel that laughter pollutes the sacred and
diminishes the divine. "Jesus of Nazareth"' was, if memory serves,
more popular among Christians than "The Life of Brian". Whether this
taboo is right or wrong, the sex taboo is bizarrely different: surely
Christians are not afraid that jokes about bonking will desecrate it and
tarnish its glory.
You might assume sex is taboo in jokes for the same reason it's taboo in books and films - but I don't think so.
Because in books and films the danger is that we'll get wrongfully aroused.
Surely no one ever got turned on by a nob gag.
They're about as erotic as porn is funny. (Which information is for me, I
hurriedly add, totally second hand, of course, and not just because the other
one holds the remote.) Blue movies and blue jokes may both culminate in a
release of tension, but in pretty much opposite directions.
So I come, for a third time, to the question why. Why so
grumpy about rumpy pumpy?
Why no titters about boobs?
My theory
Well, here's my theory (though after all this teasing the
final unveiling may be a bit of an anticlimax rather than the contrary). It
won't be the best theory you've ever seen, but try not to make
comparisons...... Sex jokes treat the whole messy, wriggly business as a bit of
fun. As what it is for most contemporary practitioners: entertainment.
Some sex jokes are more entertaining than others, of course.
Some are clever, some are lame, some are nasty, some are liberating and some
make you wish we were still amoebas. But what they tend to have in common is
that they are earthy, they bring sex down to earth.
Where once it stood proud and majestic, it is left looking a bit limp and
silly.
When you're laughing at sex, it's difficult to see it either
as a transfiguring ecstasy or a diabolical evil. The churches, on the other
hand, whatever position they adopt, take the whole thing so darn seriously. We
spent such an insane number of centuries - thanks to the unhappy experiences of
"It's a beautiful gift from the Lord," we're told.
"It's very special but also very dangerous." "It's the greatest
act of love two people can share." "It's God's marital glue."
"It's the largest obstacle to overcome on the road to holiness."
Whatever angle you peep at it from, it's too big a spiritual
deal for merriment. And I'm sure there's some truth in most of those attitudes,
but there's also a load of hype.
Laugh at it.
The thing is, we're not alone in
being hyped. The modern secular West worships and glorifies sex almost as
stupidly as we once demonized it. Which I suppose is our fault too in the long
run. So surely the best thing the churches can be doing now is bringing sex
down to earth somewhere between the two extremes. And in this, sexual humour is on our side. Sex is not the greatest act of love,
or sinfulness, possible. Sex is not the greatest joy or fulfilment
life has to offer. Sex is not the most important thing in the world. Sex is not
the answer to any but a few very simple problems. It's just sex.
It's a bit soggy, a bit smelly, a bit noisy, a bit silly. Sometimes it's a lot of fun,
sometimes it's a bit crap. Sometimes it's awesome, sometimes it's horrible. And
it is very, very funny.
We've all of us spent too long inflating the self importance
of sex by, one way or another, stroking its ever growing ego. Let's laugh at
it, and see if we can make it flop.
IMPORTANT DATES
July 24th Fish and Chips night
Aug 4th Fete Meeting after 9.30 Eucharist
Aug 11th Confirmation
Aug 15 16 Choral Festival
Aug 17 Jazz Concert with Zoot Suit
Aug 28th Pastoral Care Meeting
Sept 1st Parish BBQ
Sept 6th Parish Dinner
Oct 26th Flower Show and Fete
Nov 27th Pastoral Care Meeting
DUTIES up to & including 21st
Cleaning & Tea Team 10
Vestry Dave Gillard
Mowing No one
Narthex Jean De Kruiff
Linen June Bird
Welcome Table Betty Caldow, Sarah
Joy Haddad
Door Beryl Anson, Daniel Saunders, Steven Watson
Readers Beryl Anson, Catherine Hayes, Georgia Cadman
Euch. Assistant Mary Nicholson
Intercessor Children
Servers Jayne, Cherie, Caldwell, Ashley, Travis, Howard
DUTIES up to & including 28th July
Cleaning & Tea Team 1
Vestry Hugh Elford
Mowing Peter Ohlin
Narthex Stan & Alice Windley
Linen Wendy McGregor
Welcome Table Anne Merbach, Diana Chinnock
Door Marie Draper, Dianne Guthrie, Roslyn Johan
Readers Marion Ellis, Dianne Smith, Julie Skilton
Euch. Assistant Di Smith
Intercessor Celebrant
Servers Angela, Miranda, Paige, Ryan, Howard, Liz
THIS WEEK IN THE PARISH
Monday 22nd July
Fr Andrew's Day off
7.15am Mattins
and Eucharist St John's
Tuesday 23rd July
7.15am Mattins
and Eucharist St John's
9.00am Pastoral Care Meeting - Parish Office
Wednesday 24th July
7.15am Mattins Emmanuel
10.00am Eucharist St John's
10.00am Eucharist
Thursday 25th July ST JAMES
7.15am Mattins & Eucharist
9.30am Bishop in Council and more Wangaratta
Friday 26th July Joachim & Anne
Fr Ellis' Day off
7.15am Mattins & Trad Rite Eucharist St John's
Saturday 27th July
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist
28th July Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
9.00am Eucharist Emmanuel
11.00am Eucharist Bethanga