St James's Church, Sussex Gardens

08/09/2026

08/09/2026

On the 4th anniversary of the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Almighty God,
You are the author and sustainer of all human life;
grant that your servant, Elizabeth our Queen,
whom you granted a long and happy reign as Monarch of these lands
may be forgiven her sins and rewarded with that eternal life
promised to all those born again
in the water of baptism and power of your Spirit.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit
God, forever and ever,
Amen.

Eternal rest, grant to her O Lord,
And let Perpetual light shine upon her.
May she rest in peace.
Amen.

May her soul, and the souls of all the departed,
Through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Amen

08/09/2026

THE NATIVITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
Matthew 1:18-23

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.
When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph,
but before they lived together,
she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.
Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man,
yet unwilling to expose her to shame,
decided to divorce her quietly.
Such was his intention when, behold,
the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
"Joseph, son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.
For it is through the Holy Spirit
that this child has been conceived in her.
She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus,
because he will save his people from their sins."
All this took place to fulfill
what the Lord had said through the prophet:

Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,

which means "God is with us."

REFLECTION
Other than Jesus, there are only two saints whose birth is given the honour of a feast day: John the Baptist and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Why?
Because both are seen as preparing the way for the coming of Jesus.
John is the Forerunner: the one who will prepare the way for Christ by his preaching of repentance.
Mary is the one chosen by God to bear the Saviour of the world.
She is the 'Theotokos' - the one who bore God in her womb, who gave him our humanity so that, from the moment of his conception, he might heal our wounded human nature.
Christ came to hit the 'factory reset button' on how to be human, but he could not have done that without the 'Yes' of the young Jewish girl whose birth we celebrate today.

07/09/2026

Welcome to our livestream

07/09/2026

TODAY'S READING
Luke 6:6-11
On a certain sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and taught,
and there was a man there whose right hand was withered.
The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely
to see if he would cure on the sabbath
so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.
But he realized their intentions
and said to the man with the withered hand,
"Come up and stand before us."
And he rose and stood there.
Then Jesus said to them,
"I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath
rather than to do evil,
to save life rather than to destroy it?"
Looking around at them all, he then said to him,
"Stretch out your hand."
He did so and his hand was restored.
But they became enraged
and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.

REFLECTION
Today's Gospel invites us to think about how we use the Sabbath.
Is it any different from any other day of the week, other than that we go to Church?
Do we shop? Do we go out? Do we spend a bit of time 'in the office'?
Of course, some people have to work on the Sabbath to keep things going.
But as a culture we have abandoned the notion of a collective day of 'being' rather than 'doing'.
A day we can spend time with our loved ones doing the most important thing we will ever do: build loving relationships.
And remember, it's not just about me.
Do my 'not working' actions mean other people have to work to benefit me?
How much is my 'not working' causing other people to work and so not enjoy the benefits of sabbath?
I'm not saying there are hard and fast answers here.
But I am saying there are hard and fast questions.

06/09/2026

OPENING PRAYER FOR THE 14th SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY

Almighty God,
whose only Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence:
give us pure hearts and steadfast wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

05/09/2026

TODAY'S READING
Luke 6:1-5
While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath,
his disciples were picking the heads of grain,
rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.
Some Pharisees said,
“Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?”
Jesus said to them in reply,
“Have you not read what David did
when he and those who were with him were hungry?
How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering,
which only the priests could lawfully eat,
ate of it, and shared it with his companions?”
Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”

REFLECTION
What is the Sabbath for?
It is to set aside time for the worship of our Creator God: to realign our lives with His divine life.
It is to set aside time for us to be with friends and family: it is about relationships.
It is, as the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, once memorably described it, "the day we stand still and let all our blessings catch up with us."
It is a day to be rather than to do.
But that doing also includes acts of charity and defining what those works are is impossible as it depends on so many factors.
What Jesus will not allow is a dogmatic, blanket ban, on any activity if love demands action and inaction would demonstrate a lack of love.
And there are warnings about that throughout the Scriptures, notably in 1 Corinthians 13:
"If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing".

04/09/2026

TODAY'S READING
Luke 5:33-39
The scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus,
“The disciples of John the Baptist fast often and offer prayers,
and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same;
but yours eat and drink.”
Jesus answered them, “Can you make the wedding guests fast
while the bridegroom is with them?
But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them,
then they will fast in those days.”
And he also told them a parable.
“No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one.
Otherwise, he will tear the new
and the piece from it will not match the old cloak.
Likewise, no one pours new w**e into old w**eskins.
Otherwise, the new w**e will burst the skins,
and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined.
Rather, new w**e must be poured into fresh w**eskins.
And no one who has been drinking old w**e desires new,
for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

REFLECTION
We seem to live at a time when long held beliefs are, at best, treated as provisional, or, at worst, discarded as irrelevant in and to our modern world.
Today's Gospel sounds a warning to such an approach.
Yes, Jesus came to usher in a new way of relating to God - through Him.
But Jesus did not come to abolish the old but to fulfil it - to give it its deepest and truest meaning.
Many Christians today would benefit from understanding that approach.
The faith we believe today is like a tree that has grown from an seed and grown over many centuries.
Sometimes it has grown in bad ways and those limbs have become diseased and died off.
But the tree is still the one that recognisably grew from that seed and pretending that what has gone before is irrelevant or unbelievable remains a dangerous approach.
New growth needs its roots!

03/09/2026

TODAY'S SAINT
Pope St Gregory the Great, Pope and Teacher of the Faith

Merciful Father,
who chose your bishop St Gregory
to be a servant of the servants of God:
grant that, like him, we may ever long to serve you
by proclaiming your gospel to the nations,
and may ever rejoice to sing your praises;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.