ST ALBAN’S CHURCH COPENHAGEN MAGAZINE FOR THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN DENMARK 2019/2020 www.st-albans.dk Winter St. Alban’s is a quarterly magazine printed by: JESPERSEN TRYK, Ved Langebro 1, 2300 København S. Email: [email protected] Copies are available in church and it is available to view on our website: www.st-albans.dk Maria Kvan Mortensen kindly distributes it by post to members of our community who cannot access it electronically. Editor: Beverly Lloyd-Roberts Managing Editor: Revd Smitha Prasadam. Photographers: As stated. Article authors: As stated. Front Cover: Animal Blessing Service in October, 2019 Contributions, articles and photographs are gratefully received. Please send to [email protected] Saint Alban's Church follows the Danish copyright law. If we have unintentionally published something without permission, please contact us. 2 ~ 2 ~ Service times St Alban’s, Copenhagen Holy Communion services are held every Sunday morning at 10:30. Holy communion (or morning prayer) every Wednesday morning at 10:30 (Not on 31 December 2019) Other services are held according to the season. Coming up in the next few months: Nine Lessons and Carols 8th December 1600 9th December 1900 Christmas Messy Church 14th December 14:00 Poetry and Carols 14th December 18:00 Children’s Nativity Christmas Eve 12:00 Midnight Mass Christmas Eve 23:30 Christmas Festival Eucharist Christmas Day 10:30 More detailed information on the services are on the notice boards and the website closer to the time of the service. St Alban’s Church in Aarhus, Jutland We also have an English-speaking congregation in Aarhus, Jutland, which meets at 18:00 on the last Sunday of the month (except December), in a church we gratefully borrow from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark. Our Chaplain, Revd Smitha Prasadam of Saint Alban’s, Copenhagen, will normally lead the services. The Christmas Carol Service is on the 15th of December at 1800 Refreshments are served in Sognegården after the service. Everyone is welcome. Further details are available from Angela Hansen at [email protected] 3 ~ 3 ~ Message from the Chaplain: Advent is a time when we are invited to learn how to wait for the Lord who comes. The temptation is to eliminate Advent and move directly to Christmas. I’m writing this message in the last week of November having come from a school Nativity play. It is Tuesday and Advent Sunday is still a few days away. The moment the Nativity draws near, it is time to start partying, “hyggeligt” Christmas lights are all around us, people are already saying “Happy Christmas!” We just cannot wait (says one who regularly prays – “Lord give me patience but hurry!”) So, what can Advent teach us about waiting? Or Christmas about gift? Or indeed Epiphany about revelation? First of all we who are rich must open our eyes to the poor who have no option but to wait. We too must share the patient vigil as they wait for a just and fairer sharing. One tiny element is deepening our understanding of how God comes. The coming of God is not like the cavalry galloping to our rescue. God comes from within; from our deepest interiority. He is as St Augustine said, “closer to ourselves than we are to ourselves.” During Advent we exercise patience as we wait and watch for the coming of the Lord; for his coming is not just the birth of a child but of a word. One might even say it was the coming of a language. It needed thousands of years before there was a way in which God’s Word could be spoken in the form of Jesus just like it took thousands of years for the development of the English of Shakespeare which now is used by poets, preachers, philosophers and peasants. The Word of God does not come down so much as it wells up within us and through our human language bringing hope, joy, reconciliation and peace. They are words within the Word. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory” as the glorious prologue to the Gospel of John proclaims. 4 ~ 4 ~ Alienation and division are as old as humanity itself but so too is the desire for reconciliation and unity. The prophet Isaiah who we hear throughout Advent and Christmas says, “they will hammer their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles. Nation will not lift sword against nation, there will be no more training for war.” (Isaiah 2.4). Reconciliation is the renewing of relationships, it is a returning to friendship among persons, families, churches and groups. Jesus singles out those who worked for reconciliation for special blessing. “Happy are the peacemakers, they shall be called the children of God.” (Matt 5.9) The relationship between God and God’s people was strained and broken many times in the history of the chosen people. With each return to friendship the covenant is renewed and strengthened and the reconciliation celebrated. The formal return to Yahweh led to the annual celebration of the great day of Atonement (At-One-Ment). Isaiah constantly speaks of the coming Messiah as the “Prince of Peace” and when Jesus is out and about we see that this is indeed his business. He worked for reconciliation. He saw that there could be no reconciliation without forgiveness - so forgiveness became a major theme in his preaching and activity. This gives us hope. God is a concerned father, a good shepherd seeking out the lost and the lonely and setting right that which is broken and fractured. Jesus emphasises that it is not just the person’s relationship with the community, wider society or environment though these are important. It is the life-giving relationship with the Living God Let us pray then that the God of Advent meet us as we face the encircling darkness, that we may have the courage to challenge injustice, guard against self-righteousness, move towards the coming Light of the world and proclaim peace. Revd Smitha Prasadam Chaplain 5 ~ 5 ~ 6 ~ 6 ~ Harvest Festival On Sunday 29th September 2019 there was a fantastic ‘Harvest Festival Service’ at St. Alban’s Church. I have been coming to St. Alban’s for 9 years now and I have never seen such a good ‘All Age Service’. I think I can say there was definitely something for everyone in that service. The warm glow it gave me seeing all the happy faces of the children getting involved in the service was wonderful. Other churches across the world seem to be worrying about not having enough children in their regular congregation but here at St. Alban’s the youngsters are gaining in numbers. This is wonderful, because as Jesus said, "Let the children come to me and do not stop them, because the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Matthew 19:14. Encouraging children to join in not only 7 ~ 7 ~ brings new children in as they tell their friends how good it is at our church, but it brings their families in too. In the future these children will remember how they enjoyed Church when they were young and be more likely to take their children to Church. A truly good way of spreading the good news of Christianity. The flowers in the service were wonderful, a big thanks must go out to our dedicated team of flower arrangers. Thanks, must also go to Martin and Merete, who not only baked a harvest loaf for us but also one for the congregation in Århus. The loaves were works of art, almost too good to eat, a sheaf of corn with a cute little mouse on each. The next ‘All Age Service’ was wonderful too, with the children using building blocks with words on them to say what really builds a church. This was fantastic as it gets the children to realise from a young age that it is the people that are the main building blocks of the Church. Words and photos by Bev Lloyd-Roberts 8 ~ 8 ~ HARVEST FAIR St Alban’s first ever Harvest Fair, held on 26 October in Skt Ansgar’s Church hall, is now a happy memory. When the annual summer fete had to be cancelled at the last minute the obvious alternative was to hold an autumn event, if only to sell the vast amounts of jam and marmalade stockpiled in the cupboards. Luckily Skt Ansgar’s Church hall was available on a convenient autumn Saturday, and so a project group set to work to mount a Harvest Fair. The PR team immediately produced lively posters and publicity material, the usual suspects and a good many more were cajoled into baking enough cakes and scones to feed an army, the kitchen and food serving teams gathered their forces, Aarhus contributed a car boot full of goodies, the home produce team labelled and hatted vast numbers of jars of jam and marmalade, the Løgismose supermarket again contributed a general basket of goodies for a raffle, the books people were ruthless in selecting books as we only had half the usual sales space, the plants people surpassed themselves for the time of year, and the gifts and bottles tombola people couldn’t believe their luck with all that came weltering in. Members of the project group had fun decorating the hall and were joined 9 ~ 9 ~ by others to make up a heavy gang for all the driving and fetching and carrying. Every one of them deserves a big thank you for all their efforts.