WELCOME TO MELTON TEAM PARISH WEBSITE

Welcome to the Melton Mowbray Team Parish!

There’s so much useful and interesting information about our Team Parish on this, our new website – do take time to explore it.

And, if possible, we look forward to meeting you in person soon.

Every Blessing,
Mary (Barr)
Team Rector

If you can’t find what you’re looking for, do contact Julia, the Website Administrator by email julia@meltonparish.org.uk.

Team Rector Writes for Easter

“The foolishness of God?”

Dear Friends,

On the first day of this month, before 12 noon, many people play an April Fools’ prank on their family or friends. Have you ever rushed to the window to see if an eagle really has landed in your garden? When I was at college, I recall a colleague being tricked by someone by pretending to be their Bishop telephoning to check up on them… After a few moments the sound of laughter and the words, “April Fool” gave the prankster away!  

Although we don’t know the origin of April Fools’ Day, some have suggested that there is a connection between April Fools’ Day (also known as All Fools’ Day) and Good Friday, and that the very first Good Friday was on April 1^st.

Whether or not that is true, the events of the first Holy Week can certainly seem to be utterly foolish by the standards of our own day and age – just as they were at the time. In our anxious and fearful world where many powerful leaders are authoritarian, ruthless and self-seeking, Jesus comes to us in peace, riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. He comes in humility, washing the dusty smelly feet of His followers. He comes in obedience, allowing Himself to be betrayed, arrested, condemned and crucified on that first Good Friday.  Yet on Easter Day, Jesus was raised to new life by God, and His first friends and followers were witnesses to this event. In the light of Easter, they came to see how God’s power and wisdom were wonderfully at work in Jesus.

What seemed utterly foolish from a human perspective was in fact God’s ultimate wisdom. And so the message of the cross of Jesus Christ – His death and resurrection – has been at the heart of the Christian faith ever since.  As the Apostle Paul would later put it in his letter to the Church at Corinth:

“The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified… Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1. 18, 20 – 25).

Wishing you every joy and blessing in the light of Jesus Christ, God’s Easter wisdom,