Yokes and Burdens
More than seventy members of our wider congregation took part in Sunday’s Intergenerational Service, including from places outside London, and as far away as Nigeria and Germany! The theme for the service was from Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest..for my yoke is easy and my burden light..”
In her sermon Ayla invited everyone to choose a physical burden of equal weight for each hand, to feel its weight and then to think about how our hands felt when we put the burden down. There were some interesting burdens including bottles of wine, books, cans of juice, jam, actual weights, grapefruits and mustard and a banana! We were also encouraged to see this gesture of our hands with our palms held up without the heavy weights as a gesture of both giving as well as receiving.
This beautiful service included a reading from Christina Zandstra, a prayer from Peter Diracles and prayers from the Gardner family which included prayers of rememberance for those who died or who were injured in London on 7th July 2005.
“Peace be with you” was exchanged in sign language (one of the photos shows Jeremy demonstrating this)
And there was lots of lovely music. Jeremy on his guitar invited us all to sing two songs popular with Holy Hamsters and Hampstead Parochial School. Then It was very special in our own homes to sing “Holy, holy, holy” with the choir and Malachy’s trumpet accompaniment. The choir treated us to another amazing online anthem “His yoke is easy and his burden is light”, from Handel’s Messiah. As Margaret Willmer said in the chat box commenting on the anthem and the images of the different singers appearing as their voices joined in “I am in awe of the mathematics of putting this together”!
Zoom has its frustrations but it does enable us to be together and to share God’s love with each other.