Blog

Our Easter service will be broadcast from Mikael Agricola Church at 10am on 4 April. Follow along by downloading the order of service.

Easter-Day-2021.Final_

Good Friday services from the Helsinki Cathedral chapel will be available online midday Friday.

Follow along using the order of service below.

Good-Friday-2021.FINAL_

Our Maundy Thursday service in the Helsinki Cathedral chapel will be available on Facebook and YouTube.

Follow along by using the order of service below.

Maundy-Thursday

It is with great sadness that I must bring the news about Joan’s death. She died earlier this month.

Joan is remembered as a long-standing friend and pillar of support of the Anglican Church of St Nicholas, Helsinki. The church was not the only place where she was actively serving the community. Many organizations and individuals will be missing her hard work and enthusiastic support.

In the Church she is remembered as a person who was actively enganging in various activities, leading by her example. She greeted visitors at the door, handing out hymn books and service sheets, she made sure we had readers in the service, and looked after the collection and the bread and the wine. She took the responsibility of arranging church coffee for many years. No Annual Bazaar would have been possible without Joan passing on her long experience to the next generation.

Until the Annual Meeting in 2020 she was an active, always forward-looking member of the Chaplaincy Council.

She will be sorely missed by many in the Church and we aim to arrange a memorial service later this year. Joan’s funeral service was today, Tuesday 19 January 2021 in the Espoo Cathedral.

Joan is survived by her two children.

Go forth upon your journey from this world, O Christian soul;
in the name of God the Father who created you.
In the name of Jesus Christ who suffered for you.
In the name of the Holy Spirit who strengthens you.
In communion with all the blessèd saints;
with the angels and archangels and all the heavenly host.
May your portion this day be in peace and your dwelling in the city of God. Amen.

May she rest in peace and rise in glory.

Tuomas Mäkipää, Anglican Chaplain

Sunday 15th November, Gospel according to Matthew 25.14-30.

Dear sisters and brothers and other siblings in Christ.

This story we just heard feels so unfair to me, so unfair. How can it be that the slave who is too afraid to invest the money but hides it instead, still giving it back to his master, is the one who gets punished? How can he be thrown into the outer darkness with nothing? I am sorry but it does not feel very Christian to me. So, I decided, I have to dig deeper.

I guess most of you have heard the interpretation that this story really is about the spiritual talents we have, our gifts, what we are naturally good at. That we are not supposed to hide our talents, keep them to ourselves but to put them into good use. Of course, who could oppose that? Still, I want us to take a bit closer look at what really happened in the story and then decide what we want to draw from it.

First of all, those slaves were given talents. Each talent contained from 30 to 40 kilograms, from 66 to 88 pounds of metal. During Roman times one silver talent was equivalent to 6000 denarius. One denarius was one day’s pay for a regular worker. So, one talent was a huge amount of money, like one worker’s lifelong pay. And one slave was given five talents, one got two talents and the last one got one talent.

During those times it was a common belief that there was a certain amount of resources for the whole humanity and the question was how those resources should be divided. If someone got more, someone else lost some. That is why greed truly was seen as a sin. There was no honor in collecting too much wealth for yourself. It was comparable to theft. Honor and shame were important factors during those times. That is why the masters often let their slaves do their dirty work, take care of them getting richer and richer. The slaves had no honor to lose.

So, we have this master who is very rich and definitely does not need more. Still, he goes away and hands over his wealth to his slaves to make him even more money. Those are rewarded who have done that but the one who does not want to support his master’s greed gets punished. So, he gives back what was his master’s in the first place. Could we not see that as a courageous act? He is going against his master’s greedy nature preventing him from having too many resources, which would mean less resources to those in need. So, who is really to blame?

Yes, when we spiritualize this story, it becomes a whole different story, because our spiritual talents are not limited. When I share my talents they often just grow stronger, they intensify. Other people get a lot, too. Everyone wins. But why tell a story about money if you are trying to say something about spiritual talents? Even if that would be the right interpretation for this story, I do want to talk about money, too. I think these days we need to talk about it, since the capitalist Western society sometimes seems to have forgotten, that our resources are limited. It seems to have forgotten that we should use our talents for everyone’s benefit, not just for our own – just as those first two slaves used their talents for their master’s benefit and not their own.

Our planet is suffering because of our greed. One per cent of people own more than the other 99 per cent altogether. And still, greed is not seen as such an enormous sin in our culture in general. No, we give awards to best investors. We applaud rich people who give some money to charity while still living a life of material abundance.

I think in some ways we have traveled back to the Middle Ages when the poor people were needed for the rich to be able to do good deeds when giving the poor handouts. We are in need of reformation. We need to learn to settle with less material goods, less pollute lifestyle, sharing our resources more evenly among humankind.

You might say I am not being true to the original meaning of today’s Gospel. It is so common to talk about those talents as those strengths we each have and that we need to put in good use. But who is to say what is the right interpretation? I am saying that the spiritual understanding of those talents at its worst is a nice way to sustain the capitalist structures without them being questioned. To question the rich being allowed to get even richer is not common in our Western society nowadays. We tend to live as the resources were limitless. The Earth, and especially the younger generation using its voice, is finally telling us: “No, the resources are what they are and you have overused them. You need to stop. You need to repent and start living in a sustainable way.”

What if today’s Gospel is not so much a story of how things should be but a description of how things are in reality? Some people have too much and get even more and some people have nothing. “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” Some people are living their lives as if they were in hell already.

What if the Gospel of today is good news for those who are suffering, both people and the Earth? What if today this sermon is more demanding to people like me and more gospel to those who have not received so many earthly goods, so many resources? And what if the gospel to me and people like me lies in the fact that if we all learn to use our talents in service of the earth and the whole humankind, it is actually better for each one of us. Then heaven touches the earth, the kingdom of God is among us and we all live a life of abundance.

Though being formed and being active all ready since 1984, the Anglican Lutheran Society might be new to some of you. Anglican Lutheran Society aims to promote a wider interest in and knowledge of our respective traditions and common developments, to develop opportunities for common worship, study, friendship and witness, and to encourage prayer for the unity of the Church and especially between Anglicans and Lutherans world wide.

In their publication “The Window”, October issue introduced a variety of aspects to read about. Page 18 presents The Most Rev Dr Tapio Luoma, the Archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, as he was interviewed about his role as a ‘Thursdays in Black Ambassador. According to Revd Luoma: “Each generation must therefore recognize where people’s rights are being violated and involve themselves in advocacy on their behalf.”

Page 21 presents the Roman Catholic perspective to the past 60 years of ecumenical relations. It provides some excellent background to the Roman Catholic Church’s engagement in the ecumenical process since the Second Vatican Council and also touches the new multilateral body in which the Catholic Church is actively involved: the Global Christian Forum (GCF).

Page 25 presents a text from Revd Clare Amos, a former programme coordinator for Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation at the World Council of Churches, and a former director of theological studies in the Anglican Communion Office in London. She writes about how Orthodox and Anglican appeals from 1920 remain inspiration for unity today. Revd Amos notes that: “Looking back on both documents from the perspective of 100 years one can give thanks for what has been achieved.”

Page 31 looks ahead towards The Third Ecumenical Kirchentag which is due to take place from the 12th to 16th May, 2021 in Frankfurt. It is expected to be “hybrid” event due to COVID-19. The first Ecumenical Kirchentag in Berlin in 2003 gathered about 200,000 participants. At the Second Ecumenical Kirchentag in Munich in 2010 there were about 130,000 present. Both previous events had more than 5000 international participants and the organizers hope that some international participation will be possible in 2021, depending on official regulations

Please, Click “The Window” and read in full. Enjoy!

A couple of weeks ago, our Youth Sunday School teacher asked if I could attend a webinar about how young peoples’ lives have been affected by the pandemic. It sounded quite interesting, as the pandemic had affected my life, just like everyone else. In Finland, we had a lock down, like many other places, and everything switched to online platforms. But these were not as interactive as face-to-face meetings, and it felt duller. The situation has eased, but there are clear signs of the pandemic still – masks, social distancing, etc. So, I was interested to hear about other peoples’ experiences during the pandemic, about how it was similar to mine and how it was different.

There were three panelists in the meetings. One of them was called Salma. She thought that the pandemic brought out the best in people. The Muslim communities she practices her faith with organized Zoom meetings so that no one would be lonely, and a lot of people attended these meetings. But at the same time, she had had negative experiences. A lot of people started avoiding her because of reports that a lot of Somalis had the coronavirus. Ramadan and Eid, two of the most joyful experiences of the year, felt boring and dull without the company of family and friends. And then there was the fear of the pandemic. But Salma was able to get over her fear after finding a verse in the Quran: “Every soul shall taste death”. This helped her realize we are all mortal, and helped control her fear of the pandemic.

The second panelist was named Daniel and he was from Ireland. He had just become manager of a Buddhist center when the lock down had started. For him, the coronavirus was an eye-opener, with the pandemic showing him that our lives are uncertain and are not controlled by us, but by God. The coronavirus also highlighted the importance of friendship with people of the same age and religion. Most of his friends are atheists, meaning that their priorities and struggles are very different. Being friends with someone who shares your values and principles gives you someone you can talk to. Having someone of your same age and faith also helps you to be bolder when showing that young people do practice faith. Daniel felt this was one of the responsibilities of young people during the pandemic.

The last panelist, Roni, was from Finland. In his opinion, one of the drawbacks of the pandemic was the inability to physically go to an event, for example a Sunday service. He normally volunteers for a lot of organizations, but suddenly those were also gone. Not attending events in person was something that affected his physical life and his spiritual life. When he went to confirmation camp, he had been taught that Christian faith was a chair that stood on four legs – reading the Bible, Holy Communion, prayer, and connection with other people. Suddenly one of the legs of the chair was gone. There were online services and online meetings, but to Roni they just didn’t feel the same. He found it hard to adapt to new situations and surroundings. Two things helped him adjust to the new normal: prayer and the bible verse Acts 17: 27-28: “God is not far from any one of us. In him, we live, move and we are.” The bible verse showed that God is not only present in places of worship, but also near every one of us.

I came to realize through the webinar that faith helped everyone to come to terms with the pandemic. It helped me realize that there are a lot of values in different faiths which offer consolation in difficult times. Faith also helped people to come together even when distanced. Online Sunday services and meetings with the respective faith communities helped people to come together. In some cases, these have been the only interaction people received in the whole week. People who believe in God will have better mental health during the pandemic because they have something to believe in and are able to see the broader picture and not just the immediate future. Practicing faith is a different and a better way to live out your life. The webinar was a good and new experience for me. I am grateful to the Anglican church for allowing me to participate.

Joel Sam Johnson

Please click on this link to view the edited Webinar on YouTube