Welcome to St Peters Church St Peters Church, Maney, Sutton Coldfield is a lively and welcoming place to visit and worship God. Located in a thriving family community, the Church welcomes all ages.     Regular Service Times Morning Prayer at 8.30am, Evening Prayer at  5.00pm, except Mondays and Saturdays

Sunday Club has started!

Sunday Club at St Peter's Maney is now held every Sunday at St Peter's Maney during the 10.30 service, except on the first Sunday of each month which is a 0-99 Service. It is for pre-school and primary aged children. We have fun with stories, drama, games, songs and craft activities. So we hope you will be able to join us. The children's corner is still available for younger children. A member of our children's ministry team will be based here.

The next 0-99 service will be on 5th February when we will be celebrating Candlemas.

Best wishes from

The Children's Ministry team at St Peter's

 Sermon 17^th July

Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43

Having spent some of my day off on Monday weeding the parable of the wheat and the tares (or weeds) is rather dear to my heart. One of the joys of moving into a new house in the middle of winter is that you don’t really know what’s in the garden until the summer when things come up. And that can make you bit hesitant to pull up things that you might think are weeds in case they turn out to be something rare and beautiful.

Sometimes it is very hard to know which are the plants that we want to preserve and which are weeds. Because all of the plants that we grow in our gardens were wild once somewhere, or a form of them was. The distinction between weeds and cultivated plants can be a bit artificial. Is buddleia a weed? Or are foxgloves? Or bluebells? Or poppies? I must say I draw the line at bindweed and I’m afraid we have some of that. Some plants which were once highly desired are now classified as pests. Japanese knotweed is one example.

There is a tendency in many of us to want to sort the world into nice plants and naughty plants. To keep the good wheat separate from the bad weeds. We apply this deep desire to many aspects of life. We live in a nice part of the world. A place, we hope, that is full of good wheat. And many of us would like to keep the weeds at a distance. But that is not always possible. There’s been quite a lot of local anxiety recently about young people hanging around the church. Some of them smoke and drink alcohol. And people would rather they went somewhere else. Sometimes I would rather they went somewhere else. But I’m not sure if that’s a very Christian response. The church exists for everyone and we have to think carefully about how we convey the gospel.

Last Sunday the last edition of the News of the World rolled off the printing presses. There has been widespread public revulsion against the illegal hacking of phones belonging to people like Millie Dowler and the relatives of the 7/7 bombing victims. And the News of the World has paid the price for this. But we all know that many of the staff on that paper had nothing to do with phone hacking. And we also know I think that other newspapers have been involved in equally dubious activities. The separation of newspapers into goodies and baddies, wheat and weeds, is an artificial one. Hopefully the enquiries that have been announced will be able to uncover some of the widespread abuses that infect large sections of our printed media. But I will be surprised if we suddenly get a press that is above reproach. It will always be a mixture of wheat and weeds.

On the international stage we face similar issues. The war in Afghanistan was supposed to get rid of the Taliban. When they were in power their treatment of women was completely indefensible and we might love to see the back of them. But ten years later they are still there and we realise that there is no final military solution to the situation there. We will need to negotiate with the Taliban rather than just demonise and obliterate them.

The world is a complex place. We would like to divide it up into goodies and baddies, wheat and weeds.  We would like to lock up all the baddies and throw away the key. But maturity is about recognising that life is not so simple. People are a mixture of good and bad. And we cannot separate out the good wheat from the weeds. There is no such thing as a pure community. People have tried. The Puritans tried. The Taliban tried. But these attempts tend to end in intolerance and failure. We are called to live together. Wheat and weeds. Not necessarily knowing who is who. Leaving that judgement to God at the end of time.

And that recognition that people tend to be a mixture of good and bad applies not just to the rest of the world. It applies to us. We too are a mixture of good and bad. And Christian maturity is about acknowledging our sinfulness. Our need of God. Presenting ourselves to the world only as good wheat and ignoring our failings can be dangerous. As stalks of wheat we can grow too tall and proud. But when the wind blows our stems may not be strong enough to stand. Christian maturity is about acknowledging that we are a mixture of motivations. Positive and negative. We ask God’s to help us to be good and we leave the final judgement to him. Waiting for it with patience as it says in our reading from Romans.

Last Sunday morning, before the 8 o’clock service, I was listening to Farming Today and they were talking about hay production and how they were encouraging farmers to reduce their soil fertility and encourage more wild flowers to grow in their fields. If they did this they would reduce the quantity of hay they harvested. But they would improve the quality of hay they grew, giving a more varied diet to their animals and improving the meat that they produced. They would also, of course, improve biodiversity, the variety of plants, insects and animals that could live on their land.

That’s something we all need to think about in a world where biodiversity is under threat. Our destruction of natural habitats and our desire to grow single crops over huge areas has caused great damage to the wonderful variety of plants and animals that God has given us. In many areas of our world creation is in trouble. As Paul puts it, the whole creation is groaning in labour pains. And we need to do what we can to redeem it.

On Friday some students from Maney Hill School came to look at the plants and insects that we have in our church grounds. This will be a real help to us as we think about how we manage our trees and garden areas. There may well be things that we can do to encourage wildlife, perhaps by planting flowers that are good for bees or by trimming hedges only after the birds have nested. Putting up nest boxes and homes for bees.

We need a variety of plants: wheat and weeds. We might like to separate the world out into good and bad but the world is not like that. We are all a mixture and we need each other. And we need a variety of people. Unlike plants, people can change. They can become better. They can learn from one another. So we need to be tolerant of one another. Willing to live alongside each other. Helping one another to grow into the people God intended them to be. So that we can all produce the good fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace. Amen.