St. Cuthbert's celebrates 175 Years!

 

Our Father - praying with Jesus

 Homily for Trinity 6 - Year C – Eucharist – 27.vii.2025

(Genesis 18.20-32; Colossians 2.6-19; Luke 11.1-13)

Today’s Gospel reading addresses that most basic of questions: “How should I pray?” And Jesus gives two answers. The first is simply a prayer you can use… and it’s the Lord’s Prayer. The second answer is an encouragement to go on praying, be persistent just as you’d go on asking for something you really need. 

We find Jesus teaching the Lord’s Prayer in two different places in the Gospels. It’s St. Luke’s Gospel that we hear today, and we’re told that on this occasion “Jesus was praying in a certain place.” We don’t know just where, but he’s with the disciples, and it seems they recognise something special in what he is doing. The fact that Jesus is praying and the example of that prayer is what prompts them to ask, “teach us to pray.” 

The other occurrence is in St. Matthew’s Gospel where it’s part of the three chapters which we call the Sermon on the Mount. Actually, it falls right in the middle of what Jesus says. Jesus has been saying that we shouldn’t make a show of our religion. Don’t make a big thing of how you pray; don’t stand out in practising piety or advertising what you give or do because of your religion; don’t think that long prayers and petitions in public are what God wants. God already knows what you need. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t ask him. But it will affect the way you pray. And then Jesus goes on, “Pray in this way…” And what follows is the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father…” 

The way the prayer starts tells us something important. Our Father… We’re not praying alone. It’s not just me on my own. Prayer is not just about me. And it’s prayer with Jesus – prayer to our Father, and his.

‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ That’s the request that the disciples of Jesus make in today’s Gospel reading. It’s not just that they have seen other people praying and been impressed. They see Jesus pray. The disciple who asks, “Teach us to pray,” does so when he’s with Jesus – when he’s seen how Jesus has taken the trouble and time to go to that “certain place” with the definite intention of praying. It’s when Jesus has finished praying that the disciple makes his request. That’s a reminder to us that to pray is to learn what it is to be Christ-like. Jesus prays, and we can pray and grow with him. By prayer we can grow to be like him. How we address God tells us that prayer is a shared calling with Jesus: “Father…” When we address God, we address him as Jesus addressed him. God is our Father, and Jesus is our brother in prayer. 

 “Our Father…” We speak to God as a member of our own family - or rather we come each as a member of his family, and we come to him as the one we expect to listen to us. There’s a familiarity in the way we address God which distinguishes Christian prayer from that of other religions. Jesus uses the prayer, calls God his Father, and we are let in on the same terms. But then there’s that second phrase, “hallowed be thy name.” We’re invited to recognise the holiness of God. Prayer is not a matter to be taken for granted, and God is not to be taken for granted. If there’s one quality above all that is deficient in the life of the Church today, it’s a sense of holiness. Religion is not just to cheer us up. It’s not about showing other people that our faith is better than theirs. It’s not about having faith in the face of adversity. It’s not about feeling “spiritual.” It is about a sense of the sacred. Unless we recognise a holiness which comes from God, a holiness to which we may aspire, we remain earth-bound and dragged down by the very issues which we need to address in our prayer.

Turning to prayer is not about being an escapist. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…” is to be our prayer. Prayer for the coming of the Kingdom is prayer that God’s will and purpose be revealed. His will and purpose are to be made real in the world which we inhabit here and now. We need to want what God wants, and prayer can show us the way. Prayer is not about God keeping us safe. Prayer entails confronting those issues which might seem to deny the reality of God’s power. Natural disaster, war, poverty, injustice. Widespread fear, violence, the millions of refugees fleeing their own countries – or stuck and starving in Gaza. None of this is God’s will. When we address these things in prayer, then we know that we are beginning to look at the world with his eyes. 

And that’s only to make a start. We want to pray that we may see as God sees, but we need to start somewhere. Abraham’s prayer for the people of Sodom might seem to be fruitless, but perhaps he needs to do all that arguing with God so that he can understand the situation for the first time. And Jesus tells those who will listen that prayer at its most simple is about asking. “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Anyone who has had a cat knows something about this. The most frequently made request in any household with a cat is miaow. Invariably your cat will turn up on the wrong side of a door or window. And her miaow is a sort of prayer: let me in; let me out; feed me; brush me; stroke me. Jesus says that our prayers are answered in the way that you give in to the friend who bangs on your door in the middle of the night asking for help - even if you don’t want to, you’ll get up because of your friend’s sheer persistence. Cat owners know about that - don’t let them in the room they want to enter and they’ll tear up your carpet; don’t let them in or out at unearthly hours and they’ll keep you awake with their aptly named caterwauling. But while they demand your attention they might just have to learn that they can’t always get what they want. And so it is for us. The outcome of prayer may not be what you expected - but to find out you need to begin by asking, seeking and knocking at the door.

Very few of us manage to get our lives of prayer worked out as well as we might hope. That’s why some sort of structure helps. Pick a time when you can pray – and try to stick to it. As someone said to me, early mornings can work best before you find your good intentions being squeezed out by everything else that just happens. But other times can work. Whether you pray just once a day, or twice, three times or more, the important thing is Make sure you turn up and do it! Prayer depends not on our enthusiasms and whims but upon discipline, which involves the right use of time, a structure, content (Psalms, Bible readings, shared prayer), and - like Jesus in today’s Gospel - being “in a certain place.” 

And always prayer should be more than we expect. Start out on the discipline of prayer and new elements of prayer will emerge. Perhaps in our prayer as a congregation we need to recognise` that. We expect prayer for the sick and the departed - quite rightly, though there are certain issues about what qualifies you for the sick list and how you get taken off it! But what about other areas of life? What about those for whom we don’t regularly pray: those who’ve been baptised here, those preparing for marriage or trying to get through or over a bad one… issues which it doesn’t occur to us have a place in our prayers. 

There’s a lot there for any of us to address. But it all stems from the simple resolution to make a new start in prayer. And we can do that by taking seriously the invitation which Jesus makes to use that prayer he gives us, “Our Father”… and to ask, search and knock on the door.

St Cuthbert's JustGiving Campaign

We had hoped that planned work on the fabric of St. Cuthbert's Church would be completed within two weeks in February of this year.

Unfortunately this work revealed unforeseen problems - which is why there is still scaffolding in place around the church and inside too! Costs have far-exceeded our budget, but the work in hand is essential with widespread timber rot and many other issues.

We have a fund-raising campaign underway. This is how to give  directly to our fabric fund.  Details are as follows:

Account Name:  PCC St Cuthbert, Benfieldside

Account No:  20765678

Sort Code:  20-33-51

Our treasurer, Carol O’Malley, would like to acknowledge receipt of any gifts made and has asked if you could please email her so she can thank you individually.  Her email address is carolomalley@talktalk.net

Alternatively you can donate most easily via our JustGiving campaign - click on this link

Thank you!

“Can’t seem to find a way there...” An Easter Sermon

Easter Day – Eucharist – 20.iv.2025

(Acts 10.34-43; Luke 24.1-12)

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” The women who on Good Friday had seen Jesus taken down from the Cross and buried go back to the tomb, and find the stone rolled away – and the body gone. Instead, there are two men dressed in dazzling clothes who ask them this question: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here…”

Easter follows only after Holy Week. And Holy Week is a time of encroaching menace in which the forces of fear and terror close in upon that which is good and true to work violence upon it. Hailed as a King on Palm Sunday, Jesus on Good Friday will be reviled as worse than the criminal Barabbas and then crucified – and in between there are plots against him, betrayal by a disciple, desertion and denial by his friends, a record of faithlessness on the part of those who said they would follow him. In our world today, these days of Holy Week have seen still more horror and savagery visited upon innocent people in the atrocities of war and oppression in Ukraine, Gaza and so many countries of Africa – not least Sudan now two years into a civil war which has displaced millions. And then there are all the uncertainties with which we all live - with tariff war, falling stock markets, rising prices and job insecurity, and the fickleness of political strategy. 

Where can we put our trust and faith today? Where can we see signs of hope? What are those women doing who go to the tomb of someone they have seen killed just a couple of days earlier? What do they seek?

Just a week ago, early on Palm Sunday morning, the Ahli Arab Hospital in northern Gaza came under air attack with just twenty minutes warning. It’s a hospital run by the Anglican Church in the Diocese of Jerusalem. Its two storey Genetics department was destroyed. The Pharmacy and Emergency Department were damaged. Patients were evacuated, though one - a child who was being treated for a head injury - died in the process. It’s just one incident among many in a region where death tolls continue to rise, where most of the population has been made homeless, where power and clean water have been cut off, and food and medical supplies have been severely restricted – and where Israeli hostages continued to be held as a bargaining chip for both sides in deadlocked negotiations for a ceasefire. 

What hope is there in situations like this? When I spoke recently about life in today’s Holy Land (Israel / Palestine), I couldn’t get out of my mind an image which is lodged there: of standing by the sea in Tel Aviv–Jaffa with its hotels, beaches, surfers and sightseers - and knowing that just a matter of miles to the south that same coastline was shared by the population of Gaza. I went online the other day to work out how far Tel Aviv is from Gaza. It’s about 40 miles. Google Maps offers to tell you how to get from one place to another, but where you look to find the directions there was instead just a message: “Can’t seem to find a way there.”

How can you travel from Tel Aviv to Gaza? You can’t, except perhaps in a military helicopter or an armoured car. What hope is there in our world where so many barriers have been raised by war, fear and suspicion? 

That message: “Can’t seem to find a way there.” It’s not only about travelling along roads on a map. It’s something we may find in the lives we lead: in the frustration of things in which we fail; in the failure of relationships between people; in the lack of hope so many people feel in the absence of meaning in their lives, or something or someone to trust.

 “Can’t seem to find a way there.” That might have been the experience of those women who went out looking for the tomb of Jesus. What could they hope to find?

The women who went out to seek the tomb of Jesus on the first Easter morning left home at early dawn. You can imagine them leaving their home before it was properly light. They go with the expectation of finding only death – to do for the body of Jesus what they had been unable to do before his hurried burial, taking spices which should have been wrapped into his shroud. They find the tomb – but not the body. The stone is rolled away. The one they loved has gone.

With hindsight it may seem strange to us that their response is not of joy but perplexity. They don’t understand – in fact St. Luke’s Gospel tells us they were “terrified.” They find two men dressed in dazzling clothes – but there’s no ready assumption that these are angels. They can only be reminded that Jesus had spoken of his death – and that he would rise again. Now go and tell other people about it!

So they do. And what happens? The disciples don’t believe them: the women’s words “seemed to them an idle tale.” Only Peter goes off to see for himself. He finds no body – only cast-off grave clothes. We’re told simply that he is “amazed” – nothing more.

That’s something that may speak to us. Resurrection faith does not come about just because a grave is found to be empty. People don’t necessarily believe merely on the say-so of other people. Empirical evidence and argument only go so far. Knowing Christ to be risen is something that goes much deeper – it grows out of a sense of encounter and relationship… and in St. Luke’s account these are still to occur. The Resurrection needs to be made real in the hearts and lives of people called by Jesus.

The story doesn’t end at an empty tomb. Luke will take us on to relate how two disciples fail to recognise Jesus on the Emmaus Road until he breaks bread with them and shares his blessing. Mary Magdalene fails to recognise the Risen Christ until she hears him speak her name. The remaining disciples continue meeting in fear behind locked doors until Jesus comes to stand in their midst, to show them the scars of his wounds, to share food with them.

It’s been pointed out that if a first century writer had been making up the story of the Resurrection, he wouldn’t have women be the first to discover that the Tomb was empty. With all the prejudices of the time and the value placed on the witness of a woman who would take them seriously? Who would believe them? It’s not the way the world worked then. It’s not the way it works now.

But these women are the first witnesses to the Resurrection. They go even when others might say they have no hope of finding the way there. This is a truth we need to lay hold of. We can start today with those women who went early to the tomb with no real sense of hope but would find their lives transformed. We come together, and with open hearts we may find the risen Christ in our midst.

Let’s make these words of Janet Morley our prayer:

When we are all despairing;

when the world is full of grief;

when we see no way ahead,

and hope has gone away:

Roll back the stone.

Although we fear change;

although we are not ready;

although we’d rather weep 

and run away:

Roll back the stone.

Because we’re coming with the women;

because we hope where hope is vain;

because you call us from the grave

and show the way:

Roll back the stone.

Holy Week at St. Cuthbert's Church, Shotley Bridge

 

Holy Week at St. John's Church, Castleside

 

The "Friday Night Thing" @ St. Cuthbert's Church Hall