Homily for Christmas Night

I wonder how many of you can say that there’s just one event that has changed the course of your life? - one person or one encounter which has made you ask what life is about, or how you should go about your way of living?

Erik Varden is now the Abbot of the Cistercian Monastery of Mount Saint Bernard in Leicestershire. In 2001 he was an up and coming young academic. He’s Norwegian by birth, but was living in Paris at the time, engaged in post-doctoral research. Life was good, comfortable, with lots of friends around him in one of the great cities of the world. One cold December evening he’d been out with friends and was going back to his lodgings which he rented from a Priory of Dominican Friars. The street where he lived was just five minutes’ walk from the Arc de Triomphe, next door there was a champagne merchant, and across the road there was an expensive restaurant where top politicians and business people would eat.

But as he went to unlock his door he realised there was an obstacle in his way. When he looked again he saw it was a man curled up in a sleeping bag lying right across the step. He felt panic… and then anger. He didn’t know what to do. Generally, when you see homeless people on the street - and we do all too frequently these days - you have the option to give them some money or just walk past. This man wasn’t asking for anything. But he was blocking the way. Erik Varden just wanted to get through the door, go to his room and get to bed. But there was no avoiding an encounter with this sleeping man if he himself wanted to sleep in the comfort of his own bed.

For a while he wondered if he could reach across with his key and then step over the man. But then he reminded himself that he called himself a Christian. He said a prayer, laid his hand on the man’s shoulder and woke him up. The man was about his own age, 25. Varden didn’t have much money with him, but said he’d use it to try to find him a room for the night. The homeless man said he could find somewhere for the amount he had. But he was obviously unsteady on his feet. So they walked together. As they went, the man talked about how he had come to Paris - and how long he had lived on the streets. He talked about the people who had died for lack of shelter - a dozen the previous year, who had frozen to death in the city. As they walked on, he pointed to piles of cardboard and otherwise undistinguishable shapes in the alleys and behind rubbish bins. They were sleeping people - and he knew who they were; he named them as they passed.

Finally they reached a street where the man said someone could help him with a room. Before they parted Varden asked his name. It’s “Manu,” he said - short for Emmanuel.

Was that a coincidence - or a sign? In the days before Christmas, especially on the last Sunday of Advent, we sing the great hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel.” It’s a prayer for the coming of Christ, who we call Emmanuel. The Bible reminds us of the meaning: Emmanuel - which means “God is with us.” Through his encounter with Manu, Emmanuel, Erik Varden found himself reflecting on his own life and what he was doing with it. He’d seen so many homeless people before. But now he had seen the world through the eyes of one of them - and seen its claim upon him. They had walked together, where so often we simply ignore other people or exchange just a few cursory words. As they parted, Manu shook his hand, and said, “Monsieur, je vous respecte. And I hope that one day, you and I will sit down and have a glass together.”

As he walked home, Erik Varden found himself filled with a strange joy. Something new had revealed itself. A poor man had shown him something of the dignity of humanity. And he realised a new vocation to seek and pray for a world which might be redeemed from misery and sin and lifted to the glory which God intends.

Tonight, as we celebrate Christmas, we recognise how God speaks to us in the child of Bethlehem, through a family who found themselves without a place they could call home, through the child who would be known as Emmanuel, “God with us.” The story is that after his birth, Mary and Joseph laid Jesus in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. That’s not to say that we should judge the innkeeper. It was probably just a fact - that the town was crowded with visitors, and the inn was full. But it doesn’t mean that they were left out in the cold. What we forget is that someone took them in - and they made the best of it. There may not have been a baby’s crib available for the new born child. But they took a feeding trough intended for animals, and re-fashioned it for the required purpose.

“Each of us is an innkeeper who decides if there is room for Jesus.” I’ve found myself meditating on these words in the last few days. Where do we encounter Jesus? Who are the people we meet who bring the presence of Jesus to us? Is there room in our hearts to welcome him?

“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me…. As you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”

The call of Jesus to recognise where he may be found is more than a call to charity. It’s to see the world as God’s, to see ourselves as part of something greater than the sum of our wants and desires, to recognise his purpose reaches out to us / to me - and that requires a response to God who is already there, if only we can see.

How does God speak to us? There is no one more vulnerable than a new-born child, and in the child of Bethlehem we find Emmanuel, God-with-us. In the Dismissal Gospel (at the end of this Eucharist) we read St. John’s great words. “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” Jesus is the Word God speaks to us. But at the same time he comes as a child, unable to speak - “the Word without a word,” as he has been called. He comes in the flesh we share to bring God into our human frame. He comes to evoke in us a response of love - but already God is love. Our call as Christians is simply to recognise that - and to make that love a reality in the way we will live.

Christmas at St. Cuthbert's

No crib for a bed…

It’s a cause of great frustration that we’re facing Advent, Christmas and the New Year without any heating in our church. Good to report that funds for the work have increased during the last month. But there’s still a way to go, and we still need the official permissions to do the work - and agreement on just what we are going to do with a new system!

So how will we celebrate Christmas? The answer, I hope, is with joy! We’ll miss the church, we’ll miss being able to decorate it. But we celebrate God reaching out to his world in Jesus - and he comes into the world as the most vulnerable of creatures: a child entirely dependent on the love and provision of two human beings, Mary and Joseph; a child born away from the comforts of a home (let alone the provisions of a hospital), and laid in a manger used to feed animals because that was the best available alternative to a cot. Without the regular use of the church I think of as my spiritual home, I need to recognise how God comes into our world as a homeless child. And not for long can he settle even in Bethlehem - before long, Mary and Joseph will have to flee from the attention of Herod. From his earliest years Jesus knows what it is to be a refugee.

We at least will be able to hold services just across the road in the Hall. It’s not the same, but it makes us think… And we do intend to use the church on Christmas Eve for our 6pm Carol Service with Christingles. Wrap up warmly and make sure that the church is so full that we don’t feel the cold!

We won’t be having our usual Midnight Mass. But after the Christingle we hope as many people as possible will go over to Castleside to join the people of St. John’s for their Vigil Mass of Christmas. They’ve moved the service back to 8.30pm to give us time to finish our 6pm service and then move on.

There’ll be the usual Christmas morning service at 9.30am - back in the Hall. It’ll be strange. But it was a strange thing that shepherds found and angels proclaimed. What will Jesus find in the way we celebrate his birth?

Martin Jackson

From the December-January double issue of the Parish Magazine; click to find it online

Advent Sunday - a call to wait

Christmas is coming… You can’t really miss that, can you? The supermarkets are geared up to sell us all we need for Christmas as soon as they’ve finished selling us Halloween and Fireworks Night. Christmas advertising gets underway as soon as Remembrance Sunday has finished. At St. John’s we lit the Christmas Tree in the church garden last Thursday and sang our first carols; and St. Cuthbert’s had its wonderful Christmas Fair yesterday, complete with a visit from Father Christmas and Mrs. Claus. And I’ve even worn my skiing-Santa jumper - and been complimented for doing so!

But it’s back in the cupboard now - and today we begin Advent! I sometimes find myself saying, “Let’s get Christmas out of the way, so that we can start Advent.” Actually I’m not feeling at all grouchy. We had a fantastic turnout for the lighting of the Tree at St. John’s; and yesterday’s Fair at St. Cuthbert’s was successful, not just in raising money that we need, but in bringing people together in a way that a shopping expedition in search of the ideal Christmas gift never can - it was fun, people worked together and laughed together. Both of these Christmassy events were about building community - and all the better because we didn’t have to say what we were doing: we just did it, and it happened.

In the midst of all the busy-ness I found myself in a meeting with a social worker who was reviewing my mother’s first three months in a residential care home. It was one of those meetings that gets disrupted as people come and go, cups of tea get made and the chiropodist appears so that my mother had to disappear to get her toenails seen to. In the midst of it, with my mother out of the room, the social worker and I found ourselves talking about sickness and death. It was a fact of life for her, working as she does with old people, but she’d been touched by it personally too. She could understand where faith fits in, and had one herself, but didn’t see that it required her to go to church. That was where I pointed out what we’d just been talking about: that my mother could appear quite matter of fact about death and getting ready for it. She has her funeral plan. She knows what she wants. She was ready for it when my father died. I suggested that it was a life of church-going that was in large part the reason for this. Not just having a personal faith - though I’d encourage anyone to ask themselves what they really believe. But the fact that church-going is a social thing: it’s about coming together with other people; you get the chance to talk about things you wouldn’t normally; you can ask your questions, and share your feelings and doubts.

And I say this now because I think this is something that gets particularly focused during Advent. We know what happens at the end of Advent - Christmas! It’s about preparing for the coming of Jesus - even though we know he will come, even though we know that he has come! It’s about preparing for the coming of the Son of Man in glory at the end of time or when his Kingdom is established - though really we may not know what that means, and from today’s Gospel reading it’s pretty certain that Jesus’ first disciples didn’t know either! Advent means literally Coming. But it’s more than that. Advent requires waiting. We need to be patient. And it gives us time to ask what is truly important, what are we waiting for? Christmas is at the end of it, but it isn’t a season that should force us into a desperate sense of frenzied activity just to get everything done. It’s the season instead to ask, will Christ at his coming find us with hearts that are prepared to welcome him? Nothing we do will make Christmas happen. The child Jesus will be born, because he has been born - but are we ready for that birth?

These are things to think about - and, I hope, to talk about and share.

I’ve been taking a first look at Advent Extra, the booklet that quite a number of people in both our parishes have bought. I’ve read a couple of the articles, looked at the pictures, wondered if the “Easy Sudoku” puzzle is really easy enough for me to solve… But I’ve been most touched by looking at the centre spread which is a simple Advent Calendar. It actually starts today, Advent Sunday, not on 1^st December like the ones you buy in the shops. It doesn’t have any windows to open, it doesn’t offer any chocolate for a daily treat (or gin or prosecco). But each day it presents a thought. It’s directed at children, so adults might just about be able to grasp what it’s about. “Say ‘yes’ when asked to help,” it suggests for one day. “Play with someone who seems lonely.” “Draw a big heart. Write the names of people you want to pray for during Advent.” And the following day: “Pray for all the people in your heart.” It’s not just for children. It’s something we all need to do. “Think about Mary and Joseph looking for a place to stay. Jesus, thank you for my home...” - we need that spirit of gratitude to be re-kindled in our hearts. And you can try this one: “Sing the song, ‘Little Donkey.’ Think of a name for the donkey.”

Think - use your imagination. Talk - share what is in your heart, with other people and with God.

Having the children of Castleside Primary School with us when we lit the tree at St. John’s was important. There was the joy of their singing beneath the tree - in a way that adults have often lost. And then they led us into the church. Into the altar we have built a crib. It’s covered over again now for Advent, but last Thursday it was opened up and lit. And the children gather round it to sing, “Love came down…” Afterwards, everyone, I think, came up to look into the crib. Here there is love, God reaching out to us, and touching us in the child Jesus when he comes. Are we ready?

As we begin our Advent journey, we hear the call to look again at ourselves and our needs, our faults and failings – but then to recognise the mercy of God, his compassion, his desire to share his love, and to reveal that love in our lives.

Christmas Fair - arriving before Advent!

Weekend of Remembrance at St. Cuthbert's

Refreshing the Spirit

Sorry that this issue of the Parish Magazine is appearing late. It’s entirely due to my taking my “summer holiday” at the end of October (it’s been a complicated sort of year), but at least I managed to top up with sunshine before the holiday itself ended with cloudbursts and thunderstorms.

I bring back lots of memories - and things which I need to go over again to see what I made of them: many too many photos - and a notebook full of the accounts of what we did and where we went.

What do I remember most from this visit to Rome? Uppermost in my mind is the experience of going to church! Actually we visited many churches, but there were three places where we joined other Christians in worship. One was the Anglican Centre which is squeezed into a set of rooms in the Doria Pamphili Palace. There’s a wonderful art gallery there too, but you can visit the Centre for free. Go on a Tuesday at 12.45pm and you can usually join in the weekly Eucharist which is followed by prosecco and lunch. The chapel was packed - and interesting folks turn up, this time including a pilgrim party from the Church of Norway.

We went to Vespers as well at the Cistercian Abbey of Tre Fontane - after a day of tramping around looking at things it was good just to sit and stand as the monks did the hard work of prayer. But the place I keep going back to is the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, one of the oldest churches of Rome. I spoke last Sunday about the sermon - what I managed to hear, despite not being able to understand most of the language. But the worship is still more. It’s helped by the beauty of the place. But it’s grounded in the offering of prayer and the faith from which it stems. It’s a place of welcome. Children particularly play a part - simply by being there. One week it was First Communion candidates who were put to work as acolytes, joining en masse in white robes with candles. The next Sunday they welcomed cubs and scouts - who kept their caps on in church; half of them found themselves deployed with candles. And during the Gloria and Gospel Alleluia many of the congregation ring bells (they seem to bring their own). But all of it ties in with a great spirit of joy.

That worship stems from faith. The church itself is in the care of the Sant’Egidio Community which works with the poor and homeless - and more widely promotes peace and reconciliation. Its members meet each evening at 8.30pm to pray - but first they go onto the streets and feed the poor. Round the corner they run a restaurant ‘Gli Amici (The Friends) which is run as a partnership between people with learning difficulties, volunteers and professionally trained staff. And it all comes together in the offering of worship - in meeting with Christ.

Where is Christ to be found? In worship, of course - but also in his people. Perhaps it came together most for me as I watched a disabled man who’d prayed devoutly behind us go forward for Holy Communion - and after receiving, he kissed the priest. What was the gift? Who was the giver?

Martin Jackson

From the November issue of St. Cuthbert's Parish Magazine - find it on this link

What next? - Part 2

“The plan may not be worked out, but God has a purpose.”

That’s the sentence with which I ended last month’s “View from the Vicarage.” If anything the plan is now still more mystifying, though I continue to hold to my faith that God does indeed have a purpose! But purposes are often still to be revealed and as yet unseen.

I’d been writing in the light of personal challenges - especially through my mother’s declining health and need for 24 hour care - and the challenges we face as a parish, not least from the lack of a working heating system in our church. Concerning the heating, I said we’d sent in estimates and proposals with a request for advice to our Diocesan Advisory Committee. The Committee’s response has not been what we hoped for. So we shall be responding further to them and challenging their reasoning which appears to run contrary to advice they gave last February! This means further delay. But we are pressing on - and have made a couple of recent grant bids (and had further positive responses in other quarters).

But having picked ourselves up and worked out how we would move forward, we were then hit by Storm Alice - hit quite literally, with two trees felled, one dramatically falling across the road but being caught by the power cables. After various strategies failed, skilful tree surgeons arrived and made a brilliant job of the tree removal. Power was restored after about 30 hours - and I enjoyed loss of a phone line and internet for 5 days. But there is more fabric work to be done now, since the major damage suffered was to our own boundary wall between the Church and the Vicarage. No doubt more expense - and form filling!

We might again ask, “Why?” and “What next?”

But, of course, we can’t just give up!

I was helped today by the readings we used at the midweek Eucharist in St. John’s Church. The first was from the Book of Proverbs (30.5-9) - and came in the form of a prayer:

Two things I beg of you,…

keep falsehood and lies far from me,

give me neither poverty nor riches,

grant me only my share of bread to eat,

for fear that surrounded by plenty, I should fall away…

It’s a prayer not to be given too much of either extreme (poverty or wealth) to have to deal with. It’s very much what we ask for in the Lord’s Prayer - “Give us this day our daily bread.” That’s a prayer not to have our cake and eat it (to push the metaphor) but to have enough just to keep us going. So it asks us to examine the question, “just what is God giving us? How is he feeding and nourishing us day by day?”

The other reading we used today was from St. Luke’s Gospel (9.1-6). It tells of how Jesus sent out the Twelve Disciples with a mission. They were to proclaim the Kingdom of God and bring healing to the people they encountered - and they were to do it without any provisions:

Take nothing for the journey: neither staff, nor haversack, nor bread, nor money… Whatever house you enter, stay there; and when you leave, let it be from there. As for those who do not welcome you, when you leave their town shake the dust from your feet as a sign to them…

We expect soon to be moving into the Hall for our regular worship. It’s not what we want. Hopefully it won’t be for too long. But it can be enough for the moment (just read what Messy Church accomplished there in its most recent meeting with 31 children, their carers and a host of leaders).

And St. Augustine reminds us of the longer view in the Collect we’ve been using this week in our worship:

Almighty God, you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself,

and so bring us at last to your heavenly city

where we shall see you face to face;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord…

Martin Jackson

From the October issue of St. Cuthbert's Parish Magazine

Whoever welcomes one such child

17^th Sunday after Trinity     Year B (Proper 20) 

 Eucharist – 23.ix.2018 -  St. John the Evangelist, Castleside

 (Jeremiah 11.18-20; James 3.13 - 4.3.7-8a; Mark 9.30-37)

I’m glad to say that we have people from St. John’s Church who are involved in Messy Church at St. Cuthbert’s. Work we do with children always impresses people. Last week’s session was brilliant with 31 children registered and all the adults they brought with them as well as lots of leaders. It was loud, fun and exhausting.

People like to know especially what we’re doing with and for children. Today’s Gospel reading shows that Jesus had a way with children that must have been quite impressive. “Let the children come to me,” he says elsewhere to people who think religion has to be dreary and for adults only. Actually we have the opposite problem these days - so many adults think that religion is something children should learn about; but they don’t think it should have much bearing on their own lives.

Jesus makes us think again about our perspectives. “Unless you become like a child you cannot enter the Kingdom of heaven.” And in today’s Gospel reading he sets a child in front of his disciples - who are really themselves being rather childish, arguing “who’s best? which one of us is the greatest?” - and he tells them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me...”

But I wonder if there’s a danger in this? “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me...” Is that true about any child? What if the child is a little brat who knows just how to wind you up? What if it’s your child - adept at getting on your nerves? What if it’s someone else’s child? - and you wish they’d been taught the basics of good behaviour?

The fact is that sometimes children – even our own dear children – can be pretty horrible, and we know that we were as well when we were children. And don’t we have to remember that when Jesus says, “Whenever you welcome one such child....”?

Jesus knew what childhood was about - and no doubt how awful some aspects of it could be. In the so-called New Testament Apocrypha there’s an interesting book called the Gospel of Thomas – it starts with this rather troubling perspective on the childhood of Jesus:

4. He was again passing through the village; and a boy ran up

against Him, and struck His shoulder. And Jesus was angry, and said to

him: Thou shalt not go back the way thou camest. And immediately he fell

down dead. And some who saw what had taken place, said: Whence was

this child begotten, that every word of his is certainly accomplished? And

the parents of the dead boy went away to Joseph, and blamed him, saying:

Since thou hast such a child, it is impossible for thee to live with us in the

village; or else teach him to bless, and not to curse: for he is killing our

children.

5. And Joseph called the child apart, and admonished Him, saying: Why

doest thou such things, and these people suffer, and hate us, and persecute

us? And Jesus said: I know that these words of thine are not thine own;

nevertheless for thy sake I will be silent; but they shall bear their

punishment. And straightway those that accused Him were struck blind.

And those who saw it were much afraid and in great perplexity, and said

about Him: Every word which he spoke, whether good or bad, was an act,

and became a wonder. And when they saw that Jesus had done such a

thing, Joseph rose and took hold of His ear, and pulled it hard. And the

child was very angry, and said to him: It is enough for thee to seek, and

not to find; and most certainly thou hast not done wisely. Knowest thou

not that I am thine? Do not trouble me.

It would be interesting to know more about the childhood of Jesus, but I’m afraid we won’t learn it from apocryphal Thomas. There’s just too much in it of how we would like to deal with other people... how we know that we’re right and they’re wrong, and we’ll show them. And that is not the way of Jesus Christ as we know it from the Books which did (unlike the so-called Gospel of Thomas) get included in the New Testament.

Though perhaps the disciples were rather too slow in realising that... In today’s Gospel reading Jesus has to tell them off when they argue about which of them is the greatest. Who’s the best? - who’s the strongest? - who’s most right when everyone else is wrong? People still go on this way to this day. Just look out in the coming weeks of party political conferences. Who’s got the muscle? Who’s got the newspapers and public opinion on their side - and how do you keep them there? Will there be plots against Theresa May and a leadership challenge? Who will be trying to do down Jeremy Corbyn? But there are things more important than having power you can throw about.

It says something about human nature that people try to do other people down as a means of promoting themselves. Look at the disciples’ failure to grasp the mission of Jesus, “Who’s the greatest?” Don’t we have to recognise our failures in this respect? Clergy in particular need to search their hearts. Every 18 months we have to undergo a so-called Ministerial Development Review. What am I good at? What are my shortcomings? What do I want out of my life and ministry? I was undergoing one of these processes a few years ago, and I got the feedback that I’d simply gone about things the wrong way. I’d stayed too long in the parishes I’d tried to serve, I hadn’t tried for the right jobs, and basically I hadn’t made the right connections. Another senior priest, now departed this diocese, said that a failing in most of his parish clergy was lack of ambition to get out of the North-East and experience something different. He might be right (every other priest in the room had served their entire ministry in the Diocese of Durham) - but it didn’t answer a still more basic problem that clergy from other parts of the country are notably reluctant to come and serve here. It’s too cold, too far away (from what?) - it’s not the place to be if you want to get on… But where does God call us?

 ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,’ says Jesus to the disciples. And “I am among you as one who serves.” Can we hear that and take it to heart?

Back to children… Jesus says we should become like little children if we are to enter the Kingdom of God. But not here. Instead he tells us we must be ready to welcome them. We must be ready to serve those who might be the most vulnerable. We must be there for those who are least likely to be taken into account - even when there are few rewards in doing so.

How should we do it? I think we can learn from today’s New Testament Reading - from the Letter of James:

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish…  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy… And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

It’s not difficult to fall into the same trap as the disciples, to let vanity, pride and selfishness get the better of us. “Whoever welcomes one such child...” - that’s the way Jesus tells us to start being his disciple. That means welcoming the unruly child as well. The child who argues all the time, as much as the one with the angelic expression. The child who might be a bully as much as the most frail and vulnerable in the class. And it means recognising ourselves to be God’s children, ready to reach out to one another, ready to receive his care.

Crossing borders - and boundaries

15^th Sunday after Trinity     Year B

 Eucharist – 9.ix.2018

(Isaiah 35.4-7a; James 2.1-17; Mark 7.24-37)

Some of you will have received an email from me the other day with an appeal attached. And it’s an appeal which we’re making again in the course of our Eucharist here at St. Cuthbert’s. The appeal is for church members to help us put together a welcome pack for families moving into our parish.

People move in and out of the parish all the time of course. But these people have come a long way, not by the easiest of routes. They are refugees from Syria, and when they arrive they will be joining us with next to nothing. Already a few months ago, a handful of refugee families have been settled in the parish. Now we are being asked if we can help the latest of those to arrive as they settle in.

The lists of what is being asked for are at the back of the church. If you can, please indicate on the lists what you can bring - and then make sure we get it. Many of the items are much the same as we ask for at Harvest for the People’s Kitchen Appeal - or week by week for those who rely on our local Food Bank - dried and tinned foods, toiletries. People are people. To that extent we’re all the same. Except these have lost everything. So you might be able to help with some of the bigger household items they might need. And they’re not allowed to work - at least initially. And the allowances they will receive will be meagre. So they will be hard-pressed.

One of the problems refugees encounter is the reception they’ll get in the communities where they settle. Especially because they may look and dress differently. I wasn’t sure exactly when the first families were arriving, but I realised they’d come when I saw a woman in a hijab walking along Pemberton Road - and then more than one in family groups. We’ve been curiously insulated from ethnic and religious diversity in our part of the country. You might wonder whether you can or should communicate with someone who dresses quite differently and may not speak your language. But I hope we’ll be the better for their presence. If nothing else, their children will be the ones who will have to make connections within the community because they will be there in our local schools.

The imminent arrival of refugees from Syria makes today’s Gospel reading all the more appropriate. But it is nevertheless quite shocking - the encounter of Jesus with a woman of Syrophoenician origin, a Jew meets a Gentile. It’s Jesus who has crossed a border - the only recorded instance of him leaving his native Palestine as an adult. Jesus finds himself in Syrian territory. No great importance is given to that journey in itself. The Roman Empire is the Schengen area of the first century without border checks. That’s what had enabled Mary and Joseph to flee in fear from Bethlehem to Egypt after the birth of Jesus - if you want to say that all migrants should stay in their own lands, then you will have a problem with the second chapter of the New Testament, Matthew chapter 2!

What is shocking in today’s Gospel reading is the response which Jesus makes to the request made by this Gentile woman. She wants Jesus to heal her daughter, and he replies: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” It reads as a rejection of this woman and her daughter in their need. Jesus had brought healing to the people of his own land, who were fellow-Jews; it seems like he doesn’t want to extend this healing any further. Is it a test of how far the woman’s faith will reach? She persists: “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And Jesus gives in - the young girl is healed.

Some interpreters of the passage say that all along Jesus intends to heal the girl - he’s showing that Gentiles as well as Jews can be the object of God’s mercy; we only need to ask. Others say that it’s the intention of the Gospel writer to show that the Christian faith would be shared with Jews first before it would be taken to the Gentiles. Still others say that the word Jesus uses for “dogs” is a diminutive - so it translates as “puppies,” rather more cuddly than a first reading might suggest. But however you take it, there’s a challenge to our perceptions. God’s love is not confined to a particular people. Nothing qualifies us rather than people from Syria or Africa to be the special object of his favour. Only our humanity makes us worthy of God’s mercy - and them as well. It’s to other people in their humanity that we must make our response.

Are these people any different from us? I’ve been thinking of the links which people in our church have with other lands. Families whose children have moved to work in other countries or who have married someone of a different nationality. I have a brother who moved to the United States because that’s where the work was - over there he has a partner who comes from South America. One of my best friends here is an American who has picked up Canadian and British nationalities in the course of his travels. Others have left this country to work overseas. I have a son whose research work entails membership of a Danish as well as a Scottish university. None of these people was forced by absolute need to make the moves they did - but many have benefited because they have made their life’s journey.

Perhaps the oldest part of the Bible is to be found in the book Deuteronomy (chapter 26). It’s what to say when you come to make a Harvest offering, recognising God’s guidance and provision for you. The person making the offering should begin: “My father was a wandering Aramaean…” He was a nomad, a herdsman travelling wherever his flocks could find food.

The Israelites were a people who only discovered themselves - and God - while they were on the move. Abraham, the Father of their nation, had journeyed with his family from the region we would now call Iraq through Syria to the land of Canaan - and there he lived as a guest, not by any right. His grandson, Jacob, would make the move with his family to Egypt to find refuge in time of famine. And the return journey would take them 40 years in the wilderness with only God as their guide. The story of faith revealed in the pages of scripture is one of travel, encounter, hospitality and hostility, and finally understanding of the self and of God. Still we are called on the journey. May we know ourselves the better for it, may it help us know God and his purpose for all his people.

What next?

I’ve just come back from installing my mother in a residential care home. It’s just a mile from the house she’s lived in for the last 47 years - in fact the same distance from all the homes she’s had since she married in 1952. But it’s the greatest of wrenches. After months in hospital, a hip replacement, physio rehab, just two weeks back in her own home and then a fall which dislocated her shoulder, this is where we’ve arrived - after the agonising over the decision, visits to and discussions of the various possibilities, and assessments by occupational therapists, social workers and care home managers.

It’s been my agonising. Not like seeing your children off to university where they have made the choice and have to get on with being independent. I’ve been the one who’s had to facilitate the choice, knowing that it’s about the giving up of her independence.

Now I’ve got back home, and I realise I need to get this Magazine to press tomorrow. And there’s a wedding in the afternoon. As well as three Baptisms at the weekend in addition to the regular services. And all the register entries to make. And a couple of pewsheets to produce - which reminds me that I haven’t yet sorted out the hymns for Sunday (and what shall I preach about?). 

But it’s not my effort in all this that will make the difference. It’s trusting in the grace of God. God has a purpose. That doesn’t mean that everything is mapped out or that “everything happens for a reason” (I certainly don’t believe that after my mother’s last fall and the re-setting of her shoulder at 4am in Casualty). But in everything we believe that he may bring out what is good. Only by the Cross does there come Resurrection.

September is like a new season in the Church’s year. We have challenges to face. We’re still daunted by the heating problems in church - though we now have a couple of proposals and estimates and are seeking advice from the Diocese. And there’s the matter of where to find the money… But we will go on. The plan may not be worked out, but God has a purpose.

Martin Jackson

From the September issue of our Parish Magazine - click here to find the whole issue online 

Power and the Personal

Homily for Trinity 7 (Proper 10) – Eucharist – 15.vii.2018

(Amos 7.7-15; Mark 6.14-29)

The account of the Beheading of John the Baptist is one of the more horrific stories in the New Testament. John himself is always off-stage. The reason he’d first upset King Herod is a past event. Now he’s in prison. But the focus is on Herod and his family at a feast for his birthday.

Herod isn’t a real king. He’s a “tetrarch,” a puppet of the Roman rulers who have divided his land up into three. This is Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, who had been king when Jesus was born. This Herod has been given the province of Galilee as the region which is his to administer. We know from what happens later on that Herod must have spent some of this time in Jerusalem - because he is involved in the trial and condemnation of Jesus. But we’re not told where the events of today’s reading take place.

The indicators are that they happen in the Galilee - in a palace equipped both with facilities for entertaining and for imprisoning Herod’s enemies. The scene is of eating, drinking and dancing. But the prison is near enough for Herod to send out word to have John the Baptist killed in his cell and for his head to be brought in as the banquet continues.

Just think about that - the people who were involved in this, those who were complicit in a death without a trial or any sort of due process. Not only the executioner, but Herod who first had John locked up, his wife Herodias in the malice she holds against John, and the daughter who is manipulated into making the request for John’s death. Would this murder have been particularly newsworthy? Or just the sort of thing that might be expected of someone who has been given the power to do what he wants - and isn’t required to answer for his actions? Are there people like that in our world today? Who is going to speak out against them? What would you do if you found yourself in a tricky situation, but could extricate yourself by doing the wrong thing if you knew you could get away with it?

We’re given this whole story not simply for its own sake but to tell us how it fits in with the ministry of Jesus. In St. Mark’s Gospel it comes in between the story of how Jesus sent out his twelve disciples to proclaim the Kingdom of God, teaching and healing along the way, and the account of how he fed 5000 people with five loaves and two fishes. Jesus is making an impact by what he says and does, and Herod Antipas has heard about it. This is why we now get today’s story. People are speculating about what or who Jesus is. Some say he’s a prophet, like Elijah - perhaps he’s even John the Baptist come back. And Herod knows what he has done to John - he’d had him beheaded. So has he been raised from the dead? If Herod finds himself asking the question, it nevertheless won’t stop him later being part of the attempt to stop the whole movement Jesus leads by putting him on the Cross.

The terrifying thing about Herod Antipas is that he’s a man who has been given the authority to govern and power over life and death. But he’s moved to do what he does by personal feelings, ambition and the desire to avoid embarrassment. It’s worrying that there are people still like that today - some hold the highest positions of world leadership, others resign from political office when things don’t go their way. You can supply the names yourselves. They are not the first - and no doubt there will be others to follow.

Herod first locks up John the Baptist when John speaks out about his personal morality. Herod had stolen his own brother’s wife from him - and he can’t take it when John tells him he’s wrong to do it. But there’s something that must have nagged away at Herod. He puts John in prison, but he recognises that John is both righteous and holy. He likes to listen to him.

If only Herod could overcome the conflict which must have been in his heart and let those qualities of righteousness and holiness change him! Are there moments in our lives when we know what is right but just can’t make the move that could change us for the better? I found myself thinking of G K Chesterton’s words: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

In the end it’s just too difficult for Herod. Instead he gives in to the grudge which Herodias holds against the Baptist. He makes a stupid offer to the daughter of Herodias when she dances for him. He can’t see a way of refusing her request without losing face. And the result is that a man loses his life.

The Gospels keep the action in Herod’s palace. The execution takes place unseen in the prison and John’s head is brought back. Brought back and given to the girl who’d asked for it. And what will she do with it?

If you want the full horror, the artist Caravaggio can take you there. He painted The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist in 1608 as an altarpiece for St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. It’s still there - a huge canvas with life-size figures - dominating a room at the west end of the Cathedral. It’s been described as one of the ten greatest art works of all time: "Death and human cruelty are laid bare by this masterpiece, as its scale and shadow daunt and possess the mind."

In the picture the executioner stands with knife in hand as John’s body lies on the ground. It’s the only picture that Caravaggio ever signed and he does it using the paint from the pool of John’s blood. It’s claimed that in signing the picture the artist was declaring “I, Caravaggio, did this.” Caravaggio had been involved in a fight which had led to another man’s death. Another crime forced him to flee from the Knights of Malta. In painting the picture he must have had a sense of his own guilt.

But as we think of that scene - and of the story we hear today - we need to ask ourselves where we go wrong; and of the damage we can cause, the havoc we can bring to the lives of others.

“The king was deeply grieved,” St. Mark’s Gospel tells us. But more than grief is necessary. John the Baptist had spoken out against Herod, but also offered him a vision of righteousness and holiness. The prophet Amos offers a vision of a plumb line - not only to show what is crooked and wrong, but how it can be put right. And the love of God - the grace we find in Christ - shows us how we may move forward: admitting our faults, knowing our need, and accepting the forgiveness which is offered for us from the Cross.

Open Garden Day - Sunday 15 July

...running from 1 - 5pm.

Buy a map which admits you to wonderful gardens throughout the Village. You can start at either Shotley Bridge Cricket Club where there's a Craft Fair - or at St. Cuthbert's Church Hall where there'll be refreshments.

Proceeds to be divided between our Church Heating System Appeal and the Cricket Club Junior Division.

Building anew…

I’m not proposing that we build a new church for our parish. But I have to admit that the present one gives us (gives me) quite enough trouble itself. At 168 years of age it’s reached that critical point of lots of bits wearing out at the same time. Keeping the paint on the walls has been a long-standing problem - and we realise that the only solution is to take it all off and start again. But that pales into insignificance when you lose your heating system - and while you may not think you’re hearing much about that, let me assure you that we are working on it!

I’m glad to say that the planned roof works have now been completed - and  the bills have been paid! So there’s less anxiety in that quarter. And for the moment we can enjoy the church and the natural warmth of summer. But it doesn’t stop me fretting about the return of chillier weather and the challenges still outstanding.

So I’m glad to have found a fresh perspective when checking out part of our church’s history. Shotley Bridge Village Trust has a current project of placing plaques on various buildings of significance in our area. Each plaque will give a short description and a special “QR Code” which will link smart phones to a more detailed online account. In checking the dates for the proposed church description I noticed a couple of things. One, relevant to our current problems, is that the heating pipes seem to date back to the extension of the church in the early 1880s - or are these simply “additional pipes”? There’s reference to “the existing arrangement” - so perhaps they were simply added on to an original system dating right back to 1850! And going back to the beginning, there’s the reminder that the church didn’t spring up overnight. It was consecrated in September 1850. But the foundation stone was laid 18 months earlier. And the parish was formed in June 1847. Over three years’ work by priest and people was necessary before they could move into the church we have now. There would have been disruption as they enlarged the church in the 1880s. The task now may seem to lead us uphill. But it’s not the first challenge we have faced. Thanks to all who are working to build our church anew!   

Martin Jackson

From the Double Issue Parish Magazine for July & August 2018 - click here to read it all!

Where are you? - avoidance, sanctity and faithfulness

Trinity 2 (Proper 5) Year B – Eucharist – 10.vi.2018

(Genesis 3.8-15; 2 Corinthians 4.13-5.1; Mark 3.20-35)

Today’s first reading from the Book of Genesis starts with a compelling image: the sound of the Lord God walking in a garden at the time of the evening breeze. It’s the Garden of Eden, of course, given to Adam and Eve, its only human inhabitants, for their use and pleasure as long as they exercise stewardship over it as asked by God. In its centre there are two trees: the Tree of Life, which nourishes them and symbolises all that is life-giving - all that God wishes for our good; and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - of which God has asked them to refrain from eating its fruit. It’s a deal: they know the deal, but they’ve broken the deal. Now God comes into the picture in person.

Not that you see him. He’s only heard - but he’s taking pleasure in his Creation, all that he has made to be good, by walking in his garden in “the cool of the day,” as more traditional translations put it. I like it to be warm - give me a warm evening so I can sit out in my garden, but you can appreciate what it’s saying. I can sit at the evening hour and appreciate the subsiding of noise and the day’s busy-ness; if I’m outside or have the window open, I hear the song of birds, feel the peace settling in the summer air - and it’s lovely.

But in this third chapter of Genesis everything is about to change. God calls to Adam, “Where are you?” Does he need to ask? Surely God knows. He knows that Adam has been disobedient. He made Adam and everything in the garden, so he doesn’t need to ask… Except for Adam’s sake. “Where are you?” God asks of the man and the woman. Where have you put yourself? What sort of mess have you got yourself into? Why do you feel the need to hide?

Adam’s answer is: “I heard you… and I was afraid, because I was naked.” Adam had been created naked. It’s naked that we all come into the world. But now something has happened that makes him feel shame. Adam has come to see the human condition which he inhabits as something to be ashamed of. He feels alienation. He’s taken the step away from God - and now he realises that his own strength and his own abilities are insufficient to reach back across the gap.

“Where are you?” God asks Adam. You can treat the story of Adam and Eve as a myth, if you wish. But it’s no less true for that. If God were to say to me, “Where are you?” what would I answer? What do I answer? What would you say?

“Where are you?” So often, if you put that question to people in the context of speaking about faith, they’ll say “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” There’s a lot that religious bigotry and hatred has to answer for, history does have periods which have been described as “Wars of Religion,” and it’s sad that the veneer of religious respectability or even religious authority has been used as a cloak to cover up abuse of various sorts. Is that why so many people are reluctant to describe themselves as “religious?” But I wonder if you’d get very far if you were to press them on what it means to be “spiritual” as at the same time they reject religion and its precepts?

Fr. George Rutler, a Roman Catholic priest in New York, puts it this way:

The Internal Revenue Service would not be impressed by someone who paid taxes not in the formal way, but in a spiritual sense. Yet the equivalent of that has become an esoteric mantra among many who identify as Catholics but reject Catholicism as their religion. 

It’s what he calls “cultural Catholicism.” I suspect it actually has more identity and coherence to it than much of what passes for spirituality in this country. Nevertheless, he goes on:

That “cultural Catholicism” does not work when challenged by Catholicism’s despisers. There is much to be said for inheriting the faith of ancestors, but ancestors are betrayed when that faith is a patrimony that is squandered by a spendthrift heir. In the Middle East there are Christians who can trace their religious identity back to the apostles, but theirs is not a mere cultural religion. A year after Christian towns of northern Iraq were liberated from the Islamic State, many families still live in refugee camps…

In those areas, the faithful have had to resist attempts to make them renounce the Gospel by force. In decadent Western cultures, such surrender has been voluntary. Much of Europe has long since abandoned Christ through indifference.

“Where are you?” God asks Adam - and us. It’s a challenge. Adam does what so many of us do when we’re found out or put on the spot. He blames someone else. It was her… “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit from the tree, and I ate.” At least Eve had some curiosity about her as she took up the challenge to eat a fruit which would give her the knowledge of good and evil.

“Where are you?” How would we respond to the challenge which Jesus brought to the communities amongst which he proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God? His hearers at the time said he was mad, but they themselves could talk only about Satan and the work of demons. How much different is it in today’s world where there’s a growing interest in the occult, but little action taken to learn or practise anything of the positive aspects of faith? Even Jesus’ own family can’t take in what he is doing. Flesh and blood are not enough. There needs to be an openness to receive the message of Christ. As Jesus says, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

That’s not to say that you should write your own family off. As some of you know, my Mother has been dealing with increasing pain and lack of mobility as doctors have again and again put off surgery to replace her hip. I know I’m by no means unique in wrestling with how best to help when I live at such a distance yet am at the same time the only person she has who can try to get her the help and provision she needs. For months when I’ve asked how she is, she’s responded with the word, “Rubbish.” Her frailty and pain are not the human condition which God wills for his Creation. And then I read St. Paul’s words in today’s Second Reading from his Second Letter to the Corinthians:

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. ₁₇ For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, ₁₈ because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

How can my Mother not lose heart? I know I have. The months and years of pain are rather more than what St. Paul calls a “slight momentary affliction.” Thankfully as the crisis came to a head she has been admitted to hospital and will get her operation later this week. But for the moment there is still uncertainty, anxiety, confusion - and that sense of mortality, the “outer nature which is wasting away.”

Yet there is more that we can affirm. For a start the human condition which lets us down is a glorious condition and a gift. “Behold, I am wonderfully made,” the Psalmist could affirm - even though he spends much of his time complaining and lamenting the state he and the world are in. If sickness, pain and death make us angry with God - well, that’s better than being merely angry. Anger alone at our frailty and wretchedness get us nowhere and give us no hope. Anger where God is in the picture at least gives us hope. Not necessarily an answer - but something and someone beyond our time-limited pain.

Because I needed a day off last Friday, but wanted to see my Mother in North Tees Hospital, I drove down to North Yorkshire for the day so I could visit her on the way back. Too much driving! But I was glad I did it. In Lastingham (once I’d been to the pub!), I re-visited the village church and its ancient crypt. It’s a place where St. Chad had lived in the seventh century. A man of great ability, skilled in preaching and a faithful pastor of his people, Chad found himself deposed from his bishopric. But he didn’t engage in recrimination, he didn’t let despondency overcome him. He continued faithful in prayer and sought new ways in which God was calling him. And the end-result was that he took his Christian faith to people he’d never expected to encounter. God opened new ways.

Carrying on from there I stopped in Egton Bridge - literally because we were going the wrong way and I needed to make a U-turn. It became an opportunity to visit the Roman Catholic Church of St. Hedda. Inside we found the relics of Blessed Nicholas Postgate, a priest born nearby and who had ministered for 50 years at a time in the 17^th century when the practice of his faith was forbidden. In a period of national hysteria over the so-called Popish Plot he was caught performing a baptism, judged and condemned for treason, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. At the age of 82 he was the oldest person in this country ever to be executed for his faith - a faith he’d put into practice living quietly but travelling far and wide to be a priest to his people.

It was an ignominious end to a life lived largely in obscurity. It’s said that the man who went out of his way to trap him was rewarded with a payment of 22 shillings, but then committed suicide by drowning himself. Bigotry and hatred played their part. But the faith which Blessed Nicholas practised sustained him through a ministry lived out in the hardest of times with no earthly reward until it ended on the gallows in York. Better that way than to be like those who brought accusations against him as others did against Jesus. Better to know the cost of discipleship than to follow the easy option which avoids grappling with the hard issues of suffering and mortality, of faithful religion and a calling made real in Christ.  

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