Parish of St. Cuthbert, Benfieldside

Seasonal News from St. Cuthbert's...

2011-12-05T21:50:00.000Z

... can be found in the December-January double issue of our Parish Magazine. It's now available in print - or you can find it online by clicking here. I'm copying the "View from the Vicarage" page into this post, but do have a look at the rest of it.

Our main services for the end of Advent and Christmas-tide are listed on the right-hand side of this blog - full details also in the Magazine, on our website and on the Parish Christmas Card, available both online (so you can print your own) and on heavy paper! For good measure here's the Christmas advertising poster too (in duplicate!).

Meanwhile, from the Magazine -

Christmas…

… started early for me this year. I try to resist singing Christmas Carols as long as possible - not because I’m a natural curmudgeon, but to save myself up for Christmas when it comes. I really do enjoy making a real start with our Christmas Eve Carol Service when we bless the crib, going on to celebrate the First Eucharist of Christmas at the Midnight Mass.

But this year the lighting of the Shotley Bridge Village Christmas Tree was accompanied by Carols. I turned up to bring the carol sheets and to shout out which we’d sing next. I needed to shout. The crowd was well into three figures - and enthusiastic. “We’ll treat this as a rehearsal,” I yelled. “Come back and sing some more nearer the time!” So I hope the outdoor singers will be back at the tree on Tuesday 20th December - and giving them old copies of a Christmas Eve Carol Service, I hope they’ll note the time and day to turn up in church in droves for the Christingle!

It was great fun. And continued throughout the “Victorian Christmas Spectacular” the next day - with many turning up to make our Christmas Fair so successful.

Now for Advent! That’s the real time of expectation - the not-just-yet of Christ’s coming… And what do we expect of him? So much about the Church seems bad news, at least when the media lays hands on it. So I’m pleased to carry the item on page 19, examining some statistics which bear on the Church’s life: finances and ordinations are holding up, which doesn’t mean we can be complacent, but which is evidence of faith in hard times.

Christ’s is a birth in hard times. And through it there comes hope for a troubled world. The candles we use in the darkness of Christmas services are a sort of symbol that glimmers of light may shine brightest.

A very joyous and holy Christmas to you all, and a blessed and peaceful New Year!

Homily for Remembrance Sunday

2011-11-12T16:50:00.000Z

I'm getting ahead of myself - and have actually posted my offering for tomorrow before preaching it.

It can be accessed through the Homilies page, and directly via this link.

Commitment and Faith

2011-11-08T17:14:00.000Z

Giles Fraser, former Chancellor of St. Paul's Cathedral, has been much in the news recently. But for a long time he'd been booked to take part in Radio 3's "Free Thinking" Festival of Ideas at The Sage, Gateshead. He honoured the booking last Sunday and delivered an excellent lecture on the nature of commitment, taking as his starting point the differing callings of farmers and gunfighters in the film, "The Magnificent Seven." The Hall in which he spoke was packed - a rare occasion when someone can develop a cogent intellectual argument - and get listened to.

The lecture itself wasn't distracted by the events at St. Paul's, but a time for interview and audience questions gave us the opportunity to see how theory and practice relate - and the centrality of Christian faith.

The lecture was broadcast last night on Radio 3. You can listen to it on I-Player and to a podcast version - just follow this link and either play or download.

I didn't tackle "commitment" explicitly on Sunday morning - but it had its place as I tackled the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids; the homily is on this link.

Caught in a Trap?

2011-11-01T19:03:00.000Z

That's how it seems for the Bishop of London, and the (former) Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral. What started as a protest against financial structures and the banking system has turned into a huge embarrassment all round. It's not as though it's getting the real aims of the camping protestors heard - the news is simply focussed on the fall-out all around them. What's the message that's going to be heard as we approach Remembrance-tide. That's what I ask in the article below from our new Parish Magazine.

You can read the whole magazine here. And there are also new links to what's been preached during the last couple of weeks on Bible Sunday by Rosie Junemann, our Reader, and for All Saints by our Vicar, Martin Jackson.

Here's this month's View from the Vicarage, as it appears in the new Magazine:

Remembrance…

November is the month of remembering. Acts of Remembrance will take place nationwide as well as in our own church and village on Remembrance Sunday, 13^th November. Armistice Day is now restored as a national occasional for silent remembering. This year it will be at the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of the 11^th year of this millennium - but more than an exercise in numbers as we recall the many millions who have died as a result of war.

We can’t avoid the huge losses and wounds of war. When the people of Wootton Bassett turned out in their hundreds to stand silently as the bodies of those killed in Afghanistan were brought home, it wasn’t a repeated empty gesture - it was to say this is about us, here and now, and about what the failure of people to live in peace has brought to us. Silence is perhaps the most appropriate response.

As I write, protestors are camped outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, demonstrating their feelings about the financial institutions and structures of the world we live in. They may have a point - many people say - but what can they hope to achieve? Some of them go off from their tents to work in offices in the very institutions they are protesting about. We are all a part of this mess.

Some have asked if they will clear the camp away before Remembrance Day - a day when we give thanks for those who gave their lives so that people today might be free to demonstrate and protest; but if we fought for that freedom, should we deny it on the steps of that Cathedral?

Freedom and Sacrifice go together, and we do well to remember that. Sacrifices need to be made for the right cause and in the right way; freedoms need to be cherished and used appropriately. And Christians should be able to stand witness to that.

November begins with another remembrance - on All Souls Day as we remember the departed who are dear to us. They are our loved ones. Love is the way we need to do our remembering; it should be the motive for sacrifice; it’s the cause for which our freedom needs to be employed.

And the end of November brings us to Advent - the time to recognise the Coming of Christ, his call to welcome him who is Love himself.

Not so much a post as two links...

2011-10-16T19:54:00.001+01:00

... the links being the last two occasions for preaching at St. Cuthbert's (mine technically a repeat because I preached it earlier in the morning at St. John's, Castleside).

You can read both sermons from links on our dedicated Magazine & Homiles page on the Blog. Or go direct: Last Sunday Rosie Junemann asked whether leopards could change their spots in a sermon linked here. This morning I got to deal with civil authority, God and tax - the homily is here.

Updated at last

2011-09-28T22:35:00.000+01:00

Life is proving exceptionally busy at the moment - hence the lack of posts on this Blog.

This one is appearing simply to say there have been some updates on the other pages of this blog (accessed by the tabs further up the page) - including the Calendar and Magazine link. The new October issue of the Parish Magazine can be accessed directly by this link; there's lots to read! And our original parish website is also up-dated here.

9/11 - and a fresh start

2011-09-12T10:47:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was a strange day for me: the regular pattern of services at St. Cuthbert's, but with the unavoidable recognition of the 10th Anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks upon the United States; and then in the evening my licensing to an additional new ministry as Priest-in-Charge of the Parish of St. John the Evangelist, Castleside.

You can read what I preached in the morning by clicking here. Sorry I don't have the Bishop's excellent homily to share. But the licensing went well - the only hiccough being an opportunity for a slight detour into Music Hall mode. I was grateful for all the support - and there was a marvellous spread at the Reception. Thanks to all concerned.

Service times at both churches need to change with immediate effect - check this blog page and the links to our websites.

All you need is love...

2011-09-07T11:18:00.000+01:00

... that's the theme running through last Sunday's sermon preached by our Reader, Rosie Junemann. I missed it, but it's well worth reading and you can find it here. Links to lots more recent homilies are bundled up together with online versions of the Parish Magazine on the dedicated page of this blog.

I took last weekend off following a reading week, but I was at home so I took the opportunity to go to Durham Cathedral. It has its own particular celebration of the Feast of the Translation of the Relics of St. Cuthbert - which happily falls that day, 4th September. The main Feast of St. Cuthbert is 20th March. The Translation relates to the burial of his body in his present grave after the building of the Cathedral and following centuries during which the monks of his community moved from place to place following their displacement from Lindisfarne by the Viking raids and invasion. It was all very well done (pilgrimage procession to the Feretory / shrine) of course and you can probably find the Succentor's excellent sermon on the Cathedral's website. He took as his starting point the British Museum's current exhibition of relics and reliquaries, Treasures of Heaven, which I was glad to see a few weeks ago. We didn't actually venerate any relics on Sunday. But we were certainly put in mind of the call to holiness and the example of those who have gone before us.

Meanwhile... life resumes in this parish, and I'm about to take on responsibility also for the Parish of St. John, Castleside. This coming weekend will be busy: Northumbria Historic Churches Trust Steeplechase on Saturday; St. Cuthbert's Art Exhibition on Saturday and Sunday; and on Sunday services here will be for the last time at 8a.m. and 10a.m. At 6.30p.m. I'll be licensed in Castleside. Thereafter (from 18 September), St. Cuthbert's Sunday Sung Eucharist will be move to 10.30a.m. - with an 8a.m. BCP Eucharist on second Sundays of the month. Hopefully people will cope with the changes which will allow me to preside at a 9a.m. Eucharist in Castleside - though I'm already thinking about the problems that ice and snow may bring...

Join us for any of these if you can - and keep us in your prayers.

After the Riots - Humanity and the Divine Image + Matthew 15.10-28

2011-08-14T15:51:00.001+01:00

My summer holidays so far this year have consisted of a week staying in London. I had a great time. The weather was good, there was lots to do, we’d found somewhere both comfortable and reasonably priced to stay. And the location worked well - not in the centre of town, but next to a Docklands Light Railway station, and the bus to Trafalgar Square went from just a couple of hundred yards away.

A few years ago it was one of the poorest parts of the city - Limehouse in East London. But there is a Marina now in the Limehouse Basin, swish apartment blocks, and each night as we went back to our accommodation we’d look up and see the lights of the Canada Tower at Canary Wharf, just a mile or so away. Yet nevertheless, it’s in Tower Hamlets, which is, I think, still the poorest borough in the country. I suspect that if I’d gone onto the other side of the main street running through Limehouse, I wouldn’t have had to look too far to find all the tell-tale signs of poverty and deprivation.

I didn’t get into that part of our neighbourhood, but we did explore the next-door community of Wapping and Shadwell. In the nineteenth century it was over-populated, prone to disease and even epidemics of cholera, its workers depended on employment in the London Docks, much of it casual, so they could never be assured of regular wages. It continued to be poor throughout the 20th Century. And in the 1930s it found itself at the heart of tensions which divided many communities in many cities, but which focused here in the Battle of Cable Street when Oswald Moseley and the Black Shirts stirred up racial hatred. I’ve seen an estimate that 300,000 people turned out to resist the march along Cable Street by Moseley’s Fascists, even though 10,000 police were on duty to try to clear the way for the march. We went to see a mural painted to commemorate the opposition shown to fascism amidst the violence of the times. It took some finding... Anti-Semitism was at the heart of Fascism in the 1930s. Now the Jewish community might have gone from the area, but it’s even more racially-mixed. And - I want to say - it’s all the better for that. One of the things that surprised me in my visit to London is that people there on the whole are friendly. People on the bus in Wapping and Shadwell spoke, asked where we were going, told us where we should get off. Walking in the streets, people stopped to ask us where we were going and gave directions - some of them were probably on their way back from the mosque. When we found the mural we were looking for, it was on a building next to a park. In the park there were women, fully-veiled with face-coverings, and another woman sun-bathing in a bikini. Multi-culuralism, mixed race communities, good humour, tolerance and the sun shone. It was a wonderful week.

So I have to be glad we didn’t go a week later… This last week has seen riots in London, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Manchester and elsewhere that can only be described as lawless violence and inexcusable, opportunistic criminality. Whatever might have sparked them off in the first place, what kept them going was the realisation that if you create a big enough disturbance then you can have more or less free rein to do what you want and take what you want. So start a fire, attack the fire crews when they turn out to tackle it, and you tie up the police in protecting the fire-fighters while you can go and loot shops. That seems to be the basic tactic. I don’t really need to say anything about how you follow it through in robbery, violent confrontation, arson, attacks on defenceless individuals and even murder. We’ve heard the stories told so many times - and seen it all on our television screens…

Someone summed up the view of Britain (or more correctly England) which has come to prevail in the United States media: “A few weeks ago we were the land of royal weddings and Harry Potter, but now it’s all phone-hacking and riots in the street.” Perhaps that sums it up - but neither perspective tells the truth. The looting and violence have been in particular places for a limited time - and we can be thankful for a response by so many more people who have come out to do what they can to help clear up the mess. And the rosy glow of a feel-good film and a wonderful royal occasion mustn’t mask the disaffection and alienation which have gone deep in our society.

It has been said to me several times during the last week that in the past people might not have had the things they wanted or even needed, but they made do with what they had. That may be true. But I suspect that it’s also true that they didn’t have to live with so much wealth and conspicuous consumption on display but out of their reach. Not just the bankers who pay themselves what they want and then add in the bonuses as well. Not just the celebrities in their fabulous homes when they’re not on a round of exotic holidays. But the fact that prosperity these days has come to be seen as requiring economic growth - and that means more and more consumption. We might see people turning out on the street with brushes and shovels to clear up but society as a whole has become fundamentally acquisitive. The Archbishop of Canterbury has put his finger on the problem when he spoke in the House of Lords, saying that we need to educate people to be citizens, not consumers. In the past people made do when they didn’t have enough. But now it’s there for the taking. It’s in their face - the media can survive only if they advertise it; the “have”s are conspicuous in their consumption of it; and why should they have it when others are excluded from it?

Something has gone fundamentally wrong in society. I wondered if those who went on the rampage could have any sense of generosity? Does the concept of humanity mean anything to them? But then - when politicians and the media refer to a whole section of society as an “underclass” what are they saying about these people? - that they’re less than human? The ideal promoted by so many people with political power is to work for a society in which people have “opportunity” - but that suggests that while some may make the most of it other people are never going to succeed; so what should they do?

People who take to the streets to riot and loot succeed only in destroying their own communities. And that can only add to the tragedy of an already-divided society. If we’re to make anything relevant to this out of the first part of today’s Gospel, perhaps it’s these words of Jesus: it’s “what comes out… that defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.” We all need to take a good look into our hearts - what do we find there? how do we let it form us as the people we are? what do our actions say about us?

And then there’s that encounter of Jesus and the Canaanite woman. It happens in the region of Tyre and Sidon - so it’s outside the area inhabited by the Jews. But the Canaanites had lived exactly where the Jews were then living - the people of Israel had entered the land of Canaan and taken it by conquest. So in a sense she’s a displaced and alienated person. And when she comes to Jesus asking for the healing of her daughter, he seems to respond in terms which make the divisions between them all the more graphic: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

What do we think of other people? What do we think of their needs and aspirations? Do we see what they lack rather than what they are? - human beings made in the image of God.

This last week has seen just too much failure in humanity. Where do we want to draw the line? - not merely in terms of acceptable behaviour but in seeing people as God sees them. Jesus may start by saying that he is sent to work only amongst his own people, the Israelites. But even then he speaks of them as a lost people. We are all lost, we all need to be found and rescued. And it’s the Canaanite woman - from an alien society - who shows what faith truly is. She looks beyond the division of Jew and Gentile and argues her case. She shows what is necessary for the healing of her daughter.

We need the healing of our broken, impoverished society. As Christians we look to God who shows how he takes humanity seriously by sending his Son into the world in human flesh. Perhaps we can take a lead by being more human where we are - and displaying something of the divine image to which we are called.

Preached on 14 August 2011 in St. Cuthbert's Church, Shotley Bridge

One of this morning's Psalms - an appropriate meditation for our times

2011-08-11T09:32:00.000+01:00

Psalm 15

1 Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle? •
Who may rest upon your holy hill?

2 Whoever leads an uncorrupt life •
and does the thing that is right;

3 Who speaks the truth from the heart •
and bears no deceit on the tongue;

4 Who does no evil to a friend •
and pours no scorn on a neighbour;

5 In whose sight the wicked are not esteemed, •
but who honours those who fear the Lord.

6 Whoever has sworn to a neighbour •
and never goes back on that word;

7 Who does not lend money in hope of gain, •
nor takes a bribe against the innocent;

8 Whoever does these things •
shall never fall.

Lord, lead us to our heavenly home
by single steps of self-restraint
and deeds of righteousness;
through the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Prayer for Peace in our Communities

2011-08-09T12:33:00.001+01:00

As I write after nights of violence and lawlessness in London and other communities, I see that the Prime Minister has just recalled Parliament to meet on Thursday.

Our diocese has issued this item this morning, but it won't be accessible to everyone so I print it here:

It's difficult to know how to respond to the current situation in London and elsewhere with what seems like a complete breakdown in law and order. At best (if we can call it that) it appears to be young people giving vent to their feelings of anger and frustration with society as a whole. At worst, it's simply criminal behaviour on a huge scale stretching the resources of the police and emergency services almost to breaking point. For those of us who aren't experiencing the horrors of these events first hand we must pray that things won't continue to escalate and that the communities affected can get their lives back to normal. And we can pray for long-term solutions to the problems.

The following prayer which may help has been posted on the Church of England website today:

A prayer for peace in our communities

Gracious God,
We pray for peace in our communities this day.
We commit to you all who work for peace and an end to tensions,
And those who work to uphold law and justice.
We pray for an end to fear,
For comfort and support to those who suffer.
For calm in our streets and cities,
That people may go about their lives in safety and peace.
In your mercy, hear our prayers,
now and always. Amen

Among the other prayers is a prayer for the current financial situation

Lord God, we live in disturbing days:
across the world,
prices rise,
debts increase,
markets are in turmoil,
jobs are taken away,
and fragile security is under threat.
Loving God, meet us in our fear and hear our prayer:
be a tower of strength amidst the shifting sands,
and a light in the darkness;
help us receive your gift of peace,
and fix our hearts where true joys are to be found,
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

You can find more prayers concerning recent events by following this link.

Meanwhile, you can find links from this blog to two sermons preached by Rosie Junemann, our Reader, on the last two Sundays. Go to the Homilies and Magazines page by using the appropriate tab near the top of this page.

Here's our new Bishop of Durham...

2011-07-12T23:57:00.000+01:00

... Justin Welby, at present Dean of Liverpool. He's to be consecrated in October and enthroned in November. The news has been out for some time, but the video has only just been released.

Our latest news

2011-07-01T22:28:00.002+01:00

... is to be found in our new Parish Magazine. It's a double issue for July and August. The print edition is now out - and you can read it online by clicking here.

Ordinary Time - for Welcome and Hospitality

2011-06-26T15:02:00.002+01:00

Many churches might have observed today as Music Sunday. We thought about it but wondered if it was really necessary - we have music every Sunday and hopefully do it pretty well. And we work on the maxim, "He who sings prays twice."

So we simply kept the First Sunday after Trinity - and the first Sunday in liturgical green for a long, long time. It's good to be back into "Ordinary Time" as we strike out into a new rhythm of life and worship. The call to be a people of Welcome and Hospitality was the key issue which we drew from today's Gospel reading - here's the text of the sermon which I preached.

Next Sunday it'll be the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle - and a special day as we admit two of the younger members of our congregation to share in Holy Communion. We hope there'll be many to join us.

Pentecost - over all too soon?

2011-06-20T10:25:00.001+01:00

We've just been changing the altar frontal and church hangings from yesterday's golds and whites for Trinity Sunday to the green of Ordinary Time. I'm always rather relieved to "get back into green" - perhaps it's just the need to tone down the diet after such a prolonged season of liturgical feasting.

So now for all those "Sundays after Trinity," as the Church of England's Calendar terms them. I wonder if I really prefer this designation from the Book of Common Prayer and Common Worship over the Alternative Serrvice Book's "Sundays after Pentecost"? Now - although there's a build-up to Pentecost in the days after Ascension Day, it's very much a matter of "hello and goodbye" in one day to this Feast of the Holy Spirit. Overall I think I'd prefer to keep simply "Ordinary Time" or "Green Time" - and isn't green an Orthodox liturgical colour for the Holy Spirit?

Anyway, we kept Trinity Sunday yesterday - as is only right and proper - and you can find my Homily for the day by clicking here; please read it in conjunction with "St. Patrick's Breastplate," which some members of my congregation claim not to be able to sing (I was congratulated on reading verses from it, rather than make them sing it).

But over the road in the Church Hall, members of Sunday School were still intent on celebrating Pentecost - and produced the wonderful "Birthday of the Church Cake" in these pictures. All the disciples are individually named - and yes, that does include Matthias...

Things of the Spirit

2011-06-13T13:21:00.000+01:00

We had a wonderful celebration of Pentecost at St. Cuthbert's - too late to join in now, but you can read the sermon by our Reader, Rosie Junemann, here. You can find other past sermons and Parish Magazines by clicking the appropriate tab near the top of the blog.

No pictures, I'm afraid, from the Pentecost celebration - nor from our Summer Fair... Despite cold, wind and rain our indoor version nevertheless drew the crowds and was highly successful. Sorry we couldn't seat more people for tea. A highlight was a performance from React Youth Theatre, who came over very well from a stage shared with the tombola!

And appropriately for the period around Pentecost, we joined with our parishes from our Deanery (and others) for a Confirmation at Durham Cathedral last Wednesday. Over 80 candidates in total (it was very long - yet prayerful, with incredible concentration on the part of Bishop Mark). Just one candidate from St. Cuthbert's - Rebecca Dixon, but a good crowd of supporters from the parish (and a full cathedral nave).

Another Thomas - and a small room

2011-05-22T23:11:00.000+01:00

In this morning's Gospel reading (John 14) it's the disciple Thomas who speaks out: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

If there's a temptation to associate Thomas with a tendency to doubt, then first I would want to say that the key thing about him is his honesty.

Reflecting on this and Jesus' promise that "in my Father's house there are many dwelling places / rooms" - or indeed "mansions" (AV) - I found myself talking about the priest and poet, R. S. Thomas:

... His final reputation was that of reclusiveness mixed with a tendency to venture onto the public scene with some outrageous political views. His Welsh nationalism was mixed with a keen regret that he found himself able only to write poetry in English. For all his long ministry as an Anglican priest he was not immune to uncertainty in matters of faith. But he would not hide from the contradictions he recognised in himself. Not least as a man of words, he relentlessly explored the silence he perceived: silence in which he prayed, but also silence which could denote the terrifying absence of God, silence in the refusal of answers to appear, a silence which he might long to find broken, but in which he had the courage to dwell. It would be rash to state any final conclusions as to the sort of faith with which he ended his life. But we do have some clues from his own words….

R. S. Thomas concludes what he calls his Autobiographical Essay with a picture of himself kneeling in a room furnished with chairs and books, seeing Orion and Sirius above the bay, and knowing it ‘difficult to hold the two in proportion.’ It is an image he reproduces in a poem from his last collection, ‘At the End’:

Few possessions: a chair,
a table, a bed
to say my prayers by,
and, gathered from the shore,
the bone-like, crossed sticks
proving that nature
acknowledges the Crucifixion.
All night I am at
a window not too small
to be frame to the stars
that are no further off than the city lights
I have rejected….

Thomas never comes to easy conclusions about God. He resists the temptation to domesticate a God he finds strangely revealed in the created order, a God who so often eludes him in prayer. But at the same time he finds the reality of God meeting him just where he is – living amongst the few possessions which are necessary, in a small room, with a window not too small to frame stars which seem so near. It’s a poem of maturity after a life of searching – and it points to God in utter simplicity, and says, “We meet him here. We know God because he reveals himself in those things which have become familiar to us.”

Just an excerpt of what I had to say. Click here to find the whole of it.

A great day at the Hall

2011-05-14T16:24:00.000+01:00

... And an apology if you went looking for our new St. Cuthbert's Hall page. "Blogger" which hosts the page has had rather grievous problems over two or three days. It meant that we lost all the material uploaded to the site on Thursday.

Some of it has come back - and I've restored the Hall page and the tab by which it's accessed. So it's all there (at least as I write!) - please try again, especially if you were frustrated by a previous absence of content. Access the Hall material by using the tab which is now back near the top of this page.

Meanwhile thanks to all who worked so hard for a very successful Open Day today - not to mention our caterers and stall-holders. We had a steady stream of visitors to the Hall, wonderful food on sale as well as an abundance of plants, books and cakes. Members of Hall user groups were to hand to welcome visitors - and the general impression they gave was that they were very impressed by the new facilities.

And here's our new brochure - for any who'd like to download it.

Ready to open...

2011-05-12T15:08:00.000+01:00

The picture is an action shot taken at our Tuesday Lunch Club earlier this week. I took it while photographing the various parts of our Hall which we'd like more people to see - and here's how...

We're holding an Open Day at St. Cuthbert's Hall this Saturday, 14th May, to show off the new and renovated facilities in the Hall extension. The builder's van was parked outside again this morning, but we're confident that all will be ship-shape and sparkling. Running alongside the Open Day we have "Coffee Plus" which is rather more than a coffee morning - lunches too + books, plants and cake stalls. Please come if you can between 10a.m. and 3p.m.

To celebrate the new opportunities and possibilities there's now a dedicated "St. Cuthbert's Hall" page on this blog - simply click on the tab at the top of this page.

While you're up there we now have another dedicated page - for our Parish Magazine and homilies / sermons preached at St. Cuthbert's... and elsewhere in the case of the last few days. The most recent entries are both offerings from the Vicar: the first is for Sunday 8th May from the Parish Eucharist; the second he delivered in his capacity as Rector of the Durham and Newcastle Chapter of the Society of Catholic Priests when it met in Byker on Monday 9th May. Just click through to either of them.

Weddings, Walks & Easter continues

2011-05-03T17:11:00.000+01:00

11a.m. last Friday found me up a hill - Catbells in the Lake District. It wasn't any lack of royal feeling on my part, but because it was the last part-day of my post-Easter break before I had to get back that afternoon for a wedding rehearsal at St. Cuthbert's. I couldn't get home in time to watch the royal wedding on the box, so much wiser, I felt, to put the brilliant weather to good use and take in a quickly ascended fell.

At the top we found people with an aerial up. At first I felt they must be tuned in to the TV coverage, but then realised it was a radio aerial - I think they were tracking ospreys. Back down the hill in Keswick the festivities were in full swing with a special street market, give-aways and giant TV screen in the High Street. A great day! - and that includes watching all the recorded coverage once we got home.

Back in the parish it was the first wedding of the season - of Carl Nevin and Emily Reed, daughter of the previous occupants of our Vicarage. Congratulations to them!

And so to Sunday - which felt rather better than people expect of "Low Sunday." You can find Rosie's sermon by going to the "Magazine and Homilies" page on this blog - and with it I've now up-loaded her sermon for Maundy Thursday. You should be able to open new links on this page without difficulty, though if you don't have Microsoft Silverlight it's recommended that you download it if you want so see the page at its best - as I have just had to for my old desktop computer (without any problems - the link to the programme presents itself; just click to run the programme).

Christ is Risen!

2011-04-24T19:37:00.001+01:00

We've had an excellent Holy Week and Easter Day at St. Cuthbert's. Thanks to so many people who made it all possible, not least the folk who put in much hard work behind the scenes - and there's a lot of scene-shifting as the church itself changes its appearance and character in our journey through Holy Week.

Recently I've been finding problems with the website which hosts our Parish Magazine and Sermons. So - thanks to my older son, Adam, who knows about these things - I'm trying a different hosting solution. I'll place links to various items on a new page of this blog which you can access further up this page. Click and you should reach the document you want. For a start here are some direct links just uploaded:

The April 2011 issue of our Parish Magazine

The May 2011 issue of our Parish Magazine (this hasn't actually reached the printer yet, but will hopefully be appearing this week; meanwhile you can view it here first)

My Homily for today - Easter Day 24 April

And may we all know the joy and peace of Easter-tide!

Front Page News

2011-04-06T15:08:00.001+01:00

St. Cuthbert's Church made it onto the front page of the Newcastle Journal this morning - as the newspaper carried the news of Lew Parker's retirement from winding our church clock. Inside Lew got most of page 9, and his picture both on that page and on the front. He's also in the Journal's North-East news rival, the Northern Echo. I can't tell you on which page because all the copies had been bought up in our local newsagent.

But you can read the stories on-line. The Journal story is here - and the Northern Echo's story is here. The Echo web page even carries a video of Lew winding the clock and adjusting the mechanism.

They're both genuinely good news stories. And we're very glad to have had Lew carrying out this job for so long - and his father before him! A Happy Retirement to Lew - with thanks to him and to those carrying on the good work.

Your "busy" time?

2011-03-30T13:07:00.000+01:00

Clergy are quite accustomed to being asked during Advent, "So this is your busy time?" I'm always pleased to hear this, because generally it indicates that the questioner has quite enough on his or her plate with preparations for Christmas - and isn't going to expect too much of me.

But of course it's Lent that's the really busy time. And - notwithstanding all those Lent study groups, extra devotions and the full observance of Holy Week - what really takes up the time and generates the stress is getting ready for Mothering Sunday and the Annual Parochial Church Meeting.

Well... Mothering Sunday approaches this weekend - join us if you can as we say it with flowers, and more... And the Easter Vestry & Annual Parochial Church Meeting is the following weekend - Sunday 10th April after the Sung Eucharist. To keep things brief we aim to publish in adavance as many as possible of the Annual Meeting reports. They're in the Parish Magazines for March and April, but you can find the Reports alone here.

Meanwhile, the April issue of the Parish Magazine has now been published - and the online issue is here. But you'll have to get hold of the paper copy to get our Holy Week and Easter Card included...

Starting Lent - the Garden and the Wilderness

2011-03-14T11:06:00.001Z

Brothers and sisters in Christ, since early days Christians have observed with great devotion the time of our Lord’s passion and resurrection and prepared for this by a season of penitence and fasting.

By carefully keeping these days, Christians take to heart the call to repentance and the assurance of forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel, and so grow in faith and in devotion to our Lord.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.

... So we began Lent in the Liturgy for Ash Wednesday. I'm always rather glad to get into Lent. This year it's taken much longer than usual due to the lateness of Easter - though it's questionable whether for all that I'm any more prepared. But - while it's good to hit the ground running - the point of Lent is not to have everything worked out perfectly from it start; it's to let those disciplines of Lent work in us to prepare us for Holy Week and Easter.

Our Reader, Rosie Junemann, took us into the contrast between the Garden of Eden where things go wrong for Adam and Eve and the Wilderness as Jesus prepares for his public ministry - read her sermon for the First Sunday of Lent here.

I followed the Sung Eucharist with a Baptism of three children (including twins) and approaching 200 guests in church - and in my brief homily (off the cuff so not online) reflected on the imperfect-ness of our world, all too conscious of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Questions of theodicy, our fallen nature, redemption and forgiveness are all in that Old Testament reading for yesterday (Genesis 2.15-17; 3.1-7). I'd wondered whether I'd get away with using it in such a context, but we had a great time, a largely responsive congregation and perfectly behaved children. Which in part makes me wonder why General Synod is getting so wound up about the Common Worship Baptism Service - isn't it more a matter of how you do it rather than its content that is the issue? Elements such as the "Commission" don't work off the page - but there's permission to use your own words in order to be more direct; why not use it, rather than asking for yet another text?

Barefoot Discipleship - and Online Revisions

2011-02-26T18:11:00.002Z

"Barefoot Disciple: Walking the Way of Passionate Humility " is the title of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book for 2011. Here in Durham we can be justly proud that it is written by Stephen Cherry, Residentiary Canon of Durham and frequently referred to as the man with the longest job title in the Diocese: Director of Ministerial Development and Parish Support. Don't let that put you off... I got half-way through the book during a train journey - and just wish I had more time to read it at leisure. Hopefully that time will come with Lent.

Here's a link to a diocesan web-page which will tell you more - and that page gives a further link to a print-it-yourself leaflet, Pilgrim Posts - 10 Ideas for Lent, based on the book. Well-worth pondering - we'll be distributing the leaflet at St. Cuthbert's.

Meanwhile, our parish website has been up-dated, and the March issue of our Parish Magazine is now on sale in hard copy, or you can read it in full-colour here.

Turning the other cheek - going that extra mile...

2011-02-21T15:20:00.002Z

Yesterday we celebrated the 3rd Sunday before Lent. Because of the way the Church's Calendar is worked out it was the first time we've done so in "Year A" since the present Lectionary came out in 1998. Hope I got that right! - my point is that more often than not, we miss a critical piece of Jesus' teaching from the Sermon on the Mount as to how people should relate to one another. The Gospel reading was Matthew 5.38-48. It's required reading if we're to do anything about making relationships healthy. Why do we read it so seldom?

I wonder if as a society we've become over-influenced by soap opera, where the story-line is driven by the deliberate creation of misunderstanding. People don't hear what other people are saying - and they don't hang around to listen again or work out what was really intended. Are we any better? The whole of my homily is to be found by clicking here. And this is an excerpt:

... I suspect that many people think I’m supposed to go around “liking” everyone. The Vicar should go about with a smile on his face, spreading goodwill, never taking offence, being agreeable to all. When adverts appear in the Church Times from parishes seeking a new priest, quite commonly they say that he or she should have a good sense of humour. What they rarely say is “should have a good sense of humour, because you’re going to need it!” Maybe they could say “should have a back like the proverbial duck, so that the water and any other mess that occasionally comes your way can readily flow off it.” But actually that’s not what you need - because that would suggest that you’re rather impervious, hardened-up or deaf to what people say. And priests need to be vulnerable - so they can be easily wounded.

If that’s true of clergy, it’s true of lay people too - ordinary Christians trying to get on with lives of loving service. And that’s what today’s Gospel reading is about…

It’s part of the Sermon on the Mount, and in the section we read today you may hear an echo of the Beatitudes with which Jesus begins this so-called sermon:

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Now Jesus turns his attention to the person who lashes out at you - “strikes you on the right cheek.” It needn’t be physical hurt that’s inflicted - what people say can be even worse. And what do you do about people who always seem to be wanting from you - and never giving - whether it’s wanting something that’s rightfully yours, dragging you along to do something you just don’t feel up to, or borrowing yet again when they could easily go out and buy whatever it is they need for themselves.

Does it ring a bell for you?

When we can’t think of an answer to give, then we can start to feel guilty - and it’s all quite irrational! When we feel that I’ve really done my best and people can’t see it, then we feel hurt. When we feel we’ve just got nothing more to give, then we rightly wonder when someone’s going to give something to me…

What we find in today’s Gospel reading is that those feelings about which we may feel so guilty are nothing new. A first step in facing up to them is simply to admit how I feel.

I’m glad to say that I find myself in a community where there’s lots of support and friendship. We should really value what we have here in this church, this parish, these villages in which we live. Love is the calling of the Christian - that’s what we need, and that’s what we need to share. “Love your neighbour as yourself.” The words are in today’s Old Testament reading - on the lips of Moses as the Israelites wandered all that time in the desert, 3,000 years and more ago. “Love your neighbour…” becomes the second great command of Jesus. But remember to love your neighbour as yourself. We need a sense of self-worth if we’re to do the loving properly. We need to be free of hurt, pain and guilt. But because we’re human there are those times when people cause us hurt - and times when we wound other people too. Admit how we feel, and we’ll get a better sense of our own need, our own worth, and how we can respond.

Jesus tells his disciples, “Love your enemies.” That’s tough, but I wonder if the first step is when we have to recognise who we are setting up to be our enemy? When we pray for those we dislike, there are different things to be doing. We have to ask if there is anyone in the first place that we really do dislike; then to ask why; then to explore whether that’s a real cause for feeling that way. Then as we pray we recognise their humanity - and our own. How does our humanity relate to what the Bible tells us about our being made in the image and likeness of God?...

Holy Island... and National Marriage Week

2011-02-14T12:00:00.000Z

After a rather over-busy few weeks, I knew I needed a Quiet Day. Having nothing booked formally, I drove up to Lindisfarne - re-named by Benedictine monks from Durham as "Holy Island" though of course the original monastic foundation goes back to its establishment by St. Aidan in the seventh century.

Because the causeway to the island is tidal, there's a discipline required in working out when to go there - consult the Tide Tables! A further discipline of patience was required on the last leg of the journey when I found myself in a long queue of traffic held up by work on the East Coast mainline level crossing at Beal, just before reaching the causeway. Several drivers turned their cars round and drove off - I wonder what else they thought they would do when they must have travelled some distance to get that far?

Once I was on the island, the clouds broke up, the sun came out and the weather turned quite mild. There's something special about the quality of the air and light on Holy Island. And while there were other cars in the car park there were few people about to disturb the stillness.

I wonder how many visitors make it beyond the confines of the village - or at best the Castle? A few venture to St. Cuthbert's Island, crunching over the mussels and slipping on the seaweed. But very few go more than half a mile from the centre of the village over muddy tracks or along the coastal path to explore the dunes and discover vast expanses of sandy beach, rocky bays, cliffs and the lough with its hide. It's sometimes possible to walk more than halfway round the island without meeting anyone - and in between the dunes there are areas where even the sound of the sea is blocked out.

I'm not all that keen on the "Celtic Christianity industry" - but come to Lindisfarne and you can understand how the monks who established themselves there found a sort of "desert" in which their lives of prayer could flourish. And it's all just off the A1, which I could have got back to very quickly at the end of the day - if Balfour Beatty hadn't still been continuing their work on the level crossing.

There are more pictures of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne here. The shutter button on my ageing mobile phone isn't working too well - so sometimes it didn't work quite when intended!

And on Sunday I tackled the hard sayings of Jesus found in the Gospel reading from Matthew 5 - with particular reference to his words concerning marriage and divorce - click here! The day ended with my being interviewed for Metro Radio in connection with National Marriage Week. The idea was that it would go out in snippets at various times today - if you hear any of it, let me know!

The Big Society - and on being salt...

2011-02-09T15:33:00.000Z

I'm not sure when we last had a "5th Sunday before Lent" - never in my record of Year A lectionary cycles... and that's a shame because it means that we're only rarely going to have last Sunday's lections as set reading.

Any one of the readings for the day (Isaiah 58.1-9a; 1 Corinthians 2.1-12; Matthew 5.13-20) offered a wealth of opportunity for reflection. Not least the call to be "the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world." And before that to hear Isaiah's words:

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

In my reflections at the 8a.m. Eucharist I couldn't help but make the connection to present-day calls to work for a Big Society, but also to wonder just how many of us are willing to look beyond our own selfish pre-occupations. Getting home I found Alain de Botton giving his Point of View on Radio 4 - and from his secular standpoint admitting that individualism and libertarianism have brought society to a point where there is little to underpin any sense of cohesion; something which can be learned from a religious tradition lost to most. And then our Reader, Rosie Junemann, preached on the Gospel and the Big Society at our Sung Eucharist - find her sermon here.

How do people grasp such a concept as a Big Society if they haven't a common vocabulary / understanding / faith / moral imperative? And how does the Government think it is going to work? Obviously the hope is that it will make good for those gaps where previously there was provision by government spending. But might not the cuts simply make people more desperate and self-focussed, even selfish? And when charities find their funding cut, and churches and community groups find grants for their work dried up, who will organise people into action for the greater good?

Candlemas - and the beginning of February...

2011-02-02T13:08:00.001Z

I've been "up the road " in Consett, celebrating the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple at Christ Church. I think it was the first experience of the Feast for most of the (midweek) congregation - at least with full use of candles, procession and responsories. Hopefully a good time for all!

At St. Cuthbert's we kept the Feast on Sunday. You can find my homily for the Feast by clicking here.

And since I've been remiss about posting recently, here is my previous offering of a homily for Epiphany 2 back on 16th January.

We're hoping that the recent improvement in the weather is here to stay. A new discussion group met yesterday - back again next Tuesday. It's only a short burst, cut off by a Deanery Synod meeting the following week... But we'll be back in full flow with Lent meetings in March.

To find out what is going on this month, have a look at our new Parish Magazine, which you can find by clicking here.

From Rome to (more) ice and snow

2011-01-10T11:38:00.001Z

I took my post-Christmas break last week - and maximised my time by flying off to Rome after the Sunday Eucharist on 2nd January, returning on Saturday. I dressed a little too lightly on a couple of days, but as the week went by things warmed up.

In the parish we kept the Feast of the Epiphany before I left - on Sunday 2nd January as the Lectionary permits. But it was great to find Christmas and the lead-up to Epiphany on its proper feast day of 6th January in full flow in Rome. Lights abounded in the streets - and a profusion of Crib Scenes. Notably a depiction in lights on the roundabout of the Piazza Venezia in front of the Victor Emmanuel Monument (and reindeer on the other side!), life-size and huge at St Peter's Basilica, and a walk-in stable amongst a collection of crib scenes in the cloister of the Church of San Lorenzo fuori le Muro. The Sant'Egidio Community had its own particular take on the Nativity at the entrance to Santa Maria in Trastevere. And perhaps most moving is Il Presepe dei Netturbini, "The Sanitation Workers' Manger Scene," between the San Pietro Station and St. Peter's Square. This scene has developed over the years as the Street Cleaners add to it. The figures are tiny, the stable scene just one small part of a huge project, and around the stable people get on with the humblest of tasks. As in many of the other crib scenes, the stable is not centrally placed. This is something that needs to be looked for. But it's saying that God is here, even if apparently hidden or not obvious - and he honours the lowliest and humblest.

As for the Feast of the Epiphany, it's a public holiday in Rome. The place was heaving, especially in and around the Piazza Navona, which was in fairground mode. And the Via del Corso was packed with thronging crowds - it took at least three times as long as I'd estimated to walk along it (the few motorists who ventured onto the street couldn't move) as we went to Mass at Santa Maria del Popolo. There was a choir of choirs, a marvellous sound with a fantastic acoustic for a short Mozart Mass (strangely the Agnus Dei was said, not sung), and although there were about 700 in church with about half receiving Communion, the whole thing was over in 50 minutes - though the choir then moved into the nave for a performance of sacred music.

I came back to ice and snow - and Church Bank was officially closed at the weekend with a barrier to prevent traffic entering. Our numbers were well down on normal, but a surprising number made the effort to get down to us in the almost the most treacherous conditions I've known. Lots of falls - and I'm afraid one fractured wrist.

No more snow pictures. But you can find lots more pictures from Rome here.

And here's a link to a sermon by our Reader, Rosie Junemann, for yesterday's Feast of the Baptism of Christ.

Christmas - Why did God put me where I am?

2010-12-25T17:29:00.001Z

A very happy and blessed Christmas from all of us at St. Cuthbert's!

My question, "Why did God put me where I am?" was provoked in part by the struggle we've been having keeping open the access to our church, set as it is in the middle of a steep hill made treacherous by the snow and icy weather. It's very beautiful as well of course.

In the event there was pretty much a full house at our Christmas Eve service of Carols, Christingles and the Blessing of the Crib. And people have been coming back for the Midnight Mass and this morning's Eucharist.

My sermon for Midnight Mass sermon is now online to be found here - and I'm posting it here as well in full.

Best wishes for every blessing of peace and joy!

Homily for Christmas Midnight Mass

Someone asked me the other day, “Who decided that it was a good idea to build St. Cuthbert’s Church in the middle of such a steep hill?” It’s a question that I’ve been asking myself quite a lot recently as we’ve struggled with ice and snow on our one in seven hill with its one in five approach at the steepest point. Perhaps St. Cuthbert’s Church is here because the man who gave the land in the middle of the nineteenth century couldn’t think of anything else to do with such an inconveniently situated site. Whatever his motives were in giving it, the fact is, however, that the people who wanted to build the church accepted the land and got on with the building. I don’t know if there is any record of early regret being expressed after a couple of hard winters, but 160 years later we are still here doing what we can as we worship in this place, as we use it as a focal point in seeking to serve this community around us and in trying to witness to our faith. And you are here tonight - I’m thankful that you are, when it’s such a struggle in such seriously bad weather to get here.

Why did God put me where I am? That’s a question we could ask ourselves at any time - whether the going is tough or easy. It’s often only when life is hard that we ask questions like this. If we did it more often - in good times as well as bad - then we’d be better placed to see how God has blessed us in so many ways. Ask the question more often and perhaps that might be for you the beginning of a process in which you can cultivate a sense of thankfulness. I wish people would do this, because the voice of complaint is so frequently louder than the spirit of thankfulness… the response to God of gratitude. Why did God put me where I am? If I ask that on a sunny day in May on one of those rare occasions when I get to sit in my garden and feel that I’m on top of things, then I might quite possibly give a different answer than on a day in December when I can’t get the car out onto the road and I spend my time cancelling events which we’ve looked forward to - and which are important especially to people who might not easily be able to get out at the best of times. Against the sense of frustration I’ve encountered so much during the last month, I have to hold up again and again the knowledge of just how much we are able to do as Christians in this place, blessed with our church and its facilities in such a beautiful location. And then I can be thankful for those who do turn out again and again to offer their support for others, who struggle to get here to maintain this place and its life, and who go out of their way to help other people when they could say that life is tough enough for themselves.

Why did God put me here? We have to ask that question on the good days, so that we don’t get the wrong answer when we ask it on a bad day. There is a school of thought that Christians in this country are becoming something of a persecuted minority. But when a British Airways employee is told that she can’t wear a cross with her uniform… or a nurse is reported for offering to pray for a patient, we have to weigh this against the reality and harshness of persecution where Christians are discriminated against day by day, where they are fearful of false accusation, where they become the victims of bloodshed and violence, sometimes imprisoned, even murdered. As we celebrate this Feast of Christmas and have only the weather to contend with, we can think of those who gather tonight in Bethlehem - and who first have to contend with a security wall and identity checks simply to get there. A little further to the east, Christians gather in real fear in Iraq where in recent weeks and months congregations have been taken hostage during worship and murdered by indiscriminate gunfire and grenade attack - and tens, probably hundreds of thousands have felt that they have no alternative but to flee their homeland to find safety elsewhere. Still further to the east in Iran, a Christian pastor has been given a death sentence for apostasy - his parents had been nominally Muslim, but he felt he had had no religion of his own until he became a Christian as an adult, and for that decision of faith he now stands condemned. And in too many other countries Christians are subject to severe restrictions - in some even forbidden to practise their faith.

Do Christians in these lands ask, Why did God put me where I am? They live with real fear and apprehension - and yet they continue to practise their faith and to celebrate it.

Why did God put me where I am? It’s a question we should ask ourselves regularly.

Last weekend I went to see the film “Of Gods and Men.” It’s the story of a community of Cistercian monks in the Atlas Mountains region of Algeria. During the 1990s they became aware of the increasing pressures of Islamist extremism. For decades they’d lived alongside the local Muslim community. But that community itself was fearful. Foreign workers were being murdered by terrorist groups. And then one night at Christmas the extremists came to them, demanding that the doctor in their community should come to treat a wounded fighter, demanding that they hand over their medicines. The monks refused. The doctor himself was too frail and the medicine they had was scarce and used in the clinic they ran for the villagers. The terrorists were persuaded to leave, but from then the pressure increased. The monks had to decide whether they should leave or at least accept protection from government security forces. But they refused the help of a government they knew to be corrupt and oppressive of the people they were seeking to serve. And while some at first wanted to flee to safety in France, gradually they had to recognise the reality for them of that question, Why did God put me where I am? It was not that they were there to make converts - whenever they worshipped it was just them, the monks alone. And they didn’t attempt to make converts. But they were there to live out a vocation. Their calling was not simply to offer medical treatment to villagers who would otherwise be without it - nor to offer some employment to local people who worked alongside them in their fields. Their calling was simply to be - to live a particular way of life as Christians in a particular place; to be a presence. Where else could they go without giving up their vocation?

The Prior of the Monastery, Dom Christian de Cherge, wrote this testament:

If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. To accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I would like them to pray for me: how worthy would I be found of such an offering?

I would like them to be able to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones allowed to fall into the indifference of anonymity. My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, and even in that which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have a space of lucidity which would enable me to beg forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.

The monks asked the question, Why did God put me where I am?... where we are? and knew that his will was for them to be there, a presence which could not be denied. And in 1996 seven of the community of nine were taken hostage and then murdered. They could have fled, but they stayed - and being there they lived out their calling.

What did they achieve? Were they noticed for what they did? In fact millions now know their story and have seen the film about their lives. It’s a film that requires patience of the viewer. There’s a lot of silence and stillness. And that’s something we could all do well to seek.

Tonight we celebrate the birth of Christ in the stillness of the night in Bethlehem. The story tells us that shepherds ran from their fields to worship - and later there were strange visitors from the East. But how many people at the time noticed? The Nativity of our Lord is the birth of God’s Son into the world, but he comes secretly - not with any display. He is born in the vulnerability of weak human flesh in a backwater of the Roman Empire - to a couple who didn’t really count for much according to worldly standards. But his birth is a presence, unrecognised yet real. This child would grow into a man who would change many lives, who would bring hope in the midst of despair, healing in brokenness, and the promise of new life and salvation for all who would follow him. By this birth God enters into our human picture as profoundly as is possible.

What was barely seen at the time is now known throughout the world. Tonight we bring ourselves once more to worship at the crib. We come to receive him who gives us his Body and his Blood. From apparent insignificance we learn the way of sacrifice and love - and a challenge to our calling. Why did God put me where I am?

Approaching Christmas

2010-12-20T14:52:00.001Z

Ice is my major preoccupation at the moment. I spent much of this morning consulting on whether a regular Eucharist due this afternoon in sheltered accommodation should go ahead, and then ringing round people who might turn up to tell them that for the second time we've had to cancel it - just too dangerous for many who might have wanted to go.

Last Friday we lost the planned concert by the Leadgate Gleemen and our Handbell Ringers - the second year running. Last year it was deep snow that caused the problem. This year the plummetting temperature which rapidly and dramatically worsened our road conditions.

But we're not too downhearted. This evening we have carols round the Village Christmas Tree - I think we'll aim for no more than thirty minutes! And an order for 200 oranges ready for the Crib Service cum Christingle on Christmas Eve is even now being prepared... Let's hope that people are not put off, whatever the weather!

Last week we did at least manage to do a fair bit of eating. The Lunch Club had its Christmas Party in grand style last Tuesday, and some of its members were back for more as the Mothers' Union celebrated its Christmas Lunch at Derwentside College. Excellent fare at each - and I gather that some people who were at both events also managed to fit in another one or two festive meals in between.

Thanks to everyone who is helping to keep things going: some of the Lunch Club workers are pictured here; no photos yet of the church's magnificent Christmas Tree which a wonderful team managed to erect last Wednesday just before the weather had taken a further downturn. And Rosie Junemann, our Reader, preached this sermon the Sunday before last (Advent 3) managing to get Coronation Street's 50th anniversary, John the Baptist and the call of the Kingdom all into the space of 10 minutes. I preached yesterday - but no written record exists of what I said...

Now the sun is shining, the sky is clear and blue - which might give me an hour to go out before dark and another temperature drop. At least it should keep tonight's singing up to pitch.

See amid the winter's snow...

2010-12-05T13:34:00.002Z

I know it's too early for Christmas trees - but I've just got back from decorating our Hall for use by our various user-groups over the coming weeks. We have some magnificent decorations - and hoped they would have been seen to their best as the Rainbows, Brownies and Guides put on a coffee evening and entertainment tomorrow. Sadly, it's had to be postponed due to the ice and snow on Church Bank - hopefully it'll go ahead on Monday 20th December.

Only two cars with snow tyres made it down the Bank to the church and hall this morning - so thanks to everyone who walked. And we grabbed people while they were there to help with the decorating (completed in record time), a task we don't now have to do this afternoon - and even had a Finance Committee meeting (only one absentee, who lives on an even steeper hill), so we don't need to have that tomorrow!

Preaching this morning, I tried to make the connection between John the Baptist and the way we might be feeling in this wintry weather. I don't find John a particularly appealing character (too much shouting at people, poor dress sense, disgusting diet) - but probably I do him an injustice... I found myself reflecting on his formation through life in the desert and went on from there to the desert experience created over a thousand years later in the Russian taiga. To quote Carlo Caretto (via Andrew Louth's The Wilderness of God), “All the great religions were born between the desert and the steppe.” See how I developed that by clicking here - you'll probably need to tweak the sidebar to make the text appear.

Advent - already "a cold coming"

2010-12-01T18:20:00.000Z

The snow is over a foot deep now - little chance of my removing the car from my drive onto my steep bank for some time. So I'm re-discovering the virtue of walking - and meeting quite a few other hardy souls as I do so. The weekly "shop" is going to have to be undertaken by bus (the joy of not having to find a place to park at the MetroCentre!) - though buses are not surprisingly a little intermittent, and schedules are ending at 7p.m. Nevertheless "Go North-East" bus company seems currently to be amongst the current heroes of the region - and quite likely has the most widely used Facebook page.

All this prompted me in thinking of what to write in the "View from the Vicarage" for our December - January Parish Magazine. It's all finished now - and I've had an offer from a 4x4 driver to get the copy to the printer and to collect the finished product. Unfortunately the printer isn't there to do the work - and I'm not surprised... However, you can read the whole magazine in full colour by clicking here and using the tools to re-size and navigate (easy but be patient). And this is what's on my page:

A Cold Coming…

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow…

The opening lines of T. S. Eliot’s poem “Journey of the Magi” come to mind as I write these words on 1st December - with heavy snow falling upon the foot or so we’ve already got. At least in Eliot’s imagination the snow was melting for the Magi. There seems little immediate prospect of that for us.

Why did the wise men from the east make that journey to Bethlehem? What had motivated them? Why did we do it? - they ask in the poem. And what did it mean?

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?...

The story of Christ’s birth at Bethlehem is both the simplest of stories and also the most demanding. We bring ourselves to worship the Child who is born in the stable and laid in a manger because there was no room at the inn. Shepherds from the fields rush to worship before him. Mysterious visitors from the East come bearing rich and strange gifts. And then they go back to their former lives - to find something has changed.

Each year we need to make that spiritual journey to Bethlehem - to recover a sense of child-like awe as we see how heaven touches earth, how God’s Son is born in the vulnerable frailty of human flesh. But then we need to ask, how has this changed me?

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation…

In the coldness of a wintry world, may we experience again the warmth of God’s love. And may we know that it makes all the difference.

Wishing you all joy and peace at this time - and throughout the New Year.

Martin Jackson

Christmas starts here? - Advent certainly does

2010-11-28T18:52:00.001Z

"Christmas starts here" was the strap-line advertising yesterday's village event in Shotley Bridge - community meets business and charity benefits. We moved our own "Christmas Fair" to fit in with the big day which began with the arrival of Father Christmas (in Victorian horse and carriage) and ended with the switching on of the village Christmas tree lights.

A sleigh with reindeer would have been a far more appropriate vehicle for Santa. We're in the grip of ice and snow - and I'd thought we would have cause to regret moving the Fair to this weekend. Getting everything running certainly took determination and hard work on the part of many - church, hall and vicarage are half-way up a one in seven hill and the one-way approach is one in five at its steepest. But it worked. It seems that people took the hint from the weather, abandoned hopes of taking their cars to the MetroCentre or Newcastle for Christmas shopping and stayed local. Fortunately it was the right sort of snow - not slushy but quite dry and with the right kind of grip underfoot - and that made it easier for people to walk up or down Church Bank and drop into the Hall.

Anyway - a great day... More snow fell overnight, and I found myself unsurprised by a congregation of zero at 8a.m. But over 40 ventured out for the 10a.m. Eucharist. A good-sized contingent should now be making our way to Durham for the Cathedral's Advent Procession - but the snow is falling again, my only way out would be dangerous if not impossible and I haven't heard from anyone that they might be going to take a chance. So, our apologies...

I reflected on yesterday's events when I preached this morning - with the urgency of the Christmas Fair out of the way, now we can perhaps find the space to tackle Advent! Click the link and play with the sidebar to make the text appear in the window. And you can find Rosie Junemann's sermon for Christ the King here - sorry about the delay in posting.

For more pictures from yesterday's celebrations, click here. Keep warm!

Silence and Remembrance

2010-11-14T16:13:00.000Z

I've just come in from our village Act of Remembrance - a rather chilly affair this year, but numbers hold up with Deputy Lord Lieutenant, County Councillors, Air Cadets, British Legion members and the clergy of local Churches in attendance. A number of them would have been at the civic ceremony at the Cenotaph in Consett two miles up the hill. Ours is a more intimate affair - and the best thing is the nature of the Memorial at which it takes place: a short row of houses built after the First World War. The names of those who died in battle are recorded in a panel on the wall of one of the houses, but it's the houses which themselves are the memorial.

And isn't that right? At the Eucharist this morning where we had a separate Act of Remembrance at the two memorials which commemorate the fallen of the whole parish - not just Shotley Bridge village - we ignored the Lectionary's direction that Church of England parishes should read from the prophet Malachi, instead to use RCL's reading from Isaiah. And this is why:

The prophet Isaiah in his vision of a peaceable Kingdom (Isaiah 65.17-25) writes:

They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

Hope is in building, says the prophet. Always we face the challenge, what is it that we wish to build?

More about this in my homily, which you can find by clicking here.

And (since I haven't blogged for so long), here at last is what Rosie Junemann, our Reader, had to say when she preached for the Feast of All Saints, two weeks ago.

The picture is of the Abbey of Monte Cassino from the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in the town below.

Ahead of myself

2010-10-23T22:34:00.000+01:00

You can read tomorrow's sermon for the Last Sunday of Trinity (which we're observing as Bible Sunday) online by clicking here and tweaking the scoll bar button. It looks blank until you do the tweaking and I just don't know why - but it's there!

The print edition of the November issue of our Parish Magazine is out ahead of time as well - and you can read it online in colour. You don't need to tweak the scroll button for this. Instead its eccentricity is to open on page 10. Use the tools to find your way around, blow it up to full page etc.

With All Souls' Day and Remembrance Sunday both playing central parts in November, I found myself writing about "Remembering."

Writing as I am on the day that the Government is announcing the extent of its Spending Review cuts, I’m glad to be able to approve at least one of its recent announcements: the appointment of Simon Schama to advise on the teaching of History in schools. And I hope the policy makers will actually listen to what he says! I’m afraid that much that is lacking in society today seems to be due to a loss of perspective - all too often decisions seem to get made on the hoof with attention only to the here and now. More generally people seem to lack a sense of what has gone before in terms of national and world history. Small wonder that people have little sense of the relevance of the events in Scripture 2000 years ago and more.

And yet I’m continually asked by people for advice on gaining access to parish records which might throw light on their family history. So can I say now that if they’re more than 30 years old in the case of St. Cuthbert’s, you almost certainly need to start at the Record Office in County Hall! - and there’s a legal requirement to deposit all parish records there if they’re over 100 years old. What those requests show is a desire to know where we come from - something of the lives of our forebears.

I’m moved when people tell me - often at a wedding or Baptism - that the name of a family member is recorded on one of the war memorials in our church (sometimes on both). I think of myself standing at the great memorial wall at Tynecot in Belgium where my great-uncle - with no recorded grave - has his name inscribed, and I placed my fingers in the engraved letters, one name among so many.

Part of the Eucharistic Prayer is called the anamnesis. We take bread and wine and remember, not as something past, over and done with - but something which is part of what we are because of what Christ has done for us. Something ever present and all the more real.

One wedding and two sermons

2010-10-17T12:45:00.001+01:00

The VW camper vans were back at St. Cuthbert's yesterday as we celebrated what looks like being the last wedding of the season. Congratulations to Jayne Swinburne and Stephen Colllins - and sorry about the quality of the picture, snatched on my mobile phone just before they left for their reception.

I've finally got round to committing some of my preaching to a computer file. Last week on the healing of Naaman and the Ten Lepers - click here. There's quite a difference I think between St. Luke's take on the healing of the ten, one of whom -a Samaritan - returns to give thanks and St. Mark's version in which only one is healed. Mark has healing come by the touch of Jesus, the compassion and humanity of Christ reaching across the gulf formerly imposed by notions of ritual cleanliness and defilement. Luke keeps the intial healing at a distance without even a word of healing from Jesus - much more like the healing of Naaman, whom the prophet heals without even leaving his house. The difference in Luke is in the response of gratitude - and where it comes from...

This week, me again, on the parable of the widow and the unjust judge - the whole homily is here. I found last week's recourse to court judgements in the process leading up to the sale of Liverpool Football Club quite an illuminating way in to my exploration of the story. And while the parable has a clear point to make about persistence in prayer, there are also implications concerning justice which go wider than the legal system.

For those who don't want to click through to the whole thing, here's the conclusion:

... If the parable has a single point it’s simply to say that Jesus is making a comparison between an unjust judge who finally gets worn down to do what is right, and a righteous God who is always on our side. If the poor widow finally gets her way by her pleading, then we should be ready to call on God - and keep asking because he hears our prayers. It may not always seem that way. But that is the message we can take away from the story.

But remember that parables are not there merely to be explained. They’re there for the impact they make on those who hear them. This one begs the question, where is justice to be found? What is the integrity of those who administer the Law? Are the odds stacked against the poor? Does the legal system favour those who have the money to keep going back with more and more specious arguments? How remote is the whole system from ordinary people? I wonder how the widow in the story even gets near to the judge to plead with him. She can gain access to him for the sake of telling the story - but could she do so in real life? - or would she be more like that character in another parable, the poor man, Lazarus, lying with festering wounds at the rich man’s gate and never even noticed by him?

This is not just about the legal system either. It’s about the sort of society we want to live in. Is there justice in terms of access to health and social care? - or is it a lottery depending on where you live, on being able to argue for your rights, or in having the money to buy your way in? Are our children and young people equitably served by schools and the wider education system? - why is it that certain universities seem to be largely the preserve of students from a certain sort of school, and is that right? - and are still more from poorer families going to be put off from trying to get into the system by the costs they will incur? Is it the case that everybody should expect to have to suffer through government cuts? It seems a strange sort of justice which argues that well-off people should not complain about the loss of universal Child Benefit because poor people will also have to take their share of the pain - how much can the less well-off be expected to give up?

This is not the time for politicking - but I think we have to see that the Gospel has political implications. The quest of the widow for justice in today’s parable isn’t just a fiction that doesn’t touch us. It begs the question what does justice require now? Only if we ask that question can we be serious about seeking justice from God - about expecting that he will hear our prayers… because what are we going to pray for?

“There was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for his people.” This is the worst sort of person there could be in Jesus’ book. Because when Jesus sums up the Law he says,

The first commandment is this:
‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind,
and with all your strength.’

The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’
There is no other commandment greater than these.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

So fear that God who is to be loved. Show that you love your neighbours by seeking justice for them. That’s the Law - and it’s free for all.

Parish Up-dates & Events To Come

2010-09-28T12:58:00.002+01:00

After a busy September, there's a slight lull this week before we celebrate our Harvest Festival on Sunday (3rd October), complete with Parish Lunch. At the 10a.m. Sung Eucharist you can bring Harvest Produce to support the work of the People's Kitchen in Newcastle - and money offerings will support USPG's Harvest Appeal.

And the following week (Sunday 10th October) there's a special Victorian Evensong, designed to be as authentically near to what you might have got in 1850, when St. Cuthhbert's Church was consecrated! It's an initiative by Joyful Noise, a local West Gallery group, and they are running a workshop for all who'd like to participate in the choir or as instrumentalists. Evensong will be at 6p.m. - free to all. The workshop costs £5 - from 1.30 for 2p.m. To register for the workshop, contact Win Stokes - winATclarence8.fsnet.co.uk or Chris Gardner - cgardner303ATbtinternet.com (you need to adjust these addresses by susbstituting @ for AT, of course, to make them work).

Full details of what we're planning for October can be found in our new issue of the Parish Magazine. Give it a click and then use the tools to navigate around - you can read it in Full Screen if it helps. Here's this month's "View from the Vicarage."

Note to self…

Rather hastily during September I found myself writing this note:

Having grown up in Hartlepool, I’m now in my 30th year of ordained ministry - all of it served in our Diocese. Living on the edge of the Diocese (Vicar of Benfieldside), I’m concerned with communication and perception; and to counter the temptation to isolationism. I’ve served as an Area Dean and for 15 years or so on the Diocesan Panel working with potential ordination candidates. I work in a tradition which is sacramental and inclusive; hopefully out-going, prayerfully-attuned and theologically-focussed. Single parent of two sons - and I enjoy walking, my mountain bike, poetry and cinema.

It’s the nearest I’ve ever got to writing an election manifesto, though technically it was a “Biographical Note” which I submitted to the Diocese. The occasion was a bye-election to represent the clergy of Durham Archdeaconry on Bishop’s Council. Having been prompted to stand, I decided that at last this was my moment - and readied myself, not exactly for battle, but knowing that there was expected to be another candidate. In the event, though I know at least one other priest was proposed, no other nomination papers were submitted. So there was no election, I was duly declared a member of the Council, and no one got to read the “Biographical Note.” Until I thought to print it here.

And why? Having thought what I could say about myself - as required - in less than 100 words, I realise I still need to live up to it. I’ve not gone on to the Council just to fill a place - and we don’t at present have a Diocesan Bishop to impress. I mean what I say about the importance of the sacramental tradition and prayer and getting things right theologically. When politicians describe something as theological they imply that it’s nit-picking small print and quite unimportant. When I say it, it means it’s about God - so at the very heart of everything.

Similarly I hope you get the drift that I think “vocation” is important - the sense of personal calling. That’s not just about testing vocations to the priesthood. It’s about encouraging people to discern just where God wants them to be - whoever they are, whatever the abilities they think they possess. And inclusiveness is important because God calls to all - each of us has a place in his divine purpose. But do we recognise it? A critical moment for me was the move from saying “someone ought to do something about this” to recognising that that “someone” was me. How about you?

Martin Jackson

Back to Blogging

2010-09-20T10:49:00.001+01:00

I'm sorry about the lack of activity in recent weeks on this Blog. First it was a matter of a couple of weeks' holiday. Then back to a very busy September in the parish. I'm afraid I failed to get pictures for our parish's Art Exhibition, which ran alongside the Northumbria Historic Churches Trust Steeplechase - but it was very successful. I did get pictures from last weekend's wedding of Ian Gray and Julie Shotton - a wonderful occasion, though the brightness of the day wasn't helpful to photographers who prefer a bit less contrast. And the church was marvellous to behold - hours of work on the part of flower arrangers paid off supremely, though my camera battery failed just as I took my first shots in church.

Our Reader, Rosie Junemann, continues to preach thought-provoking sermons, and to get them scripted and onto a usable computer file. While I was away in August she addressed issues of how we regard Sabbath and Sunday. And yesterday she contrasted headlines from The Times with those from St. Luke's Gospel which address issues of Wealth, Poverty and Justice. Click your way through!

I've been preaching - but at present you can only catch me "live."

But here are a couple of pictures from my holiday - in a church at Riviere, by the Banks of the Vienne, just outside Chinon. From the outside it was so unassuming that we drove past it. Inside... amazing paintings and triple-tiered architecture. There are more holiday pictures here. Happy viewing - if you want!

Assent, Assumption and Incarnation

2010-08-16T17:25:00.001+01:00

I didn't expect to be quoting the Church of England's Declaration of Assent from the Worship and Doctrine Measure when I preached for yesterday's Solemnity of (the Assumption of) the Blessed Virgin Mary - but I did, going on to ask how we are to bring "the grace and truth of Christ to this generation." Mary is a model for us in this. The part she plays is one with the Mystery of the Incarnation, God entering our world in human flesh. The whole sermon is here. Part of it is printed below...

Meanwhile here's a link to the September issue of our Parish Magazine - and another link to some items from our churchwarden (the one with the carrots in the last post), which missed the bus when we moved the magazine deadline forward. As ever the linked pages open in funny places or need you to tweak the scroll button on the sidebar to make them appear - or is it only me that has this problem?

From the homily...

How do we bring the grace and truth of Christ to the people who live around us in the here and now? How do we proclaim afresh this faith to each generation?

The answer is to take seriously the world we live in, to explore the issues which confront us day by day. But I’m afraid that here the Church often falls down on the job. The temptation is to make the Church a sort of refuge from all the problems we face, a bubble that surrounds us for an hour or so on a Sunday morning before it pops and we have to go back to things just as we left them outside. Or on the other hand we can come along to church and find that real issues of justice, peace, freedom, poverty, corruption and human well-being are ignored for a rather more small-minded concentration on the sexuality of the clergy and whether women can become bishops. Meanwhile the world looks on, wondering what we think we’re about - if it bothers to wonder at all…

What we need to remember is that Christian faith is not about insulation from all that troubles us - it’s about transformation. It doesn’t mean ignoring the world we live in. It requires that again and again we recognise just how seriously God takes this world. The fundamental difference from any other religion that Christianity proclaims is that God gets mixed up in this world. God comes to us in Jesus. The Son of God is born into this world in real human flesh. God doesn’t say he will simply save us from this world. What God does shows that he will save us in this world. It’s there in today’s Second Reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians:

When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law…

St. Paul tells us very little about the actual life of Jesus. But here in just a few words, he shows us the fundamental shift that needs to be recognised in God’s dealings with the world. At the heart of the Gospel is the Incarnation - God comes into this world the way any of us do. All that God is, we can find in Christ. But in Christ we find also humanity in its fullness. And God does this not just by his own action. He works through what is human. His Son is born into the world because of Mary. This woman, Mary, hears the message of God through the angel - and she gives her “Yes” to God. She will bear God’s Son in her womb.

We need to recognise the part Mary plays, her response to the call of God, if we are going to be able to play our part - to make our response to the call God makes to us. She bears Christ in her womb - will we bear him in our hearts?...

There's more both before and after this section...

Travel - and where you want to be

2010-08-09T11:20:00.000+01:00

They say that the summer is the "silly season" for newspapers and television. So also for blogs... The carrots brought along to St. Cuthbert's yesterday morning by churchwarden, Linda Short, were a major talking point. Absolutely no genetic engineering here.

It was good also to be able to welcome former Curate, Nick Watson, and his family. And Rosie Junemann our Reader preached, taking her cue from the travels of Abram / Abraham.

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est

2010-07-18T22:10:00.001+01:00

Andrei Rublev's icon of the Trinity was modelled on an earlier icon depicting the Hospitality of Abraham. The hospitality shown to three mysterious strangers by Abraham was the theme running through today's Old Testament Reading, the Gospel showed us the hospitality given to Jesus in the home of Martha and Mary, and the New Testament Reading from Colossians referred to Christ as the image (literally icon) of the invisible God.

So I found myself preaching what was really a meditation on the dual call to action and contemplation. Where love and charity dwell, there God is to be found. The icon itself invites the observer into an encounter with the divine - how do we respond? Click the link for what I said - if you find the document doesn't appear, tweak the side button and then play with the tools to size the page as you wish.

Good Samaritan at St. Cuthbert's

2010-07-15T22:56:00.002+01:00

What I omitted to say in my last post and in my sermon last Sunday is that the Good Samaritan is depicted in the central window behind the High Altar in St. Cuthbert's - here it is! Above it is Christ depicted as the Good Shepherd. We'll keep that for another time...

St. Benedict and the Good Samaritan

2010-07-11T13:08:00.001+01:00

Rules for the Lectionary mean that today's Feast of St. Benedict has to give way to Sunday observance - not a bad thing when today's Gospel is that of the Good Samaritan.

We managed to bring both into our celebration of the liturgy. I was struck by Benedict's desire to provide a Rule for the sake of orderliness, but with the affirmation that it's a "school for beginners" rather than a straitjacket. And there's the likely problem for the Priest and Levite of the parable missing the point because of rules - and the lawyer doing what he can to fit them to his purpose. Benedict's purpose is to lead people to "eternal life" and it's St. Luke's Gospel which makes the inheritance of eternal life the point of the lawyer's approach to Jesus - unlike the Gospels of Matthew and Mark who have Jesus' questioner simply ask "which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

This is an extract from my sermon, the whole of which you can find by clicking here:

The thing to know about the Rule of St. Benedict is that it was written as a result of his desire to bring orderliness into the way his brother monks lived, at a time when so many thought they could do whatever they pleased. Benedict wanted to establish what he called “A school for the Lord’s service” - and his purpose was so that those entering into it would find their way to “blessings in eternal life.”

That’s something that we must not miss in today’s Gospel reading. Of all the Gospel writers, only St. Luke tells the story of the Good Samaritan. The story has an introduction which Matthew and Mark also record, but with a twist. In Matthew and Mark’s accounts, Jesus is asked, what is the greatest of the commandments? - and it’s Jesus who sums it up: love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind and your strength - and your neighbour as yourself. But it’s a bit different in Luke. Luke tells us that Jesus was approached by a lawyer who wanted to know what to do in order to inherit eternal life. And Jesus simply turns the question round: what does the religious law tell you? And the lawyer gets the answer right:

‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’

In the Prayer Book we call these words the Summary of the Law. It’s everything that’s necessary reduced to just these few words about love - do this and that’s the way to find eternal life. That’s the aim of St. Benedict when he wrote his Rule. It’s the whole point of the Scriptures - to get us into God’s kingdom, to share with him in eternal life...

In preparing to preach I noticed that the priest - the first person not to stop and help the wounded man - is very definitely going down the road, so he must be travelling away from the Temple and Jerusalem. I didn't have time to go into this. But, aware of the argument that the priest and the Levite don't stop because they fear becoming ritually unclean, I'd like at some point to explore why the Gospel seems to be so definite that they are going away from the place where they need to be "clean" - and still they don't stop...

Would we?

“Trust, Courage - and Virtue…”

2010-07-07T18:01:00.001+01:00

This is the title of my page in our newly-published Parish Magazine for July and August. Click here to find the whole issue in full colour. And this is what I wrote on the View from the Vicarage page:

I’m sorry that this issue of the Parish Magazine is appearing a bit later than usual - though it’s a double issue, so you’ll have plenty of time to read it!

One of the reasons I’ve been delayed is that I attended our diocese’s annual Clergy Summer Gathering over three days at the end of June and beginning of July. The theme this year was Trust and Courage in Ministry Today. There was much that was thought-provoking in the insights of the speakers, and much cause for gratitude in being able to share with fellow-priests and deacons in formal group-work, over meals and in the bar. Amongst other things we did was to engage in a Socratic dialogue to discern the meaning of good ministry and to sit down together to watch the film Doubt (my second viewing and I still don’t know what I think).

But the vital theme was how we experience and manage to convey a sense of trust in ministry. Trust is vital to the way we live. Robert Innes, former Vicar of Belmont, now at the Anglican Pro-Cathedral in Brussels, led us through the issues brilliantly with reference to issues in the medical field - how you trust your doctor after the Harold Shipman murders, how you feel about hospitals as a result of the Alder Hay and other scandals. He could have talked about the issues that bear directly upon the Church. But the fact is that trust is so central in so many parts of life: Thick Trust - which we need in family relationships which knits trust and love into personal bonds; Thin Trust - what we need in “regulated” professionals not least doctors and priests, where we rely upon their availability, confidence and relationship; Trust in Institutions - which might be Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs or Parliament, and is a reminder that a priest’s or a local church’s reputation is bound up with the institution of the church.

How can we build trust? The answer is simple: by being trustworthy. But of course there’s a lot involved in doing that simple thing.

In this we were helped by sessions on Virtue Ethics - basically doing the right thing, not for what I might get out of it, but because it is right. Bishop Tom took this on by looking at the specific Christian Virtues: Patience - not to be too quick to judge, and patience needs to be filled with prayer; Charity - a habit of the heart to be cultivated, “if there’s a chance, let’s be generous!”; Chastity - not just for monks, but about real relationships in their richness where we can look beyond sexual motives; and Humility - the sober recognition of my God-given gifts, and how I can use them in service.

All too brief a summary - but lots to work on for everybody…

Martin Jackson

Meanwhile here's a link to the latest sermon by our Reader, Rosie Junemann, preached last Sunday with the theme, Life is Movement.

Music at St. Cuthbert's

2010-07-03T17:55:00.001+01:00

The lack of posts on this blog is not due to an absence of activity in the parish - quite the opposite! Following the Confirmation at the beginning of June we've had a Summer Fair, a Concert to aid Sunday School Funds, a Fashion Show and all the staples of parish life. And it's also been renewal time for CRB checks on parishoners who work with children and vulnerable adults - just finding the time to sit down with each individual to check that people are really the people they say they are and that they really do live in the house where we're sitting has been a great test for my diary skills (I know I've been visiting you here for the last 16 years, but can you please prove this is your house with a gas bill no more than three months old?). Thank goodness that's over for another five years!

Music Sunday, an initiative by the Royal School of Church Music, was an occasion we observed on 13th June. Click here for the sermon that Rosie Junemann, our Reader, preached that day. I'm afraid that my recent homilies haven't reached a sufficiently scripted form for up-loading. Catch me "live" or not at all at present!

And the music theme continues...

On Sunday 11th July we welcome the Sage Chamber Choir to St. Cuthbert's for a Concert in church at 7p.m.

Tickets in advance or on the door are £5.

I know there's a clash with a certain football match that evening... but you'll probably still get home in time for the extra time and penalty shootout. So do join us! - for those who don't know the North-East, the Sage is the top music venue in our region, the home of the Northern Sinfonia as well as the Chamber Choir. This is a rare opportunity to catch a top choir on one of their excursions further afield.

Confirmation at St. Cuthbert's

2010-06-07T16:43:00.001+01:00

We were delighted to have the Rt. Revd. Mark Bryant, Bishop of Jarrow, with us yesterday evening to preside at our Confirmation. A total of 34 candidates were presented - from our Deanery and beyond. The picture shows our own parish's five newly-confirmed toegether with Bishop Mark, Rosie our Reader and the Vicar of Benfieldside.

So we started the week on a high. We hope to end it that way with St. Cuthbert's Summer Fair - 2p.m. on Saturday 12th June, in and around St. Cuthbert's Church and Hall, Church Bank, Shotley Bridge. For SatNav and Google Mappers, enter DH8 0NW...

Catching Up and Looking Ahead

2010-06-01T13:12:00.010+01:00

It's been busy here - hence the lack of posts on this Blog, and failure to add up-dates.

Full news for the new month can be found in our June issue of the Parish Magazine which is uploaded at this link in full colour.

I realise we're a bit behind with links for recent sermons too. Click here for this one which I preached at Pentecost. And last Sunday I found myself preaching at Hexham Abbey for the 25th Anniversary of Barbara McNamara's licensing in Ministry: Parish Worker, Deaconess, Deacon and Priest - all with reference to the Holy Trinity; again just click! Rosie Junemann was preaching for Trinity Sunday at St. Cuthbert's - click here for the online copy.

Next Sunday we welcome the Bishop of Jarrow for our Confirmation, shared with the Deanery and another parish outside the Deanery too. There are 34 candidates in all - so I'm not sure how we will all get in the church once we add on their supporters and our regular congregation! Please keep in your prayers all who are to be confirmed.

Please note that the Confirmation will be our Parish Sung Eucharist for the day - there will be no 10a.m. Eucharist… This is the schedule:

Sunday 6th June at St. Cuthbert’s Church

8.00a.m. Eucharist - the only morning service today

~~10.00a.m.~~ Morning Sung Eucharist is cancelled today

6.00p.m. CONFIRMATION and HOLY EUCHARIST

The Bishop of Jarrow presides and preaches

Refreshments to follow in the Hall

Wedding season begins...

2010-05-16T16:07:00.001+01:00

Spring is only getting a small look-in around here. Fortunately the sun came out for our first wedding of the season. So congratulations to Helen and Stuart. The camper van is not for their honeymoon as far as I'm aware. And the driver's concern for its handbrake is the reason it's parked in the church drive rather than on our rather steep Church Bank.

The Bride arrived in this splendid carriage just as a Children's Party was breaking up in the Hall across the road. So for a few moments wedding and bridesmaid dresses mingled with mermaids and pirates. Sadly I didn't get a photo of this.

Still here - still Easter!

2010-05-03T21:59:00.000+01:00

Sorry that it's so long since this blog was up-dated. It's not for lack of things happening, but the reverse...

So some update links: Rosie Junemann, our Reader, preached on Good Shepherd Sunday, 25th April. The following Sunday (yesterday) I preached on new dimensions of faith with reference to the recent spate of 3D films and the National Gallery's Sacred Made Real Exhibition (H/T Bishop Martin Warner in the Church Times).

And the May edition of our Parish Magazine is now online - full of news... and please keep our candidates for Confirmation especially in your prayers.

As ever, a little patience is need in accessing these links. If they don't display once loaded, scroll down a little using the sidebar button. The Magazine does open up, but for some reason always on page 10!

Less tricky - but a bigger download - Rosie has written an article on Music Sunday for Newslink, our diocesan newspaper. Find the whole issue here, and go to page 4.

Meanwhile, flowers and blossom in and near the churchyard are quite beautiful. The pictures in this posting are taken before the daffodils had come fully into bloom.

Christ is risen!

2010-04-04T16:59:00.000+01:00

We've had a wonderful Holy Week and Easter Day at St. Cuthbert's. Thanks to so many whose hard work and skill has made it all possible. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of the church which has been beautifully decorated. This is part of the Homily - and you can find the whole thing here (if the page looks empty, scroll down and the text should appear).

... Easter faith is a faith which goes deep down. To declare ‘Christ is risen’ is not just to be bold, brash and optimistic. It is faith which wrestles with the harsh realities of life, faith which grows from the experience even of the cold touch of death. Before Easter Day, there is Good Friday. Before the Resurrection, there is the Passion and Death of Christ upon the Cross. And Easter Day itself begins only as the darkness begins to recede - at early dawn, St. Luke tells us. That’s when the women who had seen Jesus buried now return to visit his tomb. They come with spices to do for his lifeless body what they had not been able to do at his burial as the Sabbath approached. They come to find a grave which they know to have been sealed with a stone, its coldness guarding a corpse from which life has been extinguished. And they find... nothing. They find the stone rolled away from the tomb - and no body… only men who tell them, “he is not here, he has risen.”

It has to be said that this is not a clincher in terms of evidence for the Resurrection. There could be a number of reasons why the body has gone...

Approaching Holy Week - and April

2010-03-26T16:47:00.002Z

The last few days have seen a lot of energy expended - much of it at the desk, but also in church as a good number of people ready the building for our celebration of Holy Week. One of the desk products is our Parish Magazine for April. It's available in print - and the online colour edition is to be found here. For those who like that sort of thing, it includes most of the reports to be given to our Annual Parochial Church Meeting. For those who don't like that sort of thing, I commend it nevertheless: printing them in the Magazine means we don't have to print them separately; and it keeps the APCM short, because we don't have to listen to them.

Because Holy Week falls across the boundary of March and April, we don't have the full details in the April Magazine (but they're all in the March issue). So here's the Holy Week menu at St. Cuthbert's:

Sunday 28th March: Palm Sunday
8.00a.m. Eucharist (BCP)
10.00a.m. Procession of Palms & Sung Parish Eucharist
6.00p.m. Evening Prayer

Monday 29th March: Monday in Holy Week
2.00p.m. Eucharist - at Derwentdale Court
7.30p.m. Ecumenical Service with Churches Together
- in St. Cuthbert’s Church

Tuesday 30th March: Tuesday in Holy Week
7.00p.m. Eucharist & Prayers with Anointing for Healing

Wednesday 31st March: Wednesday in Holy Week
10.00a.m. Eucharist & Stations of the Cross

Thursday 1st April: Maundy Thursday
7.30p.m. Sung Eucharist of the Last Supper
followed by a Watch of the Passion

Friday 2nd April: Good Friday
10.00a.m. Before the Cross: All-Age Service
2.00p.m. Liturgy of the Day & Holy Communion

Sunday 4th April: Easter Day
8.00a.m. Eucharist (BCP)
10.00a.m. Sung Parish Eucharist with Easter Ceremonies

May the love of Christ, crucified & risen,
fill your life with his joy this Holy Week & Easter-tide

Passiontide begins...

2010-03-22T22:35:00.001Z

... Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, never has anything to say. You might wonder about that. I would say, look at how important he is in his silence. Loved by his sisters - and he really needs their love. Silent in the grave - and from the grave Jesus calls him to life. Sitting with Jesus at table - Lazarus stands for all people who are there simply to be served, honoured or cared for in their need. Lazarus is the silent companion of Jesus - so perhaps he stands for us, when we are lost for words.

There is though, something more...

From my homily for Passion Sunday - find it all here.

And there's a reminder that this week sees the 30th anniversary of the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, a man who should still inspire us.

A Run of White Feasts

2010-03-18T12:12:00.001Z

Today is actually the Feast of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. But at St. Cuthbert's we've been celebrating St. Joseph instead. I know it's his Feast Day tomorrow, 19th March, but we're using Friday evening instead for our own Patronal Celebration, keeping the Eve of St. Cuthbert's Day. So there's a plug for our Patronal Festival - join us, if you can, for a Sung Eucharist at 7p.m. There are more celebrations to follow. If you can't be there, remember us in your prayers.

The Diocese begins its celebrations the same evening in Durham Cathedral, but for the Feast Day itself moves north for a Pilgrimage to Holy Island off the Northumberland Coast. Pilgrims are to gather at 10a.m. - and there'll be a Eucharist in the Priory ruins. If the weather is inclement, it'll be in the Parish Church next door. After lunch everyone is to move off to Durham and there's an invitation to walk back across the sands on the Pilgrim's Route (hoping the motorised will pick them up on the mainland). It may seem strange to have the pilgrims walk the return route rather than the approach - but there is the question of tides (and just how early they would want to start!). Anyway it's part of the pilgrimage, because the idea then is to go on to Durham for Choral Evensong - I've said I'll join in at least for that part.

And yesterday of course was St. Patrick's Day. I found myself back in my last parish, presiding and preaching at St. Patrick's, High Spen on the 120th anniversary of the church's consecration. St. Patrick's has the distinction amongst Durham churches of having been consecrated by a Bishop of Newcastle. Bishop Lightfoot had died leaving an episcopal interregnum at the time he should have made his way to St. Pat's. But Bishop Westcott turned up the following year to check that all was well.

The people were certainly in good spirits - with visitors too. But they are themselves in the midst of an interregnum (the third since I left). Pray for them, and for a speedy and good appointment. This is what I had to say in my homily.

Fables, figs, parables and politics

2010-03-08T12:25:00.000Z

The title of this post is inspired by the content of the sermon preached by our Reader, Rosie Junemann, yesterday - click here to find, then twiddle the tools to look at it.

This morning in the parish feels like a bit of a lull before it gets very busy... Probably as in most Anglican churches in this country, the emphasis here on the Fourth Sunday of Lent gets placed firmly on Mothering Sunday. So there needs to be thought as to what approach can be taken this year - and prayer that we will get children and mothers/ parents in church on Sunday. Then a certain wistfulness that we've disrupted the flow of Lent.

Or have we? This year the Churches of Orthodoxy and of the Western Rite will celebrate Easter at the same time. So it's worth checking the Orthodox Calendar as we progress through Lent. And you find that the Third Sunday of Lent is observed by the Orthodox as "The Sunday of the Cross." Rather earlier than we begin even the traditional observance of Passiontide, but at least a Lenten theme. But what about keeping the First Sunday of Lent as "The Triumph of Orthodoxy," commemorating the end of the Iconoclast struggle in the ninth century? Or celebrating St. Gregory Palamas on the Second Sunday and St. John Climacus (see above for his Heavenly Ladder) on the Fourth?

In the end, Lent is what we make it. It's certainly not to make us miserable. So let's celebrate Mothering Sunday (10a.m. at St. Cuthbert's - All Age Eucharist with presentations of flowers etc...), but let's not be twee.

And the following week... St. Patrick's Day back in my last parish, St. Cuthbert's Day here and in the Cathedral. Roll on Passion Sunday!

Foxes, hens and the divine motherhood found in Christ (via Anselm)

2010-02-28T14:54:00.002Z

Living in an area with quite a bit of wildlife, today's Gospel reading about the fox and the hen always rings a bell for me. And I love the way the imagery of the hen's care for her chicks is drawn out in St. Anselm's Canticle, " A Song of Christ's Goodness," not least because the modern form it has in Common Worship - Daily Prayer was composed by my Litugy Lecturer and College Tutor, Michael Vasey. You can read what I had to say when preaching by clicking here. This is a taster (from the middle of the homily):

.... “How often I have desired to gather your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…” says Jesus. We find these words in St. Matthew’s Gospel too – but in a different context. It’s Luke – in today’s Gospel reading – who makes the connection between Jesus, acting like a hen, and Herod, the fox. It’s the hen who has most to lose when the fox is on the prowl. But this one is not fearful – this one wants to gather the brood of chicks beneath her wings… and this is an image of warmth and safety.

There’s a marvellous drawing out of this image in some words of St. Anselm of Canterbury which were translated into a modern canticle by the man who taught me liturgy, Michael Vasey – they’re words now used in daily prayer by those who use the books “Celebrating Common Prayer “ and “Common Worship”. With the title, “A Song of Christ’s Goodness,” it has the refrain:

Gather your little ones to you, O God,
as a hen gathers her brood to protect them.

And it looks to a divine motherhood in Christ:

Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you,
you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.

Often you weep over our sins and our pride,
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,
in sickness you nurse us and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying, we are born to new life;
by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy.

Gather your little ones to you, O God,
as a hen gathers her brood to protect them.

Could there be a better image for describing the costliness of a mother’s love, the warmth and tenderness which at the same time require sorrow and sacrifice? And isn’t this also a call to see the feminine side of God, whom so easily we depict as a divine male autocrat upon his throne?

It may seem a world away from the Old Testament story of God’s covenant with Abraham. But there is a connection. If our Gospel reading shows us something of the Motherhood of God in Christ, then the story of Abram tells us of the yearning of a father who is without children...

As ever, after clicking on the homily link and waiting for it to load, you'll probably need to use the scroll button to make the text appear. The same is true for Paul Heatherington's sermon for last week, the 1st Sunday of Lent.

But I had success first time in getting into our newly uploaded Parish Magazine for March, online here. You can read it in all its colourful glory online. And we hope the hard copy will be out in a day or two.

Retreat - and ready for Lent

2010-02-15T23:18:00.004Z

It's probably a good sign that I'm not blogging much! Last week I was in Walsingham for a Priest's Pilgrimage Retreat. I gather there's a Wi-Fi connection in the Norton Cafe Bar - but nowhere else, and my laptop remained zipped up in my bag throughout my stay. What a wonderful experience that was - and the Retreat!

A letter from the Shrine Administrator, Bishop Lindsay Urwin, before the Retreat began said that 65 priests had signed up - but in the event there were rather more. All men, I'm afraid + one woman Permanent Deacon. But happily it was a non-contentious experience. The only reference to events that week in Synod was when we happened to see the TV news one night. And no one seemed bothered to discuss these issues which can be so wearing.

The Retreat itself was invigorating. I stayed awake during the addresses - an achievement for me and a tribute to Bishop Lindsay and Brother Paschal SSF. I found myself reflecting on them and on the larger experience when I preached on Sunday on St. Luke's approach to the Transfiguration. While Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus takes the disciples up the Mount of the Transfiguration as a "place apart," it's only Luke who is explicit that the intention is to pray. And only Luke tells how hard it was for the disciples to stay awake. "They were heavy with sleep but managed to stay awake," Bishop Tom Wright translates it. You can read what I had to say by clicking here. To make the text appear you've got to move the scroll button - I don't know why, but it makes it work!

And you can find what our Reader, Rosie Junemann said the previous week as she looked at the meaning of faith when things go wrong - with special reference to the Haiti earthquake.

A late post for Candlemas

2010-02-05T00:06:00.000Z

I still have a memory which must go back to the time after the birth of my brother. I would have been six - nearly 48 years ago. It’s the memory of sitting in a pew at the back of our local church, the one my parents still attend, while my Mother went to the front of the church and the Vicar said prayers with her. I don’t think anyone else was there. My Father was probably back home with the baby. I didn’t really know what was going on - but I suppose it was that service which the Prayer Book quaintly calls, “The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth, commonly called The Churching of Women.” It’s a service I’ve never used. It is a thanksgiving service - appropriate after a child is born. But the way it was used made it more of a service of purification. This was something that had to be done - and done to a woman. I have had the experience of a new mother ringing from hospital to say that she needed to be “churched” before her own mother would let her back in the house - I’m glad to say that it was a long time ago. But it begs the question about expectation, superstition, getting thanksgiving right, and what faith is truly about...

Well that's the second paragraph of the sermon I preached last Sunday as we celebrated Candlemas. You can read the whole thing here. Sorry it's appearing rather late. With the end of the "Christmas cycle" I'm rather relieved to have a couple of Sundays of Ordinary / Green Time, but we're already gearing up for Lent.

Hearing the Word - Seeing Jesus

2010-01-29T11:14:00.000Z

I was struck by the image of the young boy, Kiki, rescued from the earthquake ruins of Haiti, pulled up with arms outstretched - in the midst of so much suffering a moment of joy. It had an effect on our Reader, Paul Heatherington, who referred to the incident in last Sunday's Sermon, which you can find here.

Meanwhile, the February issue of our Parish Magazine has been published. Income from the hard copies keeps it viable. But you can find the free full colour edition here.

Haiti, holiness and miracle

2010-01-18T10:17:00.000Z

I wanted to avoid attempts at "explanation" when I preached in St. Cuthbert's yesterday. What can you say in the face of natural disaster and human suffering on such a scale? You can link to the sermon itself here. The text isn't immediately displaying for me, so if you have a problem give the page a few moments and then scroll down. For a preview, this is how I started:

When you live in a Vicarage, one of life’s pleasures is in encounters with the unexpected caller at the door. There have been a few this week, so if you’re one of them, count yourself in! Highlight of the week was on Friday afternoon when I opened the door to find a man standing there with a slightly confused expression: “Hallo,” he said. “Is this the Holy Cottage?” I think he’d seen the plate on the wall saying “Vicarage.” So I was sorry to disappoint him: “Well, you might think this is the nearest thing to a holy house on Church Bank, but actually I think you want Holly Cottage - and that’s on the other side of the road.”

In the midst of my sense of lassitude and gloom about the weather, that delivery man with a package for a neighbour brightened my day and cheered me up. He made me laugh, but he also made me think… Either the address label was mis-spelled or he’d mis-read it. He came looking for a place he’d thought was called “Holy…” - and he’d found me!

It’s humbling for a priest to be alongside a person when he or she is looking for something which can be described as holy… numinous… beyond our understanding of the mundane. One of the complaints of evangelical atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens is that religious faith doesn’t make rational sense. Faith makes claims which can’t be verified, which go beyond what reason can ascertain. And much of what they say is true. You can’t reduce faith to a matter for argument and proof. It’s when people have a sense of the holy - when they’re reaching out for something that they can’t express in words, but know in their heart to be real - that they are moving beyond rationalism. Religious faith doesn’t need to be irrational - I hope it isn’t! What faith points to is a desire for what is true. And truth as it touches us most deeply has its source in God, and reveals to us what is truly holy.

We find that truth and holiness revealed in the encounters between Jesus and so many other people recorded in the Gospels. I read one of them in the Gospel which was set for the Eucharist on Thursday of last week, St. Mark’s account of a man described as a “leper” who comes to Jesus and pleads with him on his knees: “If you want to,” he said, “you can cure me.” “Of course I want to!” Jesus replies. Jesus stretches out his hand, touches the man, the leprosy leaves him and he is immediately cured. There’s no “how” or “why” here. Just need on the part of the sick man - and the clear statement on the part of Jesus that healing is central to his calling and purpose. “Of course I want to cure you,” says Jesus - and he does.

But even as we read that story of the healing of a sick man in his need, we can find ourselves asking the question, if Jesus can heal that leper why are there so many other sick people in the world? Why doesn’t he heal them? Why are so many people suffering now after the earthquake in Haiti? Why have so many tens of thousands of people been killed there, why do so many more lie sick and untreated in the hospitals, or dying in the streets? What sort of a world has God made in which there is so much potential for suffering?...

read on...

To donate - the Disasters Emergency Committee is coordinating a relief appeal by major charities including Christian Aid, CAFOD, Oxfam and Save the Children.

Winter Thoughts & Images

2010-01-06T16:19:00.001Z

"In the dead of winter, you might sometimes wonder whether spring will ever come again."

These are Rosie Junemann's words when she preached at the year's end for the Feast of St. John, Apostle & Evangelist. Find her sermon here. We were already in the grip of ice and snow at St. Cuthbert's, but her words seem now prophetic - and she enlarged on them with a poem by Laurie Lee:

O never again, it seems, can green things run,
or sky birds fly,
or the grass exhale its humming breath
powdered with pimpernels,
from this dark lung of winter.

Actually it's been quite bright today. By now we've accumulated over a foot of snow. Tomorrow we have the funeral of Donald Love, member of St. Cuthbert's and well-loved throughout our community for his participation in so many aspects of its life. With our steep hill in mind, we're doing all we can to clear the way to the church - and this morning a JCB descended the hill, plough on its front, digger behind. It's a valiant effort. Now we desperately need some salt on the icy surface left behind - a councillor is working on it, even as I write.

Meanewhile there's a great beauty in the snow. You can find more pictures here.

Christ the Saviour is born

2009-12-25T17:10:00.000Z

The reality of the Christmas celebration would have been the same, regardless of the weather. In the event, despite yet more snow on Christmas Eve, with a fair bit of effort people managed to reach St. Cuthbert's - mainly on foot...

Numbers were pretty much the same as in recent times at the 6p.m. Carol / Christingle Service - almost full, but with a well-represented choir as a real bonus. They were back for Midnight Mass. And numbers were actually up a bit this morning! But it's still freezing with Church Bank in the grip of ice and snow.

The weather was my starting point in preaching at Midnight Mass, and I felt even chillier after reading R. S Thomas's poem, Hill Christmas as part of it. But the offering of worship was warm. Thanks to all who made it possible. I haven't yet taken any pictures of the church - but it was beautifully decorated.

And my sermon is to be found here.

Happy Christmas!

Christmas approaching

2009-12-23T15:31:00.001Z

I think I'm going to have to sort out what we're doing on Sunday before I think any more about Christmas. Sunday is the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, and we've decided to keep the Feast - but how to combine it with all the carols that people might expect?

Meanwhile, we're continuing to have the white lead-up to Christmas which Bing Crosby dreamt about. But the good news is that Church Bank has now been salted - so we're accessible with care. Flower arrangers are hard at work in church, the Brownies and Guides produced about 250 Christingles for the Christmas Eve Carol Service (service details in my previous post), the Crib is in place, orders of service are sorted out etc. etc....

So come along and join us - as well as sweets, our Christingles have sultanas... the healthier option (and why not try eating the orange?).

Lovely snow and the perils of the hill

2009-12-21T00:27:00.002Z

We've celebrated the Fourth Sunday of Advent with a Nativity presentation by our Sunday School at the Sung Eucharist. All credit to them for making it to church on foot. The average gradient of Church Bank is 1 in 7 - and at its steepest is nearly 1 in 5. Only two cars made it to the church - both 4 x 4s. Yet still more than half our average numbers turned up for our main service.

And it's worth it, of course! We got our rather wonderful tree in place last week - and it's been beautifully decorated. After the Eucharist a working party got the stable for our crib scene in place too. Now we just need the decorations and good turn-outs later in the week. Brownies & Guides are preparing to make 250 Christingles for the Christmas Eve Carol Service.

The snow is lovely - but we could do with a clear road (and more salt please, Durham County Council!).

Meanwhile the next event is carol-singing round the Tree in Shotley Bridge Village Centre - 7p.m. Monday 21st December. Later in the week in St. Cuthbert's Church, there's...

Thursday 24th December: CHRISTMAS EVE

6.00p.m. Carol Service with Christingle – a lovely service with candlelight and hand-bells.
11.30p.m. Midnight Mass of Christmas

Friday 25th December: CHRISTMAS DAY

9.30a.m. Parish Eucharist with Carols - a service for all ages.

Sunday 27th December: 1st SUNDAY OF CHRISTMAS (St. John the Evangelist)

10.00a.m. Sung Parish Eucharist

Meanwhile you might like to take a look at a new website / blog from Shotley Bridge Village Trust

And more wintry pictures from my phone are to be found here

Gaudete - Time to rejoice!

2009-12-14T10:56:00.001Z

The use of liturgical rose (pink) at St. Cuthbert's sadly doesn't extend further than the colour of the third candle on our Advent wreath. But it was duly lit, and we were reminded that yesterday was Gaudete Sunday, the name coming from the Entrance Antiphon for the day: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! The Lord is near - and also from the Epistle of the Day, Philippians 4.4-7.

Paul Heatherington, preaching, took the Epistle as his starting point and involved us in an imaginative excursion into personal relations in the early church at Philippi. I'm glad to say that the members of the congregation who took the parts of Euodia and Syntyche get on rather better than the characters they played. Click here to find out more.

Sending me his text, Paul added pictures to the e-mail of two of his subjects, Bishop Tom Wright and St. Paul, with the cheeky note: "Separated at birth?" I suspect this has been noted before...

Advent 2 & a Victorian Christmas

2009-12-07T10:23:00.007Z

We had an excellent weekend at St. Cuthbert's - and in the village of Shotley Bridge. Our Christmas Fair was brilliantly successful, and the decision to time it within the village's "Victorian Christmas Weekend" seems to have paid off to mutual benefit. I was a bit wary on purist grounds of being too Christmassy - but then again, we have been known to have our Christmas Fair even before the start of Advent.

Santa Claus apparently arrived in style - if not with reindeer and sleigh - and carriage rides continued throughout Saturday with proceeds going to charity, while Father Christmas went to his grotto in the local Dentist's surgery. I'd already expressed the opinion that this would either do wonders for the image of dentistry or put children off Santa for life - in the event getting an appointment with the bearded one was to prove almost as difficult as getting speedy attention for that painful molar, and he found himself fully booked (yes, you couldn't just turn up!) for the whole weekend. Though he did find time to come out and switch on the Christmas lights.

In the midst of it all I found time to write a homily for Sunday, which you can find here. It's about that most un-Christmassy character, John the Baptist. How is it that he manages to hog two Sundays out of Advent? Well, that's the question I started from...

After a Sunday morning in church, it was back to the village where crowds came out for carol-singing from our local schools, and a performance by our own St. Cuthbert's Handbell Ringers. Everyone seems to have had a great time - and there was lots more going on. What started as a local business initiative to stimulate trade has grown into a genuine community event.

Finally, back up the hill we transformed our Hall with its own Christmas decorations. In response to those who asked, we can't put them up in time for the Christmas Fair simply because we can't get the decorations in as well as the customers!

Last things and a new Church Year

2009-11-28T23:19:00.003Z

Traditionally on the Sundays of Advent - the start of a new year for the Church - Christians were urged to meditate upon the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. Three of them we prefer not to think about too much these days - and the fourth we'd rather put off as long as possible too.

During the last week the people of St. Cuthbert's have been grieved by the death of one of our retired priests, the Revd. Harry Lee. Could he be described as retiring? For me he's been a real source of encouragement during all the time I've been in this parish - the home he made with his wife Averil a source of hospitality and relaxation, a brother priest who could be acute in his criticism, wise in his observations, wide in his breadth of reading and learning, and always funny. His quick-wittedness was perhaps just too quick for many. At parties and other social occasions - given a suitable stooge or sparring partner - he could steal the show and reduce people to helpless laughter. In all things he was a deeply prayerful person, though reticent as to his spiritual depths. During the last days in which he needed hospital care, his Daily Office book was by his bedside. Looking at it back in his home I felt privileged to hold a book so well-used and well-prayed over a lifetime.

Harry came into his own talking about theatre - a "Friend" of the Theatre Royal and the Consett Empire. Shakespeare, pantomime and ballet were all part of the man. His funeral is to be on Tuesday at 9.30a.m. in St. Cuthbert's. May he rest in peace!

Meanwhile, I've not had time for recent blogging or internet updates. So just to say you can find my sermon for the Feast of Christ the King here. And to find out more of what's been going on recently - and looking forward over the next two months - our new Parish Magazine for December 2009 & January 2010 is here.

Sacrifice and Salvation

2009-11-16T12:19:00.003Z

Our Bishop, Tom Wright, is currently on sabbatical leave in the United States, writing "The Big Book" on Paul - something to look forward to! Meanwhile, our Reader, Paul Heatherington, took up some of his ideas on salvation (popularly described as "life after life after death") as his starting point for his sermon yesterday. And then on to an exploration of theme's in the lectionary's epistle from Hebrews. That's an ambitious task. Click here to read what Paul had to say.

The Good Samaritan had a mention - and the picture is of the depiction you'll find in St. Cuthbert's Church.

Remembrance and Humanity

2009-11-11T15:25:00.004Z

My handwriting is quite atrocious. As a child I would be told off because it was so bad. The great virtue seemed to be neatness, but I scrawled. And as the years go by it's got worse.

It's funny when our organist complains that he can't read the weekly hymn list. Embarrassing when I can't read my own writing. Potentially serious when our local Registrar rang me up to say she couldn't read some of the entries I'd made on our last Marriage Return (though we laughed about it, and I've been forgiven). But I don't think there's much I can do about it now. When one of my children was diagnosed at Primary School as having dyspraxia, he was able to benefit from Handwriting Workshops and Motor Skills sessions with trained professionals. Now his writing is far better than mine. I had no such diagnosis or help - just the occasional telling-off. It didn't do me any good.

But knowing how difficult I find it is to produce a legible sentence - and how the individual characters within words seem to have a deliberately mis-shaped self-image - I can only marvel at the way "The Sun" newspaper has chosen to pillory the Prime Minister yet again. His politics may be fair game - and military strategies over Iraq and Afghanistan need considered debate. But to take up the poor handwriting of a man who also has serious problems with his eyesight and use it to heap calumny on him is both indecent and cruel.

When I mentioned this to someone, they responded, "Well, we didn't vote for him." So, does that make it OK?

Isn't the clearer evidence that this is a man who finds it difficult to express what he feels - and more difficult to form in written characters on paper - yet who nevertheless does so? That he knows something about grief, and tries decently and humanely to express his genuine feeling. He may not make the best job of it, but he tries.

One of the less savoury aspects of today's culture and society is to express how it feels in terms of "hate." It's there in vulgar petty forms such as Facebook groups like "I hate John and Edward" (two rather daft, but innocent 17 year olds on The X-Factor). Why do people need to sign up in thousands to say that they hate people they've never met, and whose only offence is against tunefulness?

Love good. Hate evil. Do justice at the gates. That's the message of the prophets which we need to hear.

Today in the midst of Remembrance commemorations, we need to remember what truly makes for humanity. We need decency - not cheapness - in our dealings with each other. Otherwise what's the point of it all?

This is what I had to say on Remembrance Sunday before the last round of press nastiness broke out.

For all the Saints

2009-11-01T21:49:00.002Z

Benedict Biscop,Ceolfrith, Sigfrid and Eosterwine are amongst the easily forgotten saints of the North East of England. But the Feast of All Saints itself is a reminder that even anonymity does not preclude holiness. We worship with the numberless hosts of heaven. And saints are formed from people like us - people from our won community.

So in preaching this morning, I hoped to point people to those signs of the Kingdom which are to be found in people and things we may take for granted. And we shouldn't understimate ourselves. Find out more by clicking here.

Church making the news...

2009-10-22T22:30:00.002+01:00

It's been all over the blogs and the papers - but happened just as I was putting the finishing touches to the last page of our November Parish Magazine. So this is what I wrote in my "View from the Vicarage."

[The print edition is now out and being distributed. But to appreciate it in full colour, you need to click here. The picture above is to be found in the magazine - of a certain retired priest who incites ladies to wear hats in church.]

Careful what you write…

As I write these words the Church is in the news - well, not much, but in a short story that the Vatican has opened the way for Anglican clergy to transfer their allegiance more easily to Rome should they feel that way inclined. Of course it was already possible. But now there is to be a structure, and clergy and congregations who make the jump will be able to retain certain Anglican practices within defined “Ordinariates.” There’s a word new to most people - and me! There’s just this problem - most of the disaffected clergy I know of who wish to escape the prospect of women bishops are already quite happy with official Roman Catholic liturgies, and would pop over pretty quickly if it weren’t for the prospect of stricter discipline, re-selection (or not) and re-training - plus the fear that they’d encounter more guitars and rather less incense… And the pay is even worse! What they don’t want is the assurance they can carry on in an Anglican way - after all they never have wanted to do that in the past!

Actually the Church hit the news the day before this as well when Fr. Ed Tomlinson - an Anglican priest in Tunbridge Wells - found an excerpt from his “blog” plastered all over the national dailies. He wrote:

In the last few years it has become painfully obvious that many families I have conducted funerals for have absolutely no desire for any Christian content whatsoever. I have then stood at the Crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with ‘I did it my way’ blaring out across the speakers! To be brutally honest I can think of a hundred better ways of spending my time as a priest on God’s earth. What is the point of my being present if spiritually unwanted? … Once upon a time even funerals at the Crem would have been sincerely Christian in character. But that was another England, a time when Christianity was worshipped on these shores…

I fear that he’s less than charitable, though I know what he means. But I rather welcome the desire I encounter in people who wish to say something personal to them while at the same time having a priest as officiant. Where religion seems an alien creature, the music or poetry they know might help them make a connection. Weddings in church offer more possibilities than the civil version. If people wonder about my attitude I’d say, “Try me.” Nevertheless I’d advise that the organ provides better music than a CD for getting into church whether for a wedding or a funeral - our Bill knows when to start and stop! Let’s be sanguine - and cheerful.

Overdue post...

2009-10-21T00:40:00.004+01:00

... I mean this "post" is overdue, rather than the stuff from Royal Mail which is still coming through my letterbox - and I like the people who deliver my mail, whatever is going to happen at the end of the week. While on that subject, why is it that if I'm out and Royal Mail can't deliver an item of post, they have to take it back to the sorting office four miles away to be picked up after I've waited a further 24 hours? But if Parcel Force can't make the delivery, they can drop it in to the Post Office 150 yards away at the bottom of the road, and I can get it straight away? Maybe Royal Mail ought to sort their own management systems out rather than blaming it all on the work force....

I've not been blogging recently, largely because it's been so busy recently - but fun as well. I'll post again soon, with a link to our November Parish Magazine (just finished for the printer) - it says something of what we've been up to.

Anyway, I've at last up-loaded the two sermons most recently preached at St. Cuthbert's - both by our Readers: Paul Heatherington on the Word in Hebrews from 11th October, and Rosie Junemann on St. Luke for his Feast Day of 18th October. I see that I haven't up-loaded anything of my own for a while, but recent offerings have been "live" only - and that's how it's going to be this coming Sunday too!

How true?

2009-10-02T11:02:00.002+01:00

I was raised in the Church of England. I can’t say I’m lapsed. You can’t really lapse if you’re an Anglican. You don’t lose your faith, you just can’t remember where you left it.

I got a bit annoyed during The News Quiz on Radio 4 the other day. It was Jeremy Hardy who said these words in the midst of an exchange in which Christianity in general and the Church of England in particular came in for some rather scathing sarcasm. “All a bit predictable,” I found myself saying aloud. “Would they say that sort of thing on the radio about..."

See where the "View from the Vicarage" goes by following this link to the newly-uploaded October issue of our Parish Magazine...

The Odour of Sanctity?

2009-09-29T09:50:00.003+01:00

The Feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux falls on Thursday of this week, 1st October. Many people in this area are looking forward to a "visit of her relics" - part of a "nationwide tour" - to Newcastle-upon-Tyne beginning on the Eve of the Feast and continuing onto the Feast Day itself. A programme for the hours that the relics of the saint are with us is to be found here. During this time the relics will be at St. Andrew's, Worswick Street - just round the corner from the old Pilgrim Street Fire Station. It's not a huge church, and I'm wondering how they plan to cope with all the crowds.

Will I be amongst them? I've visited Lisieux myself many years ago - and the relics on view there and then were perhaps too loftily displayed. I think this is going to be a rather more intimate occasion. I'd want a visit to be more than curosity on my part - and I'd need to be asking myself just what I'm looking for? Some of my thinking is to be found in the sermon I preached in St. Cuthbert's last Sunday - click to find it. This is the way I started:

You might be puzzled by an item I’ve included in today’s pew sheet about St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Why’s it there? And what on earth is it all about? In part it’s there because I had a gap to fill, and an article ready-made to fill it. In part it’s because it’s the Feast of St. Thérèse on Thursday - we’ll be observing it as we celebrate the Eucharist that morning. And in part it’s because of a rather strange happening, which you might have come across in the news. From Wednesday afternoon until Thursday morning, Newcastle is going to have a “visit of the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.” It’s part of a bigger event. Some of the physical remains of the saint (I think it’s bones from her foot and leg) have been brought from Normandy, where she lived and died, and they’re being taken round the country in a glass casket. Thérèse was a Carmelite nun who died early at the age of 24. People might have said she didn’t have much of a life: a pious childhood; education that seemed appropriate to a girl of her class in late 19th Century France; and the rest of her life in a Convent which she would never leave again. But from those narrow confines she touched the hearts of people round the world...

One thing I've recognised is that I find it hard to say merely "visit of her relics...." Much truer seems to ring: "when she comes..." Superstition or presence? Mystery or a few not-so-old bones which should be given a decent burial?

Meanwhile there's a reminder to Anglicans in our region that we're already the guardians of the mortal remains of St. Cuthbert and St. Bede, buried respectively at the east and west ends of Durham Cathedral. We don't take out their bones to put them on display (though of course there are the records of various exhumations over the centuries). But their shrines are a visible reminder of the call to holiness. What do they say to us today?

Feeling your age

2009-09-23T19:29:00.003+01:00

I'm sitting here feeling rather sorry for myself after parting company with my upper 6 left molar this afternoon. We'd been through a lot together, but our relationship had become increasingly precarious in recent times. In the end it was the man who'd done so much of the patching up for us who decided the time had come to call it a day. So having gone to his surgery prepared for root canal work and a crown, I came away with a big hole and instuctions to steer clear of hot drinks, hard and chewy food... and alcohol - fortunately only for the rest of the day.

It's part of the aging process I suppose, though perhaps the damage was done in my teenage years when my childhood dentist used to drill anything that remotely resembled decay - thank goodness that there's a more hands-off approach now.

Thinking of how my body seems to be packing-in in various ways gave me cause for reflection as I looked at last Sunday's Gospel (Mark 9.30-37): Jesus taking a child in his arms and saying, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me..." We have to be like little children to draw close to God's kingdom. I found myself comparing this with St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, who seems to consider it a virtue to have "put an end to childish ways." The childish approach for him is compared to having a knowledge which is only partial. Adulthood is about finding things "complete." But isn't that where we so often get things wrong? We want to have everything wrapped up - being adult requires that we have all the answers.

Perhaps we whizz past the implications of this when reading 1 Corinthians - much more attractive to read about Faith, Hope and Love. Maybe Paul hadn't thought it out. We need to recognise that our knowledge is only partial. That's why we need to be like children.

Anyway that's what I found myself saying when I preached at our tiny 8a.m. Eucharist a few days ago. Our Reader, Rosie Junemann, got the prime-time 10a.m. slot, and you can find out what she said here.

Still at work - discipleship and the Cross

2009-09-16T11:02:00.002+01:00

There may recently have been a lack of activity on the blogging front - but life itself, not least in the parish, is being eventful. Quite a number of Baptisms over the last few weeks - two of them, Lucy Thomas and Ethan Junemann, in the context of the Parish Eucharist (though two weeks apart, not together). I've been hopeless in getting pictures from our various events, though did manage to pull out my mobile phone to click the cutting of the cake for Ethan's celebration - photographed with parents, Harry and Alpa. One of Ethan's Grandmothers is our Reader, Rosie Junemann, and you can read her most recent sermon on "Open Hearts, not closed minds" here (apologies that it's been waiting to be uploaded since the end of August).

In the parish Mothers' Union, our Lunch Club, the PCC, Sunday School and the round of regular activities have all sprung back into life. Last weekend saw us occupied with our Annual Art Exhibition - an opportunity to see the work of local artists (and buy it). Alongside that we had participants in the Northumbria Historic Churches Trust Steeplechase, invitations to a local Bible Society Coffee Morning, another Baptism, a Deanery Evensong (excellent sermon by the Dean of Durham) - and we had the formal opening of our Church Hall Car Park by long-standing member and long-serving local councillor Derek Hume. Derek pointed out that he's been in our choir for 75 years now. He didn't serve quite that long as Ward Councillor, but long enough to gain recognition through being made an Honorary Alderman of the County.

I finally got round to scripting a sermon as well (all the other recent ones were available only "live"). It's here and tackles the theme of Discipleship and the Cross - appropriate, I hope, for a Sunday which fell the day before the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.

And while I can't link you to the Dean's sermon for Sunday evening, I can point you to the address he gave at the SCP National Conference in the summer. Our local Chapter (Durham & Newcastle) met on Monday - as always an affirming occasion for priests, men and women, in the Catholic Tradition of the Anglican Church. I've just had a member on the phone, regretting that he missed it, and asking also why there wasn't press coverage of the National Conference. He's right that it really deserves to be better known. Take a look...

Back to work...

2009-08-27T22:46:00.002+01:00

It's been a busy summer - quite eventful, taking into account our Diocesan Clergy Summer Gathering, the SCP National Conference, a reading week at St. Deiniol's Library, Hawarden, and a couple of weeks in France. You might be able to find some pictures of the holiday here. Since our return last week there have been two weddings, three Baptisms and a rather larger than expected congregation on Sunday morning - keep it up!

And GCSE results for my younger son this morning - with which we're very pleased...

Our Parish Magazine for September has now gone to press. I'm not sure when we'll get it back from the printer, but you can find the full-colour on-line edition here. This is the editorial / View from the Vicarage:

“La Grippe A”……

is the name being given in France to what we call “Swine Flu.” It’s a rather less emotive title - and perhaps we’d have treated the illness rather differently if it had been called something else. For the moment - with a fall in the rate of infection over the summer holiday period - swine flu has almost disappeared from news coverage. But there are fears that once children return to school it might return again in pandemic proportions. The indications are that for most people it’s a relatively mild illness. But for a small minority it can lead to complications. And the families I know who have had young children suffering from it have found the experience upsetting, even worrying. So we shouldn’t minimise the problem.

In some ways the timing of the Church’s response to the epidemic was unfortunate. Guidelines were announced just as the rate of infection came to a peak towards the end of July. Now - having followed Department of Health advice that the Chalice should not be shared at Holy Communion, and that the Peace should not be shared with a handshake - we find that almost immediately the worst of the outbreak seems to be over. Except we know that we can’t be complacent. All too easily the virus could spread again.

I’ve reflected on the Church’s position as we’ve seen fears increase and recede - and I’ve circulated a leaflet on what we are doing and why. A reminder of my conclusion: “The risk of transmitting Swine Flu is no greater in a church than in any other public place. Being conscious of those church practices which might possibly increase the risk of infection can in fact reduce that risk, since it makes us more thoughtful of others and of what we do.”

And I hope that the feeling of “being deprived” because we can’t at present share the chalice may be helpful. Our Bishop has reminded us that “the fullness of the Sacrament” is to be found in Communion in one kind (i.e. as we receive only the consecrated host) - let us see it again as truly Christ’s Precious Body” (and therefore also his Blood). If we can’t shake hands at the Peace, instead we can take more notice of the people around us - the purpose of the Peace is to recognise Christ in our neighbour, not just to rush around the church. There’s a general feeling that having to think about what we are doing is no bad thing in the long-term.

Having said that, we took delivery of a case of Communion wine in the week before use of the chalice was discontinued. We look forward to opening it as soon as we can.

For the sake of posterity, here are the guidelines we're following - and the reasoning behind them.

Swine Flu and Spam

2009-07-24T00:21:00.002+01:00

All my work on trying to produce guidelines for the Eucharist has now been superceded by the issuing of advice from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York - and firmed up in our own diocese by the Bishop of Durham. Holy Communion is to be in one kind, though the President at the Eucharist may choose to intinct the consecrated wafers before the distribution.

Lots of e-mails on the subject have been landing in my Inbox throughout the day - appropriately many of them are being marked in the subject line with the question, "Is this spam?" Almost...

Swine Flu and good practice at the Eucharist

2009-07-21T10:56:00.002+01:00

The Church of England, our own Diocese of Durham and many other Church bodies have issued guidance on Church practice in relation to the fears over swine flu. What's missing is an indication of when the guidance might need actually to be implemented.

Faced last week with a sudden upsurge in infection in the wider community within our parish boundary, we had to do some thinking. Here's the gist of what I finally found myself sharing with the congregation and the action we took. Of course we'll need to review our practice on a regular basis:

1. Don't panic! All the evidence is that the illness is almost always mild. Even the worst case scenario figures given by the government for mortality are very low when divided by a population of 60 million - I think I hazarded a guess that this would work out at about 6 deaths for a parish of our size (actually it's nearer 10, now that I've done the sums... But let's not let that distract us).

2. Nevertheless we should be responsible. Some people may say they'd rather get flu sooner rather than later. But some of us have our holidays booked - and if everyone got flu all at once who's going to keep the country running and provide the care we all need?

3. There are some people you would definitely wish to avoid getting the illness - especially expectant mothers, mothers of very young children, the very young and elderly, and people who have complicated health conditions. We need to look out for them.

4. There are real concerns in our parish. I know several people who have swine flu in their families. It is spreading through some if not all the local schools. So proper precautions are responsible.

5. On the other hand because much of the spread in the last week or so has been through the schools, it's possible that the end of school term (for most of our children, 22nd July) will bring a fall-off in the rate of infection (but probably only temporarily).

6. How can we at St. Cuthbert's play our part when we worship together?

(a) follow the government's advice on hygiene - don't cough and sneeze over each other; use disposable tissues, and bin them carefully. If you've been infected or have been in close contact with someone who is infected, then it's responsible to stay away from people if you can. Wash your hands.

(b) most infection that's not airborne is by contagion, i.e. hand to nose / mouth. So I suggested that we should use the Peace to value one another - we don't need to shake hands. Instead, make eye-contact, smile, acknowledge one another... Having said that, some people did shake hands. But no one should feel that they have to.

(c) there is some guidance from the diocese about the chalice - one question is at what point might it have to be withdrawn? (In that case only the priest would drink from the chalice). Holy Communion in one kind is sufficient, i.e. receiving the Host. In the event we offered the chalice to all who wished to receive, but made it clear that they did not have to. We asked communicants not to intinct (not to dip the consecrated wafer into the chalice), because intinction itself is a means by which infection can be passed on (and it's bad practice!). Most people did receive from the chalice. But we noted among those who did not receive were a couple who had a family member receiving chemotherapy, and an expectant mother. I understand their concerns.

(d) people shouldn't feel that they had to shake the Vicar's hand as they left the church!

(e) alcohol hand-rub was available at the back of church (and the priest himself used it before the Offertory in addition to the usual lavabo).

In the event I think we got things about right. There is obviously widespread infection in our community, and we'll need to review how things progress, and whether the chalice should be withdrawn. One danger is that an invitation might be made to people to receive if they wish, only for the priest to find that most decline, leaving him / her with rather a lot of consecrated wine to consume. And the priest him/herself should not be obliged to consume - at the end of the Communion - what other people have declined to receive (or might have infected).

Should we publish these guidelines more widely? Are people presently staying away from church out of fear? If they knew what steps we are taking, perhaps they'd be reassured!

Saints and Prophets

2009-07-13T15:08:00.002+01:00

After attending a Conference where a theme was the Northern Saints, I was back in my own parish - to hear a sermon from Rosie Junemann, our Reader, which took as its starting point a Pyrenean saint. Not that this saint was ever formally canonised... and there wouldn't be much hope for most of us if the formal process John Henry Newman is now having to undergo was required of us all.

So, a reminder that we are called to be a "sacred people." And Rosie pointed to the need for a prophetic stance in our own day, no less than in the time of Amos and John the Baptist.

Meanwhile, the Sunday School's project is coming along well - next week they'll be making their own presentation of the life of St. Cuthbert, and the course he plotted throughout our region after his death. It's to be acted out complete with body, two heads and coffin. Just don't get a shock if you venture into church and see what they've left on the pews at the back of the north aisle.

Society of Catholic Priests National Conference

2009-07-10T12:31:00.007+01:00

The Durham & Newcastle Chapter of SCP hosted the Society's National Conference from Tuesday to Thursday of this week. It was one of those occasions where you can find yourself profoundly grateful for other people. Everything came together so well from venue, through speakers and worship, to the atmosphere in the bar and - most especially - the good humour of all. Even the organisers enjoyed it - and we're grateful for all the positive feedback. Thanks to everyone who made it so successful.

I hope it has a beneficial effect in the parishes and other places where members serve. The Conference theme has been "Sacred Places - Sacred People." It's not coincidental that the North-East of England's Tourist Board advertises with the slogan "Passionate Places - Passionate People." Actually how can a place be "passionate"? Much better to seek the sacred in the place - and be formed as a sacred people.

We hope that at least some texts from the speakers will soon be available. Fr. Andrew Nunn, Rector-General, has promised that his homily will soon be up on the SCP Website - in fact I've just looked and it is! We think that the opening address by Jan Sutch Pickard of the Iona Community might also become available. And it's my hope that the address by Michael Sadgrove, Dean of Durham, will get published - possibly as part of his next book(?), if not / as well as online.

My humble offering to the Conference of a homily for a Eucharist of the Northern Saints in Bede's home church of St. Paul, Jarrow is also online. The picture below is of St. Cuthbert's Sunday School at work on the project which inspired my opening words - or at least some tidying -up after most of the children had gone. If you want to know how that relates to religious devotion at St. James's Park and the online presence of Our Lady, click here.

Dealing with homicidal pews

2009-07-01T14:21:00.002+01:00

I'm taking part in our Diocese's "Clergy Summer Gathering" at Ushaw College. The theme is "Time Matters" - and we've had some excellent sessions on the theme of time: David Wilkinson related our ways of thinking about time to science fiction, astrophysics and quantum theory, Bishop Tom has been exploring the meaning of the Sabbath, and Paul Witts has explored the concept of Nostalgia.

This last subject provoked lots of interest. Best exchange so far was an example of congregational nostalgia, implicit in an objection raised to the removal of a church pew: "Someone died in that pew." To which the parish priest had replied, "Then it had better go before it kills someone else." At which another priest leapt to her feet and shouted, "Let me have it - I can put it to good use in my parish...."

Now online - double issue Parish Magazine

2009-06-29T17:21:00.002+01:00

The title says it all.

The Magazine for July & August hasn't yet got to the printer. But you can read it online by clicking here - and this way you get it in colour.

Still, I hope people will buy the hard copy...

The confirmation of faith

2009-06-29T17:02:00.004+01:00

Here's the photo I didn't manage to take after last week's Confirmation. The Vicar of St. Cuthbert's, Benfieldside with Frank Barnes and Dorothy Dover, both newly-confirmed by the Rt. Revd. Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham.

In the Rite of Confirmation, the individual Christian affirms his or her faith, and the Bishop confirms it in prayer with Christ's people. So the individual and the corporate come together. I believe, but as part of a greater whole.

Sunday's Gospel reading took us to the example of faith we find in the woman who pressed through the crowd to touch the hem of Jesus' cloak and to find healing - and the challenge to faith we find in the death of Jairus's daughter. I preached on them, and you can find the homily here. I found it worth quoting from the challenge to faith which the late Cardinal Basil Hume found in his enounter with starvation in Ethiopia - and with one individual in particular. They're his words, reproduced in the week's issue of "The Tablet:"

“This small boy came up to me and gripped my hand. With his other hand he pointed to his mouth. That was his way of telling me he was very hungry. I said to the interpreter: ‘Tell the little boy that I’ve come here to go home and make certain that food is sent to him.’ He went on doing this, but he also got hold of my hand and rubbed it against his cheek. I couldn’t understand that, but for the whole hour I was in that camp that little boy wouldn’t let go of my hand, and from time to time rubbed it on his cheek. He was very, very hungry … I remember speaking with that boy and asking him through the interpreter: ‘Why are you looking so sad?’ and he answered very simply in his own language: ‘I am hungry.’ I could see in that face the suffering Christ, and I realised just what a terrible scourge physical hunger is. But also there was an echo from the Cross which Our Lord spoke when he said: ‘I thirst’, and how he thirsts for us and wants us… Then, when the visit was ended and I had to go elsewhere, the little boy stood – I can see him now – feet astride, his hands on his waist, and looked at me almost with reproach. I could see in his face, ‘Why are you leaving me behind?’ I felt awful because there was no way I could take that little boy and bring him back to England.

“I realised that when you’re lost and are very hungry, and you are abandoned, you have a craving for two things: for food and for drink and for love … It was the next day when I was celebrating Mass that I understood as I’ve never understood before, the secret of Holy Communion. Our Lord, realising how much we need love, how much we need to be fed by him, had this marvellous way of doing it: by giving himself to us. When I visited Ethiopia … I saw clearly how when people are abandoned and dying of hunger they crave for love and for life … I have never forgotten that incident and to this day wonder whether that child is still alive. I remember when I boarded the helicopter he stood and looked reproachfully. An abandoned, starving 10-year-old child … A little boy who taught me in a wonderful way something very important about going to Holy Communion. I have often wondered since what happened to him.”

Alone at sea... asleep in the boat

2009-06-24T23:04:00.011+01:00

I see that I haven't blogged for quite some time. June has found me officiating at four weddings, getting ready (myself rather than our candidates) for our Confirmation on Monday of this week, and enjoying a Summer Fair. All this at the same time as my younger son has been taking GCSE examinations - thankfully finished today, and we've just been out to celebrate.

Annoyingly I didn't have my camera to hand when group shots of the Confirmation were taken - I hope to borrow some picures soon. And the picture above is the only one I took at the Summer Fair - during a performance by the Jane Robson Theatre Group in church.

But generally we've been having a good time. The sun has been shining again, we're hoping that landscaping work around the Hall and below the Car Park will soon be complete. And thoughts are turning towards the holidays (a week in Italy booked so far).

On Sundays we're working our way through St. Mark's Gospel - this week with Jesus and the disciples on the Sea of Galilee. This is what I had to say in my homily. If you don't want to click on the link here's an excerpt:

... the crucial question: to ask who Jesus is for us. To be able to recognise that he is at the centre of the storm with us. That we are not alone. But we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have times of sheer desperation. Jesus is sleeping in the stern of the boat. It’s not the first thought of the disciples that they’ve got him with them. Their first thought is that Jesus is asleep. They feel on their own, and this man is doing nothing for them. They feel on their own, even though other people must be near to hand. St. Mark tells us that as they set out across the Lake, “Other boats were with him.” But there’s no other reference to the people in these boats. When we are in the midst of the storm, perhaps we forget the peril that other people are in – “this is my disaster, and I’m going to suffer it all myself.” When we are in the midst of the storm, perhaps we forget that there are other people who might be able to help us. But the disciples are so pre-occupied with danger that they forget anything other than their own fight for survival on that one tiny boat. Nothing else and no one else matters. It’s as though nothing else in the world seems to exist.

And perhaps that’s how life is for us when we know that we are in trouble. All we can do when things are extreme is be conscious of the peril. So easily we feel that we’re on our own. We don’t care that other people may have their problems, because nothing can match mine. We don’t think that anyone else can help, because my problems are so far beyond my being able to deal with them that we don’t believe anyone can help us find a solution. And if we call on God, it might be only to find that he seems to be asleep.

It’s this story that tells us that it’s not necessarily so...

Trinity Sunday - trying to get it right

2009-06-08T11:25:00.002+01:00

Preaching on Trinity Sunday is one of those tasks which many clergy try to avoid. How many heresies can you unintentionally commit in the space of 10 minutes or so?

But a faith which may seem difficult is something to be engaged with. "Keep it simple," is what so many people ask - and there is indeed a simplicity in Christian faith which is the simple recognition of God's love for us. But that is love revealed in Christ, and made real by the Holy Spirit. So already you're into the realms of Trinitarian doctrine.

In preaching this Trinity Sunday I didn't aim to go far into the doctrine of God's Being, nor did I want to say that faith is difficult. But I did want to say something about what it is to hold a faith which can sustain people in the complexity of their lives - that we shouldn't expect faith to be laid out for us on a plate. If life is difficult, is a simple answer going to satisfy you? Well... there are times when that can be the case (though it's often so simple and direct that it's not really welcome either). But there are times when we just have to wrestle with it. Just because faith can be difficult, it doesn't mean that it's not real.

And the reality of God can be sensed in his Glory. That's where we started in our use of Isaiah 6. And you can read what I had to say in my homily here.

Pentecost - new life for the Church

2009-05-31T23:18:00.002+01:00

Members of the congregation and visitors to St. Cuthbert's this morning found an iPod playing in the porch this morning: "Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones..." It was of course a reference to today's Old Testament reading from Ezekiel 37.

Paul Heatherington, preaching here this morning, clarified that for anyone who missed the point. And you can find his sermon here.

The main problem I find in celebrating today's Feast is that the readings in the Lectionary are so long. We needed to add an extra page to today's pewsheet to print them all out - and who has the concentration to stay with them all the way? There are shorter options for those who use the new provision in the Common Worship "Feasts" volume. But it takes considerable energy to get everything sorted out ahead of the liturgy. We've done it in previous years. But with Pentecost coinciding with the school half-term holiday (and the resultant diminished congregation), it was just too much for this year.

But next week we're hopefully going to be back to strength - with our celebration of Trinity Sunday to look forward to (and I'm preaching for that!).

Half-Term Up-date

2009-05-27T15:52:00.002+01:00

I often try to take at least part of the school half-term week as holiday - but decided there was little chance of making anything of it this year, our household being caught up in the midst of GCSEs. Actually I'm more anxious about them than my son, and I'm glad to say we did get a good day out (and fine weather) on Bank Holiday Monday - and good weather is promised for the end of the week, so...

Meanwhile I have produced the June issue of our Parish Magazine. The entire print run is sitting in the back of my car at the moment, since the magazine distributor upon whom I drop it was out when I called. But you can read it online (and in colour in the on-line version).

I know I've got lots of form-filling to do during the next few days, and would rather put it off - so instead of motivating exam revision elsewhere in the Vicarage I really need to motivate myself. At least there's a wedding for the next-door parish to look forward to - and I gather someone else is filling in the Registers...

Anniversary of something we take for granted

2009-05-12T10:35:00.004+01:00

I was grateful to our Reader, Rosie Junemann, who pointed out to me that women were admitted to the office of Reader in the Church of England only as recently as 1969 - and last weekend was the actual anniversary of the event. So Rosie got to preach - read her sermon here as she seeks to do the occasion justice, while also taking in lectionary readings about the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch and the Vine of which we are the branches.

I say "as recently as 1969" - and then have to recognise that I'm showing my age. 1969 is now as far off today as 1929 was in 1969. And in 1929 my parents were still in nappies. Everything before the late 1950s seems to me a very long time ago. Maybe it was the coincidence of my birth and the dawning of the age of Rock and Roll that's led to my notion of what is "modern." Though of course what is "modern" now dates rapidly - and all the rounds of liturgical revision we've been through in the Church of England show that once "radically-new" liturgies rapidly tire.

I thought of this yesterday at our Archdeaconry Visitation, when our Wardens, Linda and Carol were sworn in. Our Archdeacon first gave a presentation on the up-dated Durham Diocesan Website - very adept too in his use of PowerPoint! Visitation articles which had enquired after parish's use of the Internet had revealed a definite divide between those who used the Web all the time, and those who had no access even to a computer. And there I was thinking that Facebook was out of date except for the over-50s. Archdeacon Ian then went on to give his Charge (and used as its basis the story of the Ethiopian eunuch - aargh!!! twice in two days!). Anyway it was a brave attempt to move people on, and unusually for a Visitation, people seemed to come away stimulated and enthused. Between sending in our own responses to the layout of the diocesan website and the meeting, I've found that already some changes have been made which correspond with comments we'd made. There's responsiveness (if it was a response to us).

But I'm not the best person to comment on state of the art technology. Our Parish Website looks in some respects distinctly old and creaky (one of the reasons why we now use the Blog and links on the right to archived material). Nevertheless it does the business. Even as I've been typing this post up, I've been rung up by The Times, asking me if there are any couples preparing for marriage we'd like to feature on their Register page. I thought you had to live in Knightsbridge for that - and said I wasn't sure we'd fit their socio-economic profile. Ah, but we're trying to widen our reach, was the response. So, I'm thinking about it... "How did you find my contact details?" I asked. "Through your website," was the reply. So... some old things do work.

And if you wonder about the picture at the top of this post, it was taken at the re-launch event of our Drama Group, One in Seven," (named after the average gradient of Church Bank). It was a loving re-visiting (and re-writing) of old radio shows like Round the Horne - barely remembering some from my childhood, I was struck by how much tongue in cheek and innuendo there was... really quite modern!

Our organist, Bill, brought things to a finale with a rendering of old theme tunes. Here he is just before discovering that we really should have had the piano tuned.

The end of April...

2009-04-29T19:47:00.007+01:00

I really do breathe a sigh of relief when I get to the end of April. Easter is wonderful - and I had the best part of a week's break following Easter Day. But then it's straight back to work - and that entailed getting ready for our parish's Annual Parochial Church Meeting with all the preparation and paperwork involved, and then the follow-up which requires various returns to the diocese, not least the "Visitation Articles." This year's articles want to know how our parishes are being affected by the Recession, what we've done in the way of Stewardship, and what we think of the new Diocesan Website. All complicated by the fact that the Articles have to be completed by the churchwardens who have served in 2008-2009.

Linda - who is continuing in office for 2009-10 - escaped the paper-filling by taking off to Barcelona, though at the cost of signing a blank form which I've since filled in with Liz, our retiring Warden. I'm glad to say it's in the post. And now we welcome a new Warden, Carol. I made the mistake of telling Carol that she'd find it much easier than being PCC Secretary, a post she held till a couple of years ago - mistake because our present PCC Secretary, Jill, was standing behind me at the time. But all is well, and we had our first PCC Meeting of the new year last night - all posts filled and a new agenda underway. To keep us on the mark, Jill is bringing ever-larger alarm clocks to the meeting - I had to ask her to put yesterday's clock on the floor for the benefit of the other members, since I found myself unable to see over it.

You can catch up on what we've been up to - and plan - in the May issue of the Parish Magazine. Click here - or if you're near to hand, please buy a copy!

No new homilies / sermons to link to. With the APCM following last Sunday's Eucharist it seemed best to be brief, to the point and unscripted. And the previous Sunday found Fr. Harry Lee, one of our more senior clergy, in possession of the pulpit - he needs to be experienced live.

Meanwhile we've had a return of spring warmth today - it seems for one day only. Last Saturday - for the first time this year - I summoned up the energy to get on my bike and ride up the Waskerley Way over the moors to Parkhead Station which, pre-Beeching cuts, had been the highest railway station in England. It was a beautiful day, and the calmest I've ever known it - though a cold wind in our faces sprang up for the return home. En route, we stopped off at Waskerley. Less than 50 years ago the village had a population of 75. Now there are only two inhabited houses. The Methodist Chapel is long closed, but it was good to find the Anglican Church open and well-maintained, though rarely used as part of a group of six or seven parishes. BCP and Hymns Ancient & Modern Revised in the pews. I guess the colours of the hangings are unvarying - in contrast to St. Cuthbert's in its Easter glory above.

Easter 2009

2009-04-11T18:57:00.004+01:00

Actually I'm posting this on Easter Eve - a beautiful day with spring warmth as well as sunshine. Daffodils are bearing up well, and all around there's the pale green of new leaves opening on the trees.

Hopefully much the same for everyone! And Easter should be much the same for everyone in terms of its reality... Huh - is that all? What I mean is that it's the reality which needs to be affirmed. But how do people perceive that reality? Or experience it in the midst of whatever is going on in their lives?

That's what I'm trying to explore in my homily for our Easter Eucharist.

Incidentally parish material such as the homilies gets stored off-site with a host whose advertising is sometimes bizarre. Apologies for anyone who gets troubled by this, but it's a useful means of up-loading our stuff. An odd thing about the site is the counter which tells you how much each item has been viewed - it's not entirely consistent... so in the space of a few minutes recently it was telling me that one of my homilies had not been viewed at all, and then that it had been viewed seven times. The one before had been looked at 41 times. But the "wonder" homily appears to have been read 449 times! And I think this figure is probably right... Why? - it seems to attract viewers you need to choose the right "tags" - and in this instance I'd added the labels, "prayer" and "miracle." So now I know what people are looking for!

But for Easter it's "Resurrection," "Faith," "Experience."

Christ is risen! Happy Easter!

Passion Sunday

2009-03-30T23:42:00.002+01:00

The picture shows our high altar in Lenten array - purple is conspicuous by its absence during Lent in St. Cuthbert's.

Passion Sunday found numbers still healthy, even after last week's Mothering Sunday turnout - and with the competing attractions of Shotley Bridge's continuing "Open Weekend" (plenty of time for both). And at least five very young children (two under a month old) in church - one dramatically let out a great wail during the Gospel, just at the point where "a voice came from heaven" (John 12.28).

It was an alternative text, and I was tempted to chuck the text of my homily away and make something else up. But I didn't - and you can find it here.

Open Village Day - and a challenge to Lent?

2009-03-28T15:22:00.005Z

St. Cuthbert's is in the village of Shotley Bridge -in North West Durham (and with a bit over the river in Northumberland too). Many people might pass through, but parking is difficult and the residents tend to shop elsewhere. So all credit to the businesses of the village which came up with the idea of having an "Open Weekend" for the village. Today and tomorrow is a day when they're hoping people will make a special effort to see what they're up to.

The weather wasn't at all auspicious at the start of the day, and it's still pretty grey, cold and windy. But the people are turning out. Lots of the businesses are new and located in tiny shop fronts - and they crammed. Over the years there have been lots of empty properties - but now they're all taken - the latest one opening this morning.

In fact the latest opening is of a Bridal Wear shop - that makes two seeking to corner the market only about 100 yards apart. I fear that we haven't much business to put their way this year - but who knows? Perhaps we'll get a name, and hopefully people will travel.

Another recent opening is of a "Patisserie." It's also in fact a "Chocolaterie" - and people who have read the book or seen the film Chocolat will know the stir such an opening during Lent caused in a fictional village in France. No such problems here it seems - and my younger son made a reasonably significant cash outlay for what he wanted.

So good luck to the business community here - spearheading the fight against the recession. The local churches didn't get asked if they'd like to join in. So I've been going round pointing out that we too will be open tomorrow - and every Sunday.

Parish up-dates

2009-03-26T12:50:00.002Z

I'm glad to say that we have managed to get a fair bit of preparation done for the coming weeks. Notices for our Holy Week and Easter services are starting to go up. Reports for our Annual Parochial Church Meeting have on the whole been submitted in advance and printed in the April issue of the Parish Magazine - so that should allow us a shorter meeting, and save on the duplication of the reports themselves. Just click the links if you like to see what we're up to.

"Your busy time"... and thoughts about Mothering Sunday

2009-03-26T12:34:00.003Z

"This is your busy time" is the refrain which clergy hear as they get ready for Christmas. Actually last year it really was. But never so busy as Lent - and especially Passion-tide and the run-up to Easter.

We're having a good Lent in the parish. Mothering Sunday is always a bit of a blip as our main Eucharist turns "all-age," and we work out the logistics of daffodil distribution and the safe presentation of the Brownie flag. The biggest blip is in deciding whether to stick with the readings for the 4th Sunday of Lent - or to use some provision for Mothering Sunday. The danger of keeping Lent 4 is that the lectionary provision will probably jar with people looking for a way to think about their mums. The problem with the Mothering Sunday readings is that they break up the attention you're trying to give to Lent.

This year we kept the readings for the 4th Sunday of Lent - and made a point that they probably weren't what most people would be expecting. And then we explored themes of motherhood - from our own understanding of the relationship between mother and child, through the relationship of Jesus and his Mother, and a bit about the Church as Mother. We had an excellent turn-out in the congregation, with a responsive cohort of young people for the dialogue which largely replaced the Homily. Perhaps we should have recorded it for the sake of some of the answers given to a questionnaire we used (e.g. "What is something your mother always says to you?" Answers: "No." "Shut up." "Stop it" - and downhill from there) - but on second thoughts...

3rd Sunday of Lent - the Cleansing of the Temple

2009-03-17T09:34:00.002Z

At our PCC Meeting last night, we had some correspondence inviting us to share in some evangelistic initiative or other (I forget which!) - and claiming that enthusiasm for it is "sweeping the churches" of our nation. Positive outcome for us is that we have now fixed a date for spring-cleaning St. Cuthbert's... come along on the morning of Saturday 4th April (there might be bacon sandwiches as an incentive).

Paul Heatherington, our Reader, on Sunday asked us to consider "What are churches for?" as he looked at Jesus' action in driving out the money-changers from the Temple. Meanwhile, we are preparing for our Patronal Festival - with St. Cuthbert's Day on Friday and a Sung Eucharist at 7p.m. And we're approaching the 160th anniversary of the laying of our Foundation Stone. Hopefully the question as to what this building is doing here will be a provocation to consider again what Christian witness in this - and the wider - community really means.

2nd Sunday of Lent - Take up the Cross

2009-03-10T20:51:00.003Z

Our Reader, Rosie Junemann, preached this morning on the text, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Click here to read what she had to say - and discover what her seven-week old grandson puts on his postcards and what primary school age children can tell you about St. Philomena.

There's also a reminder that Archbishop Rowan Williams has released his reflections on Lent in a YouTube video. It's worth taking a look, though I could do without the background music!

1st Sunday of Lent - Seeking Silence

2009-03-01T12:25:00.003Z

A good turn out at St. Cuthbert's for the First Sunday of Lent. The Children's Corner was full - and there was a sense of anticipation that we might end the Eucharist still more full, since one mother-to-be is now two days overdue.

My homily largely dealt with the issue of silence - one of the world's neglected qualities / virtues. Remarkably the youngest of children became quite quiet as I preached, though part of my point was that silence is more than simply "Peace and quiet."

As it happens I'm reading Sara Maitland's recently published, A Book of Silence - and very much enjoying it. She writes:

We all imagine that we want peace and quiet, that we value privacy and that the solitary and silent person is somehow more ‘authentic’ than the same person in a social crowd, but we seldom seek opportunities to enjoy it. We romanticise silence on the one hand and on the other feel that it is terrifying, dangerous to our mental health, a threat to our liberties and something to be avoided at all costs...

I’m sure she’s right that the quest for silence requires real commitment, and we shouldn’t under-estimate the demands that silence can make upon us. Before I undertook an eight-day Individually Guided Retreat, I was required to fill in a questionnaire - and there was a warning that people who had no previous experience of at least a few days of silence should not sign up. It’s when you find yourself on your own and in silence that you find not merely the opportunity for peaceful reflection, but also all the disturbing voices speaking which otherwise you can ignore amid the frantic hurly-burly of life the way we normally live it. Those things that wake us up in the early hours and won’t let us get back to sleep. The things that we try to put off, shirk and shake off… they all crowd in on us.

That found its way into my homily. As did the suggestion by Fr. Gerard Hughes – author of God of Surprises - that,

It is a very useful exercise to take a piece of paper, divide it into two columns, one headed 'Events which bring me to life', and the other 'Events which deaden me', then scribble down whatever comes to mind. Keep the list, and add to it whenever another item occurs to you. If you persist, the list will lengthen, and you may discover that you give more time and attention to the things which deaden you than to those which enliven you.

We need to look into our hearts and ask, do we find a spirit which deadens or a spirit which enlivens? Do we just try to get by, holding on to what we have got, but seeing it inevitably decay? Or do we take risks in living and loving so that we might grow?

Click here for more. Have a Happy and a Holy Lent.

Ash Wednesday - Lent begins

2009-02-25T12:35:00.004Z

I'm always come to the beginning of Lent with a certain sort of relief - time for the annual clean-up. The church is now ready in Lent array - and children from a local school will be the first to see its new bareness when they visit in a few minutes' time. For myself I feel in need of the annual overhaul for body, mind and soul.

Our March issue of the Parish Magazine has just gone off to be printed. Click here to read the online edition.

This is the Vicar's letter from the front end of the maagazine, but there's a lot more worth reading inside...

Cracked Cisterns?

No, it’s not another fabric problem with crumbling loos and bathroom fittings… The reference is actually to words from the Prophet Jeremiah:

My people have committed two sins:
they have rejected me,
a source of living water,
and they have hewn out for themselves cisterns,
cracked cisterns which hold no water. (Jeremiah 2.13)

It’s a two-fold reproach. First, that God’s people have lost sight of God himself: he’d led them from slavery in Egypt into a promised land, but they’ve forgotten that he is the source of their guidance - they just don’t pay attention to him any more. And secondly, having made themselves self-reliant, they’ve found their own resources to be an empty hope. It must be from Jeremiah that we get the phrase, “It just doesn’t hold water.” That’s what the Israelites find when they surrender the worship of God and a proper sense of their calling for false idols, materialism and neglect of the poor. And that’s what we find in our society today.

The recent “Atheist Bus Slogan” campaign has paid for buses to be emblazoned with the rather half-hearted half-thought: “There’s probably no God - so stop worrying and enjoy your life.” But will people stop worrying? Why shouldn’t you believe in God, and enjoy your life. And is enjoyment (hedonism) all there is to life? It’s not just the Recession that’s making people doubt this. In her chart-topping song, The Fear, Lily Allen sings:

I want to be rich and I want lots of money

I don’t care about clever I don’t care about funny

I want loads of clothes and I want a **** load of diamonds

I heard people die while they are trying to find them

It’s sad - and the chorus admits as much:

I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore

I don’t know how we’re meant to feel anymore

When do you think it will all become clear

‘Cause I’m being taken over by the Fear

So, is reality to be found just in what you can see, touch, get and grab? Let’s welcome Lent as the opportunity to attune ourselves once more to the true source of reality - God as we find him in Jesus Christ.

Martin Jackson