A Farewell - but not! Sermon on the Vicar's last Sunday

4^th Sunday after Trinity – Eucharist – 28.vi.2026

(Proper 8)

Genesis 22.1-14;
Romans 6.12-23;
Matthew 10.40-42

Not surprisingly, at the moment quite a number of people are asking me, “How do you feel?” I think they’re referring mainly to my impending retirement. And I’m not sure how to reply. I’m not sure really what I feel! I’ve lived so long in this one place – and it’s been so good. It’s 32 years since we moved into St. Cuthbert’s Vicarage. I remember waking up one morning and thinking, I’ve lived here longer than anywhere else in my life. Now I’ve lived here nearly twice as long as anywhere else.

It was a strange thing recently to have to clear the house which had been my family home for 55 years. I took long enough over that – with my mother in a residential care home for the last years of her life, and then keeping the house on for my own use. But eventually I realised it wasn’t the place for me to go back to. When the sale went through, things moved very fast because  the house had to be cleared out over Palm Sunday weekend and Easter. This is not the fortnight when a priest has the most time on his hands. Still I have boxes and boxes from that house in Hartlepool – and I haven’t had the chance to look properly into them, or to decide what to do with them. Except that I know that most of them will have to go! The fact that my parents themselves had put so much into boxes in cupboards is the clue. Why do we keep things? How will we use them? I’ve got that question to face with everything of my own possessions that are stored up in the Vicarage – only more so!

A theme that’s run through a lot of what people are saying to me at the moment is summed up in a card I was given the other day. “Wishing you best wishes on your retirement. Enjoy and make it a great time doing all the things that you want to do…”

That’s something that I’m looking forward to: “to do all the things that I want to do.” Except that this is more than a retirement! This weekend is also the anniversary of my ordination: yesterday, 44 years since I was ordained priest in Durham Cathedral; today, 45 years since I was ordained deacon. So for me this is always a time for thanksgiving and reflection. And these are not things that I will be giving up. There is a requirement that after retirement I should take off at least six months from exercising my ministry as a priest. I realise that will mean something of an abrupt stop. I’d like to retire with a sense of completion – with everything set in order and the job done; but it’s not. I’m all too conscious of the things we’ve worked on so long that are still not sorted out. How do you stop a roof from leaking after spending so much time and money on it? How is it that you can fix the boiler and find that then the radiators don’t work? Do we simply fix the electrics as they are at St. John’s? – or grit our teeth and take the pain of finding more money and filling in faculty application forms so that we can improve and future-proof them? These are the questions that I have raised – and now I have to leave them behind! I realise how wearing and wearying they are, but now I have to hand them over to churchwardens and those who will work with them. So please be supportive of those wardens! – it’s not an enviable task.

But no one’s task is ever over! I’m going to find that out for myself in taking on home ownership at the age of 70, having to make decisions for myself, having to sort out all those practical things without phoning up the Diocesan Surveyor. A friend of mine who has retired into a new-build (as I will) wrote to me that it was great to be able to decide just how she really wanted to have things for the first time. I’m not so sure! For the moment, I look ahead to see looming issues of snagging and then probably quite a long-haul as I work out just how I can make myself comfortable – to change a freshly-built house into a home.

But this is all rather a long digression. This time of leaving and moving is also the time when I look back on those things that have made me what and who I am as a priest. That doesn’t get given up, whatever the future may hold. The six months’ pause in ministry isn’t an imposition by those who make the rules up. It’s a time to stop and reflect on the person I am, formed for better or worse by God’s grace. To see what I value. To understand something of what I can be and do when freed from the requirements of what I have to do whether I want to do them or not. One of the practical parish questions we’ve considered is, who is going to put the bins out? Actually I haven’t minded putting out the rubbish and recycling, but what will make a difference is knowing that I don’t have to do or organise it each week! All the administration which has increasingly tied me to a desk is necessary stuff – and there’s something satisfying when you manage to keep things in relatively good order. Perhaps that’s why we talk about “the office and work of a priest in the Church of God.” But now all those files from my computer have been handed over on two USB drives – one for each parish. I face the question: so what am I? - cut loose from parish, PCC, meetings and admin?

Partly that’s answered by what I might plan to take with me as I prepare to move. What are you going to do with all those books? – has been one of the questions I’ve been asked. The answer has been, I’m not planning to use all those bedrooms in the new house for beds! Hopefully quite a lot of the books can go with me, for me to return to or even to get round to reading properly for the first time. I’ve wondered about taking all the files I stored up from eight years in university settings to see what sense I can make of them. But I suspect that they should go. I need to do fresh thinking. I hope there’ll be time to reflect – and that I’ll have the discipline to do so. And that needs to go along with making time to pray. For that I think I need a new Spiritual Director, someone who will accompany me on the way – probably someone who has had the experience I have had of a long parish ministry and then the adjustment to retirement.

With all this, alongside the necessary time to unwind and put aside so much that has sometimes tired me out, there’s the need to be ready for fresh questioning. I’m conscious that so far I haven’t referred to today’s set readings from Scripture. That first one is really troubling. Abraham believing that God is calling him to offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. He gets as far as to tie him to an altar on a pyre of wood with his knife raised in his hand before he hears the call of the angel to stop. It raises the question, how much do we convince ourselves of what is right before we can discover there really is another way? Someone writing the other day in a publication called “The Jewish Journal” dared to question the conventional interpretation that this is about Abraham’s willingness to give everything up in obedience to God’s will. Don’t we need, instead, he asked, to remind ourselves of the meaning of the name “Israel,” given first to Jacob and then to the nation who would be his descendants, “Israel” which means literally “he struggles with God.”

God calls to us – and he calls us to the struggle. There are things which we need continually to wrestle with – though I hope to do so under less pressure in the future. I’ve found myself going back to the words of T S Eliot in his poem, Little Gidding. Little Gidding is a place which has been important to me since I visited it as an undergraduate, over 50 years ago – a “thin place,” where you feel that God is very near, but also a place where people have built religious community and understood that ours is a journey to make alongside one another. Eliot concludes his poem, the final part of a long poem in four sections:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

This is the Vicar's final Sermon - but there's a week to go before he retires! His final service is a Eucharist at 3pm on Saturday 4th July in St. Cuthbert's Church, Shotley Bridge DH8 0NW - at which he is not preaching. Do join us if you can!

View from the Vicarage: Life in Ordinary…

 It’s always something of a relief for me when we reach the point in the Church’s Year which we call “Ordinary Time.” It’s those very many Sundays which follow after Easter and Pentecost. As I write we’ve already begun it, though a number of saints’ days this week are getting in the way.

Ordinary Time is when you get simply to live life with a rhythm that it’s up to you to establish. Christmas is the time of excitement, Easter the season of joy in the Risen Lord. Ordinary Time – the words may seem to indicate that it’s nothing much special. But that’s not true! Sunday by Sunday we’ll be working our way through the Gospel of Matthew (in other years it would be Mark or Luke) – what do we discover once more through his account of Jesus’ life and ministry? We open up other books of the Bible along the way. We need to be able to allow them to speak to us – where we are, in whatever we are doing.

Personally, I have found recent months to be full of activity – and very demanding. First selling a family home, and all the clearing out that required. Then buying another – an ongoing project but I need somewhere to live very soon! All this alongside lots of continuing demands from ministry and the daily stuff of parish life. Things are not slackening off, but there’s that change of gear into “Ordinary Time” – the need to work out a new rhythm and to take responsibility for setting the agenda.

I wrote last month that with all the recurrent events of parish life deleted from my diary from the beginning of July, my calendar was looking quite empty.  But that means that it’s also full of opportunity. Life is full of opportunity for us all! 

Sometimes we refer to Ordinary Time as “Green Time.” That’s the liturgical colour which we use when nothing else “special” is happening in church. But it’s not ordinary and boring. It’s the colour of life and growth.  I’m aware of the demands I face when the diary empties and I move from the Vicarage into a place which will for the first time be my own. All our lives need to be fashioned – and that’s a responsibility we all bear. But it’s also one in which we can find God is our Companion on the way.      

Martin Jackson -  Parish Magazine, June 2026

View from the Vicarage: Leaving – and getting ready…

The word has certainly got around that I am in my last months before retirement – just over two months / 9 weeks to go. “How do you feel about it?” lots of people are asking. Quite apprehensive, is my answer. I’ve lived here far longer than anywhere else in my life – nearly 32 years in Shotley Bridge; eight years before that just down the valley in High Spen (down but also up the hill, so at approximately the same altitude). So wherever I go, it will be different – starting a new life at 70.

One thing I have never experienced is what it is like to live in a house with double-glazing! Now it looks as though I will be moving to a new-build house. So perhaps I will learn to live with fewer than four layers of clothing. Even more than the change in the sort of house I will have will be the difference in the community. There’s so much that’s special about the villages where we live and the whole of the larger town of Consett – itself really a huge village where even if you don’t really know people, you can nevertheless talk with them. And hopefully get on with them!

There won’t be a community as such on a new housing estate. But there will be the opportunity to build a community. I gather the plan is to move all the residents of my new road into their new homes at the same time. So we will all be on an equal footing – except I wonder how much older I will be than all the rest! 

Already I am having to think of what I can take with me – and even more, what I need to get rid of. Difficult, when I still haven’t sorted through many of the things from the family home which I have just sold! And not just possessions. Planning my diary for the coming month, I have been deleting all the “recurring” events which makeup the bulk of my diary – now from the beginning of July it is almost empty. That’s scary – but also an opportunity; how can I use that time?

That’s a challenge to all of us – at whatever stage of life. When Jesus leaves the Disciples at the time of his Ascension, he leaves nothing by way of material possessions – but he does promise them his Holy Spirit. It’s in his power and presence that we are called to live.

Martin Jackson

This is an item from the May issue of our Parish Magazine - click here for the online edition

Holy Week at St. Cuthbert's Church

 

Holy Week at St. John's Church

 

Mothering Sunday - 15 March

 

Learning from Nazareth

We’ve only just started the year, and already I’m having to think about Lent! I always welcome this time of year as one when I can set my rhythm anew, establish a fresh discipline and make the time to listen to what God is saying to me.

On another page I’ve made some suggestions as to the elements of a Lenten discipline that might be helpful to people. It’s often just a matter of tackling those things we know we ought to do – and the period of just over six weeks which Lent takes up gives us that time-frame to do it. Like the 40 days which Jesus spends in the wilderness – you can make a start with a target date already prescribed.

A “Lent Course” can be helpful in this respect. Something where someone has already done the groundwork in helping us think / learn / pray – and where we can join in with other people, so that we know we’re not on our own. But our usual provider of such courses, USPG, doesn’t seem to have come up with one yet – and other offerings as yet seem thin.

So I’m proposing a course which we can’t complete in the five weeks available during Lent – something you might want to carry on for the two further weeks of the course – and beyond. It’s a course based on the book, The City is my Monastery by Richard Carter. It came out of his consideration of what he should be doing at a particular point in his life. Should he leave his work as a parish priest in a busy city parish? Should he join a monastery or move into some other form of the “religious life.” His conclusion was that he needed to continue in the city – but with a fresh rhythm. And it was a way of life he would pursue with others – not alone. From this there has grown the Nazareth Community and a wider dispersed group known as the Companions of Nazareth. They follow a Rule of Life based on 7 S’s – to live with Silence; with Service; with Scripture; with Sacrament; with Sharing; with Sabbath; and “Staying with…” (steadfastness, truth, suffering, love). The book is available for anyone who would like to buy it. But there’s also a course which I can share. I hope you’ll join me in exploring how it might speak to us.  

Martin Jackson

This is the "View from the Vicarage," taken from the February issue of our Parish Magazine - follow the link to read more!

And here's a link to the book on which the course is based.

Christmas at St. Cuthbert's Church, Shotley Bridge

 

Christmas at St. John's Church, Castleside

 

Coming Soon

 

A Holy Door – and where it leads…

Our parish magazine, from which this article is taken, is appearing a bit later than we might have wanted – in large part because I was away when I’d normally be editing it. Finally, in the second half of October, I was able to take two weeks of my annual leave – a rather late summer holiday!

Fortunately, it was pretty warm where I went – back to Italy. You can fly direct to Bergamo, near Milan, from Newcastle if you’re prepared to get up early enough, but we stayed first in Arezzo in Tuscany, then moving on to Rome. Just planning the rail travel entailed was quite exciting – and then travelling at speeds of up to 298 kilometres per hour on the Frecciarossa train. How is it that other countries manage to have an infrastructure that works? – though admittedly our first train was 10 minutes late into Florence so that we missed our rather tight connection there (but the online ticket allowed you to change the connecting train from your phone which we did).

There’s so much that I could say about the holiday – so much that I need to reflect on myself. Should I have gone back to Rome when I was last there less than a year ago? Back in November 2024 there was a lot going on with building works in the city – most of it in preparation for the Jubilee Year which is being celebrated throughout 2025. The Jubilee itself had pushed prices up with more people than ever travelling there, but I wanted to see just what had been accomplished and to experience something of the celebrations. So I was glad that we were able to find somewhere reasonably priced. It was an apartment in an area I’d never been to before, quite a long way from the centre – and entailed travel via two different Metro lines. But having said that it was very near the station from which we emerged, and there were lots of places to eat well and far more cheaply than elsewhere.

We arrived in Rome at the same time as the King, who was there to pray with the Pope in the Sistine Chapel. We weren’t invited! Nor was a friend who works at the Anglican Centre in Rome. We met up with her on the morning of the service. She was actually invited to a service later in the day when the King was to be given a special seat at the Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls. I’m sorry there wasn’t more coverage of that service which was about re-forging the connection of our country and the monarchy with the Benedictine Community which maintains the life of the Papal Basilica.

But we didn’t have an invitation there either! However, the next day, we took ourselves off to St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City. The previous year, the queues had been so long that we hadn’t even tried to get in. This year, there was a massive crowd approaching St. Peter’s Square, but it was well-managed and before long we were through the security checks and in the line for the Basilica. We decided to enter via the Grotto where so many of the Popes are buried. I think the route might have changed, and it was the best visit I’ve paid. We emerged into the church right by the central altar. So many people – but a wonderful sense of prayer. More than that, the route through the Basilica directed visitors to the Holy Door – opened only in Jubilee Years for pilgrims. There was no sense of a rush as we re-entered the church to find ourselves by Michaelangelo’s Pieta, and then chapels and altars set aside for prayer.

On our final day in Rome we went to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore where Pope Francis is buried. Again, huge numbers – but well-handled. All are directed through another Holy Door with bronze reliefs of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. As I walked through I saw that Jesus’ hands extended from the door . It was a natural thing for me to place my hand in his - and what a sense I had of the mercy of God we find in him! So many others had done the same, the dull bronze polished bright by all who had held - and been held - by that hand. It’s a mercy we all need to share… MJ

In the midst of life…

September has been a month of mixed emotions. It’s so good to have been able to celebrate the 175th Anniversary of the Consecration of St. Cuthbert’s Church – and we did it on the exact day, 12th September, led in celebration by Bishop Frank White. It was a terrific occasion, so wonderfully prepared for with imagination, skill and much hard work. 

All that we have tried to do in attending to the fabric problems of the church this year has been a testimony to our people’s determination that this building should continue to stand here as a witness for the glory of God – and for celebration and service to others by his people. Much work has been unseen – not least so many days of painstaking labour by Dave Short in renovating the church doors and yet again attending to the peeling paintwork; through all the preparations in decorating the church so beautifully with flowers and with displays depicting the work of so many groups which link us with our wider community; and then the massive work of catering for the Anniversary Reception and Harvest Lunch – with an Autumn Fair thrown into the mix! 

The end result was exhilaration and exhaustion! Thank you to everyone who played their part!

But at the same time we could not but help feel a sense of loss. Claire Bean died just a matter of days before the celebrations began. She has been so much part of our lives – together with Ian, Rachel and Stephen. Their response has been quite remarkable. I was glad that the bell-ringing with which the Anniversary Weekend began was a quarter peal in memory of Claire. I asked if it was going to be “half-muffled” – but the answer was “No. Claire wanted the bells to ring out for all to hear.” And of course the ringing continued – not only before services, but also with a full peal, conducted by Stephen (and Rachel’s first) in record time, and a “date touch,” 1850 changes rung to mark the year of the church’s consecration. In between Stephen went off to Hull for an additional peal!

There are things in life – and in the face of death – which make us question how to make sense of everything. This last month has been one of those times. There’s been the death of Malcolm Bates as well, with all the waiting which Nora and her family have faced. And inevitably the looking back which we have done is a reminder of the losses in which we all share.

But that same looking back also shows that loss is the other side of “gift” – what we have been given by those who have gone before, whose legacy we have inherited, whose lives we have shared. 175 years of the lives of those who built and maintained our church – through all our struggles, but also joys. All those meetings where we have sought the way forward, the search for the resources we need, the encouragement that has grown from a shared life, the worship offered, and our deepening in prayer. And then most recently in those recent bereavements. I reflected on how Claire faced death at much too early an age. Much of the work in that was accomplished simply by the life she lived, and the love and friendship shared. She showed us how important purpose is – and that it’s more than calculation. How to die is very much the same matter as how to live.

This is all rather complex, yet at the same time quite simple. I realise I have more work to do on how I live – and how I face my own mortality. It’s something we all need to work at, though mindful of the grace, mercy and love of God. I hope we can receive all that we find in our hearts after this month that is passed – and do so with gratitude. Martin Jackson

St. Cuthbert's celebrates 175 Years!

 

Our Father - praying with Jesus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

St Cuthbert's JustGiving Campaign

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

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

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

Account Name:  PCC St Cuthbert, Benfieldside

Account No:  20765678

Sort Code:  20-33-51

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

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

Thank you!

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

Easter Day – Eucharist – 20.iv.2025

(Acts 10.34-43; Luke 24.1-12)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When we are all despairing;

when the world is full of grief;

when we see no way ahead,

and hope has gone away:

Roll back the stone.

Although we fear change;

although we are not ready;

although we’d rather weep 

and run away:

Roll back the stone.

Because we’re coming with the women;

because we hope where hope is vain;

because you call us from the grave

and show the way:

Roll back the stone.

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

 

Holy Week at St. John's Church, Castleside

 

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

 

Mothering Sunday at St. Cuthbert's