Last things and a new Church Year

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

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

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

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...

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...

... 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?

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...