Parish Magazine - April issue now online

There's lots to read in our new Parish Magazine: all the details of Holy Week and Easter; preparations for our Annual Parochial Church Meeting; news of what has been happening and what is being planned - including "Messy Church," to be launched on Tuesday in Holy Week, 15th April; and a preview of our next three Book Club choices. Just click through to find all this and more!

To be a Pilgrim…

A pilgrimage is a special sort of journey. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land and Santiago de Compostela seem to be growing ever more popular - I’ve done one and would love to do the other, if I can find a spare six weeks or so to do it properly (and more time off to recover!). A new Pope has generated interest in pilgrimages to Rome, “the Holy City,” and not only amongst Roman Catholics. But you don’t need to go that far. Nearer to home we can make a pilgrimage to the tombs of Cuthbert and Bede in our own Durham Cathedral - and if you go up to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne you can walk across the sands at low tide to bring home the sense of a journey that might require a bit of effort.

A pilgrimage requires the intention of going somewhere - but it doesn’t necessarily require an understanding at the outset of what we shall find. The purpose of making the journey is to find something out along the way - the discovery of something about ourselves, about God and about God’s purpose for us. If it’s a physical journey it needs to be more than sight-seeing, always asking what is God showing me?

But to undertake a pilgrimage doesn’t necessarily require that you go that far - or even travel anywhere else at all. It can be to stay where we are, yet nevertheless explore where Christ is calling us. Lent is a special season which is a sort of pilgrimage in itself. We start on Ash Wednesday with the opportunity to recognise our need and frailty. God is calling us to repentance - and immediately promising us forgiveness and the grace to do better. That’s why ash is used at the Eucharist that day - to show us what we are reduced to the mere chemical elements of which we are composed: “to dust we shall return.” And yet God has given us a glorious calling also - of life which is made new by the love of Christ for us. The journey from Ash Wednesday through Lent and Holy Week via the Cross to Easter Day is to help us recognise that calling.

Pilgrimages are at their best when you travel with others. That’s what we should be doing whenever we gather for prayer and worship - and throughout there’s a social aspect of encouragement for one another. Let’s make the most of it this Lent, by personal dedication, in recognition of a common calling, by sharing and mutual support, by the use of resources which are there, if only we’ll look.

I’m glad that a good number of people have already signed up for a special course of study, discussion and prayer this Lent. Appropriately it’s got the title, “Pilgrim.” It’s an official publication of the Church of England. Following the course we won’t be out on our own - thousands of others will be working at it too. It’s part of a much larger series provided to encourage people on their journey of faith. This one in particular looks at the Lord’s Prayer. Intentionally it is very basic. And we need to examine the basics of our faith, to review the path of our calling if we are to grow properly. As a parish we’ve identified the need to grow in understanding of the basics of our faith and to put prayer at the heart of our life. So this course aims to fulfil both intentions.

Whether or not you’re taking part in this specific course, please make the most of Lent. As a season of just six and a half weeks it gives us all a measured course. We may not know where it will lead us as we start - but let’s pray that we’ll be better for it at its end.

                                               

Martin Jackson

 

Taken from the March issue of our Parish Magazine - read it all online!

God's Creation and our Response of Gratitude

 

(From the Sung Eucharist - 23rd February 2014)

God’s Creation is good. That’s what today’s First Reading tells us. God creates the heavens and the earth; separates light and darkness; brings into being great constellations; provides us with a world of rich resources and vast oceans too; he fills the world with plants and vegetation of every kind; he makes living creatures from the smallest bacteria through a whole array of sea creatures, birds and animals in a variety and richness to cause us to wonder; and he creates human beings - men and women. He looks on all this work of Creation - and he sees that it is very good.

There’s the well-worn story of the Vicar out for a walk one day - and he meets the grumpiest man in the village hard at work in his garden. Mr. Grumpy never shows up in church - he’s always in his garden - and he gets results: it’s the most beautiful garden for miles around. The Vicar is a pious soul: “You should praise God for the beauty of Creation,” he tells Mr. Grumpy. “Just look at this wonderful garden he has given you.” “Oh, aye,” says Mr. Grumpy. “And you should have seen the state of it when God had it all to himself.”

I look at my garden and wonder… Actually someone pointed out that it was getting a bit hard to look at my garden because the windows of my house were so dirty and it was rather difficult to see through them. When I told a friend he offered to come round and hold the ladder while I cleaned them. So we did that during the part of my day off that I managed to salvage on Friday. What a difference! It’ll be even better if I get round to cleaning the insides too! One of the reasons for doing this is that our new Bishop of Durham is going to come round and visit each of his clergy at home. The last one was going to do this, though it never quite happened… With this one I’ve already got a date and a time: Bishop Paul is coming to the Vicarage on Ash Wednesday afternoon! Just 10 days time! What impression will he take from what he sees?

Actually I’ve just received a Quinquennial Inspection report on the Vicarage from our Diocesan Surveyor. The good news is that it looks like the diocese might repair the wine cellar door. The embarrassing bit is that they comment on the garden and its “overgrown borders” - a bit unfair I thought when I just haven’t had time and a dry day to clear them out. A previous Surveyor used instead to say simply that they were “well-stocked,” which I thought was a far kinder approach. Anyway, I’ve been galvanised into action. I’ve raked out nearly all the old stuff both front and back - and to make sure I can no longer be accused of having vegetation that is overgrown, I’ve taken the lawn mower over the borders of the front garden. It’s the radical approach - though not quite as radical as a youth group I had in a previous parish which was given the challenge of clearing up my garden. They found a carpet in my garage, spread it out over the beds of weeds and set fire to it. I only found out later that we were storing the carpet for a friend of the family.

The good news following my latest efforts in the garden is that I can see the first signs of spring. Snowdrops had been sheltering behind the dead remains of last year’s flowers. The daffodils are pushing their way up through piles of leaves and whatever else it was that I’ve now raked away. I’m hoping that I may find crocuses growing where I’ve cut down some other unidentified green stuff that had spread itself too luxuriantly over half the front garden.

And when I sat outside the church the other afternoon to say Evening Prayer on Albert and Joan Bartrope’s bench the birds were singing away, heralding the spring. Creation is good. My heart lifts when I look out of my bedroom window in the morning to see two deer in the garden below. The pheasant is back. Even those irritating grey squirrels and the pigeons are part of God’s carefree creation. And you see its beauty in the smallest things. Coal tits, I think they are, flitting around in the trees below the Vicarage, and the blackbird is back in my juvenile cherry tree.

Jesus tells the disciples: “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Thankfulness needs to be our first response to God. If people would show more gratitude and do less complaining and grumbling, I’m sure the world would be a better place. “God clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,” says Jesus. Remember that, if you’re worried about new clothes for the sake of keeping up with fashion. Get a sense of perspective if you think you need a new car and the last one isn’t even out of its warranty - or a new phone or laptop or tablet or whichever model of PlayStation or Xbox they’re up to now (I’m talking to myself as well as anyone else I might be offending!).

But of course Jesus is speaking to people who have the luxury of worrying about these things. There are also those who have real cause for worry. St. Paul in our reading from his Letter to the Romans speaks of Creation being “subjected to futility” - and of Creation “groaning in labour pains.” There are many people who have experienced that this winter - with flooded fields and homes, cut-off communities and the heartache of loss. Creation seems to be going wrong - or perhaps we just felt we could control it and now we’re discovering the difference between the stewardship of creation and its misuse for our own ends. Whatever the case, the pain of so many people who have seen well-loved homes damaged and cherished possessions ruined cannot be denied.

But when money is said to be no object by the Government as it announces its intention of bringing relief to these communities, I think we need a new perspective. When it hurts to see what the people of these communities have lost, we need to remember those who live with the daily reality of surviving on the breadline. Along with the person whose home has been temporarily lost to the floods, there needs to be concern for the family which might be forced from their home because it’s judged that they have one bedroom too many so they have their housing benefit cut - and where will they go when there aren’t enough small houses to move into. Most of us do well to hear Jesus say, “Don’t worry about what you will eat, what you will drink or what you will wear,” because we probably eat and drink too much anyway. But for the unemployed person who finds that their benefit has been delayed or denied - or who has been penalised because it’s said they haven’t written enough applications for jobs which they’re not going to get anyway, this is a matter for real worry.

At his enthronement yesterday Bishop Paul encouraged us to believe in growth in a real way. Just look at how the Food Bank movement has grown from something so small, he said. But while it’s good that there has been that growth, the sadness is that it should have been necessary. As Bishop Paul went on, God’s people are to provide a place of welcome for all. And “God’s kingdom is open to all, poor and rich, old and young, from whatever nation on earth. It is to be a place of shelter and security for the broken, the hurting, the lost, the refugee, the abused and indeed a place of transformative renewal for the abusers and sufferers too.”

Do not worry, says Jesus. But look and see the goodness of God. Be thankful. Look at what God enables to grow. Be thankful, not complaining. And then - seeing what God has given us - be generous as God has been generous to us.

Here is the Lamb of God - recognising Christ

 

 

“Look! Here is the Lamb of God,” says John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading (John 1.35-42). Actually he says it twice.

First he sees Jesus coming towards him and says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And from that he goes on to speak about the Baptism of Jesus - how the Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus at his Baptism shows him to be the Son of God. John has seen it for himself - and he wants to tell people about it.

And then John says it again the next day. “Look! Here is the Lamb of God!” This time Jesus is walking past while John is standing there with two of his disciples. John points out Jesus and the two people with him decide to find out more. They leave John and follow after Jesus.

What does it mean to you to hear those words, “Here is the Lamb of God!”? We use them Sunday by Sunday, even day by day at the Eucharist. It’s the invitation which we normally use in this church to come to the altar to receive Christ’s Body and Blood - and we are reminded “Blessed are those who are called to his Supper.” Blessing is to be found by recognising Jesus and knowing him for who he is.

Perhaps though, we hear those words so often that we just take them for granted. Or we’ve never really thought through what they mean. On altars and in stained glass windows you’ll sometimes see a depiction of a lamb holding a cross. It can look cutely fluffy and pretty innocuous. But look more closely and you might see blood flowing from the lamb’s neck and into a chalice. This is about the lamb as a sacrificial victim, its blood shed and offered for a purpose.

There’s something new about the “Lamb of God” pointed out by John. Lambs and sheep were not the obvious offering for sacrifice in the Jewish Temple. Bulls and goats were offered to take away the sins of the people on the Day of Atonement. Offerings of grain and other fruits of the earth could be made especially at Harvest-time. Incense was burned as a sacrifice declaring that earth is joined with heaven in the praises of the Temple. The sacrifice of a lamb was something else - and for Jews sacrificing a lamb was not about taking away sin. It was about people and their place before God. Abel, the son of Adam and Eve, makes a sacrifice of the first-born of his flocks of sheep - and his offering is approved by God, whose lack of favour shown to Abel’s brother, Cain, leads to the first recorded murder. Abraham is turned by an angel from sacrificing his son Isaac instead to offer a ram in his place. And the Book of Leviticus made it a law that every first born son should be redeemed by the offering of a ram - though in the case of poor families like that of Jesus it could be replaced by sacrificing two doves.

Each of these sacrifices is about a personal offering - and one where the lamb stands in for an individual. The whole person needs to be redeemed before God. Except there is one particular time when the sacrifice of lambs meant something more. It's at the time of the Feast of the Passover. Lambs were offered and their blood smeared above the door of Jewish households as a sign of God’s love for his people, his care and rescue of the Israelites as he freed them from slavery in Egypt before leading them to their own Promised Land.

Now John the Baptist points out Jesus and says, “Here is the Lamb of God!” God is doing something new for his people - and in the course of things we will discover it’s not merely another Exodus, God’s care for people of one particular race and nation. It’s a new Passover which shows God’s redeeming love for the world - for all its people. “Here is the Lamb of God!” Are we going to recognise how God is at work in Jesus?

You can miss it through a sense of familiarity… “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” We sing about that every Sunday before we come to Communion in the words of the Agnus Dei.  

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, grant us peace. 

Do we take in what we are saying and singing?

For some people, talk about “sin” is a bit of a turn-off. Its reality escapes us. It’s something we might see in other people rather than ourselves - or it gets associated with sexual wrongdoing, and these days pretty well anything between consenting adults is reckoned to be OK. Problems that many people have in recognising what is entailed by talk about sin have led to proposals for some changes in the Baptism service. Predictably some parts of the media (notably the Daily Mail and Bishop Michael Nazir Ali) have started shouting about the Church getting weak about its own convictions through the proposal to drop the word “sin” itself in the Decision made before Baptism. Talk of “dying to sin” and the question, “Do you repent of your sins?” get removed from the text.

But that doesn’t mean the Church is getting wishy-washy. The attempt is to produce something more meaningful than those bits of the service which provoke a response of blank, bored looks. Something more than words is necessary. Baptism is God’s way of addressing us as whole people and asking for a response which will change the whole of our lives.

The first followers of Jesus discover this when John the Baptist points out Jesus as “the Lamb of God.” First time round he declares “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” - but we just hear John talking; no one does anything about it.

But the next day when he again points Jesus out - “Look! Here is the Lamb of God!” - there’s something that moves two of his disciples to do something that will lead to their being changed for ever. They follow Jesus. Jesus asks them, “What are you looking for?” - and they don’t know. But they ask “where are you staying?” And then they take up the invitation, “Come and see.”

“Come and see” is Jesus’ invitation to us as well. His first followers spend the day with him. Then they go and tell other people about Jesus - and they come to find out for themselves.

That’s what we need to do.

The new proposals for the Baptism service don’t drop sin and its consequences. They require the rejection of evil as “all that destroys” - not just “evil” as a short word you can easily say, but “all its many forms” and “all its empty promises.” The challenge is to make the response, “I turn to Christ” - and to keep on doing so: “And to put my trust in him… And to promise to follow him for ever.”

That’s a challenge to anyone who is thinking about being baptised or having their child baptised. It’s a challenge to all of us here. “Look! Here is the Lamb of God!” Are we ready to learn more about this man, Jesus? Are we prepared to take the trouble to spend time with him? How will we respond to his invitation? - “Come and see.”

 

Christmas at St. Cuthbert's

 

Every seat taken - and quite a number standing as Christmas celebrations began at St. Cuthbert's.

We wish you a very happy and blessed Christmas!

Getting ready for Christmas

Sorry there hasn't recently been time for posting on this blog. Another way you can keep up-to-date is through our new Facebook page.

We're making final preparations in both churches for the celebration of Christmas. I've just left Rainbows, Brownies and Guides who are making massive numbers of Christingles for use at St. Cuthbert's Christmas Eve Carol Service - 6p.m. 24th December. It's followed by 11.30p.m. Midnight Mass - and a 9.30a.m. Eucharist for Christmas Morning.

St. John's, Castleside had a well-attended Carol Service (again with Christingles) yesterday evening. Celebrate Christmas there with a Vigil Mass at 8p.m. on Christmas Eve. and a 10a.m. Eucharist for Christmas morning.

He became poor that we may be rich…

These are words of a gentle meditation from the Iona Community which we’ve used to begin our Christmas Midnight Mass. And once they’re sung - and we’ve followed them with “Once in royal David’s city” - we begin the liturgy itself:

Welcome all wonders in one sight!

Eternity shut in a span.

Summer in winter, day in night,

heaven in earth and God in man.

Great little one whose all-embracing birth

brings earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.

They’re words of beauty which express the deepest truth. So much else about the traditional celebration of Christmas resonates in our hearts from lullabies like the “Rocking Carol” and “Away in a Manger” to the raucous cheerfulness of “God rest ye merry, gentlemen.”

But there is the celebration of Advent beforehand - and it can introduce a note which jars or trips us up. I’m always challenged by the appearance of John the Baptist in his way of proclaiming Christ’s coming. The hymn “On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry” is not at all Christmassy - this year I’ve been pulled up short by this verse:

Stretch forth thine hand, to heal our sore,

And make us rise to fall no more;

Once more upon thy people shine,

And fill the world with love divine.

The “sore” is the frailty of our human condition. It obviously troubles some hymn book compilers who give a different rendering of this verse. It’s the wound which saps our energy and leaves us failing in our endeavours. It’s something more than “sin” - itself a misunderstood concept. “Our sore” needs to be acknowledged if it is to be healed: ”Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” asks the Jesus Prayer. It’s knowing what we are that we can find the grace to become what we might be.

And Christmas shows us how that can be. The love of God, reaching down to us. God’s Son taking human flesh to touch and heal us. We need the opportunities to acknowledge what we are before God: what we lack; what we might be with his help. And he doesn’t leave us simply to struggle with that knowledge. In Jesus he meets us in our need.


This is the "View from the Vicarage" in our current Parish Magazine - click to read it online. You can also find our Parish Christmas Card in print-it-yourself format - with details of Christmas services.