This is The North East | CommuniGate | Saint Cuthbert's Church, Shotley Bridge Feedback Home Page How to find us Activities Services & Times How can we help? Church Hall & Bookings Who's Who? This Sunday's Bible Readings Parish News - May 2008 Parish Gallery 2001 Homilies: October 2001 - February 2002 This Month's Calendar Thinking about Baptism Thinking about Marriage Faith & Action - inclusiveness and opportunity Aids to Prayer Children & Holy Communion Homilies: Easter-tide 2002 Homilies: May - November 2002 Parish Review 2002 Photo Page 2002 Homilies: December 2002 - February 2003 Celebrating 2003 - people in pictures Homilies: Lent & Easter-tide 2003 Ordinary Time - Sermons 2003 Pictures - summer 2003 Sermons - Advent 2003 - Epiphany 2004 Annual Reports 2007 (APCM 2008) Sermons - Lent & Easter-tide 2004 Sermons - Ordinary Time 2004 Sunday School Sermons - Advent + Christmas 2004, Epiphany 2005 Sermons - Lent & Easter 2005 Sermons - Ordinary Time 2005 St. Paul - a series from St. Cuthbert's Sermons: Advent 2005 to Trinity Sunday 2006 Sermons - Ordinary Time 2006 Sermons 2007 Sermons 2008 Contact Information for Parish of Saint Cuthbert, Benfieldside Links for Parish of Saint Cuthbert, Benfieldside Guestbook Mail Form God and the task he gives us Trinity Sunday - Sunday 22nd May 2005 Rosie Junemann, Reader of St. Cuthbert's Isaiah 40. 12-17 2 Corinthians 13. 11-13 Matthew 28. 16-20 “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.” Matthew, the inspiration behind today’s gospel, was himself amongst the eleven disciples who gathered on that day, 2000 years ago, on a mountain in Galilee. Just three years before, when he was still known as Levi, the son of Alphaeus, he had been working as a tax collector for the Romans, when Jesus called him to be a disciple. Now he is joined on the mountainside by his companions and fellow-disciples: the brothers Peter and Andrew, sons of Jonah, fishermen from Capernaum; James and John, sons of Zebedee, also fishermen from Galilee; Philip from Bethsaida on the shore of Lake Galilee; Thomas, the twin; Bartholomew; Simon, known as the Zealot; the younger James, son of Alphaeus; and Judas, son of James. This was the team of ordinary working men whom Jesus had gathered around him, and taught and nurtured through his short period of ministry. Ordinary working men – but these are people who must have been on something of an emotional roller-coaster! Just six weeks before, they had experienced the terror of Jesus’ arrest and trial, then the fear, horror and grief of his crucifixion. Bewilderment and amazement at the empty tomb gave way to dawning delight and hope as the risen Jesus appeared to them. Now, gathered together by Jesus – for who knows what? - they are besieged by uncertainty. “They worshipped him but some doubted”. What kinds of doubts do you think Matthew and his friends may have had? Perhaps ….. “How can I make sense of everything that has happened?” It’s incredible that Jesus, our friend, our wise and gentle teacher, our Lord and Master, should have died such a cruel death on the cross. It’s even harder to grasp that he has risen from the dead, even though I’ve seen him with my own eyes. How can this be? Or perhaps ….. “What does it all mean to me and how will it change my life?” I have the feeling that something momentous is about to happen. I know that Jesus is going to ask us to work for him. This is going to mean a big change in the way I live. Its exciting -–but scary, too. Or perhaps …… “Will I have the strength and the ability to do what Jesus wants me to do?” Jesus is asking us to take on a big responsibility. I’m only an ordinary person. How will I cope? How can I become a preacher and a teacher and a healer? How will I get by when he is no longer with us? There are rather more than eleven people gathered here, today, on our own particular hillside. This is the team of ordinary men and women whom Jesus has gathered around him in the Parish of Benfieldside. We have come together for an encounter with Jesus. And, like the disciples, we bring with us into this place our own memories, our own emotional baggage, our own uncertainties. Might it be said of us, too: “They worshipped him but some doubted”? I wonder what kinds of doubts we might have? Perhaps …… “How can I make sense of everything that I hear in the gospel? It was so much easier for the disciples! They had actually spent time with Jesus and knew him well. I read the Bible but often struggle to understand it. How hard it is, in this day and age, when reason and logic prevail, to believe and be a witness to the resurrection! Or perhaps ….. What does it all mean to me and how will it change my life? I come to church and I hear the demands that Jesus makes on those who want to follow him. But I’ve got my own life – and I don’t want it to change. Or perhaps …… Will I have the strength and the ability to do what Jesus wants me to do? I’m only an ordinary person and I’m weak, too. How could I be the kind of person Jesus wants me to be? It’s alright for those who are good at teaching and preaching but I don’t seem to have any special gifts to offer. When Jesus met with the eleven disciples on that mountain in Galilee, 2000 years ago, he gave them what has since become known as ‘the great commission’. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” We know, from reading the Acts of the Apostles, the astounding results of the work of the disciples in the early years after Jesus commissioned them. The Christian Gospel burst on the world like a thunderclap. By the time that Matthew’s Gospel was written – some 50 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus – Christianity had spread all around the northern Mediterranean – through present day Syria, Turkey and Greece – and into the heart of the Roman empire. So what happened to those who doubted on that mountain in Galilee? How did those doubters become the fearless, energetic missionaries who forged the early Church - who were prepared to live - and die – for the Gospel? We know from Luke’s account that they were filled with the Holy Spirit to enable them to witness for Christ, to speak with power, to equip them for various forms of service. We know, too, from Matthew’s account, that they also had the assurance of Jesus’ continuing presence with them. “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age”. As Bishop Tom Wright reminded us in the Deanery Ascension Day service – that same commission is now ours. Because it is through us, his followers, that God’s kingdom will come on earth. The tasks which Jesus asked of his disciples remain unfinished. We may feel daunted, but it is now our responsibility to bring the good news of the gospel to others and help them to understand it. It is our responsibility to bring people into God’s family, the body of Christ, the Church, and to baptize them. It is our responsibility to teach and to live out the gospel by example. How are these doubters going to cope with that? Trinity Sunday gives us an opportunity to reflect on the nature of God. We might make it sound complicated – as the Church often does! But essentially the doctrine of the Trinity brings home to us the immensity, and the richness, and the reality of God’s being. It would be foolish to think that we can define the infinite - or confine the eternal – in human terms. We could never do justice to the full wonder of God. But we can begin to unravel that mystery by reflecting on the glimpses of God which we see in the Bible and encounter in the world. As we contemplate the wonders of nature in the world around us, we are reminded that our God is the same God who brought the earth into being. As the prophet Isaiah declares in today’s Old Testament reading: “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth”. This great God, whose presence and power undergird the world of nature, is the same God whose presence and power are channelled into our lives, too. “He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless". The prophet goes on to make a very great promise: “Those who wait for the Lord (those who look to God and pray to him) shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Here is our reassurance and our strength! This gracious God, who created the world, who himself energises and empowers us, also took pity on us and gave his Son Jesus Christ to save us from our sins. And this loving God, who called the universe into being and redeemed us through the gift of his Son Jesus Christ, is also the God who is with us here and now, through his Spirit, breathed into us and around us. It’s ok to doubt! As the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen says: “Hardly a day passes in our lives without our experience of inner and outer fears, anxieties, apprehensions and preoccupations. These dark powers have pervaded every part of our world to such a degree that we can never fully escape them. Still it is possible not to belong to these powers, not to build our dwelling place among them, but to choose the house of love as our home." And remember the assurance of Jesus: “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Brother Roger of the Taize Community claims that promise for himself and for us when he says : “Christ is present, close to each one of us, whether we know him or not. He is so bound up with us that he lives within us, even when we are unaware of him. He is there in secret, a fire burning in his heart, a light in the darkness... "That is the meaning of your life: to be loved for ever, loved to all eternity, so that you, in turn, will dare to live your life.” Building on Rock 1st Sunday after Trinity – 29th May The Revd. Martin Jackson, Vicar Deuteronomy 11.18-21, 26-28; Romans 1.16f; 3.22-31; Matthew 7.21-29 The first time I made a journey into a desert… it rained! It only rains in the desert of Judaea in the Palestinian West Bank on one or two days of the year – and this was one of them. I’d travelled from Jerusalem to Jericho, the oldest still-existing town in the world, an oasis set in the wilderness, and got off the bus to trudge around the remains of the old city under a leaden sky. Later we travelled down to the Dead Sea and felt distinctly chilly at that lowest point of the earth’s surface, which is normally also one of its hottest places. It was coming back along the road which runs north-south by the sea that I remember the most dramatic thing about the day. At the top of the cliffs to the east we saw water appear and start to descend in a stream. Then there were more and more streams appearing snaking their way down the cliff-side. We stopped the bus and watched. Streams turned to rivulets and reached the valley bottom. Then they flowed towards the road between the cliffs and the Dead Sea itself. What began as a tiny stream appearing from nowhere in a matter of minutes turned to a flood. The driver said we should be on our way. Later I heard that part of the road we had travelled was washed away by the force of the torrent. For all but one or two days of each year, any visitor to that Desert would have seen only rock, sand, salt and the barren expanse of the Dead Sea. But that day the dried-up stream beds were unable to cope with the down-pour which filled them to overflow and sweep away the road in their path. It was hard to believe. Jesus in today’s Gospel tells of a day like that: “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against (two newly-built) houses…” The difference in the fate of the two houses depends on the foresight of the builders. One took the trouble to have a ground survey and opted to build on rock. The other couldn’t be bothered and probably didn’t realise he was building on sand. And probably for 364 days of the year it didn’t matter – until the one day when the rains fell and continued to fall, and the streams burst their banks and his house, lacking adequate foundations, was washed away. There’s a lesson for us there. It’s much easier to cut corners – and seemingly cheaper too. And why look at all the problems? – the world far prefers optimists to pessimists. On the door of our church at present – and in the porch and outside for all to see – we’ve pinned up some rather boring looking notices with a mixture of official terminology and my handwriting. They’re faculty applications – which is the Church of England’s approach to planning law – and they tell the reader that we’d like to re-surface the church path, make the main entrance to the church more accessible to people with disabilities and point the paving inside the church where it’s so uneven that you could actually turn your ankle on parts of it. It’s obvious that we should do these things. The whole procedure is quite tiresome, and often incumbents and churchwardens feel they could use their time more effectively and move things on much more speedily without the process. But it has to be done – and I suppose this is why… That 364 out of 365 sets of plans might be fine, but the 365th will be disastrous. It’s spotting the 365th that the procedure aims to do. If only the man who’d built his house on sand had surveyed the site on a rainy day… But in fact the church’s faculty procedures are more than simply about ensuring safety. They ask, what is it you want to build? – and why? And that’s something we need to ask ourselves whether we have projects for physical buildings in mind or not. What is it we want to build? What are we here for? What are we pointing people to by saying that the group of people in this place constitute a church? What do people on the outside think we are doing? And what is the basis of our action? What is the foundation on which we are building? If we think it’s a faith that is rock-solid, in what does our faith consist? In the things we seek to build as a Church we need continually to go back to check our foundations. The problem is that we think of this all too often in just a material sense – bricks, stones and mortar, paying the parish share, fund-raising and money on the plate (or perhaps given by Banker’s Order and preferably with a Gift Aid). These are important things not to be under-stated. I found that out in the last parish I served. It was just as well that they paid attention to their physical foundations because when they came to survey the site they wanted to build their new church upon they discovered that you didn’t have to go to far down to discover it was all sand. Better to abandon their plans, close and demolish their existing church, and build the new one on its site where they knew it would stand firm. But you can only go so far with precautions – at the time no one could tell them that the high alumina cement used in the construction of the church hall would cause problems; nor for that matter that Tesco would set up next door forty years later. We need to build, but also with a sense of what we’re building and why and what it might become. Getting the foundations sorted in the end isn’t much use if it gives us a sense that above all we must be immovable. Christian faith is not about being impregnable, but about following Jesus Christ who shows us that God’s way is the way of vulnerability, of openness, of sensitivity to people who come not armour-plated but clothed in easily damaged flesh. “On this rock I will build my Church,” said Jesus to Peter, and the way we have interpreted those words has perhaps done more damage to humanity than we might care to think. It’s been taken to mean that the Church should be built in such a way that it shouldn’t budge. If the foundation is right, then it must be right and must stand firm whatever may prevail against it. It has led its members to defensiveness and resistance to change, because they have been convinced of the rightness of their first position and will argue that rightness come what may. For a large part of Christendom, the rock has been taken to be Peter himself, and his successors as Bishop of Rome have been finally invested with an infallibility against which none may argue. But was this what Jesus intended? “You are Peter, and on this rock I shall build my Church.” They are Jesus’ words, and the name Peter translates literally as “rock.” But literalness needs to make room for irony and perception. Peter the rock is that one who will always love Jesus, but he isn’t free of human weakness. He gets it wrong time and again. He makes rash professions of loyalty, and then deserts and denies Jesus in his hour of need. It’s on the faith of people like this, Jesus is saying, that the Church will be built. God can use us even in our uselessness. There is a place in God’s kingdom for those who get it wrong, and there is forgiveness for us all. There is a need for forgiveness on the part of us all. But we don’t find it by insisting that we must have got it all right. In our building we need not only to get the foundation right, but to leave room for the guidance of the Holy Spirit; we need to be able to look up and see the face of Christ, and we need to be able to recognise his face in our neighbour. It’s said of the artist Michelangelo that when he was choosing stone for his sculptures he would go to the quarry and look and look until he found the rock in which he could “see” the statue. We need to look beyond the outward appearance, we need to resist judgement based on first perceptions so that we can sense what truly needs to be discerned. Today is “Anglican Communion Sunday” – not a day that’s flagged up in most people’s consciousness. But the people who ask us to pray for our Anglican Communion today – for the fellowship of churches of which the Church of England is a part – do so in the hope that we may see that it is something worthwhile. With so many divisions in the Church at the present, and differences on sexuality and gender issues which might seem to be insurmountable, it might be tempting to give up trying to understand the position of other people. They can’t all be right. But neither can we all live in the circumstances we might call ideal. We can seek to ensure that the lives we live are rooted in Christ – and that this is more than simply a looking back. In words of Michael Ramsey which I’ve quoted in our new parish magazine: “… the Holy Spirit enables you to see, and to see like a Christian – perceiving things as they really are in the mind of Jesus, and perceiving people as they really are with the light of Jesus upon them.” See things as they are in the mind of Jesus; see people with the light of Jesus upon them. Michael Ramsey was the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury. Today our prayers for his successor, Rowan Williams, are more than ever necessary – for his leadership and for a discernment on his part which he may be able to share with the less discerning. Let’s just not miss the point of why we are here. And to conclude… that’s a problem with our Old Testament reading today. The command from God to bind certain words to the arm or to wear them on the forehead in what is called a phylactery. The same words are placed by Orthodox Jews in what’s called a mezuzah, a small box containing a scroll which is fixed to the door frames of their homes and which they touch with a prayer whenever they pass through. But the reading begins in such a way that we don’t hear what the words are which they should reverence, so the point of it all gets missed – we can end up seeing the phylactery or mezuzah as just an object, and fail to understand what is inside and why it’s used. So these are the words which they are to bind to themselves… “fear the Lord you God,... walk in his ways,… love him,… serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul…” They’re words which Jesus takes up – and for him they sum up everything that God requires of us with the sole addition, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” The Gift of Healing Sunday 5 June 2005 - Trinity 3 Paul Heatherington, Reader of St. Cuthbert's Matthew 9.9-13, 18-26 My mother bought for my birthday, “Watching the English. The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour” by Kate Fox. She quotes Dr Johnson, who said, “When Englishmen meet, they talk of the weather.” The travel writer, Bill Bryson, says that English weather is not fascinating. Jeremy Paxman disagrees. (Now there’s a surprise.) He says one of the few things you can say about England is that it has a lot of weather. Kate Fox says that when we say, “Nice day, isn’t it? Ooh isn’t it cold? Still raining eh?” these are ritual greetings, conversation–starters or default fillers. A former Vicar of St Ives’ Church, Leadgate, The Revd William Portsmouth disagreed with all of them. He wrote that the most common subject of conversation in England is bad health. People seem to take a perverse pleasure in reporting their own and other people’s illnesses to a most detailed degree. He wrote of, “a morbid resignation in the way someone describes his sufferings as being, “hereditary” and how “Uncle Charles had it all his life.” “Many a sick person’s recovery has been retarded because some well-meaning visitor has spent an hour talking about illness. The one topic which ought never to be permitted in the sick room is sickness itself.” (Healing Prayer: 1954) Do you know the definition of a bore? It’s when you ask someone how they are and they tell you. The person who gives more information than you need to know about their last bowel movement! Glenn Hoddle was sacked as the England football manager when he suggested that physical illness was God’s punishment for sin. Such views go against everything in the Gospels. God wants us to feel whole. In today’s Gospel reading, we hear that Jesus’ fame is growing. Jewish leaders criticise Jesus for eating with tax collectors and sinners, people that truly “religious” people would have nothing to do. Jesus then heals a social and religious outcast, an unnamed woman and the daughter of synagogue leader. But the story begins with Matthew, a man with a hated job. Tax collectors had a kind of a franchise from the Romans and they could make extra profits for themselves by cheating tax payers or taking bribes. Jesus simply said to Matthew, “Follow me.” Jesus needed fishers of men, but he also needed men who could count, and read and write. Without them, we would not have heard about the woman in the Gospel reading. Jesus is not interested in how individuals are viewed by the world or religious authorities. Jesus comes for everyone. Now let’s do a sort of Biblical, Stars In Your Eyes. Yes, today Matthew you are going to be the woman who is not given a name. Now I don’t want you to go to sleep. But if you feel comfortable close your eyes for a moment. Picture the woman. Imagine what life has been like for you. You have no friends. You are a perhaps a bit scruffy, even a bit smelly. You cannot lead a normal life. You are an outsider, both religiously and socially. According to Jewish law, you are ritually unclean. You contaminate everyone you touch. You have had an issue of blood for twelve long years. No NHS. No consultants. No GPs. Jesus is becoming famous and you have heard of Jesus’ power to heal. You see Jesus. Look at him. What does he look like? You believe Jesus can help you. You come to him in faith. You creep up behind Him. You reach out to touch the fringe of his cloak. But Jesus feels the touch. Now you know your place. You are a non-person, shunned by everyone. You know that strict Jews would have been mortified if you touched them. You can see immediately that Jesus knows what has happened. You are worried now. Is he angry? What will he do? He smiles at you. He smiles at you and he speaks to you. What is he saying? He says, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” You feel great. Your spirits are uplifted. Immediately you are cured. You are well. How do you feel? You can open your eyes. When I was growing up, once a month on Sunday evenings in St Ives’ Church there was a healing service. This included the laying on of hands. The vicar, Bill Portsmouth, led the service. He said that health should really be “whole-th”. The Gospels are all about the pos¬sibility of wholeness, of being healed in this way. The peace of God which passes all understanding has a more positive meaning than peace as distinct from war. It means wholeness. A disclaimer: I have attended many healing services, including the laying on of hands, so please do not think that I disapprove of them. That is not what I am about to say. But I want to make this point. Every act of worship is about healing, that is healing in terms of our spiritual wellbeing. Sin separates us from the love of God and the love of those around us. That’s why in services like this, we confess our sins and turn to God. By seeking to change our lives, we have the opportunity of overcoming separation from God and being made whole again. An amazing reality of the gospel is that God is able to transform pain that appears to have no purpose, and achieve something though it. What is being accomplished may not be known to us. Think about the cross. Think of those who watched Jesus die. They did not have a clue of the astounding events which were to come. Our pain and hurt may seem to be pointless. But that reaction means that we share with Jesus, in his pain and sorrow. God, who used the outwardly futile sufferings of Jesus – through faith – is with us in our sufferings. The core message of the Bible and particularly of Jesus is of spiritual rather than physical health. It is possible to be 'whole' even while suffering from illness. We all come across people who are totally at peace, whilst suffering the most overwhelming physical troubles. Some of them are in this Church today. Think about them. Pray for them. Abigail Witchalls is also such a person, showing remarkable faith in the face of her devastating injuries. Jesus said to Matthew, “Follow me.” He says the same to you and to me. God is beside us as we suffer. He walks with us and shares in our pain and unhappiness. Just as he did with the unnamed woman, when we come to God in faith, by the grace shown to us in Jesus, God restores us to wholeness. It is at that point, that we are truly healed. Dare to be different... 4th Sunday after Trinity Sunday 19th June 2005 Rosie Junemann, Reader of St. Cuthbert's Jeremiah 20.1-17 Romans 6.1b-11 Matthew 10.24-39 A Sunday School teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six-year olds. After explaining the commandment to ‘honour your father and your mother’, she asked, ‘Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?’ Without missing a beat, one boy (the oldest of a family of seven) answered, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’! Our families seem to bring out both the best and the worst in us! That’s not very surprising, since it’s in our families that we feel our keenest emotions. It’s here that we experience the heights of love and passion and loyalty. But such strong bonds can often give rise to negative feelings, too – jealousy, rivalry, and betrayal. When we’re out and about with friends, or at work, or at school, we’re likely to be more guarded in the way we express our feelings. But at home we can and do express our joy and anger and despair. When Jesus talked about families, we can be sure that he was speaking from his own experience of family life. We know that Jesus grew up in a loving and supportive family. His parents nurtured and protected him. He was brought up in the Jewish tradition, to honour his father and his mother, and he challenged the Pharisees for their failure to fulfil the true spirit of this commandment. But we must also remember that there were sometimes tensions between Jesus and the members of his family. Mark tells us that there were times when they thought he was mad and might need to be restrained. And John tells us that his brothers didn’t always believe in him. So what are we to make of Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel reading? “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother in law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” Are we to take this literally? Are we to be prepared to abandon our families, to anticipate friction, to expect antagonism from our nearest and dearest, if we are to follow Jesus? There are, of course, many examples of Christians who have turned their backs on their families in order to ‘take up the cross’. Think, for example, of St Francis of Assisi, who parted from his wealthy family, stripping off his rich man’s clothes, and exchanging them for a peasant’s garb. According to legend, he said to his father ‘Hitherto I have called you father on earth; but now I say. ‘Our Father, who art in heaven’. But we really need to understand Jesus’ challenging statement about families in a much wider context of teaching about discipleship. This passage from Matthew’s gospel draws to a close Jesus’ instructions to his disciples. It warns about the persecution and divisions that his followers will suffer. Jesus teaches that God’s love has to be expressed and lived out whatever the cost. We usually emphasise the harmony and unity that the Christian faith can bring to all our relationships. But should we also warn that giving God top priority will mean re-arranging all our other priorities, even those to our families? Christian discipleship is about facing up to the challenge – being prepared for the radical demands of the kingdom of God. As William Barclay said: “The Christian can never escape the duty of being different from the world. It is not our duty to be conformed to the world; it is our duty to be transformed from it.” I recently read an article in The Times about a man called Jonathan Gornall, who was invited to speak at the Royal Humane Society’s Annual General Meeting. Unlike previous speakers, who’d been invited because they had put their own lives at risk to save others, Jonathan was invited to speak because he himself had been saved. Last year he was part of a four man crew who attempted to row across the Atlantic. You may remember that after 39 days at sea their boat, the Pink Lady, broke up in a hurricane, and they were very nearly drowned. Why did they take such a risk? “There will always be some who see no point to life beyond living it safely,“ writes Jonathan. “But there is so much more to life than simply existing. The quest to prove worthy of an almost unconceivable challenge is our greatest reward.” As followers of Jesus, our challenge is to dare to be different, to be transformed from being people who live life safely to being people who stick our necks out to ensure that God’s kingdom comes a little bit closer on earth. And there are so many challenges all around us! Just look at the headlines! Bob Geldof has recently called on us to become ‘pilgrims for the poor’, “the children of the rich world on the march on behalf of the children of Africa, many of whom are too weak even to crawl”. How can we help? We may not all be going to Edinburgh next weekend, or to a Live 8 concert, but we could all send a postcard to Tony Blair in support of the Make Poverty History campaign. There are supplies of postcard at the back of the church! Another newspaper article reports that disturbing levels of racism are still present in American and British society. The Churches’ Commission for Racial Justice calls on Christians to further the cause of community cohesion and a culture of respect. How can we help? The Commission says: “The Churches have a fundamental responsibility to keep the issue in the conscience of the nation and particularly on the politicians agenda.” As Christians we can foster positive personal and community relations. And we can openly express our concerns about discrimination. A recent report from the charity ‘Help the Aged’, called ‘Dying in Older Age’ says that the care given to older people as they approach death is often inadequate, badly planned and unimaginative. Many experience social isolation and economic hardship. How can we help? “Only the church workers” says the report, “face up to the reality of death itself, and attempt to give comfort, emotional and spiritual help.” In this community there is a very great need for practical, emotional and spiritual support for older people. Jesus asks us to leave behind the comfort and the safety of the easy life for the challenge of working for the kingdom. It’s a course which may set us apart from – may even set us at odds with - family and friends and neighbours. Equally, it’s a course which may inspire others to join us and follow our lead. And it’s a course which reaps its own rewards. Almost two thousand years ago, in the 2nd century AD, a very early Christian writer wrote: “It’s not possible to tell a Christian from an unbeliever by where he lives, what he wears or the way he dresses. There are no ‘Christian towns’, there is no ‘Christian language’. They eat, sleep and drink in exactly the same way as everyone else………… But while it’s true that they live in cities next door to other people and follow the same pattern of ordinary daily life as they do, in fact they possess a unique citizenship of their own……. Destiny has determined that they should live here on earth in the flesh, but they do not live for the flesh. Their days are passed on earth, but their real citizenship is in heaven………….. They show love to everyone – and everyone seems to persecute them. They are constantly misunderstood and misrepresented, yet through their suffering they find life. They are poor but make many rich. They lack many things but have everything that matters in abundance.” In the 21st century can we dare to be different, too? Welcoming Christ, Welcoming One Another 5th Sunday after Trinity – 26th June 2005 The Revd. Martin Jackson, Vicar of St. Cuthbert's Jeremiah 28.5-9; Romans 6.12-23; Matthew 10.40-42 “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Whatever else Jesus may be saying in the words of today’s Gospel, he is certainly emphasising the importance of a ministry of hospitality. Make people welcome, and you’re making Christ welcome, and so you’re recognising something of what God has to say to the world. I hadn’t been in this parish very long when someone was talking to me about a lady whose name I didn’t recognise. Trying to place her, I asked at which service I would normally expect to find her. “Oh, but you must know her…” was the response. “She comes to everything at St. Cuthbert’s except the services.” It can be frustrating when we find people defining their church membership by their regular appearance at the Summer Fair rather than by any sense that it has something to do with a commitment and desire to grow in holiness which may find its expression in worship. But it also says something positive – that we are succeeding in making people feel they are a part of our life; that they can feel a welcome when they appear at our door for those events they choose to come to. That’s important for people who may have little contact with others throughout the week. For much of the time they may be stuck at home on their own with only the television for contact – and there’s not much on the telly at present if you’re not a devotee of Wimbledon or Big Brother. Any family they have may live at a distance – or they may have no family. They may find it difficult to form a friendship, even to start a conversation. They may be diffident or embarrassed about inviting someone into their own home. So it makes a big difference if they can come to a Lunch Club, if they can join in a Dance Class, sit down for coffee or share a meal with other people. Which is why the Church’s ministry of hospitality is so important. And it must be more than simply welcoming people at the church door – about helping them find their way through an order of service. Hospitality starts at the most basic human level, recognising another person as a person – as a social being with dignity, worthy of our respect. I was thinking this through after yesterday’s Coffee Morning. “I can’t believe it was so successful,” Liz Parker said to me. “I don’t know if I could ever dare to do it again in case things didn’t measure up.” Well… there’s no denying that financially it was a winner, raising nearly all the money we think we need to repair the church clock’s striking mechanism. But the real success was simply that people wanted to be there, and could feel at home there. Before I heard anything about the amount of money raised, I knew it was successful because here everybody had a place, everyone was welcome. An important thing for us to recognise as Christians is that the life of the Church is not just about praying, preaching and helping other people. “Welcoming” is not just about looking out for newcomers, “hospitality” is not just provision for needy people where those needy people are someone other than ourselves. It’s about being there for each other so that the needs of the needy are satisfied because together we all have our place. Needy people are not just other people, because we all have our needs. If the Good News Jesus proclaims is directed to people on the margins of society, then we shouldn’t expect them to remain on the margins of our Church – we should expect that they will be welcomed into its heart, and that “they” will no longer remain “they” but become “us.” The other day I found myself listening to the programme “From our own Correspondent” on Radio 4. Normally the items are weighty contributions, so you might expect analysis of the problems of African debt or the forthcoming G8 Summit. But in this instance it wasn’t. Instead the speaker was talking about the American barbecue season. The importance of barbecues in the United States is not something we should under-estimate, he said. In England we wait until it gets suitably cold and wet one summer’s day and then rapidly over-cook burnt offerings of burgers and sausages. But in America a barbecue is a much more leisurely affair with the meat well marinaded and then cooked gently for hours to bring out all its flavours. The American barbecue is an institution which has an appeal to all classes of people. Just the smell of one will set neighbours off to plan their own. Only, that was a problem if you were, for example, Jewish – because what could you do if the staple of the barbecue was pork and other forbidden food? The answer was obvious – you simply worked out what you could eat, and sorted out suitable and no less delicious menus. So all classes and races may not eat together at their barbecues – but they all make sure that they have their own barbecues. Eating and drinking together are so important – and with it hospitality. But how far does hospitality go? And how much remains that divides? And this brings me to today’s reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. It’s not the easiest of reads. What we have here is the experience of an orthodox Jewish teacher who has found his life changed by an encounter with the risen Christ. It’s not an encounter with Christianity, because the institution comes later and it’s Paul who does so much to work out what Christianity actually is. Paul’s life is changed so fundamentally by his experience of Christ that he has to question everything he had previously held dear. And as a Jew, what he had believed is that God had given his people the Law (with a capital L). You could trust in what God wanted for you because it was there in the Jewish scriptures – in not just 10 but 613 commandments given to Moses and then expounded still further by the teachers of the Law. Here was something you could trust, and you put it into practice by taking it so far into the basics of daily life that you said prayers in a particular way, you cut your hair, grew your beard and covered your head after a prescribed fashion, you practised ritual ablutions and the circumcision of male children, and you kept a whole system of dietary laws far more complicated than our general notion that Jews don’t eat pork. The fact is that being a Jew affected every part of your life. Everything you did made you conscious that you were one of God’s chosen people – and that was cause to rejoice. The Law of the Jews was seen not as oppressive but as a frame within which God’s people could be truly free. The problem for Paul was, what happened when you discovered a way of life that was even more liberating? – as he did when he came to faith in Christ. Now he realised that God loves us not because we keep the rules which he had called Law – but simply that he loves us anyway, and that he goes out of his way to show us that by sending his Son to us. And this Son, Jesus, not only mixes with all the wrong sort of people and tells them God loves them, but he goes so far as to pray for the forgiveness of those who finally kill him. If God loves us that much, what do we need to do? That’s the dilemma Paul is wrestling with in Romans chapter 6. And the answer to the question, “what must we do for God to love us?” is quite simply, “Nothing.” He loves us anyway and goes on loving us. He calls to us in Jesus, even from the Cross. We don’t first have to look up the instructions on “how to get God to love you” – the love package is there already set up. It’s when Paul sees that, that he can understand that you don’t need rules on what you can and can’t eat, or how to cut your hair, or whether you need a beard. The problem is some people then carry on to say that you don’t need any rules at all – that you should be able to do what you want, because God loves you anyway. And Paul has to say, “Yes our relationship with God is not a matter of Law but of Grace – God’s freely-given love. But that’s not something to abuse.” It’s this relationship with God that is so important, and you don’t abuse relationships. Within a relationship you don’t do whatever you want and say it doesn’t matter because that person loves me. The Jewish Law had shown God’s people the limits as to what they should and should not do. Now the relationship with God depends not on keeping a set of rules but on the fact of God’s love for us – so it’s a relationship which is not to be abused. Sin is no less a reality because it’s about the barriers we put between ourselves and God – but it doesn’t stop God loving us; the problem is that we stop ourselves experiencing God’s love. We need to be able to accept God’s love and know its value. As St. Paul sums it up, “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” But do we want it? Will we build upon it? “The advantage you get is sanctification,” says Paul. In other words our relationship with God is not something to be taken for granted. It’s founded on his love for us, but it’s something that allows us to grow – by which we can become a holy people, through which our way of life will point the way back to God. We can draw others in through hospitality and concern, and if we do then we’ll be recognising that it’s God who has already welcomed us into relationship with him. Wheat & Weeds - Good & Evil 8th Sunday after Trinity Sunday 17th July 2005 Rosie Junemann, Reader of St Cuthbert’s, Benfieldside Isaiah 44.6-8 Romans 8.12-25 Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43 I’m going to have to do a lot more gardening in future! The house we’re moving to in a few weeks’ time, has a very big garden, with lots of scope for redesign and development. I enjoy gardening. I especially like to grow and cook my own vegetables and herbs. And I like choosing plants and shrubs and watching them blossom. But of course, there’s another side to gardening, too! I’m going to have to do my fair share of cutting hedges, mowing the grass – and weeding. There seems to be quite a debate amongst gardeners about what exactly constitutes a weed. To our Uncle Geoff, a weed is a plant growing in the wrong place. To him a wildflower, like the foxglove which seeds itself so readily and springs up all over the garden, is an unwelcome visitor. On the other hand, a friend of mine, who is a keen gardener, loves the random growth of wildflowers. But she’s busy rooting out the ground elder which has invaded her garden. To her, a weed is a plant which takes over and leaves no room for other plants to grow. The story told by Jesus in today’s gospel reading is all about weeds. It’s unlikely that the people listening to the story at the time of Jesus would have been confused about what he meant by ‘weeds’. In the Middle East, wheat growers fear a weed called bearded darnel. In the early growing stage, the darnel so resembles the wheat that it’s impossible to distinguish between the two. And later, the roots become so intertwined that it’s impossible to weed out the darnel without tearing out the wheat, too. At harvest time it’s essential to carefully separate the two plants because the darnel is poisonous and must be destroyed. In this story a weed is a plant which can choke and taint the wheat. The story, or parable, of the weeds is the first of a series in this part of Matthew’s Gospel which we might call ‘the kingdom parables’. This parable – like the five we will hear next week – is designed to help us to understand the kingdom of heaven – God’s new society. Parables were a popular teaching method at the time of Jesus. They were intended to illustrate and drive home a particular point. So we shouldn’t try to find meaning in every detail. Each of the kingdom parables seeks to explain one or more important facts about God’s new society, and the effect it has on the lives of people who are a part of it. This particular parable seems to convey two key messages. Firstly, it’s about waiting. As the farmer waits for the harvest time, so the people of the kingdom wait for the judgement and the reward of God. The story distinguishes between what is happening now and what will happen in the future. God’s kingdom has already arrived because Jesus has come. Those who have heard the message of Jesus, and have responded to it, are a part of the kingdom. But at some time in the future God will assert his authority and his kingship in a new way. There will be a great day of reckoning when people who do good – ‘the good seed’ - and people who do evil – ‘the weeds’ - will be separated, and dealt with according to their merits. Secondly, the parable of the weeds has something to say about the behaviour of those of us who live in this ‘in-between time’. Like the wheat and the weeds in the field, good and evil exist alongside each other in this world. It’s tempting to make black and white judgements about people, to divide the world into ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’. What kind of judgement should we make about the four young men who committed such a great atrocity in London on the 7th July? It’s easy to think of them as ‘evil people’ but we also have to think of them as a headline in The Times described them: ‘a mentor who taught vulnerable children, a devout cricketer, a young man from a broken home, and a troubled teenager’. To think of them as someone’s son, brother, husband, father, friend. No doubt each one of us is struggling to understand what could drive people to such desperate acts. The parable of the weeds is about waiting, but it’s also about tolerance. Our imperfect society is a mixed body of saints and sinners, each one with the potential for good and evil acts. So patience and forbearance are essential. We must allow God to judge. And He will judge between those who do good and those who do evil, when the time comes. More to the point, perhaps, we need to look to ourselves, and to our own capacity for good and evil. When I was a teenager we used to sing a chorus: “My heart may be like a garden fair, Loving words and thoughts and deeds a blossoming there. Or it may be a place of poison weeds, Growing into ugly thoughts and words and deeds.” St Paul reminds us in today’s reading from the Letter to the Romans, that we must be led by the Holy Spirit to ‘put to death the deeds of the body’. Paul was only too aware of his personal struggle for good and against evil. In the previous chapter of the same letter he writes: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. …….Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Our potential for good can be choked and tainted by our capacity for sin. But Paul tells us that the struggle is worthwhile. We may ‘groan inwardly’ in our current suffering, but we wait with patience for the day of reckoning, and with hope for future glory. As Tom Wright says: “We wait with patience, not like people in a dark room, wondering if anyone will ever come with a lighted candle, but like people in the early morning who know that the sun has risen and are now waiting for the full brightness of midday.” This has not been a week for good news! In the aftermath of the London bombings, there has also been a bomb attack in Iraq which killed 30 children, and the horrific massacre of 56 people, including 22 children, at Turbi in North Kenya. Our very imperfect society seems a long way from God’s new society. Will God’s kingdom ever come? Will God’s will ever be done on earth as it is in heaven? What we have seen in London in the past week is sorrow but not despair. The people of London have responded to the terrorists with dignity and with defiance. Their watchword has become ‘We are not afraid’. Giles Fraser, Rector of Putney, writing in this week’s Church Times, says: “Christian hope isn’t wishful thinking. It, too, is defiance. Whether it be the torches of exhausted firemen, searching for bodies amid the hell of the Piccadilly Line; or the candles lit by those who felt so desperate and powerless; ours is a light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. The message is simple: love is stronger than death.” This is a world in which good and evil are intertwined. Let us hope and pray that the good seed will never fully become choked and tainted by the weeds. Successors in their earthly pilgrimage... Trinity 13 - Sunday 21 August 2005 Paul Heatherington, Reader Matthew 16. 13-20 I am going to tell you a local history story. Among other things I shall explain why Oswald is associated with Cuthbert. There’s an advert and a free gift. Constantine was declared Emperor in York in AD 306. Constantine’s Mum, Helena, was Christian. Roman Emperors were seen as Gods. But for Constantine to be seen as God's appointed Emperor meant he could accomplish more than merely claiming to be God himself. In AD 313 Christianity was legalised. Roman rule ended in the early 400s, but Christianity continued locally. An early Christian altar stone decorated with small, carved crosses found at Vindolanda, near Bardon Mill proves this. In the 7th century, as a result of the Celtic missionary, Columba of Iona, Christianity in the Celtic tradition existed in Scotland and some parts of the North of England. The first king of a unified Northumbria was Ida. His son Ethelfrith inherited the crown, only to be killed in 616 by Edwin. Ethelfrith had three sons, including Oswald, who was born in 604. When Oswald’s father, was deposed, by his uncle Edwin, Oswald fled to Iona, where he was converted to Christianity. In 633, Uncle Edwin was killed in a battle with Penda of Mercia and Oswald returned to Northumbria to be crowned king. Four miles north of Hexham, at the battle of Heavenfield in 635, Oswald, defeated and killed the Welsh king, Cadwallon. The kingdom of Northumbria was restored to its dominant position in 7th century Britain. Christianity was useful to Oswald politically as it had been for Constantine. King Oswald turned to the monks of Iona and asked them for someone to lead a mission to convert the Northumbrian people to Christianity. Aidan came and founded the monastery on Lindisfarne. Meanwhile, Saint Augustine had established Christianity in the Roman Catholic tradition at Canterbury. There was a problem and it’s a problem that all different Christian denominations share. There were variations in practice between the two traditions. In the case of the Celtic and Roman traditions, you could see the differences immediately. The monks had different hairstyles. The Celtic monks shaved the whole head in front of a line drawn from ear to ear. Roman Catholics shaved their heads in the form of a crown, to emulate Jesus’ crown of thorns. But there was another difference – the date of Easter. Oswald is viewed as a model ruler. He reigned for eight years only to be defeated when Penda of Mercia invaded again. Oswald’s body was dismembered and his head and arms were hacked off and stuck on poles. Oswald is a Christian martyr and saint and he is especially remembered in this church because he is the king over the arch by the rood screen. But we also have a stained glass window dedicated to Oswald and you all have a bookmark as a keepsake, for which our thanks are due to Alan Hewlett. Oswald was succeeded by his brother Oswy. Oswy also was a Christian in the Celtic tradition. Oswy’s wife, however, was a Christian in the Roman tradition. The Roman tradition had an authoritarian structure. They worshipped in stone churches. But for those in the Celtic tradition life was a pilgrimage. Churches were simple structures. Women played greater roles. Life was austere. Do you remember when the choir and orchestra of Durham School entertained us to a concert five years ago? They sang, “Oh I do like to be beside the seaside. Oh I do like to be beside the sea”. They chose that because it’s said that Cuthbert used to wade out up to his waist into the North Sea and stay there all night praying. All was not happy in the Oswy royal household. The problem was that each year Easter was kept twice. Not a problem you might think. Two lots of chocolate Easter eggs. Wrong! They didn’t have chocolate. Seriously, things came to a head one spring when the king and his party were celebrating Easter, while the queen and her chaplains were still fasting in Lent. To settle things, the Synod of Whitby was called in 664, presided over by Hilda. On one side there was Aidan’s successor Bishop Colman, who represented the Celtic tradition. Wilfred had been brought up in the Celtic tradition but he’d travelled to Lyons in France and on to Rome. He was attracted to the whole Roman package: the churches, the date of Easter and the haircut. So, Wilfrid argued the Roman Catholic cause. What we now describe as the Eastern Orthodox tradition and the Celtic tradition had the same date for Easter, following the practice of St John. And so in arguing for the Celtic tradition, Colman relied on St John and the authority of St. Columba. Wilfrid, who had had some training as an orator in Rome, claimed that as the Roman Church had been founded by St Peter, the Roman practice enjoyed St Peter’s approval. This is part of Wilfrid’s speech as recorded by Bede. Can (Columba)… take precedence before the most blessed Prince of the Apostles, to whom our Lord said: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven”? You will recognise that as part of today’s Gospel. To cut the story short, Oswy decided in favour of the Roman side, declaring: Then, I tell you, Peter is guardian of the gates of heaven, and I shall not contradict him. I shall obey his com¬mands in everything to the best of my knowledge and ability; otherwise, when I come to the gates of heaven, there may be no one to open them, because he who holds the keys has turned away. Now a few words on studying the Bible. When we read the Bible, we bring to it what we know, including what we know of the world as we experience it today. When facts are missing, there is a tendency to fill the gaps with what we think is the truth. It is a human frailty to discard anything that conflicts with one’s beliefs. Some people quote the Bible to support an argument. They don’t analyse the Bible and pray for guidance over what it might mean and how it might be appropriately be applied. When the writer of the particular Bible passage first wrote the words he may not have envisaged his words could be applied to other circumstances. Where an opinion has been formed and the Bible is then used or perhaps misused, to prove a point, this is called using the Bible as a proof text. I suggest Wilfrid may have done that when he sought to rely on the authority primacy of Peter. For the king, there was obviously a political attraction in having a single date to celebrate the principal feast of the Church’s year. Perhaps the smooth-talking orator Wilfred stitched up the less worldly-wise Colman Celtic bishop. Is it just coincidence that Oswy opted for a peaceful life and chose the option his wife preferred! Whatever the truth, that bit of history changed the whole of the Church of Anglo-Saxon England. The Revd Canon George Harrison Ross-Lewin to whose memory this rood screen is dedicated published a book which tells the story. And as you will see from the book mark, the Oswald window is in memory of Ross-Lewin’s brother. Why is Oswald associated with St Cuthbert? The answer is that Oswy was able to retrieve his brother’s body parts a year after Oswald’s death. Eventually Oswald’s head was placed into Saint Cuthbert’s coffin now in Durham. What had Peter said, that resulted in Jesus offering him the keys of the kingdom of heaven? The longed for Messiah was a conquering hero. The disciples may have rejected Jesus, had Jesus not led them gradually to understand that He was not in that mould. Jesus talked in parables. Jesus’ followers did not always appreciate what He was saying. It was vital the disciples understood who Jesus was. Otherwise, once they were left, what would happen? How would the message of the good news of the kingdom of heaven fare? If you remember the Gospel reading, the disciples reported the gossip to Jesus. But it was a God-inspired Peter who declared to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus asks us, “Who do you say I am?” Do we see Jesus like Constantine and Oswald, as the powerful ally it’s in our interests to have on our side? Or do we accept Jesus as, “Son of the Living God”? In our pilgrimage through life, reflect on these words of St Theresa of Avila, “Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Ours are the hands with which He is to bless people now.” We are successors to the Christians in the Celtic tradition who once travelled Northumbria in their earthly pilgrimage serving Jesus, the suffering servant who died that we might live. We have God’s gift of Jesus, freely given as we are about to acknowledge in the Creed. “… where two or three of you are gathered ..." Trinity 15 Year A – 4th September 2005 The Revd. Martin Jackson Vicar of St. Cuthbert's Ezekiel 33.7-11; Romans 13.8-14; Matthew 18.15-20 “… where two or three of you are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” These are the words today’s Gospel reading ends with – a promise of Christ’s presence with us, the assurance of the nearness of Jesus when we come together in prayer, the confidence even the smallest of congregations can have. Come together, find a common cause and know that God is with you. I find myself wanting to add, “or so it seems…” But in fact I’m pretty sure that if we are looking for the original words of Jesus in this passage, then…. these are the ones: “… where two or three of you are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” There’s no edge to them. No agenda. Simply… come together: don’t worry how many of you there are; don’t be anxious about why you should be here or what you should be doing; you are my people; I will be with you. What I’m not sure about is the words that go before them. There’s no doubt that there’s an echo of those words with which the passage ends. “… where two or three of you are gathered in my name…” We find it in those instructions on how to discipline a wayward church member: “take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” But here there is a purpose – to put somebody right. And it looks as though things have moved on from the time of Jesus’ life and ministry. The words given to Jesus at the start of today’s Gospel reading are “If another member of the church sins…” But in the time of Jesus there was no such thing as the “church”, and no need for the Church. The disciples had Jesus. He would lead them. If they disagreed with each other they could appeal to him. If they wanted to know what was right, they could ask him. Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of heaven, not the need for the Church. And this passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel is one which has no parallels in any other Gospel. Talk about “Church”, and what to do when churchy people fall out, doesn’t have a place in the teaching of Jesus. But that doesn’t mean that it’s any less important. As soon as I find myself talking about people falling out, I realise how important these words are, whether or not they come originally from Jesus’ lips. It’s part of the human condition that we rub one another up the wrong way, that we hold grievances against one another. While Jesus might not have had a concept of the “Church”, he certainly knew what people were like – whether it was the people of the parables who sue each other for their coats, or disciples jockeying for position amongst themselves, or Pharisees and Sadducees arguing the finer theological points against one another… There would come a time when Jesus would no longer be with his disciples – the time would come when they would have to sort things out themselves, and this is what Matthew recognises, writing his Gospel perhaps decades after the Resurrection. We need to be able to discover Christ’s will in the process of disagreement; but where do we start? And here I think there’s the reason to believe that the original words of Jesus are those with which the passage ends – that two or three of us together will find Jesus in our midst; that together we may know Christ’s will. If we can believe this, then we have a clue as to how we may apply our faith to the difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves. And so a whole process develops. When you find someone doing wrong, go and talk to them yourself – quietly… without a fuss. There seems to be an assumption in the words of the Gospel that it’s the other person who is wrong: ‘If another member of the church sins against you… point out the fault…” And there’s a point in this, I think. It may not be the case that the other person is wrong, but doesn’t that tend to be our assumption? I’m right, he’s wrong… And we can only see it our way, and before long we’ve told everybody about it too – everybody, that is, except the person who is at the root of our problems. Feeling people have done us wrong is just a part of being human – but it doesn’t need to end there: we don’t need to wallow in a sense of grievance, injury and self-pity, and broadcast our hurt feelings to everybody else. Instead, try a quiet word – perhaps there’s been a misunderstanding by that other person… or by you. If that doesn’t work, then you might go on from there – and this is where it gets difficult. “If you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses…” But how do you take one or two others with you to talk to someone without them feeling that you’ve ganged up against them? It can get even worse if it goes even further and you proceed to the next stage of bringing in the church as a sort of disciplinary tribunal from which an “offender” can be expelled. That’s why I think what we have in this passage is not the original words of Jesus, but the Gospel writer struggling with what Jesus would say in difficult circumstances, circumstances which can’t be avoided. It’s only two chapters earlier that St. Matthew has introduced the concept of “church”, when he has Jesus tell Peter that “on this rock I will build my church,” and now he’s got the problems of conflict and what sort of authority might resolve a dispute. There are no easy solutions, and whatever we do will cause pain – as we see when the different provinces of the Anglican Communion fall out; it’s easy to speak angry words against each other, to call for the expulsion of people we don’t agree with. And if the Church is bad about this, then secular disputes can be even worse, from pettiness in the home and work-place to breakdown in international relations. Falling out with other people is simply a human thing. The question to us as Christians is how to move forward. The German church leader, Martin Niemoeller, who was imprisoned by the Nazis, himself confessed: “It took me a long time to learn: God is not the enemy of my enemies. He is not even the enemy of his enemies.” If we seek a process to resolve human disputes, we need honesty, not an agenda; we need not a guarantee that we are right but a renewed sense of calling to work for the Kingdom of God. As St. Therese of Lisieux recognised, “In the kingdom of God’s mercy, there is nothing but mercy and forgiveness.” RSVP... Trinity 20 Year A – 9th October 2005 The Revd. Martin Jackson Vicar of St. Cuthbert's preached in the neighbouring parishes of Ebchester & Medomsley Isaiah 25.1-9; Philippians 4.1-9; Matthew 22.1-14 The parable of the Wedding Feast is one of the best known stories in the Bible – though in fact it’s told in two different forms by St. Luke and St. Matthew, and perhaps they’re not really telling the same story. But what do we hear when we listen to the parable? Certainly it’s about excuses... Perhaps it’s the fear of rejection that bothers us most. Throwing any sort of party can be a tricky and stressful business. How many people should be invited? What if no-one turns up? Then there's the reluctant guest who makes excuses – the one who says that they just can't find a babysitter and the one who really does want to stay in to wash their hair. And (special fear of teenagers’ parents) there's the gatecrasher who doesn't belong. Today's gospel speaks of God's kingdom as a party – a wedding banquet - and putting it on must have been about as stressful as it could have been! The people who were invited just would not come. Some of them wouldn't take it seriously; they trivialise it and go off to do their own thing – as if to say, "Sorry, I can't come to your party – I have to go shopping." And others react violently: they beat up and even murder those who come a second time to call them to the feast. What was it about this party that made it so unappealing? Perhaps we find ourselves having some sympathy for those who get what seems to be very little notice that they should turn up at the banquet. They don’t seem to get a lot of warning. But this is a parable where the time-scale is compressed for the sake of telling the story. In fact the preparations would have gone for a long time beforehand. But in those ancient times - when you didn’t know just how long it would take the ox to cook on the spit or when the rabbi might turn up from the next village - you didn’t get the final call to attend until the feast was ready to serve and the ceremony to begin. So you can imagine all the excuses would have been thought out long before – only the invited guests put off making them until the dishes are on the table and the gong has been metaphorically and probably literally sounded. You can understand how the father of the groom feels! Everything is sorted but the people on the guest-list just don’t turn up. He tries again, but his servants just get the brush-off – if they’re lucky! – some of the servants get beaten up and even killed. Perhaps this is what astonishes us. The version of the story we’re most familiar with is probably St. Luke’s, where the invited guests are simply complacent: “No, I can’t come, I got to try out the new yoke of oxen...” and “Sorry, gloating over my latest property deal is much more important than your party.” There’s some of that in St. Matthew’s version with the would-be guests who go off to their farms and businesses. But, horrifyingly, there are those too who react with violence. And we might wonder at the king’s response. While the empty plates are still waiting on the table he sends his soldiers off to kill the murderers and burn their city to the ground. Commentators on this passage from scripture point out that St. Matthew possibly gets carried away telling the story with the benefit of hindsight. He knows that Jerusalem, about 40 years after the time of Jesus, would be destroyed by the Romans, and he sees this as the penalty for their failure to respond to the message of the Gospels. This is part of the less attractive side of Matthew, attributing blame to the Jews for the death of Jesus and taking satisfaction in what he sees to be their just deserts. It’s a view we need to disown, though nearly 2,000 years of anti-Semitism culminating in the last century’s Holocaust show the Church has been slow to learn the lesson. But perhaps there is something relevant to us in the response made by those people who were invited to the Feast. If the banquet stands for the call to God’s kingdom, then we might ask ourselves how we respond. Is it a call we can put off for another day? – something that will keep? – something which needn’t bother us now,... and anyway isn’t that sort of thing, like royal banquets, a bit dated? If there is a word which sums up the spirit of our age as something distinguishing it from other times in history, it’s quite possibly the term complacency – and that seems to be just what we have here. Except for that still more extreme response too – of violent antagonism. The fact is people often do make light of the Christian faith – the church is so often characterised as an ineffective body of people who are interested just in cups of tea and jumble sales. But then there are other people who oppose the church and the faith for which it stands with a real loathing and hatred, like the people who murdered the slaves in the parable. All the more reason why we need to recognise the call of the kingdom, to see that the Church, as the means of communicating the Christian faith, is not something to be made light of – for if the Christian faith is true, then it is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Perhaps the king’s invitation in the parable is spurned because the guests are afraid of the hidden costs. It’s free admission to the banquet, but it takes up a lot of time. Think of the excuses people sometimes make about wedding invitations: I don’t really know them that well... It’s much too far to travel... I’d have to buy a present... I’ve got nothing to wear... The invitation to the heavenly banquet is free – and just as in the parable, everybody is called – not just the well-off, secure and religious, but people off the streets, good and bad alike. But will they come? Will we? It’s something of a problem for us, that Matthew’s version of this parable ends with one of the guests being taken to task for being incorrectly dressed, and then thrown out of the party. Isn’t that one of our greatest worries in going off to a dressing-up do? “Will I be wearing the right clothes?” “Will I be wearing the same clothes as someone else?” might be nearer the mark! It’s almost our worst nightmare come true when the poor man who is incorrectly dressed gets asked, “how did you get in without a wedding robe?” He is speechless, and having been invited when he might never have had any thoughts about coming in the first place, he gets thrown out in the most unceremonious fashion. There have been various attempts to say why this should be so. One Biblical commentator suggests that the wedding garment which he’s not wearing “represents a converted life full of good deeds. Sinners are invited but are expected to repent.” All very well, we may say, but has he had the chance? Some one else argues that “Perhaps one of the problems is that the guest refuses to, or cannot, answer. He refuses to engage with the bridegroom's father, and therefore is unable to make any sort of relationship with him. Perhaps if he had made any sort of response he would have been accepted, for God forgives and absolves all sin. But all of those reassurances that God might have given him remain unheard, because the man cannot bring himself to respond in any way.” Well… perhaps there is some insight here. But far more likely the poor man is simply petrified. If he’s just been dragged in off the street and it’s the king who is laying into him, do we really expect him to have an answer? – surely that’s more than his life is worth. I can’t help but feel that underlying the whole story there may be some of the irony which seems to run through so much of Jesus’ teaching. As if to say, kings may go on like this, but not God! I wonder if so many of our problems these days come from a resentment of God like so many people these days resent royalty or anyone who throws their weight around. But – it seems to me – God is not like that. Perhaps it’s St. Augustine, back in the fourth century, who makes the best stab at the significance of the wedding garment. It stands for love, said Augustine. And Augustine knew what it was to have ignored the call of God for many years – he had a faithful and godly mother who prayed dearly for him, but he had wanted none of that. He was far more interested in secular philosophy and in a pretty wayward life of pleasure, until he found he could no longer resist the call of God and gave in to his invitation. The garment which the guest lacks is the one essential for the kingdom of heaven: love. To enter the kingdom of God, we need to repent and have a change of heart, but that is not the end of the story. This repentance must be continued in a life of love and compassion. Christians who fail to lead a life of service to others will find that mere lip-service to Christ is not enough: they can’t work out what God’s Kingdom is about because they have failed to clothe themselves in the garment of love. Sometimes we may feel we’re caught up in the Church’s life but not really know why. There are people who think they can be a Christian without letting it touch them – like the man without the wedding garment. The parable tells us that how we respond to God's invitation is vitally important. As members of the church, and as people at the party, we need to play our part to make the invitation clear. Taxes... and what they tell us Trinity 21 Year A – 16th October 2005 The Revd. Martin Jackson Vicar of St. Cuthbert's Isaiah 45.1-7; 1 Thessalonians 1.1-10; Matthew 22.15-22 “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?...” And Jesus replies, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” There have been two cases in the news recently of pensioners being sent to jail for refusal to pay part of the amount due as council tax on their homes. In both cases they’d paid most of the tax, but they withheld a part which they considered to be excessive and unjust. The first of the rebels was a retired Anglican parish priest in his seventies who was sent to jail for a month – a rather stiff sentence I thought for a crime involving less than Ł100. Since then a woman pensioner has received a sentence of seven days, though she found herself released after two, when an anonymous donor paid her outstanding tax. Local taxation has been an issue for debate for many years in this country. It’s necessary if essential services like refuse collection, road cleaning, and social services are to be delivered. But just how should they be paid for? Go back far enough and the old rating system on the value of people’s houses was no doubt resented. But of course that was nothing compared to the reaction generated by the Community Charge levied on the individual which led not only to widespread non-payment but also rioting. Direct taxation for local services might seem fairer, but not to people with lots of money and how would it be applied to people with two or more homes? And so we still have the Council Tax – and pensioners find its rate of increase outstripping inflation and their pensions, and everyone is acutely conscious of the disparities caused by where you live, and what sort of house you live in. It’s not surprising that people get annoyed about taxes. And if you have to write a cheque to pay them rather than see them simply quietly removed from your salary or bank interest before they’re paid, then you can get even more annoyed. The chief priests and Pharisees know they’ve got a popular cause when they come up with their latest ploy to trip up Jesus – a bit like party political schemers gleefully picking holes in government spending schemes, even if their own party leaders have no idea how to run things any better. They pick a tax which requires direct payment – a poll tax levied on the individual where the proceeds are sent off outside the country to Rome. But we know that their question, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?” is far from innocent. They don’t ask Jesus simply for a quiet opinion. They go along instead while he’s teaching in the Temple, and they take with them people who are normally their own political rivals, members of the Herodian party, supporters of the puppet king, who were complicit in Roman rule. Together they’ve come up with a question with an answer to which one party or another is going to take exception – and Jesus is going to have to give his answer in public. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?” If Jesus says “yes”, then not only will he lose popularity with the people. He will also be seen to cause offence as a religious teacher who advocates the acknowledgement of foreign pagan sovereignty. He will lose credibility and authority. But if he says “no, don’t pay the tax,” then he is advocating rebellion against the imperial power – and Herod’s lackeys are there to report what he says. Now Jesus is supposed to tell the people what he thinks. Of course Jesus could vacillate. He could try pointing to the benefits of imperial rule with its possibilities for trade, its advantages of law and order, the political stability that it has brought – the jobs it has created with all those wonderfully straight roads, viaducts, acqueducts and the rest. We might expect him to. If we don’t like paying Council Tax, we’ve still got to acknowledge that it pays for services that we need. When pensioners are prepared to go to prison rather than pay the tax in full, they need to be able to say where the money would come from if everybody followed their stance – or else we need a debate as to what principles of justice are involved in finding that money; and I think that there are issues of justice involved. But Jesus knows that this isn’t a matter for debate. It’s treated by his opponents as a basic issue of allegiance. Is Jesus really a religious teacher with authority, preaching a message which can set people free? - or is he an advocate of subservience to foreign paganism? Of course we know the answer Jesus will give. Take a look at the coinage you use to pay the tax. Whose head is on the coin, what’s the inscription? To which his opponents have to answer “The emperor’s.” So, he says, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” I wonder why the chief priests, Pharisees and Herodians don’t follow this up. Why don’t they ask, so what is due to the emperor, and what is due to God? And perhaps they do. But by now they must have lost the sympathy of the rest of the crowd. There’s enough been said by Jesus for people to think about. Real decisions of faith are not made when we are swayed by populist arguments for popular causes. People try to trip Jesus up, but he makes them look for themselves at the issues involved. So look at that coin you use without thinking about it. It bears the head of the Emperor – and you take it for granted. In fact the word which is translated “head” in today’s Gospel reading is the Greek word “eikon” or image. That must be enough to make the orthodox Pharisees think. Judaism forbade the making of images – one reason why they used special money of their own in the Temple. Yet they are using this coinage simply because they have to, even though it has a graven image upon it. If that’s the case, then taxes become just another fact of life. But look again at the coin. The head is also an image of humanity – and all that needs providing for. How will we use that money in the service of others? And look again. “Whose title is it?” asks Jesus. “What’s the inscription?” And the inscription would have been “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, great high priest.” The people are using this coinage which ascribes divinity to a man. But Jesus says, give to the emperor the things that belong to the emperor, and to God the things that are God’s. There still remains a choice, but that choice must be made by each and every one of use. What do we owe to God? Are we willing to give it? And who is truly “the Son of God and great high priest”? The coin may say one thing. We might want to hang onto our money. But what really has the right to make the proper claim on our lives? To whom do we really owe allegiance? Look at that human image on the coin and ask, what is human responsibility. Look beyond the rigid confines of religiosity to ask where faith should really take us. Look at that claim to be “the Son of God and great high priest,” and ask “Who is it?” THE DRAMA OF THE BIBLE Bible Sunday - Sunday 23rd October 2005 Paul Heatherington, Reader of St. Cuthbert's This is Bible Sunday. The Bible is in a sense, the Book, the foundation and starting point of all the narratives of the world. In the various translations of the Bible we can trace the development of language itself. The history of the Bible in English is a history of English literature. The Anglo-Saxon scribe Aelfric described the Bible as the book of beginnings. Indeed, “genesis” the name of the first book of the Bible means the origin of something. In a way the Bible is like a Sunday newspaper. In a Sunday newspaper you find news (usually written from a particular viewpoint) and poetry, prophecies for the future, and wise advice on how to live your life. The Bible has all these things and it also has rules and regulations, ancient tales, lists of tribes, historical records and stories. Bishop Tom thinks that one of the most powerful ways of coming to the Bible is to see it as “a single great story – a drama in which we are all invited to play a part”. He suggests that we think of the Bible as the acts in a play. Before the grand finale, when Jesus comes again and God puts everything right in our world, we have a part to play in this drama, as we listen and act on what God says – just as some of the people in the Bible did. A drama is another word for a play. All of God’s people are called to be part of the play… and some of it is yet to happen. Today, I want us to think about where we fit into the play. But first let’s first look at… THE OLD TESTAMENT “When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was waste and there was darkness. God’s breath hovered over the waters, God said, ‘Let there be light’. And there was light.” That’s one translation of the start of the Bible. Genesis is about origins – of the world, of the human race and of Israel and its ancestors. Let us now reflect on some of the individuals in the Bible. The Old Testament includes this cast list: Adam and Eve – disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit; God banished them from the Garden. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and their temptation by the serpent, is one of the most influential human legends. Abraham and Sarah – God promised Abraham and Sarah that he would bless them with children in their old age, and that their children would be numerous and all the nations of the earth would gain blessing because of Abraham’s obedience. Moses – Moses led the Israelites for 40 years in the wilderness to the Promised Land, and God gave him the Ten Commandments. David – David was specially chosen by God to be King and had a glorious and long reign. He wrote a book in the Bible which we call the Psalms, songs of praise to God. Isaiah – One of the Major Prophets, or God’s messenger. Isaiah foretold the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. THE NEW TESTAMENT Now the New Testament “(And) the Word became flesh and lived among us…” These are the players… John the Baptist – John fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy that he would prepare people for the coming of Christ. Mary – Mary was obedient to God, and said “yes” to becoming the mother of Jesus. Jesus – God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, Jesus Christ, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Matthew – The tax collector called by Jesus to follow him. Matthew became one of the disciples and wrote the first of the Gospels in the Bible. This year we have been learning about Matthew in the lectionary readings. Peter – Jesus called Peter a rock and told him he would build his Church on him. Later, three times Peter denied that he knew Jesus. John – John was the writer of the Fourth Gospel and letters. In the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, he wrote of the vision he had of the Second Coming of Jesus, when heaven and earth will meet together. Paul –Paul travelled to many countries telling everyone about Jesus and spreading the Good News. In the same way that people in a play have different characters, Paul tells us the kind of character God wants to develop in us. In today’s reading, Paul wants us to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, tolerance, forgiveness and love. Paul describes it as letting “Christ’s message in all its richness live in your hearts”. That means by making an effort to understand what God is saying to us and whenever we look at the Bible in church to pray for God to speak to us. The Bible is a drama… … an unfinished drama, which will only be complete when Jesus returns and God creates a new heaven and earth. The final part is the bit of the story in which we play our part. The cast list is you and me. But what part do we play in God’s story? Before answering that here is poem: A Still Small Voice - based on I Kings 19 11-12 “Go out on the mountain,” the Lord told Elijah “I want you to see me when I pass by.” With a blast, rocks trembled and the mountain was rent Though the Lord was not in the wind to be felt. The earth shook next. This was no fake. But the Lord was not in this earthquake A blazing inferno, this must be it! But no fire and flames for the Lord is fit. No, God came to earth from on high With a still small voice, barely a sigh (c)Paul Heatherington 2005 What is a ‘still, small voice’? In Celebrating Life, Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi writes, “It is a sound that you can hear only if you are listening.” If we listen to God, we will start to find out what role He has for us. So let us resolve to offer ourselves to God, so that when we are sent out into the world today, we shall play whatever part God has for us. A PRAYER Father God, you are the author of the drama of creation. You spoke… and created galaxies and every living thing. Jesus, your living Word, brought heaven to earth. Jesus, your living Word, filled people with hope. Jesus, your living Word, healed people and set them free and gathered disciples to play in the drama This morning we give you thanks for the Bible and for your Word to us. We pray that your Word may dwell in each one of us richly and that whatever we do, we will do in the power of your Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus Christ and to your glory. AMEN Ready for the Feast? 3rd Sunday before Advent – 6th November 2005 The Revd. Martin Jackson, Vicar of St. Cuthbert's Amos 5.18-24; 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18; Matthew 25.1-13 When I lived in Jerusalem in the 1970s, I took part in two weddings at the church to which I was attached. In one I got my first opportunity to act as Best Man, though not because I’d known the Groom or the Bride for all that long! I’d met the Bride first over the Middle Eastern equivalent of our “coffee and biscuits” after a service in the Anglican Cathedral, and learned that she was a teacher of English as a Foreign Language in Cairo – now she was spending a bit of free time in Israel and the West Bank. And then I’d met the Groom-to-be at our own church in the Old City of Jerusalem. Somehow it all came together that they knew each other and in fact wanted to marry each other. And we sorted it all out in a remarkably short time! The British Consul was satisfied, the relevant Israeli government office gave the go-ahead, and the people of the church rallied around with the Rector’s wife organising a reception and me feeling rather more nervous than the Groom in my first official role at a wedding. The wonderful thing about it was simply the sense that this ceremony would happen when we were all ready, and that it all rolled on into the celebrations afterwards. Of course, it was all rather more low key than the usual style of Middle Eastern wedding. I encountered one of those within just a few days of arriving in Jerusalem with two members of our congregation who had lived many years in the city getting married. While they were westerners, they’d become quite at home with local customs – and it showed.... We waited ages for even the congregation to arrive. People drifted in as and when. You’ll learn that things happen when they happen, I was told. And so they did. I think the Groom did turn up before the Bride, but no one seemed to be in much of a hurry. Fortunately, in the heat of that day, we didn’t have a tower-load of bell-ringers expiring in the ringing chamber. When I’m making arrangements for marriages here at St. Cuthbert’s I quite often get asked, just what are the rules as to when we can get married? The answer is “any day of the week, so long as it’s between 8a.m. and 6p.m.” The rules are a legal requirement rather than mine. Sometimes people want to make the wedding as late as possible. Then I’ll tell them that we really must start by 4.30p.m., as late as I dare just in case – as in our Gospel reading today – either of the parties to the marriage should be delayed. Under English law they’ve got to finish by 6p.m. And of course by then, from October onwards, they will have to reckon that the sun will have gone down, probably even before they begin – so any pictures taken outside the church will need special attention. The official photographer will need special lighting – the congregation will need flash cameras, not just to rely on the pictures from their mobile phones. It’s when we’re properly prepared that we can be relaxed, and a good time can be had by all! But in what respect should we be prepared? I think we can learn from the customs of the Middle East which we glimpse in the Gospels and which continue there by and large to this day. We can learn especially that there is something more important than forcing people into a mould of expectation. We need to listen to what people want. We can’t afford to get uptight when things don’t all work out the way we expect them to. In terms of the church we need to see that the wedding ceremony in church is a part of a larger whole. What we do in the service gives meaning to everything else, but it doesn’t stand on its own. It works when it draws from its participants (not only the Bride and Groom but their families and friends) all that they bring in terms of their feelings, fears, hopes, joys, anxieties, friendships and love, moving from day-to-day life in the wider world to a sense of specialness and divine purpose which hopefully is brought out in the sacrament of marriage and then sent back again into worldly celebration and the hum-drum day-to-dayness of life after the honeymoon. We find that glimpsed in the Gospel stories which have the context of a wedding. The long and possibly quite drunken celebrations at Cana in Galilee where Jesus fuels the banquet with water turned to wine. The wedding-feast to which people are invited from the highways and byways – which is a parable of the kingdom without any mention of religion! And today’s parable of the ten bridesmaids, five wise and five foolish. Some commentators on this passage say there’s no point in worrying about the details of the story, that the point is made simply in having some people ready and others unprepared for the coming of the Groom as a figure of Christ. But I think we can learn from meditating upon the context of the wedding – and a Middle Eastern wedding at that. The whole point is that the wedding is not just a half-hour service at a duly appointed time. No one is quite sure when it is going to happen. The custom seems to have been that you got your final invitation to come to the wedding banquet when all the preparations were complete – and you never knew quite how long the sheep and oxen were going to take as you barbecued them on a first century spit. And these celebrations were anyway part of a greater whole. The wedding is more than just a religious service held in a place of worship. People are on the move. Partying goes on all the time. It seems that for the actual wedding the Groom first had to come with his friends to pick up the bridesmaids before they all go on to collect the Bride and then take her back to the Groom’s house for the marriage ceremony and banquet. Our Gospel shows the Groom getting held up. Perhaps there’d been arguments over the wedding contract which held everything up at the last minute. Or maybe it was one of those dreadful do’s which get into a certain type of film where everything goes wrong at the stag night and there’s a real chance that the Groom won’t make it to the wedding. The wedding in our Gospel reading is of course supposed to happen at night, as Jewish weddings do – so the bridesmaids need their lamps, in part so they can see where they’re going after the Groom collects them, in part to add to the atmosphere at the wedding. And when we see them in our reading we find them quite unfazed by the lateness of the Bridegroom – they’re quite happy to have a sort of sleepover while they wait, as probably they’d done many times before. This part in fact doesn’t tie in very well with Jesus’ last words in our Gospel. “Keep awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour,” he tells his disciples. But the fact is that all the bridesmaids – foolish and wise - went to sleep, as verse 5 tells us. There’s nothing wrong with that. And we need to recognise that. You can find Christians who turn religion into a sort of masochism where religious duty requires them never to enjoy themselves or relax. There’s always something more needs doing for them. But the bridesmaids can relax – it’s the Groom who’s late so they’re quite right after they’ve waited so long to go off to sleep so they can continue partying later. The only problem is – will they be able to pick up where they’ve left off? It’s when they wake up that some of the bridesmaids realise they don’t have enough oil for their lamps. They hadn’t made their preparations properly in the first place – and by the time they’ve got more oil they find the door for the banqueting suite has closed on them. The Bridegroom of the Gospel passage seems cold and cruel in his refusal to let the bridesmaids in. “I do not know you,” he replies. But for all that the story is a parable of the kingdom, it would nevertheless be a mistake to identify the Bridegroom with Jesus or God. The point the story makes is the urgency required of us in acting upon our faith. Make sure things are sorted out now! It’s not because God is going to turn us down as citizens of his kingdom. It’s because this is the way the world is: act too late and we miss the bus; don’t keep putting off what we know we really need to do, because there is the very real possibility we’ll never get the chance to do it. In no situation can we afford just to sit back and expect things to happen. The fact is, if we sit back things won’t just stay the same: they’ll wind down, the oil will run out, and then we’ll find ourselves in the dark. The Gospel call is that we should be ready for action. Ready to enjoy ourselves, ready to recognise the blessings of faith and all that God gives us, but never taking any of it for granted. Faith calls us to be prepared. We are called to respond with our whole lives. Are there relationships in our lives that are in need of healing? Are there things we need to say to people that we keep putting off? We mustn’t be fooled into thinking we have all the time in the world to sort our lives out – the message of today's gospel is clear: we do not know how long we have got. We can have faith that our future is in God’s hands. But our present circumstances require us to get on with the job. Are we like the wise bridesmaids – open minded and fully prepared? Or like the foolish bridesmaids – with pockets of our lives untouched by the Gospel message; not prepared enough? In just about every human life there comes at least one moment of crisis. Most human lives have many more than one time of crisis. If we want to be able to handle that crisis, not only without going under but also growing through it, we need to pick up our spare flask of oil right now. All of us need God's love and comfort and support and strength, and we need to act upon our belief in him. All are welcome to the great feast of life, but only those who believe and act upon that belief are able to enjoy it to its utmost. Remembrance Sunday 2005 2nd Sunday before Advent - 13th November 2005 Remembrance Sunday The Revd. Martin Jackson, Vicar of St. Cuthbert's Zephaniah 1.7,12-18; Matthew 25.14-30 In getting ready to preach today, I’ve found myself re-visiting a story I’ve told before. We have a new priest at St. Mary’s, Blackhill and Our Lady of the Rosary - Father Seamus Doyle - and I met him for the first time last week. I hope he’ll be with those of us who gather at Memorial Cottages for our village Act of Remembrance this afternoon. But the story I have in mind is of a near namesake of his, Father William Doyle. This Fr. Doyle was a Roman Catholic Jesuit Priest who served as a Chaplain during the First World War. Like so many of those to whom he ministered, he did not return from the front line. He was lost so long ago. But the story of Fr. Willie Doyle is worth re-telling. Although he was an Irish nationalist, he served with the British Army as Chaplain to the 16th Irish Division. During the Battle of the Somme he was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery. He himself wrote vividly of life at the front, where he gained a reputation among Irish troops for his apparent invulnerability as he ministered to the wounded and dying. He wrote of a shell that landed near him as he went about his ministry: “The two men who had been standing at my left hand... were stretched on the ground dead, but I myself, though a bit stunned, was absolutely untouched, though covered with dirt and blood.” Despite all his experiences, Fr. Doyle continued his ministry amid the greatest dangers on the western front until the Battle of Passchendaele in August 1917. There, during an offensive, he spent the last hours of his life ministering to dying soldiers in no man’s land. A British War Correspondent who had heard of his work wrote: “All through the worst hours (he) went about among the dead and dying, giving absolution to his boys. Four men were killed by shell fire as he knelt beside them and he was not touched... until his own turn came. A shell burst close by and the padre fell dead.” A witness later saw his body on a stretcher being carried by men with tears streaming down their faces, but no one knows where his body was buried. Fr. Willie Doyle was recommended for the Victoria Cross, but the authorities of his church refused to allow his name to go forward – and while there were calls for the Church to make him a saint, they seem to have gone unheeded. The Church’s reasons appear to have been that in ministering as he did to the dying, he was only fulfilling his duties as a priest. When I read the account of Fr. Willie Doyle’s life and sacrificial death, I first wondered why the Church should seek to stop the award of the highest decoration for bravery to one of its priests. But then its reason struck another chord – he had only been doing his duty. And I thought of the occasion in today’s Gospel reading when Jesus asks the disciples how a slave relates to his master. Should someone who has been working all day in the fields ploughing or looking after sheep expect to be able to come in, sit down and find his meal already prepared? If you were the master, asks Jesus, wouldn’t you say, “Right, get my supper ready – serve me first and then you can eat later”? And wouldn’t the slaves say: “we’ve only done what we ought to have done”? Willie Doyle knew what it was to be a servant of God – and he knew that his calling as a priest was to serve alongside other men who were called to give their lives in the service of their country. If their calling was to take them to their deaths, then he would be there with them, even if he was to die with them. And so he did – he had only done his duty as a priest. But even more, hopefully, he had done his duty in recognising their common humanity and offering that before God. I add that rider about recognising our humanity, because that is what must come first in a world where so often people ascribe evil acts to their desire to be obedient to God. Jesus may tell the story of the master and the slave, but I don’t think it’s to say this is how we should relate to God. Is God really a master who orders his slaves around – are we to grovel and say to him, in the words St. Luke uses, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.” Because Jesus is surely the one who brings home to us the worth, the value, of our humanity. It’s Jesus who tells us that if we are to look for the Son of Man in his glory, we should seek to find him in our neighbour, that serving Christ means recognising him in the poor, the hungry, the homeless... even in the criminal sent to jail. Being a Christian cannot be about being a worthless slave. It does mean recognising our call to service, but this is a service which is to be freely entered into and which is our free response to God’s love. That’s something that one of the servants in today’s Gospel reading fails to see. Each of these three men is entrusted with some of his master’s wealth when the master goes off on a journey. It’s obviously a long journey which will take the master away for a long time. And while the three servants are described as slaves, they are evidently allowed a considerable amount of freedom and responsibility – it’s up to them how they will use the money entrusted to their keeping. And the money they are given is a vast amount – even the third servant, judged to be least capable, is given one talent, the amount that the average worker in his day would have taken 15 years to earn. No doubt all three servants are up to the job. The first two set the money to work, and double the amount entrusted to them – and present it back to their master. Perhaps the third could have done likewise. His problem is that he doesn’t understand his master. He has got it all wrong. He tells him, “Master, I knew you to be a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” If the three servants are described as slaves, perhaps it’s because of this third one, who has conditioned himself into being a slave. He can see his master only as one who makes demands, and doesn’t ponder how reasonable they may be, how they give him the chance to prove himself. His own meanness he projects on to the master as greed, quite unable to see that the master is a man who rewards his servants with generosity. And all of this combines to make him live in fear. He acts so as to take the easiest option which he considers to be fitting to his position – and, in hiding the talent away so that it can simply be safely dug up again later, he proves his worthlessness. This is the man who can most fittingly say those words I quoted from St. Luke’s Gospel, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.” If only he could have done something more worthy of him. Today on Remembrance Sunday, we remember all those who have given their lives in time of war – and we dare to hope that it was in the cause of right. Lives lost merely for the sake of orders are lives which have been rendered worthless even before they have been cut short. Lives given for the sake of freedom and in the cause of justice proclaim their own worth as they are laid down that others may live out their humanity to the full. How can we make a worthy response now?.. It’s good that at least we stop and keep silence - cease the activity which so often makes us unaware of what is really important. I’m glad that people are asked to keep a two minute silence on 11th November itself. At 11a.m. last Friday I found myself in the Baltic in Gateshead - it’s one of those places that is self-consciously modern, and I was doubtful whether they would announce a formal silence (just not “cool”!). But at three minutes to the hour the music in the coffee bar was turned off, and at 11a.m. an announcement was made over the public address system that the two minute silence would be kept. A woman on another table sat quietly and looked out of the window. But the girl on the counter was in the middle of serving a customer and carried on - though without speaking. A group of middle-aged women continued to chat and laugh. It made me think. Were they too embarrassed simply to discontinue the conversation? Who would say - let’s stop? How many people these days can get their minds round a place for silence, reflection and prayer? I suspect that for so many people, “peace” is a matter of not being touched by the troubles of others. It’s about my sense of being able to dwell secure - of being able to maintain my own “space”. So my pension needs to be protected, my house needs to keep increasing in value, avian flu may have been a problem for some time in the Far East but it becomes a real problem when it might arrive here… and when my country’s security is remotely threatened it needs to be sorted out before trouble can touch me - and we can find ourselves quite insensible to the damage we can inflict on others. But I need to remain unscathed. Today we remember those who have discovered what the cause of peace truly means. In the cemeteries of the War Graves Commission, one of the inscriptions most seen on the graves of those who died in the First World War is a verse from the Bible: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends.” In its original context, the verse refers to the love of Jesus which takes him to the Cross for our sake – but that in itself is to recognise the dignity and worth of those for whom Christ died. When we use these words of the war-dead, then they are a reminder of where all their sacrifice needs to be directed now: into loving service of others that our common humanity might be fulfilled. That was what Fr. Willie Doyle did, ministering to men who were only a few breaths away from death at the cost of his own life. That is what we recognise in those from our own community who gave their lives in the wars of the last century. That is the service to which we need to dedicate ourselves once more again today, with wisdom, courage, hope and faithfulness.  Email page  Feedback  Home Home Page |How to find us |Activities |Services & Times |How can we help? |Church Hall & Bookings |Who's Who? |This Sunday's Bible Readings |Parish News - May 2008 |Parish Gallery 2001 |Homilies: October 2001 - February 2002 |This Month's Calendar |Thinking about Baptism |Thinking about Marriage |Faith & Action - inclusiveness and opportunity |Aids to Prayer |Children & Holy Communion |Homilies: Easter-tide 2002 |Homilies: May - November 2002 |Parish Review 2002 |Photo Page 2002 |Homilies: December 2002 - February 2003 |Celebrating 2003 - people in pictures |Homilies: Lent & Easter-tide 2003 |Ordinary Time - Sermons 2003 |Pictures - summer 2003 |Sermons - Advent 2003 - Epiphany 2004 |Annual Reports 2007 (APCM 2008) |Sermons - Lent & Easter-tide 2004 |Sermons - Ordinary Time 2004 |Sunday School |Sermons - Advent + Christmas 2004, Epiphany 2005 |Sermons - Lent & Easter 2005 |Sermons - Ordinary Time 2005 |St. Paul - a series from St. Cuthbert's |Sermons: Advent 2005 to Trinity Sunday 2006 |Sermons - Ordinary Time 2006 |Sermons 2007 |Sermons 2008 |Contact Information for Parish of Saint Cuthbert, Benfieldside |Links for Parish of Saint Cuthbert, Benfieldside |Guestbook |Mail Form