25/6/23
Your weekly update from the Benwell & Scotswood Team
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Services this week
Sun 25 June
9.30am - St John's Patronal Festival
11am - Hub service at St James (Parish Eucharist)
4pm - St Margaret's Evening Worship
Wed 28 June
10.30am - Monthly service at Ven Bede
Thurs 29 June
10.30am - Feast of Peter and Paul, Ven Bede
News
St John the Baptist patronal festival - this Sunday, 9.30am
This Sunday 25th June at 9.30am at St John's Benwell village (NE15 6NW), we will be celebrating the feast of the birth of John the baptist. And join us after the service for a celebration brunch!
Feast of Peter & Paul - Dominic's 10 year anniversary of ordination
Join us every Thursday at 10.30 am for our service of Holy Communion at the Venerable Bede, NE4 8AP.
On 29th June it will be the feast of St Peter and Paul, a traditional time for ordinations, and Dominic will preside and preach in celebration of being ordained for 10 years!
Coffee, cake and craft - Wednesday 28th June 9.15-10.30
On the 4th Wednesday of the month at the Venerable Bede Church, 9.15am-10.30am. Come and join us, spend time with other women, share a coffee and cake and try a Bible related craft.
For more info email benwellMU@gmail.com or speak with Leahan Garratt or one of the clergy.
Prayer list
We will soon be refreshing the intercessions prayer list, if there are names you would like to remain on the list or names to be added, please send the name to Kath McIntyre at the church email address church@benwellscotswood.com
before Sunday 25th July.
We will keep each name on the list for 4 Sundays unless you indicate that the person needs to remain on it long-term. Prayers can be requested for anyone who you feel needs it, they don't just have to be those who are ill.
Friends of Denton Dene relaunch event
12-2pm, Sun 25 June
Join the friends of Denton Dene for their free relaunch event!
Family activities, scavenger hunt, meet a roman soldier, and find out more and care about our beautiful green space!
Free soft drink in exchange for litter picking!
Meet at the Bobby Robson Lounge, Blue Star Football Club, NE15 7HB
Facebook: @FriendsOfDentonDene
Items for the notices.
If you would like to announce something in the newsletter or the church service, please send the item in advance to Kath McIntyre at the church email address church@benwellscotswood.com
Please include details and no more than 2-3 short sentences about the item. If you have a preferred image please also include it in the email.
Worship texts
Sunday 25th June 2023
3rd Sunday after Trinity
Proper 7
Green
Sermon
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
Do not be afraid. Comforting words from Jesus in the gospel. Words that recall similar ideas from the sermon on the mount.We should be encouraged by words like these, but if we are honest, it is not always easy to find comfort in them. Jesus calls his hearers you of ‘little faith’ and we can certainly feel like that. The world is not only full of falling sparrows but of all kinds of catastrophes and calamities that seem to make a mockery of Jesus reassurance. Some seem far away, some touch us deeply, but all of them are a challenge to simple faith.
This week, media attention focussed on the search for a billionaire missing while visiting the seabed to view, of all things, the wreck of the Titanic, the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic, immortalised in film and folklore, a parable of human frailty and the vanity of human ambition. This wasn’t the only recent tragedy at sea, a few days earlier more than seven hundred men women and children were drowned off the coast of Greece when a fishing boat overcrowded with those seeking a better life in Europe capsized, just the latest in a succession of similar tragedies.
This week was Refugee Week a festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. The event rightly emphasises the positive benefits refugees bring as individuals and representatives of other cultures, a counter to the hostility and racism that can cloud our understanding of these issues. But here was a reminder that such celebration is against a backdrop of pain and grief, potential, tragically unfulfilled.
How can we hear Jesus’ words Do not be afraid, when we see these things and know how real they are. Catastrophe may not engulf us personally although there are certainly times it can, but it is an ever-present threat. In an age of what has been called the polycrisis with climate change, poverty, economic insecurity, war, and the threat of nuclear destruction all milling around, ominously, like so many icebergs, how much comfort can we really take from the sparrows?
Let’s listen again to what Jesus says and what he doesn’t say. He certainly doesn’t promise a life without crisis or catastrophe. Today’s passage follows immediately on from warnings of the persecution his followers will face, ‘dragged before governors and kings,.. you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.’
‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.’
Jesus certainly doesn’t say ‘don’t be afraid’ nothing bad will ever happen. The whole passage dwells on the bad thing his followers can expect, a warning of the cost of being a disciple. Jesus wants to reassure, but he also wants to warn, there is an urgency in his preaching that should undermine any complacency.
But what is His real warning? Not so much the cost of following Him, although we must be prepared for that, but much more the cost of not following, of missing this opportunity.
‘Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.’
This isn’t about pitchforks and flaming tortures but rather a warning that life is much more than the body and the dangers we face are as much from within as from without.
‘Those who find their life will lose it,’
Jesus warns against a loss of life that is not the same as bodily death but rather a loss of our real self, never finding who we really are and are meant to be, a loss of our eternal destiny, a loss of God.
This is a catastrophe that can be lived without our even being aware of it a catastrophe that can be masked by prosperity or power or the little lies we tell ourselves, but Jesus’ warning is that it is a catastrophe and will one day become apparent. The man who has filled his barns is told ‘You fool this day your life is required of you’. ‘For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life?’
But this catastrophe, our loss of self, our loss of God, is precisely why Jesus came among us.
In the famous words of John’s gospel
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ Jn 3;16
Jesus comes to show us the way of life. yes, there is warning in his words,
Those who find their life will lose it, but more importantly there is promise and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Eternal life, not an easy life is the promise held out to us. It is scary. We are told whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me . We are asked to follow Jesu on a way that was hard for him, remember Gethsemane ‘let this cup pass me by…. but not my will but yours’ or the words from the cross, nothing about sparrows but, ‘My God my God why have you forsaken me. ‘Can we be worthy? Can we have strength to walk that way?
No. Not if we think we can do it in our own strength, we shall certainly fail, but that is not what is asked of us. Jesus takes the initiative he immerses himself in the wonder and the catastrophe of human living and dying and through that immersion catastrophe is itself transformed the catastrophe of sin of separation from God is overcome. He shares our death, embraces it, and embraces us so that we can know and find the way to life.
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Do not be afraid. What looks like disaster, in Him becomes the way of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Amen
Intercessions
If you would like to add someone to the prayer list please email church@benwellscotswood.com
The name will stay on the list for 1 month unless requested to be long-term.
Prayers for others:
Maria Hawthorn
George Snowdon
Ellis Nelson
Pauline Nelson
Michelle Wilson
Peter Wilson
Alan Taylor
Maureen Taylor
Kathleen Germain
Irene Foskett
Herbert Agbeko
Lorraine Atkinson
Collect
Almighty God,
you have broken the tyranny of sin
and have sent the Spirit of your Son into our hearts whereby we call you Father:
give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service,
that we and all creation may be brought to the glorious liberty of the children of God;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
or
God our saviour,
look on this wounded world
in pity and in power;
hold us fast to your promises of peace
won for us by your Son,
our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Readings
Romans 6.1b–11
Romans 6.1b-11 Dying and Rising with Christ 6What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
This is the word of the Lord.
All: Thanks be to God.
Gospel Reading
Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.
All: Glory to you, O Lord.
Matthew 10.24–39
Matthew 10.24-39 24 ‘A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; 25it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! Whom to Fear 26 ‘So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. 27What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.* 29Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. 30And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. 32 ‘Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; 33but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. Not Peace, but a Sword 34 ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For 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; 36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. 37Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
This is the Gospel of the Lord. All: Praise to you, O Christ.
Post Communion
O God, whose beauty is beyond our imagining
and whose power we cannot comprehend:
show us your glory as far as we can grasp it,
and shield us from knowing more than we can bear
until we may look upon you without fear;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.