14/11/21
News from the Benwell & Scotswood Team
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Edwin Lutyens, Sketch of the proposed Cenotaph, 1919;
Pencil on paper; Imperial War Museum, London
Dates for your diary
Sunday 14th Nov
Remembrance Sunday
Services in all 4 churches
9.30am St James (act of remembrance on 11th)
10am St Margaret's
10.30am Venerable Bede
11am St John's
Sunday 21st Nov
10.30am, Confirmation service
Venerable Bede, NE4 8AP
Sunday 28th Nov
Advent Sunday
News
Remembrance 2021
You are invited to join in each of our churches this coming week. We remember those who gave their lives in the First World War and all other wars, and we pray for an end to all conflicts.
Remembrance Sunday -14th November
9.30am - Holy Communion (Act of Remembrance previously on 11th)
10am - Holy Communion
11am - Act of Remembrance with Scotswood Village Residents association
10.30am - Holy Communion with Act of Remembrance
11am - Act of Remembrance followed by Holy Communion
Next Sunday - Confirmations
Sunday 21st Nov, 10.30am, Venerable Bede
Confirmation is the next big step in faith, it's the chance to say ‘Yes’ to the promises we made at baptism, and declare our faith in Christ publicly.
To find out more about confirmation have a look here >
Bishop Mark Bryant, former Bishop of Jarrow, will be joining us for the service of baptism and confirmation.
Please pray for the candidates as they prepare for this big step!
Zanyar Noori
Behrooz Mohammadi
Payam Parvizi
Hadis Grurani
Mohammed Javad Abdolijomour
Ali Same
Ibrahim Farahi
Nasser Angouti
Mehdi Abbasi
Mohammed Reza Zereshki
Ebrahim Yazdenbaksh
Somita Naghibi
Reza Raoufi
Ansar Moradi
Mamy Esther Kolie
Christopher Foskett
Satar Faraji
Update on Covid-19 and worship during winter
We want to keep you informed of our plans for the short term. We always try to reach a consensus that takes everyone into account and we want to be completely transparent about how we make these decisions.
We imagine keeping our policies throughout the winter until Easter 2022. But clergy and the PCC will constantly review and discuss the best way to balance worship and activities with safety when cases are on the rise again. You may be interested in finding out about some of our current policies here:
Policy on mask-wearing
Although it is not mandatory to wear a mask, we strongly encourage you to wear a mask if you can. Remember, masks protect those around you, not yourself.
Singing
Singing and music are absolutely vital to our worship and we know it is greatly missed, but we also recognise that singing is one of the riskiest group activities for spreading the virus.
We are therefore keeping singing to our monthly experimental services so that those who are vulnerable are not excluded from joining us every week. On Sundays when we are in all 4 churches, each church will set its own policy depending on capacity and safety.
After-service refreshments
We have moved to the Venerable Bede for most Sundays, but the church is not currently set up with hot water or space for tables to provide teas and coffees easily and safely. We also do not want anyone to feel pressurised into partaking in a risky activity. So we are opening our churches as much as we can throughout the week (e.g. lunch break) so people have a choice about attending these activities or not without missing worship.
Worship Texts
Collect prayer
Almighty Father,
whose will is to restore all things
in your beloved Son, the King of all:
govern the hearts and minds of those in authority,
and bring the families of the nations,
divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin,
to be subject to his just and gentle rule;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Daniel 12.1–3
‘At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.
Or Hebrews 10.11–14 [15–18]19–25 And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God’, and since then has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’ For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.[ And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds’, he also adds, ‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’ Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.] Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Gospel
Mark 13.1–8 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’ When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’ Then Jesus began to say to them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
Sermon
The Revd David Kirkwood
In the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit Amen
Today’s reading from the gospel doesn’t make for comfortable listening. Jesus warns his friends that not only will the temple that they are admiring, a sign of strength and stability and for many Jews a sign of God’s blessing, not only will that be torn down and laid to waste but worse is to come, wars, rumours of wars, earthquakes, famines and general misery and destruction are all on the cards.
If you have been following the news from the Climate Change conference in Glasgow, you might be forgiven for thinking it all sounds quite contemporary.
There is however a significant difference Jesus is speaking from within a tradition we call ‘Apocalyptic’ a word associated with the end of the world, but which really means ‘Revelation’ This was a tradition that grew out of the intense suffering of the Jewish people during times of exile and persecution. Despite the horrific day to day reality of life in that time apocalyptic thinkers insisted that viewed against a larger canvas, past and present sufferings, no matter how intense, should be seen as a revelation of God’s purpose and the promise of His coming kingdom. It was a doctrine of hope. As Jesus puts it here, all these things are but ‘the birth pangs of a new age’
The climate apocalypticists take no such comfort, their banners proclaim ‘there is no planet B’
We might be tempted to think that, if wars and rumours of war are birth pangs, the labour has been somewhat over extended. Today is also Remembrance Sunday recalling the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when in 1918, thousands of men stopped attempting to kill one other and went back to whatever remained of their lives. It would not be long before it all began again. Today we remember the wars and rumours of war that have been the stuff of every century from the first to the twenty-first and the countless millions of those who have suffered as a result.
How does that make us feel about Jesus’ promise? Do we with the Psalmist cry out ‘How long O Lord. How Long? With the writer of proverbs do we complain that ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick’.’?
If our remembrance is to mean anything it needs to be able to cope with disappointment and yet still, with the ancient apocalypticists, find some ground for hope but if it is to be hope for today it needs also to recognise the reality of our world, the gravity of our situation and the fact that there really is ‘no planet B.’
In previous ages human extinction was always felt to be a possibility but it was seen to be a Divine prerogative it was as they say ‘in the lap of the gods’. For us human extinction remains a possibility, but the thunderbolts are now in our own hands. The eleventh hour. the doomsday clock, the last chance saloon, all phrases we have heard constantly repeated during the COP conference and meant to alert us to the reality of our situation. Remembrance Sunday reminds us that Climate Change is not the only threat to our planet another war with nuclear weapons could do the job much more quickly. Christians should be listening, we cannot afford to simply say ‘peace’ peace’ when there is no peace’ just another form of ‘Blah, Blah Blah’ but having listened we do also need to be able to speak and to speak a word of hope.
When the Climate protestors say there is no planet B, they don’t mean so let’s all give up and go home. They mean let’s see if we can’t do something with Planet A before doomsday.
If the thunderbolts are in our hands and not the hands of the gods, does that not mean, we have some agency over them? If we can wield them, can we not also lay them aside? Of course, we can feel powerless in the face of such powerful forces of destruction and death, but our Faith should encourage and empower us. Our hope is not whistling in the wind but firmly based on what we have ‘seen and heard from the beginning the Word who is life (I john 1:1)
This Word of hope rings out clearly in our first reading It tells of Jesus offering himself as ‘one single sacrifice for sins’ opening for us a ‘living way into God’s presence.’ He does that for us here on earth, in our history, on Planet A, at a specific time and place. When the temple of Jerusalem is swept away, as he warned it would be a new living temple has already been be raised up. He was speaking of the temple of His Body. The history of suffering does not end on the day, that temple is raised up, but it is changed. The reality of suffering is never more real than it is on Golgotha not only the physical suffering of Jesus but the mental anguish of His Mother and his faithful and faithless friends but from the cross another reality, the reality of Love, Love both Divine And Human is uniquely revealed. ‘The light shines in the darkness.’ It may seem like a two thousand year wait but the reality is each new generation of the faithful have found there, even in their darkest moments, the encouragement that the Day is indeed drawing near. That encouragement has transformed them enabling them to make a difference transforming others too. Our Remembrance Sunday comes in this season, ‘the Kingdom season’ if you like, when we recall not just victims but Saints all those whose lives have been touched by and carried that transforming light. The writer of Proverbs who warns ‘hope deferred makes the heart sick’ continues that ’when desire comes it is a tree of Life’. The Tree of Life for us is to be found at Calvary Through the cross Christians find meaning in suffering but there is nothing masochistic about it, ours is no death cult, ‘tree of life’ is the right word because in this death we find life the life Jesus promised ‘life in all its fullness’. Not life after death but life before, during and after. Life greater than death.
For Christians, every Sunday is a Remembrance Sunday. We step aside and make time to remember this life-giving death in bread and wine. We leave behind the things in our lives that are dead and dying We let that life enter into our life, and then then we return, we return to Planet A, we never really left it, but as we hear the words ‘Go in peace to Love and serve the Lord’ we return changed, readied not for more ‘Blah Blah Blah’ but to do what we can to share that light. As Christ changes us, we pray through us and all His people, He will change and save the world. Amen.
Intercessions
Prayers for others:
John Nicholson
Alan Robson
Peter Wilson
Steve & Alison Minchin
Karen & Mal Holmes
Colin Stamp
Esmaeel Haji Nozori
Somayeh Naghibi
Liz Holliman
Joan Finley
James, Christina, Anastasia, and Xavier
Ali Zareie and his family
The Riches Family
Jill Sorley
Joyce Phillips
George Snowden
Claire Mozaffari
Herbert Agbeko
Edward Fraser
All those who are struggling at home or in hospital with Covid-19
Rest In Peace:
Mehri Karami
Moira Taylor
John MacIntyre
Jimmy McIntyre
Leonora Plane
Janet and Frank Galbraith
Other intentions:
All those suffering the effects of war and terror.
Candidates for baptism and confirmation.
Post Communion prayer
God of peace,
whose Son Jesus Christ proclaimed the kingdom
and restored the broken to wholeness of life:
look with compassion on the anguish of the world,
and by your healing power
make whole both people and nations;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen.