5/8/21
News from the Benwell & Scotswood Team
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Edwin Landseer, Alexander and Diogenes, 1848
Tate, London
Don't forget! Today services in all 4 churches
Sunday 5th September:
9.45am - Venerable Bede
9.45am - St James
11.15am - St John's
11.15am - St Margaret's
As our last attempt at four services was scuppered by unforeseen circumstances, we are going to try again with a Sunday service in all four of our churches for the first time in over a year! We are trying out different patterns for our clergy to sustain worship in all our buildings without calling in outside help. This is not necessarily the times we will go with in the future but an attempt to see what timings might work.
Dates for your diary
Wednesday 8th September
Members of 'Mission Action Planning' group to meet
2pm at St Margaret's
Tuesday 14th September
Treasurers meeting
7pm on Zoom
Sunday 26th September - Sunday 3rd October
Newcastle Diocese Generosity Week
Wednesday 6th October
PCC meeting
7.30pm on Zoom
News
Rota
If you help us with readings/intercession/worship on Sundays then find the latest rota up until 24th October here:
If you are interested in being involved in worship then just speak with one of the clergy who will happily talk you through what it requires.
St James, Benwell - Heritage Open Days
Sat 11th Sept & Wed 15th Sept, 10am - 4pm
The Heritage and environment group will be organising guided tours and we will also open the church to look around. Explore the historic graveyard burial place of some of Tyneside's most significant people.
Pre-booking for the tours is essential, find all the info here >
Guided tour "Who's Who in the Graveyard": Saturday 11th September 1pm. Find out more about some of the interesting people buried here. Guided tour "A Walk around Roman Benwell": Wednesday 15th September 11am. This circular walk passes along the route of Hadrian's Wall and the site of Condercum Fort, taking in the remains of the Roman Temple and Vallum Crossing.
Contact the Heritage & Environment group at stjamesbenwell@gmail.com
Lunch Break to return - Tues 21st September, 12-2pm
Our weekly 'pay what you feel' lunch returns next month at St James!
From 21st September, every Tuesday there will be a simple lunch with teas coffees. You are welcome, whatever your age or background. This is always a great time to get to know all sorts of people in your local community.
Food will be brought to your tables and staff will wear masks. Please sanitise your hands and sign-in with the app or on paper when you arrive.
If you would like to help out with Lunch Break then let us know! We have volunteer opportunities for those who want to cook, wash-up, welcome and serve at tables.
Covid-19 update
No doubt you will have heard that covid restrictions are being relaxed. As case rates are still high in our area you won't see too much change just yet! But we do have plans to reintroduce activities.
Most importantly - please get your vaccine if you haven't yet! And stay at home if you develop covid symptoms. Find vaccine times and locations here >
Cornerstone Community Cafe open!
Wednesdays & Thursdays 10am - 2pm
62 Armstrong Road, NE4 7TU
Delicious affordable meals
Outdoor Seating
Dog Friendly
Kids Corner
Computer and Internet Access
Computer help
Food pantry and emergency foodbank
and a great pre-loved shop!
Worship texts
Collect
Almighty God,
whose only Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence:
give us pure hearts and steadfast wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth;
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.
Amen.
Reading
James 2.1–10,14–17 My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favouritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please’, while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there’, or, ‘Sit at my feet’, have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonoured the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
Gospel
Mark 7.24–37 From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’
Sermon
The Revd David Kirkwood
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is the first Sunday in the month and so one of our experimental Sundays. We are using the opportunity of the pandemic and the end of lockdowns to try different things. You might remember we trialled a service especially for those new to worship or new to the UK and then a service including families and children with baptisms. The experiment this time is to do what we always used to do and have not been able to do for a year and a half i.e. to have a service in each of our four churches. (Again you may remember we tried this in July and unfortunately it didn’t work out as both David and Dominic found at short notice they were unable to take part.)
You might ask the question why? What is it we are hoping to achieve? The answer is not experiment for the sake of experiment, rather it is about trying to find out best way to serve our community and to reach out with the gospel to those around us. We want our church to be open, accessible, welcoming to all. We don’t want it to feel unfriendly, cliquey, only there for an in group or a certain kind of person. We want it to reflect and show the love of Jesus for everyone in our parish. We don’t want to be putting any obstacles in the way of those who feel moved to draw near, rather we want to encourage them.
We just heard in the reading from James how the church should not be making distinctions, rich & poor are to be on the same footing, or if anything preference should be shown to the poor. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? That is the kind of church we want to be.
So it comes as a bit of a shock when we hear in the Gospel Jesus telling a gentile woman asking for his help that , ‘it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.'
Huh! Welcoming to all? No distinctions! Jesus himself makes a clear distinction and in a most insulting way. There are children, and there are dogs. The children are God’s people, the Jews. The dogs are those who are not his people, the Gentiles -i.e. everybody else.
‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
How can Jesus have been so harsh? So off message? It is not easy to answer this, some have suggested that the word for dogs is not so dismissive as it sounds, perhaps more like pet dogs or ‘little doggies’, but to be honest I’m not sure that makes it less offensive it just makes it sound patronising as well.
To really understand we need to look not just at the language Jesus uses but at the whole incident. The woman comes obviously in great need. Her daughter needs healing, so she makes her request humbly, bowing down to Jesus. As a woman and as a gentile she is doubly an outsider, and even getting this far shows great courage. Despite her lack of status and the contempt or indifference she might expect, she braces herself to break into this charmed circle and goes directly to the one she thinks can help. She is not doing this for herself, she just wants her daughter to be well. In a gesture of genuine humility she throws herself at Jesus’ feet. Then she gets the rebuff -perhaps she half expects it, she already knows what Jews think of her kind of people. But what hurts her is not being called a dog but the fear that her plea will be rejected. He’s not going to heal her daughter. How does she respond? It’s very easy to imagine another kind of response. It’s not unusual for people to make requests at church or wherever, sometimes in a very humble and respectful manner, but you can’t always help, and when they are told so, they can suddenly become abusive- and that is without anyone calling them dogs. We could imagine this woman going off the deep end, ‘You arrogant, uncaring, blank, blank Jews’. But no, what she wants is to have her daughter healed, and she keeps that focus. She doesn’t leap into an argument, at least on the face of it, she accepts what she is told. ‘Alright if we are the dogs, not the children so be it’, but she is not going away. Her humility is combined with boldness, a boldness which is even a kind of cheek. ‘OK well if we are dogs, dogs can at least eat the crumbs from the table, and all I want is the crumbs.’ And Jesus responds, ‘For this word you may go the demon has left your daughter.’
So what is going on here? Has Jesus changed his mind?
If so why? Has her submission impressed her? because she has accepted the hierarchy, Jews on top, Gentiles as dogs who get the crumbs.
Or is it something else. It is true Jesus specifically praises her ‘saying’ her answer, but I don’t read it as a praise of passivity rather the reverse. This is a woman with ‘chutzpah’. The word comes from the Hebrew ‘huspah’ meaning cheek, insolence or audacity. It can be a negative word, but in Yiddish it also includes a kind of spiritual audacity a commendable sticking your neck out for truth. ‘Shy bairns get nowt’ and this lady is no shy bairn. She has the persistence of the woman in the parable who keeps badgering the judge until she gets justice, or the man who visits his friend in the middle of the night and won’t take no for an answer and she also has a razor sharp quick wit! That is ‘chutzpah’. Whatever her words might say far from accepting hierarchy her whole demeanour challenges and undermines it. It seems to work for Jesus, whatever his words might say his action shows acceptance, she is not a dog but a daughter and she will have her healing.
So, has she changed Jesus’ mind? -is Jesus learning? That is a very tough question that raises all kinds of theological issues about what it means to be both human and divine. Sadly(?) we don’t have time to go into that right now. What is certain is that Jesus is teaching, ‘Jesus himself knew what he intended to do’ may be a phrase we can apply here. Jesus having appeared to accept an excluding world view ends up by overturning it. His actions are to open up not to close down. ‘Ephphatha’ ‘Be opened’
Which brings us back to our experiments in worship and what we hope to achieve. Can all our churches be opened not just open for the Sunday hour of worship for the chosen few (and sometimes getting fewer) but open to all those who long to hear that word that frees and heals restores and saves. For healing and salvation in its widest sense.
This is our goal but it’s not something we can simply fix in our own strength, what we can do is try and imitate the woman in the story and, not for ourselves but for those who need to hear, have the ‘chutzpah’ to ask and keep on asking after all ‘Shy Bairns get nowt’. Amen.
Intercessions
Prayers for others:
Edith Hutchinson
Peter Wilson
John Nicholson
Liz Holliman
Joan Finley
James, Christina, and baby Xavier
Anastasia Miklewright
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
Baptisms:
Ayla Ann Oliver
Rest In Peace:
Eric Harling
All who lost their lives from Covid 19
Other intentions:
Afghanistan & Iran
Post-Communion
Lord God, the source of truth and love,
keep us faithful to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,
united in prayer and the breaking of bread,
and one in joy and simplicity of heart,
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.