5/12/21
News from the Benwell & Scotswood Team
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Marc Chagall, The Prophet Isaiah, 1968
Oil on canvas, Chagall Museum, Nice
Dates for your diary
Thurs 16 Dec, 6.30pm
Carols from St Johns
Tues 21 Dec, 3.30pm
St James Outdoor Christmas event
Joint event with Food Bank, Heritage & Environment Group, and other community partners
24 Dec - Christmas Eve
2-3.30pm - St Margaret Messy Christmas
3.30pm - St Margaret Crib service
24 Dec - Christmas Eve, 11.30pm
Midnight Mass at Venerable Bede
25 Dec - Christmas Day, 10.30am
Holy communion at Venerable Bede
Sun 26 Dec - Boxing Day/St Stephen's Day, 10.30am
Holy Communion at Venerable Bede
News
Advent & Christmas programme
Carols from St John's
Thursday 16th December, 6.30pm
Location: St John's Benwell Village, NE15 6NW
Join us for a traditional service of readings and carols from St John's.
St James Outdoor Christmas Event
Tuesday 21st December, 3.30pm
Location: St James Benwell, NE15 6RS (in the churchyard)
Join us at our big festive extravaganza! This community event is organised jointly with the West End Foodbank, the Heritage & Environment Group, and other local organisations. There will be lights around the churchyard, mulled wine, mince pies, a band will lead us in singing your favourite Christmas carols, we will have a creative re-telling of the nativity story and more. Just remember to wrap up warm!
St Margaret's Messy Christmas Eve and Crib service
24th December
2-3.30pm - Messy Christmas
3.30pm - Crib service
Location: St Margaret Scotswood, NE15 6AR
An afternoon for the whole family making Christmas crafts and decorations.
At 3.30pm we tell the story of Jesus' birth and build our nativity scene with a crib service.
Midnight Mass
24th December, 11.30pm
Location: Venerable Bede West Road, NE4 8AP
Join us for one of the most beautiful services of the year. By candlelight, just before midnight on Christmas Eve, we gather to celebrate the coming Jesus Christ with Holy Communion. You are welcome even if you have never been before.
Christmas Day
25th December, 10.30am
Location: Venerable Bede West Road, NE4 8AP
Join us on Christmas morning to celebrate the coming of Jesus with Holy Communion. You are welcome even if you have never been before.
St Stephen's Day
Sunday 26th December (Boxing Day) 10.30am
Location: Venerable Bede West Road, NE4 8AP
Join us on the feast of Stephen for Sunday Holy Communion.
Have a rubbish Christmas!
Local artist Petra Ondrova and Revd Chris are making a big nativity scene made out of rubbish collected from the local area! We wanted to show that looking after the environment and the local area is a good thing. But also, after two years of having 'rubbish' Christmasses, we liked the idea of turning something rubbish into something good!
If you would like to help us make it then join us at St James on Tuesday 12-4 or Wednesday 10-1 for the next 2 weeks.
We are hoping this will be the crib scene for our Christmas event at St James on 21st Dec.
Donations and assistance for Christmas flowers
Donations for flowers for Christmas would be greatly appreciated. Help with flower arranging is also welcomed on 23rd of Dec. Please speak to Elspeth Kirkwood.
If anyone else was planning to help with flowers already then Elspeth is very happy to co-ordinate.
Worship Texts
The Advent wreath
2nd Sunday, the Prophets:
Lord Jesus, light of the world,
the prophets said you would bring peace
and save your people in trouble.
Give peace in our hearts at Christmas
and show all the world God’s love.
Amen.
The Collect
O Lord, raise up, we pray, your power
and come among us,
and with great might succour us;
that whereas, through our sins and wickedness
we are grievously hindered
in running the race that is set before us,
your bountiful grace and mercy
may speedily help and deliver us;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit,
be honour and glory, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Malachi 3.1–4 See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Gospel
Luke 3.1–6 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, ‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’
Sermon
The Revd Dominic Coad
It’s great to be speaking to you this morning because I won’t be seeing you for a few weeks. As most of you know, Frances and I are expecting our second child very soon. In fact, we will go into hospital for an induction tomorrow. It is, of course, a very special time, not to mention a nervous time, as we look forward to bringing a new life into the world and hope we will be up to the task of caring for them!
It is, of course, rather appropriate to be awaiting a new baby during Advent but it also brings home what Mary must have gone through to bring Jesus into the world. Pregnancy and birth are, even in the modern world, difficult and challenging for women, especially during COVID. But as I think about what Frances and I have experienced to get to this point I find it hard to comprehend what waiting for Christmas must have been like for Mary, all those centuries ago.
However, our focus this morning isn’t on Mary (we will light her candle on the Advent wreath in 2 weeks time). It isn’t even on John the Baptist (who’s candle we light next week) despite his prominence in our gospel reading. No, our focus this morning, on this second Sunday of Advent is on the Prophets, those special people whom God called to deliver his message to the people.
Now, when we think about prophets, we might be tempted to think of people who predict the future. Indeed, some Christians even make the mistake of thinking this way and imagine their words in the Bible can be decoded to provide information about the end of the world; how and when it will happen.
But the Bible isn’t some McGuffin from a Dan Brown novel and the prophets have not left us coded messages about the future. No, when the prophets speak they don’t speak about the future but about what is happening now, and what is just about to happen. And what they tell us is happening now is that there is great wrong in the world. And what they tell us is about to happen is that God is going to act.
Listen again to what we heard in our first reading from the prophet Malachi: ‘the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple… But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiners fire…’ These are not words that impart special knowledge of the future, they are words that only say what anyone who truly knows God already knows: that humanity and its actions will be judged against the standards of God’s justice. We hear the same warning from John this morning as he proclaims a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins, saying ‘prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’
Thus we here again the Advent call to get ready, to prepare ourselves for Christ’s coming. The prophets tell us to change the way we are living in response to their message. John called people to repentance, to turn around, to prepare the way of the Lord, as we heard in our reading this morning. But what does that mean? How are we to live?
The question is an important one but it can also be a dangerous one. You see, when faithful Christians genuinely desire to follow God and live life in response to his love and grace, it gives people like me a lot of power.
You see, I could stand here in my pulpit and tell you how you should live your life, how you should act, what behaviour is acceptable. And I could tell you that my opinions about these things are not really opinions at all but the very words of God, given to the prophets and recorded in the Bible.
As anyone who has been hurt by the church is painfully aware, priests and others in power can do a lot of damage when they tell people how to live because oftentimes such pronouncements are not reflections of who God is but merely of the people holding the power; reflections of their preferences and prejudices. Rather than draw people closer to Christ, such self-interested pronouncements produce nothing more than a sense of failure and shame.
Hopefully this isn’t your experience, hopefully your experience of the Church and our teaching has helped you draw closer to God and understand his love for you more deeply. But then, of course, you’re still here. We do need to understand that those who have been most hurt by the church are not usually still around to challenge us with their experiences.
I think we should all take responsibility for trying to find those voices and listen to them, those who have become outsiders to us. Those who, like the prophets, want to tell us that something is wrong and something must be done. Indeed, those voices are perhaps the closest we have to the prophets today. You see, the prophets were not powerful, they weren’t ordained, they didn’t hold important positions, they were outsiders. Very often they found themselves in opposition to the people who held political and religious power. In fact, John the Baptist who was executed for challenging the corruption of King Herod Antipas.
The voices of the prophets should be disruptive, they should challenge those in charge to be humble before God and share their power. It is not for me, or anyone else, to dictate to you how you should behave, how you should respond to the Advent call. The message of the prophets belongs to you. Take it, read it, decide for yourself how you want it to shape your view of the world, and your actions. That is what prophecy is for – it is to be wrestled with, to be mulled over, to be drunk in, until it begins to shape and change who we are and makes us not into the people that the powerful want us to be but that God wants us to be.
Intercessions
Prayers for others:
John Nicholson
Alan Robson
Peter Wilson
Esmaeel
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:
Tony Greener
Mehri Karami
Moira Taylor
Jimmy McIntyre
Janet and Frank Galbraith
All who died recently
Other intentions:
those who died crossing the channel this week
Post Communion prayer
Father in heaven,
who sent your Son to redeem the world
and will send him again to be our judge:
give us grace so to imitate him
in the humility and purity of his first coming
that, when he comes again,
we may be ready to greet him
with joyful love and firm faith;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.