22/5/22
News from the Benwell & Scotswood Team
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David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967
Acrylic on Canvas, Tate, London
Dates for your diary
Sun 22 May - APCM
12pm (after the morning service)
Sun 5 June - Pentecost celebration and bring and share Lunch
11am service at St James followed by lunch
News
Pentecost Celebration & Bring-and-share Lunch - Sun 5 June
Service 11am
Lunch from 12pm
On the bank holiday weekend join us for our Pentecost celebration and afterward for a lunch showcasing all our different cultures!
If you are able, please bring a dish from a culture that you are connected to. It can be a dish from your cultural heritage or somewhere you have been or are passionate about.
APCM - this Sunday 22 May, 12pm
This year's 'Annual Parochial Church Meeting' will happen directly after the Sunday service.
The happens once a year and receives reports on changes to the electoral roll, general parish activities, and finances. It is also when we elect members of the PCC and churchwardens. ADCMs (Annual District Church Meetings) will happen at the same time (these will run consecutively prior to the APCM).
Don't forget to check if your name is on the electoral roll, and if not, then remember to join!
Carnival workshops for the Platinum Jubilee
Urban Green Newcastle are running free community workshops in carnival dance, music and craft activities every Saturday in May. These free workshops take place at the West End Library, Condercum Rd, Benwell, Newcastle, NE4 9JH. Offered for ages 12+ and with families welcome to take part and turn up on the day, this project is kindly supported by Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland, Newcastle City Council and delivered by Urban Green Newcastle.
Worship Texts
The Collect
God our redeemer,
you have delivered us from the power of darkness
and brought us into the kingdom of your Son:
grant, that as by his death he has recalled us to life,
so by his continual presence in us he may raise us
to eternal joy;
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
Acts 16.9–15 During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.’ And she prevailed upon us.
Gospel
John 5.1–9 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed.One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath.
Sermon
Revd David
Today we have our Annual Meeting and everyone is welcome to stay on after the service. What is it about well like any Annual meeting it’s an opportunity to both look back on the year past and forward to what next. We also do some housekeeping, counting our pennies, or at least looking at our annual accounts, and very importantly we elect our Churchwardens and Church committees.
It may not sound very exciting, ‘dry bones’ was what we heard about in the reading from Ezekiel and sometimes dealing with church committees ‘and they were very dry’ seems about right.But the Lord asks Ezekiel ‘can these bones live?’ and when he breathes spirit into them, they do indeed live, ‘a mighty army’.
I am not promising there will be any miraculous rattling and joining of bones today but if we try to see what happens in our meeting and what happens in church as already connected, then maybe we can see how the Spirit might already be at work.
The gospel was all about the promise of the Spirit, Thursday is Ascension Day, when we recall how the risen Christ left his disciples and was taken up to heaven. Although parted from them he promised that through the Spirit they would still be joined, linked in a unbreakable bond. The Comforter would come and ‘lead into all truth’ and ‘share what is mine’.
Just think where the Comforter, which by the way can be translated as Guide, Advocate, or Strengthener, has led God’s people. From the tiny group in Palestine to what is indeed a mighty army, the universal church, present in every age and every corner of the planet, …including Benwell & Scotswood.
Parts of that journey have been dramatic, full of colour and heroism, the poetry of the saints’ lives, here in the North East we are heirs to wonderful chapters of that story, but plenty of the journey, I suspect, has been drab, dreary, and prosaic too, even in the lives of the saints.
Someone once said, some people regard the church as a bit like a helicopter, very impressive, but you don’t want to get too close, for fear of the rotas.
Well I guess the rotas are part of the prose, but like the helicopter you need them to get the thing of the ground. So if your attitude to annual meetings and committees has been like that, I do understand but please think again. The Annual meeting our Committees our structures our rotas are all part of the shared task we have, trying to be true disciples, joining in with whatever the Spirit is doing in this place. Amen
Intercessions
To add names to the prayer list please email church@benwellscotswood.com
Prayers for others:
Tamba and Esther
Irene Foskett
George Taylor
John Taylor
Nadia
Batoul Malayeri
Alistair
John Nicholson
Alan Robson
Peter Wilson
Michelle Wilson
Liz Holliman
Joan Finley
James, Christina, Anastasia, and Xavier
The Riches Family
George Snowden
Claire Mozaffari
Herbert Agbeko
Rest in peace
Terry and Elaine Lipscombe
John Garford
Wedding Banns
Julianne Hardy and James Burrows
Other intentions
Claire Lewis and Matt Dobson discerning vocation.
Ukraine, Yemen, Ethiopia and all places at war.
Post Communion prayer
God our Father,
whose Son Jesus Christ gives the water of eternal life:
may we thirst for you,
the spring of life and source of goodness,
through him who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.
Amen.