17/11/24
Your weekly update from the Benwell & Scotswood Team.
Click below to read this week's information and latest news.
Jump to:
Services this week
Sunday 9.30am - St John's Holy Communion
9.45am - St Margaret's Holy Communion
11am - Hub service (Parish Eucharist) at Ven Bede
Tuesday
4.30pm Bible Study with Farsi translation at St James
News
Ven Bede Thursday service on pause until new year
Due to extra services and events coming up during the Advent season, we have decided to pause our Thursday morning service at the Venerable Bede until the new year.
Embrace - Gaza appeal
The people of Gaza are living through an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Israel’s response has led to indiscriminate civilian suffering, with residents forced to move from place to place in search of safety. Food and medical supplies have all but run out; water, electricity, and fuel have been cut off.
The people of Gaza were already on their knees with 80% of residents reliant on humanitarian aid to survive. Please, can you make a donation into help in their hour of need?
You can donate online, by clicking below, or by calling 01494 897950. Your gift will support Embrace’s Christian partners in the immediate aftermath of this humanitarian crisis and to help to heal the wounds it’s caused across Israel – Palestine.
Sunday Worship
Second Sunday Before Advent
Red
Readings
Hebrews 10.11–14 [15–18] 19–25
11 Every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. 12But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God’, 13and since then has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’ 14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
[15And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,16 ‘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’,17he also adds,‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’18Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.]
19 Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let 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. 23Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, 25not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Mark 13.1–8
13As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ 2Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’
3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’ 5Then Jesus began to say to them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. 6Many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and they will lead many astray. 7When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8For 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.’
Intercessions
Prayers for others:
John Nicholson
Malcolm Smith
John Peterson
Maria Hawthorn
Herbert Agbeko
Ellis & Pauline Nelson
Michelle & Peter Wilson
Alan & Maureen Taylor
Irene Foskett
Pat Law
Moe and Mary
Christina Wilson
Diane Humphrey
Rest in Peace
Lawrence Okonkwo
Lynn Mosby
Isabel Matias
John Hardy
Other
Those affected by the tragedy at Violet Close
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.
Sermon
The Venerable Rachel Wood, Archdeacon of Northumberland
There’s something about these weeks after the clocks go back and before the Christmas preparations really get going, particularly in this part of the world. It is dark and it is only going to get darker. It is cold and it is only going to get colder. And then there is the news!
When we have intercessions in a service, as we will have today in a few minutes, we pray for the World, the Church and our local community. In each of these areas there has been a lot to pray about.
This week in the world we have the fall-out from the American elections and the prospect of a four-year Trump presidency with his dramatic rhetoric around deportation, cuts to government support spending and withdrawing from supporting countries overseas. Then there is the ongoing violence and despair in Gaza, Lebanon and the Middle East region more widely.
In the Church this week we have been confronted yet again in the Church of England with our inability to safeguard the vulnerable as the horrors in the Makin report into John Smyth are recognised and reflected upon. Justin Welby’s resignation offers a sense of taking seriously our past failings but there is still a way to go.
Finally, here in this community of Benwell, you are continuing to deal with the aftermath of the house explosion, the deaths of Archie York and Jason Laws and the ongoing displacement of people surrounding the blast.
Our gospel reading from Mark this morning too, appears to just give us more destruction and doom. Jesus and the disciples are visiting the great Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was a place of beauty, tradition and solidity, rather like any familiar building landmark, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament or St James Park. The disciples admire the building in the way that any of us visiting a famous landmark might. Jesus though is quick to pour cold water on their admiration, ‘See these great buildings?’ he says, ‘Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’
Jesus words points to a dramatic end to what was currently solid and familiar. This is not comforting at all. Jesus is often surprising, but even his disciples must have been shocked at his words here. Understandably, they then ask him, when these dramatic, destructive events will happen. Again, Jesus is not reassuring, but he warns his friends that this is just the world they will have to live in. He gives them advice as how to live in a time of destruction and chaos. They are not to be led astray, but to work at discerning what is truthful and right. They need to beware of easy answers, or those who promise a quick fix. They also need to face news of war and terror with faith rather than with fear – ‘do not be alarmed’, Jesus says. His final statement in today’s reading is puzzling though – ‘This is but the beginning of the birth pangs’.
In the story of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is predicting the future, but by the time the Gospel was written, the destruction of the Temple, the wars, the hunger and violence Jesus spoke of was much more of a reality for the Christians of Mark’s community. The concerns Jesus talks about were very real to those seeking to follow him in the early church. In the light of the issues we are dealing with today, in the world, the church and here in Benwell, we can hear echoes of the difficulties faced then in what we are experiencing now. Jesus’s message may not seem comforting or hopeful and yet, there are a least two things that we can take as encouragement.
The first is that, whatever we are hearing about, we are to stay calm and have faith. Easy for me to say, perhaps, but I do not mean this to sound like a quick-fix or a self-help mantra. Prayer is absolutely central to this. Regular times of saying our prayers, seeking God in silence, in church or when we’re out and about, whatever helps you to feel close to God, these times are necessary not an added bonus. Prayer is where we can lament and get angry about the difficult things we see around us or hear about on the news and it is where we hear afresh from God of his promise of peace and can know the deep peace and joy of his presence.
Secondly, we are to recognise all these things as birth pangs. These are not pains with no purpose or no end. Birth pangs end with a birth – new life, they are hopeful. This does not lessen the pain or deny the fear, but it does give us a sense of meaning and purpose. There is always hope. Any church or community might find itself under huge pressure and feel vulnerable as it seeks to witness to God’s love and God’s truth – to live out the hope of Jesus mother Mary where the lowly will be lifted up and the rich sent away empty. There may be little evidence of cause for optimism, but if something new of God is coming then there is always hope.
Our reading from Hebrews this morning reinforces this. We heard: ‘Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.’ This is faith not optimism. It is faith formed through engaging with the realities of this world, the news of the world, the church and our local community, the darkness and cold of this time of year, but still being able to notice the signs of God at work, the reality of God’s Kingdom of justice and peace drawing us to a new future where death, destruction, war and pain will be no more and God will wipe every tear from our eyes. Amen.