10/11/24
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 followed by Act of Remembrance
11am - Act of Remembrance, followed by Hub service (Parish Eucharist) at Ven Bede
4pm, St Margaret's, Act of Remembrance and evening prayer
Monday
10.55am, St James, Act of Remembrance at the war memorial.
Tuesday
9.30am Morning prayer at St Margaret's
Wednesday
5.45pm Evening Prayer at St John's
Thursday
10.30am Venerable Bede - Holy Communion
News
Remembrance 2024
We will be holding an Act of Remembrance in each of our churches this November. This is when 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.
On Remembrance Sunday -10th November
St John's Benwell Village 9.30am
Holy Communion followed by an Act of Remembrance.
Act of Remembrance followed by Holy Communion.
Act of Remembrance and prayer
On Armistice Day - Monday 11th November
St James, Benwell, 10.55am
Act of Remembrance at the war memorial inside St James' church.
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
Remembrance Sunday
Red
Readings
Hebrews 9.24–28
24Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; 26for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgement, 28so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Mark 1.14–20
14 After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God,15and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’
16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. 17And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ 18And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.
Intercessions
Prayers for others:
Tai and Derek
John Nicholson
Malcolm Smith
John Peterson
Maria Hawthorn
Herbert Agbeko
Ellis & Pauline Nelson
Michelle Wilson
Peter Wilson
Alan & Maureen Taylor
Irene Foskett
Pat Law
Moe and Mary
Lynn Mosby
Christina Wilson
Diane Humphrey
Rest in Peace
Lawrence Okonkwo
Other
Those affected by the tragedy at Violet Close
For an end to all war
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
Revd Chris
Our reading from the letter to the Hebrews says “But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
Yet this ‘once and for all’ sacrifice doesn’t seem to have brought an end to sin and war, does it? It does not feel like ‘Good news’, it does not feel like ‘the Kingdom of God has come near’.
*
Remembrance Sunday, when we remember the world wars of the twentieth century, we hold silence and lay wreaths of red poppies, the flowers that grew naturally in the fields of where so many shed their blood and gave up their lives, and we commit ourselves to creating peace in our current time.
*
I don’t always find it an easy time, I struggle with the idea of remembering war through rose-tinted lenses, romanticising the heroism, when really it was, and still is, a massive senseless loss of life displaying the very worst of human nature.
Where is the good news here? Why have we still not brought the suffering to an end? I don’t know, but in amongst this horror, I want to tell you the story of just one person, Edith Cavell.
*
Edith Cavell was born in Norfolk in 1865, and is buried at Norwich Cathedral, where she is remembered as a martyr. Norwich Cathedral is a place where I lived and worked for a while, I would therefore see her resting place every day and that was how I learned of her story.
*
The daughter of a vicar and schooled at home, opportunities for young women like her were very few. But nonetheless, she wrote, ‘Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful. I don’t know what it will be, I only know that it will be something for people.’
And indeed, she did. She trained as a nurse in the East end of London, and in 1907 she was invited by Belgium’s leading surgeon to lead the first professional nurse’s training school in there.
*
In 1914, she was visiting family in Norfolk when news came of the threat of the German invasion of Belgium. Rather than remaining in the safety of England, she immediately travelled to Brussels to be with her nurses. Under occupation, there they cared for all casualties of the war regardless of national origin, allied troops and German occupiers. This makes her an uneasy hero for some, but she cared for humans who needed care.
*
In 1915, at the same time as nursing German soldiers in her clinic, Edith also became part of an underground network. Together they enabled those caught behind enemy lines to escape from Belgium, sheltering them in her home, providing money and guides to cross the Dutch border and on into Britain. She later confessed she had helped around 200 allied soldiers escape.
Eventually Edith and the underground group were caught, arrested, and imprisoned.
*
Cavell was kept in solitary confinement for much of her ten weeks in prison, where she During which she read and annotated her copy of the medieval devotional book ‘Of the Imitation of Christ’ by Thomas a Kempis, which she read and annotated. And imitating Christ is exactly what she did.
She was tried along with 34 others and found guilty. On the afternoon of 11 October 1915, she learned that she and a resistance colleagues would be executed by firing squad the next morning.
*
That night Edith received Holy Communion in her cell from the Revd Stirling Gahan, Anglican chaplain in Brussels. In their conversation she said to him ‘I have no fear or shrinking. I have seen death so often it is not strange or fearful to me.’ She went on to say what have become her most famous words: ‘this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity: I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.’
‘Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.’
She was shot the Tir national shooting range and buried without a funeral.
*
After the war, Edith’s body was returned to England in May 1919. She received a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, and was brought back to her native Norfolk to be buried outside Norwich Cathedral.
*
“Patriotism is not enough”. These words were a rejection of the patriotic hatred that drove the war, in the face of great injustice, Edith stood for the sanctity of all humanity created, loved, and saved as children of God, not something as small as nationality.
We may not see it in the world, but Christ’s sacrifice, which Cavell intended to remind us of, is for humanity, to die for us in our sin. It is in hatred and bitterness for humans that war is made. Christ died once and for all to bring an end to sin. It is in each of our hearts that God’s good news must come close. Peace will only come to this world in the transformation of sin, of bitterness, of violence, in our hearts. Because it is only through the love of Christ for all of us with small and hate-filled hearts, that we find that violence and death does not have the final word.
*
Amen.