22/9/24
Your weekly update from the Benwell & Scotswood Team.
Click below to read this week's information and latest news.
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Services this week
Sunday 1 September
9.30am - St John's Holy Communion 11am - Hub service at St James (Parish Eucharist)
4pm - St Margaret's Evening prayer
Tuesday
No bible study this week (Chris at a conference in Sheffield)
Thursday
10.30am Venerable Bede - Holy Communion
Dates for your diary
Sunday 29th September
11am Harvest festival at St Margaret's Scotswood, NE15 6AR (no other services this day)
Mon 14th October
7pm - PCC meeting with Bishop Mark
News
Next Sunday - Harvest Festival
Sunday 29th September
11am
St Margaret's Scotswood
NE15 6AR
If you can, please bring non-perishable food items to donate to local charities and a dish to share for lunch.
On the last Sunday of this month we will have a team service at St Margaret's in Scotswood for this year's harvest festival! We will give thanks for God's creation, offer what we can for those in need, and share in fellowship together with a meal after.
Please note: as this is a team service, it will be the only service that day.
Harvest donations
It will also be possible to donate by cash or card to the Foodbank and Cornerstone on the day.
You can see a list of urgently needed items for the Foodbank here: https://newcastlewestend.foodbank.org.uk/give-help/donate-food/
Currently the Foodbank needs donations of the following items:
Tinned Fruit
Instant Mash/Tinned Potatoes
Baby Milk and Formula
Nappies (Sizes 4 and Larger)
Toiletries (Sanitary Towels)
Tea/Coffee
Soup - Tinned and Packed
Custard
Rice Pudding
Cereal
Tinned Meat
Curry Sauce
Rice
Benwell and Scotswood Giving Generously
Beginning Sunday 8th September
Throughout September we will be carrying out a generous giving campaign.
The aim of this is to:
Say thank you for all that you do!
Help you understand how we use our funds to support the community and celebrate all that is going on in our churches.
Make it simpler to offer your time, money and talents to all of our churches through the Parish Giving Scheme (which you will hear more about!)
Keep our work sustainable and enable our churches to keep growing.
We are excited about making it easier to give financially, but remember, this is just a small piece of the puzzle! Your presence and participation in our churches are truly treasured, regardless of your ability to give. You are always welcome and appreciated!
Watch this space!
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
Trinity 17
Green
Readings
James 3.13 – 4.3, 7–8a
13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. 14But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. 15Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. 16For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. 17But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. 18And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
4Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? 2You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.7Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
Mark 9.30–37
30 Jesus and his disciples passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; 31for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ 32But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
33 Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ 34But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. 35He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ 36Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’
Intercessions
Prayers for others:
Emily Watson and family
Lawrence Okonkwo
John Nicholson
Malcolm Smith
Paulette Thompson
John Peterson
Maria Hawthorn
Herbert Agbeko
Ellis & Pauline Nelson
Michelle Wilson
Peter Wilson
Alan & Maureen Taylor
Irene Foskett
Pat Law
Moe and Mary
Hilary Dixon
Lynn Mosby
Irene Scaife
Baby Alice Rose, Jodie and family
Christina Wilson
Diane Humphrey
Rest in peace
The Revd Captain Katie Watson
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
“Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?”
In a way, I find it very reassuring that there is a lot of biblical evidence for the disciples bickering and the early church falling out with each other. We stand in a long and fine tradition of moaners and grumblers that has honed and developed the religion that we have today.
*
But what is the source of all this arguing? Well, sin of course!
The letter of James tells us that. And our consciences tell us that. There are absolutely times for righteous anger in matters of justice, but that’s not what I’m talking about today. Today I’m going to talk about all things petty, stubborn, and envious. All those things that help us get on each other’s nerves.
*
As much as I love you all, I have never found a perfect church. There will always be gossip, resentment and jealousy in every community, there will always be deep differences of theological opinion, and possibly most vicious of all, there will be differences in taste about hymns.
Churches are communities. And in any community we cannot help bring ourselves. Each of us comes with hopes and fears and needs that we want met. Needs to be noticed and understood, passions we want to share, and fears we want to be protected from.
*
It is inevitable we will argue.
But why bother then? Why come to church? Well, because our worship of God doesn’t come out of our greatness and perfection, but from the transformation of our weakness by God’s grace. It comes from accepting that even as the imperfect sinners that we all are, God loves us, and therefore this is a place where we can learn to be compassionate to one another and to ourselves.
*
Jesus tells us how we do this:
‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ 36Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’
It is in the welcoming of those who are learning and growing that our community is made. It is in acceptance that we are all children, learning and growing, that our community is made.
*
We bring our sin with us into this community. We will argue and bicker, and we should! We should try to understand why that person annoys me; but we should also, with God’s help, choose to love them and recognise the sin within ourselves. It is in our rubbing along together that we understand ourselves better, understand each other better, and understand God better. It is in our adoption as children of God, as the people that we are, that we become the church, and we are transformed by God’s grace.
*
Dissatisfaction is necessary in a vision for a better world. So let us argue and bicker, but let us also have the humility to learn, let us have kindness to help one another grow.
We need to be not afraid of differences of opinion, we need to not avoid conflict. But we need to not remain there, to remain in our sin and force others to move around it. By recognising the presence of God among us, we are choosing to let ourselves be scooped up by Jesus and reminded that we are children who are always growing and are loved.
*
Let us be defined not by where each of us have come from as individuals, but what we become together. We choose to be a community, and in our common life together, we are shaped from imperfect material and built into a place where God is truly present and God is worshipped.
*
Amen.
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