URC Northern Synod

Love your minister

2011-12-16T12:44:00.001Z

There weren’t that many of us at St James’s yesterday forthe promised report from the Receptive Ecumenism team. Probably ten days beforeChristmas is not the best time to get busy people to a one-off event – even ifit offers the possibility of fitting in some last-minute shopping in Newcastle anda glimpse of Fenwicks window. But, for those of us who turned up, it was a goodday.

I admit to an interest: I have been a bit involved with theproject over the four or five years that it’s been running. Paul Murray ratherexaggerated my contribution to its birth in his opening remarks; but from my far-off student days whentransactional analysis was all the rage I still remember being told that “weall need our strokes”. It’s always good to be appreciated.

Which was one of the thoughts that was somewhere around whenthe leadership survey report was presented by Tom Redman (like Paul, a Durhamprofessor – we were in pretty high-powered company). Some 184 of church membersin our synod had gallantly filled in a questionnaire about their attitudes totheir minister; and though plenty of questions were raised about themethodology, there was no reason to dispute the general conclusion that the “performance”value of church members is heavily dependent on the style of the minister’sleadership. And the number-crunching ofevery section of the questions revealed appreciation for the minister’s “servantleadership”.

I was thinking about this this morning when an e-Christmascard made its way into my inbox. You may have received the same one yourself:Linda and Gill at Church House are appreciative of what we have done to supportand advocate Commitment for Life over the past year, and are looking forward tocelebrating the 20^th anniversary in 2012. I clicked on the link – and while notover-impressed (sorry Gill!) by the schmaltzy music and snow scene I findmyself fascinated by the site: you can send a FREE CHRISTIAN ECARD (choice ofdesign) for nearly every holiday and every occasion imaginable.

As well as Christmas and Hannukah and Chinese New Year(whywould they be Christian ecards?)there’s Patriot Day, Boss Day, Reformation Day, Teacher’s Day and St Patrick’sDay – among many others. But the two that caught my eye were Clergy AppreciationDay and Ministry Appreciation Month. Perhaps in the next few days I should send toall my not-yet-retired colleagues the one with the sleeping dog that says “takeit easy....” But you might choose thetasteful water lily that simply says “thank you” – or if you’re more effusiveyou might even chance “You’re a great pastor! Your hard work and sacrifice areappreciated!” Or where appropriate, youcan choose from two designs that proclaim “Woman of God, God Bless you for your ministry” – though tomy mind the soft focus and white dress on one of them border on what we nowcall “inappropriate”.

Receptive ecumenism, as the name implies, is aboutdiscovering what we can receive from others, rather than concentrating on thegifts that we have to bring ourselves. I’ve always been uneasy about thatnon-gospel saying of our Lord’s, that it is more blessed to give than toreceive, because in my own experience most of the people I’ve worked with in theChurch find receiving far harder than giving. Of course, as perhaps Fenwickswindow and the John Lewis advert remind us, both giving and receiving areneeded to complete any transaction – and blessedness is to be found when bothare undertaken in the right spirit.

Whether or not they receive the appropriate e-cards, I hopethat my colleagues who couldn’t get to St James’s yesterday will know that theirministry is appreciated. And if they haven’t yet filled in the admittedlydifficult questionnaire that theywere asked to complete about attitudes to theirchurch leader – yes, we know that moderators are different, and the questionsdon’t easily match our ecclesiology – the Receptive Ecumenism team would bevery grateful to receive their late entries.

John Durell

Dying to live -- Vision 2020 Northern Synod

2011-11-12T16:08:00.001Z

The group remaining in the Church at the Synod at Wideopencommented on the Northern Synod Strategy. They had both supportive and negativecomments to share. Whilst the Plan was accepted in principle it was agreed thatMission Executive needed to do some additional work to make it more acceptableto the majority.

It would be helpful to hear where the tweaking/rewritingneeds to be done to make it more universally acceptable to our churches. Youwill recall that there is no requirement to adopt the whole approach - somechurches will want to focus on just one or two themes to re-energise mission in their communities.

Some of the comments from the floor may be useful in helpingpeople suggest where a different wording or approach may be required:

Felt inspired by the ideas and felt there was plenty in the documentation to attract churches wanting to find something to re-energise themselves
Whilst unwilling to wholeheartedly endorse the approach it was suggested that whilst it would not change the world it looked a very worthwhile exercise for churches to undertake.
Several people felt that Elderships were ageing and their energies were already focused on day-to-day church matters. They felt they could not cope with anything new.
Concern that LMMR which might help Churches review their positions and plan for the future with support from others wasn’t yet off the ground and there was scepticism that sufficient other support would be available.
Some showed impatience with yet another initiative .Don't fiddle whilst Rome burns. ! Do things! Have faith but do things now!
The statements in the document help people to think clearly -- they provide signposts and are therefore helpful.
Dying to Live isn’t a good name. Generally people will not connect with the concept and therefore it will have negative connotations with many church members.
A feeling that the church is not using its financial resources well. Churches in vacancy are paying considerable sums in M& M. and pulpit fees. This money might be better used by those churches to further their local mission ambitions.
We have to focus on growth otherwise we will die!
Ecumenism just obscures falling membership -- Growth in the URC is the key. But how?
Concerns that we may have a ” Bishop- led synod” -- give ministers the opportunity to address the problems of falling congregations in a collegial way. Give them their head!
This is another initiative which glosses over problems -- we need people on the ground to develop mission opportunities which might fuel church growth.

HELP US TO SHAPE A DOCUMENT WHICHREFLECTS YOUR THOUGHTS & CONCERNS. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!

Sue Bush

Member- Mission Executive

Reformed or dissenting?

2011-10-23T09:11:00.000+01:00

I’ve been thinking the past week about “Reformed identity”. I went to Synod determined to keep quiet (exceptwhen asked to speak) and enjoy retirement in the pews – but just because youdon’t have a vote and a role to play doesn’t mean you don’t feel for people.

Wasn’t it a bit rough, after all the work that had been putinto sharpening Vision2020 for NorthernSynod, for it all to be put on hold? I can see that the document we weregiven had its shortcomings, but its authors seemed ready to listen and to amend it. If you’vebeen working hard on something like this, having it sent back must seem discouraging.Hardly the way for us to get the best out of people!

The most focused criticism I heard was over this issue ofidentity: that while we say plenty in general terms about needing to know whowe are, we need to be more specific about being Reformed. But I wonder how muchthe members of synod gathered at Wideopen could have told us about whatReformed identity means to them. I’ve never been too sure what it is: if it hasto do with the Bible at the centre of everything, and valuing a learnedministry – well, we’re mostly using the same lectionary week by week as theother Churches around us, and their preachers and worship leaders (not noticeably less educatedthan ours) will be relying on the same resources as we all do.

Either we’ve lost what is distinctively Reformed, or we’vevalued it and commended it so well that it’s somehow found its way into all theChurches. Or perhaps a bit of both?

There are other aspects of our identity, though, that we seemto forget about altogether. 1662 had just the briefest of mentions lastSaturday – a single line in one of the written reports, vainly hoping that someone might notice the date next year. Fifty years ago when wewere celebrating the 300^th anniversary of the Great Ejectment (whichnow seems to have been domesticated to the Great Ejection), I don’t recall anyconcern about Reformed identity, but plenty of discussion about what it meantto be a Dissenter.

Granted that things have moved on (fifty years ago we couldn’teven receive communion in parish churches, though ironically our forebears had sufferedfor choosing not to), and granted that taking a stand on simply being againstsomething or being different sounds far meaner than taking pride in beingReformed, I fear we are missing out on avery significant part of our identity by neglecting this historic perspective.

Congregationalist and Presbyterians, good Reformed churchpeople, wanted to be part of a Reformed Church of England, but in allconscience felt that they could not sign up to the settlement of 1662. And theypaid the price for their non-conformity. I suspect that for many of us, if we’vethought about it at all, there will be rather different issues today that wouldmake it difficult to throw in our lot with the established Church – but I atleast would not want to accuse my Anglican brothers and sisters of beinginsufficiently Reformed. And I’m sure there’s more than enough variety ofpractice and opinion to suit God’s good purposes in both our camps.

Meanwhile, if the poor Mission Executive members now have toreflect on our Reformed identity, could they also spare a thought on what it mightmean today to be a Dissenter?

John Durell

(former synod clerkand ecumenical officer)

Mozambique Blog 12

2011-08-21T18:19:00.000+01:00

Bongani is one year old. His name means Thank you – clearly appropriate as his parents waited seven years for him.

This afternoon we went to his birthday party. Hillian’s first day here in Maputo was spent at one family’s celebrations; now on our last day we’ve shared in another’s. The venue was a kindergarten in an upmarket area of the city. Just like home, there were rows of balloons on the railings outside, in case we were uncertain where to go. But the bouncy castle in front of the building gave the game away really.

Round the back was the party proper. Small tables were laid ready for some sixty children, while probably more than that number of adults were sitting at bigger tables and getting ready to tuck into the serious food. Bongani’s grandparents, who had invited us, explained that while the size of African families prevents everyone attending everyone’s birthday celebrations every year, for special birthdays like this one everyone comes together.

Sadly we had to leave before the cake was cut. Or rather cakes – there seemed to be several of them, nestling beneath rainbow arches of balloons. But our afternoon had a more serious purpose – we were due at the third English language service at Khovo. We knew attendance was going to be small, as there were many things on in the church this weekend; but the faithful few who were there have promised us that the service will continue. And their gratitude was expressed in the traditional way – well with a bit of twist. Hillian has another kapulana, but I am now the proud owner of a Mandela-style African shirt.

So that’s the last of the last things to do. It's just a case now of a bit of a debriefing session at Khovo in the morning before going off to the airport for the mid afternoon flight. I’m not sure what I will be expected to say then, or indeed what I will want to say. I think we need time to stand back from the experience and reflect on it – both in terms of what it has meant for us personally, and what we can draw from it to strengthen our two Churches.

That’s hardly blogging material – so I think it is time to sign off this Mozambique blog. Thanks for following!

John Durell

Mozambique blog 11

2011-08-20T09:22:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, as some of our students would say, we were biz. Portuguese seems easily to lose the ends of words: greetings in the latter part of the day are usually heard as boa tard and boa noit without the final e. So at Khovo we are often told that our students have been too biz to come to the lesson; and knowing that we too are biz people make frequent offers of coff to see us through the day.

Apart from working on this Sunday’s service, yesterday we had a session with Ernesto looking at how to develop prayer partnerships with our Synod, and also were part of the lunchtime celebrations to mark the opening of the Sewing Project – which I will write up separately for the main part of the website. But for Hillian and me the main event was our final English lesson.

We’ve been offering these lessons for less than five weeks – one group in the morning and one in the afternoon. So the perfect attender (and I think there may be just one or two) will not have spent much more than twenty hours with us: hardly doing more than scraping the surface. All our students have been workers at Khovo, the Church HQ, or somehow or other attached to it, and they have ranged in age from early twenties up to sixty. Everyone has had some English already – but needless to say (and a challenge to the teachers) these have been very much mixed ability classes.

When I began (a few days before Hillian joined me) the first shock was the formality of the setting, which was matched by the students’ expectations. The small classroom was set out with desks – those very old fashioned ones with chairs attached, so that there was absolutely no chance of moving the furniture round and sitting in a circle. Not that they would have wanted that. When I started the lesson by trying what I hopefully imagined was the Berlitz method of direct conversation, I was shouted down: everything was to be written in chalk on the blackboard!

But somehow we have slotted into the system. We’ve gone through the auxiliary verbs, to be and to have and all the rest of them ad nauseam. I love doing the past simple of “to have” and saying to them “Isn’t English easy?” We’ve struggled over the days of the week: Portugal seems to have been the most Christian of nations, dismissing all heathen gods from its calendar, with the result that between domingo and sabado come days 2 to 6. We’ve tried to explain that though this may make it difficult for the students to learn a set of names, it is also difficult for the teachers to have to count up on their fingers to work out just what day it is in Portuguese.

Somehow, despite the rows of desks and the chalk and the blackboard, not to mention the sheer impossibility of the subject, we’ve had a lot of fun together. I’m not sure how much this is a different experience for our students, but I suspect we are really supposed to sit on a chair behind the teacher’s table rather than walk around the room and sit on the desks and generally make fools of ourselves acting some of the concepts out. I hope it’s been a refreshing experience for them all: at any rate, with a few exceptions they’ve continued to come. They’ve struggled with irregular verbs and inconsistent pronunciation and our inadequate explanations of when to use the perfect tense rather than the past simple. They may not have been as diligent as they could have been in working at it between lessons: but who am I to talk? I sort of worked my way halfway through Learn Portuguese in 13 Weeks, and yet haven’t dared to speak a word beyond “Estou bem, obrigado.”

And yesterday we were more than a little touched by the things said at the “Bye-bye session” – by the traditional gifts of kapulanas, and by the solemn assurances that they would follow Hillian’s advice and speak a little English to each other every day. Practise, practise, practise!

For people in Mozambique, of course, there is a real pressure to learn English which is much greater than our need while here to speak Portuguese. They are painfully aware that their country is effectively a Portuguese speaking island set in a sea of English: every surrounding nation has a British imperial history, all the way from South Africa up to Tanzania; and English is the unifying language spoken right across Southern Africa. Significantly Mozambique was the first nation that had not been part of the Empire to join the Commonwealth. In this post-colonial age, it is clear where it needs to belong.

But things are not easy for people like our students. Here in Maputo everyone speaks Portuguese, but that is far from being the case across the country. So there is need to reinforce Portuguese as the nation’s own unifying language, before ever turning to another European tongue. Most families speak local languages, such as Ronga or Shangana, at home; and it is only on starting school that children study Portuguese seriously, so that it becomes the language in which their whole education is offered. So by the time they are of secondary school age they will have had to become fluent in two languages before ever tackling English. It’s become clear to us that, not surprisingly, the quality of English teaching in schools can vary considerably; but even the best is not likely to bring the pupil to fluency before school days are over. No surprise then that there are English language schools all over the city. And the pastor who told me that he is taking English language lessons with a view to studying theology at a higher level is no doubt typical of people in all sorts of professions.

So we sadly said Goodbye to our students yesterday with all these thoughts in mind. They know that they need English, but they are realistic enough to know that they are not all going to reach the level of competence that they might wish. I would have liked to have done more to help them – but we did what we could in the time that we had. I hope that they will remember us as fondly as we will them.

John Durell

Mozambique Blog 10

2011-08-17T21:48:00.000+01:00

I’ve never properly found out how the Presbyterian Church of Mozambique got its name. Bearing in mind that its roots go back to the Swiss Mission (the 125^th anniversary of its work will be commemorated in 2012), we might have expected this French-speaking organisation to have given birth to a Church that wore the epithet Reformed, rather than Presbyterian. When I’ve asked in the past about this, I’ve been given the answer that it may just be to do with the proximity of English-speaking missionaries in the late 19^th century whose work in South African will have overlapped with the Swiss. But I also wonder if the Founding Fathers may have cottoned on to the fact that the Portuguese word reformado also means retired – perhaps not quite the way you want to describe a Church that seeks to become a force in the land. (But I guess it makes me reformado squared.)

Today I’ve been asking just how Presbyterian the IPM really is. I don’t have any ecclesiological reference books at hand, but the Wikipedia article on Presbyterian polity seems to me to have the right idea when it contrasts its subject with the Congregational way, and makes the point that “authority in the presbyterian polity flows both from the top down (as higher assemblies exercise limited but important authority over individual congregations, e.g. only the presbytery can ordain ministers, install pastors, and start up, close, and approve relocating a congregation) and from the bottom up (e.g. the moderator and officers are not appointed from above but are rather elected by and from among the members of the assembly).” Many of us would be wary of this top and bottom language, but we would still expect constraints on any local church that chooses to go its own way.

We were taken this morning on a Synod Pastoral Visit to Moamba, near the South African border. The church there, which is literally the wrong side of the tracks, has been struggling since the 1920s: it can’t afford to pay for a minister, and indeed has nowhere to house a minister, so the only ministry it receives is from a poor pastor who lives 50 Km away and makes his living through secular employment. His commitment is strictly Sundays-only. Your heart goes out to such people – and wonderfully they remain faithful and full of hope. All of which is being expressed now in their plans to build a new church.

We crossed the tracks just as the train for Johannesburg drew in – but all the coming and going was on the side we had left. Another ten minutes’ walk through a very poor area brought us to a large open space, which our hosts proudly told us was all theirs. On one edge was a half built house which hardly looked the work of professional builders, while over the far side was the poor corrugated iron building that is hardly fit to function as a place of worship. Next to it were the foundation blocks of what is being designed as a substantial building. And with the visit, I should add, came an invitation to return and lay the foundation stone on November 6^th!

My heart sank at the sight of it all, because over my visits to Mozambique I have seen so many half-and-less-built buildings. A Church that knows its Bible well seems never to have reflected on Luke 14.28. Shouldn’t its people first sit down and calculate what they are capable of? Time and time again work is begun on projects for which there is no budget, no intention of ever using competent and professional labour, and which will use up all the resources that might have otherwise gone towards, for instance, costs of ministry and evangelism. All of this is being decided by local congregations, who leave no prospect of any kind of national strategy for development and mission.

Talking with the Synod visitors afterwards I sensed a degree of frustration on their part – and maybe bemusement that Presbyterian polity should have led to such a situation. They cited instances of building projects that have taken 15 or 20 years – and I suspect know of others that have simply no hope of completion. Yet on the other hand, who can disparage the faith of those who laugh at impossibilities, and cry it will be done? I don’t think I’ll be around Moamba on November 6^th, and I can’t help feeling sceptical about the whole project, but I’d love to think that one day someone from Northern Synod will attend the grand opening of its new Presbyterian Church!

_________________

Crossing back I got into trouble (or at least got my Mozambican minders in trouble) by pointing my camera at the station. Apparently special permission is needed. But the story of the footbridge is worth retelling. It carefully crosses from the central platform to the right (Portuguese colonialist) side of the tracks – but there is no footbridge crossing to the side we had been walking through. People there didn’t really count as people. “About as bad as apartheid South Africa?” I suggested. My hosts agreed – there was little to choose between them.

John Durell

Mozambique Blog 9

2011-08-14T21:06:00.001+01:00

Never mind the stereotypes – the truth of the matter is that most things do work in Mozambique, or at least here in Maputo. While we’ve been here the few power cuts have scarcely lasted a minute. The expresso machine may have been broken in the café in the park, but they rustled up a surprisingly acceptable alternative. True you will often find taps from which no water seems to run – but once the householder is able to install the right system of storage tanks and pumps that problem can be overcome.

Of course there is the terrible problem of transport – one of the chief problems of the country, I guess. Just look at the crowds waiting for buses in the rush-hour, or look at the traffic jams that witness to the fact that the increasing level of car ownership is hardly getting anyone anywhere more quickly, and it may seem that my assessment is over-generous. But by and large things do work.

So I was more than a little disappointed when we moved into the guest house to find that for all the promise of free wifi I was unable to get on-line. What’s more, despite my gentle protestations, no one appeared to be doing anything to resolve the situation. But so what? – we’re in Mozambique. However, it seems that I was wrong. Suddenly, this weekend, I’m back on-line without any trips to the internet café. Someone was trying to get it fixed after all – and in the end they succeeded.

So for the first time in the nearly six weeks I’ve been here, I could start a proper blog – real stream of consciousness stuff rather than the considered and pre-prepared pieces I’ve been putting up every few days. But I think it’s too late now. However, for anyone who’s followed me so far, here’s a brief account of what’s been going on over the past few days.

Last weekend was dominated by the news that the projected visit by Mozambican young people to Northern Synod is off: once again the High Commission has refused visas, and frustratingly the applications went in so late that there is no time for any kind of appeal. So now we are wondering how we can learn from what has happened and find ways of getting a better result in the future.

So far as Hillian and I were concerned, the big event was the launch of the English language service, which I wrote about later in the week – but also we should record the fact that we had a little holiday. Our friend Inãcio came to Maputo looking for us, and after the Sunday afternoon service whisked us back to Xai-Xai in Gaza province for a couple of days. Inãcio was one of the first visitors to our synod back in 2004 – some may remember him as the guy who was videoing everything. When our group visited Mozambique a few weeks later we spent time in Xai-Xai, and were royally entertained by Inãcio and Estrela one evening – and ever since then they have been waiting for us to return.

We had a great time with them – and even though they were both busy working, they arranged a programme for us which managed to be both relaxing and instructive. It was good too to meet up with Meg Robb, halfway through her stint with Pastor Rosa at the Betlehem church – and Inãcio’s programme gave Meg opportunity to see more of the area than she might otherwise have done. So as well as enjoying lunch together on Xai-Xai beach and mooching round the central market (larger and yet more colourful than Maputo’s), we learned a good deal about the education system through a visit to an FE College equivalent, and had a fascinating insight into Mozambique’s provision of labour for the South African mines from Inãcio’s own boss.

It all went by too quickly, but duty beckoned – and Wednesday morning we were back in the classroom with our students. Now our final week lies before us, and somehow we are going to have to try to answer our students’ questions about the conditional tense, and how you know whether to use a simple past or the perfect, not to mention the other impossible things they will probably dream up in the next few days.

And then there is “our” final English language service next Sunday: and what will happen after that? Will the pastors on the ground pick it up and run with it? Doubting whether they will would, I suppose, betray a colonialist attitude, so I’m going to say “Of course the service will continue.” Remember, things do work in Mozambique.

John Durell

Mozambique blog 8

2011-08-10T11:04:00.000+01:00

The African Games are coming to Maputo next month. Posters are up all over the city: it’s a big event evoking national pride. Out near the road to the north is the brand new stadium – looking pristine and complete when we passed through that way early last month, though there still seemed to be work to be done to complete the village. Even from the main road you can see the coloured seats spelling out the word Mozambique for all the world to see. Your view is a bit impeded however by all the street traders who have apparently been given notice to move on: the authorities are anxious that Mozambique should present only its prosperous side to the world at the grand opening on September 3^rd.

Beating them by a month, the English language service at Khovo was launched last Sunday. This was part of the reason for my coming to Mozambique this time: after conversations I had with various people in the Church during my sabbatical visit in 2006 I wrote a paper outlining how one of our ministers might consider spending a few weeks here training up a group of people to lead the English language service that so many people felt was needed in the city. Other churches are holding them, so why not the Presbyterians?

I didn’t realise at the time that I was writing my own job description, but that’s how it seemed to work out. So alongside the other things I’ve been involved in over the past five weeks I have been hoping that we could get working together on preparing for this service. But as is often the case in Mozambique, things did not work out quite as (I at least) planned. My suggestion for a group to work and train together seemed to be overlooked; and instead we found ourselves in the situation where Hillian and I were to be largely responsible for the three Sundays when we were still to be around the place.

However, I’m thankful that there does seem to be a genuine desire to continue the service after that. The consistory (elders’ meeting) has given its blessing, and a number of pastors have promised to get involved. And whereas the original case for the service was based on the number of English-speaking visitors to be found in Maputo each weekend, it has become clear that much of the support is coming from Portuguese speakers who are keen to use and develop their English. So there’s potentially something for everyone here.

The service was duly launched at 16.00 hrs on Sunday August 7^th, and is to take place each succeeding week. Pastor Felipe introduced us by reminding the congregation that worship had been held here for 124 years, but that this was the first occasion it was to be offered in English. His reference to the Day of Pentecost fitted in well with thoughts that I was going to share in the sermon; and if the hymns were perhaps not typical of Presbyterianism as I know it, at least most of the growing congregation seemed to know them – which was a well, as there were only about a dozen copies of the words.

From the first two or three rows being filled at kick-off time, by the time I was preaching there must have been 70 or 80 people present, and I think over a hundred by the time we got to the blessing. In fact the blessing was never pronounced; for having sung that we were marching in the light of God, we were told by Pastor Felipe that a Memento of the Launch was being prepared. Hillian and I had to sign the book as the first leaders of the English service, after which everyone present was invited to process to the table and sign their names as witnesses to the occasion. And with our friend Inãcio waiting patiently to whisk us off for a couple of days in Xai-Xai, we never waited for the queue to come to an end.

So the English language Presbyterian service is now a fact of life. If you ever find yourself in Maputo at a weekend don’t forget it: Khovo Church at 16.00 hours. The consistory are think considering how to advertise it, but I think this blog may be the first bit of publicity it gets. As our own church noticeboards used always to say: Visitors welcome.

John Durell

Mozambique Blog 7

2011-08-03T10:57:00.000+01:00

Amalia has just graduated, and proudly possesses a diploma in Planning and Business Management from the city’s university. She is the eldest of five children – the only girl among them; and we know enough about how IPM ministers are paid to realise that her parents must have made considerable sacrifices for her to have reached this stage.

Just a couple hours after Hillian arrived in Maputo on Saturday, we found ourselves as honoured guests at the wonderful gathering of family and friends called to celebrate Amalia’s achievement. It was an amazing mixture of praise, prayer and partying – with delicious food piled high on plates, and constant invitations to get up and help yourself to more.

Relying on ad hoc interpreters you are liable to miss the nuances, but it was impossible not to be moved by the obvious love between daughter and parents, and the gratitude and pride that marked their relationship. Whether an only daughter among boys would do as well in every family I don’t know, but here it was pretty clear that there were no gender considerations to hold Amalia back. Yet seeing the scale of the celebrations, it was hard not to wonder what challenges were being set for the younger brothers, and how equal their opportunities might turn out to be.

Several people have spoken to me about families lately. Generally they have been perplexed that we don’t seem to have families, or at least don’t want to come together as families. Our nuclear family pattern must seem strange and remote to people who, when you ask them about their family, don’t immediately tell you about wife and children, but begin with possibly deceased parents, and then work their way through brother and sisters and wider affiliations. “Why don’t you get together as we do?” they’ve asked me, and feebly I’ve responded that we do sometimes, perhaps at times like Christmas or birthday, without going on to admit that in many cases such get-togethers are seen as occasions to instil dread, and best avoided at all costs. On Saturday, with all the singing and dancing, it was impossible to imagine that there could be anyone present who really didn’t want to be.

Another contrast with our big family gatherings, and I’m thinking particularly of weddings, was the confidence and indeed loquaciousness of all who had speaking parts. Admittedly I don’t have the Portuguese to judge the quality of the speeches, but I can testify that they all went without stumbling and hesitation – and with no apparent fear of using a radio mike that sent the speaker’s voice echoing half way across the city. Not many notes in sight either – and certainly no one glued to them. The prayers and the neighbouring pastor’s address as well as father’s wise words offered as he presented their daughter with a Bible all emphasised that these were celebrations offered in the context of the life of the Church – and it’s pretty clear that the IPM is a Church that helps its young people to develop confidence, both in the faith and in their own abilities.

Amalia has a well-earned diploma, but she is looking for work in a country where graduates have just the same problems finding work as ours do in the UK. But I understand that she already has the promise of an interview – and from watching and listening to her last Saturday, I sense that she may well have what it takes to show that those five years’ work were all worth the effort.

____________

Synod readers following our comings and goings may note that our hosts have been busy doing the airport run in recent days. Hillian arrived on Saturday, two days after Meg Robb, who was immediately driven to Xai-Xai in Gaza province for her leg of the exchange with Pastor Rosa. We hope that Rosa will be working with Meg in the East Cleveland group for a few weeks in September and October. Then on Monday Matthew left, after four weeks in and around Khovo – not to mention a few days in Chimoio with a young people’s group. Plenty to tell FURY members when he next meets up with them.

Hillian and I are now working in tandem on our conversational English classes for people working at Khovo, and plans are unfolding (a little belatedly for my taste) for a weekly English language service at the Khovo church: launch date this Sunday, August 7^th. Can anyone email me a stack of English hymn books??

John Durell

Mozambique Blog 6

2011-08-01T14:44:00.000+01:00

One of the more animated moments of the synod meeting (now two weeks ago) came when the ministries committee presented their report. That the report had not reached delegates on time did not get things off to a good start – but the real excitement came with a throw-away line in the next-to-last paragraph to the effect that pastors’ wives would no longer be accepted for training for ministry.

The reasons offered for this seemingly harsh decision were pragmatic. The IPM is a small church, and it is difficult to place husband and wife teams so as to provide a real pastoral opportunity for both. But if one translator’s account of the quite short debate was accurate, there were some less nuanced things being said from the floor: are some women only looking to train because their friends have done so? A dissenting elder statesman of the church told me later that the right way would have been to agree to deal with each case on its merits, but synod seemed to want to lay the law down in a more definite and excluding manner.

I know of three married couples in the IPM ministry – out of some 50 or 60 working ministers. So the decision to go with the report seems a strange way to build up the ministry that the Church clearly needs if it is to expand as it hopes. However, one delegate who spoke to one of our guest colleagues assured him that the decision was what the women really wanted. A male voice, needless to say, and commenting on a debate where no women were heard. Despite the preponderance of women in the Sunday congregations, it’s men who make the decisions; and looking at the list of members of the Synod Council, it’s ordained men at that. I wonder who the ministries committee consulted as they drew up their report?

Over the past week I have been busy at Khovo setting up English lessons – and wishing I had more experience at this sort of thing. My intention of focusing on conversation has been hijacked by my students’ common desire to have everything written down: I come back from each lesson covered in chalk dust…. Education is taken extremely seriously in this country, and it seems that methods are pretty traditional. I hadn’t envisaged students sitting in rows at desks in front of a blackboard – but that’s how the little classroom is set out, and there’s little to be done about it.

In these mixed ability groups, it’s no surprise that the students with the better grounding in English are generally male. But the keenness and enthusiasm that some of the women, both young and older, have for learning are so striking, that I cannot believe that the Church will be able to hold them all back as it seems sometimes still to be doing.

One of the most vocal members of the class told us all the other afternoon “I have a dream to go to England and study at university”. She could not believe me when I told her how many universities there are in England, compared with the three state institutions in Mozambique – though there are several private ones as well. Needless to say, when I told her how much it costs students to go to university she began to revise her dream. But I think she and her colleagues will still have dreams, and show a personal determination to make things change. As that happens, I just hope that the Church does not get left behind.

John Durell

Mozambique Blog 5

2011-07-23T09:52:00.000+01:00

What was Africa like before plastic chairs? I’m writing this up in a room where about a dozen of them are piled up in the corner – and there must be many more scattered over the whole Khovo (Church HQ) site. Plastic chairs featured prominently among gifts made to a retiring Youth Worker at Synod last week, and to a Pastor’s farewell service I attended at Tlhavna parish the previous Sunday.

Once answer I’ve received to my question is that they have made an immense and invaluable difference. They are to be found even in the most remote places, helping people to gather and communicate with one another. Schools, clinics, consultations, and all sorts of services function so much better simply because people can easily sit down together. I guess some of the church elders could offer a contrary case based on the comfort they also provide patrons of dubious drinking dens and the like, but generally they add to the richness of the shared life of Africa’s peoples.

And churches, of course, are full of the things. Not that everyone wants to use them: at Tlhavana I watched an elderly woman walk through the door on two crutches – the kind of person we would certainly offer a lift to, while half expecting that they make the decision that they were now too bad to come to church anymore. However, this feisty woman made her way to the front and on to the platform, where she unrolled a mat and slowly sat herself down on the floor, disengaging the crutches and leaning back against the wall for the next three hours.

Most people, however, were happy to be sitting in a more western fashion. There were a few benches at the back, certainly well occupied, but not nearly enough to fill the church or provide for the needs of the growing congregation. I imagine benches cost a fair bit of money – and they must get in the way of serious singing and dancing. So a good half of the congregation were on plastic chairs. Sometimes the block of chairs stretched up to and even onto the platform. But then when the women’s group or the youth group or some other group came out to sing; or when the leaving pastor and her family were up on the platform and people were bringing gifts like a double bed and corrugated iron sheets to build a shelter, as well as those chairs…. well, then you moved the rows of chairs out the way, and cleared the space you needed for the next few minutes.

The plastic chair and the mobile phone must have changed the face of a continent between them. Pastors and others who can now keep in touch with the world and with one another will certainly give the prize to the mobile phone – but I reckon the plastic chair is a close runner up!

Mozambique Blog 4

2011-07-20T14:50:00.000+01:00

Wednesday July 20

I suspect there’s a north/south divide in Mozambique very much like our own – except for the fact that the warmer weather is in the north. It’s the depth of winter here, of course, with maximum temperatures frequently below 20°, which people keep assuring us is very cold. So what it would feel like for a synod delegate travelling down from Cabo Delgado Province you can hardly imagine. But don’t worry, because no one actually came from there.

So far as the Presbyterian Church is concerned, part of the reason for the division is history: the Portuguese authorities did not allow the Swiss Mission to operate beyond the three southernmost provinces. But once independence was gained, the Church determined to have congregations in all eleven provinces, and for all the chaos of the time quite quickly succeeded. However, this has not destroyed the impression of its being a southern-based church.

Last week’s synod was mostly conducted in Portuguese – but apparently that is quite a new departure. Previously proceedings have been in the local languages of Shangana and Ronga, which although widely spoken will not be understood by most people in the north. Much of the worship and singing last week was in those local languages, even including the sermon on Sunday morning. I wonder how included that makes the delegate feel who has taken a 24 hour bus journey to get to Synod?

And when the Synod moves pastors around, as it does every five years, it’s more than likely that those who can be persuaded to go north (and I understand that there is some consultation in what seems like a pretty authoritarian process) won’t even be given language training. So they are left to speaking Portuguese, which only the middle class in the towns will be fluent in, or going round with an interpreter all the time. Hardly the best circumstances to operate in an area where evangelisation has been a declared priority!

Yesterday morning I had a long conversation with one of the five Pastors who are stationed in the four northern provinces which make up nearly half the land area of Mozambique. (I haven’t the means at hand to look up how many Wales’s or Belgiums that makes, but it must be a pretty fair number.) As President of the Northern Presbytery (those same provinces again) he reckons that journeys between churches vary from 100 to 700Kms. And the one car is barely in working order….. It’s very hard for people from these parts not to launch into The Week’s Good Cause mode before they’ve finished the introductions. The lack of resources is so overwhelming that you’d try anyone to help you on a bit.

But I’m left wondering what the IPM itself is doing, and whether the strong Maputo base makes it hard for people to understand what life is like there. Of course it’s hard for them to go and see for themselves, and the expense of regular visits from the Centre could hardly be justified. But having made that facile comparison with our own north/south divide, I have to admit that it only takes a three hour comfortable train journey to get me to those meetings in the capital where all the important decisions are taken. A very different experience from Mozambique.

Here at Khovo where I’m based, the last couple of days has seen a gathering of the Pastors from the North, as they visit friends and relations in the big city, and also negotiate the purchase of bus tickets home. Just for these few days they’re at the centre of where it is all happening - but then it’s going to be back to the parish and those poor roads and appalling distances and unreliable transport. My guess is that when the IPM Synod, like our Synod, starts talking about mission strategies and evangelism priorities, it probably knows that in fact the burden of the work is going to fall on the shoulders of the willing and dedicated few.

John Durell

News of the World

2011-07-20T14:43:00.000+01:00

A reflection prepared for a staff meeting, St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook - 15^th July 2011

I spent yesterday having lunch at St Catherine’s Community Centre, Crook. Over a cup of tea I joined in a conversation about who might have won the EuroMillion jackpot of £161m pounds. Well last night it was reported that the lucky ticket holder had come forward. Regardless of their identity, the winning person or syndicate will hold a fortune ranked just below David and Victoria Beckham’s estimated wealth of £165million. But one winner has come forward. Retired couple Fred and Doreen Smith from Washington. They won just under £2.5m share of the Lotto Rollover jackpot drawn last Saturday. Their photograph with fizzy champagne was literally splashed across yesterday’s Journal. Mike Ashley’s big share windfall to staff of Newcastle United was announced yesterday too. Some 2,000 staff will get a share payout worth almost £88m in total. It equates to an average of £40,000 each, but combined with a payout for meeting the previous year's target, their awards are now worth an average £43,860.

Although not a betting man myself I think these are really wonderful, cheerful stories in a week of gloomy news about phone hacking. I remember the day like yesterday, when training for the ministry, a Building Society cheque for £1000 was pushed through my letter box. I heard on the radio last week of a man who took pity on a rather dishevelled and forlorn artist who was going from town to town trying to sell his paintings with no success. Whenever he came to this particular town the man would offer him hospitality, and the artist used to give him a painting as a way of saying thank you. The host put them in the attic and forgot about them. Years later, after both men had died and the house was being cleared, someone looked at the canvases and discovered that the artist was L S Lowry and the paintings were worth a fortune.

But isn’t life like that? I don’t suppose anyone would quite put it the way Cecil Rhodes did in the nineteenth century when he said: “Being born an Englishman is winning the first prize in the lottery of life.” But in one sense life is a chance - it is a lottery – it is unpredictable – as the spectators at the Open Golf Championship at Sandwich are beginning to realise. A lottery because none of us chooses when and where to be born or what postcode we might end up living. A postcode that will give access to education, economic and medical opportunities – or not as the case maybe.

Into the cathedral bookshop on Monday came Amiel Osmaston. I recognised her straightaway. We last met 36 years ago in Kenya and then only briefly for a month; we met at a bible study group run by a couple of CMS Sudan missionaries who had left Juba during the civil war, being temporarily housed in Mombasa. We talked a lot about former times, our faith journeys - Amiel is a Canon of Carlisle Cathedral, diocesan ministry and development officer. We talked about how the face of Sudan is being changed into a new country - the Republic of South Sudan - born out of generations of conflict and suffering; it is estimated that a million and a half people might have died in the civil war, and now some ten million people are now at risk across East Africa after the worst drought in sixty years.

It matters little how much we are worth in financial terms, with a lottery win, an inheritance, savings, what is stored in the attic. But it does matter to God how we use our wealth, our filthy lucre, our inheritance, for as we say in our prayers – “all things come from you and of your own to we give you.” We can define our world as we will, shrink it to whatever excites, amuses or keeps us comfortable and exclude images which unsettle us. But as human beings we can also define our world with a leap of imagination and faith, to see the world from a very different perspective. According to the Bible, God offers the potential to discover it as it’s meant to be. He sets out his intention in Jesus, giving himself to make new beginnings possible in the most desperate of situations and for the unlikeliest of people, often with meagre resources. And he invites us as ministers of the kingdom to share in the process; he gives us the resources – sometimes money - to do so.

Those making significant sacrifices and changes to our community and our world are those who give their time and money, for example at St Catherine’s Community Centre across the road, who give small and substantial donations to humanitarian causes. And as often as it is not, it is the hidden legion of men and women of goodwill and peace who work quietly to bring the vision of the kingdom of God into being, like missionaries returning to work in the new country of the Southern Sudan, bringing it into reality, with all its future economic and humanitarian needs. Such efforts don’t usually make much of a tabloid splash. But I think this is the news of the world that really does matter. The building of the kingdom of God is the News of the World.

Psalm 125: Mark 12:13-17

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit

Mozambique Blog (3)

2011-07-18T10:08:00.002+01:00

Sunday July 17th

“Is our Synod like your own?” is the question people kept asking me. “What are the differences from your own?” “Are our ways different from yours?”

The four-day Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Mozambique came to an end earlier today, with much singing and dancing by an open-air congregation that must have totalled around 2,000. It is of course the Synod meeting of the whole Church, and so is really to be compared with our General Assembly, although in size it is only a little larger than our own Northern Synod meeting. But like General Assembly, people come from all over the country, and there is lots of enthusiastic meeting up of people who may not have seen each other since last Synod, or even longer.

But how to answer the question? After a day or so I quite forgot to say anything about the singing and dancing (which I think is probably what was expected of me). Yes of course that is different – but it quickly goes without saying. No one comes up to present a report without singing the first line of a song which everyone will immediately join in; and we know that there will be two or three occasions in each session when everyone will be up on their feet and swaying. It’s hardly worth noting that the main difference from our meetings is that this one happens to be run by African Christians in Africa.

So I found myself saying that in fact we have quite a lot in common. We both worry about resources, and seem not to have enough to do the things that we want (or that we think God wants us) to do. And maybe we’re both mistaken there. And I heard voices crying out for real evangelism in which Christians really look outside the church instead of sheltering inside it. Familiar or not? And I suppose the opening procession bore some resemblance to our traditional Parade of the Moderators at General Assembly, though here it’s all the Pastors who process, and in Genevan gowns and tabs – though I imagine the hodgepodge of styles might disturb those of our brethren and sisters who like that sort of thing.

But dare I speak openly of the differences? I did with some who seemed to want me to be honest. Debating at great length trivial matters like the style of the delegates’ registration card (which has to last five years) seemed a terrible waste of Synod’s time: surely a committee could have processed that? And nearly the last item of business, deciding where the one-day autumn synod should be held, was taken absolutely cold, and as one delegate pointed out, it seemed that those who shouted loudest were the winners. So there were times when you felt the need for a Mozambican James Breslin to see that business was executed briskly, and without doubt or ambiguity. But generally this Church is getting its act together. Some of the troubles of recent years are being ironed out by a Verification Committee which has responsibility to see that decisions made by Synod are in accord with the new Church constitution and also the law of the land. Serious stuff – but it was clearly needed, and now it is happening it seems to be well received.

But for all the serious stuff and hard work, being at the Synod was a great experience and great fun! The general hospitality of the host parish was magnificent: cooked meals (served under canvas) at lunch and in the evening, and special and sometimes embarrassing care for their guests from outside the country. I enjoyed the game of trying not to get forced to use the special guests’ loo (which involved disturbing women who were busy in the kitchen) – but it was hard not get shouted at as you made your way to the perfectly clean and adequate “common” facilities. At meal times we were invariably pushed to the front of the queue, and given seats of honour. More important, we non-Portuguese speakers were provided with translators throughout the sessions, who not only helped us to understand what was going on, but also were able to share opinions and give us a broader sense of opinion within the Church.

It’s been a great time too for meeting up with people again. Armando arrived from Chimoio yesterday; and this morning I was saved from making a fool of myself in the offertory procession by Ignatio from Xai-Xai, who’d heard us greeted and came to the front to greet me personally. Lazaro, and Naftal from Ricatla, have been two of our faithful and efficient translators; and Amos Zita (like me now retired, but more deserving I suspect) did one session too. I’ve enjoyed conversations with people like Jonas Ngomane, and Pastor Carlos from Zobue, as well as individuals I’d already met up with again over the past ten days in and around Khovo – and a good number of people I met at Synod for the first time, but I hope not the last. And I should mention that Matthew has been faithfully sitting through every session, not meeting any young people as was vaguely promised, but looking forward now to a trip with a parish youth group going north in the next couple of days.

I had five minutes or so Friday morning to speak and bring greetings from everyone in Northern Synod, and assure them that this Partnership has real meaning to us all. I just hope it does – and I realise that it’s up to those of us who are enthused by it to try and enthuse others and get everyone involved. I hope that the rest of the time I have here may give me some opportunities to explore with IPM people ways in which we can try to do this.

But first of all, after four days of early rising and long day sessions – time for what I feel is a well-deserved sleep.

John Durell

Mozambique blog

2011-07-11T14:06:00.002+01:00

José has an aphorism which he brought back from a recent visit to Switzerland (the IPM has its origins in the Swiss Mission): “The Swiss has a watch, but the African has time.” It may not be original – I’m told the Taliban recently said the same about the Americans and themselves. But it’s still quite telling – although I remain an unrepentant watch-wearer.

Saturday was one of those frustrating days that happen from time to time. We had the promise of a guided tour of Maputo, but the guide failed to turn up at the appointed time. When he did appear, we were about to eat lunch, so he promised to come back in another half hour. After two hours I gave up. But maybe he had the time for something else.

On the other hand, although I may keep looking at my watch, I am not constantly connected to my mobile phone, as many people here are. There was a “no mobiles” notice glued to the pillar in church this morning, but they were certainly in peoples’ hands in the vestry before the service, and were ringing as soon as it finished. And in what is a very unregulated society compared with ours, they are of course in constant use on car journeys, by passengers and driver alike. People who have time seem not to be able to suggest that now is not the best time.

But the value of having time , rather than being tied to time, was seen in a service like this morning’s at the Presbyterian Church at Tshavana. We got underway at about 9.15 (I imagine it was programmed for 9 o’clock), and were only shaking hands outside at a quarter to two. What came in between embraced the usual liturgical fare (quite a brief sermon) and a couple of “specials”. The congregation, which has grown from practically nothing over the eleven years of its existence is now trying to get out of the fairly constricted shop that houses it, and put up a new purpose-built church. Today was one of the monthly occasions for people from each of the zones (a bit like cell groups perhaps) to bring the money they’d pledged, and hear that they are now close to being able to purchase the land.

But the main “extra” was a presentation to the previous pastor, who left the parish about a year ago. This is the way they do things: say goodbye only when you’re well and truly gone. I suppose it combats that dread that our churches have of a minister changing their mind and deciding not to go after all; but it must be strange for the new minister in post to hear all the wonderful things about their predecessor, and wonder whether or not they’re reckoned to be shaping up to such high standards. Each of the groups in the church made their own speeches and presentation – all accompanied of course with song. The a capella singing was as wonderful as ever – and the gifts all magnificent, from cooking pots to blankets, and from a mattress and bed to three sheets of corrugated iron for a canopy.

Sitting on my wooden bench, relying on an interpreter, I admit that it felt a long session. But for everyone else in the church, I am sure that the morning flew by. Hardly anyone left before it ended, when I had the privilege of giving the final blessing – which the congregation had been warned would not be translated! Here were people who simply had time – time to worship God, time to find joy in one another’s company, and time and generosity to assured a well-loved pastor that her work among them and the gifts she had shared with them would not be forgotten. And the variety of gifts she struggled home with certainly didn’t include a watch.

John Durell

Mozambique

2011-07-09T14:09:00.002+01:00

Friday July 8

It’s five years since I’ve been here – and Yes, I’m proudly telling everyone, it’s my third time in Mozambique. I’m here first of all for next week’s Synod meeting of the Presbyterian Church of Mozambique (IPM), our synod’s global partner. Matthew Appleyard, who travelled with me, has come at the invitation of the Church to learn more about their youth work. These first days since our arrival on Tuesday have been mainly settling in – but they’ve given me opportunity to see that some things have changed over recent years.

Getting off the plane is the first thing: walking straight into the terminal rather than down the steps and out into the near tropical heat. (Though as it happens just now the heat is somewhat lacking: it was hotter at Heathrow when we left.) Now you quickly find yourself in a large and well-appointed arrivals hall where the visa queues are much less intimidating than I remember from last time – all part of the airport development undertaken, I’m told, by the Chinese. There’s plenty of building going on in and around the city centre – and again, the most significant appears to be Chinese.

Church officials are busy preparing for next week’s Synod: this is the annual meeting of the whole church, to which people in true Biblical fashion will come from the north and the south. In fact, they will all come to the south: Mozambique is a vast country, but the capital Maputo is at the southernmost tip, and as well as being the most populous area, it’s by far the area of greatest strength of the IPM. We are staying at the Church headquarters at Khovo; and following a series of preparation meetings on Wednesday, Ernesto Langa and José Tovela found time to take us on a tour around the city yesterday morning – in the vehicle which Northern Synod purchased three years ago.

At Matthew’s request we drove out to see the new stadium, built to host the African Games later this year – built, needless to say, by the Chinese. It’s a fair way out of town, dominating everything around, and linked in with the Games Village which, true to form, looks as if the builders are going to be busy till the very last minute. The road along the coast and down to the harbour is as attractive as ever, with the old concrete shell of the colonial era hotel at last removed, and apparently ready for a replacement – to add to the large number of new hotels now opening closer to the downtown area. The traffic everywhere is infinitely worse than I remember from earlier visits; and Mark, who is staying at the Khovo guesthouse with us, reckons that the Government is to blame for the way in which the bus companies have been pressurised into cramming passengers in ever more tightly, reducing the quality of the service and encouraging more and more cars onto the roads.

It’s been good to meet up with people again: José and Ernesto of course, and also Ernesto’s wife Argentina who was part of the first group who visited us in 2004, and stayed with us in Durham. Then Carlos Banza whom we met in Xai-Xai on the first return visit the same year (he’s now head of the Church’s Evangelism Department), and also Reinaldo Sive who looked after me so well when I spent four weeks here during my sabbatical in 2006. Others too who made us welcome in the past, and whom it’s a real joy to meet up with again. And I know there will be more meetings up next week at the Synod: Armando Chihale who was such a good interpreter for us in 2004, and whom Hillian and I visited in Chimoio in 2006, has emailed me to promise that he will be at the Synod meeting and looking out for me.

So Synod next week is the first part of the visit so far as I’m concerned. But I’m hoping there will be specific work to undertake in the time I’m here after that, and am hoping in the next few days for some meetings to be set up so that we can start to plan how I can best use that time so as to strengthen our Global Partnership.

John Durell

A Wedding Muddle

2011-05-03T16:26:00.000+01:00

Ray Anglesea discovers marriages may be a mine field for the minister

The recent Royal Wedding in Westminster Abbey may have appeared reasonably straight forward to the adoring billion fans. Not so the wedding I was recently involved in.

The civil ceremony took place in a theatre. I had thought the bride and groom, dear longstanding friends, had invited me to take part in their “service” as they insisted on calling it because I was a “minister of religion.” I had after all history: I had preached at the bride’s sister’s church wedding and baptised one of her babies. However on checking with the local registrars I was informed by the presiding official that bible readings, prayers, religious symbols of any kind including candles were not allowed and strictly prohibited. I had to settle for reading a non-religious poem.

I was rather taken aback; I could imagine there may well have been “God” difficulties in a civil ceremony I attended a couple of years ago when dear friends, a Christian and a Muslim, had married, but the idea that the church has a monopoly on light appeared to me, at least on Easter Saturday, Easter Eve, an interesting one - “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” (outside the church there is no salvation). That, it seems, is the present view of the state, as well of the church, when it comes to state/civil weddings – and civil partnerships too.

But to all this, the Government is threatening to add yet more confusion. We can have church wedding with God; state weddings without God: same sex civil partnerships without God – to which may soon be added same- sex civil partnerships with God; and perhaps more?

The first ceremonies under the Civil Partnership Act took place in December 2005, Elton John and David Furnish paved the way on December 21, 2005 at the historic Guildhall, Windsor. The act accords people in same-sex relationships the same sort of rights and responsibilities that are available to married couples. However, the current law on state weddings as well as same-sex civil partnerships, as I discovered on Easter Saturday, prohibits religious elements. Campaigners point out that this means that whereas a mixed-sex couple can choose between a civil or religious wedding, same-sex couples are denied this choice.

The Coalition Government has admitted that there is an imbalance between civil partnerships and civil marriage and are currently seeking ways to address this anomaly. It is proposed that religious civil partnerships be permitted and those who wish to do so can have their same-sex civil partnerships performed in religious buildings. Naturally faith groups are split about the proposal. Unitarians, Quakers and Liberal Jews are up for it while the Church of England and Roman Catholics are opposed. Last February, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg stated “I support gay marriage. Love is the same, straight or gay, so the civil institution should be the same, too. All couples should be able to make that commitment to one another.” Marriage equality, I understand, is now adopted official party policy.

But if all this current legislation appears confusing then there is yet further complications – the religious press has in recent weeks reported the journeys of eight British couples who have submitted cases to the European Court of Human Rights: Four gay couples want to get married; four heterosexual couples want to enter civil partnerships. Their present inability to do these things, they say, is sexual apartheid – arguing that there is one law for heterosexual partners, another for gay couples.

Still confused? In a dramatic development on 2^nd March last year, the House of Lords voted to allow the use of religious premises and religious language in same-sex partnerships. Peers voted in favour of the proposal by 95 votes to 21, despite opposition from the government and several Church of England bishops. The proposal, which takes the form of an amendment to the Equality Bill, was put forward by Waheed Alli, who is a gay Muslim and a Labour peer. The move will result in an amendment to the Equalities Bill which would allow, though not compel, religious organisations to host civil partnerships. Religious language would also be permitted within the ceremonies. The amendment has yet to be approved by the House of Commons, but it is predicted that it is unlikely that MPs would make any significant changes to it.

How are we to pick our way through this minefield of religious and political correctness when religious people are divided in so many different and complex ways? To reconcile issues of justice and freedom here, it is probably best, says Paul Vallely, associate editor of The Independent and a leading British writer on ethical, cultural and political issues, to resort to the principle that “any changes should be permissive, not compulsory.” I suspect the vocabulary may be the easy part.

A permissive approach might suggest that straight and gay couples should be allowed to use the Bible, hymns and prayers in their civil ceremonies. The word of God is not copyright and people should be encouraged to use it. And should same- sex ceremonies be allowed in church? If a minister and congregation are happy -, then certainly.

But while we wait for the Equality Bill to be considered and amended a possible permissive approach will have to be put on hold before my other four weddings later this year. The wedding of two Roman Catholic friends on the eve of the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge together with my eldest son’s summer wedding seem reasonably straightforward, but not so the other two weddings: two Christian friends have surprisingly opted for a civil ceremony thereby omitting God; while the other consists of a fascinating authorised Church of England Betrothal Ceremony, prior to a Japanese wedding between a Christian and a member of the Shinto faith.

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister currently working across synod church partnerships. May 2011

Saturday: The Way into Silence

2011-04-20T08:22:00.001+01:00

continuing this week's reflections by Ray Anglesea

O Lord, send your cherubs in my last hour to bear my soul away to Abraham’s bosom; let it rest there untouched by any pain until the last day. Wake me then from death’s sleep, so that my joyful eyes may see you, the Son of God, my Saviour, grant me this and I will glorify you throughout eternity. Chorale, St John Passion, J S Bach
We have passed Good Friday and tomorrow will be Easter Day. The visual identity of these two events is clear. Lent is generally stark: black crosses, a purple robe, crown of thorns, spear and sponge, money bag – all of which culminates with a single man, hanging on a cross, a victim of capital punishment. Easter Day, by contrast, as church flower ladies know only too well, is a rush of gold, whites and yellows, white plaster-of-Paris tombs, egg hunts and more flowers. Between the worlds of these two extremes stands Holy Saturday, its mood subdued, yet charged with anticipation.

For many people the problem with Holy Saturday is that there is nothing actually to see. The wondrous cross is not there to be surveyed, but it is not yet time to stare into the empty tomb. The time of vigil has come. We wait in silence and in darkness. In some ways this is just as well. The visual images of Good Friday – in paintings, films and television – are perhaps, over familiar, almost prosaic. All too often, Jesus looks quite solemn but resigned on his cross, passively accepting his fate. Pain, in one still portrait, is not easy to capture, and the very act of committing that event to canvas or to the screen is an act that looses something of the reality of Good Friday. Perhaps Mel Gibson’s controversial and excessively violent film The Passion of Christ (2004) which recalled the last 12 hours of Jesus life and starring James Caviezal might be considered an exception to that rule.

But instead of “seeing” suppose we shut our eyes and listen. There is a sense of waiting, of anticipation there is a stillness and quietness that is appropriate, because Jesus had been laid in the tomb. Joseph of Arimathea, the secret disciple, but now courageous and bold, had begged the body of Jesus from Pilate, tenderly annointed and wrapped it in linen and laid it in his own prepared tomb hewn in the rock. But in our waiting what is the sound we hear?

A few years ago a short play for radio told the creation story of Genesis through two lowly back-room angels whose task in God’s workshop was to dub the sound on to creation. As they talk about the sounds to be made by fish, birds, animals, seas and rivers, attention focuses on a box in the corner of the sound workshop. “That box,” says the senior to the junior angel, “is full of sounds you don’t want to hear .......a child crying, a mother dying, the sound of war........screams, the rattle of death.......once you open the box, you’ll release the noise of chaos................and you’ll never get them back in.”

Inevitably the young angel, in the absence of his mentor, prizes open the lid and lifts it slightly. He hears no scream, nor the sound of war – just the crunch of teeth into a crisp green apple.

Lent has been acknowledging that all these sounds have been let out long ago. We cannot control them. Good Friday and Easter Sunday are about hearing them contract and be redeemed in the events of the cross and resurrection. It is the sound of fury on Good Friday that cancels out the sound of the Fall, and brings the peace of Easter on a lush fresh Spring Day. Listening in silence and imagining becomes a moment that is sacred and ultimately safe. So today is a prelude to a mystery, one that defies sight.

But there is a sound – that of earth quaking and ground breaking. But they carry different messages. Tonight, all over the world, Christians will sit in silence in the darkness between these sounds. In the vigil they keep, they will hear the story of redemption, long, long ago. They will wait and watch for a spark, that first flame of Easter light. At its appearance, there will be a new noise – shouts of acclamation and the sound of celebration.

The silenced Word will speak once more.

Hush!" said the Cabby. They all listened.

In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it. The horse seemed to like it too; he gave the sort of whinney a horse would give if, after years of being a cab-horse, it found itself back in the old field where it had played as a foal, and saw someone whom it remembered and loved coming across the field to bring it a lump of sugar.

"Gawd!" said the Cabby. "Ain't it lovely?"

Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out - single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.

"Glory be!" said the Cabby. "I'd ha' been a better man all my life if I'd known there were things like this."

From Chapter 8: The Magicians Nephew, C S Lewis

Friday: The Way to Calvary

2011-04-20T08:19:00.001+01:00

continuing this week's reflections by Ray Anglesea

Lord, our master, whose glory fills the whole earth, show us by your Passion that you, the true Son of God, triumph even in the deepest humiliation: Introduction, St John Passion: J.S. Bach, composed for the Good Friday Vespers Service of 1724, St Nicholas Church, Leipzig.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu writing in The Times 2 at the start of this year’s Holy Week (Monday 18th April 2011) spoke of a world “where governments that seemed impregnable are being overthrown.” We think of the unrest and turmoil in the Middle East, civil war in Libya, the Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Korea and, of course, Jerusalem. I am reminded in our Morning Prayer Old Testament readings from Lamentations this week how “lonely sits the city (of Jerusalem), how like a widow she has become, a city that weeps bitterly in the night, who has no one to comfort her, her friends have become her enemies.” The Archbishop comments are a stark reminder that the Christian gospel is no philosophical theory or mere symbolic story; Christians are on the front line. It is a gospel of salvation that has at its heart the execution by barbaric torture of a particular man in a particular place at a particular point in time, this year represented so graphically for me by the crucifix Lam’a Sabach’thani (Matthew 27 v46) in Durham Cathedral, by the Russian Sculptor Kirill Sokolov (1930-2004). In his obituary in The Guardian it was reported that “Sokolov regarded life as essentially tragic; he saw art as a kind of salvation.” The sculpture gives powerful and poignant expression to the suffering of people at the hands of oppressors.

What we remember on this Good Friday is all of a piece with the intense fighting around the city of Misrata, Libya. Reports on the news channels indicate that hundreds of people have been killed and 1000’s injured since late February. Golgotha, the place of the skull, where nails smashed through the wrists and feet of Jesus, the field teacher and healer from Nazareth in Galilee, stands for the skulls of every war and every genocide. Betrayed by his friends, self-preserving denial, making sport with prisoners, the mockery of crowds, spectators drawn to a spectacle, the soldiers doing their duty and dicing for his clothes, a mother in agony and a knot of women helplessly looking on – it all happens time and time again – “where human rights are perverted in the presence of the Most High (Lamentations 3 v35).

Jesus was put to death in an occupied nation. His crucifixion was the direct consequence of his challenge to the religious authorities of his day. It was no less a convenient way for a jittery Roman governor, nervous of trouble at Passover time, to get rid of a potential threat. The cocktail of the crucifixion - as I was reminded last night at the Cathedral’s compline address given by the former Bishop of Salisbury; Rt Revd David Stanclifffe - was a mixture of religion and politics. Yet although this event anchors it in history we are compelled to look deeper to see why the Cross is the mark of Christian identity and the disclosure of what God is like.

The gospels mark the ministry of Jesus with predictions of his passion. Sacrifice and suffering are at the very heart of who he is. As the 19th century novelist Dostoevsky affirmed, “loving humility is a terrible force: it is the strongest of all things and there is nothing like it.” Jesus proclaimed the coming of the kingdom, or rule, of God, a kingdom that was neither pursued nor established by the ways of violence and power. His kingdom as he tells Pilate in John’s gospel is “not of this world.” Only if it were would his servants fight.

And yet the bible tells us there is a fight, a fight of a cosmic order of which Jesus is a part, which to me in more enlightened times I find unfathomable. The ministry of Jesus is seen as wrestling with the powers of evil of and engagement with that engulfing darkness, named as sin and death, of which I can understand. When Judas goes out to betray Jesus, St John with all his layers of Gospel meanings notes that it was night, and at the crucifixion, the culmination of this struggle, the gospels record that there was darkness over the land.

Jesus came to do his Father’s will, showing that will to be a love going to the uttermost, reaching out into the very darkness of hell, plumbing the depths of human sin, betrayal, abandonment and rejection. In a costly work of reconciliation Jesus defeats the power of darkness and establishes peace. That peace is the reconciliation of a sinful, fallen humanity, caught in a web of the worship of false gods, and driven by selfish desires, with the God who made men and women in the image of his love that they might reflect his likeness.

Today is “good” only because of Easter. The passion story which comes to a close today would be vastly different without the Resurrection. It is the hope kindled by the Easter encounters with the Risen Jesus that makes all things new, a theme that I was reminded of at a dear friend’s father’s funeral today held in the very old 11th century Norman church of St Helen, Kelloe. In the light of Easter we see that love’s redeeming work was indeed done through the cross, not apart from the cross. There the fight was fought and the battle won. It was from the darkness, silence, death and the hell of the utter apartness from God that Christ rose in triumph.
And the Easter good news of the Cross and resurrection has been found to bring hope and life in the most appalling situations, in refugee camps, on battlefields and in the most abject human misery. Today we remember that even if we go down to hell God is there, and in that love going to the uttermost, we do indeed find our peace.

Rest in peace, sacred body, for which I weep no longer, and bring me also to my rest. The grave that is yours and holds no further suffering, for me opens Heaven and closes Hell. The Conclusion, St John Passion. J S Bach, composed for the Good Friday Vespers Service of 1724, St Nicholas Church, Leipzig.

Psalm 27
Colossians 1 v 19+20

Thursday: The Way to Gethsemane

2011-04-20T08:14:00.001+01:00

continuing this week's reflections by Ray Anglesea

Two smells on the way to Morning Prayer this morning; the smell of newly cut grass amongst the yellow daffodils many shades of green in the Cathedral gardens and the smell of freshly baked bread from Durham’s new Mediterranean Bakery and Deli, “Ciao Ciao.” In the bakery window are displayed delicious breads - feta cheese and mint, wholemeal, olive and rosemary and a hot cross loaf. The smell of Mediterranean bread reminded me of holidays on the Vendee’s golden beaches, camping in the pine forests south of La Rochelle and the morning walk to the boulangerie to pick up baguettes and croissants to have with freshly ground steaming coffee. Why is it that bread which we take for granted as being little more than the boring stuff holding together cucumber and tuna can somehow come become a feast when eaten in the morning sun? Perhaps because when we make time we discover the importance of the simple things in life.

In the Lord’s Prayer which will be said in churches throughout the land tonight we ask God to “Give us this day our daily bread”....................bread.............the most basic of food...............we are simply asking that God to give us life. When Jesus was starving in the wilderness, the first temptation he had was the offer of bread. Centuries before, out in the desert, where we were on Monday, the migrant tribe of the Hebrews received manna from heaven; the gift of food from God to keep them alive on their great trek. Bread by which they will survive, bread by which they would live, bread received as a gift of God.
In tonight’s meal of the last supper as the Passover meal is re-enacted we remember and celebrate this great gift of God which he has given to his church. Holy Communion, The gift of bread and wine. We ask in this meal, this service, this mass or eucharist that God would give us eternal life, that God would keep us in eternal life, for after all life is a gift of God. This life, this grace, this bread is to be broken and shared with others. Simply by sharing food we are sharing friendship, we are sharing in God’s friendship. God after all loves unconditionally ..........he wants to share his life with us...........he asks us to feed on him.

But Jesus tonight at his farewell meal with his disciples in that upper room, shot through with foreboding, pathos and drama, what Yeats would call in another context “a terrible beauty,” turns everything on its head. It is not bread that gives life, the baguette, the sliced bread, the Mediterranean feta cheese and mint loaf, but Jesus: he himself is the bread of life, he is the one who gives life, and he is the one who provides the grace to share his love with each other and with strangers. Jesus at this meal of bread and wine is playing out, acting out in symbolic form something that we are to have access to for all time. He himself who is all grace, all love, and all life becomes in this meal the servant and slave. He gives himself to us; he gives his body willingly to be broken like bread, for the great tomorrow.

What happened in the past, in that upper room we make effective in our halls, cathedrals and chapels tonight. In this communion service we take a historic journey backwards crossing all ages of faith, as we remember the event when God acted to save his people. There was no time for the captive Israelites to bake bread in the normal way with yeast and leaven, so it was therefore called “the bread of affliction.” The bread was chosen to make present and for them to remember the bitterness of the slavery of the Israelites and the miracle of their deliverance.

But God will act again. The service of Holy Communion also points to Good Friday, the very next day, and to Easter, Resurrection Day. The cross of Calvary would give way to the third day conquered by goodness, death conquered by resurrection. When the Lord broke the unleavened bread and took the cup, he was giving new significance to the bread and wine with the words “this is my body broken for you. This is my blood shed for you” At his last homily before he was murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador said “May this body broken and this blood shed for human beings encourage us to give our body and blood up to suffering and pain, Christ did not do this for self but to bring justice and peace to our people. Let us be intimately united then in faith and hope at this moment of prayer.”
In this meal tonight in the eating and drinking of the bread and wine, Christ grants communion with himself. God acts in our service tonight as he does every communion Sunday by giving life to the body, the fellowship of our local churches, the renewing of each member. The bread we receive has been broken, the wine out poured. The road from the Last Supper, passes through Gethsemane, Calvary and the garden of that first Easter.

By his action tonight Jesus demonstrates that we are loved by him forever, that we will be with him forever, in bread and wine he gives himself to us. Christ gives himself with his own hand. All we need to do is extend our hands to receive what is given – peace, forgiveness and love.

We are not alone. Jesus never promised an easy journey, through Gethsemane and onward to Calvary. But he did promise bread for the journey and in that bread, his presence, every step of the way.

Wednesday: The Way up the Mountain

2011-04-20T07:42:00.003+01:00

continuing this week's reflections by Ray Anglesea

In the middle of Galilee, four or five miles from Nazareth there stands a mountain. It is circular, almost perfect in it symmetry, like the top of a great round ball emerging from the Galilean plain. When you get to the top, where it flattens off you can see the whole of the central southern Galilee spread out around you. You look down on the dozens of little villages where Jesus walked and talked. This is Mount Tabor, famous locally as the Mount of Transfiguration.

Mountains matter in the story of God’s people. Moses came to Mount Sinai and saw the burning bush, and discovered himself to be in the personal, close and dangerous presence of God. That moment of commission led to the subsequent visit to Sinai, which was mentioned in Monday’s reflection, where he went up a mountain to wait upon God, to receive the law of God, to plead with God when Israel sinned. When he came down, the skin of his face was shining because he had been with God. So too Elijah, at his moment of deepest desolation, made his way from Mount Carmel, where he had slaughtered the prophets of Baal to Mount Sinai, where after the earthquake, wind and fire, there came a still voice saying “What are you doing here, Elijah?” God commissioned him afresh assuring him that God’s strange purposes were going ahead, despite appearances and despite his depression. Abraham’s strangest and darkest dealings with God too took place on a mountain. David’s lifts his eyes to the hills, and saw them as a symbol of God’s presence.

Here once again Moses and Elijah meet God on a mountain. History suddenly telescoped together: past and present are fused into one and future too, because the transfiguration points forward, as Luke says in his account, to Jesus departure, his exodus, which he was to accomplish in heaven. And the voice from the cloud, the same voice that announced the Ten Commandments to Moses and that whispered a gentle rebuke and decommissioning to Elijah now speak to Jesus and Jesus only: “This is my son, my beloved one, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” The next time anyone will suggest that Jesus is the son of God will be Caiaphas, in the trial narrative, and then the centurion at the foot of the cross.

But of course the strangest thing in the story is the actual transfiguration itself. Jesus was transformed so that his face shone like the sun, and his clothes themselves became shining white. This glory that shone from Jesus face on the mountain is the glory of a human being made in God’s image and now totally open to God, totally possessed by God, totally reflecting God’s image, totally on fire with God. Seeing this human being, we are seeing God, God in a mirror, God through the looking glass, God present as in the burning bush but now in the shining face, and even in the clothes of a man amongst men.

And it is because of this that the path of the Christian journey has always included the way up the mountain. The Christian tradition has emphasized two great complementary truths about mountaintop experiences, times of special and transforming intimacy with God. On the one hand they are for anyone and everyone, and if you’re missing out on them you may want to review your life of prayer and waiting upon God. On the other hand, the importance of such experiences lies not in the experience themselves, but in what they do to us, what they prepare us for, what they commission us to do.

Often we live in a perpetual spiritual winter. We look at photographs of buds and blossoms as fairy-tale fantasies, things that don’t happen in the real world. And if our present lifestyle both in the church and in our everyday lives don’t allow spaces for mountain climbing for fresh springtimes of the spirit, we should take steps to put matters right. Deep, rich transforming experiences of the presence of God are not reserved for special categories of people. They are on offer for everyone. They help us glimpse the bigger picture, to glimpse the goal, to gather fresh strength for the journey.

Spiritual experiences, great moments of illumination and transformation are never given simply that we may enjoy them for their own sake. We live in an experience-orientated culture, which teaches us to value experiences for themselves. We know so many Californians who change light bulbs and who want to share their experiences, the danger of course is to think that one’s experiences of the presence and love of God are somehow a possession, given simply to be enjoyed, clung to, celebrated in themselves, for our own use, for our own enjoyment. But the gift is given in the context of vocation, to strengthen that vocation.

Today might be a time to pause as we enter the city, to take time to walk up a mountain and wait patiently for God. Perhaps it’s time at last to do what you’ve always promised yourself and never got round to: to set time for prayer and meditation of scripture, to reordered the haunts of life in which you’ve got stuck, so as to make fresh room for God who waits to show you his glory. Perhaps its time to seek out a friend who may gently help you to move forward along the twisty mountain road. Perhaps it’s time to expose yourself again to the possibility that you too might hear a voice, might glimpse glory, might fall on your face in terror and awe, might be grasped afresh by the majesty of Jesus.

And to those who do climb the mountain comes the promise echoing the transfiguration story but pointing beyond it, from the letter of John. “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and it does not yet appear what we shall see; but we know that when Jesus appears, we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is.”

The road up the mountain is not for the casual tourist or the faint hearted. But the view from the top is out of this world.

Psalm 54: Luke 9 v28-36

Tuesday – The Way to Jerusalem

2011-04-19T08:15:00.001+01:00

continuing this week's reflections by Ray Anglesea

The way to Jerusalem is paved with great expectations.

Jerusalem is after all the city of the great King, the joy of the whole earth. It is Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest. It is the place where the living God has chosen to put his name. It is the city where David built his own house and then planned God’s house. It is the city of dreams, the Holy City, the ultimate place of pilgrimage. It was and is the city of breathtaking beauty up in the Judaean mountains, encompassing in itself steep hills and deep gullies, with stunning views and gorgeous buildings, honeycombed with twisting alleyways, shafts of sunlight into beautiful courtyards, full of smells and spices and olives, fresh bread and sweet wine, and the sound of many languages, many voices raised in prayer, many cocks crowing.

It is also a place of great pain. David captured Jerusalem from the Jesubites 3000 years ago and David too destroyed it by force. Since then Jerusalem has been besieged, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, besieged, and fought over, again and again. The joy of the world and the pain of the world, side by side and somehow intermingling. “We are going up to Jerusalem,” said Jesus, “and the Son on man will be handed over to suffering a death.” The message they wanted to hear and the message they didn’t want to hear. They came together.
It is often said that Jerusalem is a focal point for three great religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam; but it is actually a focal point of four, because we must add another “ism” name Tourism. Tourism is the modern secular version of pilgrimage, in which we go to famous places to see well known sights, not to meet with God or to receive healing of blessing, but to see what our culture tells us what we ought to see, to expand our own horizons and experiences, to buy souvenirs that make us feel good when we get back home, to take photos and videos so that we can steal something of the reality of the place and make it our won private reality. Perhaps you go to Jerusalem to worship the God of secularism, the god of a liberal culture that tells you to observe from a critical distance, but not get involved. To sense the magic of the place, and then to buy the postcards. To say a prayer perhaps if that’s your kind of thing, but not to stay on your knees all day. We’ve to get back to the museum or back to the hotel for tea. Our reality must remain undisturbed. Take no notice of that cock crowing in the background.

In Jewish history and scripture there were two main reasons in particular for going to Jerusalem. You went to enthrone the King, or to pay homage. And you went there to meet God, to offer sacrifice, to celebrate his love, his salvation, his covenant. It was never quite that easy of course. To be near the king was to be in the danger zone. The way to the presence of God remained dark and mysterious, assisted and sometime blocked by priests and well intentioned stewards. And for long periods of Jewish history, ancient and modern, it was rumoured that God had abandoned Jerusalem, at least temporally. Enthroning the king and meeting God that was what Jesus was inviting his followers to do with all its multiple ambiguities.
But the disciples with their home spun bravado were not ready for the sort of enthronement that Jesus has in mind. When the Son of man goes to Jerusalem he must suffer many things at the hands of the elders and the chief priests and scribes and is killed and on the third day is raised. The disciples are not ready to see their hopes crucified. They are not ready to see their great expectations turned upside down and inside out in order to be fulfilled. They want the kingdom of God the way they’ve always wanted it. They expect it to be tough, they expect it to be challenged, it’s going to be hard, you may have to suffer, and you’ve not going to like it.

The disciples perhaps don’t penetrate the innermost meaning of the challenge. If anyone wants to come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross, for anyone who wants to save his life will loose it, and those who want to lose their life for my sake will find it. What will it profit someone to gain the whole world, but forfeit their life, their soul; and their heart? The kingdom is coming and sooner than the disciples think. Their expectations will be more than fulfilled. But the only way for that to happen is for them to be first dashed to pieces, broken in fragments on the dusty floor, so that God can make a new jigsaw of them, one that conforms to his sort of, kingdom. Skilled craftsmen take months to make a conventional throne; it took the soldiers only a few minutes to construct one for Jesus.

When we think of Peter with his blustering confidence, his attempt to order Jesus about, we are bound to think also of the cock crowing in the early morning near the governor’s palace in Jerusalem. And we learn – and perhaps this is part of the lesson of all who would venture to a holy city, a holy shrine, to listen to the cock crowing every time we allow our own great expectations, in whatever field of sphere we may cherish them, to dominate our horizons and blot out the call to suffer, the call to lose our life, the call to take up the cross. We all have lessons for wanting to be enthroned, our private way of distorting his kingship so it suits our own aspirations and ambitions. Alas the way to Jerusalem must always be the way of thwarted expectations.

And the test of whether this journey to Jerusalem is genuine is to ask the questions whether you’re prepared for God to remake you and lovingly break the brittle you you’ve so carefully constructed. To be like soft clay in his hands, ready to be remoulded so that God can make of you what he had in mind all along. Jerusalem, that great city is a symbol of God’s great expectations, which will by no means coincide with our own. The only true way to enter Jerusalem is perhaps to go, like Abraham, no knowing where you are going, or what it is that you will meet there, perhaps to suspend a clinging and anxious belief, may be a sceptical unbelief, to simply to be, be open, to be still, to wait in silence for the strange God who still comes to those who wait in silence.

The way to Jerusalem stands for the deeply inviting, yet deeply threatening journey into the presence of the one true God, where all is known and all is unknown, where all is asked and all is promised. And those who like us are learning the pilgrim way, learn to listen, in scripture and sacrament, in silence and suffering for the voice of the one who loves us more deeply than we love ourselves. And that, whether or not we ever make the geographical journey to Jerusalem itself, is the journey to which we are all summoned.

Psalm 17 v1-8; Luke 19 v 28-44

Monday - The Way in the Wilderness

2011-04-18T07:31:00.004+01:00

Holy Week reflections by Ray Anglesea

The great Easter getaway has started. Press reports have already indicated that holidaymakers leaving for an extended Easter break can expect heavy traffic on the main roads and congested departure lounges as motorways and airports face their busiest week of the year so far. The travel chaos had begun.

For Christians the holiday getaway takes us in heart and mind to Jerusalem to remember and re-enact the events that are at the centre of our faith, the last days of Jesus life, his death and resurrection. Our travelling to that city may take us via various routes – each day of this Holy Week we might imagine one route which might take us there as we start out on this year’s spiritual journey and pilgrimage.

It is perhaps in the wilderness that the real choices are made. It is one thing to go with the crowds into the city chanting Hosanna it is another to go into the city on our own. There are too many pros and cons to weigh up, advantages and disadvantages, positives and negatives, to make that decision. Indeed it may not be easy to decide anything. When we come to make that decision there are dependents and partners to think about. And if we add to our turmoil and perplexity of journeying into the city a prayer and spiritual life that is dry and barren, the possible dilemma that we are not quite sure where we are and where we belong and where God is, then decisions may be virtually impossible to make. It is so much easier to stay where we are. It might be safer to stay with the crowds in Galilee than to risk going to Jerusalem, to stay with predictable certainty rather than setting out into unknown territories and unchartered waters.

One thing for sure you are never far away from the wilderness when you approach Jerusalem; when you are in Jerusalem the wilderness is just over the next hill. The wilderness comes in many shapes and sizes, just as the desert of Judaea and Sinai are by no means uniform the wilderness that surrounds Jerusalem comes in many forms; huge crags like Masada, there are gullies and crevasses, great rocky outcrops and hidden valleys. And it is perhaps in that place of wilderness that the decision about the journey into the city has to be made; for at the start of this Holy Week we may find ourselves in that place. Sometimes in that wilderness place we may hear many voices; being in the wilderness can be a frightening and a risky experience. Life may appear to be like a trudging journey across a lunar landscape of desert and rocky slopes, an environment that resembles more the ruins of some prehistoric catastrophe, a place of struggle and conflict, a place of loneliness and emptiness, banishment and thirst.

Moses the great law giver, prophet and enduring friend of God, the leader of the Hebrew people had been wandering around the Sinai wilderness for many years, following the call of his God, travelling like the patriarchs before him on an ambiguous and uncertain journey with his irksome, quarrelsome and difficult community. But now Moses hears the call to go to a land promised by God to his descendants, a land of milk and honey. A decision has to be made. The pillar of cloud stands outside the entrance to the tent of meeting. Moses prays.
The problem was that Moses does not want the land of promise without God, and the land of promise is nothing to the people without that same presence. God must go with them. Moses anguished prayers are answered. God will accompany him and his people and the rest of Canaan will be given to them. But Moses requests more. He is convinced that God’s favour does not rest upon him. He prays for a sight of God’s glory. He yearns for a special disclosure of God, not physical sight for he knows that no man can see God and live, but for a spiritual perception of who God is and what he will do for him and his people. God reveals himself by his name. Moses nestles in a rock to see the afterglow of God’s glory, he is to hear old truths in a new splendour, a veil is momentarily drawn back and God passes by, the strangeness of his friend remains with him.

Out there in our lives we may stand on the edge of Jerusalem in some mini wilderness of darkness, uncertainty even banishment as we struggle to move on, to take that step, to make that decision to go to Jerusalem. For Moses it was in a similar place that God met him and gave him directions that would change the face of religion for all time. In the wilderness God for Moses was his heartbeat. Closer than close. In the refuge of that rock Moses felt safe, protected, covered by the hand of his God, his friend.

It is difficult to know sometimes that God is with us, that God is for us, that God cares about our decision making, that God was even with his Son, Jesus, as he turns his face to Jerusalem and all that lies ahead of him. But the paradox is that even though we don’t know it, even though sometimes we don’t feel it – out there - God is with us. Ahead of us, before us, before we get there, he is waiting for us, hands open, to hold us as he did with Moses.

Moses the man who met God in the wilderness is often my inspiration. God met him in a new way and gave him direction and purpose, a blue print of his future plans for Moses and the people who were following him. He holds us as he held Moses. We know it will be all right, at that moment, later or at any time. We are in God’s hands; we may even feel something of that strange glory.

God is with us. Forward then to Jerusalem and may God have mercy on us.

Psalm 91; Exodus 33 v 15-23; Luke 4 v10-13

Holy Week Reflections

2011-04-17T20:15:00.000+01:00

Ray Anglesea's Holy Week reflections will be posted here day by day throughout the week

Palm Sunday: Protest and Extremism

2011-04-17T20:03:00.001+01:00

From a sermon by Ray Anglesea delivered to a joint service of West End, Robert Stewart Memorial and Jesmond United Reformed Churches

It wasn’t Hosanna the jeering, hostile crowds were chanting but “Farewell Mohamed, we will avenge you.” Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street trader, didn’t mean to start a revolution. On the 17th December, a week before Christmas, this 26 year old Tunisian university graduate and street trader wheeled his barrow into the market square of Sidi Bouzid, a dusty town in central Tunisia. He set up his stall at the street corner and began calling out his wares. Within minutes he was interrupted by a municipal inspector who started to confiscate his merchandise; the inspector alleged he did not have a trading permit. Grabbing his fruit and vegetables back the local inspector slapped him in the face.

Perhaps that was the turning point that burst into a revolution. For an Arab man to be slapped by a woman in public was the height of humiliation. Bouazizi, embarrassed and enraged, stormed over to the municipal office demanding the return of his stock. There he was beaten again. Now angry and enraged he went to the main regional government office. He was turned away. “If you don’t see me, I’ll burn myself,” he shouted. At 11:30am, less than an hour after the 1st altercation, Bouazizi was back in front of the gates of the governor’s building. He sat down and poured two bottles of paint-thinner over himself and demanded once more to see an official. Then he lit his cigarette lighter and by the time the flames were extinguished he had suffered third degree burns over 90% of his body.

He was taken by ambulance to a hospital 70 miles away then later to a special burns unit in Tunis. On 4th January 18 days after setting fire to himself Bouazizi died. By then the protests had already started. Dissent and remonstrations began to spread like grassfire throughout the capital and regional towns powered by Facebook and Twitter. Police fired on the crowds in several towns. The death toll mounted. On the day of Bouazizi’s death the Jasmine Revolution erupted into full force. Within a week President Ben Ali of Tunisia had fled the country. A 23 year old dictatorship collapsed in a matter of days. Weeks later the 30 year old rule of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt (who had amassed a family fortune of £40.5 billion), was at an end. Bouazizi had become a martyr. The very ordinariness of his life has given his story the power to overthrow dictators. The rage, frustration and poverty that first erupted on an ordinary Friday morning in a nondescript Tunisian backwater has now spread to Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Libya and Syria.

Does Bouazizi’s story ring any bells? A death on a Friday, a poverty stricken nobody from a backwater nothing town, the martyr a symbol of rebellion, beaten, spat on, abused, humiliated, mocked, abandoned. On this Palm Sunday of all days we remember the early morning madness, the protest, the repression, complaints and objection; an excited demonstration in the dense architecture of Jerusalem, a young servant king on a donkey fulfilling Zechariah’s messianic prophecy, who was to turn expectations of political deliverance on its head. Amongst waving palm branches the smell of defiance was in the air, a possible subversive peasant uprising, threats of arrest, and criticism by those who thought Jesus and his group were going too far, too fast. “This is the controversial field preacher and healer,” they shouted. “This is the son of a virgin who went to parties and turned water into wine.” Danger! Controversy! Fear! In the backwater of a destitute and penurious provincial town amid the Judaean hills there were too many authoritarian, conflicting and violent ideologies. And one of those unjust and immoral ideologies was religious extremism. Religious groups and individuals had become radicalised; a pathological illness which feeds on the destruction of life. In Jerusalem nothing has changed.

Perhaps the greatest Scottish poet of the 20th century, Hugh MacDiarmid, a passionate nationalist and convinced Marxist described his time as an age “whaur extremes meet.” Hugh MacDiarmid was the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve who was no stranger to extremism; indeed the extreme political beliefs that bewitched many during MacDiarmid’s time in the 1930’s possessed something of the quality of religious faith. The result of the extremes of global recession in the 1930’s caused many Jarrow miners and ship builders from this region to walk over 300 miles, with their MP Ellen Wilkinson, to London, demanding employment and an end to abject poverty.

Hand in hand with extreme political views is the extremes of religious intolerance and fanaticism that sometimes goes with it; recent decades have been characterised by worldwide suffering of many as a result of the actions of radicalised religious groups. Complex religious views still prevail - the murder of a Catholic police officer Constable Ronan Kerr, 25, killed after a booby-trap device exploded under his car, in Omagh, County Tyrone: the attack on a United Nation base in the city of Mazar-e Sharif which killed 14 people, seven of them UN staff, as a result of an American pastor who burnt the Koran. "The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran,” said Mr Obama “is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry; to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity.” Yet don’t let’s deceive ourselves – it was the Christian evangelical fundamentalism and neo-conservative ideology that underpinned the Bush administration that took the American nation to war in Iraq, aided and abetted by the British Government; “a war widely perceived without any basis in international law and a war that could not be described as just or moral,” stated Prof. Michael Northcott, Professor of Christian Ethics, Edinburgh University in his book An angel directs the storm. Perhaps the engineer’s song’s from the musical Miss Saigon “The American Dream” has faded, to many minds the extravagant new life of the American dream has now become the American apocalypse.

But that was last week’s breaking news. Senior church leaders have brought to the forefront of all our concerns at the start of this Holy Week the situation of Christians who are living with the daily threat of violent persecution often in unstable environments. Our thoughts this Holy Week are with the leaders and people of Jerusalem, the Middle East and the African Ivory Coast faced with massive instability and uncertainty, and with many disturbing signs of what may come. We also think with anguish of the sufferings and anxieties of the Church in Pakistan, in the context of the brutal killings that have occurred in recent months and weeks; the murder early in March of Shahbaz Bhatti the minister for religious minorities in Pakistan, a Christian and a critic of Pakistan's blasphemy laws, who was shot dead by gunmen on his way to a cabinet meeting in Islamabad. The continuing attacks on Christian communities in parts of Nigeria and Gays in Uganda are a matter of deep concern, and in Zimbabwe Christians are still subject to constant attack because of their brave stand for justice. In Southern Sudan, after a referendum more peaceful than most people dared to hope, the Church faces the huge challenge of helping to shape a new nation; the same challenge of witnessing to a unity beyond political boundaries inspires the continuing courageous ministry of the Church in Korea.
At the beginning of Holy Week, we stand with Jesus before the gates of the city of Jerusalem, the Holy City in a world dominated by news of religious fanaticism and extremism. Simon Montefiore in his new book Jerusalem: The Biography describes the city as “the global focus of the struggle between the Abrahamic religions; the shrine for increasingly popular Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism. Jerusalem is the house of one God, the capital of two peoples, the temple of three religions. She is the only city to exist twice, in heaven and earth. The city which is the cosmopolitan home of many sects, a hybrid metropolis of a hybrid people with many interlinked and overlapping cultures and layered loyalties, each of which believes the city belongs to them alone.” It is a city of religious extremism indeed; an illuminated stage for the cameras of the world in the age of 24 hour news.

As believers and as human beings, we stand today at the gates of the city at the start of Holy week – a 'city of wrong' as one great Muslim writer, Kamel Hussein, called it in the title of his fictional meditations, City of Wrong: A Friday in Jerusalem as he meditates on the last week of Jesus’ life; a city where so many sufferers are silenced and where so many innocent on both sides of the terrible conflict are killed and their deaths hidden under a cloak of angry, selfish, posturing words, whatever language they are spoken in. “We know in our hearts,” stated the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, recently “that so much of what fuels the violence of religious extremism is in ourselves too: the passionate longing for power and control, the impotent near-mindless fury that bursts out in literally suicidal ways in cities around the world, and brings destruction to so many. We know the urge to defend what can't be defended because we can't lose face.” We search for any drop of the elixir of tolerance, sharing and generosity to act as the antidote to the arsenic of prejudice, exclusivity and possessiveness. “We too are citizens of this city of wrong.”And as Ian Cowie reminded us in his poem Welcome to the City – “ don’t interfere with politics or economics – if you get it wrong for our city, who knows? We, too, might have to liquidate you.”

And in this city of protest, of religious extremism, in this city of wrong, we stand at its gates to remember the extremes of a different kind, the extremes to which one man was driven because of faith, and draw a very different message. The Easter narrative helps us to understand that what the world needs is not a retreat from faith, and religion’s moral codes, but an approach towards the mystery of creation marked by the humility of Jesus and infused by the sympathy that He showed to all mankind. The extremes to which Jesus was driven were the furthest reaches of human suffering. Scourged, beaten, tortured and crucified, His body was robbed of all dignity, like the Tunisian street trader, his existence extinguished in excruciating pain. Jesus’ journey on the Via Dolorosa was a consequence of others’ actions, specifically the rejection of His message, and the promise of redemption through faith which He offered. He was betrayed by the religious leaders of His time, who put a rigid adherence to rules, hierarchy and status before the message of love. He was condemned by the secular powers of the Roman occupation, who chose expediency rather than principle. He was, ultimately, denied by His own disciple, Peter, who sought the good opinion of others before the truths of his own heart. In each case, suffering came because men lacked zeal and passion, would not stand up for what was right and preferred a course the world seemed to deem prudent rather than the path they feared would render them exposed. Those in the Easter narrative who betrayed Jesus did so because they acted in a manner which was political, calculating and worldly.

The journey to Calvary that Jesus made was, however, for them as much as anyone. He confronted the ultimate extreme — a painful death and the cries of the world jeering in His ears — to prove that compassion can triumph over calculation, and that sacrifice can redeem sin. He required a faith that might be considered so strong as to be extreme. But His quiet adherence to the principle of love, and the willingness to sacrifice His interests for others, and then His Resurrection, completed a symbolic but real journey, and began a new phase of human spirituality.
The extremists who challenge our peace this Easter in Ireland, in the Middle East, in fragile African states come not as Jesus did, to redeem, but as His tormentors did, to uphold an arid purity and proclaim a vengeful power. Their faith is a political religion, like MacDiarmid’s Marxism, their vision is exclusive and self-indulgent, and their hands are clenched round a gun. The faith of Jesus was of a very different kind: His outstretched hands on the Cross were there to embrace all mankind. If the world is to overcome the dark passion of those whose hate drives them to violent extremes, it can only be helped by contemplating the message of compassion from the One who went to the ultimate extreme for love.

Five months ago Bouazizi was a frustrated, poverty stricken nobody in a nothing city. And that, I suspect, explains his astonishing posthumous power as a symbol of rebellion, anger and political upheaval; peaceful protestors demanding basic human rights: the humble fruit-seller who had a bad day, and couldn’t take it anymore. In the ongoing aftermath of the North African and Middle East revolution that fills our newspapers and television screens, Tarak Ben Ammar, formerly a manager of Michael Jackson’s world tour is planning to make a film about Bouazizi’s life and death. A Kuwaiti businessman has offered $10,000 to buy his cart. A square in Paris is to be named after him. Two thousand years later the ongoing Jesus revolution too is still turning the world upside down. Jesus turned out to be the only beloved son of God, who died that our sins may be forgiven, and that those who believe in him might have eternal life. And for that assurance and promise of that priceless gift we can say with the cheering Palm Sunday Jerusalem crowds. Alleluia!
Amen

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across synod church partnerships.

A Saving Face

2011-03-23T10:37:00.004Z

From a sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at Roker United Reformed Church, Sunderland 20th March 2011

An Oscar is a little golden god. Colin Firth’s acclaimed role as George VI in the film The Kings Speech won him that little god. In his acceptance speech his face was golden with happiness, shining as the statuette he was proudly yet nervously clutching. Win a Golden Globe – a planet – and you could believe yourself to be a golden god, adored by the whole world. Win yourself a Bafta, as Colin Firth did for his role in the same film, and you get a golden mask.

Golden gods, golden masks, shining faces. What produces a shining face? A golden Oscar perhaps; 15 smiling Welshmen victorious over a Scottish rugby team; Liam Jones from Durham, 2010 BBC boy chorister of the year; Kate Middleton as she approaches her wedding day or Steve Whiteley a heating engineer from North Tawton who hit the jackpot at a meeting at the Exeter racecourse. He won £1.45m on an accumulator, after placing an original bet of just £2. Perhaps we might see shining faces on the peoples of Tunisia and Egypt as they hopefully look forward to a world of security and just relationships. Much better to have a shining face than an Annie Walker glare or a Bet Lynch put down. As my choir musical director says – we sing with sparkling eyes, high cheekbones and smiling faces.

Some people with shining faces exude a presence when they walk into a room. I know the Queen would if she was invited to Roker URC; the Dean of Durham cathedral too has a presence when he comes into the bookshop, his face shines. Ron Dale, a retired preacher tells the tale of a day he attended a lecture given by Professor Joachim Jeremias, a leading world NT scholar renowned for his work on the parables. Ron Dale recounts that 30 years later he had forgotten everything from the Birmingham lecture except for one small detail. Coming from the lecture he held the swing doors for the person he had sensed behind him. To Ron’s astonishment it was Prof Jeremias. As he walked past something happened. Ron Dale looked into his face and as he did so, for the first time in his life, he looked at the sheer burning holiness in the life of another person. So great was the sense of holiness of God in the face and body of Prof. Jeremias he could actually feel heat and light radiating from him. Ron Dale writes that he was struck by his radiance. It was a face almost transparent with love, goodness and grace. It was the face of a man who had spent long hours communing with God, and it showed in his face. It was transfigured with an unearthly radiance. Even now, wrote Dale years later, he could in his mind’s eye still see that face and feel that radiant warmth of love.

In our gospel this morning Matthew tells us that from start to finish the keynote of this Transfiguration story is glory. Jesus’ face shone like the sun and his garments glistened and gleamed like light The Jews well knew the promise of God to the victorious righteous “Their face shall shine as the sun.” No Jew could ever have seen the luminous cloud without thinking of the shechinah, the glory of God resting upon his people. No fewer than three times in eight brief verses there occurs the little interjection: “Behold! Look you!” It is as if Matthew could not even tell the story without a catch of the breath at the sheer staggering wonder of it. But amongst the spectacle of the event the story holds an aspect we mustn't miss. The transfiguration of Jesus is framed in St Matthew by predictions of how he must suffer and die. The Christ whom Peter has recognised will not go up to glory before he suffers pain; or to put it another way, the glory of the transfiguration will turn out to be the glory of his self emptying for us in his death on the cross. A sombre Lenten thought we need to keep in mind as we journey towards in the events in Holy Week.

The story of the Transfiguration is pivotal in St Matthew's Gospel. It's a point of climax when Jesus is revealed for who he is, the one St Matthew wants his readers to know and follow. For a moment, the mists dissolve, and the secret is laid bare: he is disclosed as the anointed one who has come in fulfilment of all that the law and the prophets longed for. In his flesh and blood and in his shining face we see nothing less than Israel's God who had once disclosed himself in another transfiguration at a burning bush and spoken his sacred name. From now on, Matthew’s narrative darkens as it descends towards the passion - but we know what we didn't know before, which is that the man destined to die is none other than the Son of God.

Did you notice that throughout the Christmas and Epiphany season that little word glory appeared again and again? “Glory to God in the highest!” sang the angels, the Gentile kings worshipped and glorified Jesus, Jesus at his baptism was told by his father, “this is my son who I love” - the same message which was spelt out again on Mt Tabor. At the Wedding of Cana, the gospel writer bible tells us - “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” And now the band of three sees Jesus’ face, radiant, shining, shimmering with the light of the glory of God.

St Paul tells us that ‘We see the Glory of God in the face of Jesus” “God who made his light shine in our hearts has brought us the knowledge of glory in the face of Christ.” All three synoptic gospel writers have the story of the Transfiguration recounted in their gospels, with different emphasis. But when we study the Gospel of John we find no story, no record of the transfiguration. Why is that? Because for John Jesus is glorified on the Cross. It is on the Cross that the power and the radiance of God shine forth. And so when St Paul speaks of the glory of God ‘in the face of Jesus’, he is speaking of the glory of God as Jesus dies on the wood of the cross. It is on the Cross we see God’s love powerful and alive, even in the very darkest place, even in the horrifying events that are unfolding in Japan, in North Africa and have occurred in Christ Church, New Zealand.

The First World War chaplain Geoffrey Studdart-Kennedy recalled the occasion, when on the 7 June 1917, he stumbled over a young soldier with a wound in his stomach and a hole in his head. It seemed to him that the boy had disappeared and there in his place lay the Christ on the Cross who cried “inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my little ones, you have done it to me.” “From that moment on,” he records, “I never saw a battlefield as anything but a crucifix. From that moment on, I have never seen the world as anything but a crucifix. To see the world as a crucifix means that we understand Christ not merely suffered once, but still suffers amongst people afflicted with natural disasters and wars. Christ is with us, suffering with us now, enduring with us our present sufferings and facing tragedy and death with the same trepidation, regret and fear as we do. His glory is the freedom to love, even when we are buried in the darkness of suffering, God is free to love us. That is why we see glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

Last Monday I conducted a funeral service in Durham for a 96 year old lady, Joyce Hart, she was a member and was married at the former Sorely Street Congregational Church. During the service I reminded the mourners of this very same verse - that it was “only in Jesus Christ that we saw the glory and goodness of God fully shining in a human face.” I gently reminded the mourners that it is also true that in the goodness of every human being we can see the face of Jesus Christ, Admittedly faces incomplete, flawed, but nevertheless a mirror of his love. How can we see Jesus in each other’s face – well as I understand it - it is because those who live with Jesus, who are his disciples, their lives begin to echo the life of Christ as Joachim Jeremais did. But also here is church – look around - we grow in wisdom, we reach out like him in healing to the wounded of the world, we love children, we have compassion on the weak and suffering, we make our hearts known to our friends, we take up our crosses, we forgive others and ask to be forgiven. We glimpse all these facets in the faces of those we rub shoulders with day by day, in our places of work, in our families, in our churches, in our communities. When in our lives, in our words and actions, we point to the freedom to love, then we show God’s glory.

When we gather as a congregation this morning, we should see in one another the glory of God. When you look at the person next to you, the glory of God is there! By looking in love at the world and working with one another, we somehow allow glory to come to light - so that for people outside or on the edge of faith they may find their own awareness of the world mysteriously changed by the way we as Christians look at it. God calls us to be at every level agents of transformation - in a ruined and exploited natural environment, in a world of deep divisions and much poverty, and in a Church whose communion can be undermined by fear or suspicion. It is for us to show the love of God to one another by showing that light in our faces. Alas and sadly, those who are still in darkness are those who have not seen love in the face of another person. The deepest darkness, the worst darkness, is to feel that you are not loved. So as we try to show one another the love of God, then we make a light in the darkness; we begin to make it possible for those who live in darkness or despair to see glory. Wherever we are; whatever the difficulty, whatever the challenge before us we are still able to make that light shine. It was Bishop Tom Wright who said “Let’s be like him so that we can speak of him.”

I can't pretend it is easy. Loving and trying to transform the world! Like Peter, I blunder about in the presence of glory: I miss the point by trying to capture it instead of paying attention to what God is doing. The voice from the cloud tells us what we must do. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved: listen to him!'. If we can discern his voice amid the clamour and chatter that bid for our attention; if we will listen and obey and follow, then we can know transfiguration, glimpse glory in our ordinary days. It's no good going in quest for it as if it were the Holy Grail or the Golden Fleece: it must find us. But it will, for his pledge to us is: ‘where I am, there you will be also'. And maybe, just maybe, this service could be that mountain top, that burning bush, that place where we see the glory of the crucified and risen Lord, and know and love him once again.

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across church partnerships in the synod

Valentine

2011-02-13T21:51:00.008Z

A sermon preached by Revd Ray Anglesea at Cromer Avenue United Reformed Church, Gateshead on Sunday 13th February 2011

Matthew 5.21-37; 1 Corinthians 13.1-13

St Valentine's Day tomorrow: and a gift to the preacher, for our thoughts turn to love: The Beatles sang about it, Barbara Cartland, the pink chiffon queen of Romance wrote about it, Sinatra crooned about it, Elvis the King rocked about it, Shakespeare wrote sonnets and Schubert composed Lieder songs about it; servicemen and women laid down their lives because of it and the Chaucer’s Prioress in his Canterbury Tales had her broach inscribed with it. What are we talking about - Love! At my son’s wedding I presumed to offer him some fatherly advice as he looked at his beautiful bride...........from Ronan Keating.........

“The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes saying you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll catch me wherever I fall
You say it best, when you say nothing at all!”

And for the those Valentines in serious long term marriages it was Goethe who said that “the human condition is compounded of so much joy and so much sorrow that it is impossible to reckon how much a husband owes a wife or a wife a husband. It is an infinite debt; it can only be paid in eternity.”

Love directs and advises all our relationships, as the Dean of Durham recently explained – “love given, love received, love longed for and love unrequited, love disappointed and love fulfilled; the memory of love and the hope of love; love's endeavour, love's expense, immortal love for ever full, the love that moves the sun and the other stars, God's love.” And as I speak like this I ask myself as a semi retired super-sixty baby boomer whether I want to add to the millions of words spoken about love down the centuries, whether I can add anything?

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Nothing in this world
Could keep me from you!

Roses Are Red
Violets Are Blue
God made Me Pretty
What happened To you?

Well, perhaps I should try. Here’s a start.

The message on St. Valentine's Day which we celebrate tomorrow is simply this – love each other. Love each other - not with the love that depends on chemistry, mood, and feelings – roses, cards and a romantic M&S dinners for two, nor even with the love that depends on the behaviour of others, but love each other with the kind of love that Christ refers to in the reading from the Sermon on the Mount, our gospel lesson from Matthew a couple of weeks ago.

For some the beatitudes are a gospel in a nutshell. Who went up the mountain to bring down the laws of God........? The Ten Commandments....... who later sat down to teach? – Moses. In Matthew’s eyes Jesus is the new Moses – Jesus went up a mountain to sit down to teach the beatitudes. Clifford Longley on a recent BBC Radio 4 Thought for the Day programme quoted President Obama who recently described modern Egyptians as "heirs to an ancient and great civilization." He might well have added "as are we all." And of Friday night fireworks lit the skies of Cairo as protesters in that ancient and great civilization shed tears of joy as they celebrated the end of President Hosni Mubarak's 30 years of power. That same Moses who wrote the Commandments was himself a highly educated Egyptian, raised by a pharaoh's daughter. He would have known about the great experiment with monotheism. He would have known that to get into the Egyptian afterlife the deceased would have to pass a series of tests, which included: "I have done no murder. I have not stolen. I have not set my lips against anyone. I have not lusted after someone else's wife or husband. I have not coveted that which belonged to another." Ring any bells?

Love, murder and revenge are disturbing headlines used to advertise Graham Greene’s new film Brighton Rock, now on general release in local cinemas. Murder, anger, adultery revenge are every day stories on the soaps... look at Tracy Barlow and John Snape from Coronation Street - heaven help us when the new Dallas soap kicks off later this year. Murder, anger, adultery are heavy topics which occupy Matthew’s thoughts and instruction. Matthew that most Jewish of all the gospel writers tells the story of Jesus rooted in the culture and heritage of Israel in organised and orderly ways that he hoped would help Christians to keep the faith and share it; very relevant for us in today’s church that appears to have a menagerie of different opinions. He cared deeply about the mission of the church, was concerned for community, practical matters and was a clear and caring pastor. And here in this section of Matthew’s teaching are some of the most important sections in the whole of the New Testament. No fewer than 5 times does Jesus quote the law in this passage, the Law of Moses, the laws from the Ten Commandments, only to contradict it and to substitute a teaching of his own. In other words Jesus fulfils and goes beyond the Ten Commandments, the Law of Moses, and the sacred texts of the Israelites. The former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, writing in his commentary on this passage suggests that Jesus is not so much saying don’t commit murder, adultery and the rest – Jesus is saying that your heart has to be right also, for this is the way to safety and security. It not just what we do it’s what we think we might like to do which is just as important.

In Edinburgh last weekend my wife and I went to see the 2010 psychological thriller film “The Black Swan” directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman. The plot revolves around a production of Swan Lake by a prestigious New York City ballet company. As is usual with all productions of the ballet, the production requires a ballerina to play both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan. One dancer, Nina (Portman), is a perfect fit for the White Swan, while Lily (Kunis) has a personality that matches the Black Swan. When the two compete for the parts, Nina finds a dark side to herself. It is not a film I enjoyed.

Like the character of Nina who wanted to be both the White and Black Swan to some extent we all have some sort of split personality; there is part of us which is attracted to good, and part of us that is attracted to evil. One voice incites us to take the forbidden thing; the other voice is forbidding us to take it. Plato likened the soul to a charioteer whose task it was to drive two horses. The one horse was gentle and biddable to the reigns, the other wild, untamed and rebellious. The name of one horse was reason; the other horse was named passion. Life is always a conflict between the demands of the passions and the control of reason. The reason is the leash which keeps the passions in check. But a leash may snap at any time.

Part of growing up as Christians is to realise that tough choices are being asked of us; the choices are real, reflected in our reading this morning. Jesus after all didn’t say “If anyone would come after me they should go with the flow and do what comes naturally.” To love - to change your heart - can often be one of those hard choices – this is not a wishy - washy sentimental love. It is the love that goes beyond what seems right according to the letter of the law, and enters into the Spirit of what God wants for us, the love that enters into feeding others, into healing others, into showing grace to others, into giving peace to others, the love that values others, regardless of who they are or what they have or have not done. Love is total - it is unconditional - or it is not love at all. Think of the words of Jesus we heard read a few minutes ago. They were words addressed to a people used to compromising, going with the flow, to altering love's demands as they are found in the law of God so that those demands would be easier to fulfil.

To be sure there are no loopholes to be found in Jesus' words. No compromises, no deals, no escape hatches. What Jesus does is crystallize the issues involved in loving God and our neighbours so that we can know - without doubt – just where we stand, and exactly what we need to aim for. There is a story about an old pilgrim making his way to the Himalayan Mountains in the bitter cold of winter when it began to rain. An inn keeper said to him, "How will you ever get there in this kind of weather my good man?" The old man answered cheerfully - "My heart got there first, so it's easy for the rest of me to follow." The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that we can meet all the demands of love that are expressed in the law in one way – and only in one way - we can do so if with our hearts we go there first.

If Paul’s words from his letter to the Corinthian churches are to mean anything, it should surely be that our love for God is re-awakened - or rather and put in a different way - our awareness of how God so loves us. Our lives are journeys in love, a new discovery of it each day as we walk towards heaven. Our journey is a daily transfiguration, a life-changing encounter with the beloved Son whose voice we have heard and whom we love because he first loved us. Without love we are nothing says St Paul. But once touched by it we glimpse glory, we see into the face of the divine. Life is not the same after that. What we once thought it was worth burning out for we are learning to see in a different way. Like the journey of the magi and their return home, we read about at the beginning of this Epiphany season, we are no longer at ease with these old gods. The epiphany we have glimpsed has lit up something within us, made us see the world in a new way. We feel and know that we want to turn away from dead things to seek after the living God. It is disquieting and disturbing; but it is transfiguring too as our gospel reading later in Lent will tell us.

And finally, the prayer I used before the sermon “Come Holy Spirit of God, pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,” is from an old and beautiful prayer in the church’s liturgy. The reading is Paul's great hymn to love in the 13th chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians: ‘now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love'. The ancient prays: ‘send thy Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the very bond of peace and of all virtues without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee'. ‘Love', caritas, the love that never fails because it is divine.

Tomorrow - Valentine's Day – the martyred saint - I urge you - let your hearts go - love God and love each other as deeply as you can. When you do - you will find, no matter how many mistakes you may make on the way, that goodness and blessedness will blossom along your path, and all that God has planned will come to pass. Amen.

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across synod church partnerships

40 days of Christmas

2011-01-30T17:11:00.001Z

From a sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at West End United Reformed Church, Newcastle upon Tyne

Sunday 30^th January 2011

Today is the 38^th day of Christmas! In Sir Michael Caine’s immortalised words “Not a lot of people know that.” For in the church’s liturgical calendar the 40-day season of Christmas does not end until the feast of Candlemas on February 2^nd, this coming Wednesday. In possibly the greatest of all European cathedrals, Durham, where I now work, the day will be commemorated with an evening communion service; hundreds of small candles will be lit throughout the nave and quire, giving the Romanesque building a beautiful golden candlelit glow. It is a service not to be missed.

The event of Candlemas or the “Presentation of the Lord in the Temple,” is described in the Gospel of Luke. According to the gospel, Mary and Joseph took the baby Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem forty days after his birth to complete Mary's ritual purification after childbirth, and to perform the redemption of the first born in obedience to the law of Moses. Luke explicitly says that Joseph and Mary take the option provided for poor people (those who could not afford a lamb) in Leviticus 12.8 sacrificing "a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons."

In the temple, they encountered Simeon the Righteous, an elderly devout and orthodox Jew, a man of prayer, of simple devotions. The Gospel records that Simeon had been promised that "he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ." Simeon prayed the prayer that would become known as the Nunc Dimittis the Canticle of Simeon, which prophesied the redemption of the world by Jesus.

We can read this well-loved story at many levels. Simeon, prayerful, elderly is a lesson to us all in faithfulness and hope, but that is not what I would like to look at this morning. Rather, the two turtle doves that Mary and Joseph brought to the temple, symbols of their poverty, an offering requirement of the law.

The Bible contains approximately three hundred references to birds, scattered from Genesis to Revelation, ravens, eagles, sparrows, hawk, pelican, cock, dove, swallow. But I wonder whether you noticed the two turtledoves in today's gospel reading when it was first read out? Probably not. Birds for sacrifice are the small change of our religious life; very much at the ‘taken for granted', ‘cheap as chips' end of the spectrum. ‘Spiritually negligible', we might think , compared to say the faithful prayerfulness of Simeon, and his prayer that is recited daily in churches throughout Christendom, 2000 years after the event.

Turtle doves immediately remind me of the carol, the “12 days of Christmas.” Imagine if there were 40 verses in the carol, one for each of the 40 days of Christmas! Twelve are quite enough! I wonder if you have ever noticed that the first four gifts mentioned in the carol are all birds: one partridge, two turtledoves, three French hens, four calling birds. That's ten birds in all. A hint of modern folklore suggest that the verses from the carol were a 16^th century Catholic code for a catechism song sang in a period of religious persecution – five golden rings refer to the 1^st five books of the OT, The Torah, four calling birds, the four gospels, three French hens - faith hope and love, two turtle dove the OT + NT and a partridge, Jesus. Alas the story is sheer speculation and not true. Sorry to disappoint.
I would like to suggest that the pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons are significant birds to think about in this extended Christmas 40 day season.

Today is Big Garden Birdwatch Day. If like me, you love birds and want to help them, then the Big Garden Birdwatch is your chance to do something that really counts. The RSPB suggests we spend an hour watching the birds in your garden or park either yesterday or today and let the RSPB know your findings. The survey now in its third decade is important. I am sure that many of the synod’s “Faith and Feathers Group” will be out with their binoculars this weekend recording their many sightings of birds.

In last Saturday’s Times it was reported that our wild bird numbers have fallen despite millions being spent on their protection. Farmland bird numbers have fallen to a record low; the number of birds that rely on farmland for food or breeding has more than halved in England since 1970. The numbers of grey partridges, and our own turtle doves mentioned in our gospel this morning, starlings, tree sparrows and corn buntings have all fallen by more than 70% since the wild bird index began in 1970. Well let’s hope the Government’s environment white paper due in the Spring will give stronger measures to protect farmland birds. But did you see the spectacular display of Starlings last Sunday night on BBC1 Countryfile: it was estimated that 1.5 - 3million starlings took part in an air ballet, a gyroscope of movement, one of the most dazzling displays in the natural world, as the flock changes shape, one minute like a colossal wisp of smoke, the next a tornado, the next a thundercloud blocking the light. The huge gatherings, biggest in winter, are boosted by thousands of birds that come to Britain's milder Atlantic climate to escape the harsh cold of the European continent, especially in Scandinavia.

And as I mentioned to the children we can help nature out by feeding the wild birds that might come to our windowsill or garden. Not only does this help them get through the cold weather. It also brings them close to us so we can admire their unmanufactured, feathery adornment. I understand that feeding the birds is not only a good thing to do in the winter. They need a lot more food to get through the breeding season too. So if you have been helping God and nature out this is probably not a good time to stop.

The second thing I would like to mention this morning is the nature of poverty. When Mary went to the Temple she was going to make a sacrifice. Luke tells us that she sacrificed according to the law, ‘two turtledoves or two young pigeons' (Luke 2.24). Luke probably had it in mind that when we read this we would appreciate first that Mary and Joseph were being obedient and devout Jews and second that we would notice that they really were poor people. Those with any cash to spare would sacrifice a lamb on this occasion; which is interesting, as when we tell the Christmas story we think of a lamb as the gift of the poor. The reality is that Mary brought Jesus into a much lower socioeconomic stream than we like to think. Luke wants us to know that Jesus was from a very poor family. Luke's gospel is good news for the poor partly because the Saviour knows that condition.

With that in mind today is also Poverty Sunday, the start of Poverty and Homeless Action week – 30^th January – 6^th February 2011.The Church’s Action on Poverty in this year’s publicity draws our attention to our duty to speak up on behalf of the poorest and most vulnerable, especially at a time of economic crisis and public spending cuts. Although Britain is one of the fifth richest nations on the planet it is increasingly characterised by inequality between the rich and poor. Several national churches and other Christian organisations have joined Church Action on Poverty in warning the Government’s welfare proposals are based on a lack of understanding of the poor. The Big Society, mentioned by the Prime Minister in his conference speech last October, was supposed to be the Government’s defining idea, it embodies a lot of good sense about public policy, but it is clear that nobody has the first idea what it means, and the concept seems to be disappearing in the argument about cuts to public spending. And it is clear that the voluntary sector and its groups, many of which support poor people, the platoons of which underpin the Big Society concept and who are heavily reliant on taxpayer funding, will either have their funding reduced or at worst, cut back all together. Such groups will not survive. The big society cannot be built without parts of civil society now under threat.

Perhaps one of the most over-used words in last year's general election campaign was surely the word 'fair'. Each party claimed it for their own policies. Each party realised how toxic it would be to have the label 'unfair' hung round their neck. But fairness can be understood in two very different ways. The first suggests that it's about being even-handed, not seeking to favour or show bias towards any particular group or individuals. There should be no favouring of the south over the north, town over country. But there is another sort of fairness which says that sometimes even-handedness has to be set aside because without bias, what seems to be fair can turn out to be unfair. How can it be fair if sharing out the pain means we make life a little less comfortable for some but quite unbearable for others? And it is this idea of fairness that Christians see practised in the gospels. Jesus seeks out those who find themselves on the edge of a decent way of life. They're forgotten, overlooked, ignored or shunned because they are inconveniently sick or mentally ill, out of work or disabled, and as a consequence, poor. The poor have a special claim on us, our compassion, our time, our resources. Some Christians speak of this as God's bias to the poor, a bias that informs Christian ethics as a consequence. Far from all of us being in this together, it's open to question whether some, like the poor should be in this at all.

And here I am sure you would want to join me in offering our congratulations to Lindsay Cross who has been appointed MBE in the New Year Honours List for services to the West End Refugee Service, for her work amongst the poor and homeless. Lindsay serves on our synod Church & Society Group. She has been untiring in her work for refugees and asylum seekers, the homeless, and has kept the work of WERS and the needs of its clients in the forefront of people's awareness in many of our synod churches.

And finally back to the birds again, our feathered friends. As well as our “Faith and Feathers” synod group I suspect the great northern saints were probably all bird watchers, too, St Cuthbert foremost among them. As we are made more aware of our natural world, particularly its birdlife, through superb wild-life television programmes, we are beginning to discover the interconnectedness of all things. As we watch such programmes we fear where the future will take us and wonder whether civilisation and our environment will last. Might I suggest that meditating on the birds can help us into all these things. And I wonder... I wonder this: might it be that in some day in the deep, dark future, the memory of Cuthbert is held by the humble eider duck, which people will still call a Cuddy, as its lives out its life in the seashore detritus of a western civilisation which collapsed because it fostered ways if life where consumption replaced contemplation, and greed replaced grace to such an extent that, to reverse that strange story of St Francis, it was the birds who came to preach to us.

Amen

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across synod church partnership

Recalling all Baby Boomers - John 1 v 29-42

2011-01-16T18:14:00.002Z

From a sermon preached at Roker United Reformed Church, Sunderland,16^thJanuary 2011 by Revd Ray Anglesea

George was a baby boomer. Born in Manchester in 1946, George will collect his state pension later this year. As he does so he may ignore the biblical calculus that a man's span is three score years and ten and think about the possibility that he, like 10 million other Britons alive today, may become centenarians in 35 years time, according to a recent Government report. George, as he says so himself, was one of the lucky ones. George will have enjoyed a life of free love, free school meals, free universities, defined benefit pensions, mainly full employment and a 40-year-long housing boom, and George - like many others - will bequeath to their children sky-high house prices, debts and shrivelled pensions. George is a very privileged, fortunate and blessed human being – an object of resentment as much as admiration – for in this harsh cold winter season at the start of a desolate New Year - austerity and spending cuts will dominate the national conversation.

George is also a Christian; I came across a similar character in Roger Walton’s beautiful new book “The Reflective Disciple.” According to Roger, “George had been a Christian for over 50 years and even before he committed himself to the faith he belonged to a Christian family and went first to Sunday school and then to church with his parents. He had lived and worked in Salford for the whole of his life and during this time he moved churches three times, on each occasion because the congregation had grown too small to be viable and so he joined with another church of the same denomination. He used to be active in several of the church’s activities: Bible study, men’s fellowship and prayer breakfast. He was also involved in his trade union activity and saw this activity as part of his Christian duty. He no longer speaks about God much. At best he can talk about the church what it was like and what it ought to be like. He does not engage much with the bible, apart from hearing it read in church and he is no longer involved in the weekly meetings at church. He wonders sometimes now if he has been faithful and whether the decline in the church life, is, in part, his fault. He attends Sunday worship regularly, gives his money and tries to show kindness and friendship to the church members. There is much talk about from the minister at church about new ways of being church, but Fresh Expressions sounds more like a lavatory cleaner and it is hard for George to imagine what these expressions might be – it sounds very different and unfamiliar. He wonders what God wants him to do now.”

As St Paul said, “Salvation has crept up on us and we are disturbed.” Creeping disturbing words also came from the crazed figure of John the Baptist whom we met in this morning’s illustrated gospel reading with his tattered clothing and disgusting diet who baptised all-comers in the muddy waters of the Jordan. Two of John’s disciples defect to the young pale Galilean John had pointed to on the river bank and invites them, in not so many words, to transfer their loyalty to this new Mediterranean peasant teacher and healer. We heard in our King James Version of the bible that one of the two disciples, the attractive Andrew, intrigued by Jesus’ teaching leaves to find his brother Simon, later to be called Peter, the Rock. Both brothers are called by Jesus. They are called to follow. They are called to repentance and change, a spiritual process that would continue for the rest of their lives, as they continually repent, continually change, and continually see the world anew.

As we discovered in our two reflective readings this morning the idea of following Jesus for Hannah, Michael and now George is not easy and straightforward in today’s culture, as we follow Jesus “in a strange land.” But was discipleship ever easy? I suspect not. The fact is borne out by evidence found throughout the New Testament. We find discipleship means different things for different groups of followers of Jesus. But whatever tensions and difficulties there are - one thing is straightforward. Whether you were a disciple in the 1^st or are a disciple in the 21^st century - it is the person of Jesus who is the centre and focus of discipleship. It won’t be a Coronation Street train crash or an Archer anniversary episode in which lives will be changed forever. Jesus’ call - and his continuing call - on our lives will change us forever. In the beautiful four-part drama “Nativity” written by the former Easter Ender script writer, Tony Jordan, shown on prime time televisions on BBC1 before Christmas there is a lovely one-liner from Thomas the troubled young shepherd as he leaves the table: “He has come for people like me!”

With your permission I would like to address this morning the re-calling of the Georges/Georgianas of this world, the retired or retiring baby boomers whose life of faith might have begun in the optimistic brash, fashionable, modern bewitching world of the swinging sixties, and who are now making sense of a different age, a different culture in austerity bonus squeezing Britain. For today we live in confusing days of theological, ethical and moral uncertainty where many of the old answers don’t fit; we have less confidence in them because they were fashioned for a different world. We find the church – its power and influence diminished – we as church people and baby boomers find ourselves on the margins of mainstream society. We are dismayed to hear of the slaughter of Catholic Christians in Baghdad before Christmas, the bomb attack on an Egypt Coptic church on New Year’s Eve and now the arrest this week of Iranian Christians in a new wave of persecution.

Roderick Strange writing in The Time’s “Credo” column in Advent last year suggests that Faith is a gift that comes as invitation. We are invited to believe. We are invited to follow Jesus Christ. Over the years of sitting in pews, working in the world and church communities I have discovered that one of the most exciting things that has been so startling about that invitation to follow Jesus is that he has shown me the old world and the old theology in a new light. In one way nothing is different. In another way everything is different. Why? Because as a result of following Jesus Christ, this pale Galilean and son-of-a-virgin, the young Prince of the House of Israel, we begin to see the world in a different way. We may call it call it revelation. We may call it spiritual vision. If God, as we say, is in all things then the logic follows that he can reveal his character through all things. As Geoff Astley mentions in his book Christ of the Everyday “The knack is to see it.” Of course this is just bread and wine, of course he is just the carpenter’s son, of course this congregation is a bunch of miserable sinners. But we are also the body of Christ, full of grace and truth. And he is the Lord, the Saviour. This is my body given for you. It’s the way we see things.

As spiritual people we are nothing particularly special, except that we have learnt to follow this field preacher, this Jewish rabbi, and tried to understand and follow his teaching. As our discipleship has grown and developed over the years we see the remarkable in the mundane - we see nature, friendship, joy and struggle as “holy things” – things that express God’s rule, his hand and intention in our private, church and world affairs. We have learned to spot the Kingdom, the realm of God as it grows secretly like a mustard seed. We may have few other advantages, few worldly gifts and little status, but we rejoice as “senior” disciples of many years standing because we are spiritually blessed – for to be able to see the signs of the kingdom is to be a sign of the Kingdom oneself. And that is what we baby boomers have been given in our discipleship, in our walk with him, our journey of faith – we can see. We can spiritually see.

I started my journey with Jesus Christ after a conversion experience at university. Fresh exciting heady days they were too, full of youthful idealism and hope. But on my birthday last week when I looked back on my birthdays of the past and marvelled at the grace of which they are milestones I would want to say now that to be converted is, in the end, not so much a matter of seeing different things, as of seeing the same things differently. It involves seeing and living in a confusing world of intense hope and joy and vulnerable sensitivity to pain, rejection and despair. It involves seeing this child, woman or man, this country – or this slice of the natural world or sliver of historical time - as holy, as sacred as God’s. Hence my call to self supporting ministry. Worshipping and finding God in my workplace. God has given me and you the eyes of faith to work out that calling and that discipleship. How well I remember that phrase from the concluding sermon of my selection conference. “Having the eyes of faith.” To have the eyes of faith is the most important component of being a person of faith, a disciple of Jesus Christ. To see things differently. And to see things differently we have to change our hearts and minds. A point President Obama touched upon at last Wednesday’s memorial service in Tucson, Arizona as he honoured the victims - he called, not for the first time, for change – “a change in the way that people speak of what matters to them.”

As disciples of Jesus Christ we pray for a pure and open heart that is open to the world, to other people and ultimately to God. As Karl Barth said “the church is only holy “in its openness.” Christianity involves change and learning. All learning is change and Christian learning is the change in attitudes, beliefs and dispositions wrought through the process of becoming a disciple and continuing to be a disciple. Following the master is a wide ranging form of learning, or as we would say today a life-long learning process, a life-long learning experience.

One of the funniest adverts of the television at the moment is the one “You should have gone to spec savers!” We baby boomers on the threshold of retirement may need to adjust our spiritual vision, perhaps a different focus, through new lenses adjusted to the possibility of a new and fresh call – “to see thee more clearly” as the old prayer goes. A call not as it was. But newly minted according to this time, our age, our situation, in the light of our experience, for better and for worse. So we wait to be called again, a new call perhaps in this coming New Year of hard times, as David Cameron said in his New Year message, a year “of heavy lifting,” which Nick Clegg in his recent “walked through the fire” speech makes clear – the hard times will only intensify. But with our learning, spiritual wisdom and insight we baby boomers are well prepared to look to the future as so many of our friends and family face hardship in the wake of the financial crisis and public spending cuts, as the government proposes to shift the burden of responsibility for the poor to underfunded voluntary groups, as there are hints of industrial unrest in the Spring.

We are able. We are strong. We have the eyes of faith. We have adjusted our spiritual vision. We see things differently. We can change. We look to the future for new and even richer exciting adventures of discipleship.

May God refocus our vision and help us in our re-calling to follow the master, Jesus Christ.

Amen

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in local church partnerships across the Northern Synod

Taking the Christ out of Christmas?

2010-12-15T12:35:00.009Z

Is that how you find it? I've been getting a bit impatient with the complaining emails that have been coming my way the past few weeks, and yesterday seemed to be the last straw.

It began then with Harry Foster and Stewart Blake from Wideopen sharing this poem with me and an awful lot of people in their address books.

Twas the month before Christmas
When all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
See the PC Police had taken away
The reason for Christmas - no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.
It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say
December 25th is just a ' Holiday '.
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!
CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-Pod
Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.
As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears
You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton !
At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS ,
not Happy Holiday !
Please, all Christians join together and
wish everyone you meet
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Christ is The Reason' for the Christ-mas Season!

If you agree please forward, if not, simply delete

Sorry - I should have just followed the instructions of the last line. Instead, I rashly pressed "Reply to all" and sent the following message: -

The line "At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears gives the game away really doesn’t it?"

We are being bombarded with emails about a perceived problem the other side of the Atlantic – probably from a rather insecure wing of the Church.

I’ve not met anyone who’s wished me a happy holiday rather than merry Christmas!My grandson seems to have been having a busy time with the (state) school nativity play.When my church made an effort recently to get local schools in to share the Christmas story with them (in an imaginative way – see http://christmasjourney.org.uk/ ) they nearly all responded positively.

I’m afraid the people who succumb to these email viruses (and it’s not the first I’ve received: hence my growing impatience) are living in a different world from mine.I am not perceiving the injustices and marginalisation that they appear to be suffering - or is it even enjoying?

Is it too harsh to suggest that they get a life?

John

PS Apologies too for hitting Reply All. Following email etiquette and using bcc really would be better

My colleague Philip Gray from Wideopen and Ponteland didn't quite agree, and sent the following thoughts earlier this morning: -

Hi John

Having just enjoyed the winter festival play at the local school, that I can publicly abuse the name of God but not allah, that a bible can be torn up in the name of art, but not a koran. Hmmm I might at least have an idea where our cousins are coming from.

There again I might forget that because of our national foolishness the red cross ban christmas displays so as not to upset anyone, and councils are banning overtly Christmas light displays.

Perhaps we could start a discussion of how people feel about this issue?

Philip

So there we are. The discussion is started. What do you think??

"Los 33"

2010-11-27T22:32:00.004Z

From an illustrated sermon preached on Advent Sunday 2010 by Ray Anglesea at Denewell Avenue United Reformed Church, Gateshead.

It is probably the most famous sentence in the world this year. Six words and one number have been replicated on T-shirts, flags and mugs, texted and e-mailed around the world. It has been presented to presidents, prime ministers and even the Queen. It was the sentence written on a scrap of paper, put in a plastic bag and attached to a drill that – 17 days after they went missing –– reached the miners trapped half a mile beneath northern Chile’s Atacama desert. “Estamos bien en el refugio los 33” it read. We are well in the refuge – the 33.” So wrote Jose Ricardo Ojeda Vidal, the miner who scribbled the message in big red letters, the tidings that brought great joy to Chile. One Chilean television commentator compared the message to the first words in the Bible – “it is a beautiful, perfect sentence,” he said.

The rescue of the 33 Chilean miners is an irresistible subject for an Advent preacher. Being drawn up steadily through a long tube from the depths of the earth....... from the dark and the heat, the hunger and isolation....... into the light...... the freedom and the relief...... and the embraces of loving families and friends...... and the frenzy of excited news teams.......... are a simple illustration of what we mean by salvation. The Chilean miners were carried from what looked like hell to a condition as near to heaven as can be seen on earth. They were saved by the exercise of wisdom, that is, the skill of the technicians, the patience of the drillers and compassion of the medical workers. They were saved by grace alone. They were hardly able to do anything for themselves except endure long enough for the rescuing probe to break through to them. They were sustained in their entombment by faith and hope, by the practice of their religion, by their reciting of morning and evening prayer with the 33 bibles that would later reach them in their chamber-like dungeons, and the unbroken resilience of their own souls. Whether they will have stories to tell that are of interest, we shall no doubt see as their memories of the ordeal are pumped by the press. The first of several books – Under the Earth: The 33 Miners that Moved the World – is about to be published. The first television re-enactment will be broadcast in December. It was recently revealed that Brad Pitt’s Hollywood company is currently in talks to buy the film rights to the story. The smooth transition from miner to global superstar may soon be realised.

(Talking about smooth transitions and miners, superstars ands as an aside, it was surprising to discover that the future Queen of England, Prince William’s fiancé, Katherine’s great grandfather was a Geordie miner working in the pits in Hetton le Hole, mines owned by the Queen Mother’s family. From Pit to Palace: what an astonishing journey for the Middleton family!)

The end of the Chilean news-story is palatable and neat, yet the near tragedy in Chile and the tragic loss of New Zealand miners is food for more sober Advent thoughts. Like the Chilean miners we wait in silence in the subterranean vaults and entombment of our lives for the liberating light of Christ to bring us salvation, to bring us hope, to bring us truth, to bring us joy in believing, to make us human. The Christian story of Christ’s freeing and emancipating activity is foretold, I would like to think, in big red letters by our ancestral fathers and mothers of the faith, the advent prophets, the patriarchs and matriarchs and those elusive and enigmatic angels. The long expected Christ child will bring hope, justice and peace – our first Advent candle was blessed this morning as a symbol of hope. What that hope must feel like is something akin to what the Burmese people must be feeling and experiencing right now with the release of the heroic Nobel Peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, surely a beacon of hope, a source of inspiration, a liberating saviour?

The 1st Sunday in Advent is the beginning of the church year, the coming liturgical journey that explores through Matthew’s gospel the surprising ancient story and meaning of salvation. Advent has the longest night of the year and the darkest days: Advent with its traditional heavy, sombre themes of death, judgement, heaven and hell is about the coming of that light, the coming of the Lord to his people, the coming of a loved one with all the joy and excitement that that coming brings. But while we wait for that light in the middle of the darkest night of the year we wait in stillness; a time to discover God’s presence in darkness. As my favourite Welsh poet, the priest R S Thomas said in one of his poems entitled “Kneeling” I read earlier this morning – “the meaning is in the waiting.” To wait patiently and positively like some of the Biblical characters who had to wait upon God is something alien to our culture of immediacy. But waiting is an essential part of our journey with God. Waiting is often vital for the proper unfolding of God’s plan for our lives. Advent is that time of the year when we can wait, often in darkness. It is a time of quiet reflection, a time of stillness, a time to stay awake, to watch and wait for that free gift, for a new experience of God’s grace, for that light of Christ.

There is a story told of a man who bought a special gift for his wife. It was a musical box that played a tune when you opened it, but it was different because it also glowed in the dark. It was meant to be seen when the days were dark and dull. As it was a present, he kept it the box hidden away and wrapped up. At last he produced it one dark evening and his wife unwrapped it with great excitement. They turned the light off, but then it could not be seen. It did not glow in the dark, and they were disappointed. Perhaps it was broken. They put the lights back on and discovered a label inside the box that said, “If you want me to shine all night, keep me in the sun all day.” There was nothing wrong with the box, and once they had left it in the sunlight, it glowed in the dark. In the same way if we are to be the lights in the world, we must spend each day absorbing the light of Christ.

So as we wait in the darkness of the season for that light to come, we notice the darkness of the world, the darkness of the church, as we open our hearts to that darkness. We remember in prayer the families of the Catholic victims indiscriminately slaughtered in the Church in Baghdad on All Saints Day, we remember the loss of military and civilian life in Afghanistan, the flood victims in Pakistan, the unemployed in our region. In the early morning darkness I light cathedral candles to remember those who are sick and who need God’s loving healing touch. As a Christian I feel more and more a stranger in my own land, in a dark and turbulent culture. Once it was considered that some of the greatest achievements and ambitions of human social history, such as the abolition of slavery and the provision of universal education or free health care had their origins in a religious Christian impulse. Ian Hislop salutes the visionary heroes of those who fixed broken Victorian Britain in a new BBC part television programme entitled “The age of the Do-Gooders.” Yet sadly this is not the image of “do-good” religion that many recognise in this past century or even this past decade. As Lord Blair of Boughton, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police stated in the 2010 Theos annual lecture in central London last week, “Many secular voices now argue and think that all religions are a force of evil in today’s world.” We are, it would seem, part of a relentless undertow of what poet Matthew Arnold famously called the sea of faith’s “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.” We in the church this Advent Sunday are strangers to our contemporaries, who neither understand nor care what Christian faith has to say to the world. We are indeed people in a strange land. We are exiles.

As well as the darkness in our world and in the church we notice the darkness in our own lives and personal struggles and wait as that Old Testament Hebrew prophet Malachi put it for “The son of man to come with healing in its wings,” I saw that quote in a beautiful stained glass window in St Oswin’s Church, Wylam last week when my colleague and I took a frosty river footpath walk up the Tyne valley. Yet we know that in the darkness, in all those places of darkness, God is still present, already present. From our stories, from tradition, from liturgy – that, as the psalmist says, “Even the darkness is not dark to you, for the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” Even at a close friend’s father’s humanist funeral last week which I attended I can’t believe the deceased was lovingly released into a darkness and nothingness, a place without God. And so in the darkness we wait for the coming of the Light of the world to again accompany us on our journey. He will bring his strength to our weakness, he will dispel our fears with his presence, he will open our closed-circuit mind, we will rest in his presence. God is ever with us.

In his diary for 1922 Shackleton writes of his Antarctic expedition: “When I look back on those days, with all their anxiety and peril, I cannot doubt that our party was divinely guided both over snowfield and across storm-swept sea......I know that during that long racking march of thirty-six hours over unnamed mountains and glaciers of Southern Georgia it seemed to me we were not three but four. I said nothing to my companions on the point but afterwards Worsley said to me, “Boss, I had a curious feeling in the march that there was another person with us.”

But there are wider implications of this heart-warming story of the Chilean miners. All this happened to poor people, in a horrible industry, typical of the labourers in so many parts of the globe who carry out in awful conditions the gigantic pillage and often waste of the earth’s resources, century by century, enabling the wealthy, sophisticated and elaborate world in which we, who are probably more fortunate, to live. But theirs is a dangerous career as we remember this week those miners who have lost their lives in New Zealand. They illustrate for us that the world we are caught up in from childhood to grave is sustained by great suffering, is often cruel and heartless, and is usually far less merciful to the afflicted than it was to those Chilean miners we have watched these last months. We like stories with such neat happy endings, because we want to believe the world is not as cruel and indifferent as we fear. The decision not to give in to despair at the cruelty of the world is a serious one. Too often it is a sentimental decision, a preference to pretend that things are not as bad as they look, or an escapist fantasy about all things being for the best. Our Christian response to the real pain and frustration of the world is that the world is as we find it – for whatever reason you may wish to put forward. But it is not a world without God, even if at times it may seem we live as exiles, like the exodus people “in a strange land”. The Lord is here, down the mine with us, already near to us: “in him we live and move and have our being”. In whatever hole we are in, even at the verge of death – even in death itself – he is there. Nothing can separate us from him except our own blindness and hardness.

And later next month we shall discover that into one of the poorest occupied communities of 1st century Palestine, a child is born, to an unlikely young virgin and a faithful loving forgotten hero-of-a-husband, in the town of their great King, in a borrowed shed, where the child is laid in fresh straw amongst the poverty of the dirt and mess of a cowshed- cum- cave, a draughty stable with an open door. The world for that couple was as they found it, hard, difficult, occupied..... they were later to become migrants in another country..... their family story did not have, at least in human terms, a happy ending. But nestling in Mary’s arms was a baby that was destined to transform the world.

The Good news we preach this Advent-tide is that because of this birth we are right not to yield to the darkness, the despair and the cruelty of the world, to the economic and political injustices, to ceaseless news of war and bloodshed. We are right to hope and trust, as the miners hoped and trusted in that dark underground tomb that they would be delivered somehow. But we dare to go further. With the tragic deaths of the 29 New Zealand miners fresh in our minds this week we would also want to say that even if the Chilean miners had not been saved; even if they had died far underground, either through the indifference of the authorities, or the failure of the project, they would have been right to hope and trust. But where, as so often happens, humanity fails, God is present. And God hears and is faithful, even where according to human reasoning, there is no salvation.

Into the darkness of our world, our church and our lives this Advent-tide we invite Jesus Christ, the Light of the world. We ask him to renew our faith, to be present in our darkness, in our waiting, as we prepare our hearts again to celebrate the good news of his coming amongst us.

Amen

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in local church partnerships across the Northern Synod

The Great Cloud of Witnesses: Hebrews 12 v1-2

2010-10-31T19:15:00.004Z

From a sermon preached at Roker URC,Sunderland

Reformation Sunday, 31 October 2010

Welsh clerics and I share a favourite Saint - Saint Pyr. Pyr was a Welsh abbot from the sixth century who founded a monastery on Caldy Island, Pembrokeshire, in West Wales. What I find so amusing about St Pyr is the way he died. It wasn't a glorious martyrdom, burnt at the stake, a beheading, a long and painful death or anything like that. The hagiography simply records that one year while celebrating Easter and the joy of the resurrection with his brethren Abbot Pyr drank an excessive quantity of mead, and on his way back to his cell tripped into the monastery well and drowned. Poor Pyr! Yet what I find so impressive and remarkable about the death of the Abbott is that nobody in the Celtic church thought any the worse of Pyr for this. They just remembered his loving kindness and gentleness, and his hard work in building up the monastery on Caldy Island. And so they duly put him into the calendar of Saints, but for the life of me I don’t know his feast day. I like to think it comes round at the end of August to coincide with the harvest of barley and hops and the annual Durham Beer Festival. Alas the Catholic Cistercian brothers who now occupy the Anglican Benedictine abbey built on the island no longer brew their own mead, they have transferred the sales of liquor to more challenging retail sales of bottled perfumes, chocolate and shortbread. Far more sensible!I suppose it says something about me, but I find I get as much support and encouragement from the faults of the saints as from their virtues. Take St Jerome for example. Jerome, the most learned of the fathers of the Western Church (he is the patron saint of librarians) was a brilliant linguist, fluent in Latin and Greek, and a theologian to be reckoned with, and they made him a saint mainly for doing the first decent translation of the Bible – the Vulgate. In the sixteenth century the great Council of Trent pronounced Jerome's Bible – The Vulgate - the authentic authoritative Latin text of the Catholic Church. But nobody could imagine Jerome was a nice man. If you read some of his letters to his contemporaries you'll find that for sheer egotism, gossip and venom St Jerome has few rivals. Yet I can't help finding this a cause not of sadness but joy. I suppose I feel it leaves me in with a chance? Talking of chance, Ann Widdecombe is urging viewers to invoke St Jude, patron saint of hopeless or lost causes, to help her stay in Strictly Come Dancing. Apparently, the former minister appeals to St Jude each time she dances.

When it comes to St Margaret of Antioch, the names sake of a parish church in Durham, built in the mid 12th century and this year celebrates its 850 anniversary, so little is known about the Saint that it is rather hard to find fault. She was alleged to have killed a number of demons disguised as dragons. Though I suppose one might at least argue that her habit of killing and bursting dragons was environmentally unfriendly and she was a danger to wild life; clearly not somebody Chris Packham and Kate Humble would want to interview on BBC2s natural history programme Autumnwatch. And it’s no different with our modern saints. Take Mother Teresa of Calcutta, revered by the late Malcolm Muggeridge in his book Something beautiful for God. One of her former nuns was writing about what an aggressive, domineering old woman she was. I can well believe it. I’ve noticed that quite often people who achieve real good in this world, in the synod and in the cathedral where I work are rather aggressive and domineering; they have to be to fight for what they know is right. But of course that’s not the point. What made Mother Teresa a saint wasn’t that she was a nice, cuddly, Hollywood-type of nun, heaven forbid a Woopi Goldberg Sister Act lookalike, but probably the fact that she was a feisty old biddy with a bit of an ego problem - but one who was determined to show the dregs of Calcutta something of the mercy God had shown her. Talking of ego problems, and a little aside here, I have discovered that some of the Bishops of Durham had serious working relationships with their often notorious Deans, not that they could ever be considered Saintly material, but I do hope the former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, will leave his brain to theological research. The irascible and controversial Bishop Henley Henson for example, came into the public eye in 1892 after an outburst at a diocesan conference in which he referred to dissenting Protestant churches as “emissaries of Satan!” As Bishop during the Great Depression, Henson preached at court and lunching afterwards at Buckingham Palace, King George V happened to ask his granddaughter Princess Elizabeth what she had liked best at the zoo on their visit the previous day. “The rhinobottomus” she replied. Henson at once said: “Thank you, my dear Princess for giving me such a word which so adequately describes my Dean.” When a lady asked him at a dinner party if he had seen the play “Pigs in Clover,” he replied: “No, but I have seen the Dean of Durham is bed.” Meow! Meow! .....Poor Dean James Weldon! Or take Martin Luther King. He’s one of my great Christian heroes of all time. I took his book “Strength to Love” along with my 8 gramophone records to my desert island, Mombasa, when I worked in East Africa in the early 70s. He did more than anyone for racial peace and justice, his message has empowered the oppressed all over the world and his sermons and speeches are so moving and compelling that I don’t doubt Christ was speaking through that man as through a loudspeaker. But at the same time, if you read accounts of Martin Luther King’s private life, it seems he had so many extra-marital affairs you wonder he ever found strength to climb into a pulpit!

And of course here in the cradle of Christianity we are surrounded with the memory of three of the northern regions greatest Saxon saints Aidan, Hild and Cuthbert. Only Oswald died as a martyr; yet all of them truly laid down their lives for the sake of Christ. They brooked no compromises when it came to giving everything to this project of embracing and living Christianity and seeing it planted, rooted and established across England. Not only that, but this outpouring of vision and energy was an expression of a civilisation at the height of its achievements, as witness the books and artifacts from Northumbria's golden age of the 7th and 8th centuries, some of them in the Cathedral at Durham. The peoples of the North East do not honour our northern saints because of ancient Northumbria, however favoured we are to live in this beautiful region with its ‘passionate places, passionate people' as the strap-line puts it. That would be to fall into the trap of nostalgia. The saints I have mentioned, and the many others of the Saxon era whom Bede names, and buried in the Galilee chapel at the Cathedral speak with their own authentic voice about the central values of the Christian faith not only as a set of beliefs but as a lived experience forged in the vicissitudes of ordinary life.I have amusingly mentioned some saints to illustrate the fact that saintliness is not the same as perfection, which belongs only to God. Amongst the canonized saints, we can now add the 1st Australian saint, Mary MacKillop, a Melbourne-born nun who worked with needy children, and recently canonised with other saints in St Peter's Square in front of some 50,000 people. Pope Benedict declared on the 17th October 2010 that these new saints "throughout the Church (they) be honoured devoutly among all the saints".The saints are chosen not because they were perfect all-rounders, but because they had one outstanding gift or virtue which shone through them so brightly that the people who knew them couldn't help feeling, "God really is in this person." And it's important for us to remember this, because not many of us are good all-rounders either. Most of us are pretty mediocre in general, and probably all of us have some extremely dusty corners which we'd rather not have inspected. But all of us also have some particular gift through which God can be seen, and which is, if you like, is our special potential for saintliness.That's why scripture calls all of us saints, not only the ones the Church has canonized. St Paul often addressed his letters to "the saints at Ephesus", "the saints at Corinth" and so on. He was certainly under no illusion that they were perfect, since half the time he's telling them what a useless, good for nothing lot they are. BUT he still calls them saints, holy to the Lord, because Christ has counted us all holy, and given us all some gift that we can contribute to the whole body of his Church.

So it’s mistake to treat the saints as if they were perfect. And in my reformed catholic and liberal way of thinking might I suggest perhaps this morning add another radical thought - it's an even worse mistake to treat them as if they were dead (please don’t mention this or write to the synod moderator).Too often when we talk about the saints you get the impression that they are just historical figures, dead heroes from long ago. But that's not what we mean when we from time to time recite the creed and say - “we believe in the Communion of Saints.” You can't have communion with historical figures who are dead and gone. Communion is a here and now experience, a relationship, not with dead people but with living brothers and sisters in the family of God.
And how can you have communion without communication? You can't commune with somebody you don't talk to, and the communion of saints simply means the saints are there to talk to. Come and sit with me in the shrine of St Cuthbert at the Cathedral and see how many people are praying/talking with/to our Northern Saint.

It's a very good tradition, sadly neglected now, to choose a name saint or a patron saint, not only as an example but as a friend to talk to, a brother or sister in Christ whose prayers you can ask. Mother Theresa of Calcutta took her name from the young child, St Thérèse of Lisieux, the 19th-century French Roman Catholic Carmelite nun whose relics were brought to England and Wales last year for a national pilgrimage. Edith Piaff was known to have a photograph of St Thérèse by her bedside and the late Princess of Wales was reported to have often lit a candle in her memory. During the unprecedented month-long tour of England and Wales of the relics of this young saint it is estimated that some 150,000 people visited her reliquary, some 100,000 candles were lit and 50,000 pink roses left for the saint Catholics know as "the little flower of Jesus". In Ireland, three-quarters of the overall population turned out to see her remains – that’s nearly 4 million people! All this in an age when we do not go to church! And talking of recent events in the Roman Catholic Church, you may remember Deacon Jack Sullivan, whose cure from a serious debility of the spine in 2001 was accepted by the Pope as a miracle resulting from John Henry Newman’s intercession, a fact mentioned at the beatification of Cardinal John Newman recently. Cardinal Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict at Crofton Park, on his recent September state visit to Britain.Within the Body of Christ we are all one, whether we happen to be this side of the grave or beyond. As the hymn says, we have "friends on earth and friends above," as another hymn states we are all lead by that “kindly light.” We can talk to the saints and can pray for all the departed, and we can be sure they pray for us. If you really believe in the resurrection, death doesn't count, and down the centuries countless Christians have drawn immense support from a living sense of friendship, a fellowship with the saints, friends and family who have gone before.

And if people try to tell you that bothering with saints is superstitious, or idolatry, or just for Roman Catholics, I hope you'll tell them it's nothing of the kind. It simply follows from our faith that in Christ, death can't divide, we are members of one another whether here or beyond. That's why in some churches we have pictures, stained glass, icons of saints in church, and how many URC chuches have taken their name form St Andrew or St George, just around the corner we have a St Bede URC! It's really just the same as having photographs of friends and relatives on earth. We don't worship the photo, but it helps us by reminding us there's someone there who loves us and cares for us. It's the same in Church. We don't worship saints or pray to them in the same sense as we pray to God. But it’s good to know they are there, that they do care for us, and that we can ask for their prayers just as we ask for our friend's prayers on earth.

Whether we can see them or not, we are surrounded in this life by the saints - all those who were made members of his body by baptism, all who have conquered death in him, and who, because they are in him, still live, and live forever. And they - wonder of wonders - are part of us and we of them.

Holy, Holy Holy – all the saints adore thee! The saints are all around us. As the 16th century poet, Edmund Spencer says in his poem Faire is the Heaven which I read earlier and which I conclude:- Faire is the heaven where happy soules have place
In full enjoyment of felicitie;
Whence they do still behold the glorious face
Of the Divine, Eternall Majestie;Fairer than all the rest which there appeare
Though all their beauties joynd together were;
How then can mortal tongue hope to expresse
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?
The Great Cloud of WitnessesAmenRevd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across the Northern Synod

Spending Review Cuts

2010-10-19T08:43:00.003+01:00

“You cannot serve God and mammon” - Matthew 6:24

(From an illustrated sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at West End United Reformed Church, Newcastle upon Tyne, 17^th October 2010)

As the 7:23 pulled out of Durham railway station bound for Glasgow a couple of weeks ago I heard the guard announce “that because of cuts and staff shortages there would be no trolley service in standard class accommodation. National Express fully apologises for this inconvenience.” A few miles up the track a further announcement was made. “Because of staff shortages,” the guard said “there has been no opportunity to place seat reservation tickets in the carriages.” In a final announcement the guard went on to apologise to first class passengers that, again, “because of staff shortages they were doing the best they could to serve breakfast and requested customers to remain patient.” Was it I thought, as the train sped on through Chester le Street, a hunch, a foretaste, a premonition of the outcome of the spending review cuts that will be announced this coming Wednesday 20th October, as the nation is forced to tighten its belt to the tune of £120 billion pounds? For let us make no mistake. Next Wednesday billions of pounds will be wiped out of the public sector budget, social services, education, transport, libraries, parks, police, health service, and the military. Job losses will be profound: Whitehall veterans have already hinted that the Coalition Government cuts will be much, much deeper than anything implemented by the Iron Lady and Sir Geoffrey Howe.

But that is small comfort to the North East. The board room of the regional development agency One North East is not a fun place to be at the moment. Chancellor George Osborne’s has told One North East to take £33m out of its budget, in advance of its abolition in 2012. Paul Callaghan, the Chairman of One North East, stated that such a cut would lead to up to 3000 job losses and 700 businesses starved of investment opportunities.

Let us remind ourselves. These financial cut backs and job losses are a result of what began in 2007; American funds, exposed to subprime mortgages, snowballed into one of the worst financial crises in modern history – a near death experience of the global economy. The financial crisis here in Britain was taken to the brink. Titans of the banking industry bit the dust. Some British banks were partially nationalised with hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpayer’s money put on the line. Our own Northern Rock plc, the first bank in 150 years to suffer a bank run was taken into public ownership in 2008. As the recession bit harder the value of houses dropped by one sixth; the value of shares dropped by almost one third. High Street stores like Woolworths, MFI and Zavvi, went out of business. In the last 3 years tens of thousands of people worldwide have lost their jobs and it is said hundreds of thousands more will do so. On 17 September 2008, very shortly after the demise of Lehman Brothers, HBOS's – Halifax/Bank of Scotland shares fell 17% and to cut a long story short HBOS joined the Lloyds banking group in January 2009.

You may not know but the Bank of Scotland one of the worlds’ oldest banks and the first private bank to issue paper money. Inaugurated by the merchants of Edinburgh, they had heard from John Knox who had heard it from John Calvin in Geneva that lending money at interest was no longer a sin against God. Sadly, the irony today is that The Bank of Scotland collapsed because it was laden with debt. Weird devices for making money out of money, invented by university trained economists, enabled in this by government lawmakers, deregulated money on their advice. And as a result, in this country, and in the US, for the last 30 years money has been the master. As Jesus said – and as we have seen in the financial meltdown since Lehmann Brothers collapsed, the tragic effects has been that millions of ordinary people have lost their jobs, their homes, and millions of others going hungry because of the high price of food - you cannot serve God and money. The high price of food had difficult international consequences for nine of our young northern synod members and their leaders. After a frightening series of food street riots in the capital Maputo the young students cut short their visit to Mozambique; they were escorted out of the nation’s capital, a safe route to Johannesburg and a flight home.

You cannot serve two masters says Jesus in this morning gospel reading. You cannot serve God: you cannot serve mammon. Money is not just a poor sovereign. As a sovereign it replaces God and undermines the laws of God; it multiplies debt and bondage so that it destroys communities, families, homes, livelihoods and ultimately the earth itself. And yet today we have made it possible for ourselves to worship God and mammon.

Three year later after the financial meltdown the world has moved on. Today, without doubt, two of the most powerful forces in our interconnected globalised world are religion and money – leading Christian economists like Huw Pym and Larry Elliot, economic editor of the Guardian, have been saying for some time that theological and ethical approaches to economics are no longer marginal but are now central to the thinking and understanding of the current crises.

And yet it is quite striking that in the gospel parables Jesus more than once uses the world of economics as a framework for his stories – the parable of the talents, the dishonest steward, and the lost coin. Like farming, like family relationships, like the tensions of public political life economic relations have something to say to us about how we see our humanity in the context of God’s action. Money is after all a metaphor alongside other things as to how we see our relationship to God and God to us. But this financial crisis which has brought about this week’s spending cuts is about more than money. It is also about morality.

Morality was a word that was to resonate and reverberate on Saturday 4th March 1933 when President Frankland Roosevelt gave his inaugural presidential address. America, the world’s biggest economy had just started the slow ascent from the bottom of an economic abyss after the Wall Street Crash in 1929 that saw a quarter of the working population jobless. Roosevelt said “America was facing not just an economic but a moral crisis,” and he provided an almost biblical damnation of the excesses that had sent the stock market rise to heady heights in the boom years of the late 20’s. “Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion,” the new president said “rejected by the hearts and minds of men.” As Jesus said - You cannot serve God and mammon.

Almost 77 years later another president found an echo of the Roosevelt era when he outlined plans to reform Wall Street following another profound shock to the financial system. It took a year after his inaugural address at a White House press conference on 21 January 2010 for Barak Obama to thunder out his words of condemnation. As Jesus said - You cannot serve God and mammon.

At a European conference in 2006 another aspiring world statesmen Tory leader David Cameron said “there is more to life than making money,” arguing that improving people's happiness is a key challenge for politicians. It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB - general well-being," he said. "Well-being can't be measured by money or traded in markets. And as Baroness Warsi, chairperson of the Conservative Party, this administration, unlike the previous one “does God.” Well we shall see! Jesus said – You cannot serve God and mammon.

There’s a true story that comes from the sinking of the Titanic. A frightened woman found her place in a lifeboat that was about to be lowered into the raging North Atlantic. She suddenly thought of something she needed, so she asked permission to return to her stateroom before they cast off. She was granted three minutes or they would have to leave without her. She ran across the deck that was already slanted at a dangerous angle. She raced through the gambling room with all the money that had rolled to one side, ankle deep. She came to her stateroom and quickly pushed aside her diamond rings and expensive bracelets and necklaces as she reached to the shelf above her bed and grabbed three small oranges. She quickly found her way back to the lifeboat and got in. Now that seems incredible because thirty minutes earlier she would not have chosen a crate of oranges over even the smallest diamond. But death had boarded the Titanic. One blast of its awful breath had transformed all values. Instantaneously, priceless things had become worthless. Worthless things had become priceless. And in that moment she preferred three small oranges to a crate of diamonds.

No one can serve two masters; Jesus tells us, for he will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth, or ‘Mammon’. The verb serve means literally ‘be the slave of', showing that what really matters here is what motivates us and drives us. Jesus had eyes to see, and he saw how some people allowed themselves to become driven to the point of enslavement by their attempts to amass wealth, to extend security, so that this became the very centre of their energy and purpose. In fact, in setting their eyes on all this, they failed to see.

But what economic editors can see is that we are now in the end game of an old economic paradigm, an old economic model. Britain is at a historic turning point. Next Wednesday’s the implementation of the spending cuts review will be the biggest social change in this country. How as individuals and as a church are we going to respond to these changes – as the Evangelical Alliance have already commented “Is there life beyond debt? For after all George Osborne’s heavily loaded and highly communal phrase says it all – we are all in this together!

These turbulent times of approaching austerity will undoubtedly leave an indelible mark on our economic and social landscape. Of course we firmly believe that the Bible is outspoken on issues of poverty and injustice. We must be prepared to demonstrate that our faith is in God, not in the false gods of mammon of this age; I believe the church is uniquely positioned to help people who are in debt, have lost their jobs or are otherwise struggling with their finances. When we meet a new person, one of the first questions we ask is: "What do you do for a living?" From my own experience I know that my worth was wrapped up in planning career and is bound up in my self-supporting ministry. Our jobs becomes our identity - who we are! What we do becomes what we value! When we lose a job or are faced with a career change, we often feel we've lost our worth.

For a loss of a job is one of the greatest trials we can endure; the effects of job loss are often long lasting. This is largely due to the fact that society trains us to identify ourselves by how we provide for our family. A job loss can certainly lead to the loss of one's identity, which can result in the loss of a purpose in life. Without a purpose in life, we tend to feel as if we are no longer in control. These are natural and ordinary feelings.

With this loss of identify, the financial loss too has to be assessed. A family has to cope with less income and many families in the coming months will be facing this problem. Applying for unemployment compensation can be emotionally devastating for some people; I personally couldn’t cope with the prospect of “signing on.” Job loss can create an atmosphere of negative despair and a defeatist attitude among many individuals; so I would have to say evading this attitude is vital for Christians and non-Christians alike. When negative attitudes sink into one’s life, they are often difficult to remove.

Job loss has obvious immediate results. But the most damaging effect of a job loss is the slippery slope it generates. The situation can and often does go from bad to worse.

By combining the conviction that motivates our action with the resources and organisations already established, we as a church can develop its engagement to bring vital aid to those who will be in greatest need following the announcements to be made next Wednesday. “We must take care of those in need,” was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s New Year Message this year. “Our hearts will be in a very bad way if they are focused only on the state of our finances. They’ll be healthy if they’re capable of turning outwards - looking at the real treasure that is our fellow human beings.”

It doesn’t matter the reasons why people have lost their jobs. It doesn’t matter if it is their fault or somebody else’s fault or nobody’s fault at all. God cares for everybody and so we must care for everybody. There will be people in need because of the economic crisis – even in the community here in West End. We must be prepared to help them. Those who have lost their jobs – those who have lost their savings. Those who find that their pensions are not worth what they were or should be.

For those who are suffering job loss or will suffer a future job loss I can't offer you a resume, preparation advice or interviewing techniques, but I can assure you that God may have a better idea than anything you've ever considered before. Remember always that God cares about the situation we find ourselves in - sometimes running out of one’s own resources is a good time to turn to God for answers. When we come to God we may find that my worth is not to be found in me, in my job, and what I was capable of doing, but in God and what He saw in me and what He wants to do through me. In His eyes, our worth is not just about our accomplishments. In fact, it is often not about me/us at all! It is comforting to know that our significance, our economic worth neither began nor ended with our careers. Even though our careers may be done, a whole new world awaits us as we look for God's new direction.

Prayer

God, our companion in the wilderness, who led your people to new tasks in a new land, help us find new tasks and new purposes in a world of unemployment, early retirement and redundancy, that we too may find opportunities to labour and at the end to rest and see that it is good, through Jesus Christ our Lord, whose work was to proclaim your kingdom.

Amen

Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in the Northern Synod

Knox and Benedict

2010-09-12T18:27:00.006+01:00

From an illustrated sermon preached by Ray Angelsea at Denewell Avenue United Reformed Church, Gateshead - 12-September-2010

Psalm 132

Ephesians 4 v1-6

John 17 v11b-23

The Daily Record, one of Scotland’s leading newspapers stated last month that a John Knox lookalike is to welcome the Pope on his state visit to Scotland this coming week. Apparently an actor has been hired by the Catholic Church to play the leader of Scotland's Protestant Reformation in a pageant of the country's historical figures. John Knox will be one of 25 characters including Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, William Wallace, St Andrew, Robert the Bruce, Eric Liddell, St Ninian, St Margaret, St Columba and Alexander Fleming to parade in front of the pontiff's Pope-mobile on Princes Street, Edinburgh, during his state visit. You may remember from your history lessons that John Knox was a Scottish clergyman who led the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. The Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority, forbade the celebration of the Mass and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. He is considered to be the father and founder of the Presbyterian denomination.

Given Knox’s background I find it odd and amusingly ironic that that a lookalike character should be paraded in front of Pope Benedict. It was not just that John Knox led the reforms that separated Scotland from Rome; John Knox did not have a lot of nice things to say about the Pontiff. This year is the 450^th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation. The changes which came about in sixteenth century Scotland were, of course, not isolated, but greatly influenced by what was happening in other countries, in England, and Luther’s Germany, and Calvin’s Geneva; nor were they purely religious changes, but intimately interwoven with political, economic, and personal ambitions and preferences, crucially the desire for alliance with a Protestant England in preference to an alliance, and possible union, with Catholic France. The reformation was therefore first and foremost about Scotland’s national religious settlement; it heralded a new era of peace and friendship with England; and it also guaranteed Scotland’s independence as a nation state.

Within Scotland’s political community today there have been accusations that this year's 450th anniversary has been ignored by the Scottish Government. Rumblings of discontent seem to range from sensitivity to the Pope’s visit to the seemingly secularization of the nation, consideration for other faith traditions, and just apathy to the anniversary. Or, as one writer stated “the Scottish Reformation left a trail of violence, vandalism and destruction from which Scotland’s heritage has never recovered, and which is possibly the real reason why authorities cannot touch the 450th anniversary of the Reformation with a rather long barge-pole.”

As we have seen on television and read in the press in the last few days there is in some quarter’s opposition to the Pope’s visit. Recent surveys suggest that 79% of the British public remain apathetic about the state tour. On the streets of Durham I have seen billboards in the Millennium Square and posters on lamp posts displaying anti-papal bigotry. A man wearing a purple T shirt with white letters which read "No Hope in the Pope" is to be seen handing out flyers to passerby's. Ireland’s Orange Order too has protested about the visit; the Free Presbyterian Scottish Church described the decision to bestow a state visit status on the occasion as "particularly offensive". Stonewall an organisation which works for justice for gay and lesbians also object to the pope’s visit. Not surprisingly the Pope is not the organisation’s best friend. Stonewall wish to bring to the attention of the public that Cardinal Newman, soon to be beatified, although not gay on the basis of sexual practice, had, allegedly, clear homosexual sensibilities. He insisted on being buried with his friend Ambrose St John. You can imagine the displeasure from the gay community when his body was exhumed some years ago after lying beside his friend for over 100 years.

But amongst the pope-mania there are some Catholics who view the impending visit also with some disquiet. Not all Catholics are exactly over the moon about having the hard-line Cardinal Ratzinger as the leader of their Church. Sexual abuse, women rights, HIV, IVF fertility treatment, promoting Latin masses, birth control are just some of the headline and breaking news issues facing the Catholic Church under his leadership. In a letter dated 8^th September to The Times a Catholic correspondent stated that “the pronouncements of this papacy have been characterised by a depressing series of attempts to resuscitate a number of hopelessly anachronistic and irrelevant attitudes, which many of us had fondly imagined were long since securely interred in the mausoleum of Church embarrassments.” When the Cardinal succeeded Pope John Paul II one American Roman Catholic complained, “it is like electing Rumsfeld after George Bush".

And then there is the inevitable objection to the cost of the State visit. The Sun newspaper estimates the cost to the tax payer will be in excess of £12 million pounds.

How as Reformed people in a Reforming Church can we understand and value this complex history, the religious violence and imbalances of the past? How do we view the Pope’s visit this coming week? How do we look to the future of our own church in the third millennium? But most importantly how do we move towards that unity which Christ prayed for and which we heard about in our illustrated gospel reading this morning?

Let’s deal with our past history first.
In a service broadcast to mark the 450 anniversary of the Scottish Reformation on Radio 4 last month from St Giles’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, the preacher, the minister, the Very Reverend Gilleasbuig Macmillan, quoted the novelist L P Hartley who wrote, ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ Alongside Hartley we may think of T S Eliot’s idea that “time future is contained in time past.” John Knox and his reformers in their day were looking to the past as they tried to chart a new future. John Knox looked back across almost exactly one thousand years from that other giant of Scottish Christianity, Columba; the same Bible was read, the same psalms sung, the same Creed confessed, and the same sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion celebrated and administered. More importantly, Columba and Knox both tried to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus too saw himself as being true to his people’s past, taking the insights of the Hebrew scriptures and letting them offer signals and guidance for the way forward; and when his followers wrote about his significance it is not surprising that they used ideas and imagery from centuries earlier to give verbal testimony to the impact of his life and death upon them.

So from our past this morning I should like to give thanks for the place of the Bible in our Reformed tradition, and in the life of the church - its poetry, its wisdom, the ways in which its language influenced the speaking, arguing, debating, writing of our reformed leaders, generations of sermon-tasters, rich symphonic imagery of the mind. Remembering the quote – the past is a foreign country they do things differently there – I would like to make a plea that any form of Christianity ought to have an element of the Catholic and an element of the Reformed or Protestant. For out of that pick and mix unity we can cherish the pre-Reformation church and its post-Reformation successor. Our response to our past is therefore not fixed, but mobile. That is the nature of living faith, organic religion.

How do we view the Pope’s visit to our nation this coming week?
Having read some of the soundings on the Pope’s visit in the press this week my view is that it is very important that church leaders in the Anglican, Catholic and Free Church tradition take the opportunity to show that their agreements are far more profound than their differences. We espouse a similar sort of theology: rooted in the legacy of Columbus, Augustine and the recovery of authentic Patristic, the High Medieval and Reformed traditions. The visit this coming week is, I believe, of crucial importance because Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular are under increasing attack in so-called secular Britain.

A Vatican spokesman, trying to set the stage for the papal visit, said that from Rome Britain seemed a very secular society. But is this true? The Medieval and Reformation periods are often characterised as ages of great faith. Certainly, individuals and communities did die for their beliefs. However, today’s general scale of apathy and antipathy should not be underestimated. After all the celebrated eleventh century monk, William of Malmesbury complained that the aristocracy rarely attended mass, and even the more pious heard it at home, ‘but in their bedchambers, lying in the arms of their wives’. At least they heard mass though; according to one scholar, ‘substantial sections of thirteenth century society - especially the poor – hardly attended church at all’. No change there then.

Statistical surveys continually support the thesis that Britain is a place where the vast majority of the population continues to affirm their belief in God, but then proceed to do little about it. Without doubt we live in a spiritually confused culture; the Bishop of Oxford writing in his new book “Living Jesus” quotes Liam Gallagher of the rock group Oasis who once said in an interview, “I don’t pray and I don’t go to church but I am intrigued by it, I’m into the idea that there could be a God and aliens and incarnation and some geezer years ago turned water into wine; I don’t believe when you die, you die.” I think many were be sympathetic to that statement. Church attendance figures remain stubbornly low and, as is likely, the attendance at the Pope’s masses. Secularism, I would want to suggest is not a modern malaise, but is rather a typical feature of western societies down the ages. Granted, there have been periods of revival when church attendance has peaked and that is perhaps none of the aims of the Pope’s visit, to boost the morale of the troops. But the basic and innate disposition is one of believing without belonging; of relating to the church, and valuing its presence and beliefs - yet without necessarily sharing them. Or, as one wit puts it, ‘I cannot consider myself to be a pillar of the church, for I never go. But I am a buttress – insofar as I support it from the outside’. - My view is that God hasn't gone away - he just isn't where we thought he was.

But it is heartening that there has been a show of solidarity from our leaders before the arrival of the Pope, albeit in the fight back against Stephen Hawking’s assertion that science leaves no role for God in the creation of the universe. Professor Hawking’s book The Grand Design was published a few days ago to coincide with the Pope’s visit to Britain.

I am happy to say that some of my dearest friends are Catholics; we enjoy our differences and our unity in our friendship. I also would wish to say and recognise too that Catholics play a very important role in British cultural and political life. And I hope in an odd sort of way that the Beatification of Cardinal Newman may be seen as a sign of unity; for now he belongs to both Catholic and Protestant Anglicanism.

Finally in our search for church unity how do we as a church and a denomination move forward in this 3 millennium?

I have just finished reading the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks new book “The Dignity of Difference.” In it he makes a plea for toleration in an age of religious extremism. He writes about the rising crescendo of ethnic tensions, and the use of religious justification for acts of terror. Allied to weapons of mass destruction, extremist religious attitudes threaten the very security of life on earth. The Chief Rabbi writes, “We must learn to feel enlarged, not threatened by difference.” As we have heard on the news a Florida evangelical pastor Terry Jones in an attitude that reeks of tribal religion has backed down from a mass torching of the Koran after international outrage and condemnation. The basic teachings of Christ enjoin us to love our enemies, to bless those who persecute us. Love alone transforms hatred. The kind of hatred Pastor Jones advocates never breeds anything but more hatred.

We as a small denomination, founded on the tradition of our reforming fathers and mothers would I am sure want to support Dr Sack’s view: and as reforming Christian people we would also wish to say, in line with our reforming fathers, that we believe that genuine faith is committed to the search for truth wherever it comes from. God invites us to do our believing in ways appropriate to the 21^st century, reminding ourselves that we never have absolute certainty, only God is infallible. Any religion which imagines it has a monopoly of truth is dangerous – and as a non stipendiary minister working in the community as you have heard me say so many times – the Gospel is that God so loved the world, not that God so loved the church – we have to stop retreating from the giant social issues of the day into the pygmy world of private piety and the comfort zone and security of our denominational walls.

With the arrival of the Pope Benedict XVI this week let us remind ourselves as Christian people of three truths that John Knox and Pope Benedict have in common, truths which we share and which unite us – both men in different ages and different cultures claim a gospel mandate for their attitudes, though their proof texts are very different.

The three truths are taken from Ian C Bradley’s new book Grace, Order, Openness and Diversity – Reclaiming Liberal Theology.

Together we affirm in Jesus’ life, teaching, death and resurrection God’s limitless love for all humanity in this life and the next.
Together we affirm the dynamic action of God’s Holy Spirit in dispersing this divine love throughout the world
Together we affirm the beneficial insights of biblical, literary and historical criticism for our understanding of Scripture and Tradition.

Finally, let us remind ourselves as Christians in this historic week is that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe.

God has given us only one world in which to live together.

Amen

Revd Ray Anglesea

Northern Synod in Mozambique - Postscript

2010-09-06T09:10:00.003+01:00

As John has put on the web site, we arrived back safe and sound in Newcastle, at lunch time on Saturday 4^th September.

The journey back was exciting but in reality uneventful. The streets of Maputo were very quiet and clear with very little transport and few people on the move. The Colonel and team who escorted us made sure that we got across the border into

South Africa

when the relief in the group was tangible and grins were very apparent. As we drove to Johannesburg the views including a spectacular sunset were great. We were disappointed not to see any safari kinds of animals.

We booked in at the airport with no problem and had most people’s usual food - cheeseburger and chips. This was enjoyed before catching the night flight. On this people slept or watched films. In the morning a quick hop up to Newcastle, the finding of bags and the gathering of folk’s souvenirs from whichever cases they had been stashed in took place before we went out.

There it was great to be greeted by families, John from the Synod, Jane Rowell (URC International Secretary) and Richard Mortimer (URC Deputy General Secretary) who had worked so hard to ensure our safety, keep our families informed and to get us home. We will never know how much energy this took but we are very grateful.

Although the trip ended unexpectedly it was still amazing. Here are one or two comments from participants arising out of their immediate reflections – more will be added as we prepare to share the trip with folk at the Synod meeting on Saturday October 16^th.

From Matthew: ‘Mozambique is a beautiful country with wonderful people who show their feelings for their church and their spirituality in a more open way than we do.’
From Lucy and Emma: ‘We are grateful to see the different culture and what others experience in their daily lives. God is love in its greatest form and this visit certainly proved this to us. An absolutely beautifully and hospitable country, memories and people we will never forget.’
From Rowena: The love and warmth of friendship from the leadership of the Presbyterian Church of Mozambique is an inspiration and witness to the unity Christ has already given us. I hope and pray this partnership will continue to grow and enrich us.’

Northern Synod in Mozambique (3)

2010-09-03T11:27:00.009+01:00

Day 9 - Rest day!

The leisurely start and warmth of our hosts made us feel very pleased to be back in a more familiar area. Just as two suppers had been provided the previous night, two breakfasts followed in the morning!

One with hosts and one at the synod office. Much discussion was shared about the plans for the day but as it turned out the morning was used for sorting washing, chilling out, catching up on the blog and repacking bags once again. Our request for space to do our washing was met by an offer to do the washing for us! This is something we could not and would not have sought but is nevertheless greatly, greatly appreciated!

Rest Day part 2

After lunch we headed down to the beach but never got there as the desire of Sarah for not only a daddy giraffe (already bought) but also a mummy and baby one meant we spent our time bartering in various markets and buying souvenirs. We were glad of our hosts who haggled for us and ensured we were not paying far too much.

We were privileged in the evening to visit Jose’s parish 'Betlem' (Bethlehem) in a deprived area of Maputo. The warmth of the welcome was overwhelming. We sang - yes you’ve got it ‘Hallelujah’ yet again and the church sang ‘Blessed assurance Jesus is mine’ that they had learned in English in honour of us as visitors. Then first the church and then the women’s group danced up and dressed us, men and women, in kapulanas. Michael really got in the swing of things. Kate missed this as she was fast asleep back at a host’s home.

Then it was back to the synod office to wait for hosts for the night to pick us up. Four of us went to different families to enable us to meet more local people.

Day 10 (Sep 1)

Today started with office staff prayers led by the women’s secretary.

Michael, Sarah and Matthew had not joined us. Then Ernesto the General Secretary informed us that on September 1st the government sets the price of bread – like a budget in England. Riots had broken out across Maputo the capital, the road to the airport being closed and so we could not go off site.

Michael, Sarah and Matthew had to remain at their hosts home until it was safe for them to travel across town back to the synod office which they did early afternoon. Their host spent the morning on the phone and with an English dictionary trying to help and reassure and phoned the next day to see how his friends were. They commented on how the streets were bereft and there were signs of violence in many places. Church house in London picked up what was happening and contacted us and our families. The day was stressful as it was hard to work out what was happening; with pictures on the local news of a petrol station being set alight, rocks being thrown and rubber bullets being used to disperse crowds and news of people dying.

We were not allowed off the safe synod office site even with an escort. Our hosts went in search of water and chocolate for us but most shops were closed and people had not managed to get to work. So we all stayed on site and shared a meal, dancing and games to try and defray the tension and block out the gun fire that could be heard in the distance.

Our hosts have taken time and effort to reassure us and to try and ascertain what we want and to provide for those needs.

Day 11 (Sep 2)

Confined to site. We are less tired having slept better. After breakfast Lucy led us and our hosts in prayers where we played an action game in which we had to follow others around the circle. This was good fun and showed that we are to follow Jesus and take up our cross. One of the Pastors' wives thanked the youth group for having done that by coming on this visit to Mozambique. There have many many touching moments like this on the visit.

London phoned and arranged a telephone call with Ernesto at midday.

Still no decision as to what would happen so the girls braided each other’s hair. An hour later we heard that the decision had been taken to repatriate us today by road to South Africa. So we packed and ate. Then we heard from the Pastors' wives about the sewing and knitting project. Then there were emotional farewells, gifts and prayers in the largest Presbyterian church that is on site. Then we waited and waited and waited on a password.

Then the news came that we could not go today as transport to South Africa was not possible. Tension ran high as if it was risky enough that we were being pulled out what did it mean to be stuck here for another 24 hours. It was not good news.

Once more we are confined to site so the guest house rooms with en suite facilities up the road that had been booked for the rest of our visit were cancelled and we were once more dependent on the hospitality of our hosts. There was also no food left. As there is no public transport as the government is stopping gathering of crowds to prevent escalation of the protests our hosts had made soup. Later others went out in search of any take away food and two hours later returned with chicken and chips.

Day 12 (Sep 3)

A text early this morning says our transport is on its way drivers having flown into Johannesburg from Capetown last night. Hopefully not African time!

This morning Emma led prayers. We spent time while tea was being fetched last night braiding friendship bracelets. During morning prayers we gave thanks to God for memories, friendship and experiences on the trip before exchanging the bracelets with those around us who have come to mean so much to us; taking on the role of an extended family.

The roads are quiet still only large buses running and so we are hopeful of a peaceful and good journey home to England where we will hopefully be by Saturday teatime. The plus side is we may see animals on the drive through to South Africa and pretend a safari is finishing off our trip.

Our thanks go to our hosts who have coped lovingly with the changing programme with such warm hospitality.

Northern Synod in Mozambique (2)

2010-08-31T15:52:00.011+01:00

Day 4

Today we visited Ricatla Parish and Seminary where Reinaldo is pastor.

For the first time we had cassava with José pulling up a plant so we could see the tuber / roots we were eating. It seemed like a cross between potato, sweet potato and parsnip.

They greeted us with song and we introduced ourselves. Then we went inside to eat and all the women gathered on mats outside grinning as we had given them pencils, notebooks, toothbrushes and toothpaste.

Emma challenged the men as to why the women had to wait to eat but the women assured us that they were happy as this was their normal practice.

Then we sang and danced teaching the folk of the Parish Hallelujah, hallelujah which they loved and continued to sing as we left.

We wandered around the seminary seeing the single women and men’s quarters, the married students’ quarters and classrooms. We also saw the library containing books by Professor Cranfield. The books were so prized along with an old saxophone of the Presbyterian Churches’ founder that it had to be kept behind what appeared to be a prison door.

Dinner back at the synod guest house was a local ‘Red fish’ complete with eyes followed by an early night ready for travelling north in the morning.

Day 5

Today we had a bum-numbing journey in a convoy of three 4x4 off roaders as we travelled the 500 kilometres north to Imhambane. We had homemade burgers and egg rolls for breakfast. Our translator Ivo got caught in traffic on a cattle bus that gets filled to overflowing so we were 90 minutes late leaving. There’s a surprise! African time!

If the dirt tracks earlier had been a bit of a surprise then the main A1 equivalent road proved to be all the more so in places. The driving around potholes on one patch left those of us who are travel sick worse for wear. It is interesting that only experienced drivers in Mozambique are allowed to drive on these roads.

Toilet stops were amazing with men lining up on the road side and women hitching their garments. We didn’t believe we would ever master the hole in some places but needs must.

One vehicle notably slower than the others took a detour to a parish.

Matthew, Jo and Marissa visited a very small and very deprived rural community. They received a very warm welcome and were received into a church built from Coconut palms where they shared greetings and also planted coconut trees being invited to visit in 10 years and see them when grown. They were offered a glorious and humble feast which gave the three an opportunity to try new things. Matthew ended up with chicken neck on his plate which was a new experience as was finding chicken feet in ones soup.

The rest of us were getting exasperated as we did not know where they were and were hanging around in the pastor’s house. Then the girls went to the Minister of Finances House to sleep in the families beds and the boys went to Gloria’s, a government legal advisors; where they were adopted and mothered.

Day 6 - Emma’s birthday

Another early start led to the busiest day to date. Chicken for breakfast as well as lunch and dinner and we thought it might be the only meat all day. Then it was off to the tourist beaches around Flamingo Bay. We walked around a hotel built on stilts over the salt marshes that are the breeding grounds for many sea fish and watched shells with crabs in them moving around. Then it was off to Barra Beach where we swam and bartered with beach sellers for scarves, dresses and bracelets. Jo got attacked by Dracula the sand fly that Emma had to rescue her from.

Back to the pastor’s house for more chicken and rice and maize the staple food here plus a cassava leaves and seafood sauce called ‘Xiguinia’. Then it became clear how burnt some of us were getting. So we covered up for the afternoon programme.

We went to a piece of land that the parish were going to build their church on but had now more land so this was going to be as women’s self development project of breeding chickens to gain an income. We each planted a tree or two with people from the Parish to mark out the boundary of the site. Then it was off to the land where the church is going to be built. The architect told us of the plans for a training centre, church, family homes and guest houses on the 1 hectare site.

Ernesto and Rowena then laid the foundation stones and started the honour book that everyone could write in to mark the occasion. Then people cracked the tops off a different variety of coconut using machetes and the nuts were passed round so that we could share the refreshing drink within. Different coconuts and grass burrs that stuck all over us were not the only unusual plants of the afternoon many of the girl’s shoes are testament to how piercing some of the local seeds pods can be.

Then it was off to a different beach with rough surf and where our host pastors stripped to undies and frolicked in the waves to cool off and relax after the activities of the programme. The local market was visited where Matthew excelled himself in negotiating prices.

Back to the houses we were staying to freshen up. A group of activists from Mupota had travelled up today for a programme in the Parish in the evening. Due to timing we were not able to join them for bible study by our translator pastor Ivo but instead waited around for a reception dinner on the veranda of the girls’ hosts’ home. We divided up around our hosts from the synod and the local Parish but English was in short supply. The architect again presented the project and there was some discussion about the business plan and potential finances of it; these are unpromising in the short term but better in the long term if partnerships are sorted, and if through building using trainees and recycled materials the costs can be kept down.

After this beautiful meal with birthday cake for Emma and welcome cake for us and champagne we were glad to turn in after a very busy day.

Day 7: Sunday

Marisa got what time she was to be up wrong due to being tired and so everyone in her room was woken up at 5am instead of 6am.

The activists from Maputo were having breakfast at the church so we had it at a church member’s house. Then we went to church. The service began with a liturgy, then we taught a couple of songs – Hallelujah again went down very well. Rowena preached. Then we had a second offertory where in turn the parish’s present and English visitors were invited up to sing and dance their offering to the front. We did God’s love is very wonderful and gave an amount from all of us, having put our change in the first offering. We have videos to prove we can dance with the best of the Africans and that’s saying something. Then various choirs sang and there were presentations and speeches of thanks. We gave the local pastor Alfonso a URC cross and fish made of olive wood. Then we formed a line as we danced out of church and shook hands with everyone.

Then we met with the Sunday school and sat in the baking sun asking what they liked about church. They talked not of meeting friends but of the prayers and bible study, giving us the impression of a spirituality that is not always present in our churches. We then offered more small gifts to the children and young people that were well received.

The activists left for Maputo in a cattle bus and we then had lunch – more chicken and rice. Then we divided and some went back to beach.

Lucy braved the sea for the first time holding Sarah’s hand and various local people including Gloria came to the beach. Another small group crossed over to Maxixe in the ferry that took about 25 mins, and wandered around and had a drink in a ‘village square' before coming back in a much smaller boat that folk were crammed into. Bart one of our hosts was quite scared but it was a lovely thing to do and very relaxing. The sun burn is really glowing now.

We invited our hosts to a meal in a hotel in the evening and 25 of us sat around a table on the sea front to enjoy a buffet – with pizza for Kate who is not going to eat chicken again for months. Matthew got stuffed on steak as they kept bringing medium rather than well done.

It was a beautiful setting except for the more prevalent midges.

Day 8

The time up north was followed by a much-welcomed return to Maputo, particularly to off-load souvenirs and to be reunited with those things we’d left in our suitcases. Marisa’s eagerness only 24 hours earlier was exactly what we needed to begin our return home with a 6am departure. A few photographs led to the most prompt start we’ve had since arriving! African time was only 10 minutes out from British time – a good hour or two closer than normal.

Breakfast was an experience, arriving in a restaurant before 10 and not getting fed til about 11! The rest of the journey was smooth, with stops at the different pastors’ houses en route. Philippe’s house gave the opportunity to see rice plantations while Pastor Langa’s offered views of monkeys loose in the trees. Apparently monkeys don’t like men, and as all of us were wearing trousers we must all have been men – they promptly ran off! As we continued on the journey, the sleepyheads continued to nap before being awoken by shouts of ‘is that a goat on the roof of the bus?!?’ which astounded the people in many cars.

We arrived in Maputo to be met by lunch at 3 in the afternoon – not rice and chicken but an array of jacket potatoes, fresh veg and eggs.

Supper followed not long after! And for some that was only the first supper! In between lunch and supper, we chilled out and pondered what to do with our free day, while the hosts sorted out where we would stay for the night – something which took a fair amount of discussion!

The rest time has been very much appreciated to balance out our very hectic schedule in Inhambane. Supper in the synod office also provided the first opportunity to share in the chores as, until this point, our hosts have been most generous in making sure we’ve not had to do any of the hard work.

We quickly juggled and repacked our luggage for the night before the hosts arrived and we split up into pairs and threes to stay with local families.

Many of us experienced washing with buckets due to limited water supplies but on the whole we managed fine. The families were so keen to have us they offered food and very warm welcomes and expressed a keenness to have us back again! Tiredness caught up with us and we were delighted to get a good and long night’s sleep, having been advised we didn’t need to be meeting until the far more respectable time of either 8 or 8.30 the following morning. The rest was definitely greatly appreciated!

Northern Synod in Mozambique

2010-08-26T17:55:00.011+01:00

Synod Moderator Rowena Francis, Mission & Development Enabler Jo Merrygold, and seven young adults from our churches flew out from Newcastle to Mozambique on Monday August 23rd for a two week visit to our global partner church, The Presbyterian Church of Mozambique.

Day 1

Michael ended up with two body searches, losing his bottles (unfair as others kept big water bottles without comment) and being frog marched to a different check point; Kate slept throughout; Emma after much abuse from fellow passengers ended up sleeping on the floor of the plane; screaming kids or was it only one was a distraction to many.

All in all a good journey over 24 hours to Maputo, Mozambique via Heathrow and Johannesburg. At Joberg during a five hour wait we sang and were joined by a Maputo Christian who taught us a praise song in Portuguese. A warm welcome and chicken meal awaited us; plus showers in a wonderful guest house with impressively hard beds. Here ends day 2.

Day 3

Time begins to confuse us. Travel took on a Quirky Mozambiquan style – the rules of the road being a mystery to many. One of our vehicles has a fractured windscreen and access to the road if you can call it that, through a hole in floor, no seat belts but with a good driver included.

We visited Malo-Ricatla rural parish. We were only an hour late but still they waited for us and welcomed us with song. Davida was amazing, the grandma of the Parish who could certainly rock it.

Toilet – what toilet - we managed in a breeze block roofless hut. But the reason for our visit was to plant trees around the borders of the church land so that outsiders from the city do not come and build houses on church land and so involve the church in more land conflicts. We want pictures when they have grown to 30 metres.

Kate’s expletives when told she had to wring the neck of the chickens in the synod office grounds ready for dinner were best left to the imaginative. Ernesto, the General Secretary, we suspect will follow her for the duration, clucking away and doing the funky chicken dance.

We had the privilege to share lunch with the 4 administrative staff of the IPM synod. It was chicken and noodles.

Then it was off to the beach for a swim or paddle once through the seaweed. All day the markets had been calling – can we stop asks Emma again. So now we do but the market came to us in a swarm as the vehicle door opened. You buy this! You buy this! Sarah did end up with a keepsake of a beautiful wooden giraffe – name to be decided.

The chickens live another day as tonight we had beef and rice. Then we gathered in the guest house and without alcohol or a committee wrote three days worth of blog.

Tbc.......

Rowena's Walking, Whitby to Berwick: Week 4

2010-08-12T20:52:00.015+01:00

Week 4 and the final week of the Synod Coast walk and the end is in sight.

Day 1 Alnmouth Station to Embleton.

Even with my current heightened level of fitness I came to the realisation that all the way to Seahouses following a train journey to Alnmouth was not going to happen in a day. So with help from the Tourist Board a further dog friendly B&B was found in Embleton so that a more leisurely walk could take place spread over an additional day. This was a good thing as the train was delayed by a good half hour due to a broken down engineering train on the Alnmouth line. The dogs and I walked down the cycle track to the Priory and then down to the beach past the Fountain where a guy was collecting parking money. Then it was up and along the tops to Boulmer for lunch. The yellow bee rescue helicopter was buzzing around and making its presence heard most of the afternoon. This was my first weekend walking day and I was taken aback by how many people were out and about.

The views of the rock formations were wonderful. The dogs loved the freedom of the cliffs although Toby got covered in grass seeds that it will take a number one shave to get rid of. (He is booked in next week!) A local expressed concern about him bringing the seeds back home to the garden – but that has already happened. We rested in Howdiemont Sands a beautiful small bay in which the tide was coming in fast. Then we continued along the cliffs past the Bathing House built for the Grey Victorian family with its pool, past Howick to Craster. Cullernose Point was covered in noisy sea birds.

A drink in a pub overlooking the harbour and then with dogs on leads due to sheep we followed the masses over the grassy track towards Dunstanburgh Castle. This week I seem to have walked across and around golf courses galore. I am amazed they are all as busy as they are. There was a footpath round the back to the road up to Embleton where a good night’s rest in the Dunstanburgh Castle Hotel was had and where I enjoyed a dinner of local kipper pate and lemon sole.

Day 2 Embleton to Seahouses.

This was a leisurely day. It may have been best to get as far as Bamburgh but my planning and internet search for dog friendly accommodation had not turned up many places at all. Along this part of the coast there are many shacks / beach chalets dotted around the dunes, amidst the bracken, for families and people to use as a base for kite boarding and other water sports. It was hard work progressing up and down in the soft sand of the dunes. We wandered past Newton Pool Nature reserve and into the village of old fishing cottages hugging the way down to the sea. Then we saw the glorious coast line around Newton Point, Football Hole and the Snook.

Then it was a long traipse along Beadnell Bay with an incoming tide and seeming miles of sand. Toby wanted to be up on the Dunes so I had a sulking dog in tow. We diverted up stream to use the bridge across Long Nanny, mainly because of the incoming tide. We stayed on the track behind the dunes, through what seemed to be an endless caravan site to Beadnell with its harbour and limestone kilns. I went out on the head land but failed to find the C13th ruins of St Ebba’s Chapel and will need to leave this exploration for another day.

Out of Beadnell we had to follow the road and stopped at a Post Office for sandwiches on a green. I am finding stretches of this part of the coast less inspiring than further South as there is less variety; with its endless beaches of sand and dunes that the footpath often falls in behind so that the sea is not visible. This has surprised me given its reputation as a real beauty spot. I got fed up with the road and dropped down onto the beach which further along meant jumping a channel and then climbing up behind sea defences to follow a track up to the road and back down again to circumvent an old Quarry pond near North Sunderland Point. This was better though than more road walking. The views out to the Farne Islands were good although not entirely clear due to the overcast weather. Then it was afternoon tea time on the main street of Seahouses watching the world go by before walking along the front to tonight’s B&B. All the rooms had a sea view and it was great to keep the curtains open and see the lighting change across the sea and islands with the setting and rising sun and enjoy the brightness of the stars. Once freshened up from the day’s walk I went to the Old Ship Inn where a meal in their beer garden overlooking the sea finished the day off in style.

Day 3: Seahouses to Fenwick.

Today entailed a walk inland in order to get around Budle Bay with its sinking sands and tidal channel. It was a route march along the 3+ miles of sands from outside the hotel door to Bamburgh Castle and beyond. Then it was a climb onto the headland and a walk around Budle Point with excellent views of the bay. The rest of the morning was spent on varied footpaths across golf courses, fields and tracks towards Belford. This meant crossing the main East Coast railway line and passing through the grain driers that were fully operational and whose fans were whirring away. They use vast amounts of electricity. Then it your life in their hands as we crossed the A1. As we came past Warren Mill thunder and lightening moved nearer and waterproofs were only just donned before the heavens opened. This was the first real soaking of the walk. After walking through long grass my socks could be rung out and my boots were soaking wet. In a 45 minute pause in the rain I had lunch in Belford but as I set off again once more the thunder rumbled, the lightening shot through the sky and the dogs hung their heads, cowered and looked pathetic.

Following the footpath out from Belford to Swinhoe Farm we lost the route. We went through cattle in a field who unnerved me by starting to chase us so I did my Crocodile Dundee impersonation and we got through the gap into the next field. A problem – the footpath ran out and there was no way I was going back through the cattle field. So we climbed a gate with barbed wire atop that others had obviously done before us and scrambled up beside a stone wall. This then had to be climbed and the dogs enticed through bracken and encouraged through a fence. We were a good half mile North East of where we needed to be so had to follow a DEFRA path through a wood and then go along a track back to the farm to pick up the North Northumberland Coast path once more. This route seemed to be much more clearly marked going in the other direction. Swinhoe Lakes hosted a swan family and the woods around were heaving with young pheasant just let out of the pens ready for the shooting season. They made the dogs frantic by wandering along in front of us and just out of reach.

By now it was mid afternoon and I was faced with a choice. I could head through the woods to Fenwick bearing in mind my experience of the way-marking of the path so far and also that Henry and others on the St Cuthbert’s pilgrimage, having done it before did not find it easy or alternatively trekking along the cycle track/roads. I dithered but discretion ruled over valour, given the time of day and I headed to Dechant and across to Fenwick along the roads. Here I called my B&B and Bev came and collected me and the dogs and took me to Bowsden. Here I and the dogs were well cared for, with drying facilities, the dogs own beds in the lounge, a bath, soup and sandwiches. It was good to share dog stories as Bev works gun dogs and breeds them. A calm evening reading and a good night’s rest and a prayer and hope for better weather tomorrow followed.

Day 4. Fenwick to Berwick: the final day.

After a leisurely breakfast, with a married couple also staying, when discussion was wide ranging from wind farms, to employment or lack of it and dogs of course, Bev dropped me off to start today’s walk. It was down to the Holy Island Causeway, a route done only two weeks ago and then out along the salt marshes and across the sluice. With its warning notices of being an ex military zone and therefore for folk to be careful of found metal objects that could be explosives. We passed an aggressive swan protecting his family of one cygnet against another adult. The causeway was very busy as the tide was out. Then it was along a track past a stable, campsite and a farm. There were excellent views of the Cheviots and then across another golf course Goswick. I felt I couldn’t cope with a long soft sand walk so stayed on the road but it meant that the sea was not visible.

Then we dropped down to the latter part of Cheswick sands and the wonderful rock formations there. This is the point I normally reach when I walk out from Spittal when I am up there and have the time to walk the dogs so it is a familiar part of the coast. The dogs came off their leads as we wandered along the cliffs between the railway and the sea, the cattle grazing being settled in the fields. Then it was along the promenade in Spittal where we stopped in drizzling rain for me to have some lunch. I was hungry in spite of the cooked breakfast.

We walked along the dock road, the dock and river having numerous swans on it. The railway, old and new bridges were impressive. I walked across the old one as it was easiest to access although guides said it is better to walk the new one enabling better view s of the older one than when you are on it. Then it was up through the town to the station. I would have liked the energy and somewhere to leave the dogs to explore Berwick with its architecture and quaint corners more, but the train home was calling.

It was amazing to be on the train and look out of the window and pass the landmarks of the last few days walking. Then it went inland but it made me realise how far I had walked to think it was a 45 minutes train journey back to Newcastle.

By the time we had walked home over the Town Moor the dogs and I were exhausted. The walk along the coast of the synod has certainly been a challenge and an adventure through which I had been inspired and learned a great deal about the history and context of the coast of the region in all its diversity. I have also been encouraged and impressed with both the dogs and my capacity to do it and to pace it so that it remained enjoyable and not something that had to be done.

I would like to express my thanks to all those who made it possible, those like Henry and Colin who helped with route planning, hosts and drivers like Colin, Patti, Val, Yvonne and Hilga who put up with the imposition of me and dogs and also the tourist board and B&B staff. But I also want to express my deepest thanks to Alan, my husband, whose hope to see more of me during my Sabbatical than normal has not been realised but who I am grateful to for allowing me the freedom to have done this walk as part of it. And to Toby and Molly for their company and for not actually dislocating a shoulder when they headed down a rabbit hole with me on the other end of a lead. Thanks to everyone who made this a good experience and a positive walk to do.

Rowena

Toby

Molly

Rowna's walking, Whitby to Berwick: Week 3

2010-08-09T09:15:00.015+01:00

Week 3 of walking from Whitby to Berwick and I am now in my stride and feeling fit having walked St Cuthbert’s Way with a group between this and week two.

Day 1: Monkseaton to North Seaton

The dogs are getting used to the Metro as we walked in over Newcastle Town Moor to the Haymarket and travelled to Monkseaton, walking down to the front to where we left off. This part of the coast is familiar as the dogs and I walk it regularly. We went along the Promenade of Whitley Bay (dogs are banned from the beach in the summer season) to St Mary’s Island. At Seaton Sluice, we stopped for a drink at The King’s Arms. Then it was along the sands and dunes to Blyth with Toby insisting on us walking the dunes so he could chase rabbits and me failing to insist on the beach so that we were nearer the sea.

In order to stay near the coast Blyth was as problematic as Middleborough and entailed coming inland to the main A189 bridge. The journey to that point involved eating doughnuts on the refurbished sea front of Byth, a significant trek along roads past the port and then a riverside walk along the estuary where the number of sea and wader birds was good to see. Then the best way forward seemed to be cycle tracks; along the railway and through Bedlington Station and onto East Sleekburn. The next bit was the most unpleasant part of the walk yet – an on road cycle route that took me a long way round back to the main road. Here the cycle route ran alongside the main road and was not too bad. The day had progressed and unable to find an easy way down to the riverside and North Seaton Colliery I continued up the hill to the roundabout with the road to Ashington and Newbiggin off the main road and phoned my host and chauffeur for the day Yvonne Tracey. A refreshing evening of conversation and good food provided sustenance for the walk ahead.

The resident cat was not sure about the dogs moving into the garage, and the dogs were not sure about the cat. But apart from a bout of barking around midnight and Molly, taking a white to settle all was well.

Day 2: North Seaton to Hadston Visitor Centre

It was good to be joined for this morning walk by Ian and Cynthia Smith from Stockton. Ian has written a book on the Northumbrian Coast amongst others and so it was good to have his expertise and to allow someone else to navigate especially as it was not clear how we might circumvent the power station of the Alcan works in Lynemouth.

Again, this week the weather was clear and dry; ideal for walking. We walked down through Sandy Bay caravan site to the point on the north of the River Font, and then followed the cliffs northward, climbing and crossing the fence of the caravan site at various points due to erosion. In Newbiggin, we admired the sculpture of a couple looking out to sea on the breakwater and the smaller one in the town. We also had coffee and teacakes. We then walked the coastward side of the golf course. The rock formations and sea coal around were fascinating.

We managed to stay coast side of the power station but hit problems when we came to a water way. After deciding against a scramble, and walking around we had to back track and find a way down to the beach. I was glad to have company as alone I would have turned back and walked the long way round by road.

The old slag heaps from the colliery were being cleared and allowed to be washed away into the sea – who knows what this space might be reclaimed for and revitalized as.

As we continued towards Cresswell there were many ponies tethered out, most kept as pets now but some still used to harvest sea coal from the coast. Here we stopped at the ice-cream shop for something to eat and ice-cream of course. Then we parted company and the Smiths caught a bus to family in the area and I continued on my own.

Unrealistically I was aiming to do the length of Durridge Bay to Amble. Walking along the seemingly endless sands, with Toby on a lead so he did not go off the dunes, although soothing and peaceful was also a long jaunt. I came up to the Dunes and let the dogs have their way at the track down from Widdrington and we walked along the cycle track past the nature reserves to the visitor centre. Here I phoned Hilga Peacock who had accepted the imposition of the dogs and I with reticence more about the former than I as moderator. Fortunately, the dogs were well behaved and did as they were told; probably because they had chased so many rabbits, they were exhausted. It was good to be in a home from home and be fed well. I slept like a log as I guess the dogs did too.

Day 3 Hadston Visitor Centre to South Alnmouth.

The dogs continued to enjoy the freedom to chase rabbits as on a beautiful morning we followed the path around the coast, seeing Hadstone Carrs rock formation, followed by Bondi and then Silver Carrs. People had camped on the dunes and in conversation with other dog owners concern about a lost Springer Spaniel believed to have got stuck down a rabbit hole was expressed. Then it was through Low Hauxley and on along the dunes around Pan Point into Amble with spectacular views of Coquet Island.

In Amble I spent some time looking at the piers with people fishing on them, watched as a puffin tour left, had coffee and cake, and visited the town square with its sundial and the marina. Then it was up the road to Warkworth.

It was good not to be pushed for time having given myself an extra day so I walked up river beyond the castle to the Hermitage whose history is unclear. The ferryman rowing people over welcomed the dogs and so they had their first experience of being on a boat. The hermitage consisting of a chapel, confessional and dormitory carried an ethos of peace and calm. Then it was back for a picnic on the river bank.

I took time to explore Warkworth and St Lawrence’s before following the river to cross the Norman Bridge. Then it was up the lane to the golf course and along the beach – yet another part of the coast the dogs and I have done several times. Again, they would have preferred to be up on the dunes and I wanted to be on the beach. This time I won by imposing a lead. The sound of sea and bird cries led to a great sense of peace. As we approached the mouth of the River Aln, we went up onto the dunes and took the track up to the main road so that Hilga could easily pick us up and host us for a second night. I am deeply thankful for those who have hosted me and the dogs and made the walk possible.

Day 4: South of Alnmouth to Alnmouth station.

This half day took us along a cycle track near the River Aln to the road bridge over it and back down Lovers Lane on the other side with good views of Church Hill that a storm had separated off from the rest of the town a long time ago. Here we observed the town and sea from a viewing point before wandering up the main street to the Friary. Then it was round the back and up the hill to the Trig point before dropping down to the river along an overgrown footpath. I followed the river round to Lesbury where I met someone going for a bus who directed me over the old bridge with its modern counterpart right next to it, up Curly lane to the railway station. Here I had a picnic lunch before the journey home.

There is only one more week of walking to go when I hope to complete Alnmouth to Berwick. I am amazed at the sense of achievement and surprised that I have not found it more difficult physically. The coast of the synod is diverse and beautiful but some might say the best is still to come.

Rowena Francis