Memory’s Treasure *

November is a remembering month. We remember our war dead; it is a particular sad occasion for my family; my sister’s nephew Peter, 21, was killed in Basra in 2011 and buried with full military honours in his local cemetery in North Wales. I together with my wife (a day-carer at St. Cuthbert’s Hospice, Durham) will attend the Cathedral’s annual November hospice remembrance service for those who had died during the year and previous years. The cathedral is generally full.

I struggle most of the time to come to terms with the death of my parents who died some years ago, and close friends who have died during the years. Our remembering embraces all people, those with faith and those who had great faith, those we call ‘the faithful departed' or, in the words of that clever theological catch-all, ‘those whose faith is known to God alone'.  And it is about me too, because death, far from dissolving the relationships that have formed me in this life, exposes, sometimes with merciless clarity, their true nature and meaning.  

In the church’s diary at the beginning of November, the Feast of All Saints (November 1^st) and the lesser know next day the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (2^nd November)  - commonly known as All Souls – remind us that the church here on earth is not the whole picture of the Christian family.  What we live in and with here, and sometimes have to endure here, is but the tip of a vast iceberg. Our small Methodist and URC chapels are but just tiny outposts of the one great communion of saints. We need this sense of proportion, the recognition that we pray and struggle in the context of that “huge number impossible to count of people from every nation, race and tribe and language” not only of every place but of every age, a family of the living and the dead. So in this month of remembering, remebering the war dead, the death of friends and family, how do we remember them accurately without the distortions sentimentality brings to memory by idealising the dead and romanticising our relations with them?  How do we love them in the truth of what they were and what we are?  And how does this affect the way we go on living with our memories, our grief, our aching and our hope? 

Prayer I find is important and helpful.  This is not because we believe that God's mercy can only be triggered by our intercession, but because it is our life task to hold in our mind and heart those who are given to us through kindred and affinity, and as friends, colleagues and neighbours.  This task transcends the boundaries of life and death.  It matters to us that we should know that we shall not be forgotten, that we leave behind some trace of ourselves in the memories and experiences of those with whom we have shared our lives.  So it matters that we do remember in prayer those we no longer see, the dead whom we remember in love and truth.  It matters to the dead. It matters to the living. 

Love and truth belong together in our knowing of one  another, and both belong to the way God knows us. St John says in his first letter: ‘beloved, let us love not in word only, but in deed and truth'.  This, he tells us, is how God loves us in Jesus Christ, in whom ‘deed and truth' meant self-emptying, his life poured out for us on the cross.  For the resurrection of Jesus is to raise and transfigure our entire human history - not just that part of the story that belongs in this world, but all that follows it, unimagined and unknown as it is.  That is to say, our dying is as much a part of this as our living, and the dead whom we remember this month are as known to God and precious to him as we are.  To love in truth is always to try to love from God's eternal perspective.  So to remember the dead truly is to see them enfolded in God's everlasting love, to know that in him all the fragments of human life are gathered up: nothing is lost and all in the end is harvest.

This November weather, the shedding of leaves and the dying of the light are their own autumnal commentary on the transience of things.  Mortality is in our thoughts: this annual shedding of leaves reminds us that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  This recall is necessary for our souls' health.  Yet for all its impassioned cries for mercy and help, we would still want to give thanks, to give thanks for Christs’s resurrection.  To fix our hearts and hopes on the risen Christ is to place life and death in their proper perspective.  It's to awaken to the tasks of living and dying in as authentically human and Christian a way as is possible to us. To look death in the face, is both to find comfort in our grieving, and renewal for ourselves to go on living and blessing God for the gift of being alive.  

Perhaps we shouldn't ask how others may remember us when we are gone, with what thoughts they will light candles and pray for us. I am sure it should not be that we achieved some idealised, heroic, goodness: we know our own brokenness and failure too well.  But we can dare to hope that it may be with thankfulness that in our faltering way we were faithful unto death, that we touched the lives of a few others, that we were blessed to know love and to give it; and that our goodbyes were bathed in the light of Easter faith, as we are welcomed to our eternal home. 

November then, the month of Remembering, challenges us to take our faith seriously, and to ask what human life is about and what are the true gleams of glory to be celebrated in human lives; it is a time too to remember our own mortality, our frailty and failure. Death tears at the net of human belonging, of loving relationships, of heartbreak and heart ache. But to believe and trust in “the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection to everlasting life” is to trust in a life, a grace and a communion, born of a victory over sin, evil and death itself. And when we remember that creedal statement the light of Easter breaks open the dark November days.

 

 * From Love’s Endeavour, W.H.Vanstone (1923-1999)

 

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

Trees of our Fathers

In preparation for the synod’s 40^th birthday celebrations Ray Anglesea, minister at Crook, weaves together in the context of the days gospel reading, Crook’s Messy Church’s Harvest Festival (of Trees) with the synod’s summer pilgrimage to the preachingtrees at Windyhaugh, Coquetdale.

“Take up your cross”, says Jesus to His friends, “and follow.” (Matthew 16.24) What is it that we take up? What is it that we carry when we start walking with Jesus Christ? Sometimes we talk about everyone having their ‘cross to bear’, usually when the car breaks down or when we have a minor disappointment about arranging our holidays; sometimes, more seriously, when some really trying, testing time arrives for us; sometimes just in a general way, acknowledging that life is not all we want it to be. We all have our cross to bear.

But it falls just a little bit short of what Jesus meant, and what His friends would have heard. At that time, ‘taking up your cross’ meant accepting that you were going to die the death of a slave, a terrible and painful fate. It meant accepting that your future was out of your hands; accepting that humiliation, as well as pain, was going to be your lot. It’s a very frightening command indeed, seen in that light. To be a follower of Jesus Christ means letting go of what you think is yours, the life you’d like to own and organise, the life you’d like to be, the sort of life you’d like.

So the basic command and invitation of Jesus is: let go of that dream of being in charge of your life. That is a very counter-cultural message these days. We are told, a lot of the time that the great thing is that we should take charge of our lives; that what we really want is autonomy and freedom and choice and all those other things. And it’s not terribly welcome to be told that what Jesus is inviting us to do is to let go of all that. If that were all there were to the Gospel, it would be rather hard to see why it could ever be called ”good news” if Jesus is simply saying to us “Get used to a future completely out of your hands, and don’t come running to me for help.”

But of course that’s not the good news, or anything like it. And when we think about the life of our forebears, our 17^th century dissenting ancestors who, for the sake of conscious let go of their livings, their dreams, their employment, their homes to follow Christ, often fearful, often anxious, often preaching outdoors, in secret;  our descendants opposed state interference in religious matters, and were to later to found their own churches, Presbyterians, Baptists; educational establishments, and communities; some emigrated to the New World.  But they carried their crosses and many suffered terribly at the hands of the powerful Church of England through laws, known as the Clarendon Code, which were enacted by an Anglican Parliament. They restricted the civil rights of those not professing allegiance to the church and prevented working for the state, holding a position in public office or even go to university. These restrictions remained in effect until 1828.

But the flip and more positive side of the religious and political turbulence of the 17^th century produced extraordinary people, extraordinary imaginative writers and thinkers, extraordinary scientists, the world of the Dissenting Academies, the world of Doddridge the independent dissenting pastor from Northampton and Watts, the father of English hymnody, writer and theologian (whose father was incarcerated twice) the world in which joy in the things of the mind and the heart helped people move into the space they believed had been cleared for them, the space of being free citizens, even at a time when the state and the established church had, let’s say, not quite caught up with that vision. It is worth remembering that the events of 1662 marked a political as well as a religious watershed. That moment was the beginning of a new kind of political identity and a new kind of political idealism in this country – not simply the old ‘Puritan’ agenda but a new, focused, self-aware, minority Christian identity.  And so dissenters went on digging away at foundational questions of political liberty and theological exploration and have done so to this day.

But in the 17^th century these dissenters, and there were moderate dissenters, rational dissenters, independent dissenters as well as  those radicals, non-conformists  - they had odd names – ranters, adamites, diggers, brownists, 5^th monarchists, puritans, muggletonians, they didn’t want to play the King’s game, the Merry Monarch’s game. They didn’t want to play the game of setting themselves up as someone whose lives were more important than the lives of those they served. I would like to think that dissenters and particularly those in our own tradition carried their cross by carrying their people. That’s what they carried – they carried the needs and concerns, the sufferings, of those they had been called to serve and who were to follow them on this extraordinary journey of Christian discovery. They carried their people, people looking for religious freedom and toleration.

And, no doubt, in those terrible long difficult years small congregations often in isolated rural areas like those in North Northumberland and Teesdale carried their ministers as well.  In their desperate plight, attacked by royalist and Anglican vigilantes, poor, downtrodden and helpless, they carried their ministers in their prayers, as they sang their hymns of Watts and others.

And so we begin to get a glimpse of something a bit different, and a bit more hopeful, than just that austere command to ‘carry your cross’, to put up with your helplessness. What we carry is one another. In the body of Christ, in the family of the Church, we carry one another. We bear one another’s burdens, as Saint Paul puts it. We carry one another in prayer – quite simply, we remember the suffering of our brothers and sisters in our minds and hearts, day by day and week by week. As I depend on your prayers we depend on the prayers of others.

As some of you know I have withdrawn from non-essential, non urgent church activities for the time being, mostly meetings, to care for with Ki my dying mother in law, now in her 104^th year. But as I sit with her remembering her and folks in prayer I am conscious of other people praying for me, as the gospel writers have it – praying from afar.

We know that we live and we flourish as believers, our spirits and hearts come alive, not because we’re wonderful but because other people are praying for us. And we may never know quite what that means in practice and in detail.

In this family of Jesus Christ, the cross we carry is one another.

It doesn’t mean, of course, that other people are consistently and invariably a source of pain and suffering to us – not even in the Church! The French philosopher was wrong when he said “Hell is other people.” For the Christian, heaven is other people. The family of God, the other people God gives us in friendship and fellowship, they are our Heaven. And woe betides us if we forget that responsibility for one another and that willingness to be carried along by one another. The willingness to ask one another for help, to ask one another for prayer, for nourishment, so that we may grow.

So our forebears who preached under trees at Windyhaugh, Upper Couqetdale, are not there just to say to us “Look how wonderful, what heroic dissenters we are.” They are there to remind us that holy lives are lives in which people generously, trustfully, let go of their fears, their anxieties and let themselves be carried by the prayer and love of others, and above all by the love of God. And in our church, our task is that carrying of one another. It’s because of that faithfulness to one another that we are able to live and to grow. The greatest task given to us in the Church is to be faithful to one another. We know we have to be faithful to God, and this is the way we do it: by being faithful to one another and carrying one another along.

Because that, of course, is the underlying truth of the cross of Jesus. How and why does Jesus carry the cross? Because He is faithful to those God has given Him. He knows that for them to live and flourish and rejoice, He must risk everything. And He knows that if He is to be faithful to what He alone can do, if He is to be faithful to the God who has called Him, then He must be faithful to the path of risk and the path of suffering. But before we get too focused on the suffering, let’s remember the faithfulness. It’s because God is so passionate about us, so devoted to us, so consistent in His love and promise to us, that Jesus goes to the cross.

We’re involved with one another now. We’re summoned to carry one another, to be there for one another’s need, to help one another grow. We’re here, ambitious as it sounds, to be God’s gift to one another. Not in the sense we sometimes use those words – “He thinks he’s God’s gift to mankind” – but, quite literally and seriously, to be the way in which God gives hope and life and growth to the person next to us, and next to them, and to the people we’re never going to see or meet. The people we hold in our hearts, and carry in our hearts and in our prayers.

Christ Himself, we’re told in the letter to the Hebrews, carried this burden because of the joy that was set before Him. And we shouldn’t ever for a moment forget that joy that is before us, carrying one another in this way, letting go of our defences, letting go of our fears so that we can carry one another’s need. That is the way to life and the way to joy. Not the kind of joy we might have ordered for ourselves from the mail-order catalogue, but the kind of joy that God Himself wants to give us, and wants us to share with the world. May we be such a sharing, joyful, caring community?

Amen

 Mark 8.27-end, Judges 9 v7-15

16^th September 2012

 

A bright and shining name

A Baptismal sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at St Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook, 19 August 2012

Andrew and Clare, Kerry and Libby, not forgetting Phoebe, your family and friends, I welcome you to church today for your darling infant daughter’s baptism. It is lovely to have you with us: I and the church here at Crook hope you have a happy and memorable day.

I wonder if you are suffering from Olympic withdrawal symptoms? Do you say everything twice, first time in French, A level students who got their A level results last Thursday may have been graded PB; by cooking a chilli con carne you may loose marks because of its low degree of difficulty. For those Romantic couple who proposed in the Olympic Park they may well have said “With these Olympic rings I thee wed.” Maybe you will change your name by deed poll so that your passport now reads Mo Usain Ennis Bradley Ainslee Thorpedo Armitage Farqhar. What’s in a name – perhaps a nick-name Rocket Man Usain Bolt? Michael Flying Fish Phelps (who can manipulate water like no human since Moses). The Mansfield Mermaid, Rebecca Addlington? Queen Victoria Pendelton? King of the Road side-burn superstar Bradley Wiggo, or his Royal Hoyness Sir Chris Hoy? Names matter. Parents choose names for all sorts of reasons: because of where the child was conceived – Paris Hilton, Brooklyn Beckham – or because the name belongs to a member of the family or a friend, or because the name is that of a celebrity, a member of the Royal Family – how popular is the name William – names show how we are the fruit of the past, how we belong in the present and our parents dreams for our future.  Wikipedia tells me that Phoebe is a name meaning bright and shining, what a wonderful name that is, Phoebe is also a bible name, she was a woman from the City of Corinth mentioned by the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans.

Today this bright and shining Phoebe, through baptism, the sprinkling of water has been made a child of God’s grace, a member of the Church; Phoebe has been baptised as a Christian. This ceremony has obligations foremost of which is to live the Christian life. The sign at Jesus baptism in the River Jordan was a dove descending out of the sky.

Jesus too was named at his baptism by his Father: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased. At baptism, like Jesus, we are taken up into the Father’s delight in his Son. God takes pleasure in his son, God take pleasure in us, God takes pleasure in Phoebe. So by naming the child in love, this is the food that will help it grow into a human being capable of calling others into love too. God’s love is like human love. Love is a kind of dawn, an illumination. It lights up our lives, and this is shown very powerfully in the love of Andrew and Claire for their 3 children. In the ups and downs of family life this is where St Paul’s great saying is demonstrated: that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. For love never ends.

We are not just human beings we are human becomings, Phoebe is so small, so vulnerable, so lovely, ahead of Phoebe is a lifetime of development, her life story. Her name will not just identify her as Phoebe she will become her own bright and shining person. At William and Kate’s wedding the Bishop of London in his sermon quoted to the happy couple from St Catherine of Sienna -  Be whom God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire” Phoebe’s life journey starting today will be transformed in ways that we cannot possibly imagine.

Clare and Andrew, listen - your infant daughter’s baptism this morning is a sign of God’s promise to Phoebe as a Christian that he will be with her forever, as the prophet Isaiah mentioned in our reading this morning. But more than that God’s has promised to love Phoebe forever.

Clare and Andrew – God is committed to the flourishing, well being and happiness of your family, Phoebe Elice, Kerry Page and Libby May.  You have embarked on this great journey of love, not only of loving each other but of loving Phoebe and your other darling daughters. As parents you are going to be a sign, of what human love is like, you are going to be the role models of what God’s love is like. You are going to be signs of love for Phoebe.

Andrew and Clare, I tell all my baptismal couples you are surrounded by loving families with offers of help and support. Use them. Bringing up three little ones can be a daunting task. We as a church are here to help you too, our doors are open, you have our telephone numbers, we too can provide help and support, education and teenage training. Alas human beings live in a world of good and bad and that makes our lives and relationships painful and complicated but not so with God. God will never give up on you, even if you run away from him. Andrew and Clare never stop loving each other  - you are for Phoebe what human love and family life is like and can be for the rest of her life – she will learn from you, you will be her example. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.  And so it is with our relationship with God. And in all this we, as we are able, together, will do everything possible to keep our promises to love, help and support you.

Phoebe’s life is now a vocation, she has embarked on God’s journey. But we are called by name not just once at the baptismal font, we will go on being called by name until we face God face to face. Phoebe will be called by name at her confirmation, her name will be spoken when she declares her love for someone in marriage. Her name will be called when she resumes new responsibilities, her name will be written on a tomb where she will wait for the voice of love to call her into eternal life. Our names will then be recorded in the book of life that the book of Revelation mysteriously mentions, then finally, in God, we shall discover who we are.   

In this Diamond Jubilee and Olympic year, we should remember today that we have cause for thanksgiving – God has named and has committed himself yet again to one more human family, the family here from Hawes Crescent, Crook. And in the lives of this lovely family with whom today we join in celebration, we see the sign of God’s embracing, renewing vision of God’s faithful love.  

Andrew and Clare - may God bless you on your journey, and may Phoebe’s baptism be a sign to live the faith more fully.

Amen

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

Preaching trees pilgrimage worship

In response to requests, Rowena Francis and David Herbert have made the following material available. It represents the main services of worship shared during the three days of the Synod Pilgrimage in Coquetdale, August 3-5 2012.

Friday 6 Aug:
Gathering and opening worship  (REF)

Introduction:

Rivers and trees form the basis of our pilgrimage as we walk up the Coquet Valley to the preaching trees over the coming days.

Introduce yourself by sharing your name, where you come from – a river and / or tree that are significant to you and briefly why.

Hymn:  Guide me O thou great Jehovah  (v 2 sung in Portuguese)

Selected verses Psalm 104:

Praise the Lord my soul!

O Lord, my God, how great you are!

You are clothes with majesty and glory;

You cover yourself with light.

You make springs flow in the valleys

And rivers ruin between the hills.

They provide water for the wild animals;

There the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

In the trees near by the birds make their nests.

From the sky you send rain on the hills,

And the earth is filled with your blessings.

I will sing to the Lord all my life;

As long as I live I will sing praises to my God.

May he be pleased with my song

For my gladness comes from him.

Praise the Lord, my soul!

Praise the Lord;

Reading: Genesis 2: 10-14 

Comment:

We start not from the source of the river and walk down to the sea but over the next days we will be following the river Coquet. Rivers and water are a significant part of creation and the story of God involvement with us. As we have heard from Genesis the garden of Eden at the beginning was watered by a river that had significant trees by it and when we come to the preaching trees on Sunday we will reflect on the end of the bible when God’s kingdom is realised and there again there is a river with trees for the haling of the nations.  As we walk together let us consider the significance of rivers and trees as places of encounter with God and as places where the liberation we have in God is perceived.

Prayer:

Creator God

At the beginning of creation

You planted a garden, watered by a stream.

Join our walking along the Coquet River

Enlivening our love and hope.

Jesus Christ,

Baptised in the river Jordan

Offering living water to a woman at a well

Bringing salvation in blood and water

Be present with us on our journey.

Holy Spirit

Spring of power within us

Refresh us through this pilgrimage

Flow into the world through our lives

With compassion and justice. Amen.

Lord’s prayer.

Song
Peace is flowing like a river...

____________________________

 Fri 6 Aug  5.30 pm
at St Mary the Virgin, Holystone  (DAH)

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour”
(Luke 2: 46 – 47, Mary’s Song)

Opening Sentences: Isaiah 44: 3 – 4

Hymn:  The king of love my shepherd is

Reading:  John 19: 25 - 27

Mary and flowing waters at Ephesus

Reading:  John 7: 37 – 44

Bowl of water passed – we make sign of dove on one another’s foreheads

Hymn:  O Lord you are the life of the world

Silence

Prayer

Hymn:  Tell out my soul

Benediction:

Go in peace to serve the Lord:

May the eye of the Great God be on you,

The eye of the God of glory;

The eye of the Virgin’s Son;

The eye of the gentle Spirit,

The kindly eye of the Three be on you,

To aid you and to shepherd you.Amen.

________________________________

Sat 7 Aug
10.30am  at Ladywell  (REF)

This Special Place

Here at Lady's Well clear, clean water bubbles out of the hillside and this is a place which has probably been special since human beings first ventured this far north.

Legend has it that it was a Holy Place on Easter Day in the year of grace 627 when Paulinus, Bishop of York, made use of the water that flows here to baptise many people. But it was probably a Special Place long before that.

Perhaps those early Stone Age men and women who lived on fruit, nuts and seeds and the wildlife which abounded here and whose descendants carved the cups and rings that adorn rocks in this valley, drank at this well and gave thanks to their gods as they drank.

Maybe the Bronze Age people who buried their dead in stone-built kists, watered their flocks here and gave thanks to their god of the water.

Their time passed and they were succeeded by people who worked iron, who built camps upon the hilltops and who worshipped the goddess they called Bridgit.

The Romans tramped this way, drank at this well, and here they honoured their gods.

And for generations after Paulinus, this remained a Holy Place. A group of nuns built a priory, probably where the church now stands, and may have used this well as a source of water. Perhaps it is from the name they gave to their priory - St Mary the Virgin - that we get the name "Lady's Well".

And so Lady's Well has remained, a Special Place upon the hillside.

Water began the life of this well and, though human beings, frail creatures of the passing day, come and go, water remains, water bubbling up from the earth through guessed-at geological formations in the rocks and soil below.

And this remains a Special and a Holy Place, a place able to touch our inner souls.

Praise responses    (Touch Holiness p139 Duck and Tirabassi adptd)

We are a people of the water!

We worship a God whose love flows through water.

Love, like little drops, drips from fingertips to forehead.

Through baptism, the family of faith makes room for one more

Love, like a rain shower, awakens the sleeping seed within the soul

and lures it to blossom.

We worship a God whose love flows through water.

Love, like a wading pool, inspires the delight of children, jumping,

splashing, spraying each other, shivering with wet joy.

We worship a God whose love flows through water.

Love, like a hot shower after a long day's work,

cleanses us, reawakens us.

We worship a God whose love flows through water.

We are a people of the water!

We worship a God whose love flows through water.

Song :  As the deer pants for the waters

The story of Genesis 16: Hagar meets God at the spring/well

Reflection

Water is a blessing and sign of new birth. The waters break cleansing the birth canal before a new baby is born. The waters of baptism purify a person as they die and rise with Christ – a new being. The waters of rain bring an end to drought bringing forth fruit and crop for the nourishment of people bringing life. For all this new life we give thanks.

We invite you to reach into the pool, a pool similar to where Hagar in her distress met God and was called to return home to Sarah and Abraham and gave birth to Ishmael. A pool of water signifying possibly a refreshing of your baptismal promises. A pool of water showing the fruitfulness of the earth that we are called to give thanks for and share.

In quietness let the water run through your fingers and give thanks for life, yours and that of the whole earth.

Prayer

Gracious God,

It is from water that life came forth.

It is with water that your Spirit signifies your claim upon us in baptism.

It is water that quenches our thirst, and without it, no life is possible.

For those children for whom water is a luxury, we pray.

For those who rely on dried up wells; who sit parched and find no relief.

For those whose water is contaminated by industry or ignorance--who sit by the water but cannot drink.

For those whose water is tapped by others for profit. What once was a gift to drench the fields and to supply the table and the bath is now a commodity sold at a price.For those whose water is a dwindling resource --
where streams that once watered cattle and fields are now a source of violence and conflict--
for who owns this gift will survive.

Gracious God,

Drench us with your Spirit.

Saturate us with your grace.

Enable us to see the world as you see it; to see all of your children as our own.

In your Spirit make us wise, that we may show well what you have given us so that all may be sated. Amen.

©Presbyterian Mission Agency PC(USA)

Blessing: (based on Brian Wren I have no bucket and the well is deep)

God of the living waters

Refresh our longings with your Word.

Liberate us with your love.

Raise us to new life.

Bless us with springs of -

Unending joy and worth.

Renew us with your life

Tonight, tomorrow and always. Amen.

Song:    Peace is flowing like a river..

___________________

Sat evening 7 Aug
at Little Church Rock  (DAH)

“Let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never failing stream!” (Amos 5: 24)

Opening Sentence: Exodus 17: 5 - 7

Rock, springs, pools, mountains, lambs, rams… familiar landscape to our spiritual forbears, early dissenters, who may have well worshipped here, and sung:

Hymn:   All people that on earth do dwell

Reading:  Psalm 114

Cuddy’s Spring – last year’s pilgrimage on St Oswald’s Way

Reading:  Amos 5: 21 – 24

Dissent and nonconformity often go hand in hand with prophecy and a hunger for justice

 Hymn:  Father hear the prayer we offer

Prayer for a river of justice and righteousness

Build a cairn – mindful of that rich stream of faith in which we stand,
and upon which we build.

Hymn:  Glorious things of thee are spoken

Benediction

 ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_________________________________

Sun 8^th Aug 
at Rothbury Church   (REF)

Theme:
Encountering God and experiencing liberation at trees.

Call:

To the people in exile in a strange land God says:

You will leave Babylon with joy

You will be led out of the city in peace.

The mountains and the hills will burst into singing

And the trees will shout for joy.

Cypress will grow where now there are briars;

Myrtle trees will come up in place of thorns.

This will be a sign that will last for ever,

A reminder of what I, the Lord have done.

Prayer of approach and confession:

The trees shout for joy

And sing your praise

As now your people do.

The tree of life

Brings healing and peace

To all in its shade .

Fruit bearing trees

Replace the thorns

As your people hope too.

Forgive our sin, Holy God,

Prune the dead and living growth

Bring a new harvest.

Gather us home from exile

To a land of living water

Where we can grow in your Word.

Hearts overflow with thanksgiving

Roots drink up your forgiveness

The tree of our lives grows strong in you.

We thank you, creator

Praise and glorify you, Christ.

Rejoice in you, Holy Spirit. Amen.

 Lord’s prayer

Hymn :  Think of a world without any flowers

The tree of life

Reading:  Galatians 3: 10-14

Reflection on the tree on which Christ died.

Discussion on what trees can mean to people?

 In the Bible there are two words – cross and wood in the original language that is translated as cross. Sometimes the word for wood is translated by the word tree. Artists have often used that as a means for depicting the cross as a tree.

From the tree of life in the garden of Eden at the beginning of the bible, through to the tree on which Christ was crucified, through to the tree with leaves for the healing of the nations in Revelation at the end of the bible trees are a significant part of the history of God’s relationship with humanity as part of creation.

It is difficult to understand and explain the power of the cross for our healing and salvation today. Yet we can trust that God acted in Jesus voluntarily undertaking to die on the cross and let humanity do the worst it could do to him so that through that vulnerable self-giving love it would become clear that nothing anymore could separate us from the love of God that desired for each of us and all creation life in all its fullness. We are reconciled to God by Christ being lifted up on the tree. We are forgiven and liberated from all that enslaves us. We are freed to live as God’s beloved children and in the power of the Spirit to be part of the coming realisation of God’s kingdom today.

Hymn:   When you prayed beneath the trees, it was for me, O Lord

              (Singing the Faith 339  Tune Kelvingrove RAS 558)

Announcements

Offering and prayer of dedication.

Preaching trees

are significant like church buildings as sacred ground.  On mountain top and by the tree people have met with God, been called, entered into covenant relationship, cried and laughed and experienced liberation.  Let us hear of an early preaching tree when God himself visited Abraham and Sarah with a message for them.

 Reading dramatic: Genesis 18 v1-16   Trees of Mamre

Reflection on preaching trees in black American history

Janie McGee is an artist who present black American history in various media and who has done some work on preaching trees in the history of her people. She speaks of how on the plantations where black people were often enslaved they would have a tree which was where services would be held. Often men would work at a different plantation to avoid seeing their wives and children raped and suffer. Services became a time for families to meet. The preaching tree then was a place for slaves to gather and encourage themselves in the midst of trials and where God was present for them.

Many revivals took place at the tree far away from the white man’s house. But also they were a sign of much suffering. One of Billy Holliday’s early protest songs tells of the lynchings of many black folk on the trees so that their bodies hung like fruit. It is called strange fruit in the trees.

Janie McGee says ‘The preaching trees have an intense history: lynchings and revivals.  The preaching tree is the place of birthing, praying, giving, sharing, loving and believing that brighter days will come.

Foundational to the understanding of the preaching tree is the Christian faith. Again McGee says ‘And yet through 400 years of oppression .. we are still here. We are wounded, but will be healed. We lived in poverty, but through God were made rich. We were torn apart and yet we still stand together. It is the distant tree 2000 years old that gave us shade, hope and faith.

Janie likens the suffering people to the preaching trees and to Christ in these words:

The jails could not hold us. We marched with Martin, Sang with Mahaila Jackson, and cried for Emett Till’s. Over the last 400 years we have survived lynching, beating, Jim Crow, slavery and hatred.

Our family birthed writers, scientists, jazz musicians, artists, and engineers the jail could not hold us.

Freedom is more than a reality, it is a journey of the heart, the dreams and people trusting God…

we are the preaching trees.

Reflection on preaching trees in our own churches history

Some 350 years ago in 1662 the newly formed government after civil war passed the act of uniformity. This required everyone to use the same prayer book, pledge obedience to the King and to the authority of the  Bishops.  Some felt that this do not go far enough in establishing good order. Others felt that an opportunity to reform the church and bring it back into faithfulness with Christ and the word of God had been missed. The consequence was pain and conflict.

Many Priests of the Church of England were ejected, hence it was called the ‘Great Ejection’ from their parishes and pulpits because they could not agree with it. For many years they were denied civil rights such as a university education and government office. Some were martyred as traitors. Folk who dissented from this act could not be buried on consecrated church of England ground and were not allowed to worship within a certain distance of a Parish church.

Thus preaching trees such as those at Windy Heugh came into being. Dissenters to the act and therefore to government travelled away from the parish churches and worshipped and were buried in distant places. Great Bavington United Reformed Church is one example of an early building far away from another Parish church that was built at that time.

The Preaching Trees at Windyhaugh are part of the Coquet Valley’s tradition.  They, like the United Reformed Church in Great Bavington, are in an isolated place, some 6 miles from the nearest formal place of worship, the Church at Alwinton.  There are two other places in the Valley where it is possible that Dissenting Preachers are believed to have led worship.  We do not know when any of these were first used - even whether they were in use before the Act of Uniformity made worship at un-licensed premises illegal.  In the Medieval period, the valley was much more densely populated than it is now under the auspices of the monks of Newminster Abbey in Morpeth.  Though the area became deprived in the time of the Border Reivers, the area became re-populated until the 1950s when changing economics made farming in such isolated places unrewarding.

But the tradition has persisted that, here at the Preaching Trees,  Dissenting Services were held, when as the Valley’s historian, David Dippie Dixon reports, “the vigorous voices of the hill-folk sang metrical Psalms and Scriptural paraphrases, surrounded by the dark shadows of the everlasting hills, beside the murmuring ripples of the Coquet river and with the clear blue canopy of heaven above them”.

This afternoon, the Pilgrims will visit this once holy place and you are welcome to join us for our final act of worship - meet by the Barrowburn bridge at 4 o’clock and join the final steps of our pilgrimage and make this place a holy place again.

For, as we have heard, Preaching Trees are holy.  They are places of encounter with God. They are places of gathering for God's people to meet.  They are places where Christ on the cross with all its pain and suffering is found.  But also they are places where hope for liberation and where healing are found.

We sing of that now as we prepare to join in prayer by singing

Hymn:  We meet you O Christ

Prayers of intercession, thanksgiving dismissal and blessing

(with leaves to write prayers on in the quietness that can then be hung on a prayer tree during the singing of the final hymn – with some led prayers)

Christ we bring to your tree

The simple and wise,

The governments of the world and unemployed.

The rich in their palaces and poor in their sleeping bags.

May justice be realised here.

Christ we bring to your tree

Prisoners of conscience and the disappeared

Those trapped in abuse and addiction

The financial and political systems that cage us

May freedom be realised here.

Christ we bring to your tree

Protesters and campaigners who will not be silenced

Artists and writers who bring issues to light

Those in the public eye for good or for ill

May your Word be realised here.

 Christ we bring to your tree,

The new lives and those dying today

The sick and the troubled in body and mind

Ourselves in whatever pain and need we bear

May your new life be realised here.

In quietness we add our prayer to the leaves we have been given....

Let us go forth with joy and peace

Shouting for joy and clapping our hands

Giving thanks for our God, who meets us at the tree

And blesses us with new life, love, justice and peace.  Amen.

Hymn:    You shall go out with joy

_____________________________

Sun 8 Aug  4.30 pm
at The Preaching trees  (DAH)

Jesus began to preach,
‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’
(Matthew 4: 17)

Opening Sentences:   Matthew 13: 31

 Hymn:    O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

 Unveiling of the plaque

 Prayer of praise

Reading:   Ezekiel 47: 1 – 12

Reading:   Revelation 22: 1 – 5

Hymn:   Jesus is Lord, creation’s voice proclaims it

Reflection:  Kingdom living – an end in itself, or a process?

Hymn:   God’s spirit is deep in my heart

Prayer activity – watering can –

pouring God’s blessing into lives lifted up to God in prayer                                           

Hymn:   You shall go out with joy

Benediction

 and then maplets distributed  (old map of Northern Synod cut up into small squares with the text ‘On the Edge, Synod Pilgrimage 2012’ printed on reverse)