Thanksgiving for the return of the Lindisfarne Gospels

Liturgy for a Service of Thanksgiving for the return of the Lindisfarne Gospels to the North East Region, Summer 2013

Submitted by Ray Anglesea, St Andrew's Dawson Street, Crook

Please find set out below a liturgy which you may wish to use/adapt in the coming weeks whilst the Lindisfarne Gospels Exhibition is held in Durham. I am very happy to forward to you my power-point presentation which I used for this service. I am grateful for the office of the Dean of Durham for permission to use the hymn written by Dean The Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove “We praise you God, great Lord of time and space,” and a special thank you to the Cathedral’s Education Service for use of Children’s Props for the children’s address.   -   Ray Anglesea

Call to worship: Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way: and walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies: and seek him with their whole heart. Psalm 119

Introduction: We come together to welcome the visit of the Lindisfarne Gospels to Durham, their earliest home, to celebrate the Christian Heritage of North-East England, and to rejoice in St Cuthbert, in honour of whom the Lindisfarne Gospels were created and the Cathedral Church of Durham was built. We ask for God’s blessing on the Gospel Exhibition and all who visit it.

Hymn:  R&S 38 Thou whose almighty word.

Prayers As an open bible is brought forward to rest on the communion table, candles are lit beside the bible in thanksgiving for God’s word and the following prayers are said:-

Your word is a lantern to our feet

And a light upon our path

 

Blessed are you, Lord our God

How sweet are your words to our taste,
Sweeter than honey to the mouth.
How precious are your commands for our life,
More than the finest gold in our hands.

Enlighten our darkness by the light of your Christ.

May his word be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path;
for you are full of loving kindness for your whole creation,
And we your creatures glorify you.

 

A Collect for St Cuthbert: Almighty God, who called your servant Cuthbert from following the flock to follow your Son and to be a shepherd of your people: in your mercy, grant that we, following his example, may bring those who are lost home to your fold; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

 

Music: The Lord is my shepherd (Goodall) with Bryn Terfel.

Powerpoint Presentation: A collection of sights and sounds of the Lindisfarne Gospels, local attractions, theatre, music, talks and merchandise

Children’s Address: Cuthbert’s Story: This short story of the life of St Cuthbert was made into a short play, children dressed in monks habits with soft cuddly toys – lambs and otters, one dressed as a bishop with mitre, ring, and Cuthbert necklace/cross who later walked around the church stopping off at various city signposts held by members of the congregation. 

Cuthbert was probably born in the Scottish Lowlands around the year 640. At the age of 8 a prophetic remark from a playmate turned his mind to sober and godly thoughts, and his upbringing as a shepherd gave him ample time for prayer. One night he saw in the sky a dazzling light and angels carrying a soul up to heaven, and resolved to dedicate his life to God. Some years later Cuthbert came to Melrose Abbey asking to be admitted as a monk. It was from here that he began his missionary work, which he continued from Lindisfarne when he became abbot there. Once when he was at Coldingham Abbey (a special monastery that contained monks and nuns) he was spied on in the middle of the night praying in the cold North Sea. The story is told of two sea otters that came out of the sea to dry Cuthbert’s feet.  Consecrated Bishop in 685, he remained an indefatigable traveller and preacher, walking all over his diocese and spending time as a hermit on Farne Island in between. After only a year, however he felt his end coming and resigned his office dying on the Farne in the company of a few of his monks.

The Monks of Lindisfarne following Viking Raids set off on a journey with Cuthbert’s body and left Lindisfarne walking to to Whithorn, Carlisle, Ripon, York, Chester le Street, eventually arriving at Durham where he was later buried in Durham Priory, later to be called Durham Cathedral.

Props for children’s address provided by the Durham Cathedral Education Service.

Offertory, Offertory Prayer

Hymn: We praise you God, great Lord of time and space (Tune Engelberg STF 731)

           (Produced with kind permission, office of the Dean of Durham Cathedral)

1.We praise you God, great Lord of time and space
For all the saints of this and every place
Whose stories tell of light and truth and grace:
Alleluia!

2. We sing of Cuthbert, old Northumbria’s pride
The island saint who trod these landscapes wide
As humble teacher, healer, friend and guide:
Alleluia!

3. Your Spirit called the boy from keeping sheep
To guard your people and to rouse from sleep
All those a shepherd’s care would find and keep:
Alleluia!

4. He cherished all that lives and moves on earth,
The birds and beasts, your creatures brought to birth,
In whom he saw your presence, gift and worth:
Alleluia!

5. You made him bishop, gave him gifts to lead;
He told the news of grace in word and deed,
Restored your church and bound the wounds of need
Alleluia!

6. The lonely hermit, holy man of prayer
Went forth to fight the demons of despair,
With strength divine to struggle, risk and dare:
Alleluia!

7. Teach us, good Lord to serve with heart and soul;
Like Cuthbert, make us sound and whole;
And bring us with your saints to heaven’s goal:
Alleluia!

8. We sing of Cuthbert, saint, companion, friend;
To you our God all thanks and praise ascend
Now at this feast, and till all ages end.
Alleluia! Amen

Michael Sadgrove, Dean of Durham                            

 

 

Gospel Reading: Matthew 5. v1-12

Sermon

Prayers of Intercession

We remember with thanksgiving the life of St. Cuthbert and the making of the Lindisfarne Gospels in honour of him. We pray for our County and region, the cathedral church of Durham and its university, that rejoicing in our heritage, we may work together for the common good. We remember for all who will visit the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition and all who will visit his shrine. We pray that we may all be inspired to seek those good things which belong to our flourishing and to which the gospels bear witness.

Creator God, help us to read into the minds of those who write. May we glimpse their insights as we rejoice in their words. Let the things we read and learn inform our thinking and lead us to balanced views and deeper thoughts as well as enjoyable moments. Let your love shine through the prism of the printed page and the magic of the screen.

Lord of spirit and truth, surround our thoughts and hopes with meditation and contemplation. As we seek to make sense of the word through poetry and prayer, through word and deed, through music and song, may your spirit spark exploration of the gift of imagination, in writer, reader and viewer alike.

And finally - Loving Father, help us to follow the example of Cuthbert, by the simplicity of our lives and by the power of our witness, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Communion Hymn: R&S 373 Lord Jesus Christ you have come to us

The Communion

Hymn: R&S 661 How shall I sing that Majesty (Tune Coe Fen STF 667)

Benediction: May God, who kindled the fire of his love in the hearts of the saints, pour upon you the riches of his grace. May he strengthen you to walk in the way of holiness and to come to the full radiance of glory.  And the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always.   Amen

 

 

Action for Children Sunday 2013

 Sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at Ferryhill Methodist Church, 4-August-2013

For many Christians the command to be a Good Samaritan is central to their way of life; the parable of the Good Samaritan is, after all, one of the most often repeated and much loved parables of our faith. These parables of Jesus are like open ended puzzles; they force the hearer to appropriate the story for themselves; they live with us, continuing to shock, and engage.  A parable asks us: ‘Where do you stand – with the priest?’ ‘Whose side do you take – the side of the Levi?’ ‘Which one of these characters is you – or are you all three?’ The stories engage with our own powers of empathy and imagination; they are ultimately meant to change not reassure us.  And yes parables still have the power to speak to us and the Christian church today. The independent, non-partisan public policy think-tank ResPublica created in 2009 by Phillip Blond found that in a recent report 90% of church congregations undertake some kind of voluntary activity, encouraged and prompted I suspect by the parable of the Good Samaritan. That compares with only 54% for the population as a whole.

But a willingness to serve in some voluntary capacity prompted by the story of the Good Samaritan isn’t the only social asset possessed by the Church. From the running of youth clubs to visiting the elderly, providing food and shelter to the homeless and raising money for the poorest people of the world, churches like the one here in Ferryhill and mine at Crook are determined to prove that there isn’t a social problem that isn’t being solved by someone, somewhere, modelled on the story of the Good Samaritan. It was reported in The Times last week, 27^th July, that the Trussell Trust has been named “Britain most admired charity.” It runs 360 food-banks across the UK, offering emergency rations to those in need. In 2012/13 the numbers of those helped by the food-banks increased by 170%.

 “Who is my neighbour?” asks the lawyer in the parable trying to test and trick Jesus. Jesus would know well the Hebrew Scriptures. Leviticus defines neighbour in terms of family, kin, and close friends. But would Jesus argue for a broader concept of neighbour? Would he dare to be ‘inclusive’? – an inclusiveness which was already causing scandal for this pale Galilean. ‘Is any Jew a neighbour, even a sinful one, a tax-collector, a prostitute, a woman, a person of questionable sexual history?’ Or, ‘what about non-Jews, those outside the covenant, the uncircumcised, the Roman occupier, the despised Samaritan, the unclean and immoral Gentile?” Jesus was for sure getting a name for himself.

Notice the way Jesus answers the lawyers question – he does not fall into the trap of answering the question. Instead, he reframes it – his parable turns the question from ‘who is my neighbour?’ to ‘To whom am I myself a neighbour?’ - it is a subtle shift from the question of ‘who can I choose to be my neighbour to a completely different emphasis which is fundamental to the Gospel: ‘how do I become neighbour, how do I stop pointing the finger and condemning and start becoming the Gospel myself?’ This is the means by which we do not seek to define neighbour but are ourselves defined by Christ’s call to love neighbour as we love ourselves.

 We know the parable well. To cut the long story short, a Samaritan comes to the rescue. The traditional hated enemy becomes the one who saves. We are not told who the victim on the road is. So this victim could be a Jew saved by a Palestinian, or in a different context the Tutsi saved by the Hutu, the evangelical saved by the gay person, the member of the Taliban saved by the British soldier, or the other way round. And the Samaritan does not just save. He goes radically beyond saving. He risks his own life and reputation in order to help, and he offers radical generosity, not just a little bit of help, but finance enough to pay for three months of care, with the promise of more on his return. The only motive we are given is that he sees him and has compassion for him. Yes, compassion – that goes beyond, race, or tribe, or religion, or sexuality, or ideology, minority group, or scape-goating, and sees not the categorisation, or the prejudice, or the learnt fear, but sees the human being. That’s it; that’s our Gospel, the Good News of the compassion of Christ which has the power and the healing to overcome the wrong done to the victim.

Today we celebrate Action for Children – children like Sean whom we heard about in our story and the wonderful work done by Action for Children, particularly in the field of neglect. Reading their annual report a few weeks ago it reminded me of a talk given by the Bishop of Jarrow recently to his diocesan synod. The Bishop found himself reading a book on the theology of homelessness. “The author talks about somebody called Caroline and he says “Caroline begins her story at the age of 7, recalling a dysfunctional family, divorced parents, her mother always out at the pub and sexual abuse;” at the age of 13 Caroline was shoplifting to buy food and at 15 she left home and moved in with a friend. After a number of unsuccessful relationships she was married at 18. Her husband assaulted her badly. She became addicted to Valium and attempted to kill herself. She was made homeless, she was evicted for non-payment of rent on the flat she was sharing with another boyfriend and so it goes on. The author tells of a number of similar stories of homeless people whom he has met.

 “My initial reaction to hearing the story of Caroline and telling Sean’s story this morning is to admit that in a way these sort of life experiences are something right outside my experience. I simply do not know people whose experience of life is like that. Yes, I’ve met people like that as part of the work I do but there somehow seems a really very big gap between those people’s experience of life and mine. “And yet my theology and Christian understanding of the world expressed in this parable this morning tells me that Caroline and this young man Sean is my sister and brother in Christ, somebody for whom Christ died, a member like me of the human family; Caroline or Sean  is my neighbour, a victim lying on the Jericho road. The sad fact is (and I am sure you know this more than me) that within our own circuit many people whose life experiences are unbelievably different from mine are living cheek by jowl with each other. We also need to acknowledge that often our congregations have very different life experiences from the bulk of those who live in the area in which they are called by God to serve.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan, therefore, challenges us to look at our own approach to life and to our involvement with people to see if we, like the lawyer ask unprofitable questions that stifle compassion, and also to go and be a neighbour to those in need. The words of Deuteronomy echo down the centuries (Chapter 30 v 11+14), “Surely this commandment that I am commanding you is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. The word is very near you......in your heart to observe.” To which may be added, and where your heart is, there will your treasure be also.

God’s call on us in this situation is I believe is to put ourselves into each other’s shoes. Of course there is room for challenge not only about how we live our lives – including often why we are so ignorant in our churches about what is going on in wider society – but there needs first of all to be real attempt to put ourselves into the shoes of others as Jesus did. And Jesus was certainly willing to challenge – mainly of course the religious people! A society that rushes to judge and dismiss members of its communities is unlikely to be a healthy or Christ-like society.

 “I am struck by Pope Francis who, when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, washed and kissed the feet of homosexuals with Aids in his home city  - a move as controversial then as washing the feet of Muslims and women after he became Pope. Here are some words of Pope Francis when he was a Cardinal in Argentina -

he said “The poor must not be perpetually marginalised. We cannot accept the underlying idea that ‘we who are doing well give something to those who are doing badly, but they should stay that way far from us’ That is not Christian. It’s indispensable that we integrate them into our community as soon as possible…

“And he goes on: A poor man must not be looked at with disgust: he must be looked at in the eyes. “God’s vision is for a vision of a human family.” We as churches are invited in this part of our nation to start to discover what it means to be part of that human family where so many of our lives are so radically different from so many other people.

 “I am very struck by something Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury wrote about discipleship a few years ago “Being where Jesus is means finding yourself in the company of the people whose company Jesus seeks and keeps. So, when Jesus goes to be in the company of the excluded, the wretched, the self-hating, the poor, the diseased, that's where you're going to find yourself. If you are going to be where Jesus is, if your discipleship is not intermittent but a way of being, that's where you are going to find yourself, in the same sort of human company that he is in. This is once again an important reminder that our discipleship is not about choosing our company beyond choosing the company of Jesus “So that is indeed why so many great disciples across the history of the Christian Church, and indeed now, find themselves in the company of people they would never have imagined being with, had they not been seeking to be where Jesus is.

 And who is your neighbour? Or to whom could you become a neighbour? Perhaps a neighbour to the one you find most difficult to accept. How can we go beyond our own barriers to live Jesus’ radical compassion and be changed by it?

 

Amen

 

Readings: Deuteronomy v9-14, Luke 10.25-37