Dear all,

 

Last week 

Winston is quite a small church as many of you will know so perhaps you can imagine what is was like with 200 people packed inside for the morning service and baptism of Alexandra Grace Kirkup. A great occasion for the village but by the time I got to Gainford I was hot and hoarse so the service assumed a very quiet ambiance! 

In the evening I had been invited to preach at the anniversary service of Gainford Methodist chapel in the evening and given that the Darlington circuit has been hit by proposals to reduce the number of chapels from 13 down to 3 - I decided to preach about worry and anxiety - something we are all prone to do despite our best intentions.  

 

In the gospel reading from Luke we get an insight into how Jesus sustained his ministry when Luke talks about the women "who provided for them out of their resources" (Luke 8:3). If you remember, last week I wrote about how large groups of women were attracted by his message. Here some are mentioned by name - Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Suzanna and then "many others". There appears to have been a framework of support - a network that allowed Jesus and his inner circle to operate. The most famous name there by a country mile of course is Mary Magdalene, a name that has been at the centre of much controversy - and not just by Dan Brown in the Da Vinci code. Mary Magdalene was there at Jesus' crucifixion and burial. By unanimous consent in the New Testament she was the first person who "saw" the resurrected Jesus. A unique, central and pivotal figure in Christian history then. In apocryphal early writings (not included in the New Testament) she is referred to as the "apostle to the apostles" and even as the leader of the very early Christian church. In the apocryphal "Gospel of Mary" Mary is portrayed as the disciple that Jesus loved more than the others and that she had a deeper insight into Jesus' teachings and is asked to impart this to the other disciples. So very controversial then. It is now generally accepted that for reasons best known to themselves Mary's pivotal role in the Jesus story was deliberately downplayed by the early church (Giving all the fuel necessary to writers like Dan Brown to imagine the biggest cover up in history). The conspiracy theory  is also aided by the fact that when Paul wrote of all those people who Jesus had appeared to after the resurrection he mentioned the "eleven" and "500 others" but didn't even mention Mary at all. Perhaps he had never been told of that account? The apocryphal writings tell of jealousy and prejudice especially on Peter's part. So here's a thought - remember Paul said in last week's reading that Peter was the only apostle Paul had consulted when he finally returned to Jerusalem, so perhaps when Peter was giving his account of things to Paul, Mary's part just happened to, how shall we say, slip his mind? We'll never know now, though I bet we all have our theories!  A fascinating subject that fires the imagination. I feel a novel coming on.............

 

 

 

For all those who enjoy organ music the following Wednesday lunchtime organ recitals are at St. Mary's Barnard Castle: They all begin at 12.30pm except the very last one on Bank Holiday Monday

Billions of years ago at the dawn of time the universe consisted only of a volatile chemical soup that had exploded and expanded at unimaginable speed. Eventually vast nuclear furnaces emerged - that we call stars. In those nuclear furnaces all the carbon that exists in the universe was forged. That carbon forms the basis of human life. We are all made quite literally from stardust. Awe inspiring, but not the greatest miracle! Billions of years rolled by and the greatest miracle in the universe was yet to happen. In one tiny corner of this vast universe, a part of this chemical soup in some way that we will never understand, became aware of its own existence. We became conscious, self aware. In an extraordinary miracle part of the chemical soup became aware of itself and eventually was even able to contemplate the fact that billions of years earlier it was once nothing more than chemical soup. This is the greatest miracle in the universe.

 

Lets now look at the story of Adam and Eve.  Adam comes from the Hebrew word "Dust" and Eve comes from the Hebrew word for "Life". Human beings are in poetic fashion "life filled dust". What was inanimate became animated. The story of the fruit of the "tree of knowledge of Good and evil" is in my humble opinion the story of that extraordinary development, the ancient writers of Genesis chronicling this greatest miracle of the universe - the development of human consciousness. Not so much a fall, which I think is a misnomer, but rather a giant leap forward. We became aware of our own existence. We were set free. Our eyes were opened. We became like God.

 

"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons" (Genesis 3: 5-7)

 

The Prayer for Today. Self consciousness, autonomy and the ability to make moral choices did have one effect that can be equated to Augustine's theory of the "fall". Our autonomy has led to our perception that we are separate from our creator. The doctrine of incarnation, if it says anything at all, tells us that this separation is an illusion. Matter and Spirit as one is the ultimate reality - but this reality is veiled from our eyes. All Christian worship, is the process of drawing back that veil - to reveal God at the centre of all things - where He always was and always will be. Centering on that reality as Jesus did is the way that leads to fullness of life. It is like a marriage of Spirit and matter, of God's will and our will, so I have chosen for our prayer for today the opening prayer from the Anglican marriage service. It is rather gorgeous. 

 

 

Love and peace

 

Martin