Midnight Mass 2010

As I sat to write a sermon for this evening, I realised that I really love Christmas! It’s absolutely fantastic!

There’s no other time of the year when we join in something so important. Meeting in this historic church very late on a Christmas Eve we are taking part in the history of our faith, we are adding another page to the story that is 2,000 years in the telling…so far.

(14^th Century)

On the way in this evening we sang Adeste Fidelis the carol we know as O Come all ye Faithful.

The original words are attributed to John of Reading, who wrote a book called “Prose for Christmas Day” around 1320. Just after this church was built on this site.

Much later, the tune (and the rewriting of some of the words) were changed by John Francis Wade, a Catholic Layman who fled to France during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. It’s suggested there’s a secret meaning to some of the words. The return of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the secret followers of The Old Pretender Stuart are all supposedly mentioned. The faithful are the ‘Jacobites’ who are being encouraged to return, and Bethlehem, was a code for them to mean England. So this was a carol of rallying the people to return.

(19^th Century)

Then, before the Gospel reading we sang that calm and beautiful classic Christmas carol Silent Night. The original lyrics were written in Austria in by a priest, Joseph Mohr. The music was written by Xaver Gruber in 1816 and it was sung the first time on Christmas Eve 1818 in the Church of St. Nicholas, Oberndorf, Austria.

Nearly one hundred years later, in the 1914 Christmas truce of World War One, where troops stopped fighting and left the trenches to exchange gifts with the enemy, this carol was simultaneously sung in three languages (English, French and German) it was so widely known and sung. This is the quiet colossus in the Carolling world!

(20^th Century)

Even though Christina Rossetti wrote her famous poem “In the Bleak Midwinter” before 1872, it didn’t appear as a carol until 1906, in the English Hymnal with a setting by the famous English composer Gustav Holst.

It’s a fantastic carol (and probably my favourite) It’s got everything in, it’s like a KFC bargain bucket, the one where you get the fries, coke and the vienetta as well.

In the first verse, she describes the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. In the second verse she compares the first and second coming of Christ, in the third verse she

writes about the simple surroundings of Christ’s birth. The fourth is usually omitted but it’s about Mary’s love and care for Jesus and the final verse is all about how we should treat others. It’s all there!

(18^th Century)

No midnight mass is complete without us leaving to Hark the Herald Angels sing. This carol was written in 1739 by Charles Wesley. Although he was a bit of a sober, sombre man, it’s still possible to sing this carol after a Christmas drink, as a few of you will know. The words are triumphant! In the last verse we sing “sing choirs of Angels” I looked through every Bible I have, and according to them the Angels “spoke” not “sang”, but that’s fine. It’s a good picture!

So, we are in a 13^th Century church singing Carols ranging from the 14^th to the 20^th century. We are hearing the words of those who have translated the Bible down the generations and we are saying prayers and doing things that date back to the earliest days of the faith.

Christmas has given us a wealth of art and music, poetry and philosophy history that goes well beyond the story of the Son of God being born to a young girl 2,000 years ago.

Although the message of Christmas is an unchanging one, we are adding to Christmas just by being here this evening. You are part of the Christmas story, the story of God and his people, the greatest story ever told.

We are creating Christmas!

That’s why I’m a Christmas person! In Church we speak of the Incarnation – the birth of Jesus - and at Easter, we speak of the Atonement; the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus. I understand you can’t have one without the other, but I have to say that Christmas is for me, as C.S Lewis calls it ‘That Great Miracle’.

This year we are ‘creating more Christmas’ as we think of the real message of Christmas. This year we are adding to the story when we join as ‘community’ to celebrate with the people of faith from the last 2,000 years. This year, as this church resonates to music and carols this evening we are making history, and building faith. Tonight we are doing the same thing as those who came to worship here 700 years ago.

We can either fill it with stress and worry, or we can fill it with love and care. Archbishop John Sentamu cut through the Christmas theology to give us his considered message, he said;

“It’s xmas not stressmas”

May God give us all a break this Christmas and put us into the Christmas story in our time, creating something good and new, in the name of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN

Advent and Christmas in the Benefice of Magor

Advent and Christmas in the Church in Wales Rectorial Benefice of Magor

Llanmartin, Magor and Wilcrick

December

4^th Christmas Cake Saturday – Magor 2.00-4.00

4^th Lighting the tree in Magor Square with the Severn Tunnel Band 5.00

7^th Advent Quiet Hour – Magor 7.00

11^th Carols at Magor Marsh

12^th Advent Family Service – Llanmartin 10.30

12^th ‘Here we go down to Bethlehem’ songs and actions for the under 4’s Magor 3.00

14^th Mothers’ Union Deanery Advent Service– Magor Church 11.00

14^th Advent Quiet Hour – Magor –Church 7.00

15^th Carols at ‘The Lawns’ – 3.00

19^th Nativity – Magor (10.30)

19^th Nine Lessons and Carols – Wilcrick with Llanmartin – Wilcrick Church 3.30

19^th Magor – Lessons and Carols 6.00

21^st Advent Quiet Hour – Magor 7.00

24^th Christingle – Llanmartin Church 3.30

24^th Midnight Mass – Magor 11.30

24^th Midnight Mass – Llanmartin 11.30

25^th Christmas Eucharist – Wilcrick 8.00

25^th Christmas Eucharist - Magor 10.30

26^th St. Stephen’s Day Eucharist – Magor 10.30

Undy, Redwick and Goldcliff

December

12^th Undy Nativity – 3.00

13^th Redwick Christmas Tree

19^th Redwick Carols 4.00

19^th Goldcliff and Nash Carols – Nash 4.00

19^th Undy Carols with Severn Tunnel Band – 6.00

24^th Crib Service with Carols – Goldcliff – 3.00

24^th Midnight Mass – Goldcliff – 11.30

25^th Christmas Eucharist - Undy 9.30

25^th Christmas Eucharist - Redwick 11.00

Langstone, Bishton, Nash, Llanwern

December

12^th Carols at Langstone Church with the School 10.30

19^th Nash and Goldcliff Carols – Nash 4.00

19^th Llanwern and Bishton Carols at Llanwern Church – 6.00

20^th RSPB Wetlands Nash – Carols – 10.00

25^th Christmas Eucharist - Nash 9.30

25^th Christmas Eucharist - Bishton 11.00

These services are generally in addition to the usual services on the Sunday/Weekday rotas

Please remember that dates and times may change, please check the notice sheet.

Revised 20^th November

Christ the King

CHRIST THE KING -- ARE WE JOKING?

Twice in recent weeks we've noticed outrageous claims made about Christ's power. It began with St. Paul's outrageous description in Ephesians of Christ's power as "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion." His waxing lyrical about the power recalls the greatest conquerors of all time

So why is St. Paul's description so outrageous? He's making this claim of ultimate power for a poor carpenter's son who was executed on the cross in shame and powerlessness.

There can only be two reasons for this;

1. Either Paul is completely mad, this is daft and crazy nonsense, or

2. God is trying to show us what really counts for power to God.

If this is God’s power, at work through Christ, then it is completely different than what counts as power for us.

Well, this week we have all of that outrageousness thrown right back in our face and made explicit. Christ the King Sunday, we call it. And if the joke isn't obvious yet, our Gospel Lesson makes it as plain as can be. Pilate makes a joke by posting a sign of "King of the Jews" above Jesus' head. He no doubt regarded the Jewish people as a joke and thought he'd mock them a bit. This puts everyone in a mocking mood, of course, so as Jesus hangs on the cross he is made to be the butt of everyone's jokes:

"He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" (Luke 23:35-38, 39)

The joke at the beginning of the sermon today wasn’t one of mine, it was Pilates - Christ the King! What a joke!

We all know though that the best jokes are usually close to the truth, or sometimes an inversion of what’s normal. Some of the best comedians, when you listen to them actually seem to know what we are thinking. Well, God’s like that, because even though on Friday it was a great joke, on Easter morning, of course, it was God who had the last laugh.

Or perhaps it was God's first laugh?

Easter, as we know was the beginning of something new, a new relationship and Christ Jesus is the true King of that new relationship, a Lord who will someday crown all of Creation with his eternal, never-ending source of life.

In the meanwhile however, we seem to be more concerned with allowing power in the way in which Pilate saw it. We need to be honest about this

Pilate's joke, a sign of "King of the Jews" hanging above an executed criminal is a joke humanity is still telling.

If we are ever to see how the joke is on Pilate, and on us, we need to begin to see with the eyes of faith what it is that God is trying to show us with the cross.

We can only begin to see this if we begin to see what counts for power to us.

Let me repeat one more time: either this is absolutely daft and crazy nonsense, or else God is trying to show us that what counts for power to God is completely different than what counts for power to us. We must understand the dark reality that the cross reveals to us about ourselves and the way we do things.

All of human culture, and all of our human kingdoms, are founded around a collective violence of an "us" against "them" variety.

Sometimes we get to ‘scapegoat’ someone, giving them the aura supernatural, getting to blame them for our own failings. In doing this we may feel better about ourselves, but we distance ourselves from God.

Them and us is the humour of Pilate and has nothing to do with Christ the King or his Kingdom.

If you find yourselves in conversation with someone on a bus or in the pub, if you are at a meeting or a party and someone is proposing that it’s all about us and them, think about Pilate and ask yourself if that’s the humour you prefer, or whether you would rather laugh with Christ the King, because he will have the last laugh. And he who laughs last… (we all know the rest)

The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of mercy and goodness. It is that place we can create in our communities, our churches, but also in our lives.

The last few weeks in our readings we were peacefully led through stories that told us about life in first century Palestine- following Christ down the highways and byways with his bunch of followers, hearing about the work of the Son of God when he walked amongst us. We (yes us) were getting the plans for building the Kingdom on whatever space has been entrusted to us.

In a few weeks time we will be thinking of the little town of Bethlehem – the town Matthew refers to as insignificant. In this sense, all the poor and forgotten people are insignificant, like Bethlehem, yet from them, the LORD comes to us as KING. (this is another part of God’s humour)

Next week, Advent Sunday is the start of the time of preparation for us. It is the time we get to plan for the great celebration of Christmas once again. This year, make is one to remember, not just another one when we enjoyed too many mince pies, sang too many carols and fell out over things that were never important.

Make this the Christmas when you welcomed not Christ THE King, but Christ YOUR King.

Sermon - The last Sunday after Trinity


An elderly woman had just returned to her home from Church one Sunday morning when she was startled by an burglar.

Caught the man in the act of robbing her home of its valuables he runs towards the door,

"Stop! Acts 2:38!" The woman shouted



(Repent and be baptised, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven.)

The burglar stopped in his tracks. The woman calmly called the police and explained what she had done.

As the officer cuffed the man to take him in, he asked the burglar, "Why did you just stand there? All the old lady did was yell a scripture to you." "Scripture?" replied the burglar. "She had a cricket bat and a rolling pin”

The Gospel reading this morning is proof that Luke had no sense of comedy timing, and no idea how to inject irony into the scenes of the Bible. He was a Doctor after all; the report today is a little clinical.

“Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt”

Aaggh, that’s the punchline.

The issue in this part of the Gospel is one of self-righteousness. This was an important issue when Luke wrote. The Pharisees were still a force to contend with, and they had taken control of the Jewish religious tradition amongst the Diaspora as well as in the Jewish homeland.

Luke was almost certainly writing to Christian converts from Judaism with this parable. He would undoubtedly have known the ancient Jewish morning prayer which thanked God for not making him a Gentile, a slave or a woman. He was trying to get them to understand that self-righteousness was a hugely destructive force in the early church.

The story itself has a ring of immediacy about it. This makes it seem as if everyone who may have heard Jesus utter it may well have witnessed this very incident many times as they went to offer their own prayers in the temple. Note that the Pharisee stood off by himself to avoid contamination from anyone who might be in the temple courts in a ritually impure state. The tax collector, on the other hand, afraid perhaps of even daring to enter the sacred precincts, is "standing far off." In fact, this may refer to the fact that tax-collectors were regarded as unfit to enter the temple, and required to stay in the exterior Court of the Gentiles. Yet in Jesus' estimation the sincerity of his prayer far exceeded that of the Pharisee. He responded in repentance to the grace he hoped to find by acknowledging his own unworthiness.

One other detail of the story is significant: We are not told if the tax collector even knew he was forgiven. The word used is "Justified" (a typically strange Pauline word) with which Luke states this man's new relationship with God. (of course he was forgiven!)

Of the two men, he was the only one who had really prayed. For doing that he had been declared righteous, but not because he was good and the Pharisee bad, nor because he felt better for it. Rather he had the humility to do the one thing God requires: he had faced the truth about himself and asked for God's mercy and compassion.

Facing the truth is always a difficult task.

This isn’t all about us as individuals though, it’s also about how WE organize our shared life as a Church.

Being able to look at what WE do in our lives as CHRISTIANS, AND THEN organising our church life to affect those around us is very important!

SO HOW DO WE FACE THE TRUTH AS A CHURCH?

(It was at this stage that I made a coffee, looked out of the window and started to think about how we as a church could do things differently, how we could change…It was quite some time before I realised that it was nonsense – change for the sake of it is the sign of a church that has no idea what it’s doing).

I can tell you that this church is already very, very good at organising our church life to affect those around us. We have groups and clubs, events and talks, societies and services that include members of the community and the church in a seamless way – from cakes to churchmen and life groups to lunches. The Magor Church Centre is the centre of this and we should be really, really pleased!

Now I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t bother doing anymore, I’m just saying that through the hard work and commitment of people in this church we have started things that are really important.

People are starting to ask the question “what ARE they doing in there on a Sunday Morning?” they don’t think that it’s just “Vicar of Dibley, and the Parish Council”.

SO HOW DO WE FACE THE TRUTH AS INDIVIDUALS?

In the Gospel reading, the Pharisee was a good religious man, but did he have faith. He trusted in the Law and the Prophets, but did he trust in GOD. Had he, at some point managed to define GOD, and how RELIGION worked? The TAX-COLLECTOR was a bad man, and he knew it – he was in the temple waiting for the thunderbolt. He had little RELIGION, but he TRUSTED IN GOD and HAD FAITH.

Have you ever sat in church waiting for the thunderbolt? We can all feel that we are not RIGHT with GOD for some reason – and then we can judge ourselves against the PHARISEE and NOT the TAX-COLLECTOR.

Now sometimes people misunderstand this.

Are you the Pharisee or the Tax collector?

If you are the PHARISEE, your FIRST CONCERN will be more worried about remembering how many books there are in the Bible and whether the New International Version is a more faithful translation than the New Revised Standard Version. You will eventually pray to God, but in that ordered way that sounds like a church service, you will expect God to answer in riddles that you need to decode. When you get home, you’ll hate me for preaching this sermon because you thought it was all about you.

If you are the TAX COLLECTOR you’re happy that you are even here this morning because you’ve come to be with GOD and your church family in your own way. Your prayers before the service were thankful about stuff and also concerned with everyday realities – you know that you have to say ‘sorry’ to God, but it’s fine because (as a Christian) the price has now been paid for you, but you still need to ask for forgiveness. Your prayers did not have any real punctuation because they came from the heart. You have not read an article on the doctrine of substitutionary atonement this week, indeed you didn’t have enough time because you were probably worrying about people and life in general and doing your best to help. You trust other people to guide you in religion and theology and trust God to lead you in faith. You don’t care if this sermon isn’t speaking directly to you, because it might be good for someone else. When you get home you will feel as though you have been recharged.

I don’t know if we can be half and half! Tax collector or Pharisee, but isn’t it strange that we can leave church this morning thinking we have to be more like ‘tax collectors’.

I’ve been told that a good sermon should have a good beginning and a good ending, and they should be as close together as possible.

Therefore, this week;

May you leave this place recharged by the Holy Sacrament and the Word of God, May your love for others lead you into a deeper knowledge of God, May your prayers be messy but full of love, and May God speak to you in the words of others, the smile of children and the wonder of creation. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN

Trinity 20 - Here comes the judge

Trinity 20! Already

Readings for Sunday

Genesis. (32.22-31)

Second Letter of Paul to Timothy. (3.14 – 4.5)

Luke. (18.1-8) - The one with the woman and the judge

Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, ‘In a cer- tain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually com- ing.”’ And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’

The brief and strange parable for today selects a fascinating case to show the efficacy of prayer and to teach the disciples the need to pray always and not lose heart. Jesus asks them in a critical and pointed question.

“When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Is he speaking to us today? He surely is!

In our text, the widow obtains her objective. She keeps badgering the judge until she gets what she wants without a husband or sons to act for her, she has to be persistent, and make a nuisance of herself, otherwise she won’t be heard. It seems that the judge doesn’t really care about justice, his job is to administer the law, and he wants some peace and quiet - no upsets to his daily routine. So he finally gives in, and does what she wants.

The characters, on the face of it are to remind us to be faithful in prayer, and persistent, even though we want to give up, we will eventually get what we need. It is the final victory of justice over apathy, through faith and prayer.

Luke the Evangelist, who most insists on the place of prayer in the life of Jesus and the disciples recounts this story for us. We are reminded of the words of Jesus ask and it will be given to you everyone who asks receives. This is a statement of faith, the profound conviction that someone is attentive to our needs, and listening to our crying out.

Prayer to God, even in the midst of adversity is the hallmark of our faithfulness it is the cornerstone of our belief. Our faith is never something that is given forever, it needs to be nurtured and encouraged to grow, and this is done by prayer and action. Both are essential, and both are difficult sometimes. Faith is a gift, but it is also a task.

In the modern world, it is easy for us to forget to pray. When we witness the terrible troubles; war and death, poverty and famine, hatred and intolerance, it is easy for us to forget to pray, and feel somehow protected from it by our own worldly cares. It was easy for the judge in the story to forget about justice, until it affected him directly wasn’t it?

So we can see the readings give us a picture of prayer, and the importance regular prayer, asking not just for ourselves and our own concerns but the concerns of the oppressed and suffering children of God throughout the world.

The letter to Timothy tells contains another significant text. Paul writes that scripture shows us the path of a life of faith; it trains us in righteousness. So that we are equipped for every good work.

If faith is a task, it involves a fundamental requirement to proclaim the word, whether the time is favourable or unfavourable.

Paul is writing from prison in Rome to Timothy. The old guard is putting things right, by encouraging the new growth in the Church, handing over before he is finally killed for his faith.

Timothy - who was converted by Paul at Ephesus is being encouraged to remind the community about the good news of Christ. He is expected to persevere and properly guide the teaching and the prayer in the face of those who would like an easy life by cobbling together all kinds of rules and dogmas.

Timothy was having a tough time if it. He was being told to correct, rebuke and encourage not just for a while, but in season and out of season. This is the part of the story when his vocation is becoming an onerous task. There is much work ahead, and he is expected to be the defender of the faith.

In a real sense, we here today are being encouraged to speak out against all that is comfortable - the easy route to faith. We are being entrusted with the plans to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of truth, mercy, peace, love and forgiveness. We are being invited to speak out against injustice and wrong, to defend the oppressed and the destitute. To proclaim KINGDOM values and not WORLDLY values to all we meet, in all we say AND in all we do. That is the task of the CHRISTIAN, that is the task of our faith.

As I wrote this sermon, I remembered a meeting with someone who acted as CHRIST to me,

Even though I get tired, I still want to be the person who does the ‘right thing’. She was saying how this task might be hopeless, because we always appear to be fighting for one thing or another and we meet opposition in the most unlikely places. She was absolutely right to tell me this, even though she too is the sort of person who is always fighting for the right thing too.

It made me even more certain that if there are two types of people in the world, those who work for what’s right, and those who don’t, I would rather be shot down in flames as a ‘doer’ rather than a ‘fence-sitter’, or more accurately, I’ll be shot down anyway because I can’t not do stuff.

It’s all in the parable anyway…..

I know what the conventional wisdom of the parable is, the widow is us and the judge is God, but just for a moment, imagine the widow in the parable is God, uncomfortably reminding us that whatever the cost we must still have JUSTICE on our mind before all else, reminding us of the work yet to do.

GOD, who seeks justice and peace; GOD, whom society has placed in an inferior place; GOD, who is never going to leave us, even though we are not listening; GOD, who is in the right.

AND perhaps we are the JUDGE could be us weighed down by worldly cares, more concerned by an easy life rather than what’s right!

Is it the voice of GOD we hear when we feel that we should do more? Is it the voice of GOD keeping the ‘doers’ doing.

In the week to come, remember that Faith is a gift, but it is also a task, and let us all as ourselves “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

London, Paris, Rome and Wilcrick...

London, Paris, Rome and Wilcrick...

As I was giving a sort of ‘Thought for the day’ on Thursday in Undy, Pope Benedict XVI was landing in the UK. He was going to have a nice cup of tea with the Queen in Holyrood.

Amidst the controversy and scandals (and one of his senior

advisors Cardinal Walter Kasper saying that the UK is like a Third World country) the POPE came to tell us that FAITH IS IMPORTANT, not just to CATHOLICS or ANGLICANS, but to everyone.

First he delivered a sermon that rounded on what he called aggressive secularism and atheism. As he travels to different venues, his speeches and sermons have become a little more complex, building on what he said in the Westminster Hall was “The importance of building on solid moral and ethical foundations”. Religion, he said, is not a “problem for the legislators to solve” but a “vital contributor to the national conversation”

Of course, he then spoke about the “increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity” and how in human terms “time is always short”, and we should concentrate our effort, the holy and the secular together in working to solve the problems of today

, war, poverty, environmental catastrophe and a hundred other different problems that face us today.

“The Church and Christianity is not a problem, it’s a benefit to society”, that was his message.

The POPE was saying that FAITH is the structure of our everyday lives whatever we might think about it. It is the antecedent of our legal and education systems, it provides a structure for how we

treat each other and how we live our lives.

He was saying that the importance of the ‘checks and balances’ of religion cannot be underestimated; a wholly secular society would be a much worse place.

This week, two things made me think about the importance of what we are doing here in church, and in the communities around us.

I had a call on my mobile phone on Thursday night, the police told me that Langstone church had been broken into and a lot of damage had been done.

When I arrived there I met a policeman who had caught two people in the church. He told me that lots of police had taken the ‘call’ and rushed to see what was happening in the church. One policeman had commented “how could people do this?” all the police in attendance agreed, similarly in the morning the Crime Scene people also felt it was not just disappointing, but despicable that a church would be desecrated in such a way. They linked damage to the church with a downward spiral of morality and the loss of ‘community’.
This is just what the Pope was saying, you might not love the church, you might never go to church, you might not have any religion at all, but somewhere deep down most people agree that it stands for something we are in danger of losing, and at the very least a social good.

Another incident made me smile; I recently met someone who told me that he didn’t believe in any religion or faith and he had his own code, which he lived by. When I enquired what it might be, he told me;

“Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that since around 1670 this saying (in its’ many forms) has been referred to as the "Golden Rule", and usually refers to a saying of Christ. In the King James Version it says

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." (Matthew 7:12, see also Luke 6:31)

The common English phrasing is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

My unsuccessful atheist friend had been living by a saying of Christ, and determining his judgments and his philosophy on it.

The Pope’s journey to the UK could have got a lot more smiles if I wrote his sermon, it also wouldn’t have been so hard to read.

Some of the media picked up on his direct comments, and not really knowing how to deal with them, they decided instead to report on women priests and homosexuality; The pace of the church in dealing with what for many is normal and everyday.

They also brought to the spotlight the awful and damaging scandals of abuse involving Catholic Priests and citing the disinterest of the church as a failure in bringing these monsters to justice.

All these things are held up by some as good reasons to control and censure the church from every aspect of society and civic life, but they are not.

They are in the main, the cries of disappointment from ordinary people who had hoped for so much more, those who had invested heavily in the church in a spiritual and physical sense only to be let down badly.

Whether Richard Dawkins, and perhaps now Stephen Hawking like it or not, the church still holds a responsibility to the world, even if it lets people down so often. As an imperfect vessel; it is still the vessel to carry the love of Christ to the world.

Clergy sometimes joke that if you have six people attending a church decide it needs to close you will have one hundred and fifty letters of complaint. Like all humour, it has the ring of truth to it.

Surrounding all our churches are communities that might not be supporting in any physical or spiritual sense, but somehow we represent something that is good, and whose loss is their loss.

We need to translate this into a real need, so that people can once again engage with the church, and come to hear the message of hope and peace, which is needed by so many in today’s Britain.

I wish the POPE well in his visit to us in the UK, I hope that he finds that we are not a ‘third world country’ in terms of spirituality.

If the last stop in his tour turns out to be this Benefice, I would like to tell him that we might not have the fantastic splendour of St. Peter’s Square to look out on each morning, we might not be surrounded by priceless art and beautiful architecture, but even in the smallest of churches with the smallest congregations, we can still ‘fighting the good fight’, trying to live by the Golden Rule and in hopeful anticipation, trying to build the Kingdom of God for those around us.

Let’s try something different!

Let’s try something different!

As the nights are drawing in and the weather seems to be turning, we can look back at a positive summer in the Benefice.

The great success of the Benefice Weekend and other events has been cause for great celebration as we have learned a little bit more about our churches, our communities, and each other. Just over a year after the creation of the Benefice, we have much to be proud of and much to look forward to as we live and learn, change and grow together in Christ.

There have been many challenges along the way too. The attendance at the Archdeacon’s visitation made it clear that people find it difficult to relate to such a large group of churches. In addition, we have heard people say that they wish they had their ‘own vicar’ once again, this isn’t an unreasonable request. We all want to feel that our voice is heard, and that someone understands what our churches are going through.

This is why the stipendiary clergy will be taking responsibility for a smaller group of churches. The Benefice remains a Rectorial Benefice, and all decisions affecting the wider church and the future will need to be made at the Benefice Council, however each church has been assigned their own ‘team vicar’ to be a first point of contact for pastoral and church issues. They will be your advocate at the clergy and wider ministry team meetings and will attempt to understand all the issues that affect your church and community.

Having made the decision to try this, we then looked at the ways in which the Benefice could be divided naturally. I will be looking after the communities of Magor, Wilcrick and Llanmartin, all physically close together comprising the churches of St. Martin’s, Llanmartin with ‘Underwood’, the beautiful church on the edge of the woods St. Mary’s, Wilcrick and the Benefice Church in Magor. The Revd. Jeremy will be looking after the churches of Undy, Redwick and Goldcliff, splitting the population centre of Magor and Undy and travelling across the levels to the historic villages on the levels. The Revd Celia will be looking after the churches of Nash and Llanwern on the edge of the City of Newport, with the equally historic churches of Bishton and Langstone serving the people who live in those communities, all within a few minutes’ drive of the Vicarage.

As part of a larger benefice we are all entitled to feel that our voice is heard however small our church may be. These changes will hopefully help us to feel involved with something good, something new, and something that, God willing reflects the love of Christ to the communities around us and the wider world.

Our non-stipendiary clergy, the Revds. Natalie and Alison will be assisting with all the usual tasks around Magor, Undy and other churches when the need arises. Our Lay Eucharistic Ministers will continue to provide a full ministry throughout the Benefice, supporting the mission and worship.

It goes without saying that your prayers and support are needed as always.

With blessings and peace,

Mark

The Revd Mark Lawson-Jones (Team Rector)