From the Registers
Those who have died
St John’s
Funeral - December 4th “ “ “ - December 5th “ “ “ - December 9th -
Sylvia Storey
Wendy Ann Dunning
Ian MacPherson
Brandon Parish Magazine
January 2014
St. John’s church, Brandon
St. Catherine’s church, New Brancepeth
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St. John’s Mother’s Union
From January 2014, the monthly branch meeting will be on the
2nd Wednesday of the month at 2pm. This change suits more of
our members.
Win - Branch Leader
Books for the Troops – Barbara and Stephen Hall would like to
thank everyone who has given books to go to the soldiers in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Shephen now has a new posting and has no
means of sending the books. Thank You to everyone.
Contact Telephone Numbers
St. John’s – Win – 3781156
St. Catherine’s – Liz – 3731554 Joe - 3739927
website http://www.brandonparish.org.uk/Welcome.htm
email - Webmaster@brandonparish.org.uk
https://www.facebook.com/StJohnTheEvangelistChurchBrandon
https://www.facebook.com/StCatherinesChurchNewBrancepeth
Sunday services
St. John’s
- 10 am Holy Eucharist followed by a cuppa
St. Catherine’s - 9 am Holy Eucharist
Weekday services
Wed. 9.30 a.m. St. John’s
Thurs. 9.30 a.m. St. Catherine’s
- World Peace
- New Brancepeth
Parish Office in the vestry at St. John’s – First Monday of
the month from 6-7pm
OR Tel: 0191 3780642 then leave a message and number
Anyone requiring a priest in an emergency :Capt. Ray Bradbury, Church Army – 01388 811430
St. Catherine’s Church Roof – we are well on the way with the
fundraising thanks for all the fund-raising events last year and
some donations from very kind people. Joe and David are still
trying to get more grants from various places. The Diocese have
approved the architect’s plans for the new roof and we now have
to apply for a Faculty, get planning permission, satisfy building
regulations and put the work out to tender.
The Bishop of Durham
…..is the Anglican bishop responsible for the Diocese of Durham in
the Province of York. The diocese is one of the oldest in the
country and its bishop is a member of the House of Lords. The
Right Revd. Paul Butler was announced as Bishop of Durham
Designate on 12 September 2013. The bishop is one of two (the
other is the Bishop of Bath and Wells) who escorts the sovereign
at the coronation.
He is officially styled The Right Reverend Father in God, (Christian
Name), by Divine Providence Lord Bishop of Durham, but this full
title is rarely used. In signatures, the bishop's family name is
replaced by Dunelm, from the Latin name for Durham (the
Latinised
form
of
Old
English
Dunholm).
The bishop lived in Durham Castle from its construction in the
11th century. In 1832, Auckland Castle became the official
residence of the Bishops of Durham until July 2012 when
ownership of the castle was transferred over to the Auckland
Castle Trust, a charitable foundation with the aim of beginning a
major restoration of the grounds and castle and creating
permanent exhibitions on the history of Christianity in Britain and
the North East. The bishop continues to have offices in Auckland
Castle but no longer resides there.
Extract from Bishop Mark’s Sermon – Midnight Eucharist
Christmas 2013 / Franklin Prison Christmas Day
Night time – particularly when you cannot sleep – can be a
difficult time. You lie awake tossing. Your brain is all over the
place. You worry “What will happen if I lose my job. What will
happen if something happens and we can’t pay the mortgage?” or
perhaps “What will happen if she leaves me?” or ” What happens
if they discover at work what I’ve been up to?”. Lying awake at
night time can be a time for worrying and thinking “ If only I had
not done …” Perhaps even “Where did I go wrong with my
children?” Things can get out of all proportion – night time can be
a time of real worry and anxiety and restlessness.
But tonight’s story says that wonderful things can happen at
night.
The shepherds are out guarding their flock. Suddenly the sky
lights up and the night isn’t scary any more –only it probably is
because a whole host of angels and the glory of the Lord shining
all around you probably is a bit scary at least first time round! But
this is a night when wonderful things happen and the shepherds
rush through the dark night to the stable and there is the baby
just as the angels had told them. This is the baby – the baby that
people have waited and longed for, for thousands and thousands
of years and here it is.
Wonderful things can happen at night
And so I wonder what it might mean for me – for you – on this
night when marvellous things happen, when God has shown that
he cannot abandon us and that we are not alone , to put your
hand into the hand of God – and to know that in your moments of
night you are not alone.
Why would God do that, be like that? Not for fun, let's be clear.
We all know - perhaps some even from experience, but anyone
from observation - what rough sleeping is like, what suffering
looks like, what sorrow feels like. There are some here tonight
who know that more keenly than any of us.
God does it all from love. He takes up, by love, as little space as
possible - the space a baby needs - leaving us all the choice in the
world to ignore Him if we want to.
This baby, fully human, is also fully God. We can ignore him - or
make space for him; and when we do that, like the shepherds, we
find this baby fills our lives to past overflowing with the love of
God. We find a presence invading our lives that is made of love.
He offers that, and gives us choice. He knows what we suffer,
because He did too. He knows us better than we know ourselves.
Every fault and failing, every joy and virtue.
So do we walk by like the busy little town of Bethlehem, far from
still in a war-torn land? Or do we stop, and with a simple prayer
make space in our hearts and lives? In the words of the old
children's hymn, "Come into my heart Lord Jesus, there is room in
my heart for you."
The Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon at the Metropolitan
Police Carol Service, St Margaret's Church, Westminster
For the borough commander of Bethlehem, the census ordered
by the Emperor was a nightmare. For the Roman special branch
overseeing Palestine - a bad area at the best of times in those
days - it was the perfect storm.
The census meant that everyone had to go to their home
city. Bethlehem was the home city for the descendants of David,
king a thousand years before. So by definition everyone coming to
Bethlehem to register for the census was a descendant of David; a
potential rebel leader in an insecure province full of terrorists.
You were the borough commander, you had loads of new trouble
from elsewhere, and in the crowd you could not keep tabs on the
bad guys you knew about already.
Added to that, the local puppet ruler, Herod, was a murderous
tyrant with more enemies than you could shake a stick at including the relatives of those members of his family he had
killed. Not a lot changes.
Then we find not just the baby, but the man and the God, love
surpassing expectation, utterly in control, with the promise of His
presence, the comfort of His healing, the call of His purpose to
make sense of any life on this earth.
So the first rule for keeping security in Bethlehem was: no kings,
no mention of kings, no mention of David. Anyone who shows up
talking about David or kings was on their way.
To cap it all, there is a star, or comet, that shows up. Not so much
unusual as unheard of - and your staff, a superstitious lot on a
good day - are worried.
Better sense than we could ever imagine.
And now all you needed was shepherds to appear. (cont.)
Shepherds were the biggest nuisance in public order terms. They
lived out on the hills most of the time. They carried lots of
weapons and could use them. They grazed sheep over everyone
else's land, and were prone to get stroppy if you argued. They
were very poor and could not care less what people thought of
them. They drank for Israel.
The second rule of keeping order was to keep the shepherds
sober and on the hills, looking after their sheep by night, or day,
or any other time.
So there you have it: a policing problem. Tension, politics,
terrorists, crowds, parties, drunks and crooks, in a huge confusion
of unknown people in your small borough. It can't get worse. But
like all things - as you know better than me - when it can't get
worse, it always does.
The shepherds do show up, and they are clearly drunk, except
they seem stone-cold sober; but apparently semi-hysterical. Far
from waving weapons, they are just waving their arms, going on
about angels, and asking about new-born babies.
Eventually some clever officer in your force says he heard that a
peasant girl had just given birth to a baby in a sort of cave behind
the inn at the bottom of the hill.
So you send them there, and everyone checks their armour and
weapons.
A few moments' breather, and in walks this foreign character.
Lousy accent. Just enough Greek to get by. He is the servant of
some wise men from the east, and they have followed that
wretched star that is upsetting everyone in order to find a king.
They get taken quietly outside so no one hears them, and then
they get sent to the same inn.
At least you can keep an eye on all the trouble in the same place.
A squad gets sent down to isolate the area, and the sergeant
comes back."It's all quiet," he says, "they've gone inside and they
seem to be praying."
The last straw: now we have a potential religious riot on the
patch. Kings rumoured to be born? Herod will have my guts for
that one. Shepherds! The local authorities will be all over me. And
the paperwork...
So the poor borough commander went down to see this 'king'. He
buckled on his armour, sharpened his sword, prayed briefly and
somewhat bad-temperedly to whatever god he believed in (or
not) and went down to find... a peasant woman, a carpenter, and
a baby.
Like most people in Bethlehem that night, he put the music in the
air down to imagination, the shepherds to too many nights in the
fields, the wise men to foreigners who were unpredictable
anyway... and went away, because it all looked so normal that
what it meant was overlooked by almost everyone. And still is.
Yet it was the moment in which God broke into our world in a
completely different way. And everyone, including our mythical
borough commander, missed the fact.
He came to his own people, and they did not even recognise
him. Except for the few that were looking, and the ones that were
totally unimportant, like shepherds.
The coming of God as human - as much a fact as you and I being in
this building - was not in palaces with decent warning. It was in
poverty, worse than most of us. In weakness and vulnerability.
Indeed, more than that: like all babies, in helplessness. So helpless
that a few months later the only way to avoid Herod's secret
police was to flee to Egypt as a refugee.