It is THE existential question, and not a modern one. It is the question at the heart of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness; 'IF you are the Son of God...'. 'Am I? Doubt. Questioning. It arises out of the Fall in Genesis, when humanity first asserted its prerogative to rebel against God. Created as the 'image of God', as sons and daughters of the Creator turn their backs on the One that loved them, and became 'wise', suddenly knowing right from wrong (of course, they had no knowledge of 'wrong' beforehand), and, aware that they were 'naked', became 'ashamed' where there had been no shame, for shame is a consequence of the knowledge of guilt. So they hid from each other and from God. And the question arises 'Adam, where are you?'. Hiding among the trees of the garden (thank God for trees). The question has become, who am I?

Lent, then, is the time of the desert, when all is stripped away and the questions laid bare in the bright glare of sun on white, dessicated bone. Welcome to the question...

Poem: 'Instructions for the desert' by Cynthia Fuller

OT: Gen 2:15-17, 3:1-7

NT Rom 5:12-19

Gospel: Matt 4:1-11

Our acts of remembrance are presented in many different ways. But not all are helpful. This sermon explores the real point of remembrance.

Most of us bury this part of our soul, sensing that no-one would want anything to do with us if they really knew what we were like. So we try to compensate, perhaps by presenting an image of ourselves to the world by which we would like to be known. We choose our clothes, the way we look, our manner with others, to convey a particular impression, a mask behind which to hide, carefully cultivated in front of a mirror. Mirrors. Those silvered surfaces that reflect back the superficial us we want others to see. Where would we be without mirrors and photographs, and the rise of the ubiquitous 'selfie'?

But this hidden part is the 'real' us - the rest is all facade. And it is this hidden part that God calls to. In the story of the Fall in Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve have eaten the apple, they realise they are 'naked', exposed to each other. They both feel this incredible shame and guilt, and so they hide from each other and from God. Its exactly the same with each of us. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of Everyman - we hide ourselves, alone and out of sight, as George Herbert so precisely puts it, 'guilty of dust and sin'. But in the cool of the day, God walks in the garden and calls out to them 'where are you?'

'Where are you?'

That's the question God asks of each of us.

Its arguably the most profound question in the Bible. 'Where are you?'

Dare we answer?

'But what if...?'

The rub is, of course, that he already knows exactly where we are, why we are hiding, and, most frighteningly, what we are hiding. And yet his love for each of us remains infinitely deeper than our worst fear. This is the Mystery of God: how is it possible for God to know what we are really like and still love us?

The question, then, is whether we are willing to be found...

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the 12th Sunday after Trinity 2024

Poem: 'The Raven' by Norman Nicholson

OT: 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14

NT: Eph 5:15-20

Gospel: John 6:51-58

It is the simplest of things. But at what point did he cross a threshold? Was it the glance? No, that was impulsive, accidental coincidence and he was shocked. Was it when he became transfixed, rooted to the spot, unable to tear his eyes away? Surely not – such beauty is created to be beheld, and how he appreciated such delectable beauty. Perhaps it was when he couldn’t shake the image of her from his mind as he lay on his bed that night? No, he hadn’t done anything wrong, it couldn’t have been then. But of course, everything starts in the imagination…

Years later, David’s heir was to say ‘If anyone looks at a woman lustfully he has already committed adultery with her in his heart…’

But just now, he had absolutely no idea how that lingering gaze was to lead to the destruction, not only of his family, but of the entire kingdom of Israel. No one did.

The nature of sin is that it reaches out in unexpected ways to enmesh, suck in, cling to, like tentacles that drag us down to the deep. It feeds on darkness and deception, jealousy and self-interest, fear and guilt. It destroys trust, faithfulness, honesty and kindness, generosity and love. How do we identify sin? Easy. It always has ‘I’ at the centre: s-I-n.

The trouble is, we don’t even see this as an issue any more. The new Olympian mantra repeated over and over is ‘I’m really proud of myself.’ At other times we say ‘I deserve it’, or ‘I’m worth it,’ as we desperately try to suppress the niggling doubt that we're not. Others tells us ‘you need to forgive yourself’ as if we have the right or the power, or to ‘love yourself’, but love means laying down your life for another, so how does that work?

All of these point to a reversal of the true nature of love, a dependence and centring on the self instead of God and others; a distortion and corruption of the source of life into an imploding, self-destructive force that ultimately leads to the annihilation, not only of ourselves, or of our communities, or even society, but of entire species, ecosystems, and the climate. In a word, death.

And so the Bread of life enters our deep, dark, tentacled world to bring us back up to the surface, where we can gulp the Spirit, and breathe at last in the light…

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the 9^th Sunday after Trinity, 2024 (Year B)

Poem: 'The Bright Field' by RS Thomas

OT: 2 Sam 11:1-15

NT: Eph 3:14-end

Gospel: Jn 6:1-21

But what was realised? Who noticed? Notoriously, Herod became furious when he realised he was tricked by the magi, and sent his soldiers to slaughter all the boys aged two and under in and around Bethlehem, perhaps between six and twenty children, in the hope of killing the baby Jesus and eliminating any competition for his throne.

But apart from the magi and the shepherds, we are not told of anyone else having a clue about the significance of Jesus' birth. Some 'epiphany'!

TS Eliot, in his famous poem 'Journey of the Magi', takes up this theme of the enigmatic nature of the Epiphany, telling it as a story seen from the perspective of the magi. But it is a journey riddled with pain, difficulty, and disappointment. There are moments that flicker with hope, 'Then at dawn...', but they soon fade back into the grey dampness of the cold world. They wander, searching, through the valley of the shadow of Christ's death, unknowingly, until they reach their moment of 'epiphany': 'It was (you may say) satisfactory' in the most underwhelming of climaxes.

The journey, however, is for us. We are Eliot's magi, on what seems a hard, bitter, and foolish journey with almost nothing to show at the end, except a morsel of bread made from the flour from 'the mill beating the darkness', and the wine from 'the vines-leaves over the lintel' and the 'empty wine-skins' being kicked under the table. But the encounter changes us, and we are left having died and been born again, no longer at peace with the idolatry of the world around us, waiting, longing for the old white horse in the meadow to, at last, carry its white rider...

The Bewcastle benefice sermon for the first Sunday of Epiphany 2024.

Dare we pray the prayer? Dare we not?

Bewcastle Benefice sermon for Advent Sunday 2023.

Poem: 'Advent Calendar' by Rowan Williams

OT: Isaiah 64:1-9

NT: 1 Cor 1:3-9

Gospel: Mark 13:24-end

But many of us do experience the depth of darkness of physical or emotional pain, loneliness, loss, or other forms of suffering. It can seem like a place without end, without hope, devoid of joy or happiness, no 'light at the end of the tunnel', just continual darkness. For some, the weight of bearing pain, or caring for others, can be relentless, lasting for years, For others, traumatised by experiences of years ago, or who have suffered abuse of one form or another, it can seem like being trapped in a suffocating cage from which there is no way out.

Paul, in his letter to the church in Rome, grapples with the depths on his own failure as a human being. Although he begins with a summary of the mess the world is in (chapter 1), describing our struggles with fallenness, he descends further and further into the darkness of our own, and ultimately his, sinful nature (chapter 7) - "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

It is true that he passes the beautiful corals of Christ's work on his way down (chapters 5 and 6), and they hint at the treasure below. But he must make that descent himself first, before he can find the pearl of great price for which he seeks in the darkness of his innermost despair.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the 8th Sunday after Trinity, 2023

Poem: 'The Bright Field' by RS Thomas

OT: Gen 29:15-28

NT: Rom 8:26-end

Gospel: Mat 13:31-33,44-52

But perhaps it was the dreaming for which they were chosen? All of them 'heard' God speak words of promise. What does it mean to 'hear' God? How do you know it's God speaking and not your own imagination, or madness? Then again, they were all exceptionally wealthy, so perhaps they weren't mad after all.

But Jacob has fled from his brother, having deceived his father into giving him the blessing of the firstborn, which his brother, in a moment of rash stupidity (and probably joking), had agreed to give him in exchange for a bowl of stew, and been sent off by his mother to her brother's household in search of a wife.

Alone and in the darkness of the wilderness, Jacob dreams a dream: God promises to bless his offspring and the whole world. So he calls the place 'beth-el', house of God.

But what, really, is this 'house of God' that Jacob attempts to locate in the wilderness? Paul, in his majestic letter to the Romans, unpacks the promise, and our place in it.

Poem: 'Seabirds' Blessing' by Alice Oswald

OT: Gen 28:10-19a

NT: Rom 8:12-25

Gospel: Mat 13:24-30, 36-43

We love stories. From our earliest days to old age we love listening to, and telling, stories. They are how we make sense of the world around us, how we first encounter 'others' in our imaginations, and they are how we form our collective memories that bind us as societies. Jesus was a master story-teller; his stories, called parables, played off the collective stories familiar to his listeners, and turned out to be enigmatic, challenging, full of surprises and unexpected outcomes. His stories are crafted to disrupt in order to allow light to enter the dark places of our hearts.

The problem, though, is that the darkness in our hearts only enters through stories as well. Bad stories. Stories that speak against, stories of victimisation and discrimination, of separation and boundaries, stories that reinforce prejudice. These are the stories that feed self-pity and blame others. We see it all around in families, local communities, society, politics, nations. At every scale stories feed and shape our beliefs.

The story Jesus tells is of the end of all these dark stories and the beginning of the new story, which is the oldest one of all. It is the story of death; Christ's death, our death. And then birth, with the offering of a new beginning, where, like children, we learn there are no borders other than in the mind. 'There is no Jew or Gentile, no slave or free, no male or female, for we are all one in Christ.' This is the nature and gift of baptism. The new story is of the unquenchable love of God poured into the world, poured into our hearts.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Trinity (Year A).

Poem: 'The Island of The Children' by George Mackay Brown

OT: Gen 21:8-21

NT: Rom 6:1b-11

Gospel: Mat 10:24-39

So many of us are nervous souls, battered down by cares and worries, apprehensive for loved ones or ourselves. The experience of hurt and disappointment has left us timid and small. The adventure of childhood has long since been buried to allow us to cope with our journey towards the end. The thrill of life is now often found only in a book or on a screen. We manage our environments as best we can - warm homes, stocked cupboards, comfortable cars. Even so, financial worries still fret away - will we be able to afford next month? Church, too, is sedate and safe, routine and reassuring. Danger is best avoided with a thorough risk assessment. Our small worlds are contracted to a single stone in a bare field.

The wilderness is a long way from here. Thankfully?

I read a poem recently, about Christ being crucified on "the skull of the world". It's reference, of course, to the hill on which he was crucified, called 'Golgotha', meaning 'place of the skull.' But it captures something far deeper about the deadness of the world, the deadness of humanity, on which and for which he died. The poem goes on to speak of the one who hungered yet fed others, who thirsted while inviting others to come to him to drink, who raised the dead to life while dying himself. As the mockers so astutely put it 'he saved others, he cannot save himself.' How? And why?

Christ lived under the thundering cataract of God, the swirling presence of the Holy Spirit. We have been given so many images of this Spirit; water, wind, fire, and none of them are comfortable, not even the dove, who 'drove' Jesus out into the wilderness. And yet the Spirit is called the Comforter.

Perhaps its time we rediscovered this Spirit of God.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for Pentecost, Year A.

Poem: a few verses from 'Little Gidding' by TS Eliot

NT: Acts 2:1-21

Gospel: John 20:19-23

So begins a song by Leon Rosselson about Gerard Winstanley and the first Diggers - one that I sometimes sing at our folk evenings. The Diggers arrived at St George's Hill in Weybridge, Surrey, in April of 1649 as a small group of men and women who had lost their homes during the Civil War and due to Enclosure. By August they had been driven from the land by nearby landowners and resettled a short distance away at Cobham, still in Surrey. By April of the next year the local clergyman, another landowner, had managed to force them off that land also. It is a sorry and uncomfortable tale.

For such a briefly-lived movement, the Diggers have had an astonishingly disproportionate influence, still inspiring young and old alike. That fact, alone, speaks of a resonance deep within us that yearns for a different way of being in the world.

Winstanley's own inspiration, itself, came from the book of Acts, chapter 2, verses 44-45:

And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 
And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, 
as any had need. 

But this wasn't the first time in English history that the Bible had been the inspiration for understanding the equality of all. In 1381 the Peasant's Revolt was stirred by the preaching of the priest John Ball, credited with the first protest rhyme in the English language, "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?" Ball worked alongside John Wycliffe, who was translating the Bible into the English vernacular for the first time in history. Now the Word of God was reaching the Commoners and it was dangerous stuff.

This is some of the history with which we have to contend when we read Acts 2. It is difficult because we don't take it very seriously any more - it poses far too much of a threat to our established way of life. So we hide behind excuses like 'history proves its entirely impractical to live like that anyway.' And its true, many attempts to live a 'common life' have ended in failure.

Many, but not all. Monastic communities have been since the first centuries of the Church's existence as a continuation of precisely this description of the Church in Acts. They still continue today. Of course, there are multiple notorious examples where these 'communities' have been farcical mockeries, even evil parodies, of their calling through history. But there are also countless others, untold and unsung, where true life has been lived.

The question then falls to us as to how we are to respond because, despite what we may tell ourselves, possession and wealth are not the answer the world would have us believe, and that, generally, we are inclined to accept. If we were, somehow, to find a way of walking to a different drum, what would the world look like then...

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter.

Poem: 'Sudden Shower' by John Clare

NT: Acts 2:42-47

Gospel: John 10:1-10

So how do we choose what to hope for? How do we know who or what to trust and believe in? A topical question in a world of 'fake news'. A cynic's answer might be to trust no one but yourself. But only the arrogant would be so foolish, for we all die, and what is 'hope' that ceases to exist when we do?

Those seven miles of the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus were the seven miles of holiness. On them, the unknown stranger picked up the broken pieces of shattered hope and started reshaping the story in which they had hoped, had believed, had been destroyed. And at the end of those seven miles an extraordinary new vista emerged, a new hope, a greater hope, a hope that filled their hearts with burning. And then the bread is broken, and the burning bursts into sudden, blinding light. Now, at last, they know who they believe in...

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the third Sunday of Easter (Year A).

Poem: 'I saw him standing' translated from the Welsh of Ann Griffiths by Rowan Williams

NT: Acts 2:14a, 36-41

Gospel: Luke 24:13-35

We may think we know. And perhaps we can know enough, and that is enough.

It is called Love.

But the consequence of his coming is beyond our wildest imaginings. All that terrifies us evaporates as the mist in the morning sun. The clouds break open and the sudden shaft of sunlight reveals the brightest of fields. Eternity has inrupted our time-delimited existence. There is no more need for violence or greed, for insecurity or fear, for domination and manipulation, for the quest for power or wealth or freedom; all the trappings of a death-infested world. The Dawn of a new world has woken and we are invited to tread in his wake. The painting has come to Life.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for Easter Morning, 2023.

Poem: 'Love (3)' by George Herbert

NT: Acts 10:34-43

Gospel: Matt 28:1-10

So when Jesus says to Martha, 'do you believe?', he is challenging the story by which she lives, the story that defines her understanding of what is real. 'I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe me?' And then the Spirit blows, and breath comes to the dry bones. Our reality cracks, splits, shatters, and Life flows in. So the soil that we are learns how to Breathe once again.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A

Poem: 'The Desert Speaks' by Cynthia Fuller

OT: Ezek 37:1-14

NT: Rom 8:6-11

Gospel: John 11:1-45

John's Gospel is the gospel of the Spirit. Jesus has been speaking to Nicodemus about the Spirit blowing beyond the boundaries. How far beyond? This is the first woman we encounter in John's Gospel after his mother. Not only is she a woman, but worse, she's a Samaritan. And although the conversation begins enigmatically, Jesus turns a key and unlocks her to open to the Spirit. John is showing us how Jesus pushes the boundaries, not just beyond Mount Gerazim of the Samaritans, but beyond the Temple of Jerusalem. He has replaced the Temple as the meeting place of God, and the Anointed Agent of the Spirit of God. The living waters of the Holy Spirit in the Sinai desert flow from him who is the rock and the manna, Jesus, the bread of heaven. This is heady stuff.

And the work of the Spirit? To restore us to the likeness of God - to love the world unconditionally, just like him who gave his Son to bring us home.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent (Year A).

Poem: 'I am the Great Sun' by Charles Causley

OT: Ex 17:1-7

NT: Rom 5:1-11

Gospel: John 4:5-42

"Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us?" Yet still they did not recognise him.

I wonder how often that has happened to us? This ancient Gaelic Rune of Hospitality comes from the west Highlands of Scotland:

I saw a stranger yesterday.
I put food in the eating place -
Drink in the drinking place -
Music in the listening place -
And in the blessed name of the Triune
He blessed myself and my house,
My cattle and my dear ones.
And the lark said in her song,
Often, often, often goes the Christ
   in the stranger's guise.

Our final reading from Bede's Life of Cuthbert. We discover, surely with a smile on Bede's face, that Cuthbert was a useless builder, and the repairs made by Aethilwald, his successor on Farne, weren't much better. Bede is circumspect about Cuthbert's involvement in this last miracle; indeed, he is always careful, in every account, to ensure we understand that it is God who performs the miracle. The saints in heaven are merely the ones interceding on our behalf. Here we see the Church, of which Cuthbert was but a part, continuing, working, and praying. And, as Bede says in his closing sentence, "Almighty God, in this present age, is wont to heal many, and, in time to come, will heal all our diseases of mind and body; for he satisfies our desire with good things, and crowns us for ever with lovingkindness and tender mercies."

It’s different in each of the Gospels. In Luke, Mary Magdalene and a group of at least four other women go to the tomb, enter it, and meet two angels, but no Jesus. In Matthew, two women, Mary Magdalene and another Mary, go to the tomb, experience an earthquake and meet a single angel sitting on the stone that used to seal the tomb, who invites them to go in and have a look. Then they meet Jesus on the way back. In Mark, three women reach the empty tomb, enter and find a single angel sitting at one end, and run away, terrified. In John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene goes alone, finds the tomb empty, runs to tell Simon Peter and John, returns behind them, and after they’ve gone, the angels turn up and she then meets Jesus, mistaking him for the Gardener.

The utter confusion of what actually happened is the most compelling evidence that it actually did. How could it be any other way? Who remembers the details? Who was there? What was the order of events that morning? How many angels? Were there angels? The stone was rolled away! The tomb was empty! It was THE LORD!!! Nothing else matters. He is risen! Shock. Disbelief. No. It cannot be. It's impossible. Yes, I know he said it, but he didn't mean this. Did he?

The trees in the painting begin to move in the wind. Clothes on the static figures ripple in the breeze. Colours start to shift and change, as the painting comes to life, like the picture on the wall in chapter one of CS Lewis' 'Voyage of the Dawntreader.' We are treading a new dawn into a new world. This is the 8th Day. The painter has arisen.

A young man develops paralysis that spreads from his feet, progressively moving upwards through his body, which weakens daily, causing him to struggle to breathe, until he is completely paralysed, able to move only his mouth. Sounds like Guillain-Barré syndrome, and in extreme cases patients need ventilation. After a few weeks or months patients usually start a gradual improvement, and within a year most people have fully recovered.

In this case, however, Cuthbert's shoes are taken from his coffin and placed on the lad's feet. His breathing instantly improves and he falls into a calm sleep. Those keeping watch over him that night observe the healing taking place, noticing first one, and then the other leg twitching. By the time of Lauds, in the early hours of the morning, he had regained sufficient strength to join the brethren in the chapel, standing for the whole service. This is no ordinary recovery. Extraordinary.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent (Year A).

Poem: 'Instructions for the Desert' by Cynthia Fuller

OT: Gen 12:1-4a

NT: Rom 4:1-5,13-17

Gospel: John 3:1-17

Begun with the visit of the angel to a young lass in Nazareth who said 'yes', the Incarnation of the composer into his composition culminates with this climactic moment. The cosmos cracks and fissures as the Temple curtain is rent in two. Red dwarfs shudder and black holes expirate across a billion trillion galaxies. The composer dies. The colossal terror of unheard dis-chord shatters the silence of icy darkness. The fabric of the space-time continuum ruptures, collapsing in to single point of historical particularity as spirit and matter are united in the agony of a moment of utter isolation. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. All words end in silence. There is nothing that human speech can offer. The unbearable weight of darkness has descended. This is the nature of sin.

Matter and spirit are inseparable. The Creator breathed life into the soil. Cuthbert is dead, has been dead for over a decade, yet his body still retains a connection with his spirit while awaiting resurrection. In a similar way to an icon, it acts as a conduit between the material and spiritual worlds. Cuthbert is present, and can be greeted and talked to as a member of the same body of Christ. Like any fellow Christian, he can be asked to intercede on our behalf, 'would you pray for me?' This is what the clergyman of Bishop Willibrord Clement believed, what all the early church believed across the world. It seems his belief was vindicated and his request effective.

Cuthbert is barely mentioned in today's short reading. Instead, we hear of Eadberht, bishop of Lindisfarne, who sang his paean of Cuthbert in yesterday's chapter, becoming progressively more ill and dying. The Anglo-Saxon saints, along with the rest of the early Church, had a completely different view of Christian suffering to us. For them, pain and illness, although not to be sought, was participation in the suffering of Christ on the Cross, carrying their cross as Jesus commanded, in order to bring healing back into the world. A quick or sudden death, therefore, cheated them out of this privilege, meaning that they were somehow found to be unworthy of sharing in Christ’s work. The granting of Eadberht’s wish, to die through a ‘long and wearing illness’, gave him the right to be buried close to Cuthbert’s uncorrupted body, as he, too, had been found worthy of sharing in Christ’s redeeming work. Bede's final comment says it all: 'the very clothes worn by [Cuthbert], both in life and in death, have still the power to heal.' Eadberht has found his healing.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind us of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

– T.S. Eliot, East Coker IV, Four Quartets

Christ; the wounded surgeon, dying nurse. Adam; the ruined millionaire. Sin; the disease. Death; the Cross, our baptism.

The year is 698AD, eleven years after Cuthbert's death, and time for his 'Elevation'. His body has been in the ground sufficiently long for the worms to have done their work, such that his clean bones may now be translated to the church in a new casket. But, terrifyingly, the monks find his body untouched, looking as if asleep, and his clothes bright and fresh.

The 'wooden casket' they had prepared is the one still on display in the Museum at Durham Cathedral. It may be that the Lindisfarne Gospels, dedicated to St Cuthbert and created in this period, were to be blessed and read publicly for the first time at his Elevation.

Eadberht is carrying out his Lenten fast on the tiny St Cuthbert’s Isle just next to Lindisfarne. His paean is beautiful and poignant in its heartfelt wonder. In it, he links the preservation of Cuthbert’s body with the resurrection (Jonah in the fish), being called by God to be his own (Israel in the desert), protection through the fire of judgement (Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego), and Christ’s second coming. This is no disembodied existence – the inseparable but personal link between the saint’s material and spiritual existence acts as a conduit for the healing power of heaven to be made present. The saint, being in Christ’s presence, means Christ’s presence is also here.

Cuthbert may be dead, but his body, like that of Jesus, was integral to his life of holiness and, more than this, being made of the soil of the earth, again like that of Jesus, creation was being sanctified through it. Even after his death, his body retains a connection with his spirit, as it awaits resurrection. And through this connection God’s Holy Spirit works its healing power through soil and water on a poor lad suffering from some terrible mental illness. There is a profound integration of matter and spirit here.

Cuthbert has died. News of his death is relayed from Farne to Lindisfarne by torches, as the monks on both islands are singing Psalm 59 at Lauds. (This is psalm 59 in the Vulgate version of the Bible, the version translated into Latin by Jerome in the fourth century, and used throughout the Western Church at that time. In our modern version of the Bible it is psalm 60.) But Cuthbert’s death results in the fragmentation of the community, dissension and division. It seems the peace and concord between the Iona and Roman groups embodied in Cuthbert, and for which he longed and prayed, was too fragile to last without his wise hand at the tiller, until another godly leader was found in Eadberht, a year later.

Although Bede doesn't say it, perhaps out of deference, it was Wilfred who took over the episcopal mantle for the year after Cuthbert's death, and as he demonstrated at the Synod of Whitby, he was vehemently opposed to any hint of the Irish practices that still lingered in the old Irish monasteries, of which Lindisfarne was the principle. Neither was he noted for his grace towards others.

Cuthbert was buried in the church on Lindisfarne.

Not least Judas. Only God knows Judas' heart. What went through his mind? When did the thrill of following Jesus turn sour? When did the soaring delight of seeing the lame leap, the blind ecstatic, the bereaved overjoyed, become ordinary for him? How had his ideas and dreams become so fixed and hardened that the Spirit couldn't penetrate? Or was he just trying to force Jesus' hand? He never intended the betrayal to end in execution. But after years of following Jesus, how had he not seen that reality lies in the realm of the spirit, that the political is a usurping echo of the real? But then again, neither had any of the other disciples Perhaps their vision just wasn't as radical. A tortured soul. Only God, the lover, knows.

We have reached Cuthbert's last night. This is the end. Or the beginning? Weak and frail, wracked with pain, struggling to breathe, to speak. Disintegrating and screaming muscles still under the command of an iron spirit, tempered by years of discipline. He spends his final, disease-ridden moments lying in the corner of his tiny oratory, opposite the altar. Herefrith is with him, and through the course of the day, coaxes some halting words as a final legacy. "Strive to ensure all your decisions are achieved with unanimity." He receives the sacraments in the evening, and then, arms outstretched, releases his spirit. This is a holy death, in peace, pain, and virtual solitude, but with the unseen company of heaven present – Cuthbert is going home.

Medical examination of his remains in 1899 suggest his body was riddled with tuberculosis.

Which is what is going on in the Anglo-Saxon understanding of illness and disease. We may try and smugly say they had no other choice but to find an explanation to help them accept suffering and make sense of a God of love, but we have medicine and opiates now, so we can, generally, either heal the disease or ease the pain; we don't need those sorts of explanations any more. Yet look beyond, and we will see the penetrating logic of their understanding - the whole of creation is one. Cuthbert, in his pathetic weakness, is still imbued with the Spirit of wholeness, health, and healing. Jesus's words were just as true for Cuthbert as for us, 'Not a hair of your head shall be harmed.'

Many pious people, and indeed the orthodox teaching of many churches, claim it is blasphemous to say Christ was really tempted in the desert, since he was fully God and God can't be tempted by evil. No, he just appeared to be tempted in order to vanquish the devil.

But Jesus was also fully human, and the writer to the Hebrews says that he 'suffered when tempted' and was 'tempted as we are but without sin.' In fact there was no point in going into the desert to be tempted if he wasn't!

So what was the point? Why was the Son of God, straight after his baptism in the River Jordan by his cousin, John, 'driven' by the Holy Spirit into the desert to be tempted? And what's it got to do with us in the here-and-now anyway?

St Paul, in his brilliant letter to the Romans, paints it as a cosmic recapitulation of the Creation story, in which we, who struggle with the age-old temptations of self-sufficiency and independence, being 'clothed' with Adam and Eve, instead become clothed with Christ.

Heavy? Not really. It's actually just about our daily Bread.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the First Sunday of Lent (Year A).

OT: Gen 2:15-17. 3:1-7

NT: Rom 5:12-19

Gospel: Matt 4:1-11

The Pharisees and the scribes have all had their go at trying to catch Jesus out and find a pretext for having him arrested. Now its the turn of the other major sect, the Sadducees. They ask their knock-down question that proves the stupidity of the notion of 'resurrection'. It is interesting that, after Jesus annihilates the Sadducees, when the scribes seek to congratulate him, he turns on them. He has absolutely no interest in playing to the power structures. He is the great leveller, raising the poor widow up to a greater place of worthiness than all the wealthy. Remember that prosperity was seen as a sign of God's blessing, as poverty and suffering were taken as an indication of God's judgement on sinfulness. Jesus completely overturns their presumptions.

Cuthbert only has a few months left to live after he lays down his episcopal mantle. The scene is pitiful and desperate, the suffering cruel and intense. Yet they all see it as part of the path towards wholeness and holiness. The detail in its austerity is excruciating, from the suppurating feet to the half-eaten onion. Cuthbert's last days are as glamorous as Christ's passion. (Note that the Bede in the story is not the same Bede telling the story).

The battle of wits - one of the Pharisees great games. But they picked the wrong fight. Their question, of course, was designed to be impossible to answer. If Jesus said 'yes' to paying taxes to Caesar, he clearly wasn't the Messiah, as everyone knew the Messiah would come to restore Israel to its place of independence and glory by expelling the Romans, and his support would evaporate as the morning mist. If he said 'no', he would be guilty of inciting insurrection and imprisonment. His answer is literally stunning - they are silenced. But Jesus' challenge remains to us.

Cuthbert at last lays down his shepherd's crook and retreats to the solitary life on Farne that, again, isn't quite so solitary as he would like. Monastic obedience, to those of us outside the 'religious' life, can appear restrictive and claustrophobic. But it is designed to overcome the stubborn wilfulness in each of us that is called 'pride' and 'independence'. We tend to value our independence as our freedom. But the paradox is that freedom is not found in independence: it is found in service to the Creator, for only here, as we learn to love, can our beings truly flourish and become all that the Creator intended us to be. The hanging goose is merely the foil for the lesson.

"Teacher, rebuke your disciples"

"I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out."

Indeed they would. The very fabric of creation shudders at the presence of her creator. This is the most explicit claim Jesus allows to be made of his real identity, hidden for so long . Perhaps he allows it knowing that it will so upset the religious elite that it will precipitate his arrest and execution. In any case, the king of his parables returns home and weeps over his people. His pain is tangible. The spiritual desensitisation of God's chosen people happens while still thinking they are God's chosen people, as they split hairs over the meaning of 'the law'. So they think its okay to sell Temple money (at a profit) in the Temple to use for buying the animals acceptable for sacrificing in the Temple, exploiting the poor in the process - in the very place where the poor should be safest. No wonder he is angry. But where do the poor and destitute come today?

Cuthbert continues his final rounds of the diocese. He has come down river to the mouth of the Tyne, likely to the monastery at South Shields, just downstream of the Jarrow monastery (where Bede lived when he wrote this Vita). It was probably the previous monks of this monastery for whom Cuthbert prayed as a young lad when they got into trouble floating their logs back down the river, before he entered the religious life (Day 3). Abess Verca, who governed the monastery, also gave Cuthbert the shroud, which he kept, and in which he was wrapped after he died. This story of water into the most exquisite wine is clearly intended to remind us of Jesus' similar miracle, although not quite on the same scale. Nevertheless, here, as in John's Gospel, it is also a story of preparation for the forthcoming wedding feast (his death).

There was clearly something going on in Zacchaeus' heart before Jesus arrived in Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. Being extremely wealthy, and despised by everyone except others in his profession, wasn't the life he wanted; he was looking for a way out. He will have heard how Jesus touches lepers, welcomes children, talks to Samaritans, walks with prostitutes, eats with tax collectors, and castigates the religious elite. Here is a man who lives on the edge of society, yet exhibits the presence of God. So this dignified little man runs ahead and climbs a tree in order to see the wandering, healing rabbi. The story is so well known and equally as comical. But every time we hear it, Jesus' pronouncement of salvation never fails to fill the heart with joy.

And then comes another parable about Israel failing to share the gift of God, which was designed to multiply his blessing to the whole of his creation, in the same way that a single smile can spread through a room and change the world. Now it applies to us as well...

Like Jesus insisting on letting the children come, and being unafraid of touching lepers, Cuthbert, in the midst of the plague, approaches a young mother, already bereaved, cradling her dying baby, and kisses him. These are the dangerous outsiders, the ones for whom (anti)social distancing was invented. But personal safety was of no interest to Cuthbert - he was unafraid of death. In fact, he was looking forward to passing through the door to meet Eternal Life. So he was free to live and to love.

Reminds me of a short poem by the American poet, Emily Dickinson:

The Blunder is in estimate.

Eternity is there

We say, as of a Station —

Meanwhile he is so near

He joins me in my Ramble —

Divides abode with me —

No Friend have I that so persists

As this Eternity.

Jesus keeps repeating these warnings about 'being ready', and his coming at 'an unexpected hour'. Ordinary, everyday life just continues as it always has done, as it always will, one day followed by the next. Up in the morning, dress, breakfast, the routine of the day... And then it happens, without any warning. And when it happens, we move straight towards it without hesitation, without looking back, without saying 'but what if...' What will 'it' look like? Who knows? Only that we'll know it when we see it. And so we persist, learning how to pray, how to 'live' in the knowledge of God's presence with us. And as we do so, we begin to discover joy, deep as the dark salt sea, silent as the cool mountain rock. As one of the Prayer Book morning collects says, 'in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom.'

Cuthbert had blessed some bread and given it to a fellow, who put it in his bag (or pocket?), as you do. The fellow then forgets about it. Some time later he and some friends visit another ailing friend, Hildmer, who was well known to, and beloved by, Cuthbert. He had asked Cuthbert to send a priest to pray for his wife when she was ill, but Cuthbert had come himself after a prompting by the Holy Spirit (Day 15). While sitting around his bed trying to console the suffering man, our fellow suddenly remembers the bit of bread in his pocket, digs it out, tells his friends, and then they pray. They dunk it in some water and give it to Hildmer to drink, who then recovers. Although on one level the story can seem amusing, on another, it is about the participation of the wider body of Christ ('they were all laymen') exercising faith in the sacrament of healing. Cuthbert's only involvement was to bless some bread. If the faithful hadn't exercised faith, the healing wouldn't have happened.

Mountains are metaphors of encounter with God - "who will ascend the mountain of the Lord?" asks the psalmist. The Ark on Mt Ararat. Moses on Mt Sinai. Elijah on Mt Carmel. Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. The Sermon on the Mount.

These encounters of creature with Creator burn through us, transforming us into our true selves, revealing our true natures, and liberating us from the terrifying guilt most of us know we are too frightened to face. And so begins our journey from self-centredness to love, from isolated individual to catholic priesthood, from mere resemblance to true personification, from fallen image to risen likeness.

But encounters are transient, momentary. In a blink they are gone. Did it really happen? All that is left is an indelible mark on our soul, and a piton driven into our memory. But that piton acts as a life-saving anchor. When we slip, lose our grip and fall, they hold us fast. They are God's timeless presence with us. Always.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the Sunday before Lent (Year A)

Poem: 'The Incarnation, And Passion' by Henry Vaughan

OT: Exodus 24:12-end

NT: 2 Peter 1:16-end

Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9

Nuns fleeing the barbarian army. Some things never change. Cuthbert finds them a home, but one of them, a relative of one of Cuthbert's priests, Aethelwald, has a severe illness. It's a simple story of prayer and anointing, the sort of thing that goes on in the Church all the time, and has done since her earliest days. Sometimes the healing takes place this side of the curtain, as here, sometimes the other, but always the healing happens. Remember Easter? We now see through the torn curtain into the other side.

Cuthbert is both a pastoral and a monastic bishop. In this, he follows in the footsteps of one of his, and Bede's, favourite Fathers of the Church, St Gregory the Great - the first Pope from a monastic background. Despite having a diocese that stretches from the East coast to the West, and travelling generally by foot, he still finds time to visit individual parishioners. In this story, Bede deliberately draws the parallel with Jesus' healing of Peter's mother-in-law in Matthew's Gospel. Bede is telling us this is what it looks like to be a true disciple of Christ in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria.

Which is precisely what Jesus is talking about to the crowds that follow him. Count the cost, for cost there will be. Carry the cross, the symbol of brutal and painful death through the persecution of the world. For in some way, our suffering with Christ as his bride and body, brings wholeness and holiness into the world. That is the point of talking about salt.

In the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, Jesus presents himself as both a shepherd and a housewife. But what astonishes is the extraordinary joy and delight, beyond any ridiculous measure of comparative value, of the return of one who was lost - the whole of heaven celebrates. Over even just one of us. Something to ponder there, and allow it to sink in.

Cuthbert is aware that the hour of fulfilment of his prophecy to Aelfflaed concerning her brother, King Ecgfrith, is drawing near. So he goes to Carlisle to be with the queen, to be with her when it happens. As it happens, he is on a tourist trip round the city (still worth a visit, incidentally), when the event takes place. What is especially interesting here, though, is the manner in which he senses the battle and the king's death: the whole of creation shudders, although only Cuthbert can feel it, being so close to it through his life of prayer. It brings to mind St Paul's description in Romans 8 of creation groaning, waiting for the redemption of the children of God.

Healing on the Sabbath (again), weddings and banquets. But who is invited? It turns out, everyone. But who will come? Only those who know their need. Reminds me of RS Thomas wonderful little poem, The Kingdom:

It’s a long way off but inside it

There are quite different things going on:

Festivals at which the poor man

Is king and the consumptive is

Healed; mirrors in which the blind look

At themselves and love looks at them

Back; and industry is for mending

The bent bones and the minds fractured

By life. It’s a long way off, but to get

There takes no time and admission

Is free, if you will purge yourself

Of desire, and present yourself with

Your need only and the simple offering

Of your faith, green as a leaf.

The only reason Cuthbert bows to the pressure of everyone requesting him to take the episcopal yoke is because of Boisil's prophesy on his death bed, and the fact that Cuthbert so respected him as a man of God. Although we might read Bede's account of Cuthbert's life as a bishop as a somewhat formulaic recapitulation of Jesus' commands, yet, knowing what we do about his character prior to his appointment, it just doesn't seem out of keeping. We can see him clothing the poor and feeding the hungry, healing the sick and comforting the downcast. And I don't recall the same every being said of his contemporary, Wilfrid, in his hagiography.

Cuthbert and Eata had a long and close relationship. Eata was Abbot of Melrose when Cuthbert first came in from the world. When he founded the monastery at Ripon, he took Cuthbert with him as his guestmaster. When they were kicked out (to make way for Wilfrid) they went back to Melrose together. On his way back to Farne from a visit to Eata, now his bishop, in Melrose, one of Ecgfrith's close warrior companions, a gesith who had probably travelled to Farne with Ecgfrith to persuade Cuthbert to become bishop, asks him to come and heal his gangrenous servant, under the guise of asking for a blessing on his household. Another eyewitness story.

Now recovered from her illness, Aelfflaed meets her dear Cuthbert at the mouth of the Coquet river on the Northumberland coast. She draws from him the prophecy of her brother's death, King Ecgfrith, which must have been playing on her mind, knowing his combative temperament. Going further, she elicits the name of his successor, her bastard half-brother, Aldfrith, then in exile, studying theology in the Irish monasteries. But she knows, too, that her brother wants Cuthbert as his bishop in preference to Wilfrid (of Whitby Synod fame), with whom he (and many others) had fallen out. Wilfrid was the opposite of Cuthbert, loving the pomp and ostentation of the office, travelling to Rome to get papal backing every time he lost his position. The synod, held later that year, unanimously appointed Cuthbert as bishop, but there can be few bishops in the history of the church as reluctant as Cuthbert. He rejects all the letters and messengers sent to him, until even the king had to sail to Farne and get on his knees, begging him to agree. Eventually Cuthbert acquiesces, but in tears, and is consecrated the following Easter. So different to Wilfrid.

We, as human beings, created from the soil of the earth and breathed into by God, thus becoming 'significant', were tasked with being God's image present in his creation, itself just completed as an act of exuberant joy.

Instead, we have made ourselves gods of creation, thinking that 'dominance' means to dominate, rather than exercise the Creator's 'dominus', or Lordship, expressed in the delight and honour of a created world of wonder.

Modernity. Science. Power. Money. All the things that we use to define western progress turn out to be the arrogant antithesis of who we actually are. And the consequence is the environmental disaster we see unfolding before our eyes, still blind to seeing the molecules around us as an interleaving of our very bodies.

So we head to the desert, heads hung low with repentance, and seeking forgiveness from the one who calls us his children. We follow where our Dominus has led...

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the Second Sunday before Lent, Year A.

Poem: 'Cuddy' by Malcolm Guite

OT: Gen 1:1-2:3

NT: Rom 8:18-25

Gospel: Mat 6:25-end

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy." Jesus' words ring out down the centuries, posing an ever greater challenge that rinses the ear. Monasticism was, of course, the Christian community's response to this call from the earliest days in the opening chapters of the Book of Acts. Perhaps it still is.

Jesus is, once again, calling out the hypocrisy of those who, in positions of leadership, should be guiding by example and with compassion. Instead, there is arrogance and pride. If we place ourselves as the Pharisees in these stories they become, once again, terrifying. They are the astringent food of the Lenten desert.

Very practically, Cuthbert wants somewhere sheltered to go to the toilet each day. But the monks bringing his weekly supplies totally forget the necessary floorboards. Not to worry, though, when the sea obliges by throwing up a plank of the right size next morning. It may not seem much to us, but clearly it served a much needed purpose! The point is, though, that, where we perhaps tend to see coincidence, they have different eyes, seeing the wonder of creation in a way we seem to have lost.

Once again, Jesus scandalises his hearers. A parable in which a priest, one who intercedes of behalf of the people before God, and a Levite from the holy tribe of Israel, both fail to love their neighbour, and therefore fail to love God. But a Samaritan, considered a foreigner or Gentile, does. Once again, its the outsiders, those who put compassion above all, who refract the image of God.

Jesus sends out the 72 as 36 pairs (all sorts of interpretations in those numbers). But something extraordinary is afoot - the world is changing as the Kingdom of God draws near. But its still too controversial for some, and prejudice blinds many to see what is before their eyes. We need to be so careful and constantly challenge our own assumptions lest we miss the Spirit of God.

Cuthbert is still building his 'city'. The well of everlasting life is dug in its centre and blessed by God. But the grim realities of the hard life he has chosen are not spared from us. The story of Cuthbert's chiropody is gruesome.

Meanwhile, Cuthbert at last graduates from cenobitic to the eremitic life, from the communal to the solitary. And it was a graduation - only after many years of living under the strict discipline of monastic rule was permission given to a select few to remove from the environs of the community and to venture into the depths of warfare for the world as hermit. This is where the real demons were fought. Still very much a part of his community, but a lone outpost, a lighthouse shining in the depths of the wild storm of the world. But note that it also a 'city' ('civitas') - this is where the heavenly dwelling of God is being proclaimed.

Jesus feeds the crowds with bread and fishes, and the disciples report what the whole country, including Herod, is saying about Jesus' identity. Then Peter utters the ultimate profession, "You are the Christ of God." There it is. But how little he realises what he has said, for then comes the call to participate with Jesus in the redemption of the world, to be partakers with him of Earth's restoration - "take up your cross daily and follow me."

Jesus, of course, is the ultimate bearer of full humanity - completely aligned with God and hence creation. That he can sense power going out of him when the woman touched his cloak means both that Jesus felt the Spirit's activity at work, and that the Spirit in him responded to the woman's faith without Jesus actively performing the healing. This is the judgement of God at work - bringing healing, restoration and joy.

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the story Gerasene demoniac is the conversation Jesus has with the demons. They, terrified of annihilation, 'beg him not to send them into the abyss', and he shows them mercy, sending them into the herd of swine instead. What does this tell us about demons? What does it tell us about Jesus?

The fire on the stand is a metaphor for God's lamp on our lives - nothing that we do is hidden, so take care to put Jesus' words into practice. Its an extension of the parable of the sower. But putting these words into practice brings us into the new Eden, and the garden of God's presence. Hence we become his mother and brothers and sisters. The garden is creation, of which all the elements are a part. Hence Jesus calms the storm on the Sea of Galilee on the way to the land of the Gerasenes.

Jesus' itinerant ministry, and that of his male disciples, is enabled by the sacrifice and continual support of a host of women, most of whom are unsung heroines (not unlike the church of today).

The parable of the sower is another one of those familiar stories where we, perhaps too easily, place ourselves into the category of the good soil. But Lent is precisely the time for re-examing that assumption, and, if we do so, the story suddenly takes on a disturbing quality...

The Gospel story is one of those that deeply attracts us to Jesus both for his compassion and his exposure of hypocrisy. But we mustn't forget the scandal that lies behind it. If the woman was a hardened prostitute or 'sex-worker', what turned her? And what made her think that Jesus would have compassion on her, unless he had already spent much time in the company of women. We get other hints of it, such as at the Crucifixion in Matthew's Gospel, where there was a great crowd of women who had followed him from Galilee.

The Pharisee didn't actually love little; according to Jesus, he didn't love at all. In other words, he had zero concept of his own sin. The only reason he invited Jesus for dinner was to see whether he was what he claimed. But Jesus' rebuke seems to have hit its mark. The fact that the Pharisee is named thrice in the passage, 'Simon', strongly suggests that he became one of Jesus' disciples, at least after the Resurrection, if not before, and was known to Luke. The particulars in the story are unique to Luke, so perhaps it was even he that told him the story.

John the Baptist needs to know whether his cousin is 'the face of the Lord' before whom he, as the prophet of Isaiah 40, has been preparing the way. Jesus' answer to him is to simply look at the evidence and see chapter 61 of Isaiah bursting into life around him in the desert.

But the really remarkable phrase he utters is at the end of our passage - 'Wisdom is justified by all her children.' In other words, look at this evidence and recognise, and understand, whose fruits these are. Here Jesus claims to be Wisdom, the creator, healer and restorer, personified throughout the Old Testament, and especially in Proverbs, as the presence of God in his creation - 'I was with God in the beginning...' (Prov 8:22-30). Now that's audacious.

Jesus continues his sermon on the Mount - wonderful in its colour, its pithy stories and amusing analogies. At one moment, encouraging; the next, scathing. But although they are often binary in their presentation (good/bad, wise/foolish), yet their content is subtle - hearing or listening; observing others or observing self, teaching or learning.

Then we move on to two extraordinary healing stories. The first with the centurion, remarkable because he is the first recorded Gentile to approach Jesus for healing, but also because of the insight he draws from watching Jesus' ministry - clearly, if someone can heal, they are validated by God, working under his authority. The second at Nain, because Jesus touches an unclean (dead) body, and remains (ritually) clean, uncontaminated by it, bringing the boy back to life. But only the Temple has the power to cleanse. So what does that make Jesus? It is not lost on those who are observing...

They return to Melrose, but both Boisil and Cuthbert are struck down by the plague. Cuthbert goes on to recover, although with a legacy of lasting pain in his thigh, but Boisil does not. The two spend Boisil's last week together, reading and studying John's Gospel, in preparation for Boisil's forthcoming elevation to Glory.

In the final words of the chapter we discover one of the great demons with which Cuthbert wrestled his entire life - the attraction of wealth. Odd for someone who chose to live in such poverty and asceticism, while seeking out the poorest to minister to them. Or perhaps not.

Jesus continually tries to open the eyes of his people to see that the Sabbath is about abiding in God's presence, where healing and wholeness belong (hence whole-iness, from which our word 'holiness' derives), not legalistic interpretations about how many steps you are allowed to walk. That's the point of the 7th Day. But while the ordinary folk hunger and thirst for it, the leaders just can't see it. So we move to Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus, driven out of his home town of Nazareth in the hills, heads north, up to the top end of the Sea of Galilee, to the fishing village of Capernaum, where he settles for a while. From there he gathers his first disciples.

In our story of Cuthbert, we have Bede feeling the need to explain why some people fast on Fridays - the day of the Crucifixion. And this sets the scene for an extraordinary Eucharistic story with the breaking of the bread. This provides the first of our insights, not just into Cuthbert's sensitivity to the animal kingdom, but of his understanding that they are co-recipients with us of God's grace and blessing, and are to be treated with corresponding dignity. Perhaps another lesson we could learn...

While Cuthbert keeps vigil as the other shepherds sleep, he sees a sight that will change his life for ever - angels carrying the soul, as he was later to discover, of the great Aidan, bishop of Holy Island, bringer of Christianity to the northern Saxons.

In the gospel, Jesus, as a young lad, but now in the first year of his Jewish manhood, exercises his new adult independence, and perplexes his parents in the process - three days in the Temple in Jerusalem, a foreshadowing of the three days in the womb of the Earth. Then we move on to "the voice of one crying in the wilderness", where we, in our Lenten walk, are now metaphorically venturing.

In our Gospel, Christ is born. The shepherds watching their sheep on the hill see a vision of angels that changes their lives, just as Cuthbert, watching his sheep on the hill, will tomorrow (day 4). With Mary and Joseph we then visit the Temple and meet the Spirit-filled older generation of Simeon and Anna - the older we are, the higher up the stairs we have hopefully climbed (none of this nonsense of being 'over the hill'). Simeon and Anna are now ready to enter Glory.

However, in this episode Cuthbert is in excruciating pain from a knee injury, no longer able to walk - perhaps the result of an ACL injury from his boisterous games. While lying in the fresh air under a tree, he is approached by a stranger who asks for hospitality. Of course Cuthbert isn't in a position to give it and makes his excuses. But then the stranger turns the tables and offers hospitality instead - the hospitality of God.

St Cuthbert is the Anglo-Saxon saint of northern England who lived in the 7th Century and died in 687AD. He is renowned for his love of God, and his care for, and kindness towards, people and creation, especially animals, and wandered across the north of England from Lindisfarne and Jarrow to Carlisle and the Lakes as monk, abbot, and then bishop, before returning to his life of solitude on the island of Inner Farne, where he died at the age of 53.

Bede wrote his "Life" of Cuthbert, not as a biography, but as a hagiography, firstly to show us why we should revere Cuthbert as a saint, and secondly, more prosaically, to show us what a life in Christ's footsteps looks like in his time and place, and to encourage others, especially monks, to follow where Cuthbert had led. There are 46 chapters in Bede’s story of his life and so there are 46 morning prayers in the series. Bede was a master of numerology and there is no coincidence in the fact that his hagiography is written in 46 chapters and that is the same as the number of days in Lent. He almost certainly wrote as a form of 'Lectio Divina', that is, for monastic contemplation, each day through Lent. In other words, exactly the way we are using it in these times of morning prayer.

There is no record of Bede ever meeting Cuthbert. He was about 15 when Cuthbert died, but Bede was a monk from a very early age, Cuthbert was his bishop, and the latter made it his business to visit every monastic house in his see when Bede was already a teenager. However, Bede did know many monks who knew Cuthbert well, and his stories are drawn from their recollections of him. Both Cuthbert and Bede are buried in Durham Cathedral, one at either end.

There is much we can learn from our pre-Norman Christian ancestors on this island – they had an immense respect for creation (not fear, as some claim). They saw themselves as part of the whole, but with a special responsibility to care for creation. This shines through in Cuthbert’s life. For example, when Cuthbert was hungry, he shared his food with the animals around him; when he was cold they warmed him; and when they were a nuisance he reprimanded them! In fact, the way in which animals and nature responded to the Anglo-Saxon saints, such as Cuthbert and Guthlac, was one of the main ways of telling that that this was a true follower of Christ and blessed by God. But the saints also understood that the animals were equal inheritors of Christ’s work on the Cross. We see the same idea on the carved faces (iconography) of the Anglo-Saxon stone crosses of Bewcastle and Ruthwell on what is called ‘inhabited vinescroll’, where the beasts and birds share in the fruit of the vine (which, of course, is Christ, the Church, and the Eucharist).

Follow Cuthbert’s story here, and allow it’s slow pace to sink into your spirit…

To understand, we turn to the Gospels. But we can't approach them like any other book because we already know the end before we begin. No, instead we need to see them as secret gardens to explore, with corners populated by extraordinary plants, bursting with exuberant and colour-filled verdure, designed with arrangements that astonish, surprise, shock and delight. These are the gardens of The Word.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the fourth Sunday of Epiphany.

Poem: 'Mother and Child' by Charles Causley

OT: 1 Kings 17:8-16

NT: 1 Cor 1:18-end

Gospel: John 2:1-11

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the Third Sunday of Epiphany.

Poem: 'I Am the Way' by Alice Meynell

OT: Isaiah 9:1-4

NT: 1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Gospel: Matthew 4:12-23

Poem: 'The Darkling Thrush' by Thomas Hardy

Old Testament: Num 6:22-end

New Testament: Gal 4:4-7

Gospel: Luke 2:15-21

Apologies for the sometimes poor quality of the radio mic.

Poems: 'The Offer' by Mark Greene, 'Annunciation' by John Donne

Readings: Gen 3:1-16; Is 9:2,6-7; Lk 1:26-38; Lk 2:1-7; Lk 2:8-16; Mt 2:1-11; Jn 1:1-14

Poem: 'The Coming' by RS Thomas

OT Reading: Isaiah 2:1-5

NT Reading: Romans 13:11-end

Gospel: Matthew 24:36-44

But for all our tradition, does this actually have anything to do with kingship? And who decides what a real king looks like, and how a real king should act? They thought they knew in the 1stC, and it looked a lot like our modern expectations. Have we learned nothing in 2000 years?

This King upends all our notions of royalty and fealty'

Poem: 'The Kingdom' by RS Thomas

Readings: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43

So what does it mean to be 'fully human'?

In the beatitudes, Jesus' "Blessed are..." sayings, he reveals the opposite way to live, being 'poor in spirit', not arrogant; being 'gentle', not a 'task master' or a bully, etc.

But then there is the difficulty of others who treat us as less than human, where we become the 'persecuted'. As was Jesus - and it led to the Cross. How then shall we live?

Poem: 'A Listening Post'; by RE Vernede

Reading: Matthew 5:1-12

Job is devastated by a hurricane of disasters, yet still hopes. The Thessalonian church is persecuted and perplexed, but still believes. The Sadducees know talk of 'life after death' is utter nonsense, and for whom there is no 'yet' or 'but'. In the midst of it all is the God who stills the storm by taking it all into his Son...

Poem: 'Inversnaid' by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Readings:

Old Testament: Job 19:23-27

New Testament: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5,13-end

Gospel: Luke 20:27-38

Poem: 'The Poet' by George Mackay Brown

Readings: Isaiah 1:10-18, Luke 19:1-10

Reading: An extract from "Now, This Bell Tolling Softly for Another , Says to Me: Thou Must Die" by John Donne

Bible Readings: Joel 2:23-end

Luke 18:9-14

Readings: 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19

Poem: RS Thomas 'The Prayer'

Poem: 'A New Child' by George Mackay Brown

Gospel: John 14:1-5

Poem: 'St David' by D Gwenallt Jones

Readings: Hosea 1:2-10

Colossians 2:6-15

Luke 11:1-13

Poem: The Raven, by Norman Nicholson.

Old Testament: 2 Kings 2: 1-2, 6-14.

New Testament: Gal 5:1, 13-25.

Gospel: Luke 9: 51-end.