Collect

Almighty God, through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ you have overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life:  grant that, as by your grace going before us you put into our minds good desires, so by your continual help we may bring them to good effect;  through Jesus Christ our risen Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

 

A reading from Acts   (11.1-18)

 

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’

    Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ‘I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But I replied, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” But a second time the voice answered from heaven, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven.

    ‘At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.

    ‘These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.” And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’

    When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’

 

This is the word of the Lord.

    Thanks be to God.

 

Psalm 148 [or 148.1-6]

 

1    Alleluia.  Praise the Lord from the heavens;  praise him in the heights.

2    Praise him, all you his angels;  praise him, all his host.

3    Praise him, sun and moon;  praise him, all you stars of light.

4    Praise him, heaven of heavens, and you waters above the heavens.

5    Let them praise the name of the Lord; for he commanded and they were created.

6    He made them fast for ever and ever;  he gave them a law which shall not pass away.

7    Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps;

8    Fire and hail, snow and mist, tempestuous wind, fulfilling his word;

9    Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars;

10       Wild beasts and all cattle, creeping things and birds on the wing;

11       Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the world;

12       Young men and women, old and young together; let them praise the name of the Lord.

13       For his name only is exalted, his splendour above earth and heaven.

14       He has raised up the horn of his people and praise for all his faithful servants, the children of Israel, a people who are near him.  Alleluia.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it is now, and was, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen

 

A reading from Revelation   (21.1-6)

 

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

    And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’

    And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all  things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and

true.’

    Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.’

 

This is the word of the Lord.

    Thanks be to God.

 

Listen to the Gospel of Christ according to St John   (13.31-35)

    Glory to you, O Lord.

 

When Judas had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.

    ‘Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

 

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

    Praise to you, O Christ.

 

Reflection - AE

 

I’ve been away all of this week, walking the Scottish Borders and Northumberland, along St Cuthbert’s Way.  It’s from Melrose to Lindisfarne, about 65 miles, supposedly in the footsteps of St Cuthbert, and it goes through some spectacular landscapes, very varied, through woodland, along rivers and over hills to the sea, and all of it is very beautiful.

 

The weather couldn’t have been better, and although sometimes I walked with other people on the same path, mainly I was walking alone, so as you can imagine plenty of time for thinking, for prayer, for taking the time to be aware in that landscape of the presence of God.

 

We were all aware as we walked of the wildlife around us, skylarks, curlews, someone saw an adder, although the reality is very little of that landscape, like any landscape in Britain, has stayed unaffected by man.

 

Even the hills, when Cuthbert walked across them, would have had many more trees, and the river banks have been carefully managed for fishing.

 

The rivers themselves, though, and the seashore, are much older than even those forests which are now gone, and remaining themselves as they have always been.

 

To cross over to the island of Lindisfarne by the proper pilgrimage route you have to wait for the tide to go out, and then walk across the sand which is just the same now as it was when Cuthbert, and before him Aidan, would have had to walk the same way, and if you can find a rock on the island away from the tourists you can look down the coast towards Bamburgh just as they both would have done, nearly fourteen hundred years ago.

 

I’m sure you can imagine that when you’re in that kind of landscape, just like when you’re around here, it’s much easier to imagine yourself to be nearer to God, and to Heaven, especially when you’ve got the time and the peace to feel God close beside you.

 

People talk about Patricio as a thin place, where God is close by, and those hills are thin places too.

 

What we have to remember, which is more difficult to do, is that God is not only close beside us when we are walking in glorious weather trough grand landscape, or sitting quietly in holy places on the way.

 

Even though we may not hear him, or remember to acknowledge him, God is every bit as close beside us when the background noise is louder than skylarks or curlews.

 

It’s much harder to pray without peace, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t there.

 

In the heat of the steel works, or the darkness of a coal mine, or the chaos of an A&E ward, the noise and fear of a car crash, the screaming and explosions of Ukraine or Gaza now, any of the  places we might describe as Hellish, God is right there beside us too.

 

Every year we have the reminder of Easter, that Jesus went through screaming, tortuous agony and death on Good Friday, and he then went indeed down into Hell, for our sakes.

 

He then broke that inevitability, and rose again, also for us, so that after whatever we have to go through, if we love God and each other, we might rise again too, to be with him in this new earth, the holy city, where death and crying and pain will be no more.

 

After Aidan and Cuthbert walked over the sand to Lindisfarne, they both came back across to bring just that message, back across the sand and all over the North of England, to teach the pagan people there then.  Living out the new commandment from Christ to love one another, they built what became the Christian church across the country to eventually become what it is now, warts and all.

 

They won’t have had many of the comforts along the way that I had, like decent boots, and a nice B&B at the end of each day, but they’d have had that same knowledge of God walking beside them, through good days and bad, as they grew closer to him, and knowing whatever the weather or the landscape, he was there, just as he will be in this new eternity, where God himself will wipe every tear from our eyes.

 

Amen

 

Eternal God, your Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life:  grant us to walk in his way, to rejoice in his truth, and to share his risen life;  who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.  Amen.