25th July, 2021

​My dear friends,

Great Bardfield seemed unusually quiet around 8.30am last Thursday morning. None of the usual noise of revving car engines, the slamming of car doors, or the chirping of children’s voices. Then it dawned on me: it was the first day of the school summer holidays. If you are going away for a break, or having a ‘staycation’ at home, may I wish you a happy and safe time.

If I might drop a hint: should you visit a church on your holidays, I am always pleased to see parish magazines from other churches, just in case they contain any good ideas that I can tweak for use in my own parishes.

Like me, I expect you were shocked by the film on the television news showing the devastation wrought by the floods in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany just over a week ago. Our sister order, the Order of Malta, is presently doing sterling service trying to help the victims.

“It’s like a war scenario: there’s no water, no electricity, no internet connection and many roads are impassable,” commented one member of the Order of Malta from north-west Germany.

In addition to the actual rescue operations, members of the Order of Malta are currently providing meals and rest areas for the emergency services, civil protection officers, divers, and police officers. Order of Malta chaplains and other trained specialists are providing psychosocial support for the emergency services, since many rescuers are facing this kind of disaster for the first time.
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I am sure you will join me in praying for our brothers and sisters in the Order of Malta as they carry out their vital work in these flooded areas. We pray, too, for all the victims of flooding, especially in homeless, injured and bereaved, and for all who have lost their lives.
With my continued prayers and all good wishes,

​                                             The Rev. Dr  ROBERT BEAKEN, County Chaplain
ST JAMES THE APOSTLE
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Gospel: St Matthew, chapter 20, verses 20-28
There are several men called James in the New Testament and it is quite easy to get them jumbled up. Today we celebrate the feast of James the Son of Zebedee, also known to us as St James the Apostle, or St James the Great.

            We first encounter James when Jesus began to call his twelve disciples by Lake Galilee. First, the Lord called the fishermen Peter and his brother Andrew and invited them to follow him.
Then, walking a little further along the shore, he spotted James – our James – and his brother John, in their fishing boat with their father Zebedee, mending their fishing nets. Tradition has it that James was fifteen years older than his younger brother John, whom some people think is St John the Evangelist. There is also another interesting family link: tradition has it that Zebedee’s wife, the mother of James and John, was a distant kinswoman of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We shall see more of her in a minute. Anyway, at Jesus’ invitation, James and John left their father, their boats and nets, and followed Jesus.

            James, John and Peter formed a sort of inner group within the twelve apostles. They were particularly close to Jesus and perhaps provided what a later generation would call his support-network. It was not all plain sailing – no pun intended – and these simple fishermen sometimes misunderstood things and made mistakes. For example, when some Samaritans refused to show Jesus hospitality, James and John became indignant and asked Jesus if they should ask God to send fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans? Jesus gently told them that this was not his way, and nicknamed the brothers the ‘Boanerges’ or ‘Sons of Thunder.’

On another occasion, James and John were present when Jesus resuscitated Jairus’ dead daughter; but like many of the others, they failed to understand the nature of Jesus’ Messiahship. When they pictured the Messiah, they imagined a sort powerful warrior-prince, who would boot out the hated Roman invaders, take all the neighbouring countries with their funny religions down a peg or two, and revive the glories of the Hebrew kingdom.

            This mistaken, earth-bound understanding of Christ’s Messiahship becomes especially clear in today’s Gospel. One day Mrs Zebedee, the mother of James and John, came to Jesus with her sons and asked him for a favour: please would he grant James and John a place at his right and at his left in his kingdom. It isn’t clear whether this was all her idea, or whether she was asking on behalf of her sons. What is clear is that they assumed that Jesus was going to establish an earthly kingdom. So, in effect, James’ and John’s mother asked Jesus for good jobs for her boys – she is calling in a favour from her distant kinsman – “keeping it in the family,” we might say Mrs Zebedee wanted her boys James and John to be something like Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, and that his messianic pattern is that of the Suffering Servant, taking away the sins of the world in his sacrifice upon the Cross.

            Jesus responded by telling them that they did not know what they were asking. Could they be baptised with the same baptism with which he was baptised, he asked, or drink from the same cup? Of course they could, the two fishermen replied, not really understanding what Jesus meant by those words. Jesus answered that they might indeed drink from his cup and share his baptism, but it was not his to say who would sit beside him in his kingdom – that was up to God.

            The other disciples were indignant when they heard about this conversation, but Jesus smoothed it all over and reminded them that he came not to be served but to serve.
A little later, James, John and Peter were present at the Transfiguration, when the true identity of Jesus as God’s own Son was revealed to them plainly, without a shadow of a doubt.
Two or three weeks later, on the night of Maundy Thursday, after the Last Supper, James and John found themselves keeping Jesus company during his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane as he waited for Judas and the Temple guard to come and arrest him. There, Jesus prayed ‘Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.’ The cup which James and John had pledged to share with Jesus was the cup of suffering. They saw Christ drink that cup to the very dregs the following day when he offered himself in sacrifice for our sins upon the Cross.

            James and John, like the other disciples, were completely changed by the Resurrection of Christ at Easter. The two men once nicknamed Boanerges, who had suggested calling down fire from heaven to destroy the Samaritans and who had sought good earthly jobs, were changed into apostles. I am tempted to say that they had matured and grown up – but it was more than that. Seeing the risen Lord Jesus did something indescribable to those two men. Henceforth, their whole lives were devoted to spreading the Gospel.

            It is said that James travelled to Spain to preach the Gospel. Once upon a time scholars were a bit doubtful about this, but it now seems that there is no reason why James should not have gone to Spain, a wealthy Roman province with a Jewish diaspora, which was just a boat journey away across the Mediterranean. James is said to have had a dream of the Blessed Virgin Mary, his distant cousin, bidding him return to the Holy Land. He did so, and was beheaded in 44 A.D. by Herod Agrippa, a rather unpleasant character and a sycophantic friend of the Emperor Caligula. James was the first of the twelve to be martyred because of his faith in Jesus Christ.
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            All Christians are on a pilgrimage through life on earth. We each have our own route to follow. We must help our fellow pilgrims along the way. From St James, we learn that sometimes we shall make mistakes, misunderstand things, get wrong ideas into our heads. But God will sort it all out, if we will let Him. At times, we shall have to drink the bitter cup of suffering, but we shall not be alone. Christ has drunk the cup before us, and he will grant us his strength to get by. But if there are Gethsemane moments, there are also Transfiguration moments, when Christ and his love almost overwhelm us, and we glimpse things as they truly are. It doesn’t really matter what position or role we occupy in God’s Church on earth, so long as in the end we get into Heaven.
May the example and the prayers of St James encourage us on our pilgrimages through life. And may we always be concerned for those whom we meet on the way, who are finding the going tough.