Today Bishop Stephen has released his Christmas message:

#FollowTheStar

Bishop Stephen writes:

"Friends, this short video comes to you with my prayers this Christmas. I hope that what ever your personal circumstances are you will be able to pray with me, ‘Jesus, be born in me today and give me your peace.’ And then, as you long for that peace to take root in you, please remember that someone else has prayed this or something very similar and you may be the angel of peace they are needing.

If you would like to hear the hymn I played at the start of the video, here is the link:"

1 December 2022

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I hope that this will be the first of many (albeit not too often) letters from me to all the Baptised and catechumens - Priests, Deacons, Religious and People - who look to the See of Beverley for pastoral and sacramental care while I am your Bishop.

First of all, I thank you all for the prayers and support shown in recent months, weeks and days leading up to the wonderful celebration in York Minster on St Andrew’s Day during which I was consecrated Bishop in God’s Church.  To see so many of you in the Minster was wonderful and encouraging.  I am aware that many of you couldn’t travel to York but were with us all in spirit and prayer:  thank you too.

Let us at all times thank God for one another and seek to constantly support, encourage and build one another up so that, “whether we wake or sleep, we might live with him” who died and rose again.       (1 Thessalonians 5:  9-11)

Many parishes have already made contact with me and plans are underway for some wonderful events this month and beyond.  Please don’t hesitate to contact me and arrange a visit.  There is only one way we will get to know each other and that is for us to be in the same place, around the same Altar and, later, around the same teapot.  Don’t feel that it needs to be a Confirmation, Ordination or Licensing before I’m called upon.  I would be delighted to visit toddler groups, bereavement cafes and foodbanks as well as quiet weekday Masses with a handful of faithful, praying disciples.

The clergy who met me after my appointment was announced heard me speak of St Andrew’s first act of evangelism when he brought his brother Simon – who was to become St Peter – to Jesus, saying, “We have found the Messiah!” (John 1: 41)   It is my hope that as Christians within the See of Beverley we will exhibit that same enthusiasm for Jesus – that our worship, our social action, our conversation, indeed our whole being will exhibit that evangelistic joy and hope.

Joy, because it is Jesus whose life we live and share.  And hope, because the Messiah, the anointed one, is the Saviour for all humanity.  Our communities hope for so much.  We may not be able to fix the cost of living crisis, provide higher wages or manage the energy conundrum, but what we can offer is Jesus and his life giving love:  “I have no silver or gold, but I give you what I have; in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”  (Acts 3: 6)

Please be assured of my prayers as the Advent season unfolds and turns towards Christmas and the celebration of the Incarnation.

Together may we rejoice with Mary and Elizabeth.  With John the Baptist may we proclaim the Way of the Lord and with the Angels may we announce the Good News.

Yours,

+Stephen Beverley

Photo Credit: Advent Wreath in the Chapel of the Community of the Holy Cross, Costock.

Gallery of Photos

Video of the Service

Order of Service

Isaiah 52.7-10

Psalm 19

Romans 10.12-18

Matthew 4.18-22

Sermon by The Rt Revd Dr Martin Warner SSC, Bishop of Chichester

Let’s take a bit of time to think about feet. 

The wife of one of my colleagues has recently given birth and tells me she is delighted to see her feet again.  And a predecessor of mine in Chichester was unable to move away from the city in retirement because the one person who mattered to him above all others, even his wife, was his podiatrist.     

Feet are the limbs furthest from our attention, until they hurt.  On the whole we don’t expose them in polite society, preferring to keep them covered, sometimes at considerable expense.  Yes, Gucci can look great but be bad for your pocket; it can also be damaging to your spiritual health.   

The state of our feet, especially in the grimy streets of our industrial towns and cities, grieved the 19^thcentury Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins.  He reflected on how human labour seemed to disconnect us from nature and to damage the environment, noting that ‘All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil…the soil is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.’  

This might seem at odds with Isaiah’s description of the beautiful feet upon the mountains, quoted by St Paul in his letter to the Romans.  St Paul seems to be quoting from memory and, as is often the case, there is a slight difference between the New Testament quotation and the Old Testament original.   

Isaiah uses a Hebrew word, tov, that describes the feet as ‘good’: good feet bringing good news.  It might not sound as lyrical as St Paul’s version, but it is, perhaps, more powerful in its significance.  

The Hebrew word for ‘good’ describes what God sees with delight, when God calls creation into existence.  Again and again we hear that God sees what God has made and it is ‘good’.  

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the good news of justice and hope and peace is drawn from the experience of being in the presence of God, and most especially through the worship of God in the Temple in Jerusalem.  ‘I was glad when they said unto me: we will go into the house of the Lord.  Our feet shall stand in thy gates, O Jerusalem…Yea, because of the house of the Lord our God: I will seek to do thee good.’ (Ps 122.1,9) 

Stephen, a significant aspect of the ministry that lies ahead of you will demand that you become an apostolic traveller, like St Andrew, bringing Jesus to people and people to Jesus; going into the house of the Lord, wherever it is located, in communities across the north of England in order to strengthen and encourage the people of God in their vocation to be missionary disciples of Jesus Christ.  

The liturgical worship of God is a treasured aspect of our identity in the Church of England and it will be your task to ensure that this inheritance retains its imaginative intelligence and life-giving quality in a secularised culture that can often be hostile and suspicious of the practice of faith.   

Central to our identity as Anglicans is a commitment to open churches offering public worship. This is drawn from the very meaning of the word, ‘liturgical’.  It is a public work, not merely an activity for the like-minded, nervously guarded behind closed doors, fearing challenge and engagement with the unbelieving world for which, let us remember, out of love, Jesus Christ gave his life that all might live.   

The mandate for our worship has already been clearly stated: it is to ensure that with confidence and joy, the Church in each place and time is united with the Church in every place and time.  The social consensus of the day does not determine the convictions and identity of the assembly of the Church in its worship and doctrine, but it does present the context with which we are called to proclaim the gospel afresh, attuned to the language, preoccupations, questions and anxiety of our time.  We should cherish the obligations of compassion and humility that ensure our words will be intelligible and authentic as good news for those, both within and outside the Church, who hear them. 

The oath of canonical obedience, now etched into my memory in a way that I would never have expected, speaks of the use in public worship of what is authorised or allowed by Canon.  It is a phrase that some might regard as a limiting legalism.  That should not be so.  In the Orthodox tradition, the serving together in a common liturgy is an emblem of communion.  But it is more: the words of the liturgy, shaped by holy Scripture that the living tradition, are also a source from which the Orthodox draw much of their doctrine.   

We are not so different.  The sacred texts we use in our worship of God give us words with which to offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.  These authorised words also define the freedom and the limits of theological conviction that belong within the spectrum of the Church of England’s theological identity, while at the same time they commit us to a pattern of behaviour and service that put words into action. 

‘Because of the house of the Lord, I will seek to do thee good.’  This phrase sums up the close relationship between worship and social outreach, love of God and love of neighbour.  

Stephen, many of the parishes entrusted to your pastoral and sacramental care will present the stark challenges of inequality in the life of our nation today – a reality with which you are already familiar.  

The sense of dislocation in Hopkins’ poem lurks beneath the surface of our technological age.  These parishes you will serve are the treasure that is now entrusted to you.  They are the places and people who are our teachers because they speak to us of the essential pattern of God’s self-revealing in need and vulnerability. 

Wherever, and in whatever way, you kneel to wash the feet of those you serve, you will reveal the sacramental life of the Lord himself, who, with the power of the Holy Spirit, marks out these women, men and children to be his friends, his ambassadors, and his agents of the gospel among those whose life those people share. 

Foot washing is itself more than a symbol.  It directs us to the issue of our carbon footprint, in a way that Gerard Manley Hopkins would have understood, and it takes us right back to God’s vision of good in creation.   

Good feet bringing good news will not only engage with the global issues of power, greed, inequality and damage to the environment: they will also be instrumental in recovering joy and laughter, subversive gifts that challenge human pride.  Good laughter, godly laughter, is the vindication of God’s promises.  

Both Abraham and Sara (Genesis 17, 18) knew this laugher to be a sign of the transformative power of God, and the Psalmist sees it reflected in the good ordering of creation: sowing in tears but reaping in joy (Ps 126), as the valleys themselves stand so thick with corn that they shall laugh and sing. (Ps 65.14).  

This good laughter echoes through the pages of the Scriptures and breaks into song in the Church’s daily worship.  Mary is the traveller who carries this good laughter and shares it with Elizabeth in the Magnificat, good feet bringing good news, celebrated by God’s women in good laughter.   

Let these women, and especially the companionship of Mary, Mother of Jesus, Mother of the Church, and our Mother too, be a source of joy and hope  for us all, and especially for you, Stephen, as you set out with good feet to bring the transformative power of the good news of Jesus Christ to the people of this Province, living always in the joyful, confident expectation of the dawn and resurrection, which is where Hopkins directs us in conclusion to his poem on God’s Grandeur: 

And for all this, nature is never spent;  

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 

And though the last lights off the black West went 

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –  

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent  

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. 

Photo credit: Duncan Lomax