(All our songs this morning are from Singing the Faith (StF) numbers will be given where available)
Welcome to our Sunday Service, today shared on paper across our circuit and with the congregation at Northcliffe Church LEP where Methodists and United Reformed worship and witness together led by Mervyn Flecknoe one of our Circuit Local Preachers & Lay Pastor at Baildon Methodist Church.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Call to Worship – Our relationships with others
We know that one of the characteristics of people who live a long and happy life is the quality of their relationships with other people. What clues are there from the life of Jesus about how we could conduct ourselves? One of the ways in which we interact with other people is by singing together; we learn to breath at the same time, and there is evidence that heartbeats synchronise in choirs. We learn to listen to other people, and to adjust our voices to blend in. So, we begin with Rev Brian Hoare’s lovely song. He became a Methodist Minister in 1968, brought up in Southwell, Nottinghamshire. Music and RE teacher, teaching at Calverton, then Cliff College, President of the Methodist Conference. Certainly, until recently, retired in Knaresborough.
Song – StF 21 – Born in Song
Reflections on Families
Every year Jesus’ parents travelled to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up as they always did for the Feast. When it was over and they left for home, the child Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents didn’t know it. Thinking he was somewhere in the company of pilgrims, they journeyed for a whole day and then began looking for him among relatives and neighbours. When they didn’t find him, they went back to Jerusalem looking for him.
The next day they found him in the Temple seated among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions. The teachers were all quite taken with him, impressed with the sharpness of his answers. But his parents were not impressed; they were upset and hurt.
His mother said, “Young man, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been half out of our minds looking for you.”
He said, “Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I had to be here, dealing with the things of my Father?” But they had no idea what he was talking about.
So, he went back to Nazareth with them and lived obediently with them. His mother held these things dearly, deep within herself. And Jesus matured, growing up in both body and spirit, blessed by both God and people.
Our families are complex organisations. We try to please them. It is not always possible. There is abuse within families, you may have experienced that. I don’t just mean physical abuse of small children, sometimes parents try to control their children even into old age, and this is wrong. Although we are members of a family, we have individual responsibility, individual aspirations, we can each make an individual contribution to the benefit of humankind; but none of this is possible if we are being controlled. Mary was at the cross when Jesus was crucified, but earlier in his ministry, Jesus stepped away when his family tried to dissuade his mission.
In Matthew 12: 46-50, Jesus refuses to answer to his family and says “Who are my mother and brothers?”
Luke 4: 28-30 tells how Jesus was thrown out of his home synagogue, presumably containing Joseph and his brothers, sometimes families fall out, sometimes they regroup.
Families persist throughout our lives for joy or for sorrow; however, they are not immutable. I am sure that we have all adopted a brother, or a sister, or a child, or a parent or grandparent; and, because we have chosen them, the glue can be a little stronger.
Luke says that Jesus went straight to Simon Peter’s house and cured his mother, showing her the tenderness of a son. Listen to this from Luke 4: 38-40
He left the meeting place and went to Simon’s house. Simon’s mother-in-law was running a high fever and they asked him to do something for her. He stood over her, told the fever to leave—and it left. Before they knew it, she was up getting dinner for them”.
We don’t know whether Jesus’ relationship with Simon Peter’s mother went anywhere, or whether they were just ships that pass in the night; maybe, Simon Peter’s mother felt maternal towards Jesus, maybe she became one of his followers, who knows?
We can all adopt children and parents who are in need of a relationship.
When Paul writes to Timothy, for instance, he addresses his first letter like this:
1 Timothy 1: 2. I’m writing this to you, Timothy, my son in the faith. All the best from our God and Christ be yours!
So, here is the first lesson: you can’t choose all of your family, but you can choose some; you can enjoy lifelong relationships, so long as you don’t allow them to control the way you live, or your potential for contributing to the good of the world.
Our second hymn was written by Shirley Murray in New Zealand
Song – StF 681 – Community of Christ
Brief and lasting relationships
Sometimes we briefly interact with people, like Jesus and the leper in Luke 5: 12-16 there is no further reference to this leper, he and Jesus just touched lives, his life changed, he went on his way. Sometimes we have brief meetings, what is our aim in these brief meetings? We never know whether this is a brief relationship or will become a long-lasting family-type loving association. My Wife and I have been friends for more than 50 years with a couple who bought a second hand car off of us in Mansfield. We did not plan that. So, we would be wise to treat each new contact with another person as if this was one that was possibly going to last, and the first impression that we create is so important. Even if that is under difficult circumstances.
“Count yourself blessed every time someone cuts you down or throws you out, every time someone smears or blackens your name to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and that that person is uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—skip like a lamb, if you like!—for even though they don’t like it, I do . . . and all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company; my preachers and witnesses have always been treated like this.
We must count angry encounters as a benefit. We must conduct ourselves well.
We must always think, what are this person’s unfulfilled needs that they speak to me like this? Rather than “How dare they speak to me like this?”
Our aim in all our brief interactions is to leave the other people feeling better about themselves.
Jesus must have called many to follow him, In Luke 14, Jesus makes it clear that not all whom he called joined the mission that he led. And just think about what he had to cope with from amongst those who did follow him:
They frequently failed to grasp His teachings, particularly His predictions about His suffering and death. For example, they didn’t understand the significance of His words about the temple being destroyed and rebuilt in three days. John 2 :19
In the Garden of Gethsemane, just before his arrest, Jesus asked Peter, James, and John to stay awake and pray with Him, but they fell asleep repeatedly. This was a significant disappointment as Jesus was facing immense emotional and spiritual distress. Matthew 26: 36-46
The disciples often argued among themselves about who was the greatest among them, showing a lack of humility and misunderstanding of Jesus’s teachings on service and equality. Luke 9: 46
After Jesus’s arrest, Peter denied knowing him three times, and all the disciples abandoned Him. This demonstrated a lack of courage and loyalty to Jesus during His most vulnerable moment. Luke 22: 54-62
Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus by identifying Him to the authorities for thirty pieces of silver was the ultimate act of disappointment. Luke 22: 3
Jesus evidently believed that, if he persevered with his disciples, they would get the message and continue his work, and they did. How often do we think about our long-term effect on other people, rather than using our conversations to sound off about our own concerns?
Our next hymn was written by Sidney Carter, such a sensitive man, in one song, he put these words into the mouth of the tragic figure of Marilyn Monroe:
“I’ll light a candle in the sky wherever I might be
For those who have to walk alone and fear the dark like me
And for those lonely women, their names I’ll never know
I’ll glitter in the dark for them” said Marilyn Monroe
Song – StF 247 – Lord of the Dance
Healing memories of the past
Brother Michael Lapsley wrote a book ten years ago called: Redeeming the Past
Lapsley was a vigorous opponent of South Africa’s apartheid government. He was exiled twice – once to Lesotho, and then to Zimbabwe. While in Zimbabwe, he received a letter bomb that destroyed both hands and one eye.
The bomb was sent by special South African forces engaged in abductions, assassinations, and torture.
Lapsley experienced, personally, the trauma visited upon millions of South Africans, and as he went through a year of surgeries, more surgeries, and rehabilitation, he became aware that he had a choice. He could nurture hatred against those who had maimed him and seek revenge. Or he could redeem that experience by enabling others to overcome the nightmares that haunted them, even long after apartheid ended.
When we meet new people, the only thing we can know for certain is that they may be dealing with demons we will never know about; experiences that have scarred them and dictate how they address strangers, and sometimes friends.
I’m intrigued by the concept of healing memories; not of changing them, and not of obliterating them, but healing them. Or “redeeming” them, in Lapsley’s terms. Of enabling them to become a source of strength and compassion rather than anger and bitterness. Of turning negatives into positives.
When I consider the amount of suffering going on around the world, even the notion that memories can be healed strikes me as urgently necessary.
So, our relationships are not only with people now, but they cover all the interactions we have ever had; we have to choose how to use them. I have heard people say of some ethnic or racial group: you can never trust them, I’ll tell you, I once…But even if that anecdote is true, it is irrelevant.
We are going to sing the refrain of the next hymn as a prayer, please remain seated.
Song – StF 249 – Jesu, Jesu
Refrain:
Jesu, Jesu / fill us with your love / show us how to serve / the neighbours we have from you.
We ask your blessing, Lord, on our families, and we ask that we will know when to serve, and when to walk away.
We ask that you guide us to adopt those people who will benefit from joining us along the way, and to distinguish them from those best avoided.
Refrain:
We know that each person we meet might become a lifelong friend. We know that they may let us down. We know that we may let them down. We ask that we allow no-one to distract us from our mission of improving the world in which we live, using love as our language in all encounters.
Refrain:
We thank you for all the richness that others bring into our lives: those who pay for this building, those who run it. We thank you for all the niceness that we experience from those we meet, and we promise that we will try to turn every contact into something positive in our lives.
Refrain:
The Lord’s Prayer
Our last hymn was written by an amazing Victorian man. He was born in Ireland, he was engaged to be married, but his fiancée died just before the planned wedding. He emigrated to Canada and the same thing happened again. He published 115 hymns of which this is not one: this is a poem he wrote for his mother, he sent it from Canada when she was ill back in Ireland. So, let’s hear it for Joseph Meldicott Scriven!
Song – StF 531 – What a Friend we have in Jesus
Let’s close saying the Grace:
The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ / The love of God / and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit / be with us and remain with us always. Amen
