(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 Baildon Methodist Church and led by Rev Phil Drake our Circuit Superintendent Minister.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Call to worship:
God sees our hearts and loves us more than we will ever know.
Let us come to him trusting in his mercy and his care.
Amen.
Join in with singing or reading one of these songs:
Song – StF 186 – Tell out my soul
Song – StF 81 – Now thank we all our God
Opening prayer:
Motherly God,
thanks to you for life and living, even when we are weary and worn-out.
Thanks to you for challenge and change, even when we seek safety and security.
Thanks to you for playfulness and pain,
even when we seek moderation and mild-living.
Thanks to you for companionship when we are lonely.
Thanks to you for calling when we are settled.
Thanks to you for creativity when we are uninspired.
Bring us to newness of life as your people.
Bring us to wholeness of life from out of its fragments.
Bring us to fullness of life from your communion in and with us.
Motherly God, to you we pray,
Amen.
Setting the scene:
Three years ago, I led the service for Mothering Sunday here at Baildon. It was a difficult time for me, having lost my father the previous month. I spoke to you then about how a time of grief had helped to shape a new and different relationship with my mother, in what was a time of challenge and change for us both. Here I am again, for another Mother’s Day service at Baildon, this time in the wake of my mother’s death, following a time of illness in hospital, some 8 weeks ago.
During that stay on the hospital ward, I spent several hours with her each day, and one of the things I did during that time was to read to her chapters from the novel Windyridge by W. Riley, which was a favourite of hers from the days of her youth in the 1940s. If you do not know the book (and that is a fairly easy assumption, as I have met hardly anyone who does know of it) it tells the story of a young woman called Grace Holden who moves from her home in London, following her father’s death, to the Yorkshire village of Windyridge. What I had not realised until relatively recently is that the village of Windyridge is based on Hawksworth, and that many of the other places referred to, albeit with different names, relate to Guiseley, Leeds, Bradford and other places local to us.
One of the final chapters I was able to read to her was an episode in which Grace sets off walking on an errand along the road to Marsland (that’s Baildon to you and me) when she gets caught in a storm. Because I know that road as it dips and bends before coming up this side of the valley, I had a good picture in my head of the journey she was making. The wind and the rain become so bad that Grace has to seek shelter in a stranger’s house. The woman who lives there offers a welcome and a warm fire and Grace remains there until the storm has passed. To me this is a good picture of the care God offers us in the storms of life, a woman’s care and a ready welcome. On the day of my mum’s death, as I too made a journey to Baildon, on my return from the hospital, I reminded myself of this story and it gave me comfort along the way, a shelter in the storm.
Jesus, on his journey to Jerusalem, as he travelled towards a time of suffering, also relied on the hospitality of those he met along the way. But he was also full of compassion for those whom he knew were in great need; this is echoed in the words he spoke, ‘Jerusalem…how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings’ (Luke 13.34). So today, we have not got a Gospel reading as such, but a gospel verse and the image it carries for you to take away. It is a wonderful picture for Mothering Sunday of shelter, care and the compassion of God.
Bible reading:
Food for thought:
I have brought with me a blanket that I first showed to you six years ago. It is a Prayer Blanket, which was made for me by the knit ‘n’ natter group at one of the churches I worked with during my nine years in Cardiff. It was a farewell gift as I made ready to leave that appointment. The gift was offered as an aid to comfort, to wrap around myself when I felt a need to be enveloped in prayer. Little did I know as I showed it to you 6 years ago in February 2020 that it was to be the last communion service you had in church for many months, as the following month marked the beginning of the first lockdown of the covid pandemic. It was a time of uncertainty, sadness, and, for some, grief. All of us knew the need to be wrapped and held in the comfort of prayer at that time.
Six years ago, the knitting group here noticed that my blanket had developed some gaps where the seams joining the blanket squares had come undone. They took charge of it for a while, until it was mended and fully restored, ready for use once again. I have brought it back to share with you today as I continue to work through a time of grieving for someone I love. I feel the need for comfort and prayer, and I am thankful for all the support that I have received over these past three months, and I receive them all as expressions of the continuing care of God.
I have also brought with me today another item of knitwear – not one that was knitted for me but one that I knitted myself, a cardigan for my mum that I made many years ago. Please don’t start sending in requests to me to knit you a jumper or a cardigan – you would be waiting a very long time for the finished product. It was a real labour of love, but one that I am pleased to say I saw through to its conclusion. It is not perfect, and when I say ‘I knitted it myself’ that is not quite true of every stitch – there were plenty of occasions when Ruth had to rescue a dropped one! But I offer it as an example of how as Christians we can love and care for one another. And how love received in consolation can also be love offered as an expression of care for another.
For reflection:
Consider the words of this song.
Spirit there in earth’s first hour,
coaxing buds of life to flower,
gentle counterpart to power,
prelude to a mother’s care.
Where we see the art of sharing,
constant sacrificial caring,
giving space and room for growing,
then we see a mother’s care.
When our ‘Mother Church’ is open,
showing love, not worded tokens,
circling round the lost and broken,
then it shows a mother’s care,
Mother, father, foster parent,
guardian, friend, devoted carer:
may we thank the Lord, our maker
for each ‘mother’s’ loving care.
We reach out to you, Father,
God, who tends us like a mother.
Bind us close to one another
in your ‘mother’s’ tender care.
Question: can you bring to mind some small consolation that you have received in recent times? How might it speak to you of the care and compassion of God?
Concluding prayer
Loving God,
you love us like a father who gives good things to his children;
you care for us like a mother hen who draws her chicks to her,
hiding them under her wings so that they will be safe from harm.
Thank you that in your love for us you have shown
how we should care for each other.
Thank you for all those people who care for us,
our mothers, fathers, and other carers.
Help us to remember that caring is not always easy,
and never to take for granted the way that you and others care for us.
We ask that you will help us to care for those around us, even when it is costly.
Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer may be said.
Sing, read or listen to:
Song – StF 536 – He’s got the whole world in his hand
Song – StF 403 – God is love, his the care
Acknowledgments: Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Photos: Phil Drake. Song, ‘Spirit there in earth’s first hour’, and Image of hen and chicks Copyright, Roots For Churches Ltd, rootsontheweb.com, with permission to use in acts of worship.
