(All our songs this morning are from Singing the Faith (StF) or Hymns & Psalms (H&P) 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 Christine Crabtree one of our Circuit Ministers.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Call to worship:
Lord, you call our names
and we come to you.
Open our lips
that we might proclaim your praise.
We sing together a song of praise that reminds us that God is always with us:
Song – StF 109 – In the darkness of the still night
Prayer
Creator God, you are ever in your world.
In everything you have made,
your handiwork can be seen.
In every moment of history,
you are present in timelessness.
In everything we go through,
you are with us by your Spirit.
In war and in peace,
in laughter and in tears,
in losing and in finding,
in growth and in decline,
you are with us.
Help us to be fully present with you
as we come to worship:
at home or in church,
singing out loud or sitting in silence,
full of joy or burdened by cares.
You are in all and through all.
You are here, loving us.
May this be a time
when we seek to love you more.
Amen.
Song – STF 87 or HP 56 – Praise to the Living God!
Reading:
the story of how, after God had rejected Saul as king over Israel, God told Samuel to go to visit Jesse and choose one of his sons and anoint him king.
God does not look on the outward appearance, but looks at the heart. This is where he meets with us, loves us, and helps us to grow. We sing together a version of Psalm 139, which celebrates that love
Song – StF 728 – O God, you search me and you know me
Reading:
Mark 4:26-34 where Jesus tells two parables about seeds.
Sermon
A number of investigations have shown that better-looking people make a more favourable impression in interviews, get jobs more easily, and earn more in them. Some say they make 5% more money, and some say up to 12%. Apparently, people are more likely to buy from a goodlooking estate agent than a less handsome one.
We are fairly obsessed with outward appearances – people’s looks, size, weight, clothes, and accessories. Some people spend a lot of money on skin creams, make-up, hair styling, hair colouring, hair removal, eyebrow shaping, weight loss, muscle development, clothes, fashion. There are curling brushes and hair straighteners, clothes to make people look slimmer, clothes that accentuate certain parts of the body. There is plastic surgery for the bits we really hate.
And some people feel they can comment when a star puts weight on, or loses it, or changes hair style, or does or does not dye their hair, or ages well or not so well. As well as dealing with some health issues, Amy Schumer had people commenting on her puffier face, and felt she needed to speak out about it.
In our magazines, the photos we see have been altered to make the model or celebrity more attractive. Facial lines may have been removed, bulging flesh erased, clothes made to look as though they fit more snugly. What we might aspire to, in looks, simply does not exist in the way it seems to.
And God looks below the surface.
They say a week is a long time in politics; in the lectionary it is even longer, as last week the reading was about the choosing of Saul as king, and this week we have gone though his kingship and his rejection by God, and God is asking Samuel how long he will grieve over him – it’s time to move on.
Just a quick peek back at last week’s reading tells us about Saul, when he was chosen as king:
“There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else.” (1 Samuel 9:2, New Revised Standard Version)
Perhaps Samuel was remembering this as he met with Jesse and his sons, and thought that Eliab must surely be the one that the Lord had chosen. Surely this impressive young man would be a worthy successor to Saul, with his height and good looks giving him an advantage in commanding attention and winning over the loyalty of the people of Israel. Yet, just as the thought is going round Samuel’s head, he feels God speak to him to tell him this is not the one. Jesse had brought seven sons to meet Samuel, but none of them is the one God has chosen. God’s heart is set on the youngest, a shepherd boy. Far from being an ugly duckling, David had beautiful eyes and was handsome; but his choosing was a surprise to him, to the family, and to Samuel.
Yet he was called to lead Israel, and so much so that even despite the failings that would come, God called him a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22), and promised that his kingdom would be established forever (2 Samuel 7:16).
We might find it worrying to know that God looks on our hearts. Knowing ourselves as we do, we often fear we have things inside us that God would rather not see, and we try to hide them away, perhaps even from ourselves. Yet his gaze is not a condemning one, reminding us of the standards we have failed to reach. His gaze is tender and loving, and his judgment is about knowing who we are and what we are dealing with. In Jesus he has come close to us, so that he understands and has experienced all that we go through. In every encounter with the people he met, Jesus tried to show that the love of God was for all people. We only see him condemning those who are confident in their own righteousness and actually bar the way for others (Matthew 23:13).
And actually, eventually we also come to see that it is what is on the inside that matters most. When it comes out that a person in the public eye says one thing and does another, that person loses face and their supporters turn elsewhere, realising that the appearance and the substance are not the same.
During Covid, when churches recorded services and put them online, people actually preferred online services where things were a bit wobbly, to slick presentations with several camera angles and a word-perfect sermon, because the simpler presentations came across as more sincere.
We may feel that presentation is hugely important at a time when churches are reducing in number. If we want to attract younger people, surely we need to do something impressive? We may envy those churches that have worship bands and a coffee lounge, thinking that they have an advantage in attracting people.
Yet the parables Jesus tells in our passage from Mark remind us that the growth of the kingdom of God happens when people aren’t focusing on it, but getting on with the ordinary things of life. That growth leads to harvest and to an openness to those we hadn’t expected to reach; the kingdom grows and spreads sometimes despite us.
Rachel Held Evans, the author of searching for Sunday, warns us that
“contrary to popular belief, we can’t be won back with hipper worship bands, fancy coffee shops, or pastors who wear skinny jeans. We millennials have been advertised to our entire lives, so we can smell b.s. from a mile away. The church is the last place we want to be sold another product, the last place we want to be entertained.
Millennials aren’t looking for a hipper Christianity […]. We’re looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity. Like every generation before ours and every generation after, we’re looking for Jesus – the same Jesus who can be round in the strange places he’s always been found: in bread, in wine, in baptism, in the Word, in suffering, in community, and among the least of these.
No coffee shops or fog machines required.”
Can we trust that, simple as we are, God loves us and shines through us, and in the little things we do for others, he is growing his kingdom? May we be aware of that this week as we stop and speak to another, fetch their shopping, mow their lawn, listen to their troubles, and do what we can to build them up. Amen.
We offer God our foolish ways and ask for his forgiveness and his peace in
Song – StF 495 or HP 673 – Dear Lord and Father of mankind
Prayers of intercession
We bring our prayers to God who truly sees us, and knows all our needs.
God whom we call Father, on this Father’s Day, we pray for fathers. We thank you for loving fathers, for bed-time stories, for good advice, for rumbustious games and for gentle cuddles. We thank you for the way our fathers have helped us to grow strong, and for ways in which we support our older, frailer, fathers.
We pray for those who find today difficult: those whose relationship with their father is not good; those who have lost fathers; those estranged from them; fathers who have lost their children, and men who wanted to have children, but were not able to become fathers.
Lord, hear our prayers for those we love.
We pray for fathers around the world who cannot care for their children as they would like: in places of war, famine, hardship, despair. We pray for children who have lost their fathers through such things, and have to take on the role of caring and providing for younger siblings.
Lord, hear our prayers for those we love.
We pray for ourselves and our churches, that you might release us from trying to impress and help us to relax into you, that we might live out of a place of peace. Knowing that we are good enough for you, help us to be encouragers of others, recognising their gifts and thanking them for what they do.
Lord, hear our prayers for those we love.
We lift before you those going through change; those who celebrate; those who grieve; those taking exams and waiting for results that affect their future; those facing new beginnings, and those coping with endings.
Lord, hear our prayers for those we love.
We lift our prayers before you in the name of Jesus, who taught us when we pray, to say:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name,
your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and for forever. Amen.”
We offer ourselves again to God as we sing our closing hymn,
Song – StF 546 or HP 788 – Behold the servant of the Lord!
Blessing
May our Father God, our Saviour Jesus, and our Comforter Spirit, be with us all, and with all the ones we love, today and always. Amen.
