(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 led by Mervyn Flecknoe one of our Circuit Local Preachers and Lay Pastor at Baildon.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Introduction
This is a service about swings and roundabouts, hills and valleys, good times and bad times, joy and sorrow. There are highs and lows in life swings and roundabouts of strife and peace good times and bad, valleys and hills; The landscape that fills our lives will never cease to change as we grow older if not wise we live through joy and sorrow, never knowing what tomorrow may bring. How can we prepare when we cannot be aware of what awaits us there, Just around the corner? How can we prepare to deal with the slings and arrows?
Jesus tells us that we are of greater value than the sparrows that God prizes; He emphasises that the Holy Spirit guides us through the ups and downs. So, let us live with confidence and trust our lives to providence.
Song – StF 443 – Come, let us sing of a wonderful love
Prayer 1
God, giver of the Spirit within us,
We worry about unknown events tomorrow,
Things that may happen, bringing joy, or maybe sorrow.
Comfort us please, we faithless sinners.
We have betrayed our calling, just as much as Peter did
As the cock had crowed that morning,
We have, like Matthew, collected wealth,
Like James and John, we have aspired to status
Like Judas, we have been preoccupied by the apparatus
Of mission, leading to the omission of understanding
About your purposes as physician to the world.
All these disciples were forgiven
Forgive us now, enable us to forgive ourselves
So that we, like Santa’s elves,
May contribute to spreading joy.
Amen
Reading
Reflection 1
Ups and Downs,
This psalm was the first one to make me optimistic, also the first to make me sad. Me, a physicist with an amateur astronomer for a dad who agreed with William Herschel, and with John, his lad in marvelling at the expansive universe; wondering how God could make a choice so perverse to be born right here on this ball of rock and water, in an occupied country noted for its incidents of slaughter of innocents and dissidents, In a world unassailable; one amongst the huge, diverse, array of worlds available. A speck of dust, no more, in our solar system. If, reviewing history, you blinked, you could have missed Him In the vast parade of times and peoples who here held sway.
We live in a minute part of the Milky Way, which is but one small galaxy in our local cluster of many many, many mindbendingly huge collections of galaxies of stars. Yet, the capacity to be angels is truly ours. We were to be the stewards of the jewels of creation, before, that is, we totally forgot our station as servants, keepers of the Earth To benefit those future children whose miracle of birth will ensure succession of our species. Despite entreaties of prophets we continue to fill our pockets up with wealth that should belong to everyone
Ignoring totally the life, teaching, and example of the Son of God.
Song – StF 462 – Come with me, come wander, come welcome the world
Reading
Reflection 2
Ups and Downs; God knows St Paul had troubles from the highest peak of his conversion He plumbed the depths of hatred and perversion:
“I’m forever blowing bubbles
Pretty bubbles in the air
They fly so high, nearly reach the sky
Then, like my dreams, they fade and die”.
But Paul did not let his dreams die when his enemies multiplied when false witnesses testified against him, and he was thrown into goal before they could verify that he was a Roman Citizen. He could supply abundant evidence to qualify as a true servant of the good, and of our God.
In this passage from Romans five He tries explaining how he kept his hopes alive how he used the downs, the depths, the setbacks to hone his ability to bounce so many comebacks and even considered his final imprisonment the climax of his service to his Lord.
My Wife and I live halfway up a steepish hill. So, it’s not odd that in our hilly town, everyplace we want to go is either up or down. I know it sounds silly, but that means that the way back is always down or up. Sometimes we wish that it was flat. The Christian life is not flat like that. Although if it were, we could go through life on skateboards, once up to speed, we coast toward our goal, going at a steady speed. We would never develop hill-climbing muscles, never see the sunset glowing, from the top of Hope Hill never see the River Aire flowing still beneath the bridges. The swallows swooping low to catch the midges, the kingfisher’s dead straight flights, or any of the glorious sights that the valleys afford.
If the life, the teaching, and the example of our Lord mean anything to us, we must expect the ups and downs as we, as pilgrims progress along the path to loving-life success.
We read the Bible, not as much as in the past perhaps the advent of TV has led to a distinct lapse of interest, as tales emerge of more modern chaps in soaps, and gossip on the phone and in WhatsApps. During World War one, books were expensive, my Mother had but two, a Bible and a hymn book. Her knowledge of both was extensive. I’m sure that she would have known the stories in 2 Kings ten for instance, how Jehu ordered the deaths of Ahab’s seventy sons and every one of his business men without resort to Kalashnikovs or handguns just a part of his murderous spree to show his devotion to his ideas of God then; not the God of you and me. There is no mention of suicide vests in the Bible, but the best and most vivid stories are filled with gore and cruel application of the Jewish law. But in the Bible there are stories of success and failure of poverty and grandeur, of suffering that you’re not likely to see here today although you may read all about it In the literature of MSF and Christian Aid.
It’s not just New Testament Saints who suffered and rejoiced, the Old Testament paints many vivid pictures of the strictures placed on women on servants and on slaves; of cruelty and kindness shown to strangers the dangers faced and overcome by those who sought to spread the gospel. It’s clear to me that any inconveniences we suffer when we don’t think life can get much tougher are dwarfed by stories from the past. And if our suffering lasts, we can be given strength so that, at length, we may look back on lives well lived; on hurts survived on the sheer joy of having been alive.
Song – StF 463 – Deep in the shadows of the past
Reflection 3
In Bible stories, mountains are the home of graces They are sacred places, safety spaces, interfaces with the Lord Moses, of course, and the commandments there the burning bush on Horeb which scared observers.
To preserve his life, The Shunammite woman climbed up to Elisha to plead for her son, when the day was done.
King Saul and David played hide and seek around a peak with deadly intent bent on massacre, when their mutual tolerance was well spent.
Then there was that event on Horeb with Elijah seeing Earth Wind and Fire followed by the silence of content, after he lamented the slaughter of the dissenters.
Thirty-eight psalms have mountains in them only two have fountains
The Devil tempted Jesus on a mountain after he rejected jumping from a steeple and where did Jesus go, first to escape and then to use the landscape to teach this people? He climbed a hill.
He went up the Mount of Olives to pray It was the only way that he could hear his Father say do it for me; allow them to hang you from a tree.
The disciples met together up on one after the resurrection, to decide what had to be done.
The transfiguration happened up a mountain with Moses and Elijah, counting on Peter, James, and John to pass the stories on.
Deciding to climb a mountain peak is a way that people seek solitude, exercise, reflection, inspiration, and renewal; being made to climb a mountain, that’s just cruel.
Bad things happen to good friends. We stand by, helpless, as they are forced to ascend mountains they did not intend to visit; mountains that fate sends them to. I can’t defend the idea that God sends misery, but I do know that he will see us through. Our success depends on whether love extends around us. Whether our faith transcends despair. Others who live elsewhere, in Ukraine, for instance who suffer insane, inhumane treatment have our sympathy, but what can we do?
Good people who do their best, like me and you. Sometimes suffer terribly, who knew that such things could happen in God’s creation? As Shakespeare famously said: Love is not love if it alters when it alteration finds. We have to set our minds and spirits to remain steadfast
It’s hard. It seems unfair because each mountain has challenges unique, our love and faith must hold up as we seek the better view from the highest peak.
Reading
Reflection 4
Hills and Valleys; this story is certainly a low point In the story of Jesus. I don’t pretend to know what Luke saw in Gennesaret from his vantage point. It must have been a serious ruction to make him write that awful story with the introduction about the mad man and the swine who made a death-or-glory leap, when they turned from being benign omnivores into stampeding outlaws, the agents of their own destruction.
I do know that the madness of one man can infect a mob. He can rob them of their senses so that they revel in such offences that destroy the walls and fences that keep us, like an arrow walking the straight and very narrow pathways of civilized society. When, under the pretences of righteous anger, they aim at notoriety by committing impropriety. I understand how a little bit of ire, or just unkind feeling, can spread like moorland fire beyond the possibility of healing, revealing nothing of real consequence except the dense miasma of evil abroad, when hatred displaces the teachings of our Lord. So, whatever it is you feel, or your best friend tells you, remember that the glue that holds us together is love. But you knew that; to share a meal as Jesus did, with diverse people whom you may have hated can lead to understanding, kindness, and to fear abated. Remember what a mob did to those peaceful swine may it never happen to yours and mine. But when we hit the bottom, often in the autumn of our lives we must not despair. Jesus has been and still is there.
Song – StF – Abba, Father, let me be yours and yours alone as
Refrain
Abba Father, let me be / Yours and Yours alone
May my will forever be / Ever more Your own
Never let my heart grow cold / Never let me go
Abba Father, let me be / Yours and Yours alone
Lord, we confess that we sometimes wish
our lives to be free from depths to plumb and heights to scale.
We confess envy that others have easier lives,
but we know our sufferings pale against
those of refugees and prisoners everywhere.
Refrain
We pray for those who have hit the depths of life
Those whose lives are spoiled by addictions.
Those who have experienced afflictions
Within their families,
Or loss of those they miss so much
Whose hands and face they long to touch.
Refrain
Make us useful people, Lord
So that we use our strength
From overcoming suffering at length
So that we change from taking to giving
And help those on the switchback of living
To lose self-pity and gain the joys of the holy city.
Refrain
The Lord’s prayer
Song – StF 465 – Guide me, O thou great Jehovah
By William Williams, AKA Pantycelyn, who wrote this great hymn, was one of the three main founders and sustainers of the Methodist movement in Wales. Unlike the Wesleys in England, he was ejected from his Anglican membership because they feared his reforms. He was known as the “Sweet Songster” which did little justice to his formidable management and organisational work of the protestant revival throughout Wales.
Final Prayer
Come with us, Lord
Fill us with your Spirit
Shape us to your likeness
Use us to enfold with love your needy world.
