(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 Bolton Methodist Church and led by Rev Lisa Quarmby one of our Circuit Ministers.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Call to worship
“The Holy Spirit brings love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness… there is no law against such things as these!”
(Galatians 5:22-23)
Song – StF 82 – O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
Prayers of adoration, confession and the Lords Prayer
Let’s come to God in prayer…
Just where you are now – take a moment to be still, to sit quietly in God’s presence and speak to Him from your heart.
[Pause for a moment or two to reflect and listen to God]
Loving Father God, I praise and adore you, for all you are and all you mean to me…
Father – I look around me in this very moment, and I thank you for what I can see. I thank you for the warmth of my home and of my friendships. I thank you for the food on my table, and the life you have given to me.
Father – I close my eyes so I can think of you. I thank you for your wisdom, shared through the stories of the Bible. I thank you for your love, shared through the generous life of your Son, Jesus Christ. I thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that I can know your compassion in my daily life. I thank you for your Church, so that I can be in fellowship with your children and rejoice together with friends.
Father – forgive me when I have turned away from you – sometimes deliberately, and at other times when I have been distracted or overwhelmed by the demands of life. Thank you for your grace, for your forgiveness, for your understanding.
Father – forgive me when I have not responded to other people with love or respect; forgive me when I have dismissed or ignored the cries of those in need. Thank you for your encouragement and strength when I don’t know what to do to help.
With your arms outstretched, you offer to us your forgiveness this day – so we come as one family and pray in the way Jesus taught us:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory; for ever and ever – Amen.
Song – StF 449 – Lord of creation
Readings
Song – StF 466 – Have faith in God, my heart
Sermon – “…So shines a good deed in a weary world”
Jesus loved to share his message through stories, and I do too. Stories draw us in, and we identify with the characters in them; we feel their feelings, and learn as they learn. Hollywood films and TV dramas do the same job for us today as bards and storytellers did thousands of years ago, sitting round the fire, reciting epic legends of heroes.
So, I’m going to use this as an excuse to tell you about a film I like to watch! At the risk of offending any fans of Johnny Depp or Timothee Chalamet, I really love the first film version of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” with the late Gene Wilder, all wild-eyed, unpredictable and mischievous. I’m guessing that most of you are familiar with the story: several children, including the book’s hero Charlie Bucket, are invited on a tour of a wondrous chocolate factory by the mysterious owner, Willy Wonka: and one of them will win the grand prize, a lifetime’s supply of chocolate. One by one, the other children’s outrageously bad behaviour sees them kicked out of the factory. Even good little Charlie himself takes a forbidden swig of Wonka’s miraculous Fizzy Lifting Drink, but no matter – as the tour concludes, only Charlie and his beloved grandpa are left.
At the end, Charlie’s grandpa asks Wonka if Charlie has won the grand prize. Willy Wonka unexpectedly turns around in a rage and shouts: “No – because he broke the rules! Under Section 37B of the contract signed by him, it states quite clearly that all offers shall become null and void if – and you can read it for yourself – ‘I, the undersigned, shall forfeit all rights and privileges herein contained, etcetera, etcetera’ – it’s all there, black and white, clear as crystal! You STOLE Fizzy Lifting Drinks! So you get – nothing! You LOSE! Good day sir!”
Poor Charlie. Some people might say this is ‘harsh but fair’ – he broke the rules, so he gets nothing. However… Charlie could still grasp something out of this tragedy – because earlier in the tour, Wonka gave Charlie an Everlasting Gobstopper; and Charlie knows if he sells that fantastical sweetie to one of Wonka’s evil rivals, then Charlie’s impoverished family could be rich forever. Sounds like a sensible plan, right?
But little Charlie doesn’t do this. Instead, he quietly places his Everlasting Gobstopper on the desk next to Wonka, and walks away, an honest but empty-handed loser.
Willy Wonka’s hand folds gently over the returned Gobstopper, and he whispers to himself: “So shines a good deed in a weary world…” He then spins round, takes Charlie by the hands and tells him, with considerable delight, that Charlie HAS won the lifetime supply of chocolate, and will be the next owner of the entire chocolate factory!
It’s a bit of movie magic, for sure. But let’s think about that moment when Charlie has been told he’s lost everything. He knows he has broken the rules; he also can see that because of this, there is no hope for him; there is no turning back from what has happened; it’s over. So why does he return the Gobstopper? Charlie is fully aware that he can gain nothing from such an honest act – in fact, he stands to lose even more than he’s already lost – but he does it anyway. He does this, perhaps, because he simply believes in Willy Wonka and his magical presence in a “weary world”.
Jesus was just getting on with business when a very ill woman surreptitiously brushed against him in a crowded street. She had been suffering from severe haemorrhaging for a heartbreaking twelve years, but it wasn’t just the bleeding that made her life intolerable; because of her illness, she would have been viewed as unclean, so would have been excluded from much of her community’s festivals and traditions. She was in extreme physical pain, but would also have been a victim of shame and loneliness. Not only that, but she had spent all her money on futile treatments. She was impoverished.
And yet, like Charlie Bucket, she believed in something. Like Job in the Old Testament, she had lost absolutely everything; did she feel hopeless? Of course she did! But when she heard about Jesus, something in her heart told her to just be near him, to put her hand on his cloak, to bring her hopelessness as a humble offering. Jesus is touched – physically, emotionally, spiritually – and he turns to the woman and tells her: “Your faith has made you well!” Now, I don’t know how you imagine Jesus; but when I watch Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka dancing crazily with Charlie Bucket, brim-full of delight and happiness for the faithful little boy, I wonder if that’s how Jesus spoke to this woman: overflowing with glee and giggles as this woman transformed from pain and shame into freedom and joy. Well, I know how I’d react: I’d be laughing, and crying, all at once!
This part of Mark’s Gospel also tells us how Jesus is summoned to heal the daughter of Jairus; but then, alas, messengers meet them with terrible news: the girl is already dead. They say to Jairus, “Don’t bother the Teacher any longer.” There it is: the hopelessness. Don’t bother. There’s no point. It’s over. Give up. In the midst of this despair, Jesus responds with a line that would easily fit into a Hollywood film: “Don’t be afraid – only BELIEVE!” He dismisses the naysayers, ushering them out of the house, and takes the little girl by the hand – and she awakes. Again, there might have been laughter, and weeping, and joyful confusion, and maybe even some jumping about.
But before he brings new life and joy to this worried family, Jesus gives Jairus something else – it’s just what Jairus needs at that moment: faith. “Only believe”. But what do we understand by faith, by belief? These days, the world at large seems to define ‘belief’ as ‘asserting that something is empirically true even when there is no evidence’ – but this modern definition is way off the mark. For people in Jesus’ time, knowing that God exists was probably taken for granted; whereas belief in God was about commitment – belief was about devoting your energies, thoughts and actions to God, every day of your life.
But why does a person commit themselves to God? This is a harder question to answer, and sometimes only stories will help us understand. We watch Charlie Bucket give the Gobstopper back to Willy Wonka; we see the bleeding woman reach out to touch Jesus’ cloak. Both of them are without hope, and yet they believe. It doesn’t make logical sense; the people outside the house of Jairus actually laugh at Jesus when he talks about hope. So think about your own life; about your own difficulties; and ask yourself – when I believe in God, when I commit my heart to Him, what does that mean to me?
When Saint Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians, he was responding to a community that had problems with belief. The Galatians were worried that if they didn’t obey the Laws of Moses to the letter, they would not be right with God. Paul explains to them that the Laws of Moses were given to show people the difference between right and wrong, until the coming of Jesus: and that Jesus brought in “the time for faith”. Yes, the Law had helped people stay on the straight and narrow, says Paul; but there’s more to life than just trying to balance on a tightrope of good behaviour. After all, he says, we all fall short – “the whole world is under the power of sin” – and so we’re all going to fall off the tightrope, probably quite a lot, during our threescore years and ten. Paul encourages the Galatians to step out from behind the Law, and commit their hearts to Jesus.
In Roald Dahl’s story, we see Charlie Bucket fall off the tightrope. He drinks the Fizzy Lifting Drink: he breaks the rules. We see Willy Wonka quote the law to him – and the law is harsh, but fair. But there is so much, much more to life than this, and Charlie feels this in his bones. He surprises Wonka with a “good deed in a weary world” – and it is a good deed that is not conditional, that makes no sense, that won’t help him get back on the tightrope – it is an act that has no purpose other than to declare to Wonka: I trust you, and I still believe in you. It is beyond law: it’s an expression of freedom.
Saint Paul releases the Galatians from their slavish adherence to the Law: now is a time to believe, he says, a time to be free. But, he adds, don’t let your newfound freedom become an excuse to do anything you please! Instead, explains Paul, let your freedom be rooted in faithful love for one another – offer yourself willingly in loving service to God and to your neighbour. Indeed, if you look at the word ‘believe’, and then look at the word ‘love’, you will see that they come from the same ancient root word. In a nutshell, to ‘believe’ means to ‘be-love’ – to commit to someone, with love and utter trust. And that is what the woman in today’s Gospel story does: she is healed by her belief, and her belief is rooted in a trust in Jesus, even when she has nothing to bring but her pain and shame. Her story reminds me of a song called ‘Anthem’, by Leonard Cohen, when he writes about hope in times of despair: “Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack, a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in.”
So as we move into prayer, let’s reach out to Jesus from our hearts; let us bring our pain as well as our hope; let our faith inspire us to love others in God’s name; and – believe!
Song – StF 519 – Father, I place into your hands
Prayers of Intercession
Father, be alongside us in our prayers. We pray for each person in our church and across our Circuit. Father, join each of us on our daily journeys, and help us to truly see you and greet you in every encounter. Help our hearts to sing to you of our struggles and joys. Lord, in your mercy – hear our prayer.
Father, there are so many people in your world. We pray for your love for each individual, because each person that we see on the street or on the news is your child, and you love them. We pray that our leaders may be a channel for your wisdom and care. Lord, in your mercy – hear our prayer.
Father, we pray for those who work for peace, for equality, and for the love of all your creation. Strengthen them, reassure them and revive their mission. We pray, too, for the people who work for hate, for destruction and for greed. They are your children too, Father. Place humility and frailty in their hearts, so they may trust you and turn to love. Lord, in your mercy – hear our prayer.
Father, give strength to those who are vulnerable: the sick, the lonely, the poor, the persecuted, the abused, and all who are tired and heavy-laden. Help us to find them, support them and love them without condition. Lord, in your mercy – hear our prayer.
In you, Father, we are one family in earth and heaven. Thank you for the people we’ve known who have died, for their love and their faith in you. Help us to follow their example and bring us with them into the generous fullness of your eternal joy. Lord, in your mercy – hear our prayer.
Merciful Father, accept these prayers for the sake of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Song – StF 88 – Praise to the Lord
Blessing
May God bless each of us – in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
