(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 Saltaire Methodist Church and led by Rev Nick Blundell one of our Circuit Ministers.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Call to worship – I John 4:7-9
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
Song – StF 28 – Jesus calls us here to meet him
Let us pray.
Your love, O God, is for all people no matter where they are from or where they live. Your love accompanies us on our journey through life, through the good and the bad, happy and sad times and all the times between them. Your love is with us on the mountaintop and in the valley, on roads rough and smooth. You are our sustenance, our guide, our teacher and our friend. For all of this and so much more, we adore you.
Amen.
We come in penitence for journeys not shared with those who needed companionship. We come in sorrow for not walking with and talking with those who needed us most. We come in sadness that we have let ourselves and others down, and let you down when we have not accompanied those who have been searching for you. There are times when we could have done more. We confess our failings and seek forgiveness, as we seek also to forgive those who have not walked with us because the burden was too heavy for them as well. In penitence we seek forgiveness. Lord, hear our prayer.
The Lord forgives those who repent of their sins, of their failings and faults, and the Lord travels with us on our journey in life.
Amen.
Reading:
1 John 4:7-21
Song – StF 615 – Let love be real, in giving and receiving with the refrain: As God loves us, so let us love each other: with no demands, just open hands and space to grow.
Reading:
Acts 8:26-40
Reflection.
Journeying together, As we worship together this morning, we are aware of the people with whom we gather. If we are physically in church, we will have greeted, and been greeted by, those around us, with words, nods, smiles, handshakes. If we are at home we picture others in their living rooms, and those who are gathered in our churches.
We look around and see faces largely familiar, on the whole older rather than younger, less diverse than we would like, but each an individual. When we listen, we hear accents, in some cases representing different places, in others coming from another mother tongue. Each voice has stories to tell, experiences to share, wisdom to tap, questions to ask. Some we will have known longer than others. Some will be easier to speak to than others. With some we will have shared significant moments and special times.
As we think about those with whom we gather, as we congregate from a ragbag collection of individuals into this congregation worshipping together, can I invite you to give thanks for one another, for the difference each person’s attendance makes to the others, for the gifts God gives to us in one another.
For those of us who will be asked later in the day, ‘How was it at church?’, far more significant than who was leading will be who was here, and how it felt to be together. Indeed, in the terms of our first reading from 1 John, we recognise the truth that God is present because of our love for one another, ‘No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us’.
As we acknowledge that being together is important, and that God blesses us through those with whom we meet, perhaps we need to open ourselves up a little more to the possibility that God might have particular plans for us, intending us to be blessed, or challenged, or educated, through our fellowship, our conversation, our sharing.
This takes us to Philip and the Ethiopian and their encounter on the desert road. The fact that it’s the road from Jerusalem to Gaza gives us cause to pause, and notice that this road is currently closed, or open only to military vehicles. In our prayers we will pray for Israeli and Palestinian, and the possibility of some kind of respectful conversation. Here we notice such a conversation between two men with almost as many differences as those between Israeli Zionist and Hamas fighter.
Philip is a Greek-speaking Jewish Christian, one of seven appointed in Acts 6 to take some of the pastoral load off the apostles. When persecution strikes in Jerusalem, and Stephen, another of the seven, is stoned to death, Philip finds himself in Samaria, continuing to preach and help those in need.
The Ethiopian eunuch is a wealthy, influential, African pilgrim, who has been to Jerusalem to worship, and on the way home is studying the Jewish scriptures. We imagine that, with his responsibilities, he would speak several languages. He is travelling by chariot with staff.
The story puts them together, in a situation of mutual sharing, and both are profoundly changed by the encounter. They do not know each other, and are only together briefly, yet God is able to bless them both in the meeting and bless many more through what will follow.
Required is Philip’s openness to follow God’s call – first, ‘Go south’, then, ‘Go to that chariot and stay with it.’ Required too is the Ethiopian’s engagement, firstly with scripture, then with Philip. And Philip’s willingness to risk the question, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’, and then to share the good news of Jesus.
This part of the story ends with the Ethiopian baptized and rejoicing, and Philip heading not south but north, playing his part in the gospel being taken to the ends of the earth.
Where is God calling us to stay with a particular chariot? Who is looking for understanding and open for conversation? To whom might we say, ‘Do you understand this, and can we help?’
In church, or out. In the gathered congregation or on the desert road. We all need to hear, and we all have something to tell. May God open ears, mouths, hearts. Amen.
Song – StF 481 – The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want
We offer our prayers….
God who brings people together, walk with us and our companions on the road
We pray for one another, those with whom we are gathered this morning. We give thanks, and rejoice in our fellowship. We particularly pray for those facing difficulties, whether we know about them or not. As we offer prayer, may we be open to playing our part in that prayer being answered, through our attention, our words, our generosity.
God who brings people together, walk with us and our companions on the road
We pray for those on the desert road. Whether on the frontline in Palestine and Israel, or Ukraine, Yemen or Sudan. Whether in camps or shelters, or at home but listening for drones or missiles. May those who lead look to the common good, those who negotiate do so in good faith, those who bring relief and humanitarian supplies be protected and blessed.
God who brings people together, walk with us and our companions on the road
We pray for those asking questions of God, of scripture, of each other. In church, may we be open to explore deeply, to take questions seriously, to share our stories and experience with honesty, and to receive the experience and stories of others with care and respect. Out of church, may we be listening for the prompts of God’s spirit, that we might spend time in the company of those who are open to our responses to their questions.
God who brings people together, walk with us and our companions on the road
We pray for ourselves. Sometimes we are the Ethiopian, struggling to make sense of things, trying to understand. We can feel to be far from home, outside the culture of those around us, different. Sometimes we are Philip, put in the right place, with the right experience to bring to bear, ready to tell our story. May we, whoever we are, be open to the other and the Spirit of God, and so be blessed or blessing or both as God answers prayer.
God who brings people together, walk with us and our companions on the road
In the name of Jesus, who walks with his disciples and is known in the breaking of the bread. Amen.
We bring our prayers together, as we pray, with all God’s people, the Lord’s Prayer.
(The congregation at Saltaire will at this point be singing StF 581 Come, my table is a meeting place, and then sharing Communion, using words at p. 168 in the Methodist Worship Book. You might like to sit with them, and whilst not technically receiving communion, be aware of God’s grace at work in the moment.)
Song – StF 581 – Come, my table is a meeting place
We close with Gary Hopkin’s lovely hymn,
Song – StF 619 – Thanks for friends who keep on loving
We go in peace, in the power of the Spirit, to live and work to God’s praise and glory. Amen.
We bless one another, and all those we have brought to mind this day, as we share the Grace:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all, now and always. Amen.
