(All our songs this morning are from Singing the Faith (StF) & 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 Northcliffe Church LEP where Methodists and United Reformed worship and witness together 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
Lord, we come today to worship.
Some of us may be facing difficulties:
help us to know your peace.
Some of us may need to feel loved:
help us to know your care.
Some of us may be seeking answers:
help us to hear your wisdom
and the guidance of your Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Lord, you have given us the freedom
to follow you or to turn away;
to love or to hurt others;
to show care or to be unkind.
Help us to learn today
how to make good choices
and to love our neighbours as ourselves.
Amen.
Song – StF 102 or H&P 330 – For the Beauty of the Earth
The theme of our service today is freedom. In the gospel reading it is clear that, in the moment of decision, we are free to choose – whether to follow Jesus, or whether to stay where we are. In our second reading, from Galatians 5, Paul will reflect on the consequences of our freedom.
Let us pray. God whose nature and name is love, we praise you for the many gifts you pour out upon us day by day. Amongst those gifts we recognise the blessing and responsibility of freedom. As we reflect today upon this precious gift, we ask that God’s guidance and wisdom might help us to make good choices, that in all things we might witness to God’s love. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Reading:
Luke 9:51-62
As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village.
As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
He said to another man, “Follow me.”
But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”
Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”
Song – StF 660 – Called by Christ to be Disciples
Reading:
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Song – StF 372 or H&P 281 – Come down, O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine
Reflection:
You might remember the film Braveheart, with Mel Gibson playing the character of William Wallace, and particularly the moment when Gibson/Wallace, daubed with the Scottish blue war paint, and about to lead his army into battle, shouts out the rallying call in his faux Scottish accent, ‘FREEDOM!’
Braveheart was about Scottish independence, but we know that the aspiration to be free is a common human trait, and whether you’re better at history or geography, you have many examples to draw on where the desire for freedom is or has been a powerful motivation for courageous human endeavour.
As I said earlier, the theme of our service today is freedom. In the gospel reading it is clear that, in the moment of decision, we are free to choose – whether to follow Jesus, or whether to stay where we are. And in our second reading, from Galatians 5, Paul reflects on the consequences of our choices, clearly recognising that freedom is a costly commodity, for even if we are receiving it as a gift, it is a gift which demands a genuine response.
The potential disciples we meet in Luke 9 cannot get past the costly implications there will be for them if they choose to freely follow Jesus. A dangerous road, with nowhere to call home. A life with changed and changing priorities, and a new set of loyalties. A focus not on the safe ground of what has been, but on the shifting sands of what might be.
Paul, writing to the church in Galatia, has had time to develop his thinking about, and reflect on his own experience of, that freedom in Christ which is both costly and free, which has both liberated us from disabling guilt, while also helping us to see more clearly those sins from which we constantly need to be set free. Paul offers us that tension between what we have been and what we might be, and invites us to stand there bravely and without fear.
Both the Jesus who sets his face for Jerusalem, and the Paul who journeys wherever he is needed, call us to live as disciples for whom freedom is much less about freedom from, and much more about freedom to. There is still a need to handle those traits which get in the way of our fully reflecting the God who created us, to ask our gracious God to free us from those elements which harm. But the two-sided coin that is God’s gift of freedom is not equally balanced, for the freedom from is always about freedom to, freedom to love, to serve, to give, to receive, to be the person and people God created us to be.
May the God who calls us free us from those things that harm and limit and lessen, and so may we be free to serve as friends and followers of Jesus. Amen.
Song – StF 481 The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want with its refrain:
And I will trust in you alone, and I will trust in you alone,
for your endless mercy follows me,
your goodness will lead me home.
We offer our prayers….
God beyond our understanding
come close to us in Christ and warm our hearts
God beyond our imagining
place your Spirit within us and free us to serve.
We pray for one another, here and now and through the week to come. Particularly for those facing challenges or living with difficulties or disabilities.
God beyond our understanding
come close to us in Christ and warm our hearts
God beyond our imagining
place your Spirit within us and free us to serve.
We pray for those living in situations of conflict and great need. We name some of those places in a few moments of silence……………………..
Particularly we pray for those whose daily existence is fear and hardship. For those who are vulnerable, and those who are not able to protect or provide for them. And for those working for peace or resolution, or bringing much-needed provisions, shelter or medicine.
God beyond our understanding
come close to us in Christ and warm our hearts
God beyond our imagining
place your Spirit within us and free us to serve.
We pray for our sister churches, across the circuit, district, and of other denominations. For all their leaders, ordained and lay, for all who carry responsibility. May each be freed to look outward, to those needing your grace and open to receive.
God beyond our understanding
come close to us in Christ and warm our hearts
God beyond our imagining
place your Spirit within us and free us to serve.
Amen.
We bring our prayers together, as we pray, with all God’s people,
The Lord’s Prayer
Song – StF 238 & H&P 68 Lead us heavenly Father, Lead us
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.
(CCLI 119945. Service prepared by Rev’d Nick Blundell)
