(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 Christchurch, Windhill, where the Methodist Church and the Church of England work and worship together in a local ecumenical partnership (and have done for the last 26years) led by Rev Nick Blundell one of our circuit Ministers
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Gathering Prayer
Loving God, your love is immeasurably more than we could ever understand.
Draw us deeper into the truth of your love for us and help us to reflect that love in our daily lives. Amen.
Song – H&P 66 or StF 51 – Great is your faithfulness
Prayer
Holy God, you are full of love for all your people,
even though we do not always appreciate it and respond as we ought.
Holy God, your persistence and patience amazes us –
you go on loving us even when we know we don’t deserve it.
Holy God, your generosity overwhelms us.
Holy God, you are beyond our imagining– you are so much more.
Holy God, may we learn to be closer to you, to listen more,
to feel more, to know more of the immensity of your love.
Holy God, this is our prayer. Amen.
Bible reading
We sing Charles Wesley’s hymn, echoing the passage above
Song – StF 503 or H&P 267 – Love divine, all loves excelling
Bible reading
Luke 4:21-30 Jesus returns to the synagogue in Nazareth
Reflection
I’m confident that somebody here or at home will have had Love Divine as a wedding hymn, with others having I Corinthians 13 as a reading at their marriage service. I know I did first time round. And it’s a good choice, a beautiful summary of what love is, giving the happy couple something to aspire to as they journey on together.
However, I’m sure that when Paul penned this passage, he did not intend it to be a stand-alone set of words for weddings. Rather, he was writing to a specific community, in a particular city, at an appropriate time. We do not know whether it crossed his mind that the document he created to send to Corinth might be copied and sent further, whether there was any sense in which Paul and his contemporaries realised that the letters they were writing and the stories they were collecting would become ‘Bible’ in the way they did. They were writing principally for the moment, responding to live issues, seeking to help the embryonic Christian communities springing up, like Corinth, around the largely Roman world.
The church in Corinth was a church in conflict, with cliques and factions arguing over who was the greatest, and who had the best spiritual gifts. Rather than a reading for a wedding, Paul is sending hard words to a church in danger of divorce. He urges them to get their priorities right, reminding them that the most important gift they possess is love, which they hold in common with all God’s people, and which, if they will receive it fully, will draw them together and deal with those difficulties which have got in the way of the gospel.
The issue of who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’ has blighted church history. Not just at the level of the local church, as in Corinth, but at times on a national and international scale, judgements about who is included and who is excluded have led to the persecution of those who are ‘different’, and wars being fought.
When Jesus returned to the synagogue in Nazareth, he was at first greeted warmly – ‘It’s Joseph’s lad, doesn’t he speak well, one of our own.’
But as Jesus speaks the mood turns, for the two stories he chooses to tell have God blessing, not those who are like them, or from their tribe, but rather a widow from Sidon and a soldier from Syria, both gentiles and foreigners. He is talking about inclusion, about God’s love able to reach beyond the boundaries of geography, custom, history; they want to hear about exclusion, where they are on the inside while those who are different are on the outside, excluded.
So now the local boy made good is himself excluded, taken from the place of worship to the brow of the hill, a place of punishment. Jesus, with his Father’s grace, walks away from this hill. It will not always be so.
On another hill, on another day, God’s Son will open his arms to all who need him, and die on a wooden cross, the ‘King of the Jews’ giving himself for all the world.
This gift of sacrificial love both blesses and challenges.
Blesses, in that it shows us that God’s love includes us, that nothing we can do will turn that love aside.
Challenges, for the One who dies dies for all, excludes none, and calls on us to be like him, and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.
It is hard to always have open arms, to love unreservedly. May the One who knows this best give us grace to follow him. Amen.
Prayer of thanksgiving
Almighty, everlasting God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
so much of who and what you are has been gifted to us by those around us.
We give you thanks and praise.
So much of our relationship with you and our spiritual growth
has been gifted by those who worship with us.
We give you thanks and praise.
So many of your examples of love challenge us, uphold us, sustain us
and create in us a yearning to love more as we are loved.
We give you thanks and praise.
Amen
Song – H&P 145 or StF 249 – Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love
Prayers
Lord God, we bring you our prayers, spoken in words and offered from the heart.
We pray for those unable to return to the place and people they know as home. Because of war, famine, persecution, domestic abuse, climate emergency
Merciful God, hear our prayer.
We pray for those unable to welcome the stranger, or the excluded. Because of prejudice, ignorance, fear, greed and self-interest
Merciful God, hear our prayer.
We pray for those excluded by others, or by their own perception or expectation of others
Merciful God, hear our prayer.
We pray for those elected to serve, from local councillors to Prime Ministers and Presidents, that they might fulfil their role with integrity, and work for justice and peace
Merciful God, hear our prayer.
We pray for those daring to speak truth to power, and those seeking to help those endangered or excluded by the choices and policies of others
Merciful God, hear our prayer
We pray for any known to us who are struggling this day, for whatever reason. In the silence we lift them to the God who will always love them, and offer our part in making that love known
Merciful God, hear our prayer. Amen.
We share the Lord’s Prayer
Song – H&P 381 or StF 550 – Forth in thy name ,O Lord, I go
Sending and blessing
Loving God, thank you for your great love for us,
love which is patient, kind, protecting and persevering.
Help us to take your love out with us this week
and share it with those who feel they are outside of your family.
Give us your heart for those who don’t yet know you.
We ask this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
And so may the blessing of God, Creator, Son and Spirit, remain with us, now and always. Amen.
CCLI 432031 Service prepared by Rev’d Nick Blundell