(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 and 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
Welcome to worship today.
In this service of worship we shall be considering change, based on readings from John’s Gospel, a passage from Romans 8, and Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 6:1-8.
Song – StF 94 – To God be the Glory
Fanny Crosby was a blind American hymn writer and poetess who wrote over 9,000 hymns. She used scores of pen names to disguise the fact that most of the hymns in most hymn books were by her. Her lyrics sold 100 million copies. Fanny memorized five chapters of the Bible each week from age 10, by age 15, she had memorized the four gospels, the Pentateuch, the Book of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and many of the Psalms.
Reading
Reflection 1
You’ll hear enough every day on the news to give you a real, severe, case of the blues. You’ll hear of warfare, poverty, and those who abuse their power. Some of them claiming faith to make others fear and cower. But the Gospel promise is to empower us to sail forth, to be happy and hopeful, right here, right now, in Bradford North Nicodemus came by night. He was a man so full of fright at being labelled by other pharisees as a traitor that he could not be seen with Jesus in daylight he had to wait until twilight descended.
His church, you see, had all the powers of a dictator they might equate a meeting with betrayal that could not be defended they would cut people off if they strayed from the line of belief, of obeying the laws laid down in the Torah. Of considering compliance to them, as a lawyer, to be more important than the plight of the poorer people around while Jesus, having his ear to the ground, understood the needs of the ones he was sent to; understood the fright of those with intent to …Change.
He knew about birth. He had sisters and brothers. He knew what a baby was worth to the mothers He knew what they went through to give life a chance He knew so much about the merry dance of getting the foetus head down so that both would survive and both be alive to the joy of all the Earth. Surely He knew the painful suffering of the foetus who, in order to greet us is squeezed through an access far too small for his head leaving the warm, dark, loving, liquid caress of the womb and having, instead, to draw a first breath of cold air aware, as the cord link to his mother was cut, of the stare of the strangers, fearing the dangers, and the rough feel of the blanket on which he was put.
Yet this was the experience awaiting Nicodemus if he chose to be born again and to come among us to experience eternal joy and happiness and life in service with Jesus.
Song – StF 503 – Love Divine all loves excelling
Reading
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you have not received the spirit of slavery again to fear. But you have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirits that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him.
Reflection 2
It’s clear the great St Paul well knew, from his own experience, that glory comes to those who suffer along with Christ, to those who shun the selfish queue for Earth’s riches; in order to commence a life which is one in which just enough sufficed.
John Wesley, the richest preacher ever, thought two silver teaspoons enough to crave for any follower of Christ, not too much to sever that precious bond that lasts forever. The differences between those called Slaves by St Paul, whether to fashion, or to respectability, and those children of life living with more humility finding unexpected nobility without the liability for stuff whose purchases may cause regrets; well, those differences are huge:
Choices open to the ones St Paul calls slaves are limited by what the mind and body craves. You just can’t trust how any one of them behaves. They will resort to any subterfuge they may behave like a bit like Scrooge to bolster personal wealth, or status regardless of community health ignorant of the hiatus they will cause preferring adulation and applause, unaware of what might have been if they had given God a chance to forgive their sin. Whereas a person following Jesus every day will sacrifice and not betray when others are in need, or when the fate of Earth decreed that we should restrain our greed. Someone just dedicated to the Bible is unpredictably liable to choose some verse which, although perverse, does nothing to empty out their purse.
The Bible has so many conflicting stories of war, of genocide, of ego-driven kings, whose war is always just, driven by the lust for glorious things. There are six hundred laws of Moses and those called by St Paul “The Slaves” can smell the roses and choose those that suit their natural inclinations even ‘tho’ in the epistle to Galatians St Paul, in the middle of his woeful privations goes to some pains when he explains that other Christian nations should not feel constrained by Jewish or Old Testament explanations of what is loss and what is gain. Whereas those who follow Jesus know well that his law frees us from antique decisions that would seize us and condemn us into slavery. Instead we can emulate the bravery that he demonstrated on the cross; all is gain and none is loss when we emboss our lives with His ethos.
Song – StF 345 – And can it be that I should gain and interest in my savour’s blood?
Reading
Reflection 3
Uzziah was a most effective King of Judah. His subjects would his praises sing with every victory, read slaughter of every Phillistine, man woman and son but not, of course, the daughters in their teens they were brought back as slaves, procreation machines, for warriors by express curriers as instructed by Moses in Numbers 31:18.
Uzziah died a leper, excluded from society. He had offended priests in a variety of ways and suffered exile a punishment that was quite in style, for a while. His death was the year when Isaiah took up the baton to represent his God with his prophet’s hat on; to warn those of his tribe whose Old Testament beliefs would have women being made to hide their faces behind their handkerchiefs in public places while men remained free to enjoy embraces whenever they wanted, in their palaces.
The wind of change howled through the land; God’s Spirit seeking men and women to take a stand against the evils perpetrated in Uzziah’s reign justified by laws both ancient and arcane. When God asked for someone to lead this change Isaiah did not claim that volunteering would mean too much to rearrange in his life nor that he was a stranger to this sort of pioneering. No, Isaiah felt that he did agree that sitting on the fence was not a viable option he knew that someone had to lead on the adoption of better ways to be and simply said, here am I, send me.
Song – StF 662 – Have you heard God’s voice
Reflection 4
Well, here we are and still forsaking prose. I’m heading into danger territory, so, here goes. What challenges face the church? Why even ask the question? Is there even a suggestion that church has some purpose that is not to do with giving me a warm place to meet my friends and have coffee too?
Let’s start with money. Every organization needs it. Whether its rainy or sunny, we have to heat it and maintain it. Not just the weeks you come to enjoy the fellowship. This is why so many of you choose a standing order as a way to pay for the privilege to freely worship. You deserve the credit for opening the church’s airway giving your treasurers some leeway to spend on spreading of the gospel instead of just maintaining the hostel, the sanctuary, this oasis guaranteed surplus cash is a necessary basis for opening the heavenly gateway for others.
Let’s talk about that gospel; we should be sharing our belief. I don’t know whether you might think that this might bring you angst and grief, embarrassment because you cannot quote the Bible like a legal brief, but I can offer you some quick relief. This isn’t something tribal. You don’t know what the person next to you believes. You think, maybe, that it would worsen his or her regard for you if you spoke out, exposed your thoughts, if you only knew! Your neighbour, yes, is thinking just the same as you. So that excuse is rather lame. Just think about why you belong the church, what is it about the place? You can talk about Amazing Grace, but who would understand? What about the warm embrace you feel when you enter here and strangers reach to shake your hand? Meeting people face-to-face? Support when you need a hiding place to readmit you to the human race. All that is worth telling to your neighbour? And, perhaps, to those with whom you labour?
We are here because of what Jesus did for us all those years ago, and still today the love we feel, receive, and practise, all display a quality of life that will convey to those around that they should not delay to join our fellowship in the week and also on the Lord’s day.
Prayer time
We acknowledge with thanks all the many contributions that benefit this church, often from those who can ill afford what they give of time and money, because they think it the right thing to do.
Prayers
First, Lord, we confess that we have taken the easy option too often in our dealings with other people.
We have sought the company of our comfortable friends rather than looking out for the friendless.
We have allowed pride to stand in the way of apology, valuing being right rather than being loving.
We have given mainly where we have an expectation of receiving.
So, Lord, we sink our pride and ask for your forgiveness, expecting that this will mean we have to ask the forgiveness of those whom we have unwittingly offended.
Secondly, Lord, we offer thanks, and think that we should do so more often, even, perhaps constantly, for all the goodness that we find in life; goodness denied to those who, through no fault of their own, are homeless refugees the world over.
Please allow our gratitude to persuade us that we could manage with less, with less food, with less comfort, less entertainment, fewer new clothes.
Please allow gratitude to surface in our lives as spoken appreciation to those who render services to us: drivers, vendors, cleaners, health workers.
Finally, Lord, we ask you to help us tune our ears and our minds to be sensitive to what we hear and observe, so that we may find out where our talents and resources can best be used next.
The Lord’s prayer
“Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be your Name, your kingdom come,
your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours
now and for forever. Amen.”
Song – StF 409 – Let us build a house where love can dwell
The grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ
The love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
Be with us now and always. Amen
