(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 led by Mervyn Flecknoe one of our Circuit Local Preachers and Lay Pastor at Baildon Methodist Church.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Introduction This is a service about HOPE
Song – StF 25 – God is here as we, His people meet to offer
Prayer
Lord of the poor and dispossessed
We confess that we maybe too content.
Our protest against the inequity of this world order
is so quiet and ineffective that it borders on consent.
Remind us of the sacrifices
Made by Jesus and his saints
Forgive our mean complaints
And our habitual vices
of keeping our love theoretical
Whilst living a life heretically selfish.
We humbly accept forgiveness, for Jesus’ sake
And the responsibility that brings
To make sure that kindness springs
From every action and from every breath we take. Amen
Reading
Reflection 1 What an apocalypse Joel was seeing!
He was being straight with his folk, time for jokes about foreigners was over the crisis at home was on his mind prices rising, water cut off, death warrants signed by nature, and by selfish rulers using powerful tools as ways of getting their own way.
His prophecy could have been written today about any number of crisis hotspots on, say, the Christian Aid watch list, or maybe by a government think tank in the UK.
The first of Joel’s chapters is all about disaster like the effects of the world trade collapse or the erosion of soil and the pollution of streams dreams of revolution and catastrophe as his people committed blasphemy by taking creation for granted.
Chapter two comes after repentance the Lord repeals the death sentence as each of us learns to use the land to produce food to satisfy demand, digging our lawns to plant potatoes draining the swamps to starve mosquitoes. Self-sufficiency, to make sure our neighbours have something to eat so that we may approach the mercy seat with less dread, having offered bread to strangers;
Unless, that is, we need our hoes to fight invaders because Joel also warns that we might have to beat our plowshares into swords if we cannot find the words to make peace, to ensure that prosperity will never cease.
We do like a bit of continuity stability, so that we know what’s what and how to behave when we are in a spot of bother. But Joel says that all will change in the blink of an eye, all will become strange. It will only take a few changes in Governments, or a breaking of our rainbow covenant with God to treat the Earth as a brother or sister. Instead, we resist her pleas to treat each insect and cephalopod with respect. We fill the seas with plastic waste, and count disposable bottles of less importance than the taste, and throttle children in poverty with exhaust gasses, what an atrocity!
Our brothers and sisters in lands afar accessible now within the range of a holiday jet, where you can bet tourists who prop up a bar know nothing of the hunger and the desperation gripping mothers and children suffering deprivation as their menfolk make dangerous journeys living in degradation to send some money home.
While our excitement comes from whether Ernie will choose our premium bonds. Are we prepared? Are we just scared? Do we really think we will be spared the wrath of the ravaged Earth, in the aftermath of our profligate living? Are we still giving too much attention to the retention of our own comfort?
Prayer 2
Lord, through your Spirit,
we ask you to endow us with
abounding hope right now and always,
So that our life displays your strength.
When power will go to any length
to silence justice,
give us courage to raise our voice, just as
Jesus did; and rejoice that we are his people.
When an end to poverty seems far off,
renew our faith in your kingdom come on earth.
When our neighbour reaches out,
inspire us to respond and let our actions shout
your love. In Jesus’ name. Amen
Song – StF 693 – Beauty for brokenness, hope for despair
Introduction to the Christian Aid film
The Alta Verapaz region of Guatemala, 90% of people are living in poverty. The region is home to the Indigenous Q’eqchi’ (C’-WAY-chee) people. Men in the community often seek work away from their homes, while women grow crops to feed their families.
Aurelia is a community leader, a mother of eight and a beloved grandmother. In recent years record high temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns have hit farmers like her hard. Water sources are drying up or being polluted by industry.
Aurelia, and others from the place where she lives, walk for around four hours each day during the two trips they must make to collect safe, clean water from a cenote – a natural sinkhole like a cave, with water at the bottom
Christian Aid Film please watch this if you are able
https://christianaid.resourcespace.com/pages/view.php?ref=16200&k=1de57ce076
But Aurelia isn’t giving up. Congcoop, Christian Aid’s partner in Guatemala, supports communities with agricultural resources and training that help them to become more climate resilient.
Aurelia took up the opportunity to gain new skills with Congcoop. She’s combining her deep knowledge and understanding of her land with innovative techniques. She’s making organic fertiliser, constructing rainwater collection systems, and growing a wider range of crops.
Song – StF 698 – God! As with silent hearts we bring to mind how hate and war diminish humankind
Reading
Mark 6:30-44 Supper for Five Thousand
Reflection 2
Jesus had to change his friends’ ideas addressing their fears of being overwhelmed as volunteers when trying to meet the needs of their peers.
They had to forget what was usual; The casual acceptance that some people were sentenced to a life of dependence he hoped his disciples would find a state of transcendence in which these folk became their own kith and kin in which they could fix the state they were in.
The first step was that they recognise the need to concede that people needed to feed if they were to remember the stories Jesus told and uphold the standards that he set.
You can’t think straight any longer if your belly aches from hunger.
The second step was to assess to what resources they had access that might help to feed every granny and grandad who had turned out to hear and revere, this sincere teacher, whom some had thought mad. They gathered together the food in their bags and discovered that others came out with contributions and together they began to find the solutions in more equitable distributions of existing resources without recourses to magic tricks, just sharing together of their picnics.
Together we can solve the world’s hunger if we resolve to involve both older and younger both richer and poorer and to dissolve the barriers which are otherwise going to floor us. We can join in one uplifting chorus of hope so that we may cope with all before us. It is all about hope, you see hope for you, and hope for me hope enables us to be more than we are just now.
Who has a hope in Hell? to allow them to cope with one more bombshell? Let’s look at those who stare into the abyss, who cannot dismiss the idea of suicide whose aspirations died with no-one at their side whose pride will not allow them to decide to keep on living. St Paul, chained in his prison. Jesus, on his cross. A bereaved parent mourning her loss. In all these stories, hope has, in the past, arisen. An alcoholic who goes to meetings drinking tea. A drugged up ex-marine, who can only see his family crumble, he stumbles on the telephone number for Help for Heroes, they help him unencumber from his debts, his addictions, ease the restrictions on his return to society. A man who has cheated and longs to come back, A woman betrayed who cannot keep track of her money, in debt up to her eyeballs who recalls the people she has let down the pitfalls that trapped her. Then Christians against Poverty enwrapped her in their loving embrace to allow her to replace what she owes and dispose of her debts. A child raised in poverty in Windhill, just over there with scabies on her skin and nits in her hair hopes that one day she may have her fair share of good luck and with pluck she will make it. We hope that Aurelia keeps up with her work as she tries not to shirk the responsibilities that come with the newfound possibilities.
However deep we have sunk how much our pride has been shrunk there is hope if we look if we use the textbook of the Gospel, our guide to living well to climb out of the pit and to offer a hand to those who don’t yet understand that there is escape from the quicksand a return to the promised land of Good life for all.
Prayer 2
Lord, hear us as we pray for all people living in poverty.
For those unable to maintain modesty when meeting basic needs.
For children who will not eat a nutritious meal today,
or who cannot afford to stay at school.
For those consuming seeds they should be planting
For those who have sold their tools to buy bread,
and for those who live in dread of soldiers.
Help us take their troubles on our shoulders.
Fill us with a fierce determination
to hasten the time when equity will rule
and end cruel torment.
May our dissent be clear in the lives that we lead
And may we represent our Lord’s advent here.
May we hear the cries of those who
Go through the pains of hunger and denigration
At the hands of those who abuse creation
For their own ends.
May we speak up with them for an equal
and a just society.
Instead of hiding behind hollow, insincere piety.
Help us to see that action is good medicine for anxiety.
We seek to serve our global neighbours.
Working so that they can reap the benefits of their labours.
We ask these prayers in the name of our Saviour. Amen
Song – StF 701 – Heaven shall not wait for the poor to lose their patience
Prayer
First, hold out a hand in front of you. Each finger will remind us of someone to pray for.
Hold your thumb with your other hand. Your thumb is closest to you. So, let’s start by praying for the people who are closest to us – our family, our friends, the people we love.
Next, hold your index finger, the one you use for pointing. Let’s pray for the people who help show us the way to live, who teach us and heal us:
police, teachers, doctors and nurses, and others.
Now your middle finger, which is the tallest. It reminds us to pray for the leaders of our country and our world; such as Anna Dixon and the other people who work in Parliament, for Susan Hinchcliffe and all Councillors and officers, and for those who have the power to make decisions about money, war and peace.
Now hold your fourth finger. We’ll use it to remind us to pray for people who are excluded, marginalised and oppressed, and people who are trapped in poverty. We pray for Aurelia and her community in Guatemala.
Your last finger is your smallest finger. It can remind us to pray for ourselves. In a moment of quiet, let’s bring our own needs to God, and ask God to give us hope for today and tomorrow.
Let’s use this time to think of actions we could take to help bring hope to others – our neighbours, both local and global.
The Lord’s prayer
Song – StF 705 – It is God who holds the nations in the hollow of His hand
As we go out from this place, help us to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with you.
We give thanks for the vital work of Christian Aid and for all who support this work.
May your compassion flow through our actions and offerings.
Loving and faithful God, give us hope and send us out to serve you, this day and every day.
