(All our songs this morning are from Singing the Faith (StF) or 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 25 years) 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
People of God, let us walk in God’s ways; let us sing of God’s love; let us shout for God’s justice.
We are ready to walk, sing and shout for God’s kingdom.
People of God, get ready to listen to all God wants to say; get ready to change your minds and your heart; get ready to move with God in the world.
We are ready to listen, change and move with God.
People of God, listen for God’s voice; listen for God’s guidance; listen to what God is saying to us today.
We are ready to listen and to follow with all our heart. Amen.
Prayer
Open us, Lord, to your purposes this day, that we might welcome you in friend and stranger, and know your love in the grace others show to us. Amen
Song – H&P 595 or StF 571 – As your family Lord, see us here
We use today’s Psalm as a Prayer. Psalm 48:1-3, 10-14
Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise, in the city of our God, his holy mountain. Beautiful in its loftiness, the joy of the whole earth, like the heights of Zaphon is Mount Zion, the city of the Great King.
God is in her citadels; he has shown himself to be her fortress. Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love. Like your name, O God, your praise reaches to the ends of the earth; your right hand is filled with righteousness. Mount Zion rejoices, the villages of Judah are glad because of your judgments.
Walk about Zion, go around her, count her towers, consider well her ramparts, view her citadels, that you may tell of them to the next generation. For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end. Amen.
Reading
Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offence at him.
Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honour except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.
Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village.Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits.
These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.”
They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.
Song – H&P 315 or StF 404 – God’s spirit is in my heart
Reflection
There are two themes that strike me as I walk with Jesus into that familiar synagogue in Nazareth, and then listen with his disciples to the instructions to go out two by two.
Firstly, as we witness the local boy returning to his home place, but not finding a welcome, but exclusion and hostility, I wonder about our experience. Both church as synagogue, in the sense of wondering how we welcome returnees, and church as returnee, in a society which seems no longer to welcome us.
Secondly, as we hear the instructions Jesus gives to those he sends, I notice the direction, made even clearer when he sends the seventy-two (in Luke 10), to be guests not hosts. I wonder how this might connect with our first theme? The prophet without honour in his hometown.
We live in a society whose institutions were founded in days when Christianity was the dominant religion, with an understanding of the Christian stories widespread, and an expectation of Christian values implicit. Education, social provision, the justice system, medical care, even foreign policy, all were built with a significant influence being the Christian faith.
We might still have Bishops in the House of Lords, but the society we live in today is very different. A rich diversity of faiths, a much more secular setting of policy, a widespread absence of knowledge and understanding of the Christian scriptures and stories, a general lack of experience of churches and church life. The world has changed. And so I wonder whether the gospel picture of a prophet without honour in his home town might be a helpful way of thinking about the place in which we find ourselves today? The Christian Church in a society with a historical foundation of faith, but a current antipathy, sometime hostility, to those who represent the church today – that’s you and me. Or perhaps it’s just me and not you? That is, those of us who wear our collars back to front, who are seen as representing the institution of church, in a time when institutions are not to be trusted. It seems to me that we have moved from a time when church, and clergy, were integral to, and trusted by, society, to a season in which we are looked on with suspicion and mistrust. We are not alone in this. Politics, media, business, health, charities all have experienced this move from respect to cynicism.
So how do the instructions of Jesus to the twelve speak into this reality? He sends them out two by two with the encouragement to accept hospitality where it is offered, to be guests rather than hosts. Now some of you will have heard me talk about healthy churches being those where the majority of folk attending see themselves as hosts rather than guests, in that they recognise that worship and welcome is the responsibility of all of us, not just those who hold office or preach the sermon. I am not suggesting anything different – God, the ultimate host, invites us into the church, and expects us to respond to this by in turn becoming hosts ourselves – it is the task of all of us to make the stranger welcome. But I am suggesting that, in seeking to share our faith, the encouragement of Jesus to accept hospitality, to be guest rather than host, may be key. If we are guest, we listen at least as much as we speak, we respect our host, we wait for the invitation to share our story. And people will want to hear our story. The same research that identifies people’s suspicion of institutional church also recognises their openness to spiritual things. They are uneasy about structures but open to stories. Abuses of power put them off, but practices of prayer provoke curiosity and interest.
So who is the person, or where is the place, with whom or in which you feel some sense of welcome? How might you take up their invitation? How might you listen well to their story or question or wondering, and what might you share with honesty and integrity in response? In some situations, the best answer we can give is to offer to pray for the situation – it says something about who we are as people of prayer, who God is as the one to whom we pray, and who the person is as someone for whom we (and God) want the best. ‘Would it be okay if I prayed about you and the person you have told me about?’ says more than we might think, and will usually be more welcome than we expect.
So let’s be good and godly hosts when people do come, or return, to us. But let’s also be good guests, listening and loving, ready to share the faith that is in us, open to the God who accompanies us in every place, home and away. Amen.
Prayer of praise and thanksgiving
Thank you, Lord God, for coming to us in Jesus as our guest, made welcome by some and rejected by others. May we always make you welcome, ready to open our hearts to your love and our hands to the stranger. And may we always be open to receive your hospitality, to notice your blessings, to meet you in the other. Amen.
Song – H&P 390 or StF 362 Meekness and majesty
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 returnee. Because of prejudice, ignorance, fear, greed and self-interest
Merciful God, hear our prayer.
We pray for those looking for meaning and purpose in their lives, and wondering who they might invite to share their story
Merciful God, hear our prayer.
We pray for those elected on Thursday, that they might fulfil their role with integrity, and work for justice and peace for all
Merciful God, hear our prayer.
We pray for those who failed to be elected on Thursday, particularly those who had previously served.
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 would always make them welcome, and offer our part in that making welcome
Merciful God, hear our prayer. Amen.
We share the Lord’s Prayer
Song – H&P 892 or StF 470 – Lord, for the years
Sending and blessing
Loving God, thank you for coming to us as one of our own, and for calling us to be your own.
Give us the grace to welcome you in friend and stranger, and to recognise your part in the invitations we receive.
And so may the blessing of God, Creator, Son and Spirit, remain with us, now and always. Amen.
