Sunday 25 August 2024
14th after Pentecost
Welcome!
Sunday 25th August is a special day in Westwood church as the congregations of Westwood and Greenhills come together in worship of Jesus Christ. The future for Westwood and Greenhills congregations is to become one united congregation worshipping within the current Westwood buildings. Today’s act of worship reflects that coming together in both content and participation.
Scripture
Praise – Let us build a house
Prayers
Ancient of Days, Almighty Father, God of Gods, El Shaddai…
God, we call on You by the names we have, taking on our lips words that cannot contain You. You are always more, so much more, and as we turn to You, You have already turned to us and called on us: My people! My beloved!
To wait before You and meditate on You – this is what restores us.
To know again that You are the Living God – this is what reawakens our hope.
We gather in worship not with tired rituals, not with doctrines or traditions whose origins have vanished in the mists of time; we gather simply to offer our hearts, a genuine giving of self to the God who made us and gave us life.
Our God has built a Kingdom in which love conquers all, where love holds us all together and love heals our wounds. In His Kingdom we are lifted up to be the people He created us to be through the Son who emptied himself of all but love.
And so, we come to listen with ears that are ready to hear.
We come to receive with hearts that are open to Your gifts.
We come with just a tiny seed of faith waiting for it to be nourished.
We come because we are His people and He is our God.
Because in His name we care for one another.
So, we gather in Your presence and offer You our love and thanks for keeping the world turning, for infusing all that exists with the breath of Your Spirit, for looking on us with warmth and pride because we are Yours.
Hear us as we join in the words of the Lord’s Prayer saying…
Our Father who art in Heaven Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory forever. Amen.
Address
Clarence Musgrave, God rest him, was the minister of Murrayfield Parish Church, Edinburgh at the time when I was a young naive Assistant Minister fresh out of Uni. Clarence was a formidable person, not always easy to get on with. He had received the call to be minister of Murrayfield from his time working in the mission field in Africa. In the hot climate of Africa, he refused to wear the traditional heavy black robes a Church of Scotland Minister might typically put on but was OK with just a light weight grey cassock.
Moving from my Probationary year into my first charge in Fife, the congregation were keen to gift me my Clerical robes. But I think something of Clarence’s approach had rubbed off on me. I just couldn’t see myself wearing long black robes every Sunday, so I politely declined the offer and said that just a cassock would be fine. I still have the grey cassock they gifted to me although I’m not sure if it actually fits me anymore! Middle age spread and all that!!
The good folks at Ochiltree and Stair gifted me the blue cassock that you have seen me wearing on countless Sunday mornings and other occasions too. But I wear it less than I used to, far less to be honest. My dress code has become less formal as time has gone by. Partly in response to the less formal setting of our sanctuary and partly because, wearing a suit, I feel far better at being “just me” when I’m with you on a Sunday morning. It’s funny how dressing in a certain way helps to present an image, a status or position, a function or role, that might instantly make that person or occasion identifiable. The Funeral Director in top hat and pinstripes, the bride in her wedding gown, the farmer in his wellies, the minister in his dog collar and robes, elders in tails for Communion Sunday… we could go on. Just be thankful that I’m not here in my jeans and fleece. Somehow that would feel wrong – for me anyway.
I’m not the only one grateful that dress codes have changed. No longer is it an expectation that you should arrive to church in your “Sunday best” or that ladies should be wearing a hat or elders wearing tails for Communion. You are you, wear what you wish, just be yourself.
I dare say that Paul, in prison in Rome, was very aware of the significance of the attire of the Roman soldier who was guarding him with sword and shield and breastplate and helmet. There was no mistaking who he was, who he represented and what he was there to do. Paul rapidly expands on the parallels.
Of course, the parallels Paul draws with his guard’s military attire have nothing to do with actual clothing but with personal and spiritual qualities. When you are fighting against spiritual forces a tin helmet won’t be much use to you; but knowing you are on the right side of things, in the light not the darkness, may be all the defences you need. “For we are not fighting against human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age.”
To be honest, I think we struggle with Paul’s language. The very idea of spiritual forces at work in the world is now foreign to us. We do not believe in things that cannot be seen or touched. And yet we are surrounded by things that cannot be seen or touched; things that live in the human heart and soul – we call them attitudes. When the human heart and soul takes on a racist attitude, antisemitic, homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic… are these things not the dark spiritual forces that infect us, and spill out from the soul to fragment society and destroy relationships. Do these things not call on us to take up arms; Do all this in prayer, always seeking the light, always seeking an end to the dark attitudes, the dark forces that divide and destroy and degrade.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, built his relationships with others upon his relationship with his Heavenly Father. He learned to love others because he knew of his Heavenly Father’s love for him. Or to put it more simply, love God and love your neighbour as yourself. Sadly, we live in a world that has forgotten how to love God and so has lost the foundation upon which we learn how to love others.
And so, in this dark age, we cling to truth, faith, salvation, righteousness, the good news of peace – and we pray that we too may be ambassadors for the Gospel.
Praise – Beauty for Brokenness
Prayers for Others
Loving God, we know what we should be and we know what we are, the gulf between the two so wide!
So, we come now feeling a little ashamed because we know in our hearts we should have done better, tried harder, believed more firmly… and we seek your mercy.
Forgive us for those things that mar and deface our lives; when we are greedy, proud, selfish or filled with jealousy, for these things harm relationships, alienate us from each other and from you. Lord in quietness we think on our own relationship and the places where hurt exists. Give us the grace Lord to heal the hurts, to extend forgiveness and seek mercy…
Lord, we have confessed to our brokenness as individuals; that same brokenness that shatters society, creates the have’s and have not’s, fosters inequality and nurtures injustice. Lord in quietness we think on the greater consequences of our failings as individuals and how that visits our community, our neighbour and the stranger. Give us the courage to right the wrongs and show compassion. Lord hear us in our prayer…
Lord, we confess to the exploitation of the natural world. We have used without giving back, plundered the world’s vast resources never stopping to recognise that the world is finite, limited in its resources. And now we are learning of the consequences of our actions, a contaminated world, the fine balance of God’s creation tipped in the wrong direction. We see the natural world suffering and we, humanity, shall suffer with it too. Humanity is bound up in everything around us. Should we destroy this world we destroy ourselves.
Lord, we confess to our abuse of the natural world, all that you created and gifted to us. We have not cared for it in the way we should have. Help us to learn this painful lesson. Lord, we pray for the gift of creation that it may be set free from humanity’s greed and wastefulness. Restore to us a deep sense of awe at all you created and to treasure creation as a gift to inspire us, not a resource to squander.
Lord, we pray for your created order and confess to our part as individuals, as communities and as the human race in the pain and distress your creation now endures…
Lord, we thank you for hearing our prayers. May change begin with me. AMEN.
Praise – We cannot measure
The Grace
And now… May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you and all whom you love, now and for evermore. AMEN.
Very moving service lots to think about Thanks to Rev Kevin McKenzie always.