Sunday 08 September 2024
16th After Pentecost
Creation Time
Welcome!
We know not everyone who is part of Westwood Church is able to be in church on Sunday morning however, we thought it would be good to offer some excerpts from the Sunday morning service. Where we can, we offer parts of the service in text and audio, whichever works best for you. If you want to plug in headphones to your computer, tablet or mobile phone now is a good time to do it ! If you want to offer some comment or feedback just use the comment box at the end of this post.
Scripture
Isaiah 35: 1 – 7
Mark 7: 24 – 27
Praise – Praise to the Lord
Prayers
Loving and sustaining God, known to us from our very beginnings, known to us in the life-force within your creation, creatures who sing of God each dawn and dusk, who creep through the Earth beneath our feet, and swarm in the air around us, open up our senses to all life, life on whom we depend.
We see you in the earth’s abundance and diversity, in the swaying of the grasses and scent of flowers; for our life is not detached or neutral; not isolated, nor disconnected. Our every action works its way through skies and seas and reaches the heavens above, and all our ways of life and commerce will shape this day, and many days to come.
You are the God who chose to walk your Earth and in the cool of the evening to walk with us in paradise. Yet, we have trodden heavily upon this earth; trampling rather than tilling, uprooting without replanting, reaping without sowing, as if this could go on and on.
Yet in love, you say: no more! In love, you say change now!
In love, you shine a bright light on God’s urgent permission to think and act differently: to choose other than to harm or take without giving.
Christ, who forgives before we’ve even confessed, stay with us on the journey of healing, grant us determination as people forgiven and loved to leave behind the burdens we should carry no longer and receive the life that quenches our thirst.
May God’s will to be done throughout all Creation.
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
It’s a few years now since Lynn and I had a holiday in Italy. We will go back one day maybe when we have a special anniversary or birthday to celebrate. Typically, we have enjoyed the Lakes and Mountains kind of holiday in Italy, not that we are mountaineers or anything, we’ve simply enjoyed the spectacular scenery. But what sticks in my mind is the amazing relationship, and spiritual relationship, that has developed with those mountain landscapes.
I can recall being overawed by the vast mountain landscapes of the Pordoi Pass, near Canazei, North East Italy and simply incredulous to see a little church perched on a near vertical cliff face hundreds of feet up from the base of the cliff. It makes the climb up Belmont Drive to our wee church pale into insignificance. I suspect most of the worshippers at that wee cliff face church arrived with ropes and other climbing gear! It really cannot have been easy to build a church in such a daunting location. The sheer determination to get tools and materials up that cliff face hardly bears thinking about, and yet humanity’s relationship with God has always involved the challenge of mountain terrain.
I suspect we all know of a church somewhere, even in Scotland, that sits on the top of a hill, or a high point in the town, prominently featured for all to see. Somehow its elevated location points us toward the heavens and Godly things and the importance of those Godly things. Those buildings become statements of faith in their own right even if, as in that wee cliff face church, their remoteness makes it almost impossible for anyone to actually worship from within their walls!
For the prophet Isaiah the image of a Road to Holiness begins with an image of the dry desert becoming as beautiful and fertile as the Lebanon Mountains. Long before Isaiah we have Moses on Mount Sinai receiving the stone tablets of the Law, twice. We have the revised edition. Who knows what was written on the first set of stone tablets??!! Peter James and John go with Jesus to a mountain top where they see Jesus transfigured and shining like the sun. Jesus comes down from the Mount of Olives to enter Jerusalem and go on to his trial and crucifixion. The mountains and hills are spiritual places not just because the view from the top allows us to see the vast wonder of creation stretching out below us; the mountains are eternal and everlasting, we did not witness their birth or formation and we shall be gone long before they crumble to rocks and dust. Somehow the mountains reflect the very nature of God; eternal and reaching to the heavens.
And yet, these ancient rocky landscapes are remarkably fragile. In other parts of the world, we might be thinking of Snow Leopards or Mountain Gorillas struggling to survive through de-forestation of their mountain habitats. And closer to home we may consider the decline of mountain hares and ptarmigan because our winter sports facilities scar the fragile landscape as do humans who in their increasing number erode the pathways and leave litter, where soil erosion on steep slopes caused by deforestation harms the quantity and quality of water downstream to farms and industry and power stations.
When we fail to see our connection to the remotest and most unforgiving terrain in our environment, we fail to see how just how much harm we bring to ourselves. And maybe we can only appreciate that connection between humanity and creation when we see creation as a gift from God, always beautiful, sometimes brutal and terrifying, and if left alone perfect in its function.
Praise – When I survey
Prayers for Others
Grenfell Tower – seven years on
The final inquiry report on the Grenfell Tower tragedy and the death of 72 residents reveals a catalogue of lies, greed and incompetence on behalf of the construction industry and Housing Associations and even the fire service. 72 residents whose deaths were avoidable. And we think on families who still do not have the justice they seek, now hoping that inquiry evidence will be used in prosecutions; prosecutions that are still years away. It is a long time to live with the rawness of their grief, the wounds that are never allowed to heal, the questions that never find an answer; re-living the trauma in every page of the report. Lord and God, we pray that justice may now be served, that integrity be restored, and peace return to the hearts of those who mourn. Lord hear our prayers…
Thanksgiving
In a hurting world, war torn and weary; in a hurting world where even the young have lost their innocence and bring suffering to others, in a hurting world where a bright tomorrow is a forlorn hope, it is hard to offer prayers of thanksgiving. Yet, we have you Lord, eternal and steadfast like the mountains; a God of love and justice, a God who invites us to walk in the light of love, a God who invites us to be the antidote to the ills of this world, and for that we give thanks, give thanks for hope, for light, for love, for joy; give thanks for a different way to life this life. Lord God, Lord Jesus Christ in prayer we thank you for the hope of the Gospel, this life of faith and the presence of the Kingdom of God. Hear our prayers…
Praise – For Everyone Born
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.
A very interesting service very moving