Sunday 22 December 2024
Fourth Sunday of Advent
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.
Your Weekly Church Notices
Scripture
Micah 5: 2 – 5
Luke 1: 46 – 55
Praise – While humble shepherds
Prayers
Lord God, with prophets and angels we have been waiting, waiting for the coming of your light. We have been waiting, with people all over the earth, for the coming of your light. We have been waiting, watching, longing for the coming of your light.
Come now and shine in our hearts. Shine in our church, shine in our world; for we need your light, and every day we hope for the light that shone within Jesus Christ to shine within us too.
We confess to the dark things in each of us that spoil our living as individuals and together as Your people. We confess to the dark things, which destroy our world and drive us to despair. We need your gospel, we need Christ, we need the assurance that the light is still shining, we need to hear afresh that you love us as a Father loves his daughters and sons…
Lord God, we thank you for the light of your word, shared among us in scripture and song and story. May our lives be reawakened, may our minds be renewed, may our hearts be refreshed through the word. Come and prepare us for the coming of Christ, that our spirits may leap for joy at the hearing of your promises, that our bodies may be healed and restored by your grace.
So shall we lift up our hearts in prayer.
So shall we lift up our voices in praise.
So shall we humble ourselves even as Christ was humble in birth, in life and in death.
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 seems that a worrying new trend is developing and indeed has already reached quite significant proportions. It is believed that 46 % of the population, when they feel unwell, use the Internet to self –diagnose their symptoms. Sadly, once someone has rightly or wrongly diagnosed their particular illness, there is also a trend to use the Internet to purchase medication which because of its poor quality, or dubious origins, or because the diagnosis is wrong can end up making people extremely ill. Maybe because of waiting times to get appointments, maybe because we can be too embarrassed to speak to a doctor, maybe too frightened of what the doctor might find, a lot of people are resorting to self-diagnosis. Trouble is we so easily read into, our symptoms, things that are not there. Our imagination plays tricks on us until we believe something which doesn’t really exist. We mis-interpret and mis-diagnose.
I have to confess that I’ve often wondered whether some of the Gospel interpretation of some of the Old Testament Biblical prophecies falls into a similar category, a mis-diagnosis, a mis-interpretation. It is calculated that almost one third of the New Testament comprises quotations from the Old. Those who wrote about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ were so very concerned to prove that Jesus Christ was the long awaited Messiah.
The little Old Testament book of Micah is a great example. It is hardly read at all in the Christian calendar, except on this Sunday just before Christmas.
Out of Micah’s whole book, which actually is quite short, just three verses offer a prediction of the birth of Jesus Christ. Usually, these are the only three verses we ever get to hear from Micah’s book. When Micah wrote his book some eight centuries before Christ, he was clearly thinking about something much more immediate than eight centuries ahead. The Israelites had fallen away from their faith in God and from God’s laws and commandments. Society was going to rack and ruin; the culture had become dishonest and the officials corrupt. Micah and his contemporary, the prophet Isaiah, warned that such goings-on would end in tears; disaster for the nation would not be far away.
Most of Micah’s book is devoted to his dire warnings to Israel and Judah to mend their ways. He attacks the rich who were exploiting the poor, the fraudulent merchants, the dishonest judges, and the corrupt priests and prophets. He warns that the sins of the nation will result in God’s just but terrifying judgement and he particularly censures Judah’s leaders for betraying their God-given trust and their divine responsibility.
But having delivered his judgement, Micah’s thoughts turn to restoration and peace and refreshment, and so he ends on a note of promise. And it’s this note of promise, which we recognise year after year at Christmas, for Micah prophecies that “one who is to rule Israel” will arise from the little town of Bethlehem and will “feed his flock in the strength of the Lord”. That flock will live secure lives, Micah adds, for that ruler will be great to the ends of the earth and will be a man of peace.
The New Testament, picks up these wonderful verses written in the Old Testament by Micah 800 years earlier, and interprets them for us. As soon as an interpretation is placed upon those verses I can see what he means, but if I were simply to read the whole of Micah’s book without any thoughts of the birth of Jesus in my head, I wonder whether I would interpret Micah’s verses in quite the same way? And that leads me to wonder whether some of the story of Jesus birth was written with this well-known Jewish prophecy in mind, because the prophecy fits the birth narrative so well.
Could the interpretation of the centuries-old prophecy be a bit like google-ing your symptoms? You see in them what you want to see in them. Matthew and Luke are the only gospels to mention the Christmas birth stories at all. Of these two, Luke has almost all the details about the Christmas story. It’s from Luke that we learn about the census and the journey to Bethlehem and the stable and the shepherds.
Matthew begins his gospel with a long and detailed genealogy of Jesus, proving to his readers that Jesus was indeed born of David’s line. Then he tells us the story of wicked King Herod, who ordered all the baby boys in the area to be killed. Matthew is pointing out to his readers how they and their fellow countrymen have abused Jesus and how much they have to answer for. He emphasises the negligence of the Jews by telling of some strangers, some gentile astronomers, who according to Matthew, were the only people to discover and visit the newborn baby. He names these Magi as the only ones to offer gifts to the newborn baby, and they’re gifts fit for a king, for a priest, and for one who will eventually die. In his account of the birth of Jesus, Matthew is telling the Jews how mistaken they have been, how they’ve misjudged the situation and how it took gentile strangers to make the connection between those ancient prophecies and Jesus of Nazareth.
It is hard to dispute that Micah’s prophecy was most certainly fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Micah knew that to ignore God and God’s laws inevitably leads to disaster, but he also knew that God never gives up on his people and would eventually redeem even the worst situation to bring peace and restoration. That period of peace and restoration began at the first Christmas when Jesus was born, and was brought to its ultimate fulfilment in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
This pattern, forecast so long ago by Micah, continues today for individuals, institutions and civilisations. When institutions or civilisations become corrupt they eventually fall. So do human beings who become corrupt. But God’s story always ends on a high note. As Micah showed, God’s story always ends in hope and promise. This is the message of Christmas and it’s a message that has no end. Whatever happens in life, or however bad we might feel, there is always hope, there is always promise. God is on our side and to prove it he sent us a saviour who entered this world as a tiny vulnerable baby.
Praise – Hark the herald angels
Prayers for Others
It’s the why that intrigues us most. We know when you came; born in that stable 2000 and more years ago. We know where; in that little town called Bethlehem. But the why; the why intrigues us. Why go to all that bother? Why such an elaborate plan? Why would God suppose that living amongst his creation was going to help somehow? Why? when He knew that we were, and are, far from perfect would he want to do that? Other than for love. Love makes us to do some magnificent and selfless things.
Maybe all you wanted was for humanity to turn away from inward looking ways and look outward to you and to each other, to know that love is the better way.
Show us how to love like you love, to love with that perfect love. Where we see suffering may our hearts be open to those who endure and struggle; for struggle comes in many forms, poverty, injustice, inequality, discrimination, disability, gender and race; in every facet of human life, we fail to love as we should. Lord hear us in our prayers for those known to us who endure and struggle…
Lord Jesus, you entered this world to offer your life to people entirely unknown to you. You sat with strangers, dined with tax collectors, offered kindness to those you had never encountered before and would never encounter again. You loved them because in your heart you knew that your Father in Heaven loved them. Show us how to love the stranger, to acknowledge and offer kindness to those who are just passing through, who barely impact upon our living yet are loved by you in the same way as you love us. Lord hear us in our prayers for the stranger who endures and struggles…
Lord Jesus, you entered this world to bring light and hope. May those words not be glib or meaningless for this world knows darkness and despair and looks to you, and those who trust in you, to be a place of light and hope. Lord, we pray for our world and those of this world who through power and authority instigate despair, feed off the poor, oppress and torture. Give us the strength of faith to speak up for those who have no voice, who are robbed of their dignity and humanity. Lord hear us in our prayers for this world…
Go in peace to wait, to watch, to wonder.
Go in peace to think, to do, to dream.
Go in peace to welcome the Christ child and walk with him into the world. AMEN.
Praise – Once in royal David’s city
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 great service and very.moving