Sunday 19 January 2025

Second Sunday after Epiphany

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

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

John 11: 17 – 27 

John 20: 24 – 29 


Praise – I want to walk with Jesus


Prayers

Creator God, we worship and adore you.

Standing with all creation, we know ourselves to be made for your glory.

Reflecting your image and likeness, we feel your touch upon our lives.

Remembering your faithfulness, we bless you that you never give up on us.

Hearing your call to us, through story, saint and sage, we bless you for your compelling presence in our midst.

Lord of life, we worship and adore you.

Standing at your tomb, with Mary, we weep.

Failing to know you, we hear you call us by name.

Knowing you again, we want to cling to you.

In your gentle love, you restore us and compel us to call others to life in your name.

Spirit of power, we worship and adore you.

Recalling creation’s story, we feel your brooding presence.

Travelling from slavery, we follow you into freedom.

Standing before the cross, we seek you in the darkness.

Burning with your fire, we are compelled to discipleship.

Creator God, Lord of Life, Spirit of power, we worship and adore you and ask you to hear us now 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

There is something comforting and at the same time mind-boggling about the thought of congregations just like us, of all Christian Denominations across Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales and beyond, joining together this very morning in the same prayers, reading the same passages of scripture and reflecting upon them.  There will be hundreds, no – thousands of congregations from major city centres to tiny island communities taking a moment to remember we are not alone.  We do not exist all by ourselves or for ourselves.  We are part of something so much bigger than ourselves.  Is this what Christian Unity feels like, looks like?

Christian Unity is different to Ecumenism.  The Ecumenical movement seeks to being Christian denominations closer to each other and that certainly is part of Christian Unity.  But what if our differences of tradition didn’t matter at all?  What if you could go to any Christian Church anywhere in the world on any Sunday morning and find we were all offering the same prayers and reflecting on the same scriptures; offering a united and unified worship the world over? 

In reality it won’t happen.  Of course it won’t.  Every local church responds to the life of its own community and nation.  What is happening in Scotland is not the same as what’s happening in Ukraine.  Can you imagine what the prayers of intercession would be like if we mentioned every social problem from every nation in the world every Sunday morning.  You’d still be here at tea time.  Of the following week. With the sermon still to come.  The church would never sleep, the doors would never be closed, the lights would never go out, the church would be a house of Prayer-that-never-ceases.  Actually, when I think about it, that’s just what the church is meant to be.  A House of Payer-that-never-ceases.  Only we can’t do it all by ourselves.  We need each other; the other congregations, the other denominations, in other nations and continents.  Diverse as we are, it is our unity that glorifies God through prayer-that-never-ceases.

Christian unity has not been an easy thing to arrive at.  For the first 300 years the Christian faith was persecuted.  It was fashionable and entertaining to feed Christians to the lions in Roman amphitheatres. Christianity was an underground movement that despite the certainty of persecution continued to grow.  It was the Roman Emperor Constantine who embraced Christianity and overnight raised Christianity from a minority sect to the religion of the entire Roman Empire.  And so, the church faced the challenge of unifying its message and beliefs.  In the year 325 Emperor Constantine convened a meeting in Nicaea for church leaders. The meeting lasted for three months as they gathered together all the strands and expressions of faith from different communities and authored the Nicene Creed.  For one thousand seven hundred years that Creed has been a central expression of what the Christian Church believes, of what you and I believe.

The antiquity of the Nicene Creed does not mean it is simple, naive, or easy to grasp.  The Creed challenges us to believe some incredible things – God as Creator, the Virgin birth, the Resurrection, the Return of the Christ, the Ascension, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The words of the Creed cause us to hear echoes of Jesus words to Martha; ‘Do you believe this?”  Do you believe this?

Martha was brave enough to answer in the affirmative even if she couldn’t bring herself to quite repeat Jesus words, ‘Yes Lord, you are the resurrection and the life’ is exchanged for ‘I believe you are the Messiah’.  And Thomas, doubting Thomas, also found it hard to believe or accept what his fellow disciples were telling him. Believing is a journey.  A journey on which sometimes we need to look back and see where we have come from and use it to shape the future.

In that sense we are no different to those Church leaders who gathered in Nicaea one thousand seven hundred years ago this year; who looked to their past, their heritage of faith and used it to shape the future of a church unified by a common statement of belief.

In an age where it is getting harder and harder to know what to believe, or who to believe, we give thanks for the wisdom of those who laid a foundation for our beliefs in the Nicene Creed which has shaped our past and our present and will shape our future.


Praise – Will you come and follow me


Prayers for Others

Leader: In this time of intercession, we join our prayers in the present

with the faith of the Church in ancient times. Let us Pray.

Reader 1:  For all things were made out of nothing, and their being

would again sink into nothing, if the Author of all things did not hold it by the hand of governance.

(Gregory the Great [c. 540-604])

Congregation:  Lord of life, we receive all creation from your hand and by your providence. Teach us to live in your world with care and seeking justice for all that you have created.

Reader 2:  I call this faith: the intelligible light which by grace dawns in the soul, that supports the heart, and grants the gift of hope.

(Isaac of Nineveh [7th century])

Congregation:  Loving God, grant us the gift of hope in abundance in a world troubled by division and violence. Strengthen your people afflicted by apathy and fear.

Reader 1:  What wonder then, if, coming to God, we first of all profess that we believe, seeing that, without this, not even common life can be lived.

(Rufinus of Aquileia [c. 344-411])

Congregation:  Merciful God, forgive us for the times we have failed to live a common life as Christians. Draw us more deeply to one faith in you so that we may witness to the world.

Reader 2: Truth sees God, and wisdom contemplates God, and from these two comes a third, a holy and wonderful delight in God, who is love.

(Julian of Norwich [c.1343- after 1416])

Congregation: Heavenly Comforter, we pray that we may trust more in the gifts of your truth, wisdom and love than in the cleverness of our thinking.

Reader 1:  The light of Christ appeared and made the darkness of the prison disappear and hallowed our birth and destroyed death, loosing those same fetters in which we were enchained.

(Irenaeus of Lyon [c. 135-198])

Congregation:  Compassionate Lord, lead us to work together so that wherever there is darkness and oppression, suffering and injustice, we may bring your light and freedom. AMEN


Praise – Love Divine


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.

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