Sunday 01 June 2025
7th Sunday of Easter
Ascension
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
Acts 16: 16 -34
John 17: 20 – 26
Praise – Longing for light
Prayers
Each of us arrives from all the ordinariness of living to step aside from the noise and clutter of life to focus ourselves once more upon You, our Lord and God. To allow you to touch again that place inside our soul. And seek again our better selves.
Let us celebrate the richness and diversity of life in the presence of God.
We bring our hopes and anticipations. We bring our joys and celebrations. We bring our sorrows and lamentations. We bring our faith and adorations. We bring to this hour of worship all that makes our lives real and meaningful, that they may be blessed by communion with the lives of others.
From the fragmented and often chaotic world of our everyday lives, we gather together in search of wholeness. We bid you welcome, those who come with weary spirit seeking rest. We bid you welcome, those who come with hope in your hearts, those who come proud and joyous, those who come to learn and explore.
We enter into this time and this place to join our hearts and minds together to remember what is most important in life. To be challenged to live more truly, more deeply, to live with integrity and kindness and with hope and love, to seek the company of those who walk a common path, to be renewed in our faith in the promise of eternal life, to be strengthened and to find the courage to continue to do what we must do, for the sake of Christ our Lord.
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
In the Roman Empire those who found themselves on hard times with no food, or income or a roof over their head had two very stark choices. One choice was starve to death on the streets and the second was enter into slavery. Slavery for the Romans, and this sounds harsh, was a way of solving a social problem. It was a far from perfect solution but at least it answered some of the problems. As a slave you would have a roof over your head, typically you would sleep in the basement or cellars of the house; and you would be fed. It might have been better than starving to death but it also sounded like a living hell. Slave quarters, truthfully were not much better than cave dwelling. A slave was not valued as a human being, forget the United Nations Convention on Human Rights, slaves were no more than a piece of property to be constantly at their masters beckon call. Slaves might easily be abused physically, sexually and emotionally without any recourse to justice. A slave was lucky if they had a good, kind or caring master, but all too often a slaves lot in life was to endure all kinds of injustice and humiliation and deprivation. That’s the way it was and nobody thought any the worse of it. Nobody thought it was wrong. Nobody campaigned for a slaves rights or justice or equality.
That slave girl in the Book of Acts, the one who had a gift for telling the future, I think she had it lucky. Not lucky in the sense that her master was kind, but lucky in the sense that her master had found some value in her. Her ability to tell the future made her special, she earned income, not for herself but for her master and maybe because of that she was treated a bit better than some. She was never going to be released from slavery not while she had some worth in the eyes of her master.
From the moment we are introduced to her we can see there is going to be a problem. Luke, who wrote the Book of Acts, describes her as having an evil spirit. It seems the lines of conflict have been drawn before a word had even been spoken. The slave girl followed Paul and his companions for many days shouting out that, “These men are servants of the Most High God! They announce to you how you can be saved!” which is not an untruth in any way, but Paul becomes increasingly irritated with her until he snaps. If what the slave girl shouted was not wrong, if the message was not wrong, then perhaps it was the messenger that was wrong. This slave girl, believed to be possessed of an evil spirit, was not the right person to be proclaiming the gospel, or bearing testimony to the work Paul and his companions were doing. Right message, wrong messenger. And Paul put a stop to it.
Today is a special day, I may have said that a few times recently! Today is a special day because Gwen and Meaghan are ready to openly say that they have embraced a faith to live by, faith in Jesus Christ. They have heard the message; and they are ready to be the messengers. They are ready to live out their faith within and through the life of this congregation, or perhaps, some other congregation as life unfolds for them through their adult years.
If Paul’s encounter with the slave girl in Acts 16 tells us anything it is that message and messenger need to be as one. We cannot receive the message of Christ and not live as Christ calls us to live; faithful in prayer and worship, tolerant of others, offering compassion and forgiveness, loving our neighbour and our enemy, and encouraging others to find faith in Christ Jesus. This is not an easy pathway through life, it is a pathway of choice and of calling which in our own strength is nigh on impossible to achieve. We give thanks therefore that our Lord does not expect us to follow in our own strength but in dependence on His Grace and the leading of the Holy Spirit. Each and every one of us here has at some time in some way responded to the message and answered the calling to be the messenger. We are all constantly on the journey of bringing the message and the messenger together as one. Right Message, Right Messenger. Today Gwen and Meaghan join with us on that journey of faith.
Praise – O God you search me
Prayers for Others
Why else do we come together but to hear your word in the scriptures and measure ourselves against it. We hear your word and try to understand, we try not to dilute it down but to preserve its integrity, its radical nature.
Lord Jesus, you prayed, “that they all may be one” and we wonder just what you mean by that; for we are not identical to each other, there is so much diversity and sometimes division. How can we be one unless we have something in common, a foundation from which we all build, an outlook on life that guides our thinking and actions. Just what did you want your Heavenly Father to do when you prayed ‘that we may all be one?’
Gaza
And yet, it seems obvious that in this world we are not one. We see babies and children on the edge of starvation in Gaza. Prolonged cruelty being visited upon those who cannot defend themselves, who have nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, who will forever bear the scars of conflict in body and mind. Conflict that will breed conflict for generations to come as it has in the past. We pray for places of conflict where the desire to even recognise the common foundation of humanity has long since evaporated…
Kayden Moy
We pray for our own town and community where neighbours and families have lived peacefully alongside each other to find life turned upside down through knife crime. We remember Kayden Moy, his family, his friends, the school community at Duncanrig who are once again facing this trauma. We remember so many who are touched by this as the shock wave ripples outward leaving saddened, disbelieving hearts in its wake. When once we were as “one” the foundations upon which we built trust, community, family and neighbourhood have been shaken.
We pray for those arrested in the aftermath of Kayden’s death. Young lives destroyed and families shattered; who will forever carry the knowledge of those actions, whose actions will forever divide them from community, distance them from those they know and love. When once we were as “one” the foundations upon which we built trust, community, family and neighbourhood have been shaken. Lord God, hear us in our prayers…Lord Jesus, you prayed for us, those who are your disciples that we may be one, to live in the strength of your love and to bear your image, to be Christ-like in all we do and say and think. Help us then to restore the common foundations of community and family and neighbourhood. Show us how to be as “one”. 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.