Sunday 12 October 2025
Harvest Thanksgiving
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
Matthew 26: 6 – 11
Genesis 4: 1 – 9
Praise – Great is thy faithfulness
Prayers
Lord of all, we praise you for the universe in all its wonder, for the world in all its beauty and for life itself in all its incredible variety. There is so much that gives us pleasure, offers fulfilment and captures our imaginations; so much that challenges and inspires, speaking of your wonderful love and causing us to look forward with anticipation.
We see life that does not depend on us to survive. We experience the wilderness of desert and moor and mountain that deserve our respect; for nature does not mould itself around us; we are small, of no consequence to the life force of nature itself.
And yet we come seeking forgiveness because in our hearts we know we fail to appreciate nature. We use it for our gain. We abuse it for our pleasure. Humanity no longer lives in harmony with the natural world. Humanity spoils the world, failing to appreciate it as we should, treating it as ours by right rather than entrusted to us as a gift from you.
Open our eyes to the countless blessings and inexhaustible riches you have freely given, and help us to show our appreciation by safeguarding them for our children and children’s children.
If the whole realm of nature were ours to give, then Lord it would still be too small a gift. You have given us the gift of nature, the gift of your son and the gift of your eternal love. All we have and everything we are, we owe to you. And we dare to come to you in these moments of prayer offering our gifts, inconsequential in comparison, and yet you delight in them for you can see the love from which they are given.
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
One summer holiday, probably at a Butlins camp or the like, my sister and I decide to run through a series of swimming pools. We splashed through the baby pool, waded through the knee-high water of the middle pool and with reckless abandon threw ourselves into the third and largest of the pools. I was instantly out of my depth. I had expected my feet to reach the floor of the pool but no matter how many times I broke the surface gasping for air and swallowing water there was nothing below me to save me. It was only when I came up for the third time that my dad grabbed me under the arms and pulled me out. Since then, I’ve never been very fond of deep water. Deep water looks cold and foreboding to me. If my feet can’t reach the bottom; if I’m not in control then I find that situation intimidating and uncomfortable. You won’t often find me at a swimming pool; it’s a world I’d rather avoid.
We all have things, which fill us with foreboding; things we’d rather avoid. Maybe it’s the overbearing boss at work, or a fear of flying, or indeed anything that makes us feel out of our depth, no longer in control, an alien environment like being in a foreign country or seeing someone with a strange pattern of behaviour which frightens us. And we all have ways of coping with that place where two different worlds collide. Avoidance is one way of coping. Or we enter into conflict and try to destroy that which frightens us, or we try to control it, in some way to lessen its impact upon us.
The Book of Genesis tells the story of two brothers Cain and Able. Cain is the farmer. Able is the shepherd. Forget about them being actual people for a moment, I doubt if they were, for the story tells us about two different worlds on a collision course with each other. For generations the Israelite people had been a nomadic tribe wandering in the deserts with their flocks of sheep and goats. That’s Able’s world. Over the generations some began to settle into a farming life on the fertile grounds near the coast. They became the farmers. That’s Cain’s world. The settled farming life begins to erode the foundations of the traditional shepherding way of life and though God rests his favour upon the shepherd the animosity between them grows until the settled farming lifestyle wins the day. Cain killed Able. And then says with utter indignation in his voice “I don’t know. Am I supposed to take care of my brother?” The resentment in Cain’s voice is quite breathtaking! Am I my brother’s keeper even when his ways seem to threaten mine and I don’t understand him and he makes me feel uncomfortable and out of my depth?
Even in our Harvest thanksgiving there is a clash of two worlds. Our thanksgivings are tinged with disquiet, discomfort maybe even guilt because as we give thanks for the great abundance of gifts God has placed in our lives, we do so in the knowledge that many many of God’s children do not share in that great abundance. They are the ones who live in poverty.
Poverty makes us feel out of our depth, it’s a world we don’t know and don’t understand and so we try to find a way to resolve that conflict within us by avoiding it, or taming it in some way.
Is that what we are doing today? We are happily giving our gifts to those who are poor but at the same time we don’t get too involved.
Is that the way Jesus did things? We know fine well it wasn’t. Jesus sat at the supper table with sinners and tax collectors; he touched the leper. Jesus said the most outrageous things, did the most shocking things. Jesus did not think their world was one to avoid. He absolutely got involved with those who struggle. Isn’t that what we are meant to do as well? Am I my brother’s keeper?
No one is going to deny the generosity of the Harvest gifts brought to church today and the good they will bring to those in need. But does it make sense that the man or woman or child who receives our gifts today will be someone we seek to avoid tomorrow?
Worlds collide. And when they do it can be an uncomfortable experience. Are we left resentfully asking “I don’t know. Am I supposed to care for my brother?”
Praise – Beauty for brokenness
Prayers for Others
Gaza / Israel peace.
Tentatively. Hopefully. Quietly, we give thanks to you Father for the first steps in a Peace Agreement between Israel and Hamas. We breathe a sigh of relief that suffering might be eased and hope restored. We rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. For hostages to be reunited with families we give thanks and for those who will weep and mourn over the return of their departed loved ones, we too shall mourn. For those who simply wish to go back home, to rebuild life we also pray.
May the steps that come lead to lasting peace; we pray that division, hatred, and the never ending cycle of conflict be broken once and for all. May all of humanity learn to love their neighbour, and see in the eyes of every human being the child of God to be loved and cherished. Lord hear us in our prayers…
Harvest Prayers
When you Lord, gave us life and breath and gave us freedom to live within the paradise of Eden, you Lord, surrounded us with beauty, you filled our lives with the beauty of fellowship with our creator, you showed us how to love and be loved. On this day of Harvest, we thank you for the world we live in and express our longing to once again live in the Garden of Eden where fellowship with You and with each other is the greatest of all blessings. May the gift we bring this harvest be the gift of an open and loving heart that seeks not to avoid our neighbour or their need but to bring all into the endless generosity of God’s eternal love. Lord hear our prayers…
Praise – Come ye thankful people
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.