Sunday 02 November 20025
21st After Pentecost
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
2 Thessalonians 1: 1 -12
Luke 19: 1 – 10
Praise – Be still for the presence of the Lord
Prayers
Lord our God: with a song of our lips, we worship and praise You this morning. For You are the creator who fills us with wonder You are the king who deserves our service.
What can we do for You, Lord?
How can we respond to Your kindness towards us?
No gift could ever repay Your love or do justice to the good things that You have given. We can but praise You with rejoicing voices and with the silent adoration of our hearts.
Gentle God: we confess that we do not always feel like lifting our hearts in praise.
We lose sight of Your wonder in the ordinary places and we forget Your goodness when times are hard. Forgive us when we dishonour You, and help us when we find ourselves struggling. Lead us gently onwards to brighter and to better places, where we can regain a vision of Your glory.
Almighty God: awaken us now to Your living presence as we gather here within Your house. Pardon our inadequate efforts, and complete our offering with Your abundant grace. Enable us to praise You with the music of worship and also with the music of our lives.
May we then offer you something joyful, a sweet smelling offering, an abundance of service that glorifies your name. In all our actions, in our thoughts and in our words may the love of Christ be found.
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
The New Testament gives us a picture of what God is like through the life and work of Jesus Christ. That picture has nothing to do with what God looks like, in a physical sense, but has everything to do with what God’s nature and character is like. What we see in Christ as a loving compassionate man seems to be poles apart from what we read in the Old Testament where God creates with just a word of command, where God can be angry and full of judgement. Yet both of these pictures are true. The Book of Genesis speaks of a mighty and powerful God but at the same time this is a rather faceless, distant God. Then I remember the story of Zaccheaus and take heart.
Jesus was passing through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus had been in Jericho before. At that time, it was Blind Bartimaeus who had been healed. This time it was Zaccheaus who so desperate to attract Jesus attention. Zaccheaus was a little, but we might also say an insignificant, man.
Zaccheaus lived a life in isolation from the mainstream of society. His profession made him an outcast. We are all aware that Zaccheaus was a tax collector. To collect taxes for Rome meant Zaccheaus acknowledged Rome’s right to do so, that Caesar was King; Caesar was to be worshipped as a God. This of course was a betrayal of all that the Jews believed; that there is only one true God and God is one. Just to make matters worse for Zaccheaus, the tax collectors profit came from the extra he could extract from people beyond what they legally owed. The more a tax collector could bully and threaten people the more profit he was likely to make. Tax collectors were seen therefore, not just as conspirators and traitors but also as cheats and thieves and oppressors of the poor. In reality then, his chances of having any meaningful contact with Jesus were just about NIL and his chances of having a good relationship with God were even less.
Luke, the author of our Gospel, seldom records names in his accounts. Yet here he does and all to prove a point. Zaccheaus means; pure, innocent, just and righteous, yet the little man whom Jesus greets is a corrupt tax collector. Those who knew him did not see a pure and innocent man but rather the cheat and the cutthroat and the traitor.
I can’t say that it was much else other than an act of desperation. In desperation Zaccheaus determined that he should see Jesus. It was not without its obstacles of course. He was too small to see over the crowds but in some way that was the least of his worries. He was hardly a popular man to be standing in the midst of a crowd who gladly would have punched and kicked and taunted him just for being who he was. But he risked it!
And then he climbed the sycamore tree just to catch a glimpse of Jesus, taking the risk of making his presence all the more obvious to the oncoming crowds. Zacchaeus just wanted to be noticed. We all know that feeling when the things we want are unimportant to anyone but ourself. People often overlook us because we are not significant or big enough to matter to them. How often we pass hints in our conversation about the way we really feel but no one notices because it’s just not that important to them. Or sometimes we are ignored intentionally because of ill feeling – and we all know that kind of thing too.
I could imagine Jesus walking by, his head down, thinking about what might meet him in Jerusalem. He knew the authorities would be against him. Yet in that moment when Jesus mind must have been filled with a hundred more important things he stops, looks up and calls to Zacchaeus by name! Suddenly the possibility of friendship opens up for Zacchaeus. And as if that wasn’t enough Jesus invites himself for dinner. No matter what else was happening in Jesus life, that one little man, Zacchaeus, was more important. Calling to men like Zacchaeus was essential to who Jesus was and what he had come to do. It was true then. It is true today.
Jesus was not a man who would be accepted in today’s politically correct world. Or maybe he just didn’t care. Jesus scandalised the Jewish upper class by accepting the hospitality and friendship of the most insignificant of people – the social and religious outcasts of his time. He did so publicly and repeatedly. When it came to people’s welfare Jesus knew nothing of protocols or taboos or customs.
Such was the impact of this moment on Zacchaeus that the direction of his life changed and not just a little. Filled with the warmth of friendship Zaccheaus promised to give half his possessions to the poor and to repay those whom he had cheated four times over. It was a response of free grace on his behalf – a response, which far exceeded the demands of the Law.
Early Church Father St. Augustine was fond of saying, “He loves each as if there were no other in all the world to love, and he loves all as he loves each”. It is wonderful to think that God calls each of us by name, wonderful to think that he will notice us even if we think we are small and insignificant, we cannot betray him to the extent that he cannot forgive us, we cannot become such sinners that he will not dine with us. And that is good news for those who hear it.
Praise – How deep the Father’s love
Prayers for Others
Jamaica and Hurricane Mellissa
As Hurricane Mellissa weakens and moves across the Caribbeans to Cuba, the Bahamas and Bermuda, we stop for a moment to remember those who have borne the full force of Mellissa; we remember the people of Jamaica. Strong resilient people they may be yet they are facing destruction on such a wide scale that it is impossible to know where to start. 90% of buildings have lost their roofs, shelter is hard to find, food, clean water, communications, even moving aid and supplies across roads that are blocked is challenging. Power is out; power lines are down.
We are grateful that they had time to prepare for such a significant storm; the death toll could have been higher, but for those who are grieving that figure is too high. We pray for those who endure such pain and loss…
We pray Father for compassionate hearts across the globe; hearts that might respond to the needs of a community which is now in distress, to bring hope, to help them re-build.
Mellisa was a storm the likes of which has never hit Jamaica before. The ferocity of the storm unparallelled. We might pray that they build back stronger and better, be better prepared for next time but that may be to ignore our collective responsibility for changes in our climate that create such storms. Is it okay to live as we do because we are not the ones to bare the worst of the consequences? Lord, help us not to be blind to the global consequences of our lifestyles and actions. Lord hear our prayers…
Gracious Father we have offered our prayers in the hope that You, our God, might work a miracle of healing and hope. But our work is not over, we continue to pray; persistent in our prayers, bold in our prayers and ever more aware that You choose to work miracles of healing and hope through us. AMEN
Praise – To God be the glory
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.