18th. September. 2022. Service.
Inverkeithing Parish Church linked with
North Queensferry Church
Worship 18th September 2022
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Prelude: “There is a balm in Gilead
Bible Introit Hymn 63 “All people that on earth do dwell”
Collect: Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Hymn 160 “Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven”
Praise the name of the Lord.
Blessed be the name of the Lord!
From the rising of the sun to its setting, praise the name of the Lord.
We will bless God’s holy name now and evermore.
The glory of the Lord is high above the heavens,
but God raises up the poor and needy on the earth.
So let us sing God’s praise as we worship Him
Prayer
In time of light, in time of darkness, We gather in this place. Seeking the solace of faith, And to be found by the mercy of the living God. With tears and with laughter, With the memories of the long years, On this day we share that which is good And that which brings us comfort and hope.
Prayers of Confession and Petition
Compassionate God,
Creator and faithful provider of all that is good,
Reconciler and Inspirer in life, as a worshipping community we approach you once more; seeking to be made aware of your presence with us, desiring the knowledge of your comfort and peace – peace such as the world cannot give.
As we mourn the death of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II we cannot help but see from the example she set throughout her days, the many ways in which we have fallen short as faithful servants. We know we do not always “do to others as we would have them do to us”. We know how often we forget that “those who humble themselves shall be made great and those who make themselves great shall be humbled”. We know we sometimes ignore the teaching to “love your neighbour as you
love yourself”. Forgive us our failure to live consistently as your people, as inhabitants of earth and citizens of heaven.
And assure us of the forgiveness that you offer in Jesus Christ.
Help us, every day, to live up to the sacrifices made on our behalf by those who have gone before us. For we ask all these things in Jesus’ name, Amen.
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, for ever Amen.
The Intimations
Coffee Mornings
This week Inverkeithing Tuesday 13th 10am – noon;
Doors Open Day
This afternoon the church will be open from 1.00-4.00 for Doors Open Days. We will have a display of old photographs, and anyone interested in the archaeological dig which took place in the Friary Gardens back in June can meet here and be escorted to the gardens for a talk from Dr Gavin McGregor the archaeologist In charge of the Dig. Light lunches will be available.
Volunteers
In Inverkeithing we are looking for volunteers to support the Children’s Church Saturday Fun Club which replaces Messy Church. The first of these will be held on Saturday October 1st from 10am-12noon. Please speak to any member of the Children’s Church leaders is you can help.
A Service of Thanksgiving for the life of the Late Queen is being planned for next Sunday afternoon 25th September in Dunfermline Abbey with the participation of the Lord Lieutenant of the County and the Provost of Dunfermline. Ministers from the Presbytery are being invited to participate along with some from other denominations. An invitation is extended to all who wish to attend. Further details including the time, will appear on the Abbey Facebook Page.
The Offering
In every generation, God calls us to participate in the world’s healing and renewal. The gifts we offer will help touch lives with God’s renewing grace. Be generous as God is generous.
Prayer of Dedication
We bring our gifts to you, O God, in gratitude for all you give us. Bless them and make them a source of healing for a world in need, for the sake of Jesus Christ, who sends us out in love. Amen.
All Age Talk
This picture is of a plant that grows in a rocky place in Israel that is called Gilead which is across the river Jordan. Gilead means a place that is hilly and mountainous. This is a special plant because it has been used for thousands of years to heal people. It is made into a balm which is a kind of ointment for rubbing into the skin. It is known as the balm of Gilead in the Bible. I’m told that the balm of Gilead smells a bit like Vicks or Tiger Balm, and it was used for rubbing into wounds, bruises, and sore muscles.
I am sure that you have at times scraped you knees or had a bruise or cut that has needed an antiseptic or soothing ointment. Perhaps your mother put a balm on it to help it get better.
There was a time when people in Israel were very unhappy because of war and famine and terrible things happening. Their prophet Jeremiah asked, isn’t there any medicine to help is there no balm in Gilead, no doctor, no healing to help my people. He was so sad he wanted to have fountain of water in his head to cry for the people of his day who had died or were suffering.
There is a balm, a medicine for our pains, the first people to sing about this were black slaves in America who turned the words round to sing there is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. They were singing about Jesus, who is our balm, our healer. Amen.
Chorus “For those tears I died”
Reading: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
18 You who are my Comforter in sorrow,
my heart is faint within me.
19 Listen to the cry of my people
from a land far away:
‘Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King no longer there?’
‘Why have they aroused my anger with their images,
with their worthless foreign idols?’
20 ‘The harvest is past,
the summer has ended,
and we are not saved.’
21 Since my people are crushed, I am crushed;
I mourn, and horror grips me.
22 Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no healing
for the wound of my people?
9 Oh, that my head were a spring of water
and my eyes a fountain of tears!
I would weep day and night for the slain of my people. Amen.
Hymn 44 “Praise waits for Thee in Zion, Lord”
Luke 16:1-13
16 Jesus told his disciples: ‘There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, “What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management because you cannot be manager any longer.”
3 ‘The manager said to himself, “What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg – 4 I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.”
5 ‘So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?”
6 ‘“Three thousand litres of olive oil,” he replied.
‘The manager told him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifteen hundred.”
7 ‘Then he asked the second, “And how much do you owe?”
‘“Thirty tons of wheat,” he replied.
‘He told him, “Take your bill and make it twenty-four.”
8 ‘The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
10 ‘Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?
13 ‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.’ Amen, this is the Word of the Lord, to Him be all glory and praise.
Hymn 721 “We lay our broken world”
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Sermon
There are two elements in our passage from Jeremiah that I wish to focus on today. The first can be illustrated by a story I read some time back about a little girl.
One day, her friend lost her favourite doll which she’d brought over to play with. She was heartbroken and sat on the steps and began to cry. When the first little girl’s mother came outside to check on the girls, she found them both sitting on the step sobbing. When she asked what was wrong, she was told through the tears that the little friend, Suzie had lost her favourite doll. The mother looked puzzled for a bit, then asked her daughter, “did you lose your doll too?” “No”, the daughter sobbed. “Then what’s wrong with you?” “Nothing” she sobbed. “I’m just helping Suzie cry.” That is empathy: when our heart breaks for another.
On this topic a newspaper article written by an Austrian commentator about the national grief at the death of the Queen caught my eye on Friday. It runs: “The British are mourning the fate they have chosen for themselves. “The deeper outpouring of grief in the UK is understandable but seems also to unlock something else: grief, stress and sorrow over a fate the Disunited Kingdom has chosen for itself. The Queen’s funeral will mark the moment when Britain also bids farewell to the country as it was once known.
This chimes with a verse from Jeremiah which was composed into a spiritual in America and made popular in the 1970s. “there is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.” What beautiful, comforting words. But the prophet Jeremiah doesn’t say that. He cries out, “no”. For him there seems to be no balm to comfort. He is weeping inconsolably, not for his own problems, but for those of his people. Listen to his cry again: “my joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick…for the hurt of my poor people I am hurt. I mourn and dismay has taken hold of me…my eyes are a fountain of tears, so that I might mourn day and night.” And he was not weeping for himself, he was weeping for his people. God had given him a great sense of empathy for his people. Even as he delivered news of judgment, Jeremiah’s heart was breaking.
Jeremiah lived in a time of great tumult and transition. The nation of Judah was undergoing a period of political and social decline. Does that sound familiar?
Sometime around the year 600 BC the people of Judah woke up to a day of enormous frustration. They had planned so many wonderful things. They had thought they were on the edge of tremendous national prosperity. They had a fine king, Josiah, who had rebuilt the Temple, had refocused the people, and had energized the nation.
But then one horrible day, at Megiddo, a hillside north of Jerusalem, Josiah and Judah’s army marched out to intercept Necho, the Egyptian pharaoh, who was on his way to do battle with Babylon. On that day, that terrible day, the dreams of the people of Judah were dashed, as on the plain of Megiddo King Josiah lay dying, his army crushed. Incidentally Megiddo is also called Armageddon, where, according to Revelation the final battle between good and evil will take place.
Bad as that defeat was, only a short time later, at Carchemish, another battle, this time with Egypt defeated, but the Babylonians stepping in to take over. Judah, with its bright hopes and its worthy ambitions, now became a vassal of Babylon. Defeated. Dried up like the raisin in the sun.
The prophet Jeremiah reports their plaintive cry: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” Jeremiah, they said, it’s late! We had such high hopes, such fantastic dreams for ourselves! But it’s late! “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
So, with new leaders who were weak and ineffective, all around him, the prophet saw people who were not living up to the covenant with God. Thus called Jeremiah felt called to preach repentance to his people, but their resistance was to lead towards their eventual destruction.
Chapter 8 goes on to describes an upcoming invasion from an enemy in the north. Soon the people will undergo intense suffering and tragedy. The amazing thing about the prophet Jeremiah is that he does not revel in being right. He has told them time and time again of the need to repent and the coming consequences of their sin if they don’t. And time and time again, they refused to listen. Now they are about to bear the consequences of this continual sin and refusal to repent.
Schadenfreude is an emotion by which our human nature revels in seeing the wicked punished. We like to see the bad guy get theirs comeuppance. But not Jeremiah. He does not stand aside and preach condemnation to the masses, or even point a finger saying, “see, if you had listened to me, you wouldn’t’ be in this mess.” At one point in the narrative, we find him weeping inconsolably for the brokenness of his people. He is a man in pain: for those who have died in the wars, for those who are alive and begging to be rescued by the very God they have turned their backs on, and even pain for the heart of God which is breaking over the pain of God’s people from the mess they’ve gotten themselves into. This weeping of Jeremiah over his people is reminiscent of Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem before his crucifixion.
As we hear the wailings of Jeremiah here in our scripture, I can’t help but marvel over the power of true empathy. It is his true love and concern for the people of Judah that allows Jeremiah to anticipate, identify with, and experience his nation’s suffering. Much like the little girl in our story, he is heartsick, and weeps, not for his own troubles, but for the pain of those he loves.
This leads us to wonder, what is the place of true empathy in the church today? How often do we find ourselves mourning for the sinfulness or brokenness of our world? Each day we hear reports of children killing children, of children who are abused, of violence and addictions and sexual perversions, of corruption in our governments and our churches, of terrorists attacks throughout our world and threats at home. It is enough to make you sick at heart. And you see, God’s heart breaks even more than ours at all this -at the loss of life and loss of morals and loss of hope and loss of fullness of life with which we are surrounded today. That is why he calls us to empathy- not a kind of empathy that simply feels sorry for folks…that is sympathy. But an empathy that leads us to deeds of mercy and justice- i.e., to action in His name. That is true empathy.
True empathy is a vital part of our call to ministry. We are moved to ministry when we allow our hearts to break with the things that break the heart of God. Only when we allow ourselves to see clearly the needs of the world around us and feel the pain of their lostness can we be moved by God into action. We, like Jeremiah are called to be “weeping prophets” as we develop a sense of true empathy for the brokenness of the world around us. Sometimes it is tempting, when we see pain, suffering, brokenness, and consequences of sin around us, to pass by on the other side.
The second theme can be illustrated by Langston Hughes, poet of the Harlem Renaissance, in the 1920s spoke about the frustration of a people who had been waiting for the dream of freedom to come true. He suggested that when people do not get what they earnestly want and desperately need, either that frustration dries you up, shrivels them; or it creates a boiling rage.
What happens to a dream that is deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or does it just explode?
Here we are, near the end of summer. It’s halfway through September, and there isn’t much summer left. Did you begin the season with high hopes about what you would accomplish? Once the days grew longer, and there was more sunlight, what did you imagine you might do? Get those weeds pulled, plant those vegetables, your garden into shape? But the hot dry days of July withered not only your garden but also your energies, and here we are at the end of the season. What will you do about that garden? Did it dry up like a raisin in the sun? We are through August it’s late and now it’s September, it’s the end of summer, and where did the time go? What happened to that dream deferred?
Where are you are in your life? What is to be done about good intentions, never fulfilled? those ambitions, never completed? What about all those dreams of what you could become and what you might make of your life? And here it is, late, and so many things were never done. Here you are a senior adult, nearly at the end of the lazy hazy days, and dreams deferred are sagging like a heavy load, or maybe exploding in rage.
Can you feel that in your own life? As we continue with fruitless political unrest, the prospect of inflation and increased prices, an ongoing war and reports of the worsening effects of global warming and now everything suspended in national mourning, we can only conclude: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
You’re a parent or grandparent, and suddenly you see that that child of yours is not a child anymore. Others influence him; there are other sources for her mind to draw on. If you are going to shape that character and guide that heart, it may be too late. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
You’re a man or a woman of a good many years, and you recognize that you have come to a stage in life where there just isn’t plenty of time anymore. When I think about being seventy-two years old, and so many of the things I once thought I might do, I know I will never do. I am not sure whether I feel disappointment, or pain, or anger. I only know that it’s September in my life, and I sense some frustration. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
What is the word of the Lord for those of us who feel as though our dreams have petered out and our visions clouded over, for we are near the end of the summer’s warmth and feel the first chill winds of decline just ahead? The word of the Lord through Jeremiah offers us first, an analysis of what is wrong; and then, a word of hope for what can yet be done.
First, Jeremiah’s analysis of what is wrong when dreams are deferred, and we are not fulfilling our hopes and visions. Jeremiah remind us that the problem may be that we have expected God to guarantee our ambitions, but that we have not wanted to pay the price of faith as a nation. Jeremiah tells us that the issue is that we have expected God to make it all happen for us, but we have not wanted to take on any of the discipline.
Perhaps we don’t want to be bothered or get involved. But for real ministry to happen, we must get involved. We must risk caring, risk investing ourselves, be truly saddened by the violence and hatred in our world to the point of action. We are called to ache over those who don’t have their basic needs met, those who are struggling with addictions, those who have taken the wrong path, people who are lonely, lost, afraid, suffering, in need of grace, comfort and strength and to walk with them through the valley, offering the hope and healing balm found in Christ.
A disciple is one whose heart is broken over the things that break the heart of God. God’s love is a healing balm, and so as disciples, our task is to show people to the truth that we all can find healing, wholeness, renewal, forgiveness and strength in Christ, who waits with arms outstretched. May we, like Jeremiah, have our hearts broken with the things that break the heart of God. Jeremiah asked a rhetorical question, is there no balm in Gilead? It took an oppressed and enslaved people far from their home to turn the question into a statement through their faith in Jesus. There is a balm in Gilead, Jesus the Saviour and the Healer. When our lives point people to the Christ – to this balm of Gilead that makes the wounded whole we can do this in the face of all the grief and challenges of the current world situation. There are opportunities to make a difference, one life at a time, all around us and around the world. That may be the calling of our remaining days. Amen.
Prayers of thanksgiving and intercession
Gracious God, your relationship with your people is open and loving and liberating. It is through knowing you that we discover our real humanity, and through knowing you that we understand who we are and are set free to live as your people.
We give thanks for that life-giving and life-altering relationship; for all we have been and all, through you, we have yet to become. We pray for our world, knowing that it is your world.
We pray for those people and places kept apart from, or closed to, the values of the kingdom of God where peace and justice, and compassion and grace will reign in abundance and will direct all things.
We pray for those who are bereft of love, considered unlovable, reduced to living a lonely life, grief stricken, outcast, forgotten. May they experience the love you offer us all.
We pray for those who are bound by that which restricts them or damages them in life; addiction, ill health in body, mind or spirit. We pray that in you they may find the freedom they crave for their flourishing.
And as we give thanks for all those who have gone before us in faith, we bless you again for our late Queen Elizabeth II, for her courage in the face of overwhelming expectation, for her sense of duty, for her hospitality and kindness offered to so many, and for her daily trust in the example and grace of Jesus Christ.
Commending again her family to your care and trusting that she lives now in your presence, we pray for our King as he assumes his many responsibilities. May he find support and strength for the way ahead. Direct his steps and guide his paths in the days and years to come. These prayers we offer through Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord. Amen.
Hymn 736 “Give thanks for life”
The National Anthem
The Benediction
Go with confidence and commitment, to serve God in ways large and small for the sake of Christ, our friend and Saviour.
And may God bless you and keep you; may God’s face shine upon you, and bring you joy and peace, now and evermore. Amen.
May God’s blessing surround you each day
Postlude: “Now let thy servant depart in peace”