20th June. 2021.Service.
Service of Worship 20th June 2021
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Prelude We cannot own the sunlit sky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12x8aZH_Zd0
Introit: The Lord’s my Shepherd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbGsIVeKU_E
Collect
O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Call to Worship
Give thanks to the Lord, for God is good.
God’s steadfast love endures forever.
We have seen God’s wondrous works all around us,
and we come to praise God’s holy name.
Open wide your hearts in this time of worship!
We lift our hearts to God with thanks and praise.
Prayer of Adoration and Confession
Holy and gracious God, source of life and love,
we gather in your presence
to wonder at the beauty and complexity of all you have made,
acknowledging how small and insignificant we are, each on our own.
Yet you love us with a promise that gives us significance,
and restores our purpose amid the creation you love.
When we are overcome by forces around us, you speak words of peace.
When trouble or sorrow sets in, you give us the strength we need
to persevere in our witness to your love.
In this time of worship, O God,
we remember all you have been, all you are and all you will be,;
offering you all praise and honour, love, and loyalty,
with our lips and with our lives
to the end of our days. Amen.
Mighty and Merciful God, source of hope and wholeness,
We confess that we fail you far too often.
You call us to serve in the footsteps of Jesus,
but we look to our own interests first.
You call us to love our neighbours,
but we are so good at finding fault in others and withholding our love.
You call us to do justice and care for the vulnerable,
but we prefer to be silent rather than take a stand for those at risk.
Forgive us.
Open wide our hearts to our neighbours in need,
as we put our trust in your mercy—for us and for them.
Assurance of Pardon
The mercy of our God is from everlasting to everlasting.
We accept and stand upon the good news of the gospel.
In Jesus Christ, God’s generous love reaches out to embrace us.
In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven and set free to begin again giving thanks for God’s generosity and share it with our neighbours.
Prayer for Understanding
God of wisdom and wonder, send us your Holy Spirit to guide us as we listen to your Word. Say to each one what we need to hear that we may be challenged, comforted, or blessed according to our need. Inspire us to act with the courage and compassion we find in Jesus Christ, your Living Word. Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer in the version most familiar to you.
Invitation to the Offering
The scriptures teach us about the courage it can take to serve God. Giving takes courage, too. Let us give to God as we are able, trusting that God will honour our courage and generosity, blessing our gifts with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Prayer of Dedication
God of promise and perseverance, we offer our gifts with thankful hearts, grateful for your patience with us as your purposes unfold in us and among us. Bless our gifts with the power of the Spirit so that your church may accomplish your purposes in our community and bring blessing and providence to may through Jesus our Lord.
Praise, I will praise you Lord
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWuTvpiVEmY&list=RDSWuTvpiVEmY&start_radio=1
The Readings
Job 38:1-11
38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
2 ‘Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
4 ‘Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone –
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
8 ‘Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, “This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt”? Amen
Mark 4:35-41
35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
40 He said to his disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’
41 They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!’ Amen.
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
3 We put no stumbling-block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5 in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7 in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8 through glory and dishonour, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
11 We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. 12 We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. 13 As a fair exchange – I speak as to my children – open wide your hearts also.
Amen, this is the Word of the Lord, to him be all glory and praise.
Please add the Amen after each reading and omit the paragraph headings in the Pulpit Bible.
Brother sister let me serve you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQaOErUUjm8
Sermon
Owing to a family bereavement I offer Dr Janet Hunt’s thoughts on Jesus stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee instead of a sermon today.
I cannot help but believe that all of us have experienced something of ‘storms’ in these last many months in a way perhaps we never did before.
And no, not only the sort of midwestern squall which passed through here the other day, bringing much needed rain to the drought which is already taking hold this summer in the place I call home — the one which had me scrambling to safety because of predicted winds and hail.
For while such storms are powerful and can and often do certainly threaten life and property and much of what we hold important, I find that I read the story before us now more as metaphor for the other sorts of ‘storms’ we have found ourselves weathering of late.
Now it is not that ‘storms’ don’t come to all of us. Certainly, they do and we can all recount instances of storms survived, storms through which we received shelter, storms which left us changed in good ways and hard ones, too. Even so, the constant battering of ‘storms,’ both inside and out, which I have experienced in the last year and a half has been unlike anything I had ever known.
For this has been so, hasn’t it, that most all of us at one time or another or at multiple times in the near past have looked down to see that our ‘boat was already being swamped?’ If not physically, then emotionally, spiritually…
That our identities, perhaps, or our futures, or our understandings of how things work in the world, or our lives or the lives of loved ones were threatened, perhaps even taken by a virus which mysteriously affected one and not another?
Oh yes, we have known ‘storms,’ haven’t we, the sort that stripped the familiar landscape bare, forcing us to look at things as they really are, revealing that to which we were perhaps blind before?
And yes, even now as things limp their way back to some semblance of ‘normal,’ in some ways the same terror those disciples must have felt has not entirely left us:
• because of the memory of the ‘wind and water’ which so threatened,
• because of the damage left behind,
• or because the ‘storm’ has just taken on another form now as we assess the ‘damage’ to ourselves, our families, our communities, our communities of faith and as we seek to move forward into a still uncertain future.
And the truth is, this is the easy part of this reflection to capture in words:
• Because we know ‘storms.’
• We know the uneasiness the disciples must have felt as the storm gathered energy, even though or maybe because they had come through such storms before.
• And we recognize the terror in their voices when they awaken Jesus and shouting to make themselves heard, accuse him of not caring at all.
Or at least I do.
And yet this is so:
• Storms simply are.
• We ignore them, deny them, or fail to prepare for them at our peril.
• And, yes, we move beyond them, learn from them, recover from them often with gifts which come from beyond ourselves. But we seldom do so unchanged.
I saw something of this a few days back. I was accompanying a group on a Civil Rights Tour through parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. We were in Selma where we were joined by a guide who with powerful enthusiasm and deep hope told us the story of her beloved city and its significance in the Civil Rights Movement. She spoke to us of ‘storms’ which had led to loss of life and injury and the battering of hope, the effects of which are still known there today. And she told of the many storms which preceded those you and I probably know best. Only she did not stay in a time past which seemed to climax nearly sixty years ago. No, like any good historian, she stood on the ground today and showed how what happened then affects her community now. And she said this, although not in these exact words:
• She said that Selma and the people who live there had long been broken wide open by all that had happened there.
• She said that they had had to deal with it, with the ‘storms,’ if you will, and with each other in the wake of all of it.
•And as a result, she claimed that they were a decade ahead of most of the rest of us in terms of ‘living and working together well,’ in spite of all that would keep them apart, because there was no way they could ignore or deny the ‘storms’ which had affected them all.
Indeed, she reminded me that we do so much better when we acknowledge the ‘storms,’ learn from them, and yes, remember that something, Someone with power and love which so far exceeds our own, is in the ‘storm’ with us, giving us what we need for whatever is next.
Perhaps in much the same way, I cannot imagine those disciples were ever the same again after weathering that storm and witnessing the power of Jesus in the midst of it.
As we get some distance from the particular ‘storms’ we have recently come through, I expect we will not be the same either — especially as we accept the invitation to recognize what has been revealed in us and in the world, as we reflect on all of its meaning, and as we are able, more and more, to see how Jesus has been with us in it and at work in it all.
Oh yes, we know ‘storms,’ don’t we? Maybe in a way we never have before.
May we also recognize the power of Jesus both in the midst of the storm and in the wake of it and in each of us.
May we speak of it. Celebrate it. Learn from it, from all of it. Lament what has been lost, to be sure, but also be grateful for the gifts which are ours now, only because we have been through the ‘storm.’ And recognize how we have been changed by it.
Most of all may we live as those who better know the One who even the wind and the sea obeys.
Who has been there in the boat with us all along.
God in whom we live and move and have our being:
As we look at the world around us in your presence today,
we are grateful to know you are near, and that your presence will not fail us, no matter the challenges we face.
We are conscious that for each of us in our own lives there are so many challenges—and also in the lives of those we care about, and in the wider world as we hear in our daily news.
We wonder how in your mercy and your love, you will reveal yourself, in response to so many different needs.
Help us trust that you have promised never to leave us or give up on us no matter how overwhelming our situation.
God, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.
In faithful silence, we lay before you the concerns on our hearts this day:
We pray for those who have been in the headlines this week and for the situations which concern us deeply, and for all whose lives cry out to you for help in a world so uncertain and frightening:
God, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.
We pray for those who are suffering from illness of any sort, coping with pain
or with ongoing treatment,
for those waiting for or recovering from surgery,
for people who are bereaved or burdened by some significant loss,
and others affected by economic hardship in these uncertain times.
God, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.
We pray for those who are waiting for something significant—
a birth or a death, a trip, a visit, a phone call on Father’s Day,
a move, a new job or the moment of retirement.
Grant them patience, O God, in this time of restless waiting:
God, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.
We pray for the work of our church and our government in pursuing policies which will shape our church in the coming years.
Empower this work, O God.
Bless our congregation, its ministries, and the faithful work of all churches in our community. Unite us in our witness to the love of Jesus. Show us what we can do
to serve together in the great fellowship of the gospel as we pray together the in the faith of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Through the love of God our saviour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpj1SVKoeQU
Sending out and Benediction
As the Lord has given to you peace and healing, now go into the world offering God’s love and hope to others. Go in peace and remember that God goes with you. Amen.
May God’s blessing surround you each day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_3O_N49GiU
Postlude: Postlude Master, thou too once hasted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAEeWbXrxI
The Hymns
In the text are suggestions to check on YouTube if you wish to sing along. Some may not be as familiar as their titles suggest.
For Children
Have you ever been out in a boat on the water? Since our Bible lesson today is about Jesus and his disciples in a boat, I thought it might be fun if we imagined that we were sitting in a boat. Would you like to do that? OK, climb in. Now that you are all in the boat, it would probably be a good idea if I got in the boat with you. It wouldn’t be a particularly good idea to send a bunch of children out in a boat by themselves. What if they got out in the middle of the lake and something bad happened? What if a storm came up? Have you ever been out in a boat when a storm came up? First the wind started to blow, then came the rain, thunder, and lightening. That is quite frightening, isn’t it?
Well, that is exactly what happened in today’s Bible lesson. Jesus and his disciples had been traveling all around the countryside and Jesus had been teaching and performing many miracles. When evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake.” So they climbed into a boat and set sail to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was very tired, so he was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a pillow. Suddenly, a fierce storm came up. High waves came up and the boat began to fill with water. The disciples were afraid and went and woke Jesus. “Teacher,” they shouted, “don’t you care that we are going to drown?”
When Jesus woke up, he spoke to the winds and the waves, “Silence! Be still!” Suddenly, the wind stopped blowing and the sea became calm. He turned to the disciples and said, “Why are you afraid? Do you not have faith?”
The disciples were absolutely terrified. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “Even the wind and waves obey him!”
As we sail through life, things are going to happen. We will face many storms in our life. They may not be the kind of storms that we talked about in today’s lesson. Perhaps we may face a serious illness or a family problem. We might make a wrong decision or fall in with the wrong crowd at school. When you face these problems on the sea of life, who do you want to have in the boat with you? I know who I want! I want Jesus. He can calm every storm. If you take Jesus with you day by day, he will be there with you in the storm.
Here is a video about this story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzPwRXytr7U
Our Father, we know that each day we will face difficult situations. We are thankful that as we sail through life, you are always there to calm the storms. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Intimations
We will celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper during worship on Sunday 27th June 2021. Please accept this invitation to attend. In accordance with the latest recommendations from the Church the Kirk Sessions have approved singing during worship, but we must still wear masks an observe appropriate distancing.