21st. August. 2022. Service.
Inverkeithing Parish Church linked with
North Queensferry Church
Worship 21st August 2022
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Prelude: “Take and eat”
Bible Introit Hymn 807 “Praise God from whom all blessings flow”
Collect: Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Hymn 19 Ye gates, lift up your heads on high
Hungering and thirsting, we come to the Lord.
Jesus is the living bread!
Feed us with your love and healing power, O Lord.
Give us the bread of hope and compassion that we may also feed others.
Praise be to you, O Lord, for your compassion upon us.
Praise be to you, O Lord, for your constant love. Amen.
Prayer
God our Father and Creator, Christ Jesus our Saviour, and Holy Spirit who makes us holy; When we hunger for fulfilment: you are our bread, you are our sustenance, and you are the one who meets all our needs.
When we thirst for communion with you: you are sweetness of life, you are the fullness of life, you are life itself.
When we desire what is true and enduring: you alone are truth, you alone are genuine, you alone are the one who was, who is, and who shall be.
Holy One, you are our hunger filled, you are our thirst quenched and you are our desire fulfilled, to you, now and forever, O God, we our praises and prayers to you.
From our desire to be free and to start again with you and one another we join our voices in confession:
God of mercy, we confess that too often we have failed to speak and act with kindness; to care for others as we have been cared for, to welcome others as we have been welcomed, and to live as forgiven and beloved people. We remember the good not done, words not spoken, and grace not given or received. Hear us now as we make our silent confession to you.
Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation; the old life is fading; the new life has started to emerge. Know that you are forgiven and have the courage to forgive one another.
By your Word, may our minds open to greater understanding, our hearts open to deeper love, and our wills strengthened for greater service. 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
Christian Aid
Christian Aid Envelopes are now available for the recent East Africa Hunger Crisis Appeal. The war in Ukraine is causing global food prices to rocket. East Africa is facing a crisis on crisis.
Millions of innocent children, women and men in East Africa are taking desperate measures to survive in the face of extreme hunger, caused by failed harvests, livestock deaths and water shortages. Please take an envelope and if you wish, return it with your donation to the offering plate from next Sunday.
https://www.christianaid.org.uk/appeals/emergencies/east-africa-hunger-crisis-appeal
The Minister will be on holiday until September 8th. The services in North Queensferry will be conducted by Morag Wilkinson 28th August and Iain Mitchell 4th September and by Moira Lamont and Joan More in Inverkeithing. For pastoral assistance please call The Rev Andrea Fraser, Dalgety Bay Church Phone: 01383 824092 Email: office@dalgety-church.co.uk
Volunteers
In Inverkeithing we are looking for volunteers to meet and greet people as they come into the church on Sunday. This is to supplement those who are already serving on the rota. There are also members who do not have transport on a Sunday. Please speak to Moira or Joan if you are willing to help with either of these.
The Offering
With gratitude for the healing and hope that Jesus offers, let us present our offering to God. May our gifts help to share that healing and hope throughout God’s world in Christ’s name.
Prayer of Dedication
Father, we place our hope and trust in your loving kindness. Because we would praise you with more than words, we offer our gifts to support Christ’s mission in the world. Bless these gifts and our lives, that all the world may share your loving kindness. Amen.
Isaiah 58:9-14
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: here am I.
‘If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
13 ‘If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the Lord’s holy day honourable,
and if you honour it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
14 then you will find your joy in the Lord,
and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.’
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Amen.
Hymn 111 “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty”
Luke 13:10-17
‘10 On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, 11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, ‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.’ 13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, ‘There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.’
15 The Lord answered him, ‘You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? 16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?’
17 When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. Amen, this is the Word of the Lord, to Him be all glory and praise.
Hymn 623 “Here in this place new light is streaming”
Sermon
Some years ago, a Jewish friend, who was a graphic artist, created a birthday card for me based upon the numbers in my date of birth. I don’t remember how he did it, but the card concluded with,” You are Number One”! Numerology has always been important to the Jews as well as to other Middle Eastern religions and cultures. We can find many instances of the significance of numbers in ancient scripture. Indeed, in the Pentateuch, the fourth Book of Moses is called Numbers. Through the ages, Jewish and some Christian scholars have delighted in finding significance in numbers within the scriptures. You know a few: Forty days and nights, seventy elders, seventy years, twelve tribes, twelve apostles, twelve gates, 144000 saints and so on.
Today the special number is “eighteen.” Eighteen years is a long time to be disabled, but that’s how long the woman Jesus encountered in the synagogue in today’s passage from Luke was “bent over.” And there’s a certain irony in that number, for 18 was also a particularly important number in Judaism. In Hebrew, each letter has a numerical value. The number 10 is the letter yud. The number 8 is the letter het. Together, they spell the word chai (pronounced “hi”), which means “life.” In fact, a common Jewish toast L’Chaim!, which means, “To life!” is often spoken at celebrations in anticipation of good things to come.
But for this woman, 18 represented only years of suffering, but since Jesus has now noticed her, 18 is about to take on the chai meaning for her. She is about to receive life!
Luke knew that the original readers, or hearers of this story in his gospel would been likely to recognise the number 18 in the story as significant and as a sign that what was about to unfold in the story would have something important to do with life and its value.
The story tells how Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, as he often did, when woman with a serious health problem showed up. She was, as the text says, “quite unable to stand up straight.”
Jesus noticed her and immediately responded with grace and compassion. She didn’t even have to ask to be healed. He simply said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Then he laid his hands on her and, as Luke records for us, “immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”
Over the centuries, lots of Christians have read this and other healing-on-the-Sabbath passages in the gospels and concluded they are a direct criticism of Judaism’s Sabbath customs that the radical Jesus loved to break. Many, in fact, have taken all this as proof that Jesus came to tell all the Pharisees and other rule-keeping Jews to lighten up and not be so obsessive of pedantic about the Law of Gods.
That is a view that still evokes prejudice in us when we hear in this story how the leader of the synagogue spoke to the crowd indignantly because Jesus had healed the woman on the Sabbath. Thus, he charged, Jesus had violated the Sabbath.
But if we read this story in Luke more carefully, we discover that the crowd watching and listening to Jesus got it right. As Luke, who some scholars believe may have been a physician himself, writes, “the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that [Jesus] was doing.” They weren’t upset at Jesus, and they weren’t thinking he had violated the Sabbath. In fact, they reacted as if they believed that the response of the synagogue leader had more to do with his efforts to find fault with Jesus and find excuses to bring him more under the control of the synagogue leaders. Let’s face it Jesus, in their eyes was a heretic, and the system always keeps non-conformists under surveillance.
It is interesting to ask whether Jesus was guilty of breaking the Sabbath rules.
Amy-Jill Levine is a Professor of New Testament who until last year taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She has a reputation of being one of today’s best New Testament scholars and she is Jewish. She describes herself as a “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Protestant divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt,” and is the author of many insightful works. Earlier in her career became well known for a book called The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. In that book, Levine deals directly with the passage we read today. And it’s worth quoting her on this.
First, she writes: “No Jew, then or now, would have upheld any Sabbath ruling preventing work were a life in danger.” Levine doesn’t say it, but the use of the number 18 in the story may be a signal that the woman’s life, after 18 painful years, was in increasing trouble.
Let’s look closely at what Jesus did. He called the woman over to him and healed her just by speaking these words: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” It’s worth noting that the Bible does not specifically spell out what kind of work is prohibited on the Sabbath, although it at least refers to working in the fields, treading in a winepress, loading animals, doing business, traveling, and kindling fire as forbidden work. But over the centuries there has been plenty of debate about what is and what isn’t permitted on the Sabbath, and that’s true in both Judaism and Christianity, as those of you who remember Sunday laws will know.
In America, Sunday Laws are known as Blue Laws, (“blue” meaning “puritanical”). Laws like that have been around since the time of the Emperor Constantine who in CE 321 decreed: On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. Codex Justinianus, lib. 3, tit. 12, 3. Blue or Sunday Laws have been largely repealed since 1994 when England was the first to repeal most of them, although large stores there are still only allowed to be open for six hours on a Sunday. Many countries like Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and the USA still have Blue Laws in place about Sunday trading and behaviour. Oddly, there were no “Blue Laws” in Scotland. Legally shops could always open on the Lord’s Day, however faith and custom were much stronger in the past and had the effect of totally discouraging Sunday work or leisure here. In 2003 Scottish shopworkers gained the right to refuse to work on Sunday for religious reasons, something they never had before. Curious, eh?
One of the things we know from other miracle stories about Jesus in the New Testament is that he didn’t even need to be near people to heal them. For instance, John chapter four contains a story in which Jesus heals the son of a Roman nobleman when that son was about 20 miles away from Jesus. Thus, in Luke’s Gospel Jesus, through his words followed by a brief touch, gives the woman back a healthy life. Life — 18, chai — is restored. And the people rejoice.
The conclusion to draw from this healing story, Levine says, is that “the forbidding of work on the Sabbath remains in place … while miracle working remained permitted.”
Now it’s our turn to fix what needs fixing. As we think about this story today there is something to take away beyond avoiding calling Judaism then or now a rigid, graceless religion of rules. The story also should encourage us to focus on our own faith tradition and to seek out ways in which we can help make life — 18, chai — better for people in need.
We Christians, after all, call ourselves the hands, feet and heart of Christ in the world today. If healing of any sort is needed, we can — and should — respond to that need and be Christ for others. As Jesus tells us in John 13:34, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Indeed, the goal is not simply life but what Christian theologians Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun, in their 2019 book For the Life of the World, call a “flourishing life.”
In such a generative life, we don’t just barrel through our days, not noticing life’s beauty and its mysteries. Rather, we breathe in the gift of life that God means for us to have, a life that is loving, full of grace and compassion and is committed to helping others find a flourishing life, too.
As we do that, we would do well to notice that in Luke’s story of Jesus healing the woman who had been bent over for 18 years, no one brings that woman to his attention. Instead, Jesus sees her on his own. He notices her. He is paying attention.
That is a call for us to take off the blinders that prevent us from seeing what has gone wrong in the world and how we can help to fix it. For the harsh truth is that we cannot fix what we don’t, won’t or can’t see what needs to be fixed. And often it’s not simply individuals in trouble who need our help, it’s whole systems — systems we often support and benefit from without much noticing that they even exist and that they oppress others. What kind of systems? Let’s name some:
If we don’t or can’t notice racism, we can’t fix it.
If we don’t or can’t notice sexism, we can’t fix it.
If we don’t or can’t notice homophobia, we can’t fix it.
If we don’t or can’t notice Islamophobia, we can’t fix it.
If we don’t or can’t notice antisemitism, we can’t fix it.
If we don’t or can’t notice educational inequality, we can’t fix it.
If we don’t or can’t notice economic inequity, we can’t fix it.
If we don’t or can’t notice environmental degradation, we can’t fix it.
There are more we could add here. But you get the idea, and you can see the pattern. But we should not despair for as we learn to see reality and we can find ways to work together to fix what needs our attention, whether it’s a hungry, homeless person begging on the corner or an entire health care system that fails some people who need care.
We can pay attention to the cries of the poor. We can read history and learn how the systems that need fixing came into being in the first place. We can welcome strangers among us and listen to them with empathy.
It is when we fail to do that, we may miss an opportunity to share God’s grace and healing with others. We may miss the chance to help others find the grateful, gracious, flourishing life that God intends for everyone.
The heart antenna of Jesus was alert as always; he noticed a woman who needed help and he helped her. Now we are the ones called by Christ to notice what needs healing. The good news is that when we do respond and help to fix what needs fixing, we may hear around us an appreciative crowd expressing its joy over what we’ve done, and it is a joy that reverberates in heaven. Amen.
Prayers of intercession
God of faith and love, by your grace alone we are called to be your people. As members of the Christian family in this place, we pray for the whole Church of Jesus Christ. Take from her all that disrupts her unity and make her faithful in your service. May your people so live in Christ and he in them, that they may be his body in the world today.
We pray for the world which you love, and for which Christ gave his life. Guide leaders of the nations and all who strive for peace and justice. Look in mercy on all who are powerless, and shelter those who are homeless, hungry, or oppressed. Help us to care for our neighbours and to cherish the life of your creation, that your will maybe done on earth.
We pray for our nation. Bless the Queen and the royal family. Direct the government, members of parliament and all who in various ways serve the community. Grant that none in our land and may be despised or rejected, and that your kingdom of love may prevail.
We pray for those in need, for ill or distressed people, and for those who draw near to death. In the name of him who bears our griefs and carries our sorrows, bring them your comfort and peace.
We thank you for all who have departed this life in faith. Keep us with them in communion with Christ our risen lord and bring us at the last with all your saints to eat and drink in the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ, to whom with you, Father, and the Holy Spirit, the praise and honour for ever. Amen
Hymn 669 O Thou who at thy eucharist didst pray
The Communion
Invitation to the Lord’s Table
Friends, this is the joyful feast of the people of God! They will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God. According to Luke,
when our risen Lord was at table with his disciples, he took the bread, and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.
This is the Lord’s table.
Our Saviour invites those who trust him to share the feast which he has prepared.
The Great Thanksgiving
The Lord be with you.
And also, with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
It is truly right and our greatest joy to give you thanks and praise, eternal God, our creator.
You have given us life and second birth in your Spirit.
Once we were no people, but now we are your people. You claimed Israel as your chosen nation
and raised up the church as a witness to the resurrection, breathing into it your life and power.
From worlds apart, you gathered us together.
When we go astray, you welcome us home. Always, your love has been steadfast.
Therefore, we praise you, joining our voices with the choirs of heaven and with all the faithful of every time and place who forever sing to the glory of your name:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.
You are holy, O God of majesty,
and blessed is Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord.
In love with you and in compassion for all,
Jesus healed and taught, challenged, and comforted, welcomed, and saved.
He formed a community,
promising to be with his disciples wherever two or three were gathered and sending them on his mission of hope and healing in the world. Jesus trusted his life to you, and went freely to his death, so the world might be set free from suffering and sin.
You raised him from death and raise us also to live a new life with him. In the power of the Holy Spirit, you send us out to make disciples as he commandedRemembering all your mighty and merciful acts,
we take this bread and this wine from the gifts you have given us and celebrate with joy the redemption won for us in Jesus Christ. Accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving as a living and holy offering of ourselves, that our lives may proclaim the One crucified and risen.
Great is the mystery of faith.
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.
Gracious God, pour out your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these your gifts of bread and wine, that the bread we break and the cup we bless may be the communion of the body and blood of Christ. By your Spirit unite us with the living Christ and with all who are baptized in his name, that we may be one in ministry in every place. As this bread is Christ’s body for us, send us out to be the body of Christ in the world.
O God, today you have called us together to be the church.
Unite us now at your table, and in one loaf and a common cup, make us one in Christ Jesus.
Let your Spirit empower the life we share and ignite our witness in the world.
With all who have gone before us, keep us faithful to the gospel teachings and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Give us strength to serve you until the promised day of the resurrection, when with the redeemed of all the ages we will feast with you at your table in glory.
Through Christ, all glory and honour are yours, almighty God, with the Holy Spirit in the holy church, now and forever. Amen.
Breaking of the bread
The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took bread, and after giving thanks to God, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying:
Take, eat.
This is my body, given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
Take, eat, this is the body of Christ which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of him.
In the same way he took the cup, saying: This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.
Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the saving death of the risen Lord, until he comes.
This cup is the New Covenant in the blood of Christ, shed for the remission of the sins of many. Drink of it, all of you.
Prayer
Gracious God, Father of all, we give you thanks and praise that, when we were still far off, you met us in your Son and brought us home. Dying and living, he declared your love, gave us grace and opened the gate of glory. May we who share Christ’s body live his risen life; we who drink his cup bring life to others; we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world. may we who have received this sacrament live in the unity of your Holy Spirit, that we may show forth your gifts to all the world. Keep us firm in the hope you have set before us so we and all your children shall be free and the whole earth live to praise you name, through Christ our
Hymn 167 Guide me O thou great Jehovah
The Benediction
In days of strong faith may we serve God joyfully.
In days of weak faith may we serve God with courage.
In times of happiness may we sense God’s smile.
In times of grief may we sense God’s
In times of failure may we trust God’s mercy.
In times of success may we give God praise.
The liberating grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the undergirding, unhindered love of God,
and the truth revealing fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you always. Amen.
May God’s blessing surround you each day
Postlude: “Hallelujah” G F Handel