23rd. January. 2022. Service.
Inverkeithing Parish Church linked with North Queensferry Church
Worship 23rd January 2o22
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Prelude “Be thou my vision”
Bible Introit 755 “Be still and know that I am God”
Opening Prayer
Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Saviour Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvellous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Hymn 127 “O worship the King all glorious above”
Call to Prayer
God’s glory pours down from the heavens.
Earth below receives the good news with joy.
The promise is true that Jesus has come to show us way to God.
We serve God by serving and caring for each other.
Come, let us prepare ourselves for joyful service.
Lord, make us ready to serve your Holy Name. Amen.
Prayer
Light of light, Lord of Lords, God of this world and the next,
Lord – We come this morning at the start of another week to worship You, our Alpha and Omega, our beginning and end.
You guided, protected, strengthened and blessed us this past week – for which we thank You and praise You.
There’s no one like You. There’s no one who loves us as You do; no one who knows us like You do; no one so good and so strong, so powerful and compassionate as You. We worship You in glory.
You bind us one to another – each of us to You and all of us to each other. Together You make us Your family, marking us with the same Spirit. Thank You.
You show us Your way, give us Your truth and impart Your life to us in Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord – the One who we trust. We bless you, God our Saviour.
Light of light, Lord of Lords, God of this world and the next, we thank you for the promise of this day, with its challenges and its blessings We thank you Lord for this opportunity to worship, for the freedom to be together among your family meeting in your house and in the warmth of your embrace.
Thank you that here we may put aside the uncertainties of this world and rest upon the certainties of the Kingdom, for your promises are not changeable, but dependable, immovable and eternal.
Thank you that we can bring to you all the hurts and fears that trouble us, all our sins and the guilt they bring and leave them with you knowing that your strength and assurance are all that we require. Minister your grace and peace to our minds and hearts.
Thank you that as we are here and now we are transported from a world of concerns and fears to a place where we can enjoy your presence and there find healing, wholeness and refreshment. Thank you also for the challenge of your Word and the comfort and strength of your Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ our Lord in whom we pray,
Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in 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
The Inverkeithing Tuesday Morning Coffee mornings will resume on February 1st. Repairs to the heating system are being completed on 25th January, hence the delay.
The Bible Discussion Group will meet in North Queensferry on Tuesday 25th at 7:30pm and thereafter every second Tuesday.
Kirk Session Meetings
The Inverkeithing Kirk Session will meet on Wednesday 9th February at 7 pm and the North Queensferry Kirk Session on Thursday 10th at 7pm.
Invitation to the Offering
The Apostle Paul reminds us that we are part of one body, each of us and all of us. The gifts we offer in Jesus’ name are all needed, each of them and all of them. Together, the body of Christ accomplishes many things through the gifts we share.
Prayer of Dedication
Creator God, you made each of us in our uniqueness, and together, all of us to bear your image in the world. Accept our gifts, unique as they are, and bless them for the sake of your Son, Jesus. May they bear his grace and mercy into the world you love that your purposes may be fulfilled.
All Age Talk
People make promises every day. Sometimes we give something to another person as a sign of our promise, sometimes we sign our name to seal our promise, other times we just give our word to another person that we will do something.
I’m sure you have all seen a rings like these. When a man and woman get married, they usually make promises to one another. They say something like, “I promise to love you for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health as long as we both shall live.” Then they exchange rings as a symbol of that promise.
These are ordinary stamps like the ones we receive in our letter box every day. When the Post Office sells you this stamp and you put it on a letter, it represents their promise to deliver it to the person to whom the envelope is addressed. It doesn’t matter if it is cloudy or sunny, raining or snowing, hot or cold, the mail gets delivered. That is the promise that this stamp represents.
You are too young to have a credit card, but one day you probably will. Most adults have a credit card which they use to buy things. When you buy something using your credit card, you have to sign a ticket. When you sign the ticket, you are promising that you will pay for the items you purchased using the credit card. Your signature is your promise. And an IOU is a promise that someone will pay something that they owe to another person.
People make promises every day. Do they always keep their promises? Unfortunately, some people don’t. God makes promises too. The Bible is full of God’s promises. Does God always keep his promises? Yes he does! One of my favourite verses in the Bible is one that says, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. (2 Cor. 1:20) That is what our Bible lesson teaches us today.
Jesus was in the city of Nazareth on the Sabbath day, so he did what he always did on the Sabbath. He went to the synagogue. He stood up and began to read the words of the prophet Isaiah from the scripture. He read where it says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favour has come.”
When he had finished reading, he sat down. All eyes were on Jesus. Then he began to speak to them. “The scripture that you have just heard read has been fulfilled this very day!” Jesus came to earth to fulfil the promises of God. All of God’s promises are fulfilled in him.
Wouldn’t it be great if you and I were as faithful in keeping our promises to God as he is in keeping his promises to us?
Our Father in heaven, thank you for your faithfulness in keeping your promises. Help us to be faithful in keeping our promises to you. In Jesus’ name we pray.
792 “Our God is a God who makes friends”
Reading: Nehemiah 8:1-1-3; 5-10
8 1 all the people came together as one in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the teacher of the Law to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel.
2 So on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. 3 He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law.
5 Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all stood up. 6 Ezra praised the Lord, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, ‘Amen! Amen!’ Then they bowed down and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.
7 The Levites instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing there. 8 They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.
9 Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and teacher of the Law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, ‘This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.’ For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law.
10 Nehemiah said, ‘Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’ Amen.
Hymn 257 “Singing we gladly worship the Lord”
Reading: Luke 4:14-21
14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’ Amen, this is the Word of the Lord, to Him be all glory and praise.
Hymn 251 “I the Lord of sea and sky ”
Sermon
During the course of last week there was a photograph in the paper of four children lying asleep on a thin mattress laid over a sheet of polythene in the slush on a street in Kabul. Their mother, wearing a soaked red dress and with her head covered by a thin black veil, was begging for alms as the people walking by looked straight past her.
Jesus’ words quoting Isaiah 18 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ It seems self-evident that these words are meant for people like her who are actually poor, in captivity, physically blind, surely, and those who are powerfully oppressed. These words sing for those for whom the great reversal of ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’ — a year of jubilee — would change everything for the better as old injustices are addressed and a fresh start is granted.
Seeing that picture puts a lot of the problems we face in this country into perspective and the thought comes that this is not ‘me or you.’ We are not poor, we are not prisoners, some may have a degree of physical blindness, and we are not oppressed. What are we to make of Jesus’ words today?
The Gospel story begins with a rather dull, truly typical event in ancient Jewish synagogue life. On the Sabbath, a preacher, not a rabbi or some other formal religious authority, but a person known as a “maggid” a “speaker” or an “enquirer” reads from the scroll and comments on the verses. This preaching style of Jesus’ day was widely practised and expected by congregations–that the speaker would take biblical verses literally out of their textual context–such historical criticism as understanding contextual context is, of course, a modern development–and the speaker would apply them to the religious, political, and ethical questions facing his hearers. Preaching involved making an ancient story, the wisdom of the prophets, alive for the day.
Jesus was a maggid in his hometown on this particular Sabbath. A synagogue leader handed him the scroll, and Jesus found the place where the reading of the previous week left off and read from the words of the prophet Isaiah: which we all heard. Jesus then rolled up the scroll and handed it back to the attendant. All eyes fixed on him. The congregation awaited his comment–his interpretation of these ancient words, a Messianic promise for them. Would he address the occupation, the oppression of the empire, or perhaps his own ministry that is gaining attention throughout the region? No one breathed, the community alert with expectation. What would Jesus, their neighbour, say?
Jesus might have preached on the wisdom of the old prophet: “In the past, our fathers and mothers envisioned a world of justice, freedom, and healing. The fullness of abundant life in a land of milk and honey as God covenanted with Moses.”
Or he might have elaborated on the world to come: “We, along with Isaiah, await the fulfilment of this glorious promise! One day, the poor will be lifted up, captives set free, and the blind will see! Oh, how we long for that! How we pray for that! But it seems so slow in coming.”
Jesus could have appealed to his friends’ sense of theological nostalgia–How great Isaiah was! or their fragile theological hope for a better future. The kingdom of God will come! But he did neither. Instead, he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
They were shocked. What do you mean that the Spirit of the Lord is here? Now? Today? That the poor hear good news, that prisoners are being released, the blind see, and the oppressed receive justice? This is the year of Lord’s favour?
Have you been watching the news, Jesus? Are you aware of how horrible things are? That there is more inequality than ever, more people in prison unjustly, more illness of all sorts, more violence and terrorism than our ancestors ever knew? This now–today–is the kingdom of God? Are you crazy?
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Not yesterday, not tomorrow. Today.
And with that word, Jesus’ furious neighbours tried to throw him off a cliff.
Congregations are often consumed with memories of the past and hopes for the future. Speaking of the past may take a form of maintaining buildings and structures, of teaching ancient texts, and passing on patterns of life and values from ancestors. Speaking of the future is often wrapped up in hopes for salvation and eternal life, desires for answered prayers, for the children to hold onto faith or “come back to church.” Both past and future are important to vibrant communities; healthy and life-giving practices of honouring our ancestors and embracing a hopeful future derive from the witness of the whole biblical tradition.
But both “past” and “future” as the primary location of faith have their shadow sides. Overemphasizing the past results in nostalgia–the belief that the past is better than either the present or the future–a disposition that is steeped in grief and fear. Overemphasizing the future–the belief that all that matters is that which is to come–often results in thwarted hope, doubt, and anxiety.
A recent survey from Public Religion Research in the United States discovered that the majority of churchgoers express high levels of both nostalgia and anxiety. By strong majorities, religious Americans–particularly white Protestants, and without any significant difference between theological conservatives and liberals–believe that “our best days are behind us” and that the future of society is bleak. In particular, mainline congregations are caught between valorising the good old days and a deepening sense of desolation that some promised future will never arrive. Evidently, most Protestants would rather look back with sadness than trust that a more just and beautiful future beckons. As a result, today is lost. Today is merely a stage upon which we mourn the loss of past and fear what we cannot imagine. Do you agree that the same thing applies here in Scotland?
But “today” is a deeply dangerous spiritual reality–because today insists that we lay aside both our memories and our dreams to embrace fully the moment of now. The past romanticizes the work of our ancestors; the future scans the horizons of our descendants and depends upon them to fix everything. But “today” places us in the midst of the sacred drama, reminding us that we are actors and agents in God’s desire for the world. “Today” is the most radical thing Jesus ever said.
Jesus essentially told his friends, “Look around. See the Spirit of God at work, right here. Right now. God is with us. Just as I AM promised our father Moses at the burning bush, ‘I will be with you.’ This is the sign of God’s covenant. The ever active, ever loving, ever liberating, always present God is here with us. Now.”
In effect, Jesus is asking his friends to open their eyes, to see the burning bush, to become more attentive to God’s promise to live with Israel in the land, and that God is keeping God’s promise, no matter how awful the outward circumstances. This is not a call towards quiescence—pray, meditate and everything else will go away. Instead, it is a call to see more deeply, past the immediate sin, injustice, trials, and evils of human life to the profound reality of love and compassion upon which everything else truly rests: The love of God and neighbour.
In order to realise this we must first of all grasp the freedoms Jesus proclaims for ourselves now. There are a lot of ways to be imprisoned other than the most obvious:
Self-doubt, expectations about what can do on our own to help other people or too low, too high, or simply wrong expectations of others, for instance. I like to imagine that had I come across that mother in Kabul I would have found a way to help. But at this distance options are limited. We can only help by contributing somehow to helping agencies. Also, we may be afraid to get involved in helping others because of what it might cost us.
For a lot of people the shackles are cruel and, debilitatingly physical, illness, addiction. I learned this week of a disabled young woman who is becoming increasingly house-bound whose mother has just been diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. Her now is hard and her future is terrifying.
Other people are kept in place by bonds which are at their root, deeply spiritual., Distrust of religion because of upbringing, difficulty coming to terms with trauma in the past or hurts that are hard to let go or forgive. Obsessive beliefs or behaviour born out of fear or ignorance. All these can imprison and paralyze people and so we may need to be set free from very different things.
Fannie Lou Hamer was a black American civil rights activist who suffered many racist attacks in the course of her life. A white surgeon removed her uterus in the course of a routine appendicectomy on the grounds that fewer poor black people would be born. She came from a family of twenty! She famously said: Nobody is free until everybody is free.”
This is true. We need the liberation of the gospel, not for after we die, but for today. Freedom from fear, exhaustion, the constraints of the virus. Nobody is free until everybody is free.” We all need to be set free from anger at people whose response to the pandemic has been different from our own. We need to be set free from our tendency to think in terms of ‘us vs. them.’ We all need to be set free from fear self-righteousness, weariness and so forth.
This story tell us that the heart of God is with everyone who suffers, the poor the captive, the blind and the imprisoned, at whatever level, is true for them.
If we can see, experience, and grasp that the active force of love is at work in the world now, our fear recedes, hatred melts, the willingness to murder and kill and seek revenge flows away with the tide, and we can recognise that in the midst of all things–even in the worst oppression–God is with us. Through our delusions of power, the clarity of grace, mercy, and justice make themselves known to us. And that transforms fear into compassion, giving us the power to walk in the way of love God intended.
In a very real way, the Spirit was upon Jesus. But it was also upon his friends and neighbours, too. For Jesus was one of them. And by emphasizing the word “today,” Jesus transformed Isaiah’s words, Isaiah’s prophecy, into a powerful invitation for the whole community to act on behalf of God’s justice. The text might have read:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me (and therefore also with you), because he has anointed us to bring good news to the poor. He has sent us to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
Living in God’s promise is not about yesterday. Nor is it about the future awaiting some distant Messiah and eternal life in the Kingdom of God. It is about NOW. This is a hard truth to hear and receive. Jesus’ friends refused. They would rather stay mired in nostalgia and complain about the future. How great the prophets were! If only a saviour would appear and get us out of this mess!
But Jesus’ sermon remains as clear, poignant, important, and urgent as ever because nobody will be free until everybody is free. And today Jesus says that ‘freedom’ is already here. Today this promise has been fulfilled in your hearing–what we need is here. Today. Amen.
Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession
God our Father, you are the God of life and love.
You created us in your own image and endowed us with enquiring minds and called us to share in your creation. You have set us in relationship with each other: in families and neighbourhoods, in churches and communities, in cultures and nations.
We thank you for the rich gifts of, language art and culture, knowledge and science in every sphere of our lives. You have given us a gloriously beautiful world and the wealth of emotional experience in our home life and community. These bring meaning and encouragement to our lives and as our world has broadened before us our horizons approach the wonder of heaven and eternity. Help us to use our talents and abilities to share our knowledge of you and the blessings of the gospel to enrich our common life from one generation to the next.
God of mercy and forgiveness, you call us to live together in peace and unity in Jesus Christ and during this Week of Prayer for Christian unity, we pray that your Spirit will create understanding and co-operation among all who bear the Name of Jesus Christ.
Help us share our gifts with each other that churches within our land may flourish and our common mission find new energy as we recover from the hard months behind us Lead us to reach out to people of other faiths and no faith that, together, we may be a blessing in the world.
God of healing and hope,
We pray for our neighbourhoods and our nation.
Wherever people are divided, and bitterness turns into resentment, teach us how to work for reconciliation.
Inspire our leaders to work together for the care of the most vulnerable and to restore the health of our common life and unite us as a nation. May we be generous citizens and careful stewards
of the land you have entrusted to us.
God of justice and mercy,
We pray for the world Christ died to redeem, so deeply divided by religious and political animosities, by ancient bitterness and more recent conflict.
Encourage world leaders to work for peace and understanding,
especially in countries torn by violence, and places still struggling with the effects of the pandemic, with poverty, hunger and the effects of natural disasters. Today we pray for the people of Tonga
May the gospel of love encourage us all to pray and work for restoration and renewal.
God of courage and comfort,
We remember those of our congregation and community
in need of your special attention today…. Use us as agents of your healing and hope as we offer ourselves in the service of Jesus Christ our Lord, in whom we pray Amen.
Hymn 248 “For my sake and the Gospel’s go”
Benediction
May the grace of Christ, which daily renews us, and the love of God, which enables us to love all, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, which unites us in one body, make us eager to obey the will of God until we meet again, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
“May God’s blessing surround you each day”
Postlude: “We’ve come a long way, Lord”