28th. November. 2021. Service.
Service of Worship
28th November 2021
First Sunday in Advent
Prelude: – “O Come, O come, Emmanuel”
Bible 791 “Open your eyes, see the glory of the King”
Collect
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
277 “Hark, the glad sound the Saviour comes”
Call to Prayer
Advent is a time to wait.
We wait for God to appear like a tender shoot growing from the stem of Jesse.
Advent is a time of hope.
We wait for God to with justice and righteousness.
Advent is a time to worship.
We wait for God who comes to fulfil His promises.
Prayers of Adoration and Confession
God of light and love, our praises and prayers overflow with hope as we enter the season of Advent
You come to your people to live with us.
You come with power—not to dominate, but to transform.
You come with promises—not to give us what we want, but to make all things new.
You come with signs of your deep love for the world.
You come, and your truth breaks into our lives destroying
shattering lies and half-truths, setting your people free.
Your coming is our hope, a hope renewed to every generation.
Today we wait for you in our worship with gratitude and anticipation of your blessing, grace and love
Come into our lives again, O God, and renew our hope in the face of so much that is discouraging, for we are in the name of Hope made flesh, Jesus Christ, your promise and our desire.
O God, you search us out and know us,
and all that we are is open to you.
We confess that we are entangled in sin.
When we scoff at those who await your return,
and live as though you were never here:
When we long for your coming to change the world,
and yet are unwilling to change even our own hearts:
When we do not make straight paths for justice,
nor offer a welcome when you come as a stranger:
When we dismiss prophets and angels
and refuse to nourish your seed within us:
When we reduce our preparation for your coming
to reckless expense and trivialities:
We turn to you,
O God of infinite mercy; We renounce evil; We claim your love;
We choose to be made whole.
The One who comes with justice also comes with mercy. The God of Judgment is truly the Christ of compassion. God offers us forgiveness today; in the hope we will receive it gladly. Do not be afraid but rejoice in the God who comes to us.
Spirit of God, move within us and among us today,
to open God’s Word, read and proclaimed, for us.
Shine a clear light to guide us to your truth.
Just as we read the signs of the seasons,
help us to discern and understand the signs that are in your Word, pointing us to Christ, your Living Word. Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer in the version most familiar to you.
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.
Intimations
The fortnightly Bible Study Group will meet on Tuesday 30th November at 7:30pm in the Vestry in North Queensferry. (Postponed from last week).
The Inverkeithing Christmas Fayre will be held on Saturday 11th December from 2-4pm in the Church.
There are limited places for the Christmas Lunch on Wednesday 1st December at 12 pm in the Church. Please speak to Moira or Joan as soon as possible if you wish to attend.
Inverkeithing Community Council are holding a Christmas Market at which the congregation will have a stall on Saturday 3rd December from 3-8pm in the Civic Centre and Queen Street car park.
The Christmas Services
Sunday 19th December the Children’s Nativity and Family Services at the usual times in both congregations.
Christmas Eve: A joint Carol Service for both congregations will be held in Inverkeithing at 6:30pm.
Boxing Day: The Sunday Services will be held at the usual times in both congregations.
Invitation to the Offering
We make our offering today with hopeful hearts, trusting that the Holy One who comes to us will bless our gifts and our lives, to make us signs of hope in the world God loves.
Prayer of Dedication
Holy and Righteous God, we offer our gifts with humble hearts, knowing the need in your world is great and our gifts alone will never fill that need. We offer our gifts in hope that you will bless them and use them to help fulfil your purpose revealed in Jesus Christ, Saviour of us all. Amen.
All Age Talk
Christmas is coming soon. It’s easy to tell. We see the signs all around us. What signs have you seen? We see Christmas decorations on houses; we hear Christmas songs on the radio; we see commercials on TV, and more. If we didn’t have all of these things to remind us, how could we tell that Christmas is coming?
Two thousand years ago, there was no TV or radio announcing that a child would be born and that He would be the Saviour of the world. When Jesus was born, very few people even knew about it. But it was an event that God had promised, and it was foretold by prophets many years before. Many people had been looking forward to the coming of the Saviour, but they didn’t know exactly when He was coming.
We’re entering the season of Advent. Advent means “the arrival of something very important.” It is a period of time when we look forward to the celebration of Jesus’ birth at Christmas–and we also look forward to Jesus’ return.
Jesus promised to come again, and we look forward to it, just as people 2,000 years ago looked forward to the Saviour being born. No one knows exactly when Jesus will come back. It isn’t marked on the calendar, but we’re watching and waiting, expectantly.
As we prepare to celebrate the birthday of our Saviour, let’s also be sure we prepare for His exciting return.
Dear God, we thank You for this special time of year and its important meaning to us. We praise You for keeping your promise to send a Saviour who will come back again. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pxPAlw2abo
Hymn 282 “Christmas is coming” (chorus & verse 1 repeat) *
Reading Jeremiah 33:14-16
14 ‘“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will fulfil the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah.
15 ‘“In those days and at that time
I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line;
he will do what is just and right in the land.
16 In those days Judah will be saved
and Jerusalem will live in safety.
This is the name by which it will be called:
The Lord Our Righteous Saviour.” Amen.
Hymn 284 “Hope is a candle once lit by the prophets” *
Luke 21:25-36
25 ‘There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26 People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. 27 At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’
29 He told them this parable: ‘Look at the fig-tree and all the trees. 30 When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. 31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.
32 ‘Truly I tell you; this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
34 ‘Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be always on the watch and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.’ Amen, this is the word of the Lord, to Him be all glory and praise.
Hymn 21 “Lord, teach me all your ways” *
Sermon
I heard an interesting comment from a well-known Strict Cistercian monk called Thomas Keating. He was talking about the meaning of suffering. He mentioned the fact that among the many Jewish victims of the Holocaust in the Second World War, those who maintained their faith and their mental health were those for whom their suffering had meaning, who believed that it was somehow part of the redemptive purposes of God. Those who saw no meaning in their experience succumbed and died much sooner experience.
Theirs was part of a recurring cycle of tragedy and evil that has been part of the human experience for millennia. No reading of history can avoid the fact that every generation has its share of suffering to a greater or lesser degree. Our day and generation is no exception.
The Twentieth Century up to 1950 saw the deaths of between 165 and 175 million people and a further approximately 30 million in the 1919 pandemic in a time when the average population was 1.8 billion. One tenth of the world population died as a result of war and plague.
We have lived in a relatively calm period of history since then. But now we are threatened by a disruptive pandemic and climate change as well as social upheaval and political posturing reminiscent of previous upheavals. It is estimated that there are 272 million migrants looking for a new life throughout the world up from 2.8% in 2010 to 3.5% today. It is no wonder that many have what someone has described as the “doomsday blues.”
For people like the Palestinians, or the poor millions of Latin America, or the Rohingya, millions in Africa and Syria, or other the racial and religious minorities nothing has changed. Their sense of security and well-being was blown away long ago.
Our complacency may have been shaken to a degree with incidents like the terrorist attacks of 2000s, and now the pandemic is deepening unease This then is very much a crisis for the Western world. It is those communities and nations which have long enjoyed an extended “arm chair ride” (sometimes on the backs of the poor and the exploited and the abused) who are now anxious and pessimistic. Our comfortable life may be ending in many ways. On the surface there may seem to be little scope for hope.
But is the situation so very different from any previous era? In New Testament times many people suffered from similar fears
In preparing for this Advent, it struck me again how the imagery of troubled times as recorded by St Luke in today’s gospel reads like a commentary on bad times in every century since.
Jesus drew from the widespread mood and apocalyptic language of his time.
His words echo other writings of that era. Wars, terrorism, revolts, persecution, famines, earthquakes, betrayal by spies, break up of family life, meteors and comets, religious extremism, and injustices. What is more, many people in each century really thought they were living on the edge of doomsday, the very end of the world. If we read St Paul, certainly in his early letters he was expecting, in the near future, the final collapse of the old world order.
Yet those early Christians, like St Paul, were not pessimistic. They did not have the jitters. They had a confidence about them which contrasted with the anxieties of those around them. We must remember that many of the disciples witnessed the Roman atrocities in Jerusalem when Titus destroyed the Temple and ruined the city in 70AD. But they lived with hope. This hope was grounded in God and the work of God’s only true Son, Jesus. This God was greater than all their fears and was never outwitted by any evil or calamity. Jesus was and would be God’s final word.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Luke 21:33
To believe in Christ Jesus, is to believe in a gracious Purpose that is ever at work.
It is to trust in a redemption that is unconditional, irrevocable and eternal, for as St Paul says, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39.
Today is the First in Advent in which we light the first, the Candle of Hope as we await the coming of the Saviour in the Bethlehem event which was not a beautiful but lonely flash of light in a dark night, but the Light that is the only permanent reality. In the present world climate, we need to hear this Advent message.
Here is a strong Word to the anxious and the shaken: Christ will come again.
For many centuries, Christians have on the first Sunday of Advent celebrated faith in the coming again of Jesus Christ. This coming of Christ is a joy to be celebrated.
This is frequently referred to as the Second Coming, though we may prefer to use e the phrase “Final Coming.” Christ first came dramatically in the holy incarnation. By his Spirit, Christ unobtrusively comes repeatedly to every generation, to initiate and foster the work of liberation and healing. Finally he will come to consummate all things. That ultimate consummation is the theme of this Sunday.
If you don’t believe in the Final Coming of Christ, then I suggest that you don’t really believe in the first coming of this True Child of God. They are inseparable as lightning and thunder. The parousia (second coming) and the incarnation go together. If they are not inseparably linked into our faith, our Christmas activities are in danger of becoming a sentimental excursion into fantasy. Sadly for many much of the message of Christmas has been reduced to just that. In Marks and Spencer the other day, there was not a single card to be had with a spiritual message. Most of them were about sparkles, magic, and fizz, having a lovely time and staying calm.
Without Christ as the Alpha and Omega, the One who will certainly come again, then Advent and Christmas becomes a brief sentimental diversion, time out from the hard suffering and desperation of this world. It may offer a bit of temporary escapism. But silly sentiment cannot provide a liberation for anxious souls who fear they are living in doomsday times.
They believed that Christ would come again to fulfil the reconciliation of heaven and earth. They believed that what Christ taught in his agape-love and expressed by how he lived and died would have the ultimate say. They might have to live through calamity terror, or suffering, but such evils were not the end of the story. Jesus is the end. Jesus is the irrevocable end. As we said last week those first Christians never pretended that bad things could not happen to the world or to the church, but that Jesus and his love ultimately rule this universe. Like Luke they repeated the words of Jesus with quiet confidence: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
Thomas Keating, mentioned earlier, in a conversation with another theologian called Richard Rohr affirmed that the purpose of the incarnation, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are the fullest expression of God’s love. They also condemned that idea that it was to appease God’s anger that Jesus’ died as a product of primitive dualistic thinking. Rather, they are an expression of God’s forgiving love of us and they invite us to accept without fear whatever suffering may come to us in this life. It is not our ultimate destiny or loss; it is our discovery that, as John says in his prologue to his gospel, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it”. The darkness of this world’s experience can never overcome the light of God’s love within us. And that is an occasion of joy to us.
Of here are always some people on “the lunatic fringe” of Christianity who exploit the Final Coming of Christ as a message of fear. Please, dear family of God, don’t let them be the only voice! The New Testament preaches the Final Coming a message of love and joy! This is God’s word to us. Hope, love and joy. Not doomsday but doxology!
In the midst of our doomsday blues the Advent message is one of hope.
Anxiety, despondency, or even despair are not meant to be the Christian condition. Not one of the hope-full words of Christ has been cancelled by recent events. Christ Jesus, with all his amazing grace, will come again to us even as the world reels from the effects of the despoiling that leads to wars, pandemics climate change earthquake and volcanos.
The gospel is primarily about this hope. However dark it gets, God declares that we may, we must hope. We are told that the word “Advent” comes from the Latin word to come. Actually it doesn’t. The Latin verb to come is “venire.” “Advenire” means to come towards, to arrive. The implication of this is that Christ comes to those who expect him, those who wait for his arrival.
This bring us to Jesus later words in this passage: 34 ‘Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap.” This is a warning, and an encouragement to hold our hope close to our hearts and minds. We are not to let go of our hope, in fact we are to let nothing distract us from it. Like worry about the state of the world and what might happen to us, or to get so caught up in the business of life that we lose our spiritual consciousness. We are to wait, with faith and with hope.
A minister friend took a week off before Advent. For her it meant switching off her mobile telephone as well as being away from the Manse.
She wrote: Dissipation, as I understand it, is that which distracts. Which wastes time. Which fritters away what matters most. Which takes our attention off what matters most of all. While that phone can be a powerful gift as it connects us to one another and to the world, it can also draw us away from what we most need as it makes it easy to look away from what God is doing in us and in the world.
These are small things, yes, but in those hours when the phone was off a little something changed in me… for a time I found I could hear the nearby waves more clearly…that the song of a bird resting on the branch of a tree just off the back deck caught my attention more quickly. And yes, this as well. I stepped out into the darkness that night and I looked back to see the moon casting its shadow in that place where other light was not there to interfere. (I have heard of this, of course. I mean there are whole songs written about moon shadows, right? But I caught my breath to realize I could not ever remember seeing it for myself before.)
And yes, there was this in those more quiet hours. The voice of God somehow rang more clearly as well… once or twice taking advantage of the quiet somehow urgently to remind me to rest as needed… and that time is precious.
Oh, it is so that there is so much to be done in the world today:
As we see nations embattled with one another, faction against faction right in our own country.
As we recognize signs of our neglect or our over-activity exacting a price in terms of rising and roaring sea and waves.
As people do more than ‘faint’ in fear and foreboding and sometimes, too often, take up arms in our very streets seeking to protect or defend or to attack first, all the while aided by the ready accessibility of weapons which are only meant to take human life.
There is much, so very much to be done.
But that is not the call today. Indeed, the urging we hear right now is to simply lift up our heads, to be on guard, to keep our eyes, our ears, our very hearts peeled to see what God is doing next.
For me it helped last week to turn off the cell phone for a while, a practice I have every intention of doing again and often.
And so maybe this is enough this first week in Advent. The time will come again, and no doubt very soon, to ‘do’ again. But as those who have long been a part of a people who follow the One who speaks with such urgency to us today, how can we possibly ‘do,’ without first standing with our heads raised high, looking to see and hear what God is already doing? And why wouldn’t we, if our ‘redemption is, in fact, drawing near?’
Advent is a time of calm, patient waiting for the arrival of Christ. He comes to us; we wait for him full of hope And when God says the time is right, Christ will come again in finality, fulfilling all that he began. Amen.
Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession
Spirit of Hope, when the world is confusing and bleak, when darkness threatens. you pierce the despair with the light of your Word and renew our faith that you are the God who holds the future in your hands.
Thank you for the lessons we have learned in this life, for the times when we have experienced your grace and wondered at our fears and the weakness of our faith.
As the pandemic stretches on, and new threats are discovered, there is still hope as medicine can recognize them quickly and find measures to counteract them. Give us wisdom to take care of each other
As the world around us prepares for the long, cold sleep of winter, we pray for those who feel the burden of loneliness and isolation. We remember families without homes to shelter in, who through conflict, natural disaster or political upheaval are forced to leave their homes and are facing the cold in camps in fields and woods or risk crossing dangerous seas.
(Keep a brief time of silence) Spirit of Hope, shelter all these under your wings. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
O God of Peace, we hear much about s conflict and disagreement all around us these days, sometimes in our own lives and relationships, and in many nations and countries and communities in the news. We pray for places where violence and cruelty are endemic especially in Afghanistan, Haiti, Yemen and Ethiopia where wars continue.
(Keep a brief time of silence)
God of Peace, work among us for just and peaceful resolutions to all these conflicts.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
O Creator of Joy, we thank you for moments of joy and celebration in our lives, for pleasures which we share with family or friends, for quiet times of reflection and conversation, and for the many ways that allow us to keep in contact with those whom we love.
As the days grow colder and the Christmas season approaches, we remember people who feel bitter while others rejoice, those who grieve the loss of loved ones or face a bleak winter for any reason. Today we think about those who are still suffering from the Aids pandemic and thank you for the advances in treatment and care which lengthen and improve lives. We pray for similar advances in the care, treatment, and prevention of Covid 19
(Keep a brief time of silence)
Creator of Joy, bring them light and warmth in the season ahead, and help us to be compassionate companions and bearers of love and joy. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Love divine made flesh in Christ, you call us into communion with you and community with one another.
We pray for your church and our congregation, that love may guide all your people as we plan for our life and mission.
We pray for our families and friends whether we are close or far and ask that your will unite us in love and harmony this Christmas. (Keep a brief time of silence)
Love divine, bless each one with your love and help us to express our gratitude and concern for each other in word and action.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. Amen.
Hymn 273 “O come, O come, Emmanuel”
Sending out and Benediction
God’s presence and promises are real. Go now into God’s world, trusting in God’s love and placing your hope in God. With each right action you choose be awake to the signs of God’s invitation to new life. Know that the reign of Christ draws nearer. Go in peace. Amen
“May God’s blessing surround you each day”
Postlude: “People look East”
*Regrettably not all our C of S Advent Hymns are available on YouTube.