7th February. 2021. Service.
February 7th 2021
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Prelude: “They that wait upon the Lord”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPIGEmPZLwg
Let us Worship God
Hymn “Jubilate everybody!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nukqkr29DP8
The Collect for today
Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Hymn “Fill your hearts with joy and gladness”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_mJ9G60f6w
Call to Worship and Prayer
How good it is to sing praises to God!
Praise the Lord who gathers us together.
God’s mercy is given generously to all in need.
We are never out of the reach of God’s love.
Come, worship and celebrate. God is reaching out to you this day!
Give glory to God who heals and forgives us.
Prayer of Adoration and Confession
Creator God, Source of all life,
in you all creatures are connected
and all creation is redeemed and made new.
Day by day you make yourself known to your people.
In the beauty of the heavens, we see your glory.
In the bounty of the earth, we know your generosity.
In strength for our bodies and minds we experience your energy.
Delighting in all that we have seen, known, and heard,
we worship you, one God, Creator, Christ, and Spirit.
Holy One, along with our praise, we offer you our confession.
At times we forget what we once knew of your love in deep and satisfying ways.
Consumed by worry, we forget to trust you.
Although we know you made us for a purpose, we choose our own ways.
Discouragement seeps into our hearts in the cold and dark of winter
and we do not serve you as eagerly as we might.
We fail to speak out against wrongs and injustice in our community and sometimes we do not stand up for what we know to be right.
Forgive us.
Renew our spiritual energy for your service.
Raise us up on wings of faith.
May we walk by your light and not grow weary.
May we run and not faint.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
God our Father, while it is true that we have all sinned,
it is a greater truth that we are forgiven through your love in Jesus Christ.
To all who humbly seek the mercy of God
in Jesus Christ, our sin is forgiven.
Give us peace with you in Him, with ourselves and with one another.
Prayer for Understanding
O Lord send your Spirit to move in us and among us. Focus our attention as we read and listen, that we may absorb your Word with deeper understanding, come to know you better, and serve you with greater purpose. Through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.
The Lords Prayer (in the words familiar to you)
Hymn: “Great is Thy faithfulness”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4ox4es1jo8
Invitation to the Offering
Jesus’ ministry brought healing and hope to so many people who reached out to him. Our offering supports ministries of healing and hope here and around the world. Know that your gift matters and give as God has blessed you.
Prayer of Dedication
Generous and loving God, we bring our offering to you, trusting that you will bless our gifts and use them in ways we cannot even imagine. Jesus touched so many lives in so many different ways. We ask that these gifts will touch many lives, too, with your healing and hope in these difficult days. Amen.
The Readings
Isaiah 40:21-31
21 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
23 He brings princes to naught
and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
24 No sooner are they planted,
no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
25 ‘To whom will you compare me?
Or who is my equal?’ says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.
27 Why do you complain, Jacob?
Why do you say, Israel,
‘My way is hidden from the Lord,
my cause is disregarded by my God’?
28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall,
31 but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles,
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
Mark 1:29-39
29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30 Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. 31 So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her, and she began to wait on them.
32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all who were ill, and demon possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.
35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: ‘Everyone is looking for you!’
38 Jesus replied, ‘Let us go somewhere else – to the nearby villages – so that I can preach there also. That is why I have come.’ 39 So he travelled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. Amen.
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
16 For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.
19 Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Amen.
Hymn: “We lay our broken world”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvmXNG6VXJU
Sermon
Isaiah 40: 30-31
Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall down exhausted.
But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
More than one person has said to me recently that the extended Covid-19 restrictions are having an adverse effect upon their lives. With less social involvement and the normal rhythms of life being so disrupted, it is easy to fall into lassitude. There may be plenty of things to do, but somehow, the energy or the motivation for these are lacking. It is too easy not to be bothered and to turn to the television or Netflix.
A minister I know suggested with the exuberance and zeal of a young faith and youthful energy, that Isaiah might have got the order of things in our text upside down. He reckoned he should have written chapter 40, verse 31, in this way:
Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall walk and not faint,
they shall run and not weary,
they shall rise up with wings like eagles.
That seemed more logical to him: a rising scale of Christian aptitude and achievement. Like babies, Christians begin with walking, graduate to running, and then by the grace of God our faith and achievements for the glory of God would soar like eagles. For those who trust God things would ascend from steady to impressive to glorious
Looking back in later yrears, he suspected that in the early phase of his pilgrimage, he saw walking, and especially faithfully plodding, as being third-rate version of the Christian life.
Is this an accurate representation of Christian life? Progression to excellence with increasing spiritual prowess and power?
The main question which arises for us is, “what does it mean to wait on the Lord/”
But first we might want to look at those words: Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.
Waiting? What does it mean to wait on or for the Lord? Does it mean sitting on pious posteriors and twiddling our religious thumbs, expecting God to get us out of a mess? Regretfully we must acknowledge that some Christians take that attitude. Their faith is characterised by pious inaction. They wait for God to put things right.
That is not fair to what the Bible means by waiting for, or waiting on, God. Translators of the Old Testament Hebrew text in Isaiah 40: 31, opt for words like wait or hope, or trust
Behind the word translated “wait” lies the Hebrew verb qwh. In Semitic languages it seems that this originally had to do with twisting or plaiting strands together, as in making a cord or a rope. Here we get a sense of the strength that comes from binding things together.
There is also a feminine form of the word (mqwh) which used to denote a place for collecting water. That is, a reservoir, tank or cistern.
Waiting on God then, implies an experience of allowing God to bind together our strengths, or gathering our resources like collecting water. Or, as we might say these days, letting God help us “get our act together.” God focuses us, gathers the frayed strands of our being, builds and conserves our resources, reinforces us, and enables us. God assists us to get ready for whatever challenges come to us in life.
Waiting here is active, not passive. It is not waiting with dismal resignation to our fate but trusting with confident expectation that God will employ the various strands of our life to the strongest and fullest degree possible.
Such waiting is not always a comfortable process. It may involve pain; tough decisions, personal anguish from radical changes as we ask God to reorder the discordant parts of our lives. It is sometimes said that in order for us to receive blessing from God we have to let go of some of the things we are holding on to. Attitudes and beliefs, fears, hatreds, resentments, sins, relationships, or possessions are just some of the things we might need to let go of or reorder. Hands that are full cannot receive something new.
But it is worth it? Those who “wait” on the Lord shall certainly renew their strength and regather their hope, trust, expectation and resources of love.
Is this really true? Thousands, indeed, millions, say yes! And among those millions of walkers and plodders I count myself to be present. It works for me.
You may not think of yourself as a strong or very clever person. Physically and emotionally, you may not feel robust. You may be like the bruised reed or smoking wick of which Isaiah spoke (42:3). Things which are simple for some may be difficult for you. We all have our weak areas as well as our strengths. Paul spoke of his thorn in the flesh, he may also have hinted that that he had defective eyesight; in Galatians 6:11 he wrote, “See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!” If he was nearly blind, it may have made his dependence, his waiting on God more imperative. It is our weakness which drives us to wait upon God, and again as Paul said God’s reply to him was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9.
Set times of prayer and meditation are an essential part of Christian daily life. Without them we are disconnected from God. How can we expect strength if we are letting our spiritual batteries drain? The more under pressure we are, the more we need to keep our daily tryst with God. The more hectically busy we are, the longer the length of time we need to spend at “the mercy seat.” The more we wait, the more we are equipped with the energy we need for work and circumstances which we my fear might be beyond us. This does not rule out the dialogues of prayer we may have during the day. It is not good to keep physical batteries on charge all the time. But prayer top-ups do not do us any harm.
God is always able to take our weaknesses and turn them to strengths. He may plait together our few strengths and made them much stronger. God can gather our resources. Sometimes he waits for us to acknowledge our weakness, our needs, and as we hand these to him, he then adds his strength to cover our deficiencies. So, waiting on God means offering what we have for him to add to it, just as Jesus offered the loaves and fishes in the wilderness: “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.”
Let us return to the full text with which we started:
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall down exhausted.
But those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
Was that young minister right about the order of Isaiah’s words? Isaiah’s text seemed to start with glory (rise up with wings like eagles) descend to athleticism (they shall run and not weary) and conclude with plodding (they shall walk and not faint).
And it does sound a bit like T S Eliot’s gloomy ending to his poem “The Hollow Men:” “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
However, I believe Isaiah got it completely right. Sometimes it is better to walk than to run. There is a joy in walking, even when it is into the face of a stiff wind. The value of going steadily is often underestimated by impatient Christians. Sometimes the Spirit of God says,” wait.” The Church is not good at waiting. We feel we must be doing something for God as if the work is ours and not God’s.
When I was in Prince Edward Island, the Session was impatient to bring people in from a part of the parish which was difficult. I felt restrained because of the hostility to the congregation of some of the people who lived there. After four years, an opportunity arose when a young man was admitted to hospital with a serious bone disorder. As chaplain, I got to know him and in time that contact opened a way to bring several families into the fellowship. It took four years, but it might not have happened if we had launched a visitation campaign only to be met with disappointment.
God’s time is the best time: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6.
There are exciting times (especially when we are young and vigorous, but not exclusive to our younger years) when our feet hardly seem to touch the ground. We are filled with visions and high hopes. Nothing seems impossible. We soar up with wings like eagles. Life is one big, glorious wow! That is wonderful phase of life. Thank God for it.
And there are other times, more common than the eagle’s wings incidents, when we find ourselves running the race for God without too much effort. We seem to make progress, yet the finishing line appears a long way off, but we still do not easily tire. That too is a wonderful feature of the Christian life. They shall run and not weary. Thank God for it.
Yet there are those slower times, more frequent than seeming to soar high or to sprint, when we must steadfastly walk.
While it is true that such slower times may be more familiar to the middle aged and the elderly, they also may occur when we are young. These are those long stretches in our Christian pilgrimage when we set the jaw, fix our eyes on Jesus, and keep following no matter how little progress we outwardly appear to be making. Often, we are reduced from striding to plodding and from plodding to shuffling. But we do not give up. Our faith and love do not collapse. To our own surprise we keep going when we thought we had already been at the end of our tether. They shall walk and not faint.
Pandemic time is plodding time. So, we cannot go for a visit to another part of the country, or see people face to face except through a screen, but at least we can do that. If we believe that God only intends good for us, then we may accept the discipline of plodding. So, since you are in Jesus Christ by faith, do not become discouraged should you find yourself doing a large amount of walking, only occasional running ,with only rare moments of soaring like the eagles.
Walking with Christ is a choice experience, a precious gift from God. They who must walk lack the elation of the eagles’ wings; they have none of the exhilaration of the times when we run well. Yet faithful walking is a wonderful thing to behold. A joy to experience. A gift to celebrate. Thank God for it!
Those who wait on the Lord (who gather their resources in God’s presence, who have their few threads of strength bound together by the Spirit, who find even their weaknesses being turned to good use by the Lord of amazing grace) shall share the wonder and joy and expectation of Isaiah.
Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is an everlasting God.
The Creator of the ends of the earth
does not faint or grow weary,
God’s wisdom is unsearchable.
God gives power to the faint
and the weak are given new strength.
Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint. Thanks be to God!
Among the shining hosts in heaven be glory and praise! Among those on earth who today soar like eagles’ wings, those who run and not weary, be glory and praise! And especially with the loyal and loving folk who walk and not faint; be glory and praise to our God for ever and ever! Amen.
Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession
Holy and loving God, we thank you for the story of Christ’s life among us,
a pattern for the way we live.
We acknowledge gratefully the moments of quiet and contemplation that restore us,
and help us to become aware of your Spirit at work in the world and in our own lives.
Teach us to trust in your strength, that we may live with confidence and courage during times of stress and anxiety.
These days of pandemic are still difficult
and we need to know you are near to us in our lonely times.
Meet us in the place of deep stillness that is within us all.
In the quiet of this moment, we hand over to you
all those things stirring within us today:
Anything that has been distracting or hurtful…
(Hold a silence)
Anything that makes us worry or brings sleepless nights…
(Hold a silence)
Our hopes and dreams for the future…
(Hold a silence)
and for the lives of those we love…
(Hold a silence)
We hold before you the needs and hopes of those we know who need your presence, especially remembering those facing grief and loss…
(Hold a silence)
We pray for wisdom for the leaders of our world…
(Hold a silence)
We pray that peace and prosperity will begin to flourish in places facing war, famine, and disaster, and we pray for the work of the Church of Scotland and other churches serving in these situations…
(Hold a silence)
We pray that those who manage the world economy find honest, just and generous ways to respond to the challenges caused by the pandemic…
(Hold a silence)
We pray that the dignity of each creature be honoured and the earth itself be treasured…
(Hold a silence)
May peace with justice thrive in the world you love through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Hymn “We cannot measure how you heal”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exr0oxZwZKA
Benediction
The God who named the stars has named each of us.
Remember that God is calling your name.
We will answer God’s call
to proclaim the gospel of love.
Jesus Christ healed, cast out the demons,
and made people whole.
Jesus offers you wholeness.
Healed by Christ, even in our brokenness,
we go to proclaim the gospel of love.
The Holy Spirit anointed Mary, birthed the church,
and is right now blowing you out this door!
Empowered by the Spirit,
we go out to proclaim the gospel of love!
Amen!
May God’s blessing surround you each day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_3O_N49GiU
Postlude: “On eagle’s wings”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y22lG4Z49Lo
For Children
Do you have a tablet computer? I. It seems like a lot of people have these. As you probably know, it has a built-in battery, and it has to be recharged. You can’t do much with it if the battery runs out. What do you have that needs to be recharged?
You plug it into a charger with a usb cable, don’t you?
People need to recharge their batteries, too. We work and play hard, and if we don’t get enough rest, pretty soon we just don’t have enough energy to do the things we need to do.
Even Jesus had to recharge. Today we’ll learn how He did that. As you listen to what happened, use your arm to tell how “charged” you think Jesus’ “battery” is.
Jesus travelled all around Galilee preaching, driving out demons, and healing people.
One day, Jesus and some of His disciples went to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was there in bed with a fever. Jesus took her by the hand and helped her up. All at once, the fever left her, and she began to prepare a meal for everyone.
That evening many people came to Jesus to be healed of all sorts of diseases. The whole town gathered at the door to watch. That must’ve been a long day.
Jesus got up before sunrise the next morning and found a quiet place to pray and recharge His spirit. When Simon and the others woke up, they found Him and said, “Everyone is looking for You.”
Jesus had recharged His batteries and was ready to go. He said to them, “Let’s go to other towns and villages so that I can preach to them, too. That’s what I came to do.” So, they travelled throughout the region of Galilee, and Jesus preached in the synagogues, healed people, and cast out demons. What do you think Jesus’ battery would have shown after that?
If Jesus thought it was important for Him to recharge His spiritual battery, it’s important for us to do that, too. That’s why we should spend time in prayer every day and come to church each week. What do you think your spiritual battery is showing today. Does it need to be charged?
God, help us to remember that just as our bodies must be renewed by proper rest, our spirit must be renewed by spending time with You in prayer, Bible study, and worship. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Here is a video about Jesus healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLtlwhySM9w
Intimations
The Inverkeithing Kirk Session will meet via Zoom at 7:00pm on Thursday 18th February.