24th. July. 2022. Service.
Inverkeithing Parish Church linked with
North Queensferry Church
Worship 24th July 2022
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Prelude: “Speak, Lord, in the stillness”
Bible Introït 65 “Jubilate, everybody”
Collect: O God, the protector of all who trust in You, without You nothing is strong, nothing is holy. Increase and multiply upon us Your mercy, that with You as our ruler and guide
we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever and ever. Amen.
Hymn: When morning gilds the skies
We come before God with thanks and praise.
We praise God for His unfailing love and faithfulness.
We bow before God in worship.
We worship God, for his great glory
We lift our prayers to God with confidence.
We have faith that God will answer our prayers and increase our strength.
Prayer
Good and Glorious God, this earth, full of your glory,
praises your name with unspoken words of beauty and peace and reveals your love through hand of stranger and gift of grace.
This earth, full of your glory, praises your providence
through living water and life sustaining food and reveals your Word in daily blessings and the breath of life. This earth, full of your glory, praises your name. We add our voices to the paean of praise and sing of your goodness in joyful worship. How can we not sing your praise with heart and soul and proclaim your name
throughout the world? God of creation, Awesome in power,
Sustainer, Provider, Saviour, Father of all, there is none like you!
How can we not declare your glory with all our being?
In all this You have given us a world of beauty, but we have spoiled it. A world to feed us, and so many go hungry. A world of riches, and we are unwilling to share. A world to care for,
and we think only of ourselves. Forgive us, gracious God,
for those times your heart is saddened by our selfishness. For those times we have not thought for others, no cares but ours.
Remind us to see this world as your gift to us to be shared and nurtured, and all that lives upon it to be loved and cared for. May you who loved the world so much that you sent your Son to be our Saviour forgive us our sins and make us holy to serve him in the world, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Most High, Glorious God, enlighten the darkness of our minds. Give us a right faith, a firm hope, and a perfect charity, that we may always and in all things act according to Your Holy Will. We pray that your name may be glorified, through the beauty of this world, and the service of our lives in Jesus Christ, who taught us…
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
Highland Games
This year the Highland Games will be held on Saturday 6th August. We are having a tent at the games park for the sale of rolls/ cakes/ teas & coffee & the Church will also be open from 10am to 2 pm for the sale of rolls/ hot pies/ cakes/ teas/coffee. We are looking for donations of cakes (which should be wrapped if possible), tablet, fillings for the rolls (there will be a list of suggestions in the Church), monetary donations towards the cost of the rolls & pies.
We are also looking for help on the Friday to fill the rolls, at the games park & in the Church on the Saturday & lists will be in the Church to add names, alternatively you can give your name or donation to Moira or Joan.
The Offering
God responds to our needs and requests with great generosity. Such is God’s great love. Let us share God’s love with others through the offering we present this day.
Prayer of Dedication
Generous God, we offer you our gifts, thankful that your love is overflowing. Bless these gifts so that your love will flow through them to meet the needs of those who cry out to you and to us, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
All Age Talk
I’m sure you’ve heard of a “Knock, Knock” joke. I have some to tell you today. Ready?
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Tank. Tank who? You’re welcome!
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Canoe. Canoe who? Canoe come out and play?
Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Orange. Orange Who? Orange you glad this is my last knock, knock joke?
The Bible tells us about a time Jesus was talking about knock, knock, knocking.
One day, Jesus was teaching His friends, the disciples, how to pray. He said, “Let’s say you went to a friend’s house late at night…” “You said to your friend, ‘I need to borrow some bread. I have a friend visiting and I have nothing to feed him.’ “
“What if the friend answers, ‘I can’t help you right now. It’s late and we’re already in bed.’ But what if you keep knocking on the door? Jesus said, “If you knock so long that you wake everyone in the neighborhood, your friend will get up and give you some bread.”
Jesus used this story to tell His friends and us to knock on God’s door by asking for what you need. He says, “Everyone who asks will get what he asks for. Everyone who looks will find what he is looking for. Everyone who knocks will have the door opened to him.”
Jesus said prayer is a way to ask, seek, and knock. Jesus even taught His disciples a way to pray. We call this prayer the Lord’s prayer. Let’s pray it now:
Our Father in heaven, holy is Your name; Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Hymn 522 “The Church is wherever God’s people are praising”
Reading: Psalm 85
For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. A psalm.
1 You, Lord, showed favour to your land;
you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
2 You forgave the iniquity of your people
and covered all their sins.
3 You set aside all your wrath
and turned from your fierce anger.
4 Restore us again, God our Saviour,
and put away your displeasure towards us.
5 Will you be angry with us for ever?
Will you prolong your anger through all generations?
6 Will you not revive us again,
that your people may rejoice in you?
7 Show us your unfailing love, Lord,
and grant us your salvation.
8 I will listen to what God the Lord says;
he promises peace to his people, his faithful servants –
but let them not turn to folly.
9 Surely his salvation is near those who fear him,
that his glory may dwell in our land.
10 Love and faithfulness meet together;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.
11 Faithfulness springs forth from the earth,
and righteousness looks down from heaven.
12 The Lord will indeed give what is good,
and our land will yield its harvest.
13 Righteousness goes before him
and prepares the way for his steps. Amen
Hymn 103 “Fill your hearts with joy and gladness”
Reading: Luke 11:1-13
11 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’
2 He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: ‘“Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 Forgive us our sins, or we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.”’
5 Then Jesus said to them, ‘Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.” 7 And suppose the one inside answers, “Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.” 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
9 ‘So I say to you: ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
11 ‘Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’ Amen
Amen, this is the Word of the Lord, to Him be all glory and praise.
Hymn 562 “Through the love of God our Saviour”
Sermon
It has never occurred to me before to ask an obvious question about today’s Gospel passage. Why did the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray? Like most Scottish children of my generation, and that includes almost every one of you, I was taught to pray at home and school and in Sunday School. We were not necessarily taught anything about prayer as a discipline, or prayer as a foundation of life, but we were taught what we know as the Lord’s Prayer or the Disciples’ Prayer as it is sometimes known. In some respects, it was enough, because it encapsulates in an easily memorable form all that prayer needs to contain.
Being Jewish, it is certain that all the disciples learned prayers in childhood. They would know the Shema Prayer, Hear, O Israel the Lord your God is one Lord… They would be familiar with the Psalms and the prayers found throughout the Old Testament scriptures. So why did they need to ask Jesus to teach them to pray?
They had been in the presence of Jesus for quite a time witnessing first hand all the mighty works he had done; and they were impressed by His wisdom, His power, and His love; they were basically asking Him how they could pray and get similar results themselves. Jesus prayers were different, it seems, from the ones they had heard or learned in synagogue or temple.
They were learning that Jesus’ life was fuelled by prayer. Spiritual life is made stronger by and everyday intimate relationship with God; yet very few people ever show the same enthusiasm as the disciples when they asked him, “teach us how to pray”; … because these disciples knew that was where Jesus was getting his power. The simple answer to this is that Jesus, and as Luke, notes John the Baptist was also relying upon the power of the Holy Spirit as the source of prayer. This is a discovery that every Christian disciple must discover.
Jesus response however was not to speak first about the Holy Spirit, but rather he gave them a model prayer which encapsulated each of the elements of prayer. We are familiar with them and need only touch on them:
God is our father in heaven who is holy, whose kingdom or Lordship is yet to come on earth, whose will has yet to be done upon the earth as in heaven. This prayer is a means of bridging the gulf between a sinful humanity and the holy God. A petition for God’s providence for life upon earth follows; then for the mutual forgiveness of sins, a prayer that does requires repentance, but not sacrifice. This would have been a significantly new idea to the disciples, and finally a prayer to be preserved from the great tests and temptations of life and for deliverance from evil.
The Lord’s prayer is in fact a mnemonic or memory aid. Just as doctors and nurses use mnemonics to remind them of the elements of a procedure, viz. FAST for stroke: Face, Arms, Speech, Time. Or SOCRATES for pain: Site, Onset, Character, Radiation, Associations, Timing, Exacerbations, Severity. These help the clinician to cover everything that needs to be assessed. Thus, the Lord’s Prayer is a mnemonic, each phrase of which can be expanded and made more specific. By taking time with God at each stage of the prayer, we are reminded of what we should talk to God about.
Luke then tell us that Jesus does not leave it at that but adds three more crucial considerations.
Each of these illustrations involves asking. In the first, Jesus tells of approaching a friend at midnight because a visitor has just arrived, and the homeowner has no bread to give him. While the friend has good reasons not to get up — the door is locked and the children are in bed — Jesus says the friend will get up, not because of the friendship, but “at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” Jesus is not saying that God gives grudgingly when we make a pest of ourselves in prayer. Sometimes, Jesus’ sayings illustrate the opposite of what is true about God.
The second example starts with one of the most well-known promises in the New Testament. “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. Everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” That is followed immediately by Jesus’ questions about what we give our children when they ask. Would anyone give a snake instead of a fish, or a scorpion instead of an egg? “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
So, all we must do is ask and seek and knock. and God comes through for us! It’s amazing and faith-building! But — and you already know what’s coming next — what about when so many people have asked, searched, or knocked and did not hear, find or have the door opened for them they thought they needed so badly. Unanswered prayer, or prayer that isn’t answered in a timely (as we define timely) fashion, is a problem for anyone who has ever prayed.
It’s probably one of the reasons people stop praying or even surrender their faith. A minister recalls a whole family leaving both the church and their faith because of unanswered prayers. This family of five saw their youngest child, a boy 4 years old, fall ill with a severe childhood cancer. For about 9 months they took him to several different doctors and went to a children’s hospital with a great reputation. While all of this was going on, they solicited the prayers of people in many churches. Their pastor visited and prayed often. But after nine months, their son died. The boy’s father could not believe God would not answer their prayers. He took his family out of the church and said they were done with God.
Janet Hunt also tells a painful story:
Some years ago, I got called to the hospital to be with a family.
Their loved one was in ICU. She had overdosed and she was young, too young, and those gathered were heartbroken.
By the time I arrived there was no brain activity and the nurses on staff were having a terrible time convincing at least part of the family that there was now no turning back, that hard decisions had to be made.
I can recall spending time with part of the family in the waiting room, listening to their pain, their struggle. I remember stepping to the bedside and offering prayer. I know I prayed for strength and for peace. I did not pray for a miracle, at least not the sort some of those gathered wanted. As soon as I ended, one in the group as much as said that my prayer was worthless and mostly politely asked me to leave as they would be getting someone else.
I did leave. And being just a volunteer chaplain on call, I have no idea what happened next, although I have always wondered how they reconciled their own experience of this loss with their trust and hope in God who has promised to answer prayer. And yet with all of this, I do know more fully now what prompted their desire to pray that the inevitable be altered.
This kind of dilemma often faces ministers and chaplains. Spontaneous healings do occur and often in response to a bold prayer, however they are not the norm. It happens that life is a challenge and difficult and painful things will occur; however, we all know that this life is neither permanent nor guaranteed. Physicians and chaplains know this all too well. There are times when it would be cruel to pray specifically for the prolongation of life and that prayer for strength, peace, comfort are the real expression of love, not for the false hope of an improbable miracle. I have spoken before of a Christian fellowship who prayed fervently for the healing of a leader with a brain tumour. When that was clearly being denied the prayer was for an easy and peaceful death, and that was denied too. And the grieving widow then gave birth to a severely handicapped child. None of the obvious prayers for healing was answered, but there was grace and faith in that woman’s life, nonetheless. Hers was a great victory of faith.
As Christians we believe that we are eternal in Jesus Christ and that this experience of life is to trust the God who is the source of life. Whatever our experience, it has purpose in the eternal counsels of God for our blessing and for His glory of which we are all a part. We are learning to know God, to love and be loved, and to share in the processes of redemption of the whole creation which will ultimately be consummated in Jesus Christ. In this life we need to keep this in mind.
How do we come to an understanding of prayer? Specifically, how do we make sense of today’s scripture that reaches such grandeur as both the “Lord’s Prayer” and the promises about “ask, seek, and knock?” We see the “highs” of this passage, but we’ve all experienced the sense of loss and defeat when the answer doesn’t come as we want it to.
There are some clues in all this that help us. The first clue is found early in Jesus’ model prayer. “Father, hallowed be your name ….” Recognizing, and addressing God as Father sets the order of things right at the start. Understanding that God is our heavenly Father has far-reaching implications. The Father looks out for the very best interests of the children. And while children of all ages don’t like to admit it, their father, assuming he was a good person, usually has the right thing, even when they were sure he was wrong.
A second clue is also found in Jesus’ prayer, “Your kingdom come.” The reality of God’s kingdom affects how we pray. Understanding “Ask and it will be given you” points us to the need to seek God’s kingdom, even, or especially, in our prayers. In Matthew’s account of the Lord’s Prayer, we see the phrase, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Like the first clue, this one points us to the fact that God’s kingdom and his will are what we are all striving for. We want God’s kingdom to come, acknowledging that there are things we don’t understand about it this side of heaven.
A third clue, found in the example immediately following Jesus’ prayer, points us to the importance of persisting in prayer and not giving up. Jesus is not comparing God to the neighbour begrudgingly giving his neighbour bread, but rather he is saying that if a man like that can hear and help us, how much more will our heavenly Father hear and help us.
Finally, there’s a fourth clue, or an affirmation of the first clue, to our understanding. We emphasised that Jesus, like his cousin John prayed in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus does not neglect this most crucial aspect of prayer We noted in the first “clue” that the Father has the best interests of the children in what he does. This is emphasized again as Jesus gives the examples of us giving good gifts (no snakes or scorpions!) to our children, and how much more God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.
All true prayer is inspired by the Holy Spirit, so the first prayer we need to make is for the help and power of the Spirit of God Himself. Think of prayer as a circle. The Spirit, knowing what we need, prompts us to pray, he inspires the words, he carries the prayer to the even praying Jesus in the Father’s presence and the Father receives and answers the prayer. We can break into this circle at any time and offer the prayer from our own perspective. If it is wrong in anyway, remaining with the Spirit in the circle will surely correct it and we will receive and possibly understand the meaning of the answer. But we are free to leave the circle, and many do so and don’t return until another crisis occurs. It is only as we are persistent, not in asking just for what we want, but waiting in God’s presence for God to answer in the best way.
That pastor we spoke of did finally hear from the family which left the church following the death of their son. After a couple of years when the pastor had been appointed to another church, he received a call from the father. He told of how God had been at work in his heart and in his life. He reached the point where he could look past the tragedy of his son’s death to see the goodness of God in other ways and people and circumstances in his life. He gradually recognized that it was God who got him and his family through a very hard time.
Your story and mine are still being told. Are you spending time with God in prayer? “When you pray, say, ‘Father, hallowed be your name …’” Amen.
Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession
Gracious God, once again your Word has reminded us how we should pray. We know that He has opened the Temple of Heaven to give us access to the throne of grace and that we may speak freely to you on behalf of each other and all humankind. Hear us as we proffer our prayers to you, using our Lord’s guidance.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name as we Father, thank you for your love for us. These are our prayers for the needs the church, the world, our communities, and ourselves, as we trust the love which reaches out to us from before the foundation of the world. Lord in your mercy: hear our prayer.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Our intercession is for the world which you have entrusted to us. We love the wonder of your creation and the exuberant cycles of nature. Forgive us for taking without giving, reaping without sowing. We pray for the farmers of the world who are coping with climate change, whose crops are threatened and whose livelihoods endangered. We pray for people who are suffering in consequence of the heatwaves which are still enveloping parts of the globe. Lord in your mercy: hear our prayer.
Give us today our daily bread. We cannot take for granted the wealth of the earth which feeds us, and so as we thank you, we pray for all involved in food production and distribution. We pray for leaders of the world that they work to establish peace among nations, equal access to resources and opportunities for everyone. Lord in your mercy: hear our prayer.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
We ask for forgiveness for the things we have done, said, or thought which have hurt other people Challenge us to be more like our Heavenly Father and treat everyone with love and respect. We thank you for the love we share among our families and friends. We recognise that they may have faults and they love us despite our own. Help us to be flexible and adaptable in our relationships and able ourselves to accept constructive criticism. Lord in your mercy: hear our prayer.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
We pray for courage to face and cope with all difficulties in our lives when we encounter stress, illness, bereavement, poverty, or loss. We pray for people who have aroused our compassion and name now… and for ourselves and our needs Lord in your mercy: hear our prayer.
For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and for ever. Faithful God, we thank you for that as we pray together our petitions are magnified and the voice of amen unites us and affirms the will of heaven as it is inspired by your Holy Spirit. We look forward to the week to come and claim for each other awareness of your love and support in all we do.
Merciful Father accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Hymn 519 “Love Divine, all loves excelling”
The Benediction
Beloved of God, you have been healed and forgiven. God has poured God’s love upon you that you may be faithful disciples, offering healing love and forgiveness to all. Go in peace and may God’s peace always be with you. Amen.
May God’s blessing surround you each day
Postlude “All over the world”