Sunday service for 27 September 2026

Sunday 27 September 2026, NL1-3, Flourish In Faith 3
Gourock St John’s Church of Scotland
Service prepared by Rev. Teri Peterson
Manse phone: 632143
Email: tpeterson (at) churchofscotland.org.uk

If the video doesn’t play, please click here to view it on our YouTube channel

Welcome
*loop
*tea/coffee

God-sightings

We Gather As God’s Family (As the Bible is brought in, we stand and sing) (praise band)
A family gathered in love,
striving for justice and joy,
blessing the broken-hearted,
and sharing the hope of God’s kingdom.

Call to Worship
One: In every place,
All: God is present.
One: In every circumstance,
All: God is with us.
One: In the best and worst of times,
All: God is making us a blessing right where we are.

Sanctuary Hymn 124: Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (organ)

Prayer
With-us God,
we look to you and find grace in your eyes,
we look around and seek your goodness.
Yet we confess that sometimes we can’t see your blessing in every situation.
We want you to give us what we want —
a good life, free of trouble, safe and comfortable, prosperous and happy.
You promise instead to be with us,
to show us your steadfast love,
and to make us a blessing wherever we are.
We want you to set your people free and make sure everyone is cared for.
You call us instead
to look out for the vulnerable and to use our own powers for good.
Forgive us when we want you to give us an easy life,
but we don’t want to do the work to make others’ lives easier.
Forgive us when we confuse your blessing with privilege or prosperity
and then refuse to share any of it.
Forgive us, O God of every blessing,
and liberate us from our wrong thinking and our wrongdoing,
that we may learn to live out your goodness in every place and time.
Wherever we find ourselves,
we pray you would reveal your abundant life
in the midst of this life.
Keep us focused on your way,
that we might live faithfully
no matter what.
We ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

Friends, hear this good news: The Lord is with us, showing steadfast love. Wherever we find ourselves, God’s kindness stretches even there. Look carefully and see: God’s grace is present and for you. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sanctuary Children’s Time

Hymn GWA173: Goodness of God (praise band)

Scripture Reading: Genesis 39.1-23
Last week we heard about Abram and Sarai traveling to and through the land of Canaan, following where God shows them. Throughout their lives they continued following God’s lead, sometimes faithfully and sometimes taking matters into their own hands, sometimes demonstrating God’s care and sometimes demonstrating human cruelty, sometimes trusting and sometimes laughing at God’s plans. Eventually, at age 90, Sarah gave birth to Isaac. Isaac married Rebekah, the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother. Together they had two sons, Jacob and Esau, who did not get along. Eventually Jacob married two sisters, Leah and Rachel, and also their maids, Bilhah and Zilpah. Between the four of them they bore Jacob twelve sons. The second youngest was Joseph, who was his father’s favourite. Jacob gave Joseph a fancy, long-sleeved coat or dress, as a sign of his favour. The other brothers were, of course, jealous, and one day they conspired to get rid of him. They sold Joseph to passing traders, and took his fancy coat, dipped in animal blood, home to their father to pretend he was dead. Jacob was inconsolable. We pick up the story today in Genesis chapter 39, beginning at verse 1, and I am reading from the New Revised Standard Version.

Now Joseph was taken down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man; he was in the house of his Egyptian master. His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hands. So Joseph found favour in his sight and attended him; he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field. So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge, and with him there he had no concern for anything but the food that he ate.
Now Joseph was well-built and handsome. And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Look, with me here, my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my hand. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” And although she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not consent to lie beside her or to be with her. One day, however, when he went into the house to do his work, and while no one else was in the house, she caught hold of his garment, saying, “Lie with me!” But he left his garment in her hand and fled and ran outside. When she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled outside, she called out to the members of her household and said to them, “See, my husband has brought among us a Hebrew to insult us! He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice, and when he heard me raise my voice and cry out, he left his garment beside me and fled outside.” Then she kept his garment by her until his master came home, and she told him the same story, saying, “The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to insult me, but as soon as I raised my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me and fled outside.”
When his master heard the words that his wife spoke to him, saying, “This is the way your servant treated me,” he became enraged. And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined; he remained there in prison. But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love; he gave him favour in the sight of the chief jailer. The chief jailer committed to Joseph’s care all the prisoners who were in the prison, and whatever was done there, he was the one who did it. The chief jailer paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph’s care because the Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper.

For the word of God in scripture
For the word of God among us
For the word of God within us
Thanks be to God.

Sermon: flourishing on a downward trajectory
Joseph was his father’s favourite, and he basically got a free pass, from his brothers’ perspective. He got the prettiest clothes, the least chores, the most love and praise even if he didn’t do much. He told his family he’d had a dream that they were all beneath him and he believed it…and his parents’ response was just to laugh it off with “oh Joseph, don’t talk like that….”

And then his brothers threw him into a pit. His first ever fall from his pedestal…but not his last. Rather than his brothers being beneath him as he had dreamed, they used all their power over him to get rid of him, selling him to enslavers who would traffic him across borders into another country. And there he had to actually work. No more long sleeves proclaiming he was a lad of leisure…he had to put in the labour. His hard work paid off with more work being added but he started to see himself as better than the others around him, maybe even better than the nobility he worked for. But he was still vulnerable to accusations and even when he had done nothing wrong, he was blamed and punished, and so he fell even further into a new pit, this one with locked doors and guards. And there, he had to work harder, in worse conditions. And he was forgotten about there for a long time.

Usually when we think about a blessed life, being sold into slavery, wrongly accused of assault, and thrown into the palace dungeon wouldn’t be top of the list of evidence of blessing. The Lord was with Joseph, it says — more than once! But you’d never know it to look at his circumstances.

Perhaps the outer trappings of our lives are not a reliable indicator of God’s presence, or of God’s blessing.

Instead, it seems that the blessings abound for…the people all around Joseph. Potiphar and his household flourish — and it’s noticeable to them that things are better in their lives and their circumstances because Joseph is with them. The jailer finds his life improved, and the prisoners do too, because Joseph is there.

I wonder how our presence improves the lives of the people around us.

Many people would say that the church has been on a downward trajectory — we hear all the time about declining membership, about problems, about buildings closing because there’s not enough money or volunteers to keep them in good condition, about how there aren’t enough ministers to go around, on and on and on. Sometimes it’s easy to think that we are at the end of the church’s story, because it’s all doom and gloom news. And people are afraid it will be their church next — we feel vulnerable, like Joseph, that at any moment some upper management structure that says one thing now could turn on a dime and throw us down without warning. We see the spiral and we don’t know how to stop it…but a bit like Joseph, we also feel the weight of the world and our sense of responsibility…and maybe also a bit like Joseph, we are prone to a wee bit of an overdeveloped sense of self importance now and then, which can put people’s backs up, as it did his older brothers and Potiphar’s wife.

So even though I think this story has a lot to say to us about power dynamics, marginalised communities, trafficking, sexual assault, and the dangers faced by vulnerable people…the reality is I can’t preach half a dozen sermons today. Some of those may make an appearance in a midweek video, but today I want to think about what Joseph can teach the church when we feel as if we have fallen from favoured status to the lowest dungeon.

At every downward turn of his fortunes, it says “the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love.”

I wonder if that is our experience as a church? When things aren’t going according to our plan, when it feels as if we are losing ground, do we sense that the Lord is with us, showing us steadfast love?

One thing I notice about Joseph is that the Bible doesn’t record any of his prayers. We don’t know if he asked God what was going on, why was this happening to him, or how he could reverse the trend. We don’t see Joseph begging for God to make the path clear, or to take away the time of trial. All of those are perfectly valid prayers, we see them throughout other parts of the Bible and we pray them ourselves…but it’s striking that Joseph doesn’t. He has literally fallen from the heights of favour to the depths of a dungeon and it seems that no matter where he was, the Lord was with him showing him steadfast love.

Perhaps there is something for the Church to learn, about paying attention to the presence and love of God no matter our circumstances, because it turns out that God’s presence and love are not a guarantee of comfort or safety or material abundance…God is with us, the question is whether we notice only when we are winning, or also when we appear to be losing.

Another thing I notice about Joseph is that blessings abound where he is. Not for him, but for others. And people notice. Just as God promised to Abram in the story we heard last week…Joseph is being a blessing, even though the part where God blesses him and makes his name great has not yet happened. So again I ask: how are the people around us better off because of our presence? What does our presence as a church do to bless the neighbourhood in which we are planted? What blessing does our parish experience because we are here? It’s a vastly different question than the ones the Church has been asking of late — we often want to know how to get more people inside, or how to get the community to support the church, or to get more interest in what we are doing.

But what if we turn the question completely around and ask what we can do for others without any sense of what they owe us in return, or how we expect to be blessed because of it…just fully focusing on improving the lives of the people around us. Full stop. Even if it means sometimes people don’t believe us or our intentions or motivations, even if it means we fall farther down for a while…just putting aside our sense of entitlement and favoured status and the outer trappings that came with it, and putting in the hard work to make the lives of other people better.

And because what good presbyterian sermon doesn’t have three things? A third thing I notice about the story of Joseph that I think the Church can learn from in our times is his integrity. When Potiphar’s wife propositioned him, he could have thought about whether it would help him get even further ahead if he did what she asked. He could have manipulated the situation to his advantage. But he didn’t. When he then arrived at work and realised that he was in a dangerous situation, where the usual witnesses were absent, he didn’t opt for cowardice, he still went to do his job even though he knew where it was likely to lead. When he was thrown into prison, he continued to serve, to keep being a blessing, when he could have spent his time in there maligning his old owners and how quickly they turned on him. Joseph had those old dreams — however poorly he communicated them to his family — and he had that sense of God’s presence and steadfast love, and they sustained him in doing the right thing, even when the cost was incredibly high.

Too often I think the Church shies away from things that we think will cost us — cost us our reputation, cost us money, cost us members — without ever asking if that turning away is costing us our integrity, our fidelity to the God who is with us. And of course when we do that, not only do we end up making an idol of our reputation, money, and membership…but we paradoxically lose them anyway because those idols cannot save us.

Perhaps the church can learn from Joseph how to flourish in faith in these times we live in today, when we so easily get caught up in the idea that flourishing looks a certain way and we worry we don’t have it. Whatever his circumstances, Joseph knew that God was with him, he recognised God’s steadfast love, he worked hard for the good of others rather than himself, and he did so with integrity. He focused on being a blessing, even though it cost him nearly everything, and took a very long time to turn around…and ultimately, in a bigger picture that Joseph got only a glimpse of in his own lifetime, God used it all for good.

May it be so. Amen.

Silence for Reflection

Hymn GWA24: Your Labour Is Not In Vain (praise band)

Sanctuary Offering and Response GWA153: God the Maker of the Heavens, verse 1 (tune: Converse) (organ)
God, the maker of the heavens, 
and the planet that we share,
show us how to live, like Jesus, 
lives of gratitude and care.
Make us mindful of the footprints 
from the lives that we pursue.
Make us partners in your mission:
you are making all things new.

Concerns of the Church
*blessing photos
*Bible Study Wednesday
*Tent of Nations Daoud Nasser at GLPC 4 October
*Just Peace 6 October
*Harvest Sunday 11 October
*concert 27 November is real
*prayer groups

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
Gracious God,
your blessing may not look like we expected
but it is a blessing nonetheless,
and we give you thanks
for all the many ways you bring us to flourishing.
And in this world where so many are not given the chance to flourish,
we pray for all who are vulnerable —
those whose homes are not a safe place,
those whose workplaces are hostile environments,
those who live in fear of being alone with someone,
those who are exploited or trafficked,
those wondering if their current situation is forever.
Make yourself known to them,
surround them with your care,
fill them with your courage,
and bring them out to new life.
We pray for all who are caught up in unjust systems,
those who believe they are better than others,
those who think they can force their will on other people,
those who are so used to getting their way they can’t take no for an answer,
those who see only how others can be useful to them.
Make yourself known to them,
surround them with your word of truth,
fill them with your compassion,
and bring them out to new life.
We pray for all who long for their life circumstances to be different,
those suffering in body, mind, or spirit,
those struggling to make ends meet,
those who feel their challenges are beyond their capacity,
those overwhelmed by the world as it is.
Make yourself known to them,
surround them with a vision of your kingdom,
fill them with hope for your future,
and bring them out to new life.
On the 27th day of the month we join our hearts as your St John’s family to pray
*For St Ninian’s Primary School — for the children, the teachers, the staff, and the families.
*For the leaders of St John’s congregation: for the elders, the Kirk Session, and the Session Clerks.
*For the land, people, and governments of the nations of Dominica, Guadeloupe, Antigua & Barbuda, St Kitts & Nevis, the US and British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the British Overseas Territories of Anguilla, Turks and Caicos, and Montserrat.

You are always with us, O God,
offering grace, reaching out with loving-kindness,
making us a blessing even when we don’t feel it ourselves,
bringing flourishing where we saw only despair.
Work through us to reach your world with your love today,
in every place we find ourselves.
We ask in the name of Christ who is indeed God-with-us
and who taught us to pray together:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.

Hymn 513: Courage, Brother, Do Not Stumble (organ)

Sending
Whatever path you are walking just now, let your life be a blessing to this world God so loves.
As you go, may the Spirit of God go above you to watch over you. May the Spirit of God go beside you to be your companion. May the Spirit of God go before you to show you the way, and behind you to push you into places you might not go if you thought you were alone. And may the Spirit of God go within you, to remind you that you are loved more deeply than you can possibly imagine. May the fire of God’s love burn brightly in you, and through you into the world. Go in peace. Amen.

Sung Benediction Response (John L Bell, tune Gourock St John’s) (organ)
Now may the Lord of all be blessed,
Now may Christ’s gospel be confessed,
Now may the Spirit when we meet
Bless sanctuary and street.

Sanctuary Postlude Music (organ)

Announcements

* We worship in the sanctuary on Sundays at 11am, and Sunday worship is also online.

* The first Sunday of the month at 11am is an all-age service, with different ways of encountering God’s word without a traditional sermon. All people — young and old, different personalities and learning styles, are welcome! You’ll find a more informal service with a variety of music, a Bible story, prayer, and some more interactive elements. The online service for the first Sunday will therefore also be different — there will still be a reading, prayers, and music, but usually not a sermon.

* Wednesday Bible Study is at 7:30pm in the manse and we are beginning a study of the five “festival scrolls” guided by the book Forgotten Books of the Bible by Robert Williamson Jr.

* Bowl & Blether is on the first Mondays of the month, with doors open from 11:30-1:30, and lunch served from noon. All are welcome for a bowl of soup, a toastie, a friendly chat in our warm hall! See you next week on 5 October.

* On Tuesday 6 October at 7:30pm we have an opportunity to learn more about how we can play a part in working toward a Just Peace for Israel and Palestine. It’s a complicated situation that we often lament and rarely want to risk getting involved in, but Christian Aid has produced resources to help us learn, pray, and act for peace. Come along as we hear the voices of people living there, learn more of the context, and discover what we can do with our one small voice added to others.

* Starter Packs are in need of Bathroom/Kitchen Cleaner, Washing Up Liquid, Shaving Foam, Hand Wash,Toothbrushes for Adults.
The FoodBank are short of Biscuits and Juice as well as the usual items: Meals, Beans, Vegetables and Soup.
You can bring donations to the church and place them into the boxes in the vestibule. Thank you!

* We are moving into a time of Harvest, and turning our attention to how God’s faithfulness ensures our flourishing, through every season. To help us celebrate that He keeps His promise to be with us always, no matter the circumstance, you might like to bring to church a photo capturing what this has meant to you, personally. The photo could be of a person who has been a particular help or encouragement to you, or of an occasion or point in time that has been important to you in your faith.

Please place your photo in an envelope with your full name written on the front and give this to Anne Love. Anne will photocopy the photo, and return the original to you. Or if you have a digital photo, please email it to anneelovee4@gmail.com. These pictures, over a period of weeks, will form a collage of gratitude on the board we have put up on the wall: a visual testament to how we form part of a living story, a legacy, blessed by many hands to be fruitful, that we may in turn bless others.

* Free period products are available in the church toilets for anyone who might need them, thanks to Hey Girls and Inverclyde Council.

* Did you know that the ministry we do at St John’s costs about £3000 per week and we are currently running about £500 short? Everything we do is funded by your generous giving — all our support for young people, older people, bereavement care, community outreach, worship, study, spiritual growth, and community work is because of your offering. If you would like to set up a standing order in order to facilitate your spiritual discipline of giving, or if you would like to make an extra gift to support the ministry St. John’s does in our parish, you can give online by clicking here. If you would like to set up a standing order, please contact Teri and she can give you the treasurer’s details. You can also send your envelopes to the church or the manse by post and we will ensure they are received.

* Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Youtube, and to sign up for our email newsletter! Midweek you can watch Wine and the Word and Theology Thursday on Youtube, get snippets of thought or inspiration following Teri on TikTok, and of course keep up with announcements and events on Facebook and our weekly email.

Harvest 1 (Anne Love, Seonaid Campbell, Ann Stephenson, Nicola and Jamie Amott)
Have you ever received something that you felt you did not deserve? A good thing, that you had not worked for? A trial that felt unjust? Or have you ever trusted in a promise that seemed to take a while to be realised? Or have you felt you were being asked to do something you did not feel experienced enough or brave enough to do?
When we studied the readings set for the harvest season, we noticed that God’s sending is often uncomfortable, requiring us to leave the familiar and face the unknown. We also saw that God was eager to bless, keen to take our burdens, generation after generation and for all time, His spirit pushing us into places we might not go if we thought we were alone so that all might ultimately flourish. And so our theme this season is flourishing in faith, and this flourishing is how we are blessed, because there is always room for more, and always enough for all.
The story of God’s faithfulness in and through every season stretches back thousands of years.
It is our heritage. The theme of God’s constancy to His people winds its way through our readings this season, through characters just like ourselves: undeniably human, complicated, fallible, finding themselves in all kinds of challenging situations, having to make choices, being victors and being vulnerable. We see how the beautiful partnership between God and his people unfolds in:
* Noah’s trust in God’s oddly specific building instructions and surviving the end of the world;
* Abram’s obedience in a late age relocation to a land he did not know, with no map to get there, yet he did;
* Joseph’s diligence, both as a valued servant and then as a valued prisoner, blessed in the worst of times;
* Moses’s leadership, guiding a disgruntled, homesick people through a wilderness to an uncertain future; yet he receives God’s timeless commandments for his people;
* Joshua’s strength, succeeding Moses in leadership, carrying that burden to reprimand a people going astray, yet ultimately driving them to renewed commitment to God.
In these stories we won’t see easy prosperity, quick wins or magic formulae for success. Rather, we will see something more like our own lives. We will recognise being in a difficult place, outside our comfort zone, far from what has been home, or perhaps being misunderstood, maligned or even misused. But so too, will we be reminded of the times we have benefitted at some point from receiving a gift we did nothing to earn: be it friendship, guidance, a kind word, a helping hand, a helping cheque, an opportunity to grow, an encounter that changed our lives. And through the constant change life brings, so too does God’s love remain constant, blessing us that we may be a blessing to others. And we flourish not because everything has always gone well for us, but because God intends for us to be fruitful through the seasons and gives us what we need to get where He wants us to be.
This season we will acknowledge God’s love in our lives through people, places and times on the Blessing Board which Teri will tell us about in more detail. We plan to host a Christian Aid Just Peace film study and discussion night on 6 October. We will have our Harvest Service on 11 October, with a particular focus on the plight of refugees. We will also be looking at how we can encourage and support a new baby group.
So, as we move into Harvest time, we reflect on what we have received and what we can give, on our inheritance and our legacy, gratitude for God’s generosity, and giving generously where we can, when we can, flourishing in our faith to bless our community and our world now, and in the times ahead.

Sunday service for 20 September 2026

Sunday 20 September 2026, NL1-2, Flourish In Faith 2
Gourock St John’s Church of Scotland
Service prepared by Rev. Teri Peterson
Manse phone: 632143
Email: tpeterson (at) churchofscotland.org.uk

If the video does not play, please click here to view it on our YouTube channel!

Sanctuary Prelude Music (praise band)

Welcome
*loop
*tea/coffee

God-sightings

We Gather As God’s Family (As the Bible is brought in, we stand and sing) (praise band)
A family gathered in love,
striving for justice and joy,
blessing the broken-hearted,
and sharing the hope of God’s kingdom.

Call to Worship
One: At every age and stage of life,
All: God calls us to follow into blessing.
One: In every situation, whether celebration or grief,
All: God calls us to follow into blessing.
One: Just as we are, with our whole life story,
All: God calls us to follow, and be a blessing.

Sanctuary Hymn 160: Praise My Soul (organ)

Prayer
You call us out, O God,
into your holy land —
a place you show us
and promise to appear.
We pass through,
uncertain which parts are holy,
looking for you,
wondering how we’ll know.
Make this a holy place today
that we may see you here
and recognise your blessing
poured out into us, and through us.
You call, God, and you promise.
You invite us into partnership,
and we confess that we have mostly tried to do things ourselves.
We spend our energy making something of ourselves,
securing our future, keeping up, defending our way of life.
And when you call us to a new thing,
we admit we sometimes think “we’ve done our bit, can you send someone else?”
Forgive us for hearing your word and still believing we had to take matters into our own hands.
Forgive us for acting as if you have only a finite amount of blessing to go around.
Forgive us for putting a time and age limit on your calling.
Speak to us once again, and give us ears to hear and feet ready to go
to be a blessing to your world in need of good news.
We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hear and believe this good news: It is never too late. God’s grace is right now, and God’s blessing is from everlasting to everlasting. Trust the Spirit’s call and let the blessing be for you, and through you. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Online Hymn 81: I to the Hills (Psalm 121)

Sanctuary Children’s Time

Sanctuary Special Music: Choir to sing “He Put a New Song in My Heart”

Scripture Reading: Genesis 12.1-9 (NRSVUE)
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

For the word of God in scripture
For the word of God among us
For the word of God within us
Thanks be to God.

Sermon: be a blessing
I always think it’s so interesting that when God calls Abram, he doesn’t ask any questions. I would have a lot of questions…. like “where am I going, or at least how will I know when I’ve got there” or “where will I live and what will I do when I get there.” I suspect some people would want to whether it was safe, or if we would be able to meet new friends or if the view would be as good as it is here. Some may wonder why — why choose me for this task? After all, Abram was 75 years old — he could have just said “I’ve already done my bit, you should ask someone else, it’s time for the next generation to volunteer, I’m winding down and stepping back from commitments…”

Maybe we’d want to know how exactly any of this was going to happen — Abram was 75 years old with no children, so how would God make him the father of a great nation, exactly? If we can’t have the road map, could we at least have the business plan?

Yet Abram asks no questions at all. We don’t know if maybe Sarai would have, if she was given the chance — I have some friends whose husbands definitely just turn up without planning or packing anything, so maybe Abram was one of those and she was the one handling all the details. But ultimately, what God said seems to have been enough for them to pull up their tent stakes and go. No excuses about their age or how much they’d already done and it being someone else’s turn. No clarifications. No demands to at least have the destination in mind before they set out. They just decided to take the first step and trust that this God — who was different than the gods their family had worshipped for generations — would handle the rest.

That made me curious about what exactly God said, that would get these two pensioners packing up their home and setting off into the unknown without a single question.

First — and I do mean first, like literally the first word that is ever recorded between God and Abram — God says Go. It’s a command, not an invitation, and it’s written in kind of a weird way that isn’t used very often — it actually says the word twice in two different forms so that you don’t miss the point: Get yourself going. Get up and get moving. Get out of the rut you’re in and go.

Then God says he will show Abram his new home. He doesn’t say where, or how far, or what it will be like. No TripAdvisor reviews or estimated travel times, just “I will show you.”

And then before Abram has a chance to ask a question — because this is the point that I would probably have interrupted God to ask my questions — God gives a promise and an invitation. I will make of you a great nation — let me bless you, let me make your name great.

We normally read that as things God will do — I will bless you, I will make your name great. But the verbs are again a little bit weird, and can definitely be understood as an offer that needs accepting. The promise is there — you will be a great nation. And then the invitation: let me bless you. Let me be the one that raises you up. Let me handle what others think of you. Let me pour new life into you even at your age and stage of life. Let me do this for you.

Letting God handle that is perhaps trickier than it sounds on the surface, of course. We like to be in control of our own image. We want other people to think well of us. We know we have to work hard for ourselves, and promote ourselves in order to get promoted. If we want to get ahead, then we’ll have to make that happen. Making a name for ourselves in whatever our area, or at the very least becoming prosperous, is a more than full time job, especially when you add in defending yourself against detractors who want to pull you down for their own reasons. And all of that is as true for the church as for our individual lives — we want to make sure our church looks good, or better than the others, is growing, and is safe in the presbytery plan.

But God says…let me make your name great. Let me handle the other people. Let me bless you.

And then in the middle of all of this, there’s another command. Let me bless you…you, be a blessing.

You, be a blessing.

That’s the instruction: Go, and be a blessing.

The middle bit is where we so often get ourselves into trouble — when we try to make ourselves great, when we try to save ourselves, when we try to control what other people think of us, when we try to manufacture our own blessings apart from God’s gift or grow our own church. I was at a Book Festival event in Edinburgh last month where the author said “growth is not the mission — growth is what happens when you’re faithfully doing the mission.” Or, as God says to Abram: let me handle that. Let me bless you. You, Go and be a blessing. Focus on the mission, and I’ll do the rest.

I can’t say for sure that hearing that promise from God would inspire me to get up out of my familiar comfortable place and go without any further questions, but I do wonder what might happen if we trusted God as much as Abram and Sarai did, and just….went? Without asking for a fully developed plan, or a list of goals and outcomes, or even certainty that there’d ever be an end point at all. Without worrying how it would look in the paper or whether anyone would even know it was us so we could get the credit. Without saying we’re past our prime and it’s someone else’s turn to step up, or we don’t have permission, or we don’t know in advance if it’s going to work or not, we need more research. What if we just decided that our mission is to be a blessing to all the families of the earth — or at least all the people right here where we’ve been planted — and let God handle the questions about our reputation or our stature in the community or our future in the presbytery plan or our growth. What would it look like for us to take the first step on a mission to bless our community without knowing where the rest of the staircase goes?

I wonder if we could actually pause right now to brainstorm: what can we do this week to be a blessing to someone else? What can you do as an individual that would bless someone else? And what could we do as a church that would bless our parish or the world? What action, what generosity, what opportunity can we offer to the people around us? Not so that we will get anything out of it, not to accomplish a goal, but because it is the command God gives: go and be a blessing. Not in the abstract, but in real life.

Let’s take a moment to think and to ask God to show us what we can do to bless our community.
…

Does anyone have any ideas to share? Perhaps your idea can be an inspiration for others…

Each day let’s practice — when you wake up, ask God to show you how you can bless someone else today. Then keep your eyes and heart and hands open to act. No excuses, no endless clarifying questions: go and be a blessing, and let God handle the rest.

May it be so. Amen.

Silence for Reflection

Online Hymn: Send Us Out (Resound)
Sanctuary Hymn 81: I To The Hills (Jessie B favourite) (organ)

Sanctuary Offering and Response GWA153: God the Maker of the Heavens, verse 1 (tune: Converse) (organ)
God, the maker of the heavens,

and the planet that we share,

show us how to live, like Jesus,

lives of gratitude and care.

Make us mindful of the footprints

from the lives that we pursue.
Make us partners in your mission:
you are making all things new.

Concerns of the Church
*blessing photos
*Kirk Session tomorrow 7pm
*Contact Group Tuesday 1pm
*Bible Study Wednesday
*Tent of Nations Daoud Nasser at GLPC 4 October
*prayer groups

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
Gracious God,
you are present as you promised,
and we give you thanks
for you see us —
in all the ups and downs of our life stories,
with all we carry,
with all the griefs we bear and the hopes we nurture,
in our faithfulness and our failure.
You see us, and you care.
When we think we are at an end,
you show us into new life.
And so we come before you in prayer,
seeking your future.
We ask for your help for all who are walking through the valley of the shadow of death,
those living with sadness and loss that changes everything.
Walk beside them and bear them up in your hand.
We ask for your help for those places where neighbours struggle to coexist,
where hate has flourished and favour for one has meant pain for the other.
Show us how to live together in your peace.
We ask for your help for those beginning a new chapter,
those making a journey they never anticipated,
those leaving home and wondering what new life is ahead of them.
And we ask for your help for those who are stuck in the familiar,
in old patterns that no longer serve them, in comfortable ruts that will not lead to life.
Reveal your next step for them.

On the 20th day of the month we join our hearts as your church family to pray:
*For all who work in our transportation services — the trains, the buses, the ferries, and the taxis. For drivers and conductors and pilots and sailors and behind-the-scenes workers, and for all who travel in and out of our town.
*For the many volunteers who keep St John’s ministry vibrant: the pastoral care team, the flower team, Bowl & Blether volunteers, sound and powerpoint volunteers, those who count the offering, those who serve on Season Teams, those who do door duty and who make tea & coffee, and so many others.
*For the land, people, and governments of the nations of Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei.

We ask for your help as we learn how to be a blessing.
Teach us to ask how we can be a blessing wherever we are,
to look for opportunities to bless those around us,
and to live as if your grace is enough not only for us, but for everyone.
We ask these and all things through the power of your ever-present Holy Spirit,
and in the name of Jesus the Christ, who lived your way among us
and who taught us to pray together:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.

Sanctuary Hymn: Send Us Out (praise band)

Sending
Go and be a blessing, and let God handle the rest.
As you go, may the Spirit of God go above you to watch over you. May the Spirit of God go beside you to be your companion. May the Spirit of God go before you to show you the way, and behind you to push you into places you might not go if you thought you were alone. And may the Spirit of God go within you, to remind you that you are loved more deeply than you can possibly imagine. May the fire of God’s love burn brightly in you, and through you into the world. Go in peace. Amen.

Sung Benediction Response (John L Bell, tune Gourock St John’s) (organ)
Now may the Lord of all be blessed,
Now may Christ’s gospel be confessed,
Now may the Spirit when we meet
Bless sanctuary and street.

Sanctuary Postlude Music (organ)

Announcements

* We worship in the sanctuary on Sundays at 11am, and Sunday worship is also online.

* The first Sunday of the month at 11am is an all-age service, with different ways of encountering God’s word without a traditional sermon. All people — young and old, different personalities and learning styles, are welcome! You’ll find a more informal service with a variety of music, a Bible story, prayer, and some more interactive elements. The online service for the first Sunday will therefore also be different — there will still be a reading, prayers, and music, but usually not a sermon.

* The Kirk Session will meet on Monday 21 September at 7pm.

* The Contact Group starts its season with a Pot Luck Lunch on Tuesday 22nd September at 1pm. This will be followed by a short AGM. All are welcome to join us – just bring along a small sweet or savoury item for the lunch.

* Wednesday Bible Study is at 7:30pm in the manse and we are beginning a study of the five “festival scrolls” guided by the book Forgotten Books of the Bible by Robert Williamson Jr.

* Bowl & Blether is on the first Mondays of the month, with doors open from 11:30-1:30, and lunch served from noon. All are welcome for a bowl of soup, a toastie, a friendly chat in our warm hall! We will take August off, so see you next month on 5 October.

* Starter Packs are in need of Bathroom/Kitchen Cleaner, Washing Up Liquid, Shaving Foam, Hand Wash,Toothbrushes for Adults.

The FoodBank are short of Biscuits and Juice as well as the usual items: Meals, Beans, Vegetables and Soup.

You can bring donations to the church and place them into the boxes in the vestibule. Thank you!

* We are moving into a time of Harvest, and turning our attention to how God’s faithfulness ensures our flourishing, through every season. To help us celebrate that He keeps His promise to be with us always, no matter the circumstance, you might like to bring to church a photo capturing what this has meant to you, personally. The photo could be of a person who has been a particular help or encouragement to you, or of an occasion or point in time that has been important to you in your faith.
Please place your photo in an envelope with your full name written on the front and give this to Anne Love. Anne will photocopy the photo, and return the original to you. These pictures, over a period of weeks, will form a collage of gratitude on the board we have put up on the wall: a visual testament to how we form part of a living story, a legacy, blessed by many hands to be fruitful, that we may in turn bless others.

* Harvest 1 (Anne Love, Seonaid Campbell, Ann Stephenson, Nicola and Jamie Amott):
Have you ever received something that you felt you did not deserve? A good thing, that you had not worked for? A trial that felt unjust? Or have you ever trusted in a promise that seemed to take a while to be realised? Or have you felt you were being asked to do something you did not feel experienced enough or brave enough to do?
When we studied the readings set for the harvest season, we noticed that God’s sending is often uncomfortable, requiring us to leave the familiar and face the unknown. We also saw that God was eager to bless, keen to take our burdens, generation after generation and for all time, His spirit pushing us into places we might not go if we thought we were alone so that all might ultimately flourish. And so our theme this season is flourishing in faith, and this flourishing is how we are blessed, because there is always room for more, and always enough for all.
The story of God’s faithfulness in and through every season stretches back thousands of years.
It is our heritage. The theme of God’s constancy to His people winds its way through our readings this season, through characters just like ourselves: undeniably human, complicated, fallible, finding themselves in all kinds of challenging situations, having to make choices, being victors and being vulnerable. We see how the beautiful partnership between God and his people unfolds in:
* Noah’s trust in God’s oddly specific building instructions and surviving the end of the world;
* Abram’s obedience in a late age relocation to a land he did not know, with no map to get there, yet he did;
* Joseph’s diligence, both as a valued servant and then as a valued prisoner, blessed in the worst of times;
* Moses’s leadership, guiding a disgruntled, homesick people through a wilderness to an uncertain future; yet he receives God’s timeless commandments for his people;
* Joshua’s strength, succeeding Moses in leadership, carrying that burden to reprimand a people going astray, yet ultimately driving them to renewed commitment to God.
In these stories we won’t see easy prosperity, quick wins or magic formulae for success. Rather, we will see something more like our own lives. We will recognise being in a difficult place, outside our comfort zone, far from what has been home, or perhaps being misunderstood, maligned or even misused. But so too, will we be reminded of the times we have benefitted at some point from receiving a gift we did nothing to earn: be it friendship, guidance, a kind word, a helping hand, a helping cheque, an opportunity to grow, an encounter that changed our lives. And through the constant change life brings, so too does God’s love remain constant, blessing us that we may be a blessing to others. And we flourish not because everything has always gone well for us, but because God intends for us to be fruitful through the seasons and gives us what we need to get where He wants us to be.
This season we will acknowledge God’s love in our lives through people, places and times on the Blessing Board which Teri will tell us about in more detail. We plan to host a Christian Aid Just Peace film study and discussion night on 6 October. We will have our Harvest Service on 11 October, with a particular focus on the plight of refugees. We will also be looking at how we can encourage and support a new baby group.
So, as we move into Harvest time, we reflect on what we have received and what we can give, on our inheritance and our legacy, gratitude for God’s generosity, and giving generously where we can, when we can, flourishing in our faith to bless our community and our world now, and in the times ahead.