Sunday service 26 January 2025

Sunday 26 January 2025
Gourock St. John’s Church of Scotland
Service prepared by Rev. Teri Peterson
Manse: 632143 
Email: TPeterson (at) churchofscotland.org.uk
Email Charlene, Parish Assistant: CMitchell (at) churchofscotland.org.uk

Prelude Music (praise band)

Welcome

We Gather As God’s Family (As the Bible is brought in, we stand and sing)
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: Come into the presence the Holy One
All: We are only human, imperfect and unsure!
One: Come and do not be afraid
All: We are only human, easily paralysed by fear or by awe.
One: Come just as you are!
One: We are only human, but since Christ calls, we will follow.

Sanctuary Hymn 509: Jesus Calls Us O’er The Tumult

Prayer
We want to be close to you, Jesus —
close enough to touch, close enough to breathe-with, close enough to be sure of our connection.
You have bridged the gap between divine and human,
but also you are Holy, set apart even as you are God-With-Us.
You come into our everyday, Lord Jesus:
the places where we know what to do, what to expect.
We are happy to meet you in the midst of life
though we’d prefer to do so on our terms.
We long for the clarity of your voice,
for a miracle that would make everything obvious,
but maybe not when we’re already working in our own wheelhouse —
we need a miracle in the confusing and chaotic things instead.
We confess we expect no miracles in our regular day-to-day.
We know our work, our tasks, our lives,
and we just get on with what we do.
Would you do something we know is impossible, God?
If you did, how would we even respond?
We admit that it would be tempting to celebrate and enjoy the change,
to keep that windfall and experience for ourselves.
Yet you indeed do the impossible,
and with your power revealed comes your purpose revealed, too.
Forgive us for wanting one without the other.
Forgive us for not even looking for your hand in our work.
Forgive us for our continued desire for control.
Speak into the space between us today,
that your voice may carry more clearly the good news of your kingdom that is at hand, even now.
Give us the courage to receive your blessing that strains imagination,
and to orient our lives to your wonder.
Amen.

Jesus calls us just as we are — acknowledging our imperfection and calling us anyway. Having spoken the truth about our failings, so now hear this good news: God’s love is greater than our weakness and greater than our strength, in Christ we are forgiven and made new, and the Spirit calls us to leave our unworthiness behind and join the kingdom work, whoever and wherever we are. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Online Hymn 509: Jesus Calls Us O’er The Tumult

Sanctuary Children’s Time: The Sacrament of Baptism

Sanctuary Hymn: A Little More

Scripture Reading: Luke 5.1-11 (New Revised Standard Version)
Last week we heard the story of Jesus preaching in his home town of Nazareth, and the congregation becoming angry and trying to throw him off the cliff. He passed through the crowd and went on to Capernaum, where he taught in the synagogue and healed many people, including two on the Sabbath: a man possessed by a demon and Simon Peter’s mother-in-law who was ill with a fever. In Capernaum they wanted to keep him for themselves, healing and teaching, and tried to prevent him from going on, but at daybreak he was away again, saying that his call was to proclaim the message throughout the land.
Today we pick up the story here, at the beginning of Luke chapter 5. Up to this point, Jesus has acted alone, but today he begins to call a community. I am reading from the New Revised Standard Version, Luke 5 verses 1-11.

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

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: we know better?
Have you ever had the experience of someone coming into your work, or your house, or your church, or any other place where you know how it all works, and telling you how to do something? Not like when there’s a new system or something, or for a training…but just walking in, looking around, and telling you how to do a thing that you are an actual expert in, you’ve done it millions of times, and then someone thinks they know better? And…has the thing they said to do ever been one you absolutely knew would not work: maybe you’ve done it before and it didn’t work, or it’s just the opposite of how you do things?

What did you do in that situation? Roll your eyes and refuse? Try to explain why they’re wrong? Or just done what they said — maybe to prove them wrong, or to get them to stop explaining your own job to you? And….how did that go?

Well…for Simon Peter, it didn’t go as he expected.

Simon Peter was a professional fisherman, he ran a small business with multiple boats and partners. He spent most of his nights fishing, because fishing was a night shift job — possibly because of the type of nets, which were visible in the water in the light, possibly because of the habits of the fish and the birds. But he had been fishing the sea of Galilee for years, and he knew what he was doing.

Jesus was from Nazareth, which is up in the hills, nowhere near the water, definitely not a fishing town. He came from a carpentry family, and when he stepped into the boat he basically proved to Peter that he didn’t know anything about fishing.

Can you imagine how Peter felt when Jesus then told him how to fish? Add in that it had been a long night, they had worked hard but had nothing tangible to show for it — and a night of work with no fish also means a night of work with no pay. They would not have been in the best of moods when Jesus, the non-fisherman, told them how to do their jobs.

But they did it, and apparently with less snarkiness than I would have felt: “sure Boss, if you say so…”

And when the miracle happened, it was beyond their comprehension. It was boat-sinkingly large, a windfall beyond their wildest dreams. You can imagine them bringing the fish in, anticipating what they’re going to do with the extra money.

Except for Simon Peter.

He had seen Jesus do miracles before — just in the last chapter, Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law, and then also a whole crowd of people right at Simon’s front door. But none of that was enough to cause the response that the fish did. When Simon saw the impossible thing Jesus had done right there in his own workplace, in the thing he understood best, that’s when he threw himself down at Jesus’ feet and called him Lord, saying he wasn’t worthy of being in his holy presence.

Not at the healings. At his work. Where he knew what to do and how to do it, what worked and what didn’t work. In his own area of experience and expertise.

I wonder how we would respond if Jesus turned up in our home or work or church and told us to do something different. Would we say “we’ve done that before and it didn’t work”? Would we say “that’s not how we do things here”? Would we say “that’ll never work”?

I’m not Jesus of course but I have definitely heard all those answers when ideas have been suggested. And I’ve said them a few times myself!

But Simon Peter got a miracle because he followed Jesus’ directions, even though he “knew” they wouldn’t get results.

How often do we refuse Jesus’ directions because we know better? What miracles might we experience if we took the risk and followed his lead?

Peter insisted afterwards that he wasn’t worthy, but Jesus basically ignored him and gave him a new job to do — using his skills in a new way. Peter didn’t believe in himself, but Jesus believed in him, and when they got to shore, it says that all of them left everything and followed Jesus. For all they may have daydreamed about what they could do with such a windfall, it wasn’t worth anywhere near as much as being close to Jesus, after what they’d just seen.

Jesus showed up and did something impossible, right there in the place where they thought they knew it all. And it didn’t matter to him how worthy or unworthy they were, how many times it took them to recognise him, or what snarky things they thought or said before they saw the truth. All that mattered was that when he gave a direction, they followed it. And so he invited them to join him.

Jesus still turns up in our everyday lives, and still does things we think are impossible. He still invites us — just as we are, no need to fix ourselves first, no matter if we missed previous opportunities — to join him. He believes in us even before we believe in ourselves. The only requirements are: when he tells us something, will we do it? When he wants us to try something we know can’t work, will we follow his directions? When he calls, will we follow?

We might just get a miracle.

May it be so. Amen.

Hymn 533: Will You Come and Follow Me

Sanctuary Offering and Response GWA148, chorus
I will sing a song of love
to the One who first loved me,
and I’ll sing it as a child of God,
who is named and known and free.
For the love of God is good,
it is broad and deep and long;
and above all else that matters,
God is worthy of my song.

Announcements
*Evening service tonight
*Smalls for All collection
*Contact Group Tuesday afternoon
*Bible Study
*Readers Rota update
*devotions
*food bank Diluting and long life juice, tinned ham & tuna, UHT milk & nappies sizes 5 & 6.
/ starter packs cleaning cloths, hand wash, soup & shaving foam.

Please consider yourself invited to participate, and to pray for all the activities, ministry, and mission God is calling us to do together.

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
We come into your Holy presence, O God,
trusting your call to us,
your Love inviting us into community with you,
despite our faltering faith and our missteps and our fallible humanity.
You do incredible things,
working through our skills yet also beyond them,
revealing your power and glory here in this world.
We give you thanks for your providing,
for the impossible that becomes possible in your hands,
for the gift of seeing there is more to life than what we can earn or learn.
We pray today for those whose lives are defined only by their productivity,
those caught in cycles of poverty or overwork or unjust working conditions,
those who can’t see or plan past the next paycheque,
those who are not free to make choices outside their circumstances.
We pray too for those whose labour goes unseen,
those who keep things running at home or behind the scenes,
those who do the emotional labour and carry the mental load,
enabling others to pursue careers and dreams and long hours.
May they know they are valued and worthy for who they are,
not only for their labour,
and may we be emboldened to work for justice in our economy and business and society and families.
We pray today for those who are paralysed by fear,
those whose homes are not safe but they can’t see a way out,
those whose community or nation are at war and they are collateral damage,
those who don’t know how to move forward with the baggage they carry.
May they know peace and love that lifts fear,
making space to breathe and hope,
and may we have both the empathy and courage to reach out with a helping hand or a lifeline.
We pray today for those who believe they need to be fixed before they can be good enough,
those who are seduced by the perfect image presented by others,
those who swing from technique to best practice to program without success,
those who are too afraid to fail so they can’t try something new.
May they know your compassion and tenderness,
your truth and wonder,
and may we have the grace to accept one another with love
and the generosity of spirit to follow you who are always doing a new thing.
On this 26th day of the month we join our hearts as your St John’s family to pray:
*For Gourock Primary School — for the children, the teachers, the staff, and the families. Bless them with bright minds and open hearts and willing spirits, with friendship and laughter and the graciousness it takes to be in community together. May the school have the resources it needs and the families the support they need to ensure the children grow in mind, body, and spirit.
*For the Contact Group and other fellowship groups at St John’s, that they may learn and deepen friendships together in your presence.
*For the land, people, and governments of the nations of Trinidad & Tobago, Grenada, St Vincent & Grenadines, Barbados, St Lucia, and Martinique

You are the Holy One,
beyond our control yet with us always,
and you call us just as we are to join your kingdom work
bringing life and hope
in this world you so love.
Trusting in your power and your mercy,
we bring our prayers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 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 530: One More Step

Benediction
Go from this time of worship expecting Jesus to find his way into your everyday life…and when he does, listen to what he says, and follow him into blessing you can’t yet fathom.
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 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)
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.

Postlude Music

Announcements

* We worship in the sanctuary on Sundays at 11am, and Sunday worship is also online. If you are able, please enter by the front door in Bath street, and only those who need step-free access should use the back door. If you feel unwell, please worship online, to protect both yourself and others in our community.
The Sunday evening service is tonight, and on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of each month. We have toasties and sandwiches together from 5:30 and the service will start at the back of 6. All are welcome for this simple meal and time of worship. The Sunday evening service is informal and reflective, with guitar-based music, Bible readings, and prayer for our parish. Come along and discover practical ways to apply the word to your life, in a chilled vibe that fosters connection and reflection.

* The first Sunday of the month at 11am is now 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.

* There’s no Conversation Corner with Charlene this week — watch this space for information about future dates.

* The Contact Group meets on Tuesday 28 January at 2pm and the speaker this week will be Teri, talking about the Holy Land.

* Bowl and Blether is on the first and third Mondays of each month through the winter, the next one is Monday 3 February. Doors open at 11:30am, soup and sandwiches are served from noon – 1:30. All are welcome to join us for lunch and a chat in our cozy warm hall. Volunteers are also needed and welcome, please speak to Teri, Graham Bolster, or Charlene if you’d like to volunteer for soup making (9-11:30am), toastie-making (11:30-1:30), serving (11:15-1:45), or clean up (1:15-2:30). 

* Starter Packs are in need of cleaning cloths, hand wash, soup & shaving foam.

The FoodBank are in need of Diluting and long life juice, tinned ham & tuna, UHT milk & nappies sizes 5 & 6.
You can bring donations to the church and place them into the boxes in the vestibule. Thank you!

* During the month of January we are helping Greenock Rotary with their Smalls For All collection.  Pants must be new and they are particularly asking for ladies size 8 to 14 and children ages 3 to 15.  

* Our Advent Gift Day has raised £2,120.00 (including the Gift Aid) for the ministry of St John’s so far. Thank you so much for your generosity! If you would like to contribute a gift, it isn’t too late! Please be sure your name is on your envelope or your bank transfer, so that we can claim Gift Aid. If you haven’t filled in a Gift Aid form at some point since this time last year, please do so — we have all new forms to update our records. Thank you!

* Did you know that the ministry we do at St John’s costs about £3000 per week? 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. 
It is also possible to donate to the work of the parish assistant, speak to Anne Love about how to go about directing new donations to that item in the budget.

* Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Youtube, and to sign up for our email devotions! Midweek you can watch Wine and the Word on Youtube, pray with video devotions on Facebook, and consider a new angle on something with a devotional email. 

* Wednesday Evening Bible Study is at 7:30pm in the Manse and we are reading Luke!

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