Sunday service for 10 December 2023, second Sunday of Advent

Sunday 10 December 2023 — NL2-14, Advent 2
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
Email Rob, student minister: RThomson (at) churchofscotland.org.uk

Prelude Music (praise band)

*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.

Welcome & Announcements

Call to Worship
One: In the wilderness, where it’s hard to find our way,
All: God is coming.
One: On the mountaintop, where we shout and hope to be heard,
All: God is coming.
One: In the valley, where shadows threaten to overtake us,
All: God is coming.
One: God’s glory shall be revealed,
All: and all people will see it together.

Sanctuary Hymn 279: Make Way, Make Way

Online Hymn: Light of the World

Lighting the Advent Candle
One: Look at the world —
All: But it feels like endless bad news
hate / climate catastrophe / inequality / war / disaster / hunger
One: Look at the world —
All: The world is weary.
*All sing: (hymn 303 it came upon the midnight clear v3)
But with the woes of sin and strife
the world has suffered long;
beneath the angels’ hymn have rolled
two thousand years of wrong;
and warring humankind hears not
the love-song which they bring;
oh, hush the noise and still the strife
to hear the angels sing.

One: Hush the noise.
Look closely.
You may have to
squint.
You may have to
peer
into the shadows.
But when you do…

~Candle is lit~

compassion / reaching out / new life / prayer / reconciliation / helpers

One: Look at the world —
All: The world God so loves
One: This is where the Messiah comes
not some faraway galaxy
not waiting for a perfect world
not a safe, sanitised, rose-tinted past
not where there’s plenty of room and plenty of time.
Here.
All: A thrill of hope: Emmanuel, God with us.

*Hymn 273, two verses: O Come O Come Emmanuel
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Desire of Nations, bind
all peoples in one heart and mind;
bid envy, strife, and discord cease,
fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.

Prayer

Let’s come before the Lord in prayer.

Gracious, merciful and loving God,
We come before you today with humble hearts,
With empty hands, in awe of the vastness of your love
In the stillness of this moment, we come to confess.

We confess that hope itself sometimes seems like a fool’s gambit.
The world is so dark and so harsh, unfairness seems like the standard,
Justice seems like a theory; we rarely see in practice.
Insanity seems to have taken over the hearts of people the world over, men and women not so different from us, think they can make themselves safe by killing each other.

Time and time again we try to do things our way, we look for comfort in the damp and mouldy blanket of our own strength. We allow bitterness to cloud our trust in your plan for justice and renewal and we seek vengeance.
We are so busy drowning, we resent the intrusion, when you offer us the lifejacket of your Gospel. We lose sight of you in the storm of our own anxiety.

And so, we are thankful that you are the One, the One who keeps His promises,
The true and living God who demonstrates His trustworthiness through action, through mercy. Who calms the storms and commands the waves.

As we seek your truth in the words of your prophet today help us to prepare our hearts today.

Prepare our hearts, to seek comfort not in our own works but be glad in the knowledge that you will provide for our needs, even amid our distress.

Prepare our hearts, to be grateful in the assurance of salvation, despite our flaws and shortcomings, sure in the knowledge that you have adopted us as your children and will not let us go.

Prepare our hearts, to be sure in the knowledge that those who have gone on ahead of us are safe in your company, dancing in the presence of the maker of all things.

Prepare our hearts, to worship the One who is Lord so that we don’t have to be, to whom vengeance belongs, to who mercy is preferable, who can be trusted to be just.

We ask this as always, in the wonderful name of Jesus.

Amen 

Sanctuary Hymn: All the Earth Was Waiting (Resound….Praise Band)

Sanctuary Children’s Time

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 40.1-11 (New Revised Standard Version)
The reading today is from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 40. Isaiah is speaking to people who have been in exile for more than 50 years already, who have grieved the loss of their homeland, their Temple, their way of life. They have raised families in a foreign land, all while trying to keep alive their connection to God, even though they could no longer worship according to their traditions. It has been a difficult few generations, in which they had lived through war, displacement, learning a new nation and language, a new political and economic system. For decades they’d been going back and forth between wondering if they could ever go home or if they should just fully integrate into the society where they had been sent to live. After all this time, the word of God came through the prophet Isaiah:

~~~

Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

A voice says, “Cry out!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass;
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers; the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers; the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
See, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him
and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms
and carry them in his bosom
and gently lead the mother sheep.

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: Practice Peace
This is a passage that always brings up such good feelings — I think because it starts with the word “comfort” and ends with God carrying the lambs in his arms, and because of course it brings to mind Handel’s Messiah. How could we not feel good when we’re humming “every valley, shall be exalted…” It just sets the mood, I think!

I don’t want to ruin that mood exactly…but…I do want to notice some things I hadn’t paid all that much attention to before, which I must warn you *might* affect that warm fuzzy easy peace.

Every valley shall be lifted up…and every mountain and hill be made low…the uneven ground will be made level and the rough places a plain.

Now some days walking up from the train station I might wish for the mountains and hills to be made low, but if we take these words seriously, this is not just a giant construction project, it’s a re-making of creation. This is like earthquakes and volcanoes and landslips. The entire landscape is being re-formed. Every single thing is shifting, and not one landmark will remain in place — we would look around and not recognise anything, as if we’ve never even been here before.

And the prophet says “THEN” the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. Then…as in, after this re-making of creation is accomplished, after we get to the stage where we can’t find our own way because we don’t see anything familiar…then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together.

Not some of us who know where to look. Not some of us who have gone to the same places over and over again looking for God in the same ways. Not some of us who have given poor directions to those who’ve been seeking. Not some of us who have made it as hard as possible to find the way in through the maze of requirements, rules, traditions, and obscure language like a password. All people shall see it together, when everything has shifted to make a way for God to come.

The prophet complains about having to give the message, because people are prone to fading away at the slightest hint of change — notice he says “people are like grass: the grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it.” When the breath of the Lord blows upon it — I don’t know about you, but I also hear a re-creation in that! With all the land changing shape so that God can come to us, we are primed to hear echoes of God breathing life into creation…except this time it’s that God’s breath of life actually withers those who thought they were forever. The sense that when we are flourishing, when everything is going great, we have built something that will last, to discover that in fact all of that is fragile is disorienting. Perhaps as disorienting as looking up to discover that the entire landscape around has changed and nothing looks the way we remember. When we can’t find our way, the breath of life can feel more like a sigh of despair, the end of an era…or a last gasp, trying to re-make the way it was before, only to find we’ve exhausted ourselves and there’s nothing for it but to lie down and fade away.

BUT, says the prophet: BUT — the word of our God will stand for ever.

No matter how faint we feel, no matter how disoriented we may be, looking around at a world where everything is changed. The word of our God will stand forever. And that word includes the promise that when the whole landscape has shifted beyond recognition, that is when God is coming to us so that all people — not just some — may see God’s glory together.

So we come back around to the comforting peaceful vision…but by way of a complicated and perhaps even terrifying journey into the wilderness of the unknown. And isn’t that kind of how the world feels today? We look around and everything feels different, we can’t use any of the old familiar landmarks to find our way, and it’s so exhausting trying to figure out what on earth is going on that even the breath of life feels like too much. The world is being re-made in a new form and we don’t know if we’re going to like it or not. But even when all our old comfortable ways disappear, even when the road we had so reliably traveled is no more — whether or not it took us where we wanted to go, at least we knew where it went! — even when the institutions and buildings we thought were so stable (despite the ways they perpetuated injustice and inequality and ineffectiveness) begin to fall, there is this truth: the word of our God stands forever. It is the only thing, in fact, that stands forever. And in the re-created world where everything else feels strange, that truth will be more visible than ever.

There’s something else in Isaiah’s call and promise here that I think is really important: instructions. Comfort, comfort my people, speak tenderly to them, call out the good news and point to the vision of God coming across this re-made earth to come to us.

These are instructions to the community to comfort each other, speak tenderly to each other, give good news to each other, point out where we see God to each other. These are instructions to God’s people, commanding us to be witnesses of the truth that God’s word stands forever, even when the evidence in the world around us is shaky at best.

And that made me think of how last week we talked about hope as a discipline — something we have to practice over and over again. I think Isaiah is also pointing us to the fact that peace is a discipline. We have to practice speaking tenderly to each other when we’d rather lash out about the constant shifting of the ground under our feet, and when we’d rather get revenge. We have to practice offering comfort for others when what we really want is just to have our own comforts catered for and ignore the basic needs and humanity of others. We have to practice looking for God and sharing that vision with others when the headlines are mostly bad.

When we practice these things, when we practice peace, that actually hastens the re-creating, the re-shaping of the landscape that allows God to come to us. So paradoxically, practicing the discipline of peace may actually lead to more upheaval at first, because peace isn’t about calm, it’s about a reshaped world where God’s wholeness is the norm. So practicing peace also means practicing justice, the kind where those who don’t seem to deserve tenderness or comfort get it anyway, and those who promulgate division as a strategy for calm or inequality as a virtue get sent away to learn God’s more excellent way. Practicing peace moves the goalposts from the ways of this world to the ways of the kingdom, and that can make everything feel unfamiliar and scary when we have relied on those worldly systems. Practicing peace requires speaking up even when we think there’s no point shouting into the chaos, because God calls for the message to be proclaimed even if we don’t think anyone is listening. Peace is a discipline we have to practice every day, with compassion and hope and trust that transcends the evidence of our eyes.

So yes: the landscape is shifting. Yes, everything feels unfamiliar and scary. And yes, the more we practice peace the more the earth will move and the more things will change. But that re-shaping is required, if we truly long for the day when all peoples will see God’s glory together — together in peace.

May it be so. Amen.

Online Hymn 304: O Little Town of Bethlehem

Sanctuary Hymn 274: Comfort, Comfort Now My People

Sanctuary Advent Gift Day Mission Focus: Inverclyde Faith in Throughcare

Sanctuary Offering (praise band — Light of the World)

*Sanctuary Offering Response: Hymn 305 verse 5
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb,
if I were a wise man I would do my part,
yet what I can I give him,
give my heart.

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
God of all comfort,
we thank you that all things are held in your hand,
and your word stands forever.
We come before you with gratitude for the ways you have fed and carried us,
and placed us in community together that we might nurture, comfort, and encourage each other.
In times of trouble, we have looked for comfort in so many places,
while you have been reaching out to us through the hands of our neighbours,
and longing to reach out to our neighbours through our hands.
We pray this day that all people would see your goodness,
and learn to extend a hand of comfort and peace to one another,
that together we might experience the liberation of your kingdom come on earth.
We pray this day for those who see no reason for hope,
whose day-to-day life has no evidence of good news,
whose longings for justice, for companionship, for grace
go unanswered.
May they hear and believe the truth
that you are indeed present with power to change things,
that this present situation is not forever,
that your breath will always have the last word.
We pray this day for the world that needs re-shaping,
for all the places where obstacles stand between your people and abundant life,
for people who will suffer in the disruption of the re-creating,
and those who cannot wait any longer for it to begin.
Especially we remember the people of
Palestine and Israel, Ukraine, Yemen, Venezuela, the Congo…
and people closer to home, those sleeping rough in these cold wet days,
those who aren’t safe in their homes,
those who have to rely on food banks and donations,
those who struggle with addiction and isolation.
May your creation’s healing begin,
may the systems that need to turn upside down start to shift,
and may all people have enough to flourish for their time
and to bear witness to the power of your breath of life.
However disorienting your work in the world may prove,
ground us in the truth that your word stands forever,
and draw us along your way into the peace of your kingdom.
We ask in the name of the One who embodies your will for the world,
Jesus the Christ, coming among us to reconcile us to you forever,
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 304: O Little Town of Bethlehem

Benediction
Go forth from this time of worship to hold hope for one another, to make peace together, to speak up with good news that reveals the presence of our God who is even now making a way in the wilderness.
And 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

* This Advent we are asking everyone to update your Gift Aid information, so we can ensure we are maximising our Gift Aid opportunities. Please fill in a new Gift Aid form so that we can update our records!

* Christmas Post: Our youth organisations will again deliver Christmas cards in Gourock and in the west end of Greenock. Delivery will remain at 30 pence per card, and they can be brought to church by Sunday the 17th of December. The money raised by the Christmas Post funds our youth ministries throughout the year, so it’s a good cause as well as saving you a lot of money compared to the post office!

* A funeral service celebrating the life of Mr. Alex Fairhurst will be held in the sanctuary this Tuesday, 12 December, at 1:45pm, with a committal afterwards at Greenock Crematorium. 

* The next meeting of the Contact Group is this Tuesday, 12 December at 3pm (note later time) in the large hall for a service of carols and readings.

* Clydeview Academy is hosting a Christmas lunch for our mature members on Wednesday 13 December at 1pm. Tickets are available from Teri.

* Next Sunday the 17th of December will be our Advent communion for “joy” Sunday, at 11am.

* The next Bowl & Blether is 18 December, with doors open from 11:30-1:30. It’s a great opportunity to get out and meet some people and have a meal and some social time! This month our donations at Bowl & Blether are going to support those who use the Grieve Road Pantry with some groceries for Christmas.

* We worship in the sanctuary on Sundays at 11am, and all 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.

* Starter Packs are short of Razors/Shaving Foam, Bathroom/Kitchen Cleaner, Tea Towels and Cleaning Cloths.
The FoodBank are requesting UHT milk, rice pudding, long-life fruit juice & confectionery. You can bring donations to the church and place them into the boxes in the vestibule. 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 new parish assistant, speak to Anne Love about how to go about directing new donations to that new 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. Feel free to share with your friends, too!

* Registration is now open for Jump Into January, the Winter mini-Exploratorium: 3rd-4th January, 9am – 1pm, we’ll be Jumping Into January with children in P1-P7 — tell all the kids you know! If you can volunteer for breakfast club (8am), during the morning, or in the kitchen for snacks and lunch, please speak to Teri or Charlene or Graham Bolster.

* Wednesday Evening Bible Study meets at 7:30pm at the manse.

* This year our Advent Gift Day will be received TODAY Sunday 10 December, and will be an offering for Inverclyde Faith In Through-care, which supports people coming out of prison and re-integrating into society. IFIT believes everyone deserves the chance to learn new life skills, access training and employment opportunities, and develop positive relationships. Their goal is to empower individuals to realise their full potential and make positive changes in their lives.
There are a number of ways to participate in this Gift Day. We are looking for donations to enable the staff to provide supermarket vouchers during the holiday period and to help provide a trip to Camas next year; for items that can go into gift bags for the participants (shower gel kits, hats, scarfs, gloves, socks, etc — most participants are men but there are a few women as well); and for items for children of participants: four girls, aged 7, 9, 14, and 15, and two boys aged 11 and 16.

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