Sunday service for 10 May 2020, fifth Sunday of Easter

10 May 2020: 5th Sunday of Easter
Service prepared by the Rev. Teri C Peterson,
Gourock St. John’s Church of Scotland
Contact: tpeterson@churchofscotland.org.uk

Welcome and Announcements
Though we cannot be together in person, we can be together in spirit! Please note the following announcements:

• Children’s Time happens each Sunday morning at 11am on Zoom. If you would like the login details, please contact Teri.
• Churches across Scotland are calling people to join together in prayer on Sunday evenings at 7pm, placing a lit candle in the window and spending time in prayer for others. TONIGHT, due to the Prime Minister’s briefing, we will have a prayer service Live on our Facebook page at 8pm. In addition, the moderator of our Presbytery has asked us to pause each day at 11am to pray for healing, health care workers, and our community.
• Feel free to share this with others, with the attribution information at the top. If you know someone who does not have access to the internet and who also does not receive the tape ministry, you can either print this service out and share it with them, or let Teri know via email or phone call and we will be sure they receive a printed copy.
• Mid-week there is a devotional email that goes out, it will be printed and included with the following Sunday’s sermon distribution. You can subscribe to the email here.
• Also mid-week there is a facebook live video devotional on the St. John’s Gourock Facebook page. 
• We now have a youtube channel! You can subscribe there so you never miss a video. Don’t miss “wine and the word” — an occasional series during the 5pm hour that helps us transition from one part of the day to the next, via reflections similar to those that would normally have been in the “God’s Story, Our Story” take home inserts given out each week. 
• If you or a church member you know is in need of friendly phone calls or help with anything while they self-isolate, please contact Teri. Elders are already in contact with people in their districts as well, and you can pass information to them! We are hoping to continue and even deepen our connections to one another, building up the Body of Christ even when we can’t be in the building.
• CHRISTIAN AID WEEK starts today! Especially in these times, our care for each other matters more than ever. Please consider a gift to Christian Aid, which you can give here.

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The Doxology (tune: Old Hundredth)
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Christ all people here below;
Praise Holy Spirit evermore;
Praise Triune God, whom we adore!
Amen

Prayer
God of resurrection power,
you called your Son out of the tomb
and in so doing, called the whole creation into new life.
Even now, you call us to join your way of resurrection,
you lift our eyes and raise our hearts,
you transform our minds and renew our spirits.
Bring us once again into awareness of your presence,
that we may offer you our worship,
and be nourished for your kingdom’s work.
We pray in the name of the risen Christ. Amen.

Hymn: Amazing Grace (my chains are gone)

Reading and sermon and prayers of intercession (if you prefer to read rather than watch the video, the script is below!)

A Praying Community
Acts 12.1-13.3 (NRSV)
(Easter theme: Witness Apprenticeship Programme)

The book of Acts is volume 2 of Luke’s work — the first, the gospel, tells us about Jesus, and the second, Acts, tells us about the Body of Christ in its earliest days, as they figure out what it means to be the Church. It’s a story of the disciples being led by the Holy Spirit, the community growing and spreading, and in the most difficult of circumstances. We know that it was written probably in the 80s, about 50 years after Jesus lived, died, and was raised. We don’t know for sure when exactly the events that Luke writes about took place, but a good guess is that it’s probably around the 40s and 50s. In that time, the disciples have been preaching and healing, the church has been traveling on those fancy Roman roads, and the Roman Empire has been expanding its reach and also its cruelty.
Today’s story begins with the third King Herod to rule in Judea as a client king, perhaps better called a puppet of the emperor. The first, who was king when Jesus was born, was known for his cruelty, which we can see in the way he handles the news that the Messiah has been born. The second, the one whom Joseph feared and so he took his family to Nazareth in Galilee rather than back to Bethlehem, which was just a few miles from Jerusalem, was the one who beheaded John the Baptist on the whim of a party oath. And this third Herod, called Herod Agrippa, was no better. We hear about him in Acts chapter 12, beginning at verse 1.

About that time King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword. After he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. (This was during the festival of Unleavened Bread.) When he had seized him, he put him in prison and handed him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover. While Peter was kept in prison, the church prayed fervently to God for him.
The very night before Herod was going to bring him out, Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while guards in front of the door were keeping watch over the prison. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his wrists. The angel said to him, ‘Fasten your belt and put on your sandals.’ He did so. Then he said to him, ‘Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.’ Peter went out and followed him; he did not realise that what was happening with the angel’s help was real; he thought he was seeing a vision. After they had passed the first and the second guard, they came before the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went outside and walked along a lane, when suddenly the angel left him. Then Peter came to himself and said, ‘Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hands of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.’
As soon as he realised this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many had gathered and were praying. When he knocked at the outer gate, a maid named Rhoda came to answer. On recognising Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that, instead of opening the gate, she ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gate. They said to her, ‘You are out of your mind!’ But she insisted that it was so. They said, ‘It is his angel.’ Meanwhile, Peter continued knocking; and when they opened the gate, they saw him and were amazed. He motioned to them with his hand to be silent, and described for them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he added, ‘Tell this to James and to the believers.’ Then he left and went to another place.

It was the most hopeless of situations. James, the brother of John—one of the first disciples to be called, leaving his nets and hired men and father and following Jesus….one of Jesus’ inner circle, along with his brother and Peter, violently lost at the hands of a jealous mad king. During Passover, no less. And then, when the king realised he could perhaps score some points with the religious leaders he was always at odds with, he arrested Peter too. Peter was, of course, the leader of the Jerusalem church, just as Jesus had said he would be.

Now, after all these years, the very thing the disciples had feared, the reason they hid in the upper room, both before and after the resurrection, because they were afraid that the authorities would come for them next, happened. On the last night of Passover, Peter was in prison, chained to two soldiers, with more soldiers outside the locked door, inside a locked prison, outside the locked city gates, knowing that the next day was his last. And the church, grieving the loss of James, fearful for Peter, prayed.

It was an impossible situation. There was literally no way out.

Of course, God specialises in impossible situations.

Peter was no stranger to dreams and visions. He had many, some of which changed the course of the church forever. So when he dreamt of an angel and a light, he must have assumed it was happening again. He followed the angel out of the cell, out of the prison, into the city, and it was only when he was standing in the dark streets alone, after curfew, that he woke and realised that his sleepwalking was more than a dream, it was a divine intervention! He ran to the house where the church was praying—a house owned by a wealthy independent woman, no less. And then one of my favourite moments in all of scripture happens: Rhoda, the servant, comes to the gate and when she sees Peter, she leaves him standing there while she runs back in to tell the others! And, just like on Easter morning, they don’t believe her — literally tell her she has lost her mind. But Peter is still at the gate, perhaps beginning to get nervous in case he is spotted, making a racket knocking on the door! Finally they let him in, he tells his story, and then….he goes away.

Perhaps he left because he knew it would be safer for everyone if he wasn’t found among them the next day. Perhaps he went into hiding somewhere else. Tradition says he traveled to Rome and preached the gospel there until he was later crucified himself, upside down. Whatever the case, he recognised that his calling was no longer with this community, but elsewhere. The role of the Jerusalem church had changed, and they needed new leadership. It was time to pass the baton to James, the brother of Jesus, and let him grow into his role as leader of the Church in Jerusalem. So as hard as it is to know when it is time to let go of authority and pass it to the next generation, Peter discerned that both their calling and his were now different, so away he went.

Continuing now at verse 18…

When morning came, there was no small commotion among the soldiers over what had become of Peter. When Herod had searched for him and could not find him, he examined the guards and ordered them to be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there.
Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon. So they came to him in a body; and after winning over Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for a reconciliation, because their country depended on the king’s country for food. On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat on the platform, and delivered a public address to them. The people kept shouting, ‘The voice of a god, and not of a mortal!’ And immediately, because he had not given the glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.

Herod had already revealed himself to be cruel, to care more for how he was perceived than for the well-being of others, and to be prone to acting on whims. When Peter could not be located, Herod simply took his anger out on the most convenient underlings available…though the guards, of course, had nothing to do with Peter’s escape. They were sacrificed to his ego, and when that was done he went away to his better palace, in the Roman capital of the territory.

There, surrounded by all the trappings of power and glory, people came asking for help because they were starving. They have to literally beg and grovel, praising Herod with all their might, in order to get a morsel of food. He set himself up as if it was a religious festival, appointing a day for them to come and sing his praises before he would allow them to receive necessary supplies. It was the opposite of how the church operated — remember that throughout Acts we have heard “there was not a needy person among them” because everyone shared their resources so that they could all have enough. Not so with the king. But…in what might be another of my favourite lines of scripture, we hear that the angel, perhaps the one who had brought Peter out from certain death to life, does the opposite for Herod. His insistence that people glorify him in order to have what they need just to survive ends with him being struck down, “and he was eaten by worms and died.” Notice the order of the words there! It makes me laugh every time. Which is good, because when we live under startlingly similar circumstances, we need a bit of a laugh now and then.

I could go on for some time about this particular style of quid pro quo from a political leader, but I think it might be better if we focus on the importance of giving glory where glory is due…and that is always to God.

And, of course, the story continues! At verse 24, and going into chapter 13:

But the word of God continued to advance and gain adherents. Then after completing their mission Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem and brought with them John, whose other name was Mark.
Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the ruler, and Saul. While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.

In contrast to Herod’s ways of self-glorification and making people grovel for their survival, the church, the community of sharing and compassion and abundant life, continued to grow. When a community knows who they are and then lives out that mission with clarity and grace, people are attracted to that! People want to be a part of something that feels real and hopeful, and that makes a difference in the world, and the church certainly has that.

You may recall that Barnabas and Saul had been sent from Antioch to take the offerings that would help the Judean church survive the coming famine. When they returned after finishing that mission, they brought John Mark, whose mother Mary was the leader of the house church where Peter had told his prison break story. When they returned, they took their place in the leadership of the Antioch church, which may have been the most diverse church leadership team ever: there was Barnabas, who was an immigrant who had moved from Cyprus to Jerusalem and then been sent to Antioch; Simeon, who was black; Lucius, an immigrant from North Africa, Manaen who was one of the second Herod’s childhood friends and converted from within his court; and Saul who had formerly been a Pharisee!

This incredibly diverse leadership team guided the whole church in Antioch as they studied God’s word, did their best to live according to Jesus’ way, and listened for the Holy Spirit. This community spent their time in spiritual practices, fasting and praying and singing and sharing in the work of the community. And there, in that community, in the midst of those practices that helped them draw closer to God, the Spirit spoke.

“Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

And so the first missionaries were ordained, set apart for the work given to them. They didn’t just go off on their own, they were equipped and sent by a community that knew and loved them. And that community discerned this calling through the spiritual practices they did together.

As we too prepare to be sent out as witnesses, I wonder if we can learn here about the importance of a praying community. Both in Jerusalem and in Antioch, we see the community gathered together, praying and listening for the Spirit. And each time, their prayers lead to a new phase of the Church’s life, first as Peter hands over authority to James, and then as Saul and Barnabas head out on their missionary journeys.

Who knows what God might do with a whole church praying and listening for the Spirit today! It might feel like we are in the midst of an impossible situation, things can feel a bit hopeless as we continue behind our locked doors for a while longer, frightened and worried. But God specialises in impossible situations. And though the world outside might feel indifferent to the gospel at best, the reality is that the Spirit is still calling and equipping and sending us to share the good news that there is another way, we don’t have to live by the Herod way or the Empire’s way. Abundant life for all creation is possible, in Christ.

So…what if we decided to be a church that prays together? Yes, for all the usual things we pray for—safety and health and comfort in the midst of grief. And also explicitly for the Spirit to reveal what God’s vision for us is, what our calling is in the next phase of our life together, and for the people and the resources and the gifts to fulfil that calling. As we prepare to be witnesses, let’s pray.

Gracious God, you are still speaking, even now.
We give you thanks, for your resurrection life
springs from impossible situations,
you set us free from the shadows of night
and walk with us into a new dawn.
Lord we pray this day for your Church,
here in this place and around the world.
We ask for your guidance, your leading, to be clear.
Give us eyes to see and ears to hear,
hearts and minds to understand and hands and feet ready to follow.
Reveal your Way, and help us to walk it with faith and grace.
Especially in these challenging days,
when all we knew is changing before our eyes,
show us your vision for what your Church can be and do.
Equip us for your good work,
and increase our capacity—
for love, for welcome, for giving, for hope, for trust, for service.
Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.
…
God of comfort, you are our companion in all times and places.
We pray this day for all who still walk in the dark valley,
for those living in grief,
for those whose bodies hold on to fear and anxiety and depression,
for those who are ill, and wonder if they will get well.
We give you thanks for those who care for others,
children and elderly,
those struggling to breathe and those waiting for an operation,
in hospital and at home and at school and over the phone.
We pray you would keep them safe from harm,
and give them courage and compassion
as they serve the community with grace and hope.
We thank you for those who work in those places we used to overlook,
delivering food and parcels, stocking shelves, cleaning rooms.
We pray you would hold them close,
give them strength and help them, and us, see their hands as your hands.
We lift up to you this day those people
whose job is to think of the greater good,
to work for the welfare of all people,
to find ways through a crisis,
to lead the community and the nation.
We especially pray that they would use their power with your wisdom,
that they would lead with empathy
and with concern for well-being ahead of greed.

Holy and loving God, we give you all glory and honour and praise,
for you are the source of all goodness,
your love is the foundation of all life.
We offer you our prayers, and our lives, in the name of Jesus the 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.

Offering Prayer
In Christ you have given us all things, O God, and also called us to give of ourselves, following his way. As we enter into this resurrection life, make our giving a witness to your generosity. May we know the blessings of the kingdom, even as we seek to live in it each day. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

You are invited to place your offering envelope in a safe place until we can meet again. Or, if you haven’t already, to consider setting up a standing order so that your spiritual practice of giving can continue. Please remember: no one will come to your door to collect your offering while the church building is closed! Stay safe.

Offering Response Hymn 410, verse 4
(tune: Easter Hymn, Jesus Christ is Risen Today)

Sing we to our God above, Alleluia!
praise eternal as his love; Alleluia!
praise him all you heavenly host, Alleluia!
Father Son and Holy Ghost, Alleluia!

Song: Baba Yetu (the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili):

Words:
Baba yetu, yetu uliye (Our, our Father who are)
Mbinguni yetu, yetu, amina (In heaven, our, our, amen)
Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are)
Jina lako litukuzwe (Let’s glorify your name)

Baba yetu, yetu uliye (Our, our Father who are)
Mbinguni yetu, yetu, amina (In heaven, our, our, amen)
Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are)
Jina lako litukuzwe (Let’s glorify your name)

Utupe leo chakula chetu (Give us today our food)
Tunachohitaji utusamehe (We need you to forgive us)
Makosa yetu, hey (Our errors, hey)
Kama nasi tunavyowasamehe (As we do forgive those)
Waliotukosea, usitutie (Who did us wrong, don’t put us)
Katika majaribu, lakini (Into trials, but)
Utuokoe, na yule, milele na milele (Save us, with him, for ever and ever)

Baba yetu, yetu uliye (Our, our Father who are)
Mbinguni yetu, yetu, amina (In heaven, our, our, amen)
Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are)
Jina lako litukuzwe (Let’s glorify your name)

Baba yetu, yetu uliye (Our, our Father who are)
Mbinguni yetu, yetu, amina (In heaven, our, our, amen)
Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are)
Jina lako litukuzwe (Let’s glorify your name)

Ufalme wako ufike utakalo (Your kingdom come that it be)
Lifanyike duniani kama mbinguni, amina (done on earth as in heaven, amen)

Baba yetu, yetu uliye (Our, our Father who are)
Mbinguni yetu, yetu, amina (In heaven, our, our, amen)
Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are)
Jina lako litukuzwe (Let’s glorify your name)

Baba yetu, yetu uliye (Our, our Father who are)
Mbinguni yetu, yetu, amina (In heaven, our, our, amen)
Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are)
Jina lako litukuzwe (Let’s glorify your name)

Utupe leo chakula chetu (Give us today our food)
Tunachohitaji utusamehe (We need you to forgive us)
Makosa yetu, hey (Our errors, hey)
Kama nasi tunavyowasamehe (As we do forgive those)
Waliotukosea, usitutie (Who did us wrong, don’t put us)
Katika majaribu, lakini (Into trials, but)
Utuokoe na yule msiba milele (Save us from this distress for ever)

Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are)
Jina lako litukuzwe (Let’s glorify your name)

Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are)
Jina lako litukuzwe (Let’s glorify your name)

Benediction
As you live this resurrection life, preparing to be a witness to Christ’s love and God’s grace, I invite you to be a part of the praying community, to ask and to listen for God’s leading as we find our way into the new world unfolding before us. And remember: the Spirit of God goes above you to watch over you; the Spirit of God goes beside you to be your companion; the Spirit of God goes before you to show you the way, and behind you — to push you into places you might not go alone; and the Spirit of God goes 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 Response (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.