Sunday service for 16 August 2020, twelfth Sunday of Pentecost

16 August 2020: 12th Sunday of Pentecost
Service prepared by the Rev. Teri C Peterson,
Gourock St. John’s Church of Scotland
Contact: tpeterson@churchofscotland.org.uk

* At this time the St John’s Kirk Session has decided, for a variety of reasons, not to open the building yet. We will continue to worship online and via the telephone recording ministry, with mid-week offerings on video and by email, and through phone calls and zoom gatherings. If you have questions about this, please do contact Teri, or Cameron, or your elder. However, the building works that were suspended during lockdown are again underway. If you see people around the church building, they are likely contractors, and we would ask that you go ahead and say hello but keep a safe distance, and do not enter the building at this time. It’s important that we do everything we can to ensure they have a safe worksite, so that they can continue the work both on the tower and inside the sanctuary as quickly and safely as possible.

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

* Coffee Fellowship Time will happen today on Zoom! The room will be open from 11:45 – 12:45 for you to drop in for however long you wish, so grab a cup of tea or coffee (or juice or whatever you prefer!) and maybe a biscuit, and come have a chat! We look forward to seeing you!

* The Moderator of the General Assembly has invited us to join him in a week of prayer beginning tomorrow — there will be morning prayers and reflections posted on the Church of Scotland website and social media channels each day at 8am, and then a chance to gather for prayer on Zoom each evening at 8:30pm. If you’d like login details for evening gatherings, contact Teri. More information can be found here.

* The Kirk now has online giving! If you have not already 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 here! If you would like to set up a standing order, please contact Peter Bennett, our treasurer, or Teri and she can give you his details. You can also send your envelopes to the church by post and we will ensure they are received. Remember: no one is coming to your door to collect your envelopes, so please stay safe!

* We also now have an audio recording of the service available on the phone! Simply dial 01475 270 037 to listen to the most recent service. Please share this number with your neighbours, friends, family, and fellow church goers who don’t have the internet, so they can listen in!

* The theme for worship this summer is “Postcards of Faith” — we’ll be getting some postcards from God’s people throughout scripture, following their journeys with God and each other.

* This summer we are taking a Church Family summer trip! We’ll be journeying together from Shore to Shore — the shores of the Clyde to the shores of the sea of Galilee, to the hometown of St. John the Evangelist. Keep track of how much time you spend in prayer, reading the Bible, serving others, or going for a walk. For every 10 minutes, you move us 1km along the journey! Then each week send Teri a note, text, or phone call saying how far you “traveled” this week. On our return journey, we have now reached Corinth!!

* Children’s Time happens each Sunday morning at 11am on Zoom. If you would like the login details, please contact Teri. 

* The Young Adult Bible Study (BYOPizza) resumes via Zoom at 1pm today, when we begin studying the Book of Revelation! If you’re aged 15-25 and 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. Our Sunday evening prayer services will be shared across our “Fuzzy Parish” (now called CONNECT). Tonight’s service will be led by Teri, and will begin at 6:57pm on the Connect Facebook page, and be sure to like / follow it while you’re there!

* 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.

* Sign up to our YouTube Channel 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. 

* Mid-week there is a devotional email, which is also printed and included with the following Sunday’s sermon distribution to those without internet access. You can sign up for the email here.

* 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.

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Hymn 501: Take this moment

Reading, Sermon, Prayers 

Hymn: God of Justice

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Call to Worship and Opening Prayer

As things simultaneously seem to be new and old, strange and familiar,
Whether you long for the old normal or are excited about the new normal,
Jesus words echo through the ages and into our homes,
Through our screens and our hearts:
Come and have breakfast.
Come, whatever work or play you have been doing today.
Come, whatever tasks you have ahead of you.
Come, whoever you are, wherever you are, whenever you hear this invitation.
Come and be fed, for it is Christ himself who provides.
Be nourished, so that from his abundance, you can live to feed others.
Come, let us worship God together.

Let us pray.
You provide beyond our imagining, O God.
With a word, you created,
and even still your mercies are new every morning.
We praise you for your abundant blessing, seen and unseen.
As we turn our hearts to you this day,
we pray you would take from us any thought that does not glorify you.
Give us the imagination and the courage to leave behind the habits and ways
that separate and divide,
that make us rely on ourselves rather than your grace,
that leave some with too much and others with too little,
that turn our eyes backward rather than forward.
Show us again the wonder of your new creation,
form us ever more into your likeness,
and make us ready to inhabit your kingdom, even now.
We come with minds and hearts open to receive your goodness,
and hands ready to serve as you call,
offering ourselves in gratitude for all your grace,
through Jesus Christ our Lord, 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,
and 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.

Sung Prayer #159
(words: Timothy Dudley-Smith, tune: Lord of the Years by Michael Baughen)

Lord, for ourselves; in living power remake us,
self on the cross and Christ upon the throne;
past put behind us, for the future take us,
Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone.

Friends, hear and believe this good news: if anyone is in Christ the whole creation is made new, the old has gone and the new has come. So know that you are forgiven, believe that you are forgiven, live as if you are forgiven, and be at peace. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Reading: John 21.1-14 (New Revised Standard Version)

After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’ They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’ They answered him, ‘No.’ He said to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’ So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the lake. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.
When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.’ So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

Sermon: New Normal (Postcards of Faith 9)

They went back to what they knew.

It’s hardly surprising, after the stress and upheaval and change they’d experienced, between those last few days in Jerusalem, and then those three days of grief, and then the wonder and uncertainty of resurrection…they needed some stability. They couldn’t stay in Jerusalem forever, it wasn’t their home, after all. So they went back to their seaside town, and tried to go back to their normal life.

It’s the thing many of us have been longing for, for months now — to get back to normal. We are definitely not the first to have that desire! Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, and John, and the others wanted to get back to normal too. Except that the normal they used to know, before Jesus, wasn’t really there anymore. How could they simply return to the lives they used to live — having the same conversations with all the same people who had known them their whole lives, doing the same day-in-day-out work of a peasant community in an occupied land? They had seen incredible things, met hundreds of people…and they’d been changed, at least on the inside. While their world seemed the same as it ever was, the reality is that they were different…and the world was different too, now that resurrection had happened, though people didn’t see how just yet.

They made a valiant effort though. They went back to what they knew. They put out from the shore, they let down the nets, just the same way they’d always done it.

But this time, nothing happened.

Despite doing everything the usual way, something about it wasn’t the same.

In the morning, when they heard the stranger calling from the beach, some part of them must have thought he was crazy, even as another part of them recognised something in his instructions. Soon their net was overflowing with an abundance that could only come from the One who promised Abundant Life — the One who had extravagantly fed the crowds of thousands with only a few loaves and fish, the One who had turned hundreds of gallons of water into the best vintage of wine.

The first to realise the truth was the one who had been closest to Jesus during his life — the disciple whom he loved, usually thought to be John. He had been close enough to hear Jesus’ heart at the Last Supper, and even from the boat out on the lake he could hear it still. And then Peter did one of his typical impetuous Peter things — he put ON his clothes and jumped into the water to swim to shore, leaving the others to struggle with the hundreds of fish and the boat! Only after he saw Jesus up close, and after Jesus reminded him to go help did he then rush back and, apparently, singlehandedly, Hulk-style drag the net ashore, teeming with 153 fish. It’s an oddly specific number — not the usual vague, exaggerated style that we hear from fishermen about how it was THIS BIG, their hands getting wider apart even as they speak — and some scholars think it represents all the known countries at the time, a reminder that Jesus’ abundant life reaches to the whole world.

As they sat around the fire, drying out their clothes, exhausted from a long night yet exhilarated by the turnaround of the morning, Jesus did something he had done hundreds of times before: he broke bread and gave it to them. And they didn’t need to ask who it was, because in that moment they knew for certain.

When they get up from this table, Jesus will give them instructions to pass it on, pay it forward: feed my sheep. In other words, take this moment and let it become your new normal, your formative experience that you keep going back to.

The ways we used to know will not be able to sustain us in the new world that is ahead of us. We will need to learn anew the heart of the matter, be formed in that new way, and live from that core story. That breakfast on the beach was not just a welcome respite from a bad night at work, it was a reminder of their life with Christ, that was to continue even when they weren’t physically at the same table.

I think of how, when I was growing up, my family ate dinner together every night. Whatever we might have been eating, whatever we might have talked about, it was probably the most formative aspect of my childhood. It’s where we came together, where our family values were communicated and reinforced, where stories were shared. Even though I no longer sit at the same physical table as my family, who I am today was shaped by those hundreds of family dinners.

The same is true for us as Christians, members of Christ’s family. We sit at the family table, we share the bread and wine, and it forms us, makes us who we are meant to be. It’s where we learn the stories of God doing a new thing among us, and the values of hospitality and justice and love and abundance…and that’s what we draw on when the world is tough and we aren’t sure what to do, and the temptation of going back to what we know is strong.

They went back to what they thought they knew…but Jesus was calling them to a new normal, formed not by their old habits but by his Way, Truth, and Life. That continues to be true, even when we aren’t currently sitting at the same physical table — we will need the new habits of a life formed according to Christ, not the old habits we look back on so fondly…especially when those old habits were not good news for everyone.

For all who are tempted to think this is only about church life in a post-lockdown world, it’s much bigger than that. Jesus reaches into every aspect of our lives, not just our Sunday-morning hour. That time around the table is meant to form us into new habits that stop us going back to the old ways we know when it comes to politics, racism, and sexism, how we spend our money, how we relate to each other, what and who we value, how we spend our time, what we eat and wear, how we talk to each other online and in person, the work we do, which jokes we’ll call out as harmful rather than funny…and also, yes, what it means to be church, what it means to be part of a community, going forward.

Jesus didn’t only call those disciples to experience worship differently, or to teach Sunday school differently, he called them out of their old ways of work and earning, out of their old ways of relating to each other and to the people in their community, out of their old ways of thinking about themselves and the world. This is a big journey we are on. We will need to be nourished by those formative days around the table, hearing the stories and learning the values and carrying them forward into every place we go. That’s what it means to be family with the One who promised Abundant Life: just as we have been nourished by it, we are sent out to ensure others have it as well — and especially those who have been denied, excluded, left behind, or poisoned instead. Feed my sheep, Jesus said, just as you have been fed.

May it be so. Amen.

Prayers: by Fiona Webster
Lord God, our Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Creator of all that we are, Your Grace and Mercy are beyond anything we could hope for.
As we come before You in prayer, we need your help in receiving Your forgiveness. Our lives are in your eternal plans for the Salvation of the World.
There is much in our world’s situation we do not understand.
And it is only when we come before You and learn from past generations that we become aware of all you are doing through Scripture and the witness of those who lead Your Church.
Lord, many of us have had time recently to spend in Your presence. We ask forgiveness for all the times Your Spirit prompts us and we turn away.
Lord God, You sent Christ into this life that we might learn to trust and obey. We continue to need Your guidance as we walk in Your Way.
Thank You Lord God for the life of Christ and for the gift of the Holy Spirit to whom we can turn to at any time.
Lord, thank You for the many blessings that we have. Although we have enjoyed some good weather, it is more clear now how much we need to take care of our planet. Our young people seem to be leading the way in this, May we have the wisdom to listen.
For the health of the seas and the air we have polluted, we thank You for organisations and individuals who make us aware of the action we need.
Our governments have so much to contend with at this time, the Covid virus being uppermost in everyone’s prayers.
Be with them Lord as they guide us through these strange times.
We remember those who have died during this time and those grieving, who cannot share thanksgiving for the lives they have loved and lost.
Thank You for all doctors, nurses and all who bring relief and comfort at this time.
We give thanks for our local communities, for those who have worked and served us to help us through these days.
Local food stores, Health centres and pharmacies among many others.
This week many parts of our country have been battered by storms and flooding. We pray for those affected, that they may be given strength to cope and recover.
Lord our hearts have been touched by the recent train accident, and we think of those grieving here for their loved ones for those dealing with all the consequences of this tragedy.
Lord, we pray for ourselves, our church family, who miss coming together to praise and worship You.
We thank you for all the building work and look forward to the church being restored. We anticipate the new stained glass window to be dedicated in worship to You.
We praise you for our minister Teri and thank You for all that Teri and the Connect team have been doing to keep us together.
Our prayer is that each one of us will turn to You at all times and that our souls will be at peace in You.
Help us to be a comfort when needed in practical and spiritual ways. In all things we ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Benediction
Having been nurtured by the Living Word, and experienced the abundant life of Christ, go to feed his sheep, to share that abundance you have known, to build new habits of grace for the new world that is ahead of us. 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.

Benediction Response
Words and tune (Gourock St. John’s): John L Bell

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.