Sunday Service for 24 May 2020 — Seventh Sunday of Easter

24 May 2020: 7th 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, and we will have a prayer service Live on our Facebook page. 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 or a Virtual Tea Break 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.
  • Parklea has plants for sale! While we can’t have our usual plant sale in the church hall, you can still support this community organisation and get your spring and summer plants by visiting their website. 
  • Pentecost is coming next Sunday—31 May! If you’d like to download and colour in a Pentecost prayer to hang in your window, you can get one here. We’d love to see them everywhere when we’re out for exercise! Also, beginning this Thursday or so, when you’re out for a walk you might find a Spirit Selfie Station on one of the church doors! Stop and take a selfie and send it to Teri so we can put together a slideshow—both to see each other and to celebrate the Church’s birthday….and to remember that the Church is the people, not the building.

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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 489: Come Down, O Love Divine

Reading: 1 Corinthians 12.31-13.13 (New Revised Standard Version)

If you prefer a manuscript to read along, it’s below the video!

But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Sermon: A Legacy of Love
(easter theme: witness apprenticeship programme)

Throughout the Easter season we have been learning alongside the apostles about how to be Christ’s witnesses in the world. Our apprenticeship programme has included lessons in making eye contact and really seeing people, in having an abundance mindset, in being a praying community, and in having a teachable spirit. Now here we are in the last week of the season, the final lesson before we are sent out from our apprenticeships to put all our new skills into practice in the world.

What better lesson to end with than this? Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Love is like the foundation of our pyramid. Picture something like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, with food, water, shelter, and safety at the base — they have to be in place before a person can give their energy to things farther up, like relationships or education or self confidence. In this case, it’s Love that is the base of this hierarchy. Without the base, nothing else is possible. Any efforts at using gifts of knowledge or prophecy or even faith will fall flat if we haven’t built on a foundation of love.

And God is Love, according to 1 John chapter 4, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. So if we are not building on a foundation of Love, we have actually built a foundation on something other than God — a foundation that will wash away when the storms come.

These are words that are often read at weddings, to mark the beginning of a new phase of commitment in a relationship. But they were actually written to a community that was well on in their life together, and it was falling apart. The church in Corinth was conflicted, divided, and frustrated. There were divisions over socio-economic status, background, worship style preferences, and theology. And there was conflict over who was most gifted, or who had better gifts and talents than others. They had trouble even sitting at the same table for the Lord’s Supper. It was a church family pulling apart at the seams.

That’s the community to whom Paul writes that there is a still more excellent way, and this is that way: Love.

Not love the warm fuzzy feeling, not the kind of love that’s printed on a greeting card or expressed in a box of chocolates. This is love that is active and hard working — it is actively patient, making room for the different experiences of others; it is actively kind, doing for others as we would have done for us. This is love that refuses to keep a mental catalogue of past grievances, that never seeks our own advancement at the expense of others, that does not make sport of differences or even jokingly rejoice in an enemy’s bad fortune. This is love that carries the weight of relationship, refusing to lay it aside only for convenience or personal preference, that looks forward and insists on faithfulness.

And God is Love.

What incredible news, that God is like this! How different from the way so many people think of God. But this is indeed the God who looked at the creation and called it good, who led the people out of slavery and into freedom, who guided the Israelites through the wilderness even when they moaned every day of those 40 years, who insists on justice for the poor, the immigrant, and the marginalised, who took on flesh in Jesus and lived among us, gathering all sorts of people from all sorts of places, touching lepers and blessing children and feeding the hungry and forgiving the people who crucified him and commissioning women to tell the good news of the empty tomb. God is love: actively patient and kind, making room for all kinds of experiences, carrying the weight of relationship, refusing to keep a note of past infractions, being faithful.

And we are made in the image of God.

As people we spend a lot of time crafting our image, deciding what is important and building a life.
All those other things the Corinthians valued…all those other things we value…all those things we think define us, that we use to craft that image and build that life…knowledge, wisdom, prophecy, communication skills, awards, talents, work…all those things will come to an end. They are all temporary, however much we might like to think they’re permanent. But love never ends. Love lives on long after we do. Love comes from God, and calls us to God and each other, and existed before creation and will exist long after. And after all, what’s left after we are gone? People may remember our achievements, our skills and talents, for a time. But our most enduring legacy is love — or lack of it. The mark we leave on the world begins and ends with love.

That’s true for individuals and for communities — Jesus said that the world would know his disciples by how we love. That should be the marker of the Church here and now, and that will be our legacy.

And if we have not love, we are nothing.

Without love, we are nothing, have nothing, do nothing.

Indeed, without love, Paul says, we are a distraction. A noisy gong, a clanging cymbal — something that could be part of the ensemble, making music together, calling people to attention, but instead just pointlessly rattles about, drawing people away from the truth rather than toward it.

Sometimes I think we have built on some other foundation, not love. Sometimes a foundation of preferences, of traditions, of fiscal realities, of rules and regulations, of cultural baggage…there are many possible foundations, but they aren’t the base of the hierarchy of needs for the Body of Christ. And so we have distracted people from the good news of God’s grace and power, from Jesus’ saving work, from the Spirit’s continual call, because without love all our words are just noise.

How will people see our faith? How will they know the God we proclaim? How will they know the love and the call from Jesus?

By our love.

Patient and kind, making room for people to come with all their quirks and foibles, different experiences and needs.
Not arrogant or rude, not insisting on our own way.
Not keeping track of the things of the past.
Bearing burdens together, not leaving some to carry them for our desires to be easily and cheaply met.
Enduring together, not abandoning some as if they are disposable.
Holding faith and hope together, not resigning ourselves to injustice because it’s too difficult to tackle.

We don’t understand everything — we see as if through a mirror or a dark glass. But that is no excuse for withholding love. We do not have to know fully in order to love! Indeed, we might even say that as we continue to build on love, we will see ever more…without it, we will always have only the tiniest sliver of understanding. It’s only by loving that we learn to love more, just as we learn any other skill by practicing it. That’s how we grow up and mature in faith, by ensuring a strong base and then practicing love, not just in the easy moments but in the difficult ones as well.

So as our apprenticeship comes to an end, the work of witnessing begins…and though we may not feel as prepared as we would like, neither did the disciples who stood on that mountaintop hearing Jesus commission them. But we don’t have to know everything in order to build from a foundation of love, to act in love, to speak in love, to live in love, to leave a legacy of love. All those other lessons matter, but this one matters most, and without love all the others fade away.

Now faith, hope, and love abide….and the greatest of these, the largest, the chief, the base of the hierarchy of needs, the foundation without which nothing else can be…is love.

May it be so. Amen.

Prayer
Loving God,
You create, redeem, and sustain all things
in the power of your love.
We thank you this day for being the foundation
of our lives, and of our life together.
We are especially grateful for
your patience,
your kindness,
your willingness to bear with us
even when we are not faithful to you.
From age to age, you endure,
and your love leads us on.
We come, bearing the burdens of our community,
holding both friend and enemy in your light.
In your mercy, hear our prayers
for those who suffer, in body, mind, and spirit…
for those who care for others so tirelessly,
on the front line and behind the scenes…
for those working diligently to guide us
into a new way of living…
for those in fear…
for those living in unsafe situations…
for those who feel overlooked or forgotten…
for those who wait in hope for a new dawn…
for your creation groaning…
May your comfort,
your peace,
your courage,
your justice,
your wonder,
your grace,
your hope,
your faithfulness,
your love
fill every place,
every heart,
every home,
every crack,
every hole,
every mind,
every body.
Your love never fails.
You never give up,
and we pray that we too would have the fortitude to persevere in loving as you love.
We offer ourselves, body, mind, and spirit, to you,
trusting in your grace and mercy.
We lift these prayers in the name of Jesus the Christ,
your love in the flesh, 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.

If you haven’t already, please consider setting up a standing order so that your spiritual practice of giving can continue even when we are not able to be together in person. If you’d like more information about that, please contact Peter Bennett, church treasurer, or Teri and she will direct you to the right person! If you aren’t able to give by standing order, you are invited to place your envelope in a safe place until we are able to be together again. Please remember: no one will come to your door to collect your offering while the church building is closed without contacting you first! 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!

Hymn: Proof of Your Love

Benediction
As you live this resurrection life, preparing to be a witness to Christ’s love and God’s grace, may you build always on a foundation of Love. 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.