Sunday Service for 27 September 2020

27 September 2020
Service prepared by the Rev. Teri C Peterson
Gourock St John’s Church of Scotland
Contact: tpeterson at churchofscotland dot org dot 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 12 noon (ish) today, 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! Click Here to join.

* 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 autumn is “Becoming God’s People.” We’ll be exploring  who God is and how God’s character informs God’s actions, and how our actions also ought to be informed by that character…by way of stories of God and humanity working out their relationship with one another through the Old Testament.

* 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) meets via Zoom at 1pm, reading chapter 3 of 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, beginning at 6:58pm 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.

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Hymn: You Say

Readings, Sermon, Prayers:

Hymn 259: Beauty for Brokenness

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Call to Worship and Opening Prayer

Come,
whether you carry dreams fulfilled or hopes dashed,
whether you are feeling alone in the world
or surrounded by friends,
whether today brings delight or uncertainty —
God calls us with love and purpose.
Let us pray.

God, sometimes life seems so complicated…
it would take ages to tell the whole story,
so we trust you know and understand.
As we turn our attention to worship,
remind us that we stand in the long arc of your story,
surrounded by your great cloud of witnesses,
so we need not bear the weight of complexity alone.
Draw us in to your truth,
that we may walk in your way,
and know your abundant life, even now.
We ask 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,
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 #139 vv. 1 & 4
(words: Iain D Cunningham, tune: cwm rhondda)

God the Father of Creation,
source of life and energy,
your creative love so shapes us
that we share your liberty.
Teach us how to use this freedom
loving children all to be,
loving children all to be.

Members of our Saviour’s body,
here on earth his life to be,
though we stand as different people,
may we share the unity
of the Father, Son, and Spirit,
perfect love in Trinity,
perfect love in Trinity.

Reading: Genesis 37 & 50

Since we heard about God’s promise to Abraham last week, both Hagar and Sarah bore sons to him, and each was promised to become a great nation — Ishmael and Isaac. The story of the Bible continues through the lineage of Isaac, who married Rebekah and became the father of Jacob and Esau. Jacob has been both a trickster and a dreamer all his life. With a pot of soup, he bought his brother’s birthright, and later he tricked their father out of Esau’s blessing. When running away for his life, he dreamt of angels coming and going from earth on a ladder. After marrying both Leah and Rachel, he and Esau eventually reconciled, and Jacob dreamt again, of wrestling with God and coming out the other side with a blessing and a new name: Israel. Jacob had four wives, and twelve sons. The youngest two sons were the only children borne by Rachel, who had always been Jacob’s favourite and truest love. We pick up the story today in Genesis chapter 37, reading verses 1-8 and 17-36, and then skipping to the end of the brothers’ story in chapter 50, verses 15-21. I am reading from the New Revised Standard Version.

Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan. This is the story of the family of Jacob.
Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.
Once Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, ‘Listen to this dream that I dreamed. There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my sheaf.’ His brothers said to him, ‘Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?’ So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words.

(his brothers were pasturing the flock….)
Joseph went after his brothers, and found them at Dothan. They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. They said to one another, ‘Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.’ But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands, saying, ‘Let us not take his life.’ Reuben said to them, ‘Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him’—that he might rescue him out of their hand and restore him to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the long robe with sleeves that he wore; and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.
Then they sat down to eat; and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, ‘What profit is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.’ And his brothers agreed. When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.
When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes. He returned to his brothers, and said, ‘The boy is gone; and I, where can I turn?’ Then they took Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat, and dipped the robe in the blood. They had the long robe with sleeves taken to their father, and they said, ‘This we have found; see now whether it is your son’s robe or not.’ He recognised it, and said, ‘It is my son’s robe! A wild animal has devoured him; Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.’ Then Jacob tore his garments, and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son for many days. All his sons and all his daughters sought to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and said, ‘No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.’ Thus his father bewailed him. Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.

Realising that their father was dead, Joseph’s brothers said, ‘What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong that we did to him?’ So they approached Joseph, saying, ‘Your father gave this instruction before he died, “Say to Joseph: I beg you, forgive the crime of your brothers and the wrong they did in harming you.” Now therefore please forgive the crime of the servants of the God of your father.’ Joseph wept when they spoke to him. Then his brothers also wept, fell down before him, and said, ‘We are here as your slaves.’ But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.’ In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them.

Sermon: Love Them With God’s Love

Family relationships can be so complicated, can’t they?

I think it would be something of an understatement to say that Jacob’s large family was a bit on the dysfunctional side. Jacob had first been tricked into marrying Leah when he really wanted to marry Rachel, and then throughout their lives both Leah and Rachel gave their enslaved servants to him as wives too — this, like the other human trafficking in this story, will need to be a sermon for another day. Jacob ended up with four wives and twelve sons, plus at least one daughter, but he really loved one wife and her two children the most, and everyone knew it.

That kind of favouritism was bound to create problems on top of the usual dynamics that come with younger children. As an oldest child myself, I understand the impulse to wish away a younger sibling now and then, but I can’t quite get my mind around the idea of trying to kill him or sell him into slavery — that is a whole other level of sibling rivalry than even our intense teenage fighting was!

Reading this story reminds me of a phrase that my supervising minister used to use, back when I was training for ministry 17 years ago. Whenever something frustrating would happen, she would say: “remember your job is to love them with God’s love.” The idea is that even if I didn’t feel particularly loving toward someone at the moment, or maybe even if I disliked them!, they still deserved and needed to be loved, so I ought to see myself as a conduit of God’s love, even if my own love wasn’t available. That way, I would behave toward them in a loving way, regardless of my own feelings.

This is true for all Christians, not just ministers. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God and to love our neighbour…which doesn’t mean that we are always going to like people! Love is not so much a feeling as it is an action. To behave with love does not actually require that we emotionally love in the moment, though that may well follow.

One of the ways that we can act with love, even if we don’t yet feel it, is to practice empathy, by trying to see from the perspective of the other person, or what we sometimes call walking a mile in their shoes. Empathy is something that gets talked about a lot but not practiced much, I think, perhaps because we confuse it with sympathy, perhaps because of a lack of imagination, or perhaps because it is too painful for us to imagine ourselves in a less-privileged position than we enjoy. But let’s imagine what empathy might have looked like in this story.

What if Jacob had been able to see from the perspective of his three not-favourite wives, or his ten not-favourite children? Would he have then been able to feel their grief at not being loved? Their anger at being passed over even though tradition said they should receive more? Their worry about the future?

What if Joseph had walked a bit in his brothers’ shoes? Would he have seen the sadness that had replaced the playfulness of his childhood? Or how tired they were from keeping the flocks and herds, all while knowing that they may well be displaced out of their inheritance? Would he have seen how they wished for their father’s approval, or for even a day with a long tunic that marked them as being above manual labour?

What if the elder brothers had taken a moment to look through Joseph’s eyes — and seen his frustration at being coddled like a baby even when at 17 he ought to have had a bigger role in the family business? After all, the word that we translate as “long robe with sleeves” or that the musical translates as “coat of many colours” actually literally means “the dress of an unmarried royal princess.” Would the brothers have recognised that Joseph perhaps wanted to outgrow his princess dress, and his dreams reflect his longing to take his place among the family? Would they have sensed if he had discomfort with his father’s favouritism, or maybe his desire to prove himself to them, the big brothers he looked up to, hoping for their approval and to be seen as an equal?

It can be hard to look through someone else’s perspective, to walk a mile in their shoes. But when we do, our behaviour changes. We may still feel angry or sad or disappointed, but we are far more likely to have compassion and to be able to act with love. And when we act with love, we are more likely to grow into feeling it. This is what it means to love with God’s love — to act like the person is deserving of love, because they are.

This is a major part of growing as God’s people: learning to love with God’s love, to behave in loving ways even if we don’t feel it. That choice to act in love may help avoid some of the broken relationships that are so common, and it can even help heal some of the brokenness we live with now, both on a personal level and a societal level. As Cornel West said, “justice is what love looks like in public.” It isn’t a miracle cure, but it is a good start.

At the end of the story, when Joseph was in the position of power he once dreamed about, and their father had died, the brothers were still caught in the old ways. Their fear that Joseph may still be harbouring a grudge led them to yet another act of deceit, on top of all the others. But this time Joseph had learned a few things. He recognised their fear and their sadness, and chose to look past that and show them love anyway. Whether he felt brotherly love for them in the moment or not, he chose to act like it. Joseph took the moment to see from their perspective, and then offered his brothers forgiveness and reassurance and kindness, which is all they had really wanted all these years anyway.

Interestingly, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes that this is the first time in the Bible that forgiveness is ever mentioned. It took the entire book of Genesis for people to learn forgiveness…and after this, it’s something both God and people do. But he writes that humans learning to offer forgiveness to one another is what then brought God’s forgiveness into the story — sort of like how Jesus taught us to pray “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Perhaps it is in learning to love with God’s love that we are most likely to experience love ourselves. I know that it can lead to feeling love for others…but maybe it’s also a conduit toward feeling God’s love for us, too. When we act with love, we become more like the God in whose image we are made — the God who is love.

May it be so. Amen.

Prayer

Loving God, you never play favourites.
You created humanity for community —
community with each other, with the earth, and with the Holy.
Looking at your whole creation, you called it very good…
and you made us in your image.
Yet we confess that we have not mastered the ability to love everyone.
We have made love into a feeling and reserved it for a few,
rather than seeing it as a way of living that insists on justice for all.
We lament the divisions, the supremacy, the inherent inequity of our way of limited love.
(silence)

God-with-us, you came to live among us, to share our humanity in all its pain and joy.
We confess that too often, our relationships are built on assumptions.
We are not good at listening, or at seeking to understand the other’s position.
We assume they know, or feel, what we know and feel,
and so our empathy is limited.
We lament the broken relationships in our past and our present,
the misunderstanding and the pain that we have caused.
(silence)

God who is Three and yet One, your eternal dance of unity inspires us.
We confess that we have made it a heavenly ideal we never intend to reach on earth.
We see the beautiful simplicity of your Trinity,
and the messy complexity of our family dynamics,
and decide no one would expect us to try.
We lament the strained connections, the missed opportunities, and the abuse of power
so often marring our family life.
(silence)

Compassionate God, we are sorry —
sorry for the hurt we have caused,
to those near to us and those we will never meet.
We recognise that pain, for we share it too.
We ask your forgiveness, and your healing grace.
Show us a more excellent way of love for you, for ourselves, for our neighbour.
We ask for your help,
for those who are suffering in body, mind, or spirit,
for those who live in fear of violence,
for those who have been trafficked, treated as property,
for those our society has deemed disposable,
for those who feel they cannot be themselves or show their true feelings,
for those who cannot see a way forward into a future with hope.
May your saving grace bring healing, and hope, and abundance to all in need.
(silence)

God of grace and glory, we thank you for bringing us together today,
and we pray you would continue to bring your people together across all divisions,
that we may show your love and mercy to the world,
in our actions as well as our words.
We ask in Christ’s name. Amen.

Benediction
In the week ahead, practice loving with God’s love, and may you find that love multiplies in return. 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.