Sunday Service for 6 September 2020, fifteenth Sunday of Pentecost

6 September 2020: 15th Sunday of Pentecost
Service prepared by the Rev. Teri C Peterson,
Gourock St John’s Church of Scotland
Contact: tpeterson at churchofscotland dot org dot uk

* We are not in the Battery Park today, due to circumstances outwith our control. We hope to try again at some point! In the meantime, all worship remains online.

* 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 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. WE HAVE MADE IT HOME!! Many thanks to all of you who walked, cycled, ran, and prayed us through this amazing journey! Well done, everyone!!!

* 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 next Sunday, reading chapter 2 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 all three Connect clergy, 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.

* 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 #198: Let us build a house where love can dwell

Reading, Prayers, and Sermon:

Hymn: 10,000 Reasons

Call to Worship and Prayer

Whoever you are, wherever you are, whenever you are, hear this invitation from God, for the Church, the Body of Christ, is never closed. The gates of God’s city are open to all who would come and live in its peace. So come, let us worship God together.

Let us pray.

Loving God, you hold time in your hands, for in the beginning, you were there, and you are the destination to which our lives lead. Your love is the life behind the universe, and the breath in our lungs.
Yet often we see ourselves separately from you. We forget that you made us for relationship, that you made us to be one with you, reflecting your image. We confess that we have pushed you into the past and the future, preferring to be left to our own devices in the present.
Forgive us when our story does not make room for your grace to break through in the world. Forgive us for confining your action to a few things we want, or a few moments we are willing to accept, rather than seeing you at work all around.
We long for the peace of your kingdom, Lord. We read of your care for the garden of this creation, and we look forward to the day when we might gather by your river…forgetting that you have given us a spring of water gushing up to eternal life, right here and now. May your forgiveness wash over us, and your eternity grow in us, and your vision fill us. For we are your people, and you are with us always, for which we give you thanks in the name of 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 #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: Revelation 21.1-6a, 22-26 (New Revised Standard Version)

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.’
…
I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations.

Sermon: The End of All Our Exploring (Postcards of Faith 12)

Over the past three months, we have journeyed through the scriptures, from God calling Abram to leave his house and go to an unknown land, Jacob and his family going down to Egypt to join Joseph, and the Israelites escaping from Egypt through the Red Sea, and then eventually crossing the Jordan into the promised land. We have followed the journeys of the Queen of Sheba going to visit Solomon, and Jonah trying to run away from his calling. We have become like disciples following Jesus from the first day John the Baptist explained who he was, to the hillside where he fed thousands, to the beach where he met us again after his resurrection. We have gotten letters from Paul, telling us about his own travels and exhorting us to continue reaching toward the goal of God’s kingdom. And today we arrive at the end of the book of Revelation, with the vision of God’s reign being complete and beautiful on earth.

As we have traveled through scripture, we have also been traveling ourselves — not the kind of holiday we might have had planned for this year, but a church family one in which each of us contributed toward our progress as we tended our physical and mental health with daily walks or runs or cycles, and as we spent time tending to our spiritual health through prayer and reading God’s word. Together, we walked from St. John’s Church on the shores of the Clyde, to the hometown of St. John the Evangelist on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Together our various activities have moved us more than 11,510 kilometres over the past three months! That has taken us across Europe and across Turkey and across the Middle East, around Judea and Galilee, and home again by way of St Paul’s journeys. We have, virtually of course, visited the great medieval Cathedral in Cologne, checked out some of Romania’s national parks, seen the devastation wrought by war in Syria, admired the ruins of ancient Corinth, remembered Paul’s imprisonment in Rome, and prayed at the refugee camps of Calais, on our journey to and from the home of our namesake St. John the Evangelist in Bethsaida. I hope I haven’t been the only one doing a little research on the foods we might enjoy in each place!

We have traveled quite a distance together, both physically and scripturally, so how fitting is it that we now end up at the very place where God intends all things to end up: in the holy city, which has come down from heaven to earth. Not that God takes us out of this earth, but that God comes and lives among us. Just like back in the Exodus days, when it says that God pitched a tent in the camp with the people, and just like in the birth of Jesus when John’s gospel says that God became flesh and lived dwelt among us, the mark of the kingdom of God is that God will live with us in the city.

This city is, like any other city, busy of course. It isn’t a place of perfect quiet and solitude — it’s a community where we will live together, working things out like any community does. But there will be no death, no pain, no tears — can you imagine? A community where people are all so loved and respected the we live together in harmony without the griefs of injustice or loss. God is indeed making all things new.

One of the ways all things are being made new is in our understanding of what this new heaven and new earth will be like. We have all these images in our heads, developed through centuries of art and literature, but sometimes they’re a little bit different than what the scripture actually says. For instance, this chapter of Revelation is the one where we get the idea of heaven having pearly gates — though we didn’t read that part, as it was verse 21 and I asked Mhairi to skip to verse 22! But it says that this holy city that has come down to earth, where all can live together, will have twelve gates made of pearl.

I think it is so fascinating that we have taken this image of pearly gates and placed them in heaven, when Revelation so clearly says that the city is here on earth. And even more fascinating that we have, in popular imagination, made St Peter a gatekeeper, when it also clearly says “the gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there.” So the gates of this city are always open! No need for a gatekeeper, as literally anyone can come in as they please — no curfew, no restrictions. And all those nations, all those systems that used to exploit people for the glory and gain of the few, all those kings that have fought amongst themselves for power and wealth, will instead stream in through those gates and give glory to God, living in this new community of justice and peace and harmony.

It of course feels like a far-off vision. It must have felt equally far off to John when he wrote it from the midst of the Roman Empire and its oppressive regimes and persecutions. I don’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or just sigh at the fact that the idea of a city where the gates are never closed, where all are welcome and valued, where no one is seeking their own power and glory, and where we all live together in peace feels just as far off now as it was 2000 years ago.

This new Jerusalem has no temple — indeed, has no need of a temple, even. Because God lives there, the entire city is holy ground. And because God lives there, that means that at any moment, we might run into God. Because God lives there, light shines and the shadows never overcome it, so nothing is hidden or deceptive. Because God lives there, all are welcome.

I keep saying “there” but the reality of this incredible vision is os much more than that: it’s here. Not somewhere far off, where we have to be rescued and taken away from here to finally get some peace. But here, on earth. Just as Jesus taught us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven,” so the truth of God’s future, and past, and present, is this: that God comes to us.

TS Eliot wrote that “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” After all our summer adventures from shore to shore and back again, can we look up and see our place with new eyes? What if God is indeed dwelling with us right here, right now…and every place we go, we might meet God walking about the town, and every step we take is on holy ground? Then it would be up to us to ensure that the community we build here is heavenly too — that we address injustice so that there’s no one left in tears and pain and suffering… that we keep the pearly gates open… and that the way we live together as followers of the Lamb is a light to the nations.

May it be so. Amen.

Hymn: How Lovely, Lord, How Lovely (Psalm 84)
Text: Arlo Duba. Tune: Merle’s Tune, by Hal Hopson

1 How lovely, Lord, how lovely
is your abiding place;
my soul is longing, fainting,
to feast upon your grace.
The sparrow finds a shelter,
a place to build her nest,
and so your temple calls us
with in its walls to rest.

2 In your blest courts to worship,
O God, a single day
is better than a thousand
if I from you should stray.
I’d rather keep the entrance
and claim you as my Lord
than revel in the riches
the ways of sin afford.

3 A sun and shield forever
are you, O Lord Most High;
you shower us with blessings;
no good will you deny.
The saints, your grace receiving,
from strength to strength shall go,
and from their life shall rivers
of blessing overflow.

Prayers

You, Lord, are Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, first and last, Lord of life and death. You made us in your image and you hold us in your care. We give you thanks for revealing yourself to us, in running water, in light playing on the hills, in the faces of friend and stranger. And we pray for the eyes to see your kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven.
You are the resurrection and the life, and so we pray today for those who long for life—for those fighting disease, for those walking in dark shadows of grief, for those whose lives are marked by violence and fear.
We lift up to you those who flee from their homes, seeking a place of peace, following a thin thread of hope, longing for welcome and safety. May your hand guide them to people who will offer a caring hand.
We hold in your presence our neighbours who are caught in the web of addiction, or a cycle of poverty, or who cannot see the thread of hope. Give us compassionate hearts and wisdom to find ways to make our society more just and more peaceful for all.
We pray especially this day for people who have found the gates to your kingdom closed to them, and for those who have made long journeys only to find they cannot see you in our midst. May they know your care, and see your goodness.
We ask that you would let your light shine through us, through your church and through this community, that we may reveal your presence in the way we live together, treat each other and the earth, and seek the harmony of your new city. We long for the day when nations stream together to sit under the shade of your tree, O God. Gather us into your kingdom, teach us how to live together as one people made in your image. Guide our leaders with your wisdom, and inspire us with a desire for your abundant life.
Give us faith to see signs of your kingdom, even now. And if our vision fails, give us courage to trust your love which never fails. Join our voices to your song of love, justice, and grace, even now. For we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

Benediction

Friends, as you go into your week, be on the lookout! Because God could be anywhere. You might meet God in the street, you might find yourself walking on holy ground, and you might find that you are a light to others.
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.