Sunday service for 6 June 2021

Sunday Service for 6 June 2021
Prepared by Rev. Teri Peterson, Gourock St. John’s
Manse Phone: 632143 
Email: tpeterson (at) churchofscotland.org.uk

To hear the audio recording of this service, phone 01475 270037.

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Prelude Music (in person only)

Welcome/Announcements (in person only)

Call to Worship
1: In the beginning God created, light and dark and everything in between.
2: God’s creation is filled with every colour of the rainbow, more colour than we can even see.
1: God’s people are every size and shape and colour and language, reflecting God’s image.
2: And we are called together to walk with God.
Teri: So we turn our hearts to God’s way, and our minds to God’s word,
All: and our lives to God’s glory.

Prayer of Confession
God of rainbow promises, all creation sings your praise and reflects your glory. We come to join our voices to those of the earth, sea, and sky…and to the voices of your faithful people who have gone before us in this place. Together we seek your face, and we long to hear your voice, echoing through the generations, showing us your vision. You call us to trust you into the unknown, to go forward in faith. We confess that often we follow our own ways instead. We forget that you are God and we are not. We admit that we use your creation for our own ends, heedless of the consequences for the earth and those who live in it. We hide behind the way things have always been, and we confess that we look back with both gratitude and nostalgia, and forget to look forward in faith. Forgive us, Lord, and show us the way out of our destructive path. Forgive us, and remind us that you are our true centre. Forgive us, and shine your many-coloured light around us. Re-member us into your people once again, that we may live in your good news. We offer our confession and our gratitude for your grace, in the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.

If anyone is in Christ, the whole creation is renewed. We are forgiven in order to live with love, joy, and peace. Thanks be to God. amen.

Music
Online: In the Midst of New Dimensions
In Person:

Children’s Time (in person only)

Reading: selected verses of Genesis chapters 6-9, NRSV (Seonaid Knox and Derek Reid)
(6:9-14 and 17-22, 7:12, 7:17-8:22, 9:8-15)

These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.

For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them.’ Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.

The rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights.
The flood continued for forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings; everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred and fifty days.
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters had abated; and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.
At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark; and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him any more.
In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and saw that the face of the ground was drying. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God said to Noah, ‘Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.’ So Noah went out with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. And every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out of the ark by families.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelt the pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.
As long as the earth endures,
    seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night,
    shall not cease.’

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

For the word of God in scripture,
For the word of God among us,
For the word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

Sermon: Rainbow Road
Every time I read this story I wonder how we can possibly use it for cute nursery decorations or children’s songs. I even remember growing up singing at camp “God said to Noah, there’s gonna be a floody-floody”…but at least I wasn’t a church kid so I didn’t know what the song was about. Because the reality is that just a few chapters after looking around and declaring everything to be very good, God was heartbroken and regretted creating human beings. After investing so much, giving so much…earth’s people were on a path not only of self-destruction, but of violence that was destroying creation as well. God was upset and had to do something.

In the face of overwhelming disappointment, God decided the same thing many of us do: to counter violence with violence. The divine retribution is complete devastation—nothing will be left…except Noah, the 7 members of his family, and two of each living animal. That’s it—everything else will be utterly wiped out, drowned, washed away in the flood of God’s grief and anger.

Somehow that’s never part of the playset, or the song, or the wall decals.

In ancient Israel, water was a symbol of chaos. Think of the very beginning of the creation story—in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. That word, formless void, is “tohu va bohu”— which actually means chaos. The creation story is about God making order out of chaos. And yet just ten generations later God decided to go back to the beginning and start over.

Well, almost start over. Because there was one person — one, in the whole world — who “walked with God.” We might wonder what it means to “walk with God” in this world, where there was no scripture and no temple and no tradition. How did Noah know God? What sort of relationship did they have? What was it about that relationship that made Noah different from everyone else? However it happened, Noah wasn’t participating in the corruption and violence that God saw as ubiquitous on the earth.

So Noah and his family, and the animals, and food, will all carry over, like seeds saved for next season. And through them, God promises to do a new thing.

After the rain stopped and the waters began to subside, after the ark came to rest on the top of a mountain, Noah began sending out scouts—first a raven, then a dove. When the dove came back with an olive branch, a sprouting twig of hope from below the tree line, a sign of spring, of new life, then Noah knew it was nearly time to go.

And then, just as all these animals walked out of the ark, family by family, God looked around at the fresh new world, shiny and clean, and recognised instantly that the curse didn’t accomplish what he intended. Now that the rain was gone, God saw that the creation will always contain the seeds that can grow into violence just as easily as they can grow into compassion. The question about those seeds is what kind of water they get, and the flood waters of violence will not stamp out violence. God sees clearly now that redemptive violence is a lie—fighting violence with violence will always fail. As Ghandi put it: an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Or as Martin Luther King Jr said, hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

And so God hung up the bow—a weapon, a vehicle for violence—facing away from the earth. God chose a different path, a path based on covenant and creation and love. This covenant to never again use violence against the world was not just with Noah and his family, but with all the creatures of the earth too. In this dawn of the new creation, this springtime of the covenant, God promises to look forward with hope, and asks us to do the same.

The word covenant is used hundreds of times in the Bible, and this is the first. This is the seed that grows into the kingdom—a promise to take a different road, a rainbow road. This promise does not have any conditions, no requirements or prerequisites, no quid pro quo expectations. It does come with a commission, though, a calling: to walk with God on this rainbow road, rather than the road of destruction and violence we tried before.

It wasn’t long until it became clear that human nature hadn’t changed much inside the ark — despite the entire world changing around them, they still went back to the old ways. But through the promise, and through the remembering of the promise, God had changed the strategy. No more fighting fire with fire. God decided to work in the world in more personal ways. God’s covenant starts out being with Noah, and then with Noah and his descendants, and then with the whole of creation that comes out of the ark. God speaks to people, and through people; to creation and through creation. Rather than becoming more distant to avoid heartbreak and grief and frustration, God becomes more involved, even to the point of taking on flesh and joining us in this fragile human life. This is the promise that God offers in the rainbow: not only “I will not destroy” but also “I will come that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”

You know what’s interesting about rainbows? It’s never clear where they begin and end. Most of them seem to be an open circle, embracing the earth with no regard for who is in or out. Kind of like the ark, really, and kind of like the church. The fast and slow, ugly and beautiful, smart and silly are all in the ark together, all in the church together, and all embraced by the rainbow together. Some in the ark are silent, others roar incessantly. Some eat more than their share. Some make room and others push and shove. Some are desirable by the world’s standards, and others are decidedly undesirable. And yet God put them all together…put us all together…in this body, this seed of new creation, and set us on this rainbow path toward the kingdom. We don’t know really where the path began, since scripture says the beginning was tohu-va-bohu, chaos. And we don’t get to see exactly where it ends, though we know that Jesus promises to be with us to the end of the age. But we do know that it doesn’t leave anybody out, even when we’d prefer it did.

This is a hard story hiding behind those cute animal stickers and rainbow paintings. Not only is it a story of violence, it’s also a story where we get an uncomfortable glimpse into the earliest days of God’s relationship with humanity…and that glimpse is of a God who tried something that didn’t work, and had to decide to go a different way. First it was God regretting making humans and deciding to get rid of them…and then God realising that was not going to solve the problem and covenanting never to do it again. That’s not how we usually think about God behaving! But this is a story of God turning a page and committing to something new—putting the past firmly in the past, even while carrying forward what is good. And in the process, God covers the whole earth and all that is in it with the promise, offering a new way to walk into the future.

As we look back at what was, and ahead at what could be, there’s lots of talk of a “new normal” — we can’t go back to the way things used to be, because it wasn’t actually good, however much nostalgia we might feel for it now. The question is how we’ll go forward, creating a community and society and world that reflects God’s love and perhaps even brings God some delight rather than grief. We know that God turned away from divine violence and promised never to pick that up again, but we still have experienced a wiping away of the old ways in this past year…and now we need to turn the page on a new chapter in our life together, bringing what is good and leaving behind the rest, to commit to turning away from the ways of violence and and toward inclusive community that walks the rainbow road of God’s promise together.

May it be so.
Amen.

Music
Online: Ewe Thina (“we walk his way”) sung by Ghana nat’l youth choir
In person: Hymn 260, Eternal Father Strong to Save

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

Holy God of all life and breath,
we give you thanks for your promise that is for all—
in every place and time, for every creature and person.
We give you thanks for your creative spirit,
colouring the world with love and wonder.
We give you thanks for your constant presence with us,
in the midst of the storm and the calm.
So often the world feels like storm…the news tells stories of destruction and pain.
We lift up to your care all those feeling the power of your creation,
in the path of fire and hurricane.
We hold in your light all those who feel they walk in darkness—
in the shadows of grief, with the burden of depression, or anxious about the future.
We offer our prayers for those who live each day with violence or fear—
in their homes, in their neighbourhoods, in their nation.
We especially pray for those who have fled and seek refuge—
from domestic violence, from war, from famine, from gang violence.
God of promise and peace, light up these grey skies with your rainbow.
Remember your people.
Cover the earth with hope, that we may see a new way, for our footsteps are faltering.
Give wisdom to this world’s leaders,
and courage to all of us, to seek peace and pursue it.
Show us your many-coloured path yet again, and guide us.
Make us an answer to prayer,
a place of refuge,
a community of hope,
a beacon of light in the shadows.
Fill your church with your breath again this day, and every day,
for we pray through the power of the Holy Spirit and 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.
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.

Benediction
Go into your week to walk with God on the rainbow road. 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.

SUNG Benediction Response (tune: Gourock St. John’s, words by 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.

Postlude Music (in person only)

Announcements

* All worship is online (or on the phone at 01475 270037, or in print) and we also meet in person, subject to the usual protocols for distancing, hand hygiene, mask wearing, and some limited singing! We can welcome approximately 35 people for worship, so if you would like to come in person, please phone Cameron (630879) on a MONDAY afternoon between 1-3pm or Anne Love (07904 617283) on a Saturday morning between 10-12 to book a place.

* Young Adult Bible Study is on Zoom at 1pm, we are reading through the Gospel According to Mark. Contact Teri for login details.

* Tonight we will gather with Christians across the nation for evening prayer on the Connect Facebook Page. Jonathan is leading tonight’s service, log on at 6:58pm to join in.

* 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 by clicking 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 or the manse 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!

* Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Youtube, and to sign up for our email devotions! Midweek you can watch Wine and the Word on Youtube, pray with video devotions on Facebook, and consider a new angle on something with a devotional email. Feel free to share with your friends, too!

* You can download a free summary / recap of this year’s General Assembly from the Life and Work website here. 

* Starter Packs update: in May Starter Packs were provided to 24 homes. Within these homes were 17 single people, 8 families including 13 children. The Monthly Focus for June is Children’s Shower Gel, Shampoo, Sponges/Face Cloths. Items in short supply: Shaving Foam, Soap and Hand Wash. As always, thanks to everyone for your continued support.