Sunday service for 20 November 2022, Christ the King Sunday

Sunday 20 November 2022, NL1-11 (Christ the King, Moving Godward 8)
Gourock St. John’s Church of Scotland
Service prepared by Rev. Teri Peterson
Manse: 632143 
Email: tpeterson (at) churchofscotland.org.uk

Prelude Music

Welcome and Announcements

Call to Worship
One: So many voices call —
All: inviting us to trust them,
to give ourselves to them,
to follow them.
One: So many voices make big promises to calm our fear —
and big threats to stoke it.
All: They call out to us, and it’s easy to think “they’re speaking my language.”
One: Together, we come to seek God’s voice amidst the noise.
All: Together, may we hear the truth.

Hymn 716: Come and Find the Quiet Centre

Prayer
Your word comes out from your holiness, O God of peace and justice,
teaching us the still more excellent way.
We confess that we are not ready to turn our weapons into farm equipment.
We pray for peace while learning war, in our words and our policies and our choices.
We confess that we sometimes like the idea that everyone will one day join us,
vindicating our beliefs if not our actions.
We pray for unity while insisting on uniformity.
Forgive us, Creator and Ruler of all,
for you call all to orient toward you,
not to whitewash our uniqueness.
Forgive us, Guide for the right path,
for your teaching and judgment is trustworthy,
and we have chosen distraction that distorts community.
Forgive us, Giver of every good gift,
for you call us to be among the nations as a blessing to all,
not to manipulate and force to get our own way.
Forgive us, and transform us — and through us transform the world,
that your vision of nurture and abundance and peace may become reality.
Lift our eyes to your way,
and move our feet too.
For your ways are higher than our gaze normally looks,
higher than we usually look.
Show us your biggest vision,
of peace and community and enough,
and inspire us to pursue it.
We ask in the name of the Prince of Peace, Christ our King.
Amen.

Sanctuary Hymn 456: Christ is the World’s True Light (tune: Nun Danket)

Children’s Time (We Will Walk With God / Sizohambe Nye)
(Story of Isaiah 36.1-3, 13-20, and 37.1-7)

Prayer of the Season
The whole earth is yours, O God.
From the beginning of the story,
you have been drawing us toward you.
We give you thanks that you have brought us this far
even when we feel like we have to trudge every step.
Though we don’t know how to be your people,
still you coax, call, and carry us forward.
Show us again today what it means to be people who live close to your heart,
not through our own efforts, but yours. Amen.

Reading: Isaiah 2.1-5 (Robert Alter translation)
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw in a vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
And it shall happen in future days
that the mount of the Lord’s house shall be firm-founded
at the top of the mountains and lifted over the hills.
And all the nations shall flow to it
and many peoples shall go, and say:
come, let us go up to the mount of the Lord,
to the house of Jacob’s God,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.
For from Zion shall teaching come forth
and the Lord’s word from Jerusalem.
And he shall judge among the nations
and be arbiter for many peoples.
And they shall grind their swords into ploughshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not raise sword against nation
nor shall they learn war anymore.
O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk in the Lord’s light.

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: Push
Can I just say how much I want this vision to come true? Nation shall not raise sword against nation…grind their swords into plows… Can we even imagine a day when we no longer spend our time and resources training people for war, buying things for war, setting aside a chunk of the national budget for weapons and warships and other equipment whose purpose is death and destruction, while arguing over the ever-smaller bit set aside to nurture and heal and help?

It feels impossible. Especially at the moment, when we see the opposite has happened. In Ukraine and in Syria and in Yemen and in Israel and Palestine and in so many other places, the choices of a few have consequences for many, both nearby and farther afield. While Isaiah shares a vision of weapons of war becoming tools for growing food, instead we see that using those weapons leads to hunger. The missile defence system that sent a missile into Poland this week fell on a farm. The places across Africa and the Middle East that depend on Ukrainian grain and oil to get them through their own drought are falling deeper into famine. The people gathered into refugee camps go hungry as the rations never quite reach far enough and supply convoys are often incomplete when they arrive. And yet we proclaim that the day is surely coming when the very tools we use for destroying the earth and those who live in it will become tools for nurturing the earth and bringing forth its capacity to nourish and sustain life.

It’s a beautiful vision. And also, if it’s only a vision we sing and talk about but not a vision we pursue, we’re basically saying it means nothing.

The prophet shared this vision nearly three thousand years ago, and we’ve been reading it and reciting it and singing it and praying it ever since. So why isn’t it here? Who is served by our distraction from the goal? Who is served by our continued division when God has shown us how to orient ourselves in the same direction? Who is served by our exhausting ourselves with living in opposition to God’s kingdom?

Think back to the earlier part of the story we heard during the children’s time. The king from the neighbouring empire had sent his military, led by his highest ranking official, to bring destruction. Towns, villages, farmland, and people had been damaged or destroyed. The army was now camped outside the walls of Jerusalem. The delegation from the foreign king was invited to conduct business in private, or at least in the diplomatic language no one else would understand, but in a move of master propaganda, they simply shouted in the common language of the people: you’ve heard about all the victories we have won. We’ve already taken the rest of your territory. We’ve already destroyed the crops you depend on. We’ve already taken over your neighbours. Why would you think you’ll be any different? Why would your God save you when none of the others did? We are obviously more powerful than he is.

It was a calculated move, designed to strike fear and doubt into the people inside the city. They were already afraid, having heard the news from other places. They were already on edge, with supplies running low and an army just outside. Who was served by now sowing division among them, maybe convincing some that God couldn’t help them, or that surrendering and being relocated to another land would be just fine, while others wanted to hold firm to the promise God had made?

Division among the community is lose-lose for the people inside. It would, however, serve the interests of the far away king who got richer and more powerful with every conquest, and who cared not at all for the ordinary people or the earth that stood in his way…but actually, if we look to the bigger picture, that kind of greed always leads only to emptiness that requires ever greater conquest to fill, ever greater fearmongering to feed the machine. And keeping that going, expanding forever — whether in empire or economy — is ultimately both exhausting and impossible, there’s always a fall at the other end. Always. So it’s lose-lose-lose.

The king in Jerusalem described the situation to Isaiah the prophet as like a child that is ready to be born, but the mother is too tired to push. The pressure is building, and something has to happen — either we have to find the strength to bring something completely new into being, or else we all die together. There is no middle ground in this situation, and it isn’t possible to just stay as we are. It may be in the interest of the military powers or the imperial elites or other adversaries of the gospel to exhaust us and distract us, to move our focus to something else, to just wear us down so we can’t do anything anymore…because they know that if we can’t push something new to birth, then we die, and they can do as they please.

And honestly, we fall for it every time. We get more and more tired as the situation gets more and more outrageous. We exhaust ourselves trying to keep up with the news, the requirements, the updates, the plans. We find ourselves confused about changes and we turn on each other when we interpret them differently, because we’ve been manipulated into orbiting the game the powerful are playing but never actually taking part ourselves. And we lose sight of the vision that makes pushing toward birth worthwhile…it starts to feel like giving up would be easier. It’s too much to pay attention to it all, the compassion fatigue wears us down as we try to respond to an ever-expanding list of urgent needs, and we just consign the prophet’s words to the end of time despite the fact that he uses language that clearly intends this to be a near future, not a cosmic last days future. We stop pushing.

But when birth is imminent, to stop pushing is an emergency.

All that pressure that’s building, all the pain that feels more and more constant, is a sign that something new is coming. And yes, it may hurt us on the way, it may grow into something uncontrollable and different than we imagined, it may take our hearts with it, but new life is coming.

When we stop pushing, we consign that new life, and ourselves, to death.

It’s easy to feel like giving up. The people in Jerusalem were conflicted — trust God, or give in to the foreign army before they did any more damage? Orient toward God’s way of caring for one another, or keep one eye out and one stash of swords handy just in case? Throughout history we have been conflicted — work for actual peace, or mutually assured destruction? Even in the church we have been conflicted — look forward to God’s future, or rest in the comfort of our past?

Isaiah says that the nations — all the different people groups and political groups and languages and religions and ethnicities and everything — will come to one place, all oriented the same direction, learning and walking in the way of the Lord, and we will recognise that we could live in this world the prophet describes.
We don’t have to fight to get our own way, we could walk together on God’s way.
We don’t have to fight to get enough, we could turn our swords into plows and work together to enjoy the fruits of the earth which are enough for all.
We don’t have to spend our energy figuring out how to kill each other, we could spend our energy figuring out how to feed each other.

Do you remember, back at the very beginning of this season, we heard God’s promise to Abram that he would receive a blessing, and that blessing was that his descendants would become a blessing to every nation of the earth? In you, through you…in us, through us…the world will experience blessing. We are to be among the peoples as a blessing from God. And today we have this vision from Isaiah that the peoples will come and learn the ways of abundant life, turning away from the abundant death we so often deal out to one another.

What if part of our calling to be a blessing is to pursue that world the prophet describes? And every time we can’t even imagine how it would work so we just call it naive, or far-off, or impossible,
every time we are distracted or give in to exhaustion and stop pushing, we lay aside our opportunity to be a blessing.

Today is Christ the King Sunday — a festival that marks the end of the liturgical calendar, but perhaps more importantly the festival during which we declare our allegiance. This day was only added to the calendar in 1925, when the Church was concerned about rising nationalism, fascism, dehumanisation, and militarisation that suggested perhaps the War To End All Wars would not, in fact, be the last. The purpose of this festival day is to remind us that we are citizens of the kingdom of heaven first, that our allegiance is to the Lord whose word stands forever, whose judgment is sound and who calls us into abundant life…and who calls us to push new life into being, to insist on living a different way. Today Christ the King Sunday feels sadly more relevant than ever, as some use the threat of sword and spear to divide us so we won’t have energy to turn and feed each other, care for one another, and love our neighbour. But a different way is possible. The way of the Lord stands before us, and the invitation to orient ourselves toward the mountain of the Lord, to live as if our allegiance to God’s kingdom comes first, to push until peace comes to birth, to insist on not just pretty words but actually moving God-ward.
May it be so. Amen.

Online Hymn: Build Your Kingdom Here

Sanctuary Hymn 715: Behold, the Mountain of the Lord

Offering
All we have and all we are is a gift from God, and we are created in the image of this generous God — because of all God has given us, we are able to give of ourselves and our resources, for God’s glory and God’s work. The ministry and mission we do here at St John’s costs just over £10,500 per month and it is because of your generous giving that we are able to serve our community in this way, and that is what this morning offering goes to each week. In gratitude for God’s good gifts and in response to God’s call, your morning offering will now be received.

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
You are the One whose kingdom we long for,
the One whose way we seek,
the One who brings new life to birth.
We pray this day for all who are too exhausted from trauma, compassion fatigue, or overwork
to even imagine the push required to bring that new life forth.
We lift up community workers, health care workers,
people serving behind the scenes in jobs we never think about but can’t live without,
neighbours who grieve lost hope
and those who cling to the distractions because they can’t cope with what is to come.
May they be held and strengthened, knowing your powerful hand is their guide and stay.
We pray this day for all who spend their days and energy jockeying for position,
trying to make their way out of poverty, or to the top of the heap,
and especially for those who are trampled along the way.
We lift up people whose multiple jobs don’t make ends meet,
and the business and political leaders whose choices affect so many.
And we pray too for those whose lives have been disrupted by cycles of violence,
who seem to have no choice but to learn war,
or who have been deemed collateral damage.
May all people come to trust you, and in that transformed world,
find they are able to attend to daily bounty,
nurturing and feeding the earth and the community.
Loving God, we look at the world and feel overwhelmed,
barely knowing where to begin our prayers, let alone our action.
We trust your word that it does not have to be this way,
that abundant life is possible,
and we pray for the courage to keep pushing it to birth.
We ask these and all things in the name of the One
who lived among us as our peace, 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.
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.

Sanctuary Hymn: The Time Has Come (Text: John L Bell; tune: Sussex Carol)
The time has come when, from the past,
prophetic words ring true at last;
though earth’s hostilities increase,
God’s promise is of lasting peace.
Hallelujah! Prepare the way.
Hear what God’s chosen prophets say.

The time has come to make it known
that every tear and pain and groan
are registered in heaven above
to be redeemed by holy love.
Hallelujah! Prepare the way.
Only Love lifts us from dismay.

The time has come to make amends:
earth and its people should be friends.
Erase the policies of death,
spread hope with every vital breath.
Hallelujah! Prepare the way.
God gladly comes to earth to stay.

The time has come to share good news,
to sweep the floor and mend the shoes,
prepare to protest, praise and dance
for God is eager to advance.
Hallelujah! Expect a birth:
God’s gracious feet will touch the earth.

Benediction
Go out to speak God’s truth into a world of noise, filled with the Holy Spirit whose encouragement strengthens us to go against the tide, and the peace of Christ that passes all understanding.
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 (John L Bell, 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.

Postlude Music

Announcements

* We worship in the sanctuary on Sundays at 11am, and all Sunday worship is also online (or on the phone at 01475 270037, or in print). If you are able, please enter by the front door in Bath street, and only those who need step-free access should use the back door. If you feel unwell, please worship online, to protect both yourself and others in our community.

* The Church Notes, which will celebrate what has been going on at St John’s for the past few months, will be coming soon. If you have stories to share from an organisation or group or ministry from the summer or autumn activities, please send them to Seonaid Knox as soon as possible.

* The season of Advent begins next Sunday! Any organisations or groups with announcements to share for the season of Advent or month of December should please send details to me by Wednesday this week so that the monthly intimations sheet can be prepared for next Sunday.

* Join Connect in a service for Prisoners Week, with the Connect+ Singing Group, at Westburn TONIGHT, 20 November at 6:30pm. All are welcome as we join in an informal worship and the chance to learn more about Inverclyde Faith In Throughcare, which supports people as they re-enter society after serving a sentence.

* Gourock Schools and Churches Together is hosting the afternoon tea concert at Clydeview Academy TOMORROW, Monday, 21 November at 1:30pm, and tickets are available now from Teri.

* Ready, Steady, Advent! will take place at Lyle Kirk (Union St) on Saturday 26 November between 11am-1pm. It’s open to families to drop in for all or just part of the morning, and there will be Advent-themed crafts, games and activities, some worship and free soup and sandwiches served afterwards.

* Our Advent Appeal this year is supporting “A Little Box of Love” for Mind Mosaic Child and Family therapies. They are asking us to fill a shoebox or gift bag with items such as winter clothing, small toys or arts-and-crafts items, perhaps a few sweets, gift/food vouchers, baby items, gift sets, etc — there are three age categories: babies and toddlers aged 0-3 and their parents, children aged 3-12, and teens aged 13-18. If you would like to fill a shoebox, label it with the age and gender child it’s for, and bring it and place it under our Christmas tree up until the 15th of December, please do.

* Did you know that it costs us about £10,500 per month to do the ministry we currently do at St. John’s? That includes heating and lighting the building and keeping it in good repair for church and community groups, programming and pastoral care for people of all ages, our contribution to minister’s stipends, and other ministry costs. 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 be 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!

* Young Adult Bible Study meets in the manse on the 2nd and 4th Sundays at 7pm for a meal and a study of the gospel according to John. If you’d like more information, for yourself, a family member, a friend, or neighbour who is in their 20s, please contact Teri for the dates/times and other information.

* You are invited to join in reading the Bible in a year for 2022 — immersing ourselves in God’s word throughout the year. We get together to discuss each week on Wednesday at 7:30pm in the manse at 6 Barrhill Road. All are welcome, no experience necessary! Feel free to invite a friend, too! Anyone who has ever wondered just what the Bible actually says and what it has to do with us is welcome.

* Old Gourock and Ashton Parish Players Panto is coming up! This year it’s Jack and the Beanstalk and shows are from Wed 30th November to Sat 3rd December. Evening performances start at 7.30 on Wed, Thur and Fri. Tickets for these performance cost £9. The matinee on Saturday starts at 1pm and the early evening performance starts at 5pm. Tickets for these performances cost £6. If anyone is interested please contact Avril on 07713 625750.

* The Presbytery of Clyde meets in Inchinnan Parish Church, Old Greenock Rd, Inchinnan, Renfrew PA4 9PE on Tuesday 22nd November 2022 at 6.30 p.m. 
At this meeting, Presbytery will discuss the draft Mission Plan previously circulated for the Cluster in which our congregation is located — Cluster A — and an Order of the Day has been set for 7 p.m. on the 22nd November for this Cluster to be discussed. Our congregation is cited to attend for their interest and is entitled to respond to the report through the contribution of one person representing the congregation.
The Presbytery Plan Review Committee has given notice that they intend to table the plan for comment but to ask presbytery not to take any substantive decision at this meeting — basically, rather than voting on the Mission Plan on Tuesday evening, we will be invited into a further consultation process and an amended draft plan will be presented to a future meeting, to which we will again be cited to attend in our interest. We are still entitled to send a representative to address presbytery regarding our position in the proposed plan, and/or to send further written communication directly to the planning committee. If you have questions or comments please feel free to speak to Teri, who is also on the planning committee, or to Cameron or Alan if you wish to direct comments to the Kirk session.

* The Christmas Post will again be carried out by our youth organisations — you can bring your cards between December 4 and 18, though the earlier the better please! The cost will remain at 30p per card, with all proceeds going to support ministry with young people at St John’s.