Sunday Service for 22 November 2020, Christ the King Sunday
22 November 2020, Christ the King Sunday
Worship prepared by Rev. Teri Peterson,
St. John’s Church of Scotland, Gourock
Contact: tpeterson at churchofscotland dot org dot uk
Hymn 449: Rejoice the Lord is King
Prayers, Reading, Sermon:
Hymn: Lord, Reign in Me (lyrics below the video)
Lord, reign in me, reign in Your power
Over all my dreams, in my darkest hour
‘Cause You are the Lord of all I am
So won’t You reign in me again
Lord, reign in me, reign in Your power
Over all my dreams, in my darkest hour
‘Cause You are the Lord of all I am
So won’t You reign in me again
Over all the earth you reign on high
Every mountain stream, every sunset sky
But my one request, Lord my only plea
Is that you’d reign in me again
Lord reign in me, reign in your power
Over all my dreams, in my darkest hour
You are the Lord of all I am
So won’t you reign in me again
Over every thought, over every word
May my life reflect the beauty of my Lord
You mean more to me than any earthly thing
So won’t you reign in me again
Lord, reign in me, reign in Your power
Over all my dreams, in my darkest hour
‘Cause You are the Lord of all I am
So won’t You reign in me again
Lord, reign in me, reign in Your power
Over all my dreams, in my darkest hour
You are the Lord of all I am
So won’t You reign in me again
Teach me how to pray
And teach me what to say
Remind me of your power
Every day and every hour
Lord help me trust in you
Cast all my cares on you
I want to live for you,
Obey in all I do
Lord, reign in me, reign in Your power
Over all my dreams, in my darkest hour
You are the Lord of all I am
So won’t You reign in me again
You are the Lord of all I am
So won’t You reign in me again
~~~~~
Call to Worship and Opening Prayer
God’s word is for us —
wherever we may be.
In our familiar places,
and outside our comfort zones,
in the tangible things of our tradition
and the liminal space of this time,
God’s living word is within us.
So come, let us worship,
seeking an encounter with the One
whose love can never be thwarted,
who calls us God’s people.
Let us pray.
You are a persistent God,
speaking new truth through ancient words,
and putting new songs of eternal truth on our lips.
In your faithfulness, we learn trust.
In your life, we learn love.
For You are our God and we are your people,
and we thank you for your voice, always calling us to your way.
We confess that when we hear your voice alongside the voices of others — leaders, friends, ourselves —
we often cannot decide which to follow.
If we’re honest,
we find it easier and less trouble to be silent in the face of wrong,
allowing misdirection, lies, and hateful words to take root and spread,
because we want to be liked so we don’t speak up.
And we admit that sometimes we join the powers of this world
in believing we can simply ignore
or even cut out the word we don’t want to hear —
both yours and others.
Chisel into our hardened hearts, O God,
with your word of justice and peace.
Forgive us, come close once again,
and write your grace into our very being.
Show us what it means to commit our lives to you
in the midst of this world’s competing voices,
and lead us in your Way, Truth, and Life.
Transform our hearts this day
and give us courage to embody your word,
that your truth might be read from our lives.
Whatever the challenges before us,
and however the powers respond,
may we bear witness to Christ our King,
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.
Reading: Jeremiah chapter 36 verses 1-8, 21-23, 27-28, & chapter 31 verses 31-34
King Josiah was the last good king in Jerusalem, presiding over a generation of reforms that took down idols and restored the Temple, pointing the people to God’s presence and commandments. He was killed in battle in 609 BCE, and his son Jehoiakim took his place. He was not like his father. He not only encouraged idol-worship, he also maintained his own lifestyle and his position with the kings of other nations by force, sometimes taking lives, other times taking resources from the people of the land, thus subjugating his own nation for his personal safety and glory. The prophet Jeremiah spoke against this practice, insisting that following God’s law involved not only correct worship—which wasn’t happening—but also actions like caring for the poor, honoring the land, and shepherding the people in peace rather than taking advantage of them. For his preaching, Jeremiah was banished from the Temple, and eventually imprisoned. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign, 605 BCE, the Babylonian army swept through the region and defeated all the other nations, including Egypt and its large army. At that point, Jehoiakim paid Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, to save Jerusalem: he sent gold, furnishings from the Temple, and several members of the royal family as hostages. We pick up the story of Jeremiah and his secretary Baruch in chapter 36, then hear some of what was written on the scroll from chapter 31. I am reading from the New Revised Standard Version.
~~~
In the fourth year of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Take a scroll and write on it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today. It may be that when the house of Judah hears of all the disasters that I intend to do to them, all of them may turn from their evil ways, so that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.
Then Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah, and Baruch wrote on a scroll at Jeremiah’s dictation all the words of the Lord that he had spoken to him. And Jeremiah ordered Baruch, saying, ‘I am prevented from entering the house of the Lord; so you go yourself, and on a fast day in the hearing of the people in the Lord’s house you shall read the words of the Lord from the scroll that you have written at my dictation. You shall read them also in the hearing of all the people of Judah who come up from their towns. It may be that their plea will come before the Lord, and that all of them will turn from their evil ways, for great is the anger and wrath that the Lord has pronounced against this people.’ And Baruch son of Neriah did all that the prophet Jeremiah ordered him about reading from the scroll the words of the Lord in the Lord’s house. Then the king sent Jehudi to get the scroll, and he took it from the chamber of Elishama the secretary; and Jehudi read it to the king and all the officials who stood beside the king. Now the king was sitting in his winter apartment (it was the ninth month), and there was a fire burning in the brazier before him. As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a penknife and throw them into the fire in the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier.
Now, after the king had burned the scroll with the words that Baruch wrote at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: Take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll, which King Jehoiakim of Judah has burned.
(31.31-34) The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Sermon: Book Burning (Becoming God’s People 10)
Every time I read this story, my first thought is “poor Baruch.” Writing in those days was painstaking work, and it was still not a terribly common skill outside the priestly class. He spent many years as Jeremiah’s secretary, writing down visions, sermons, diatribes, and stories, taking dictation from a cranky prophet.
When Jeremiah told Baruch to go read the scroll, I wonder if he was surprised that he was told to go to the Temple during a time when lots of regular people would be there, traveling in from the countryside for a ritual. It would be a crowded place, full of everyday peasants and artisans, people who followed rather than led. Jeremiah’s prophecies were only tangentially about them—they could, of course, work to be more faithful themselves, but the real target of Jeremiah’s preaching were the leaders who followed their own self-interest and led people astray.
Baruch took the scroll to the Temple and read it out loud, and the people listened. But we don’t know how they reacted, because the scene shifts to the king’s advisor, who heard Baruch reading and realised the king needed to know about this, ASAP.
It’s probably too strong to say that the advisor was a spy, but it certainly has that feel about it—someone reporting the words spoken at a religious service, knowing that the king won’t like what he hears.
And he didn’t. Jehoiakim sat in his palace, which had different wings for different seasons of the year, in front of his enormous fireplace, and calmly tore up and burned the word of the Lord instead of tearing his garments in grief and repentance. He didn’t even look anxious about it, just taking a piece of scroll every few minutes and throwing it into the fire in one of history’s first recorded book burnings.
But really, it was too late. The days are surely coming, says the Lord…The word had already been read, and heard. It was already out there, wiggling its way into people’s minds and hearts, taking on life throughout the city and the surrounding countryside. Jehoiakim burned page after page that painted him in an unfavourable light, that reminded him of his responsibility as a shepherd to guide the people in faithfulness, to take care of the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow, to protect the poor and to care for the land. He didn’t want to hear it, but the message was burning its way through the hard hearts of the people, and God was at work. The word of God can’t be destroyed, even if it makes us uncomfortable, or reminds us of things and people we purposely put aside. And it certainly won’t be constrained by the desires or policies of the people in power.
Today is Christ the King Sunday, which was instituted in 1925, as many nations in Europe were experiencing increasing militant nationalism. In the midst of a culture that disapproved of difference, and leadership that demanded unwavering loyalty, the church was called to proclaim that our allegiance is not to a nation or a leader, but to Christ. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven, along with everyone else God chooses to invite to the feast. It’s the same message that Jeremiah and Baruch got when they were called to write the whole scroll a second time: a reminder that the king, or his upper class advisors and friends, are not God. And God has a much bigger picture going, with people from every nation and language, every time and place, youngest to the oldest and the least to the greatest, all knowing the new covenant because it is written on our hearts, not just on paper.
The thing is, a covenant written on paper can be torn up and ignored. We can’t destroy the ideas, of course, but the book can be easily put out of sight, out of mind. A covenant written on our hearts, though…the only way to ignore it is to destroy ourselves. To turn away from the new covenant God has so carefully written inside each and every person is not only to turn away from a world in need, retreating into the winter palace while our sisters and brothers work themselves to the bone for our benefit…it is to turn away from being human, to turn away from our hearts, to put aside our belovedness and seek our own gratification alone, creating our own law along the way. We have to forget who we are, and where our loyalty lies.
We humans have made a pretty good effort at this. But the fact of the word remains: even when we lose our way, or turn away, God is love, Christ is Lord, and the Spirit provides word after word, scroll after scroll, chance after chance for us to remember who we are and who God is, and to re-align our actions and words with the community of Christ’s kingdom — where people come from north and south and east and west to share a feast where there is enough for everyone, no matter what their earthly status might be. The word is already out there, and in here, working its way into us and through us into a world desperate for good news, a word of love and justice that cannot be contained, a word that calls us to live as if it is true, even when it contradicts the powers of nation and economy and culture. The days are surely coming, when we will know and act like we are God’s people, children of the covenant, sealed by the Spirit, belonging only to Jesus Christ, forever.
May it be so. Amen.
Prayer
Faithful God, you give and ask us to use your gifts for your purpose.
You plant your goodness within us:
we bear your word in our minds and hearts,
we carry your life in our bodies,
we breathe your breath,
that we may reveal your love to the world.
We pray you would take our gratitude and turn it into a way of living.
We ask for the blessing of committing ourselves to your call,
not just spiritually but tangibly too,
and we dedicate our resources —
time, energy, money, and attention —
to your kingdom’s truth.
It sometimes feels in this world as if truth is hard to come by,
while all around us people are in need,
the earth groans,
the world stage is more fragile than we realised,
and it’s easy to think there’s nothing we can do.
So we turn to you, our rock, our refuge and strength, our help in every trouble.
We turn to you, creator, redeemer, and sustainer.
We turn to you, ruler of the nations and hope of all creation.
We ask for your help for those who are suffering, in body, mind, or spirit.
May those living with illness know your healing presence.
May those living under restrictions
know your comfort and light in these shadowed days.
May those serving as your hands in
hospitals, homes, research labs, and other essential work
know your strength and compassion.
We ask for your help for people who live each day with fear,
especially in places of violence and war.
May those for whom home is not a safe place find a refuge.
May those who hear guns and bombs
finally experience the deep breath of a quiet night.
May those who choose violence come to know
new ways of living and thriving.
May your peace fill our hearts, our homes, our world.
We ask for your help for our leaders,
that they may seek the good of all, not just some.
May all in positions of power be
thoughtful and courageous in doing what is right.
Send your Spirit of justice and imagination
to those who sit in decision-making places,
in government, in business, in church, in community.
We ask your help for ourselves,
that we may be faithful bearers of your image
here in our parish, in our work and at home and online.
May all who see us recognise your work.
May our community be strengthened,
our hands reach out to help and our hearts to include.
Heal all division and inspire us to love one another,
as you have loved us.
We ask these and all things in the name of Christ.
Amen.
Benediction
Friends, go into your week ready to bear God’s word that is written on your heart, in order that all may read the truth of God’s love from your life. 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.
Announcements
* Young Adult Bible Study meets on Zoom at 1pm (BYOPizza). We are reading chapters 8-9 of Revelation today! If you’d like login information, contact Teri.
* Today is the last day in our series on Becoming God’s People — next week Advent begins, and worship will be on the theme of “The Blessings of an Impossible Christmas.” You may want to have a candle handy when you worship at home during Advent, so you can join in the Advent Candle Lighting.
* The Gourock churches are sponsoring a Christmas Window competition for those who live in Gourock! The theme is Christmas Carols — so choose a carol, decorate a street-facing window in that theme, and send in your entry form by 10 December! The judging begins on the 11th and prizes will be announced later the following week. We may not be able to sing together at a carol service, but we can have a visual carol service as we walk around our neighbourhoods, so let’s make the whole town festive together! You can enter online here, or you can get a paper entry form and either snap a photo and email it in, or return it to the manse.
* 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!
* If you would like to attend in-person worship in the sanctuary, you will need to book a place as we can only safely accommodate 35 people at a time under current distancing guidelines. Please phone Cameron (630879) on a Friday morning between 10-12 or Anne Love (07904 617283) on a Saturday morning between 10-12 to book in for that Sunday. If we reach our capacity, you’ll be given the first seats the following week.
Inside the church: face coverings must be worn, you may give your offering at the door rather than by passing it through the rows, we will ask you to sit in a particular seat to ensure everyone’s safety as there is a one-way system in place, and the service will be around half an hour with no singing but with instrumental music. Families are welcome, and children should stay in the service for the whole half hour — there will be a children’s time for them though! If you’ve been out of the area in the past 2 weeks, or if you have any symptoms that could be covid, please plan to worship online rather than in person.
If the government Tiers or regulations change, that could affect our services. Should that happen, we will contact everyone who is booked in for a service, and will use all our regular communication channels to advise of any new restrictions or procedures or plans.
Online and audio recording-by-phone (call 01475 270037 to listen to the service) worship will continue, and the print version will continue to be available on request.
* The Boys Brigade is again meeting in the large hall — if you know any boys from P1 – S6 who would like to explore what it’s all about, please contact Alan Aitken: alanandrewaitken at gmail dot com. There are spaces available in all sections (Junior Section on Mondays at 7pm, Anchor Boys on Tuesdays at 5:30pm, Company Section on Fridays at 7:30pm). The Guides are working on their plans and hope to start up after Christmas. For information, contact Gillian Dick: gndick at hotmail dot com.
No other organisations or groups are currently using our halls, so that we have time to adequately clean and ensure the space is safe for everyone. This will be reviewed after Christmas.
* 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. 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 or with a neighbour who is coming to in-person worship and we will ensure they are received. Remember: no one is coming to your door to collect your envelopes, so please stay safe!
* Teri is doing the Time For Reflection to open the Scottish Parliament this week on Tuesday at 2pm. You may be able to watch online on the scottishparliament.tv website.
