Sunday Service for 13 March 2022, second Sunday in Lent

13 March 2022, second Sunday in Lent
Gourock St. John’s Church of Scotland
Service prepared by the Rev. Teri Peterson
Manse phone: 632143 
Email: tpeterson (at) churchofscotland.org.uk

To hear the audio recording of this service, please phone 01475 270037. It’s a local landline number so minutes should be included in your phone plan.

Prelude Music (in person)

Welcome

Call to Worship
One: With mingled love and anxiety, we come to Christ, who says:
All: This is for God’s glory.
One: In hope and in grief, we come to Christ, who says:
All: I am the resurrection and the life.
One: With trust and with confusion, we come to Christ, who says:
All: Unbind him and let him go.

Prayer
Hymn 776: Ukrainian Kyrie:
Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison.

God of life,
you overcome even the long shadow of death,
that we may live freely and fully in your way.
As Mary and Martha trusted the power of your presence,
we too call on your name and ask to see your face.
As Mary and Martha were honest about their grief and disappointment,
we too come to tell you our truth.
Walk with us to the place we have laid our grief,
and call us out into new life.

Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison.

We proclaim you all-powerful and sovereign, O God,
and yet we confess that we want you to use your power
for the things we want, when we want them.
We know you can,
and so we can’t comprehend why sometimes it seems you won’t.
We admit that we wish we could control how you answer our prayers.

Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison.

Forgive us when we think that your seeming silence
is the same as your indifference.
Forgive us when we leave you behind,
assuming you have left us.
Forgive us for our wavering trust
in the face of the difficulties of this world.

Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison.

Set us free from the shadows that cling so closely,
and make us ready to come out when you call our name. Amen.

Music
Online: You are a Refuge (Resound Worship)

Children’s Time (in person only)

Reading: John 11.1-44 (New Revised Standard Version)

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’

When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

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: The Voice of Grief
Lord, if you had been here…

It’s the kind of thing that really only hits home when the funeral is over. Before that, there are too many details to attend to, things to arrange, tasks to do. But when the paperwork is finished, and everyone is paid, and the last sausage roll is eaten, and the tomb has been closed, we go home and it all suddenly becomes very real. Too real. All the feelings we’d been holding together so we could get through the days come to the surface, and we finally get a chance to say to God what we really think and feel.

The sisters knew that Jesus could have changed this. He was capable of doing something…and he didn’t do it. And when they saw him, they told him point blank: you could, but you wouldn’t. It’s hard to know exactly if they were blaming him for their grief, but it wouldn’t have been the first or the last time that God was questioned for not acting.

Some of us may have spoken to God this way before. Maybe not in exactly these words, but similar ones — where are you, God? Why do you allow these terrible things to happen? Why won’t you do something? The pain is overwhelming and unnecessary and unfair, when you could do something but you don’t.

Those feelings are perfectly normal, and God can handle it us telling the truth about them. It is okay to cry out, to give voice to the grief and frustration and anger and pain, just as we do when we are joyful or grateful or hopeful. Sometimes we may feel like praying this way about our own situations, when we’ve lost someone or gotten bad news or when we’re anxious for ourselves or a loved one. Sometimes it may be more for world events, when we feel helpless as we watch the news and we can’t understand why these terrible things are happening and why everyone seems so powerless to stop it.

Lord, if you had been here…

Martha said it first, having run down the road to meet Jesus before he could even get to the house — a house filled with flowers and food and friends who had come to mourn with them and support them. Mary and Martha weren’t alone, they had a whole community that surrounded them in this time of grief, weeping with them, sharing memories, drying their tears.

Martha didn’t wait until Jesus could join this crowd, she ran out and met him at the edge of the village. There in the middle of the road, we see that Martha is a thinking type of person. She and Jesus had a theological discussion…one which she thought was about some future time, and one which Jesus knew was about the here and now. He is offering abundant life, resurrection life, right this minute, because in him, time is fulfilled. Martha may only have understood eternal life as something that comes later, but Jesus says that with him, it starts today.

When Mary came out to meet Jesus, he hadn’t gotten any closer. He was still standing in the middle of the road. And all her community was with her — unlike Martha who came out alone, Mary was surrounded by the people holding her up in these difficult days. Mary wept as she said, “Lord, if you had been here…” Unlike her sister’s way of coping by intellectualising and anticipating a future, Mary was coping by sitting with the pain, with wave after wave of feelings. She needed her friend, and he wasn’t there. And Jesus wept with her.

He met each of them in exactly their grief place, and walked with them in it in a way they could manage in the moment — whether that was crying together or talking through the big questions. Each of them said the same words: If you had been here… but the voice of grief sounded different for each of them, and Jesus gently joined them and offered another voice — the voice of resurrection life.

And then they said to him the very words he had said to countless disciples, perhaps even words he had said to them before: come and see.

Come and see the closed door of death, the end of hope and possibility, the stone that blocks the way. Jesus followed them to see the reality of fully-human, to experience the depths and the visceral horrible decaying end.

I always wonder at what point Lazarus woke up. I was talking about this with a friend and she said “at what point did the water turn to wine?” Like that miracle, this is another one where we don’t see it happen, or know how it worked, or at exactly what moment. But what if Lazarus was awoken, in the dark, covered in a shroud, to hear the muffled voices outside…what if he too could hear the weeping of his sisters and friends, the shock and disgust at the smell his body would be giving off, the scraping of stone against stone, the rush of fresh air bringing sounds of confusion and the prayer of Jesus: “Father I thank you that you have heard me” — past tense, notice: Jesus thanks God for having heard even though we don’t yet know what he asked, or when. And only then, cutting through the voice of grief, came the voice of Jesus addressed to him, calling him by name as the shepherd calls the sheep: Lazarus, come out.

Imagine how disorienting that would be, not only for Mary and Martha and their friends and neighbours, but for Lazarus. He knew that voice — like the sheep know their shepherd. But what could he possibly be calling Lazarus to? The end was past, the grief was real, there were no more options.

With God, all things are possible. And it turns out that Jesus intends to give abundant life on both sides of the grave.

It’s easy for us to identify with Martha and Mary in this story, to see ourselves in their experience. Great grief is a sign of great love, and we know grief well. We know the helplessness and the fear and the anger. We know how to call out “where are you?” We know that God has the power…and yet we cannot understand why God doesn’t use that power the way we want him to. Why doesn’t Jesus’ offer of abundant life also offer a way to skip over suffering and pain? He takes away the power and finality of death, and changes its meaning…but the human experience still has both heights and depths, and Jesus knows them himself, just as we do.

I wonder, though, if we might imagine ourselves as Lazarus. Disoriented, hearing the grief and disgust and longing and prayers through layers of shroud and stone…catching a whiff of fresh air but totally uncertain how that can work or what to do with it…and then when we hear the voice of the shepherd rise above the voice of grief, we come out like Lazarus, walking hesitantly out of the tomb but still bound by the old reality that had been shattered, still carrying the baggage of grief, still clothed in the past.

And Jesus said: unbind him and let him go.

Unbind him.
Remove that old stuff, for the former things have passed away, and all things are made new.
Unbind him.
Take off the markers of death and walk into new life.
Unbind him.
Lay aside the old ways that muffle our sight and hearing, that hold us back and tie us down, and let go.

What kind of abundant life might we live, if we were unbound?
How might we turn out to be an answer to prayer, if we were unbound?
What other powers we think are so definitive might be shattered, if we were unbound?

The grief of this world is great and is like a thick fog shrouding everything. May the voice of the shepherd cut through it all, and set us free to live, and so to change the world.

Amen.

Online Hymn 727: In the Bulb There Is a Flower

(In person Hymn 721: We Lay Our Broken World)

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
You, God, know the breadth of human life and death,
the joy and the sorrow mingling throughout this journey.
You have celebrated milestones, and laughed, and wondered.
You have felt grief, and wept alongside your friends.
We give you thanks that even now,
you walk alongside us, sharing the heights and depths,
and reminding us of your abundant life
that transcends the boundaries we think we know.
We bring our joy, for lighter nights and changing seasons, for daffodils peeking through the earth, for new life in our midst and new opportunities to love.
We bring our concern, for those dear to us who are ill, for your creation struggling to survive, for those who are struggling to pay the bills, for those caught in cycles of poverty or substance abuse or trauma, for our leaders who are meant to seek the common good.
We bring our grief, for a world at war, and those who suffer at the hands of another, for the people who must flee their homes and are met with something less than welcome, for all who grieve without the ability to say goodbye.
As your people, following your example,
we rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.
In all the ups and downs of this human life, you are with us, God,
and you promise that we will know the fullness of your life,
not only on the other side of death, but even now,
so we come to ask your transforming grace to lead us ever onward.
May we be unbound this day,
set free from the trappings of death whose power you have broken,
to walk in the power of your love,
this day and all the days to come.

We pray 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.

(in person) Hymn 727: In the Bulb There Is a Flower

Benediction
Friends, whatever the challenges of the week ahead, remember they are not the end of the story: the love of God overcomes even the power of death! The Holy Spirit is even now setting you free from the old ways, and Christ himself calls you by name to come out into new 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.

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.

In person Postlude Music

Announcements

* We have now entered the season of Lent, a season of preparing for Easter. During Lent we are invited to be particularly attentive to our spiritual practices, to remove things from our lives that are hindering our relationship with God, and to be diligent in pursuing faithful ways. This season is meant to get us ready to meet the risen Christ on the other side of the tomb, and to follow him wherever he will lead. The theme for worship during this Lenten season will be “Who’s Calling?” — thinking about how we incline our ear to the voice of Jesus through the cacophony of the world around us.

*You are invited to join in reading the Bible in a year for 2022 — immersing ourselves in God’s word throughout the year. Click here to find a reading plan that’s five days a week (leaving a couple of days for catch up each week!). Watch this space for information about a Bible study as we go through the scriptures together!

* 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. We can now welcome up to 85-100 people for worship with 1m distancing between households. No booking is required. Masks are required at all times inside the building, including while singing. 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.

* Tonight we will gather with Christians across the nation for evening prayer on the Connect Facebook Page, led tonight by Karen. 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!

* The Kirk Session will meet next Sunday, the 20th, after worship, with a light lunch provided.

* St John’s is hosting the Easter Code for P6 pupils on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the 21st – 23rd of March, from 9-12 each day. If you would be available to help out on any or all of those mornings, please contact Teri.

* The Spring Church Notes are now available! You can read them by clicking here.