Sunday service for 22 December 2024, fourth Sunday of Advent

Sunday 22 December 2024, Fourth Sunday of Advent
Gourock St. John’s Church of Scotland
Service prepared by Rev. Teri Peterson
Manse: 632143 
Email: TPeterson (at) churchofscotland.org.uk
Email Charlene, Parish Assistant: CMitchell (at) churchofscotland.org.uk

Prelude Music

Welcome

We Gather As God’s Family (As the Bible is brought in, we stand and sing)
A family gathered in love,
striving for justice and joy,
blessing the broken-hearted,
and sharing the hope of God’s kingdom.

Lighting the Advent Candle
One: Look! Not with the world’s eyes, but the Holy Spirit’s.
All: God is in the business of transforming the world!
One: Not in ways we expect or have planned ourselves,
All: but from the edges and the obscure.
One: Younger and elder, well-heeled and unknown,
All: God’s work is seen through us.
(~candle is lit~)
One: Look! The light shines.
All: We will trust the Holy One whose love turns the world around.

Sanctuary Hymn 306 O Come All Ye Faithful OR 296 While Humble Shepherds Watched Their Flocks

Prayer
You are Love, O God,
and in Love you lift up and fill,
in Love you bless and show mercy,
in Love you bring down the powers and scatter the proud.
We confess that we long to be the ones lifted up and filled and blessed,
and we never see ourselves as the powerful or proud.
Instead we domesticate your Love,
fitting it into our notions,
not allowing it to transform us.
Forgive us when we box your Love into ours,
and so look with judgment rather than welcome at the people you choose to honour.
Forgive us when we ignore the movement of your Holy Spirit
and so overlook those who know your work best.
Forgive us when we hold onto the way things are,
and so cannot recognise your kingdom growing quietly in unexpected places.
Remember your mercy, O God,
and help us to trust your promise.
We so often feel small in the face of your glory,
and yet we are here to magnify —
to make your work visible,
even in our own small lives.
Reveal yourself today
in the tiniest glimmer
and the largest of promises,
that we may indeed turn our attention and so turn the world.
Open our hearts and minds to receive your good news,
and to magnify your revolutionary Love in the world.
We ask in the name of the One who comes among us, Immanuel.
Amen.

Online Hymn 316: Love Came Down At Christmas

Sanctuary Hymn: 315 Once in Royal David’s City OR 316 Love Came Down at Christmas

Scripture Reading: Luke 1.26-56 (New Revised Standard Version)
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowly state of his servant.
    Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name;
indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
    and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things
    and sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the aid of his child Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

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 and Children’s Time: Magnify
I think that Mary’s song is so interesting because — like any good lecturer — she tells us what she’s going to say, then she says it, then she tells us what she just said.

And she starts by saying: My soul MAGNIFIES the Lord.

What a weird way to describe what she’s doing. Because what does it mean to magnify? To make bigger of course…to amplify, to highlight, to lift up, to reveal the detail, to see something you normally can’t see.

(With children: look at different things in the microscope, talk about how we can see details we couldn’t see before, or stuff that’s too small to see with our own eyes but it’s still there)

But God is hardly microscopic…God is not small at all! We sing about a Great Big God, speak about God being bigger than our imaginations can hold, pray to a God who is beyond comprehension, all-encompassing…every thing we say when we talk about God is about God’s enormity. God’s hem alone fills the temple. God can hold every single person and the whole world in the palm of his hands.

So God must be big enough not to need magnifying, we should surely be able to see with the naked eye. Why would God need us to be like a magnifying glass or a microscope?

Well, we look round the world and it often seems we can’t actually see God in the midst of everything. We see food banks with empty shelves and more of our neighbours are hungry than ever. We see people fleeing persecution and gangs and war, and being met with hostility when they finally reach safety. We see the rich getting richer and more powerful. We see climate change affecting more and more of us. We see children exploited for cheap labour, kept out of school because of their gender or lack of money, and sitting crying in the rubble of their homes. We see governments that don’t seem willing to make changes that would serve anyone other than themselves. We see people with disabilities trapped in unsuitable accommodation because there’s no social housing without stairs or with wide enough doorways. We see so much terrible news it’s beyond our capacity to even comprehend it all. We pray for peace and justice and food and fairer systems and abundant life for all…but we don’t often see it.

But Mary did. With the eyes of a prophet she described what she saw: God’s kingdom fulfilled, and it was like opposite-land compared to the empire she lived in. She was a girl from a working class family, from a town in the middle of nowhere, living under occupation, in a precarious social situation since she was pregnant before she was married…basically living a life where it’s pretty hard to say God has been good and favoured you with a blessing…but she sang about how God had turned the world upside down: brought down the powerful and lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things, come to help his people, fulfilled the promise.

She magnified: made something visible that we hadn’t seen with our own eyes. Showed details we hadn’t been able to make out before. This is what the kingdom of God looks like: the hungry fed, the powerful brought down, the trampled down lifted up, the proud scattered. All those times we just said “kingdom of God,” this is what it was made up of, this is what it looks like when you look super up close, when you magnify the small parts to make up the big picture.

That means that when we highlight and amplify those small constituent parts, the things we notice God doing, no matter how small, we are like the magnifying glass or microscope that lets people see that the kingdom is actually here, even though it may not always be visible to the naked eye. Revealing the details of what God is doing, highlighting God’s presence, showing others who might not recognise God on their own so they know what to look for. Because everything, even seeing God, starts small. From something even the size of a mustard seed, or a tiny baby, or a moment of welcome rather than judgment, or a story shared, can grow God’s whole kingdom of love.

One small thing, like changing pride to openness and curiosity and welcome.
One small thing, like feeding a hungry person or family.
One small thing, like a word of hope shared.
One small thing, like telling a story of when you have seen God.
One small thing, like a baby born in an unsuitable place at an inopportune moment and yet changing everything.
Small things add up, they grow up, they multiply…

And the more small things we see, and share, and do…the more scared the empire gets. Because when we come together, take care of each other, and perhaps most importantly tell each other what we have seen God doing, we begin to recognise that in fact God’s kingdom is among us, and that the way things are is not the way they have to be…that’s good news for those peasant women in an occupied land whose situations should have been shameful, good news for the hungry and oppressed, good news for those who have been shut out. But there’s a reason that Mary’s song has sometimes been banned under certain oppressive government regimes…it’s not good news for the people who benefit from the way the empire runs the world.

Isn’t it interesting that Luke’s gospel both begins and ends with women discussing and experiencing revolution, the turning upside down of everything we thought we knew? Here at the beginning of Jesus’ life, we find his unwed teenage mother and his elderly auntie — like many good aunties, no indication of exactly how they’re related but they’re family! And at the end of his life, we find his middle-aged mother (it’s likely she was the same age I am now!) and his women disciples at the foot of the cross, and weeping at the burial, and then first to see the empty tomb and receive the good news that the world had changed forever.

It all starts with such a small thing, at least in the big picture: an elder receiving a youth, treating her like an equal, the two of them believing each other’s stories and supporting each other as peers through a very unusual situation.

It would be easy to imagine that an older relative would be judgmental about a teen mother, or that the youth would be dismissive of the older woman’s story thinking what could she know? It’s easy to picture them both going about their strange pregnancies alone, assuming no one else could understand. But instead they spend time together, loving each other through this encounter with God and the growth of new life, when no one else would believe them.

And that small thing grows.

And the empire trembles. The powers that be would prefer we keep separate, see ourselves as individuals and isolated stories, have blinders on and don’t look for a bigger picture, keep God to ourselves, private and personal.

But Mary teaches us not to keep it to ourselves, but rather to join her in magnifying. Reveal the detail. Show on the big screen what God has done for you, so that others can see how God is at work in them too…and when we put all those little pictures together, we get the big picture and see that God is in fact turning the world around.

May it be so. Amen.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian, said in an Advent sermon in 1933:
“The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might say the most revolutionary advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings… This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about collapsing thrones and humbled lords of this world, about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.”

Hymn: Canticle of the Turning (words: Magnificat arr. Rory Cooney; tune: Star of County Down)
My soul cries out with a joyful shout
that the God of my heart is great,
and my spirit sings of the wondrous things
that you bring to the ones who wait.
You fixed your sight on your servant’s plight,
and my weakness you did not spurn,
so from east to west shall my name be blest.
Could the world be about to turn?

Refrain:
My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn.

Though I am small, my God, my all,
you work great things in me,
and your mercy will last from the depths of the past
to the end of the age to be.
Your very name puts the proud to shame,
and to those who would for you yearn,
you will show your might, put the strong to flight,
for the world is about to turn.
(Refrain)

From the halls of power to the fortress tower,
not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware for your justice tears
every tyrant from his throne.
The hungry poor shall weep no more,
for the food they can never earn;
there are tables spread; every mouth be fed,
for the world is about to turn.
(Refrain)

Though the nations rage from age to age,
we remember who holds us fast:
God’s mercy must deliver us
from the conqueror’s crushing grasp.
This saving word that our forebears heard
is the promise which holds us bound,
till the spear and rod can be crushed by God,
who is turning the world around.
(Refrain)

Sanctuary Offering and Response: Hymn 322 verse 2
Good Christians, all rejoice
with heart and soul and voice;
now you hear of endless bliss,
Jesus Christ was born for this:
he has opened heaven’s door,
and all are blessed for evermore.
Christ was born for this!
Christ was born for this!

Announcements
*Gift Day TODAY
*Longest Night tonight at 6pm
*Christmas Eve 7pm 
*Christmas Day 10am
*29 December lunch and film
*take home devotions
*Teri away 27 December – 13 January — call Charlene or Cameron

That’s a lot going on in our community! Please consider yourself invited to participate, and to pray for all the activities, ministry, and mission God is calling us to do together.

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
Loving and surprising God,
bringing blessing to birth,
in gratitude and delight we come before you,
bearing our experiences of your grace,
holding fast to the promise you have spoken.
With hope and trust we carry our prayers for your world:
for the up-ending of empire, sung in the voice of the unwed teen mother;
for the filling of the hungry and the lifting up of the downtrodden;
for the women no one believes and the friends who are a lifeline.
Pour out your Holy Spirit that all may see your truth unclouded by their assumptions,
and send your mercy on those who wait for the dawn.
With longing and commitment we carry our prayers for peace:
for unjust systems to unravel, and justice to be practiced in every place,
for cycles of violence to come to an end,
for our lust for power and greed to be replaced by love for our neighbour.
Pour out your Holy Spirit that all may breathe freely,
and let your peace fill every home, town, and nation.
With joy we pray for your vision to be revealed:
for those who carry your message to be courageous,
for those who hold positions of power to seek your will and the common good,
for those who have been overlooked and pushed aside to be heard and believed.
Pour out your Holy Spirit that all may see and rejoice,
and turn us toward the new thing you are doing, even now.
Knowing that you are Love and those who abide in Love abide in You,
we pray for our community and your church:
for those young people everyone worries about but no one listens to;
for those older people feeling forgotten and left behind;
for those not sure if they belong.
Pour out your Holy Spirit that all may know themselves beloved,
and set your Church to the work of making your love visible.
On this 22nd day of the month we join our hearts as your St John’s family to pray:
*For arts groups — theatre groups, choirs, bands, dance groups and classes, the art club and photography club, and others who support each other in artistic endeavours and expression. We pray for the community to be strengthened and built up as we engage in creativity together in the image of our Creator God.
*For the youth organisations of St John’s: for the Anchor Boys, Junior Section, and Company & Senior Section of the Boys’ Brigade, for the Smurfs, Brownies, Guides, and Rangers, and for the Exploratorium holiday clubs. For their leaders, volunteers, young people, and families. May they grow in faith, hope, and love together.
*For the land, people, and governments of the nations of China, Mongolia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

You turn things upside down, O God,
and we pray that you would make us ready
to live faithfully in your kingdom,
coming even now in the Prince of Peace, Immanuel,
in whose name we pray, 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: 301 Hark the Herald Angels Sing OR 304 O Little Town of Bethlehem

Benediction
Go out to magnify those small moments, those details, when you see God’s love — because it’s when we share what we see that God’s kingdom becomes visible to all.
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 Sunday worship is also online. 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 Sunday evening service is normally on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of each month. We have toasties and sandwiches together from 5:30 and the service will start at the back of 6. All are welcome for this simple meal and time of worship. The Sunday evening service is informal and reflective, with guitar-based music, Bible readings, and prayer for our parish. Come along and discover practical ways to apply the word to your life, in a chilled vibe that fosters connection and reflection.
This month, the fourth Sunday evening service Tonight will be the Longest Night service — we won’t have toasties beforehand, but the service will begin as usual at 6pm. This is a candlelight Christmas service that looks for light amidst the shadows, and is perfect for those struggling this season, or who could just use a quieter service with a chance to

* The first Sunday of the month at 11am is now an all-age service, with different ways of encountering God’s word without a traditional sermon. All people — young and old, different personalities and learning styles, are welcome! You’ll find a more informal service with a variety of music, a Bible story, prayer, and some more interactive elements. The online service for the first Sunday will therefore also be different — there will still be a reading, prayers, and music, but usually not a sermon.

* Charlene is available for Conversation Corner (Vestry Hour) on WEDNESDAY AFTERNOONS in December and January, from 1-2pm, except for Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Just ring the bell at St John’s Road and she’ll have the kettle on for you! Come in to chat about anything you’d like.

* Bowl and Blether is on the first and third Mondays of each month through the winter, the next one is Monday 6 January — IF we can get some volunteers to make soup. Please speak to Teri if you can volunteer! Doors open at 11:30am, soup and toasties are served from noon – 1:30. All are welcome to join us for lunch and a chat in our cozy warm hall. Volunteers are also needed and welcome, please speak to Teri or Charlene if you’d like to volunteer for soup making (9-11:30am), toastie-making (11:30-1:30), serving (11:15-1:45), or clean up (1:15-2:30). 

* Starter Packs are in need of kitchen and bathroom cleaner, cloths and kitchen paper.
The FoodBank are in need of diluting juice, long-life juice, tinned meats, noodles, UHT milk, deodorant and toiletries.
You can bring donations to the church and place them into the boxes in the vestibule. Thank you!

* Did you know that the ministry we do at St John’s costs about £3000 per week? Everything we do is funded by your generous giving — all our support for young people, older people, bereavement care, community outreach, worship, study, spiritual growth, and community work is because of your offering. If you would like to 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 Teri and she can give you the treasurer’s details. You can also send your envelopes to the church or the manse by post and we will ensure they are received. 
It is also possible to donate to the work of the parish assistant, speak to Anne Love about how to go about directing new donations to that item in the budget.

* 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. 

* Wednesday Evening Bible Study is on a holiday break now and will resume on the 15th of January.

* Free period products are available in the church toilets for anyone who might need them, thanks to Hey Girls and Inverclyde Council.

* The Longest Night service — a quieter, candlelight Christmas service for those struggling with Christmas cheer for any reason, or for those who prefer a less exuberant celebration of Christmas — is TONIGHT at the usual evening service time of 6pm.

* Christmas Eve worship will be at 7pm.

* Christmas Day worship will be at 10am — bring a gift to show-and-tell!

* Next Sunday 29 December in the afternoon we’re having a family holiday film day! Stay after the Lessons and Carols service for a light lunch and a Christmas film! (Or come along at 12:45 for lunch, 1:15 for the film!)