Sunday service for 5 February 2023

Sunday 5 February 2023, NL1-25
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
Teri: The living word speaks:
1: offering nourishment for growing life,
2: pointing toward the narrow gate,
3: firming up our foundation.
Teri: The living word calls:
1: do unto others…without making it about you,
2: use your energy where it matters, for good,
3: be doers of the word, not only hearers.
Teri: The living word promises:
1: seek God’s kingdom and you will find,
2: God is the giver of every good gift,
3: building up in love creates a new world.
Teri: Come to hear and follow the living word.

Sanctuary Hymn 187: There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy

Prayer
Loving God, we come asking and searching and knocking,
longing to see your kingdom of heaven come on earth.
Open to us today the goodness of your word;
feed and strengthen us for the journey ahead.
Then walk before us on the narrow road,
and surround us with companions on the way,
that we may both receive and share the blessing.
Holy One, you created the world in love,
and yet we so rarely reflect it.
We confess that we have built a house on the foundation of
our favourite traditions, our likes and dislikes,
a rose-coloured view of history,
and a sense of being more right than “they” are.
We admit that we have judged other houses without ever being inside,
and resisted too much scrutiny of our own.
Forgive us, for we have not treated others as we would want to be treated.
Forgive us, for we have repeated your words but rarely acted on them.
Forgive us, for we have blamed the music and the decor when the real problem was far deeper.
You are our rock, O God,
and we pray you would help us in the storm
to move from shifting sand to firm foundation,
even if it means letting go of the old life and building anew,
going beyond lip service and putting your love into action.
We ask in the name of the One in whom all authority dwells, Jesus the Christ.
Amen.

Online Hymn: How Firm a Foundation

Sanctuary: Children’s Time

Reading: Matthew 7.1-14, 24-29 (New Revised Standard Version)

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.
‘Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.
‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

‘Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!’
Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

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: Only Love Fits Through
Around this time of year, 23 years ago, my minister suggested to me that I should spend the summer volunteering on Iona. I was looking for something to do with the summer, since I would be off from uni, but flying across the ocean to Scotland was not on my radar of possible options. Aside from the fact I’d never heard of Iona, and it didn’t have anything to do with my music degree or advancing my career, I didn’t have the money for that anyway. I told him all those things and asked for other suggestions, and went on my merry way.

And then, I swear, it was like all of a sudden Scotland was everywhere. Someone left a box of walkers shortbread in the student lounge. I turned on the radio and there were bagpipes. I was babysitting and I put the kids to bed and grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch to settle in to watch some exciting TV I didn’t have at home and when I turned over the edge, the label said “made in Scotland.” That last one was the moment that I was like “oh for goodness’ sake, fine! I’ll fill out the application.”

Have you ever experienced this? Where one little thing is suddenly noticeable everywhere, like some kind of sign? Of course we know, psychologically, how this works. But when it happens, it feels an awful lot like the Holy Spirit — and it probably is. After all, God breathed the Spirit into humanity, and here we are!

Well this last few weeks, it has happened to me again, but with this passage. Danny mentioned it when we were talking about the things we hold onto or that help ground us in God’s way when we’re struggling. I knew then it was coming up in the lectionary but hadn’t really put much thought into it yet…and then it started appearing everywhere. The chaplaincy team planned an assembly for Clydeview using Burns poems, and the scripture our resident Burns experts chose to go with things like “a man’s a man for a’ that” and “to see ourselves as others see us” — which is, of course, a poem about church people thinking they’re better than everyone else — was this – do not judge, first pay attention to the log in your own eye. We just did those assemblies this past week. I was talking to funeral directors, driving to a funeral, and one of them mentioned that people from Greenock used to look down on the Port and say they’d never go there, and now it’s turned round with all the shopping in the Port and people looking down on the shell of central Greenock, like the measure you give will be the measure you get. And — as you know I’m part of the presbytery planning committee so I hear a lot of things from a lot of people about their church and what they’re doing — I heard church members say that they’re not doing more in their neighbourhood because the people who live there are bad, undeserving, and would just ruin it all anyway…their own neighbours were not worthy of the missional energy or investment of the church. And the voice of Jesus rang in my ears: do not judge, for with the judgment you make you will be judged. Would it appropriate or inappropriate for the presbytery mission planning committee to judge the church the way the church judged its neighbours? I was at a primary school assembly where the staff were trying to address the fact that some children are being excluded by others, and they’re alone on the playground…and it turns out that some parents have said things about other children that their children are then putting into action at school, leading some to be intentionally left out. And then I have seen a lot of things on the internet this week that clearly judge some people — mainly people who look like us or sound like us — as worth helping, and others only worth sending back wherever they came from, or neglecting because they’re not our problem. And then I had a phone call from an angry person who identified themselves as a member of another flavour of Christian, and in the course of their rant about something we were doing, told me that Americans don’t belong here and since I’m not from here I should stop interfering in their neighbourhood.

If the Holy Spirit wanted me to pay attention to this text, it worked. It’s been everywhere, every time I open my eyes or ears, for the past few weeks.

The thing is, if it’s true what Jesus says, that hearing his words and not acting on them is like building on sand, then many of us who wear the name Christian have houses just waiting to be swept away. Because frankly the judgment I see and hear from my fellow Christians — judging that our neighbours are not worth loving, though we’ll protest all day long that isn’t what we meant the reality is that’s what our actions say — is appalling. And I’m aware that I do it myself, as I catch myself sometimes and try to correct my thinking, we’re all complicit here, this isn’t about finger pointing — which would be the opposite of Jesus’ intention! The things I have encountered these past few weeks have made me ever more aware of the log in my own eye, too.

As all this was happening, I was praying about what Jesus means when he says “enter by the narrow gate.” Because in some ways that felt like the opposite of do-not-judge…if we know that God’s kingdom and God’s love is more expansive than our human misjudgment, what could it mean that we’re supposed to go to this narrow gate, which makes it sound like some people won’t be good enough to get in?

And then I realised: the gate is indeed wide, and the way easy, that leads to destruction. There are a million and one ways for me to tear down another person, to imply or to say outright that they’re not good enough, not worth helping, too messed up to belong, too different to include, that they’re not one of us and so our lowest priority. Choosing that way, one of the numerous options for dismissing, marginalising, minimising, traumatising, oppressing, hurting another person or group of people, that’s easy. It’s a very wide gate, and it’s a smooth road. Everybody’s doing it, after all. It’s just popular opinion. It’s just majority rule. It’s just the way things are. Those destructive words and actions are numerous and easily accessible, and you can’t take them back. And they don’t only tear down the other person — whether or not that person ever hears them. They also tear down my own spirit from the inside out. It corrodes my heart, and opens up brokenness and darkness, when I choose that way. And then it’s easier the next time, and easier, and easier…to move from just posting something online to saying it about people who won’t hear me anyway to saying it to someone’s face. It destroys people, it destroys community, and it destroys us.

The gate is narrow that leads to life. Because there’s actually only one choice available. When we encounter a person, whether in the flesh or online, whether it’s someone we know or someone we only see on television or someone we’ve just heard talked about, whether it’s an individual or a whole class or race or nation or category of people, there’s literally only one choice. It’s a very narrow gate indeed: a gate that lets only one way in.

The narrow gate that leads to life only admits love. Love your neighbour. Love your enemy. Love people the same way you want to be loved. Love as I have loved you. Love because God loved you first.

The narrow gate is too narrow for our judgment. Too narrow for the wide range of things we say and think about our neighbours who are human beings like us. Too narrow for the “just a joke.” Too narrow for keeping things for ourselves and not letting others have any. Too narrow for our assumptions about what other people are like. Too narrow for our Facebook memes and our rulebooks and our name calling. It’s too narrow for anything but love.

The paradox, of course, is that the wide gate and easy way seem so attractive, so simple because it’s what everyone else is doing, and yet it literally eats us away from the inside until we’re just a shell. A mean, angry, hurt shell that can do nothing but tear others down in order to get a shred of triumph before we fall back into despair at the world we have created. It’s a gate that leads to death before we die. And the narrow gate, which is a very hard road, swimming upstream, insisting on being different, insisting that we don’t call politicians names… and we don’t categorically decide that whole swathes of people are criminals… and we don’t allow other people to gossip around us… and we don’t write off neighbourhoods because of their past problems… and we don’t repeat lies even if they’re funny… and we don’t condemn people who are different to a life of constant danger and difficulty simply because we don’t want to do the work of changing our habits. It’s a hard road. But.

This is a big but.

BUT: that hard road and that gate that is so narrow only love can get through…that road leads into the kingdom of God, which is the most expansive, most beautiful, most loving, most inclusive, most generous, most hopeful kingdom of belonging, of compassion, of peace and justice, of community, of abundance. The narrowest of gates leads to the biggest and widest welcome. And it’s there that our spirits and minds and bodies and communities and families can flourish. It’s there that we find life in all its fullness — right now, not in some post-apocalyptic heavenly utopia, but the kingdom of heaven here on earth, embodied in the Body of Christ.

Or not — and when the Body of Christ chooses the wide gate of destruction instead, it’s a real punch of extra disappointment, too. GK Chesterton once wrote that “The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried.”

For those who try to stop doing the things that won’t fit through the narrow gate, who persevere in love despite the cost, who insist that a better world is possible and we have to be the ones who build it… for those who try to put Jesus’ words into action, rather than just parroting words we have no intention of practicing, they’ll find that the storm life sends their way may well be bad but it won’t be a disaster, because they’ll be standing firm in the community of the kingdom of heaven — a community where everyone is valued and loved and looks out for each other as we build on the solid rock of Christ’s love. And for those who think “it’s too hard to change my ways now,” well…the shifting sand of popularity isn’t a very good foundation for a life.

It may be difficult. But also Jesus says that when we seek the kingdom of God, we will find it. When we ask for help in living his way, we will get it. When we are finally ready to knock on the door that only love fits through, it will open for us.

May it be so. Amen.

Online Hymn: If I Speak Words of Wisdom (Resound Worship)

Sanctuary Hymn 533: Will You Come and Follow Me

Offering (Sanctuary only)
God pours out every good gift and promises that when we use those blessings to bless others, all we need will also be provided. Doing the ministry we already do here at St John’s costs over £10,000 per month, and our ability to continue to join in God’s mission here in this place is because of your trust in that promise. Our generosity is our response to what God has done for us, and we trust that God will use our offerings to reveal the kingdom of heaven here and now. Your morning offering will now be received.

Sanctuary Offering Response 808 (old hundredth)
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
praise God all creatures here below;
praise God, the Trinity of love,
before, beneath, around, above.
Amen

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
You love us into a new way of being, O God.
From the beginning your love has transformed —
from chaos into clarity, from wilderness to flourishing, from death to life.
We thank you for your grace that meets us and calls us, fills us and guides us.
Today we offer ourselves to you,
in gratitude for your teaching,
in trust that you will receive our commitment and use it for your glory.
We are grateful today for people who have modelled your way of love for us,
and for those we have the privilege of being role models for.
We are grateful today for small things like longer daylight
and birds singing outside our windows.
We are grateful for your love for us,
and we pray that we might learn to pass it on,
to love others the way you love us.

We know, Lord, that you know us better than we know ourselves,
that you hear us before we can even ask,
and when we don’t quite know what to say, your Spirit intercedes for us.
We come today searching, asking, knocking,
on behalf of our neighbours and the world around us.
We ask your mercy for those who have been judged harshly, and felt the sting of betrayal,
for those who have been given a short measure, and expected to make do,
for those who have been taught that they will never be good enough to join in.
May they experience your unconditional love.
We ask your mercy, too, for those whose default attitude is judgment,
those who will not choose the good measure for others and so cannot receive it themselves,
those whose vision is so obscured by self-righteousness that their world has closed in.
May they too experience unconditional love, and discover the possibilities of a new way.
We ask your Spirit of companionship
for those who have had to learn to depend only on themselves, or on one or two others,
and whose relationships are strained by that weight.
May they learn the blessing of interdependence,
practicing the image of your Triune life.
We ask your Spirit of empathy
for those struggling to love others as themselves,
for those whose self-image or self-confidence is so low they don’t know how to love,
for those who can’t imagine how others want to be treated,
and for those who have been marginalised, oppressed, and abused until they no longer want to try.
May they be blessed with compassion, with a listening ear and an open heart,
and imagination to see your image in themselves and others.
We ask your Spirit of courage and peace
for those who are in the midst of the storm,
for those surrounded by violence and feeling unmoored by grief.
May they be strengthened and empowered to embody your promise in this life.
We ask your Spirit of truth
for your church, called to be Christ’s Body,
to build on a firm foundation and to carry on his work.
May we be honest with ourselves and with you,
and choose to walk the narrow road that leads to life,
that all may see your hand guiding and your love reflecting
through us into this world.
We ask these and all things in the name and authority of 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: How Firm a Foundation

Benediction
Go from this place to take your part in creating the world anew, reflecting the kingdom of heaven on earth. Since God is good, do good to others. Since God is generous, open your hands and heart. Since God is love, put love in action.
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 choir rehearses immediately after worship, in the sanctuary.

* 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!

* Wednesday Evening Bible Study meets in the manse at 7:30pm. All are welcome as we continue reading through the Bible in slightly more than a year!

* Young Adult Bible Study meets in the manse on the 2nd and 4th Sundays at 7pm for a meal and discussion of the gospel according to John. Everyone in their 20s is welcome!

* Bowl and Blether is here in St. John’s on Monday 6 February, from 11:30am, and in St Margaret’s on Saturday 11 February from 11:30.

* The Contact Group meets on 7 February and 21 February, at 2pm. On the 7th they’ll hear from Ros Gallacher about Ukrainians in Scotland, and on the 21st from Clare Cunning about Smalls for All.

* The chaplaincy team will be doing Firm Foundations workshops for Primary 7 pupils the week of 6 February. If anyone would like to be the hot-chocolate-maker-and-deliverer for Moorfoot on Tuesday 7 February, please let Teri know ASAP. All the supplies except milk will be delivered to you, and you make hot chocolate and then deliver the flasks to the school at 10:15am.

* The Kirk Session meets on Thursday 9 February at 7:30pm for a regular meeting.

* Smalls for All: During January and February the Contact Group is facilitating this year’s Smalls For All appeal, and everyone is invited to contribute packs of pants for ladies, girls and boys. There is a box for contributions at the Bath Street entrance to the church building. Thank you for your generosity.

* 2023 marks the 125th anniversary of the 2nd Gourock Boys’ Brigade. Tickets are available now for two anniversary events: the Reunion Dinner Saturday 18th March 6.30 for 7pm in Masonic Hall John Street, tickets are £20 for a 3 course dinner menu and programme. Places are filling up fast so please get in touch to reserve your place as soon as possible. Our anniversary Grand Charity Ball will be Saturday 9th September 6.00 for 6.30pm in Greenock Town Hall. Tickets priced £50 or £500 for a table of 10 will be available soon. The benefitting Charities have been selected and will be announced shortly. We are delighted to announce that every penny raised from ticket sales and our charity auction on the evening will go directly to our chosen charities. This event is open to all so please spread the word, book your table, put the date in your diary and look forward to what we are sure will be a Second To None evening of enjoyment and celebration.

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