Jesus Shaped People - Week 3
Service sheet (pdf)
Call to worship
We’re focusing today on Luke’s account of the teaching of Jesus, so much of which comes to us in stories. The Bible is, as the old hymn says, a book full of stories. Our call to worship, Psalm 124, is a story in itself, and as with all good stories, it draws us in.
1-5 If GOD hadn’t been for us
—all together now, Israel, sing out!—
If GOD hadn’t been for us
when everyone went against us,
We would have been swallowed alive
by their violent anger,
Swept away by the flood of rage,
drowned in the torrent;
We would have lost our lives
in the wild, raging water.
6 Oh, blessed be GOD!
He didn’t go off and leave us.
He didn’t abandon us defenceless,
helpless as a rabbit in a pack of snarling dogs.
7 We’ve flown free from their fangs,
free of their traps, free as a bird.
Their grip is broken;
we’re free as a bird in flight.
8 GOD’s strong name is our help,
the same GOD who made heaven and earth.
Help us to live in the light of your truth, and in the peace of your presence,
always rejoicing with the angels of God in the new life and liberty you have given us. Amen
1-5 If GOD hadn’t been for us
—all together now, Israel, sing out!—
If GOD hadn’t been for us
when everyone went against us,
We would have been swallowed alive
by their violent anger,
Swept away by the flood of rage,
drowned in the torrent;
We would have lost our lives
in the wild, raging water.
6 Oh, blessed be GOD!
He didn’t go off and leave us.
He didn’t abandon us defenceless,
helpless as a rabbit in a pack of snarling dogs.
7 We’ve flown free from their fangs,
free of their traps, free as a bird.
Their grip is broken;
we’re free as a bird in flight.
8 GOD’s strong name is our help,
the same GOD who made heaven and earth.
Opening Prayer (Collect)
Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for coming amongst us, and revealing God’s ways to us;Help us to live in the light of your truth, and in the peace of your presence,
always rejoicing with the angels of God in the new life and liberty you have given us. Amen
Song
You might like to sing, or reflect on the words of, Hymn StF 247, by Sydney Carter, which tells the story of the story-teller - I danced in the morning.
We notice Jesus’ stories tend to confound our expectations. Those of us who know them well might have been inoculated against this by familiarity, but the surprises are there to be rediscovered.
On that Jerusalem-Jericho Road the last person is the last person the listener would have expected to help the bleeding victim! Samaritans to Jews were the lowest of the low, and the notion of a Good Samaritan would be an utter contradiction in terms.
The bigger-barn-building farmer is a success story, until it isn’t. Suddenly. And the farmer’s choices and values (and fate) challenge ours.
Going after a single missing sheep, when the ninety-nine are in the wilderness, is verging on reckless, and certainly wouldn’t meet the Galilean Chamber of Commerce’s risk assessment protocol. ‘Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine…?’ No, we wouldn’t. We’d play it safe, workout the percentages, and miss the party.
These stories of Jesus, illuminating and reinforcing his teaching, challenge convention and offer new ways of looking at, and living, life. Not least in the category of lost and found.
We lose all kinds of things, some on a daily basis. Objects - keys, notes, glasses, socks (okay – that might just be me). We lose our temper, our balance, our perspective, our marbles (that might be me too). More significantly, we can lose direction, feel we’ve lost value, lose self-respect, lose memories, even hope. And we know what it is to lose a loved one, an experience that can trigger and heighten all those other losses too. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that the experience of losing things is a significant part of being human.
The stories of Jesus teach us that so is the experience of finding and being found – it too is part of being human. We can identify with the woman finding the lost coin, needing to share the news with her friends, to tell someone. We can rejoice that the lost sheep is brought home. And just as we can imagine the despair of prodigal son and grieving father with distance and difficulty between them, so we can rejoice in the finding, the returning, the welcoming, the homecoming. “Given up for lost, and now found!”
Jesus’ stories, as does Jesus’ story, show us that God’s love is the opposite to loss, to being lost, to losing. Jesus’ stories, as does Jesus’ story, teach us that God’s love can find us, we can know we are found, and being found we can face loss with new confidence.
As Jesus journeys through these chapters of Luke’s gospel, from Caesarea Philippi to Jerusalem, from being declared ‘Christ’ to the cross, he is teaching his disciples, then and now, to see loss as gain, and to trust God even when all seems lost. When he greets his friends with words of Easter peace, when he finds them again in the upper room and meets them on the Emmaus Road, he will prove that losing and finding, being lost and found, is not just human experience, but divine also.
The father’s heart breaks when he loses his son, the son’s when he realises he is lost. Both rejoice when they find each other once more. So it is with God. As shepherd, woman, father celebrate the finding, so does God. The missing sheep wandered off, the coin rolled into the dark, the son made a serious misjudgment, or should that be a series of bad judgements, but with each there is joy at the finding. If we recognise ourselves in the story, perhaps we begin to realise that we are being sought, that we can come home. To use the bible’s picturesque language, God’s angels will party at the news of a homecoming.
Being found, being home, won’t stop us losing things, but it will give us a new way of looking. Lost keys, notes, glasses, socks - less anxious, more aware we have other socks! Losing temper, balance, perspective, marbles – a deepening of prayer will help with all these. And those significant things, lost direction, value, self-respect - finding and being found by God creates new possibilities as we open ourselves to God’s plans, and let God’s love fill us, overflow us. If we forget, God remembers, and loves us still – in this is hope.
And what about losing a loved one? Found by God doesn’t mean exempt from the pain of loss, but it does mean conscious of a love that holds our loved one and ourselves in a divine embrace. Baildon friends are deeply saddened at the moment following the death of Tony Capper. Tony was someone who put love into practice every moment of every day, and was loved by all he met. Jenny and the family are sad but thankful, confident that Tony will be dashing around doing good things in God’s presence. Tony lived as someone who knew he had been found by God, and always wanted others to know that too.
By the rivers of Babylon: Psalm 137 for the year 2020
By Rev Becki Stennett, Sept. 2020.
(Shared with the Yorkshire West Methodist Synod, 12th September).
Take some time to pray for one another, your church and circuit family, that each might know they are found, and that together we might seek those who feel lost, and rejoice when they are found.
Take some time to pray for yourself, offering your thoughts and prayers honestly to God, acknowledging those elements of lost-ness in your life, opening yourself to God’s forgiveness, love and grace.
The Lord hears our prayer, Thanks be to God.
Readings
As we set off today to listen to the stories of Jesus, we notice they are often told in response to questions, or criticisms, sometimes answering directly, sometimes taking the questioner in a direction they didn’t see coming. A question about eternal life takes us to the Jerusalem-Jericho Road; an enquiry about inheritance leads us to a barn-building farmer’s sudden death; some wittering about the company Jesus keeps triggers stories about a lost sheep, a missing coin, and a prodigal son’s forgiving father. As people living with many questions, let’s listen to the stories…..
LUKE 10:30-32
Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.
“A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’
“What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbour to the man attacked by robbers?”
“The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded. Jesus said, “Go and do the same.”
“A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’
“What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbour to the man attacked by robbers?”
“The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded. Jesus said, “Go and do the same.”
Luke 12:16-19
Then he told them this story: “The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’
“Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?’ “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.”
“Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?’ “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.”
Luke 15
15:4-7 “Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbours, saying, ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep!’ Count on it—there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.
15:8-10 “Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she’ll call her friends and neighbours: ‘Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!’ Count on it—that’s the kind of party God’s angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God.”
15:11-32 Then he said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’
“So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.
“That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father.
“When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’
“But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.
“All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’
“The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’
“His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’”
15:8-10 “Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she’ll call her friends and neighbours: ‘Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!’ Count on it—that’s the kind of party God’s angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God.”
15:11-32 Then he said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’
“So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.
“That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father.
“When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’
“But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.
“All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’
“The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’
“His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’”
Reflections
Reflecting on the stories, we hear a sung prayer of Noel Richards, StF 530, To be in your presence, to sit at your feet, where your love surrounds me, and makes me complete.
We notice Jesus’ stories tend to confound our expectations. Those of us who know them well might have been inoculated against this by familiarity, but the surprises are there to be rediscovered.
On that Jerusalem-Jericho Road the last person is the last person the listener would have expected to help the bleeding victim! Samaritans to Jews were the lowest of the low, and the notion of a Good Samaritan would be an utter contradiction in terms.
The bigger-barn-building farmer is a success story, until it isn’t. Suddenly. And the farmer’s choices and values (and fate) challenge ours.
Going after a single missing sheep, when the ninety-nine are in the wilderness, is verging on reckless, and certainly wouldn’t meet the Galilean Chamber of Commerce’s risk assessment protocol. ‘Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine…?’ No, we wouldn’t. We’d play it safe, workout the percentages, and miss the party.
These stories of Jesus, illuminating and reinforcing his teaching, challenge convention and offer new ways of looking at, and living, life. Not least in the category of lost and found.
We lose all kinds of things, some on a daily basis. Objects - keys, notes, glasses, socks (okay – that might just be me). We lose our temper, our balance, our perspective, our marbles (that might be me too). More significantly, we can lose direction, feel we’ve lost value, lose self-respect, lose memories, even hope. And we know what it is to lose a loved one, an experience that can trigger and heighten all those other losses too. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that the experience of losing things is a significant part of being human.
The stories of Jesus teach us that so is the experience of finding and being found – it too is part of being human. We can identify with the woman finding the lost coin, needing to share the news with her friends, to tell someone. We can rejoice that the lost sheep is brought home. And just as we can imagine the despair of prodigal son and grieving father with distance and difficulty between them, so we can rejoice in the finding, the returning, the welcoming, the homecoming. “Given up for lost, and now found!”
Jesus’ stories, as does Jesus’ story, show us that God’s love is the opposite to loss, to being lost, to losing. Jesus’ stories, as does Jesus’ story, teach us that God’s love can find us, we can know we are found, and being found we can face loss with new confidence.
As Jesus journeys through these chapters of Luke’s gospel, from Caesarea Philippi to Jerusalem, from being declared ‘Christ’ to the cross, he is teaching his disciples, then and now, to see loss as gain, and to trust God even when all seems lost. When he greets his friends with words of Easter peace, when he finds them again in the upper room and meets them on the Emmaus Road, he will prove that losing and finding, being lost and found, is not just human experience, but divine also.
The father’s heart breaks when he loses his son, the son’s when he realises he is lost. Both rejoice when they find each other once more. So it is with God. As shepherd, woman, father celebrate the finding, so does God. The missing sheep wandered off, the coin rolled into the dark, the son made a serious misjudgment, or should that be a series of bad judgements, but with each there is joy at the finding. If we recognise ourselves in the story, perhaps we begin to realise that we are being sought, that we can come home. To use the bible’s picturesque language, God’s angels will party at the news of a homecoming.
Being found, being home, won’t stop us losing things, but it will give us a new way of looking. Lost keys, notes, glasses, socks - less anxious, more aware we have other socks! Losing temper, balance, perspective, marbles – a deepening of prayer will help with all these. And those significant things, lost direction, value, self-respect - finding and being found by God creates new possibilities as we open ourselves to God’s plans, and let God’s love fill us, overflow us. If we forget, God remembers, and loves us still – in this is hope.
And what about losing a loved one? Found by God doesn’t mean exempt from the pain of loss, but it does mean conscious of a love that holds our loved one and ourselves in a divine embrace. Baildon friends are deeply saddened at the moment following the death of Tony Capper. Tony was someone who put love into practice every moment of every day, and was loved by all he met. Jenny and the family are sad but thankful, confident that Tony will be dashing around doing good things in God’s presence. Tony lived as someone who knew he had been found by God, and always wanted others to know that too.
Song
You might like to sing, or reflect on the words of John Newton’s hymn StF 440, Amazing grace – I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.
Psalm 137
Last Saturday, not yesterday, a week yesterday, it was our Yorkshire West Methodist District Synod. We usually gather at a school of somewhere across the district and spend the day attending to the church's business, but we gathered instead on Zoom and did what we needed to do. The opening worship was a bit special, and the most special bit of it for me was a psalm newly written by one of our Ministers, Becki Stennett, written as a version of Psalm 137 for the year 2020. She shared it with us and we have permission to share it with you.
By Rev Becki Stennett, Sept. 2020.
(Shared with the Yorkshire West Methodist Synod, 12th September).
Praying for others, and ourselves.
Take some time to pray for any known to you who are experiencing loss – of health; confidence; employment; security; company – and any who feel lost – whether through their choices or actions, those of others, events.Take some time to pray for one another, your church and circuit family, that each might know they are found, and that together we might seek those who feel lost, and rejoice when they are found.
Take some time to pray for yourself, offering your thoughts and prayers honestly to God, acknowledging those elements of lost-ness in your life, opening yourself to God’s forgiveness, love and grace.
The Lord hears our prayer, Thanks be to God.
We pray, with all God’s people, the Lord’s Prayer.
Song
Please sing, or reflect on, Matt Redman’s hymn, (StF 446) I will offer up my life
Closing Prayer
Heavenly Father, we rejoice that when we were lonely and lost you came to meet us in your Son, and rescued us from the prison of our sins. Rejoicing in our fellowship in him, we are glad to be part of his great work today, and share your joy as others discover your promises. Amen
Blessing
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all, now and evermore. Amen
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