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Virtual Worship - 3 January 2021

The Christian Way…

Dealing with hardship


Introduction

Welcome to our worship this morning from Bradford North. My name is Mervyn Flecknoe, I am one of the Lay Pastors at Baildon Methodist Church. Welcome, wherever you are, near or distant. We know that we have worshipping friends with us as far away as Kent and Cornwall this morning. This is the first of seven Sunday Worship sessions entitled “The Christian Way”. If you would like a booklet that covers this series and you have not got one yet, please send an email to laypastors@baildonmethodists.org and we will make sure you get one. The subtitle of the series is: “Learning lessons from the life, teaching, and example of Jesus, about how we can meet life’s challenges.”

This first service is about dealing with hardship, and we shall be using the story of Mary as a starting point for our thoughts, so our first musical contribution is from the lockdown carols recorded in Baildon Methodist Church:

Music

The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came, which you will find in Singing the Faith 187


The Bible Readings

We read the story of Mary, in the Gospels of Matthew, chapter 2, Luke, chapters 1 and 2, and finally, Mark chapter 15. These readings are taken from The Message Version.

Luke 1:26-33

God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin’s name, Mary. Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her...She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. But the angel assured her, “Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.

Luke 2:1-7

So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth to Bethlehem in Judah, David’s town, for the census...He went with Mary, his fiancée, who was pregnant. While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the hostel.

Matthew 2:14-15

After the scholars were gone, God’s angel showed up in Joseph’s dream and commanded, “Get up. Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Stay until further notice. Herod is on the hunt for this child, and wants to kill him.” Joseph obeyed. He got up, took the child and his mother under cover of darkness.

Matthew 2:13-17

They lived in Egypt until Herod’s death...Herod, when he realized that the scholars had tricked him, flew into a rage. He commanded the murder of every little boy two years old and under who lived in Bethlehem and its surrounding hills.

Mark 15:17-20

They dressed him up in purple and put a crown plaited from a thornbush on his head. Then they began their mockery: “Bravo, King of the Jews!” They banged on his head with a club, spit on him, and knelt down in mock worship. After they had had their fun, they took off the purple cape and put his own clothes back on him. Then they nailed him to the cross.

Collect for the day

Mary, mother of Jesus,
we thank you for your selfless example of how to bear hardship,
and pray that we too may show fortitude in the face of difficulty, sorrow, and pain,
understanding that others also suffer hardship
with courage and sacrifice,
Amen

Commentary

We believe that Mary was a young teenager when she learned that she was pregnant. As an unmarried mother in a society where this was an offence punishable by stoning to death, this could have been the worst possible news any girl could receive. But Mary’s response, recorded by St Luke, was the Magnificat, which contains the wonderful words: “I’m dancing the song of my Saviour God…I’m the most fortunate woman on earth! What God has done for me will never be forgotten.”

We are so deeply aware of the Bible stories, that we are sometimes unable to empathise with the characters because we know what comes next, you see? It is surely remarkable that Mary refused to see herself as a victim of circumstances and was able to interpret finding herself as pregnant as being an announcement by an angel. She was able to see herself as a member of a team effort in a noble cause, bringing Jesus to birth and raising him so that he could achieve his mission.

Right at the end of her pregnancy, Mary had to accompany Joseph on what must have been at least a three-day journey to Bethlehem; we always think of Mary on a donkey, but there is no evidence for this in the Bible. She then found herself giving birth in a dirty stable, well, I have never seen a clean one, with only a carpenter for a midwife.

Matthew then tell us that, terrified by the threat of a raid to kill her baby, she then had to embark on a much longer journey to Egypt. She then experienced life as a refugee, exiled from her parents and from all that was familiar to her; living in fear of Herod after the massacre of the innocents. What a combination of the worst fear a mother can have, and the rejection and persecution that usually faces refugees!

We know that being a parent is for life and not just for Christmas. Mary shared the experience of many parents in not fully understanding her son, his motivations, or his desires for the future. Finally, she had to watch as he died publicly, under prolonged torture.

Prayers of Penitence and Dedication

Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that we have not dealt with hardship very well.
We have sometimes allowed ourselves to become resentful, thinking that we have suffered unfairly.
We have looked at the lives of others and only seen the best bits to fuel our envy.
We have sometimes allowed hardship to excuse us from our Christian duty to build each other up.
For these, our sins, we repent.
Help us to understand that there are always people worse off than we are who need our help.
That there are those who envy us our health, our wealth, or our families.
We pledge ourselves to build each other up.
We pledge ourselves to use our own suffering to understand what others are going through.
We pledge ourselves to live as helpers and not as victims. Amen
Now please join me in saying the Lord’s prayer in whichever version suits you:

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.

Commentary

Once the excitement of replacing stone tools with bronze axes and then with iron ploughs had taken place, people found that they were living in settled villages rather than travelling camps. Not a lot then changed in the next 2000 years. It was into this society that Mary was born. It was therefore a society in which the experiences of ancestors was much more directly relevant than it is for us today. With only expensive, feeble, candle lighting, and no TV, the winter evenings would have dragged on if storytelling had not provided entertainment. So, we believe that, as is still common in our Muslim communities, many people knew their Bibles off by heart. Stories about ancestors would have taken the place of soap operas on TV.

We must also remember that nearly all the women in the Bible lived as possessions of either their fathers or of their husbands, having no rights; the equivalent of what we would call slavery.

Matthew’s Gospel gives us a list of the ancestors of Jesus, it is a list that Mary would have known well. It contains the names of just four women, one was Bathsheba, a married woman who was taken as a sexual partner by King David, who then had her husband killed. Then there was Tamar, a woman whom Judah used as a prostitute and then condemned her to death, until he found that she was carrying his twin heirs. Rahab, courageously put herself in danger by sheltering Joshua’s spies, only to see all her friends and relatives massacred by the invaders whom she had sheltered. Ruth, as a young widow, became a refugee and stranger, and had to seduce Boaz in order to feed herself and her mother-in-law. What a catalogue of hardship!

Mary knew that hardship was par for the course; it seemed that all her ancestors had suffered hardship too. So perhaps it didn’t feel like either punishment or unfairness. All these women, together with Mary, were in God’s team to bring Jesus to Earth as our guide, teacher, and example. It helps to get through hardship if you feel that you are part of a team, contributing to a noble purpose.

We have so many examples before us. We can choose to read about celebrities, about badly behaved footballers, or about how heroes have coped with hardship. We can mourn our hardship or learn from it. We can use hardship as grounds for dissatisfaction, or use it to give us empathy with those who are worse off.

Prayers of Intercession

Those watching this service will hear prayers of intercession from two of our regular internet congregation in Dover, Kent. For many years, Graham was the editor of the Dover Express, which was constantly fighting campaigns on behalf of the poorest in society, including those arriving in Dover in inflatable boats. We invite you to spend some moments here making your own intercessions with God about issues important to you. However, please remember those trying to cross the perilous strait between France and England in overloaded, leaky inflatables.

Commentary

Imagine you were in one of those inflatable boats, having spent your entire family’s wealth to purchase your ticket to England, to escape violence from, say, the Sudan. Imagine the boat, mid-channel, leaking air and dumping you, and everyone else into the water. Imagine how you would feel bobbing there in your life jacket, cold, wet, having lost everything. You are a victim, awaiting someone to rescue you, helpless, unable to do anything. Imagine then you see someone else’s child, without a life jacket, just going down for the third time nearby. Suddenly, you are no longer a victim, you become a rescuer. The point is that hardship is relative. It depends whether you can see a purpose for yourself.

At every point on the scale of human wealth, it is possible to envy someone above, and pity someone below; which of these we choose to do determines whether we are victims of fate, or courageous lifeboatmen to the rescue.

Music

Our next hymn is “Eternal Father strong to save” No. 517 in Singing the Faith.” 

Commentary

What have we found out today about how we might deal with hardship? First, if we can understand that hardship is part of the human condition, rather than a punishment or an unfairness, it is easier to bear. Stripping out resentment, or a feeling of being picked on, leaves us with only the hardship to deal with. To understand how very ordinary hardship is, we do need to look beyond superficial dealings with our friends and relatives, to understand more of their lives, to empathise and assist where we can. We need to do more than giving money to WaterAid, Oxfam, or Avaaz, we need to try to understand the lives of the people we are helping, as Mary would have understood the hardships of her ancestors. This may be more difficult for us than for Mary because all her ancestors would have lived lives similar to her own. Whereas now, as some of the richest people on the planet, we struggle to understand what it is like to live in constant contact with poverty, dirt, and disease.

The second lesson for us, revealed in the Magnificat, is to find joy in every corner of our lives. If we can find reason to give thanks, we are home and dry. We must try to see ourselves more as lifeboat crew than as victims of circumstances. “Count your blessings”, my mother would have said. Joy will come by having a purpose to build each other up. At the beginning of the year, we can change tack, we can take on a new role, or we can give up a role that no longer fits to take up a role that is more needing of our attention. Next Sunday is our Covenant Sunday, a time for renewal of vows, a time of change for the better.

If the life of Jesus tells us nothing else, it tells us this: Sometimes, it is our Christian duty to seek out hardship; to put on hardship as a garment that enables us to serve. The people whom we admire most are often those who have filled their lives with hardship, whether fostering children, working in refugee camps, rescuing people from burning buildings, or manning lifeboats.

Let us rejoice in every good thing, and all will be well; it may not be perfect; it may not be easy; but if we can see our purpose, how our lives can help make the lives of others better, then all will be well.

Music

Our last hymn, for those watching, will be Stuart Townend’s version of 23rd Psalm. You are invited to read the psalm instead.

Blessing

Next week, our covenant service will be conducted by Rev Phil Drake; his subject in our series of services is “Stepping Down”, handing our work on to others.

I wish you all a very joyful New Year, full of service, full of purpose, full of thanksgiving. Finally, from John 16:33: In this World you will have trouble, but have no fear, I have overcome the World.

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