Virtual Worship - 21 February 2021

 

Service Sheet (pdf)

Call to worship

Behold, I make all things new, Beginning with you, And starting from today. Behold, I make all things new, My promise is true, For I am Christ the way.
Words and Music: John Bell

Welcome

Hello and welcome to our Sunday worship today. I’m Deacon Merry Evans one of the ministers working with Methodist churches, people and projects across the North of Bradford.
This is the beginning of Lent. These days few of us engage in strict fasting, but still observe Lent as a time of denial and preparation for Easter. We still ask, and get asked, “What are you giving up for Lent?”. Some of us give up small luxuries during this time, or take on a discipline of prayer or spiritual reading and contemplation. Doing so connects us emotionally to the period when Jesus went into the wilderness to get closer to God. We shall be thinking about wilderness later on in our service.

Reading

Mark 1: 9-15 Reader: Margaret Parr – Howarth Road Methodist Church

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” 12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. 14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Bible Gateway: New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Song

John the Baptist was thought of as a prophet. He spoke to crowds of people, calling them to turn away from wrong doing and from wrong thinking, and to turn towards God. He baptised them in the water as a sign of that new start. Then Jesus comes, and he too is plunged into the river by John. This is a sign that he too is committing himself to follow God’s way. Jesus then hears the call of the spirit leading him into the wilderness for forty days- a long time.

STF 189: Wild and lone the prophet’s voice. Frodsham Methodist Church
Or HAP 130 Forty Days and forty nights

Lent Liturgy:

Reader:John Parr – Howarth Road Methodist Church

Our Lord Jesus Christ said: ‘The first commandment is, “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these’. ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.’

Prayers of Confession

Lord, you are steadfast in your love and infinite in your mercy;
You welcome sinners and invite them to be your guests.
We confess our sins, trusting in you to forgive us. Lord, have mercy.
We have yielded to temptation and sinned. Lord, have mercy.
We have turned from our neighbours in their need. Lord have mercy.
We have resisted your word in our hearts. Lord have mercy.
May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and keep us in life eternal. Amen.

Collect:

Almighty God, whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit
and, as you know our weakness, so may we know your power to save;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Canticle: 

Saviour of the world Read 795 STF/ 829 HAP

Sermon:

My Dad worked for the civil Service. He once had to arrange a meeting with his counterparts from Europe. The meeting was to be in Scotland and the European contingent were complaining about the length of time scheduled for travelling to and from the meeting and questioning the need to stay in a hotel for two days either side of the meeting. My Dad commented that he now realised most people in Europe had little idea about how remote parts of Scotland actually are.

The meeting was held in Campbelltown. Although it is only about 50 miles from Glasgow as the crow flies, it is actually 138 miles by road. And a lot of those roads are actually single-track roads so it’s a 7 hour round trip. In terms of access, it must be the remotest town on the whole of the British mainland. I never wondered why they had to have a meeting there! As I think it about it now, I can only assume it was to do with spending some international funds in the area. For some reason I remembered my Dad’s throw away comment about its isolation.

In my 20’s, I had a holiday in Rothesay and it occurred to me, looking at the map and remembering Dad’s comment about Campbelltown, that I would drive down the peninsula to see just how remote it was. I never got there! It took me so long to get half way that I just knew I had to turn around and go back or I would either have to stay there overnight or risk travelling for hours on dangerously narrow and twisty roads in the utter dark. However, I did stop around the half way point and found a viewpoint looking out over the sea towards the Isle of Arran. I tried to find a picture of this view to show you but couldn’t find one. And although this isn’t the view

towards Arran, it’s a bit like how I remember it. A huge open space, sunny, looking out over the sea from a high point. Sitting in such a landscape can move one deeply. It stirs the soul. As I sat there, I felt connected to nature, to the sea, to the sky, to the earth. Gradually I became acutely aware that there probably wasn’t another human being for twenty or thirty miles, except perhaps on the Island across the sound. I suddenly felt very strange, even a little panicky as I realised how I was utterly alone. I don’t think I would have called that locality a wilderness, but it was definitely remote. And because of the feelings I experienced I began to realise that Wilderness is as much about one’s state of mind as it is about a place. Have you ever been alone in a place, so remote, that it began to affect your state of mind?

The Gospel of Mark doesn’t tell us much about Jesus in the wilderness so we tend to fill in the gaps, and imagine that he was wandering about, alone, taking shelter wherever he could, or that he found a cave and stayed there for much of the time. Perhaps he, too, was acutely aware that there wasn’t another human being for twenty or thirty miles. In all likelihood he will have felt very strange, even a little panicky as he realised how utterly alone he was. If I had felt strange after only 40 minutes looking out over the sea towards Arran Jesus must have felt very strange indeed during 40 days of isolation. In Scotland, having come so far into a remote place, I had turned round and beetled back to my holiday flat. He stayed in the desert, committed to searching out what the Spirit was trying to teach him about his calling.

In his isolation he must have had periods of intense boredom, mixed with times of incredibly strong emotion and frustration. There must have been lots of unsettling experiences, including perhaps meeting with wild animals. The whole experience must have been disturbing to his state of mind. We can imagine that his wilderness experience was not just about surviving in the hardship of an extreme landscape, but going through times of turmoil in his mind, times of feeling strongly connected to nature around him, the rocks, the sky, the earth, the animals. (Perhaps too there may have been times when he felt close to God.) This was a testing time for Jesus. That verse from the letter to the Hebrews comes to mind, …that Jesus was “one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” What he went through in the wilderness is what we go through in our wildernesses.

There must have been a moment when Jesus realised this wilderness time had come to an end. He was now ready, and set off proclaiming the start of his mission, his work for God. “The time is now, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Jesus had faced his time of testing, difficult as it must have been, and come through the other side. The experience seems to have changed him. It was a turning point in his life.
What can we learn from this?

When I talk with Christians about what they feel to be testing times they often ask: Where is God in this? Why has God abandoned me?

Their head knows and believes that God is always there, but they don’t feel it. They become confused, or disappointed, or angry, or depressed. For some people, previous experience has shown them that ‘Carrying on’ is all that is required, and for many that works. As someone said to me just this week about the loneliness of lockdown “I remind myself that eventually ‘This too will pass’.” Going through the difficult time, persevering, seeing it through to the end is all that it takes. Staying faithful to normal routine carries them onwards. Although their times of prayer may be mechanical, feels empty and void, eventually everything works through.

But for some, that isn’t enough. Carrying on just doesn’t work. Or as someone in a support group I used to run once said, “I can’t cope with coping.” This person’s state of mind was affected by the relentless, ongoing problems which never changed. Their wilderness just went on and on, even beyond 40 days. Even beyond 40 months.

A lot of what passes for Christian spirituality these days is about looking for God’s ever-loving arms and celebrating the love we can feel coming from God as a loving parent, to us as a beloved child of God. And that is good. But it isn’t everything. Some Christians think that this is how they should feel all the time. But it isn’t so. In our reading we read that a voice from heaven came to Jesus, saying “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” And, of course, that is true for all of us, we are well loved by God ‘as his children’. And sometimes that will be confirmed in us by deep and warm feelings and sensations. But as we have just read, after this voice is heard comes the call into the Wilderness, to be tested and tempted.

All of us can expect that we will be called to times of challenge in our own unique wildernesses. Those can be challenging times. In wilderness times, deep parts of ourselves will come to the surface, parts which are frequently the darker, less pleasant sides of ourselves. Traditionally these were thought of as ‘deadly sins’: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. These are the parts of us that we sometimes think of as the temptations we have to battle with. These are likely to be the things that come to the surface if we take seriously this time of Lent as a time of denial. During that struggle the question arises, who has the upper hand: your will, or the deadly sin?

If you decided to observe this lent as a period of denial then be prepared at some point to enter into a wilderness, where you are tested against one of these deadly sins, or as I sometimes think of them, as ‘universal personality traits’. Be prepared to enter, to a greater or lesser extent, a state of mind where you may become disorientated, feel isolated, have disturbing moments of emotion, feel angry, listless, or argumentative. Climb a mountain, go to a quiet place, talk to God about it but don’t avoid these things. Face them and don’t give in. The story I told you about going to visit Campbelltown resulted in me abandoning the journey and going back to the safety of what I knew, to the comfort of my holiday home. I was only mildly disturbed, but I didn’t see the journey through. And although you might think that your trial might be of a lesser order than the trials Jesus went through, think of yourself as by his side, and going through the wilderness together. For Jesus was “one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” He saw it through. With his help you can see your wilderness through too.

Song: 

STF 728 O God you search me and you know me or HAP 883 (Psalm 139)

Prayers:

• Father, we pray for all who are going through a time of trial or temptation at the moment. Strengthen and protect them all. Make us quick to encourage one another and slow to criticise.
• We pray that your church may always hold true to your truth and love, with your love.
• We pray for those in positions of power that they may not give way to corruption but work with integrity.
• We pray for those in our families and those who live in our neighbourhood, that we may live in harmony together.
• We pray for those in prison, and for those imprisoned by guilt.
• We pray for those who have died through neglect, mismanagement of resources, from violence, and from oppression.
• Father we thank you for the way you protect and enfold us every moment of every day.

Merciful Father, accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen. Susan Sayers, New Intercessions for the church year, 1995 Kevin Mayhew.

Lord’s prayer

Song

Either O Lord the clouds are gathering, NMCGB, Graham Kendrick, MAYC Orchestra & Singers OneSound,  or: STF 233 / HAP 132 When Jesus came to Jordan

Blessing:

May the enveloping love of the God the creator, the living presence of Jesus the redeemer, and the glorious light of the Spirit the sustainer, be with you and those you love, now and for always. Amen.