Virtual Worship - 11 April 2021

Stay alive in the Spirit

Welcome to the first of seven services from Bradford North Circuit that will address the question “How can we use the COVID-19 crisis to get the church back on track?” The series is called “Stay Alive in the Spirit” and an outline booklet is available for you to download. You are welcome wherever you are.

Week 1, Setting the Scene

Service sheet (pdf)

Call to worship

Let’s begin right up to date with Psalm 137, written in about 600BCE. The writer was one of a group of people who were not allowed by the authorities to worship in their own temple; they are puzzled about how they will ever be able to worship again. Does this sound familiar? The psalm will be sung on the video by group called Boney M which you are probably too young to remember.

A Collect for Today

God of Change, comfort us in our fear, as we let your Spirit roam through our church, overturning treasured tables, driving out cherished prejudice and irrelevance, bringing in the wind of change so that our church on Earth may benefit all your people
Amen

Reflection

You will see that people have always been puzzled about how to change when change is a glaring necessity.

The Jewish people had been captured en-masse and taken into exile. They were lost, they only knew how to worship in their temple in Jerusalem and it had been destroyed, there was no going back to how things were, things would never be the same again. Does that sound just a little bit familiar?

Many churches just now are considering how they can reopen. Some older people have passed away, some office holders have given up, some buildings have suffered damage during lockdown. There is no returning to business as usual; well, maybe the Holy Spirit is saying Hallelujah! It wasn’t working for us anyway! If your church is expanding by taking in lots of new young Christians, you are in the wrong broadcast. But for the rest of us, how we were conducting our church life was responsible for what the church was like. How many new Christians had joined us in the last year? How many church offices had passed to younger people?

Let’s just have a peek at the changes that established the early church and got thousands of new converts in a single day.

John the Baptist’s dad was a priest. John would have learned from day one: this is the law, this is how we do things in our religion, not like the heathens! How big a step was it for John to start telling the pharisees that they were a nest of snakes, betraying the religion that they were supposed to uphold? What did his friends and neighbours think of this U-turn?

Jesus had been a carpenter, he could have continued to do that, nice, regular earner, people always breaking stuff that needs mending. How big a step was it to go from that security to spend forty days in the desert and then become an itinerant preacher? What did his friends and neighbours think of this U-turn?

We are not sure who Mary Magdalene was but, in Jesus Christ Superstar, she sings about Jesus: “I don’t know how to love him…I’ve been changed, really changed… he scares me so.” Along with the other women and men whom Jesus met, she experienced real life-change. What did her friends and neighbours think of this U-turn?

Matthew had been a tax collector, in those days tax collectors were known for their corruption and disloyalty, working effectively for the occupying power. Peter had been a fisherman. Simon probably was still a Zealot, perhaps our nearest equivalent was a member of the Real IRA. See how their lives changed! What did their friends and neighbours think of their U-turns?

St Paul was a tent-maker and had been raised as a pharisee, he learned to count all his learning as nothing once he discovered his preaching mission to the gentiles. I wonder whether all his friends and fellow pharisees carried on sending him birthday cards? What did his friends and neighbours think of this U-turn?

Song

Our next hymn is “The Church’s one foundation" which you will find in Singing the Faith 690

Reading from Luke chapter 3

When crowds of people came out for baptism because it was the popular thing to do, John exploded:

“Brood of snakes! What do you think you’re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to deflect God’s judgment? It’s your life that must change, not your skin. And don’t think you can pull rank by claiming Abraham as ‘father.’ Being a child of Abraham is neither here nor there—children of Abraham are a dime a dozen. God can make children from stones if he wants. What counts is your life. Is it green and flourishing? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on the fire.”

The crowd asked him, “Then what are we supposed to do?”

“If you have two coats, give one away, Do the same with your food.”

Tax men also came to be baptized and said, “Teacher, what should we do?”

“No more extortion—collect only what is required by law.”

Soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

“No harassment, no blackmail—and be content with your rations.”

The interest of the people by now was building. They were all beginning to wonder, “Could this John be the Messiah?”

“No! I’m baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you

Prayer

I worry, Lord, you know, about the church and its potential to sustain us and to grow, to become a power essential to upcoming generations as they struggle to reverse our inequality of nations, and lack of loving, which is worse. I fear that I may be the stumbling block that stops the church expanding. When I take stock, it seems that I may be a little too demanding and require that others share the same beliefs and understanding. So, grant to me humility to step aside, and let the younger ones get in their stride, Blossom with awe and wonder that will refresh your holy church…You may just need a quiet helping hand, a roady, not the leader of the band, If that is so, call off the search, I can be your man. But then, if you’re requiring big changes in our worship; If the Spirit is inspiring us to show entrepreneurship And you really want disciples who will lead the revolution Then, trusting you, we dedicate ourselves to be part of the solution. Amen

The Lord’s Prayer

Reflection

John the Baptist, Jesus, his disciples, and St Paul, all lived in troubled times. The government was corrupt and ineffective. There were great inequalities of wealth and power. This was a critical, pivotal, time in history. Does any of this sound familiar? But the early church flourished against this background, mainly amongst the poor and the oppressed. Now that doesn’t sound like the church that we have today, does it?

Let’s just go back to the prophecy of Isaiah, not because he had a crystal ball, but because he was a man who could see the way the wind was blowing. So, 160 years before the Israelites were coming to terms with their new conditions in exile, as recorded in the psalm 137, Isaiah (in chapter 57) had been urging people to change “Build up, build up, prepare the road! Remove the obstacles of the way of my people…”There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.” His hearers had taken no notice for 160 years.

That is a similar amount of time since our first warnings about climate change by Arrhenius and Chamberlin. We have not done any better than the Jews had done between 760 and 600 BCE. Joshua Lederberg told us in 1990 that “the biggest threat to man’s continued dominance is the virus”. Luckily, we have two aircraft carriers and some nuclear-armed submarines, but we arrived in January 2020 unprepared for a pandemic.

We, as human beings, generally don’t heed warnings, we don’t prepare for predicted catastrophe. We like to think that things are going to carry on much as they have been doing. Like the brothers of Dives, we in the church have not listened to prophets. Human beings resist change, and then we cry “Foul” when predicted catastrophe strikes. The church is declining, and it is the fault of everybody else; nothing that we have done could have contributed to the decline, could it?

John the Baptist came to warn people that they had to change, to repent from their previous ungodly ways and to open their hearts and minds to the message that Jesus would bring. Some did. Some didn’t. We should remember his warnings as our society emerges from lockdown and all the non-essential shops reopen so that we could go out and buy all those things that we don’t need.

If we, as a church, continue to do what we have always done, to use the language that we have always used, to keep using the metaphors that we have always used without thinking about how obscure they may seem to outsiders, to continue with our habits that are wrecking the climate and depleting biodiversity, then we will fade away, we will continue to alienate the young, and we will betray our descendants and those around the world in low lying countries and in parched equatorial lands who are our cousins and neighbours, we will be betraying our Saviour all over again. We must change. Over the next few weeks, a series of worship leaders will help us consider the issues.

Song

Our next hymn is by Tim Dudley-Smith: “Lord for the years your love has kept and guided urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way” which you will find in Singing the Faith 470. It reminds us to be thankful for the continued presence and assistance of our Lord in the person of the Holy Spirit. We are not alone in this crisis.

Last verse: Lord for ourselves in living power remake us, self upon the cross and Christ up on the throne, past put behind us, for the future take us, lord of our lives to live for Christ alone.

Prayer

We pray for all those who will lead our worship over the next six weeks up to Pentecost.

We pray for those who will resist the message of change because it feels disloyal to the church they know and love, because they are tired of keeping things going, because they have lost touch with the Holy Spirit.

We pray for those outside the church, those who, in a few months, will become part of our community although we don’t know them just yet, and maybe they don’t know us either.

We pray for the officers of this church, and of every church, who fear the change from “keeping things going” to “responding to your Spirit”.

We pray for those whose churches will close, who will see their cherished spiritual home put to other uses, who will have to decide whether to join another worshipping community.

We pray for those who are going to have to hand over power to others, to see their cherished systems changed, to see mistakes being made and nonetheless to be supportive of their successors.

We make all these prayers in the hope that we will be able to change to do your will for this Earth that sustains us and gives us a home.

Amen

Reflection

Let us imagine that the church is our house, and that we are opening the door to long-awaited guests. Is the front door clearly marked, is it open, is it light and warm inside? What about the front room, the sanctuary, is it welcoming or strange? What about if the new guest wants to help in the kitchen, or in the workshop? How willing are we to learn from our new guests? We are the hosts. There is no-one else to do the welcoming. We are the ones responsible for the welcome. The first gift to the Early Church was the gift of speaking so that everybody could understand. Can our new guest understand what we are talking about? Can new guests understand our language, our metaphors, our theology? Let us hope that our mission to welcome will become clearer over the next few weeks.

Next week’s service will be led by Rev Christine Crabtree. Its title is “Every Person Matters” and, Yes, that means You! And our friends and neighbours! And all the people who annoy us! And the children of our great grandchildren! Looking forward to it…

Blessing

Let us close saying this blessing together:

Come with us, Lord Jesus;
Fill us with your Spirit;
Shape us to your likeness;
Use us to enfold with love our needy world.