Doing Church Differently - COVID 19: Worship at Home

In our Worship at Home services for the rest of August, our Scriptural focus will be thinking about what it means to be church. We begin this week by looking at the moment when Jesus declares, “I will build my church and the gates of Hades (or hell) will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18) Then for the next three Sundays we will look at passages from the Sermon on the Mount as we consider some aspects of the Church’s life.

Introduction:

Preparing for Worship – A Prayer of Approach

Spend a moment in quiet, before using the following prayer as you begin your worship.

Ever present and ever living God,
you are the same yesterday, today and forever,
but we are not!

As we live in changing and uncertain times,
help us to step aside from toil, tribulation and tumult
to centre and still our hearts on you.

Here in this place, here in this moment,
I choose to rest in your presence and to worship you,
In the name of Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.

Hymn – StF 690 – The Church’s One Foundation - https://youtu.be/Nr7rbeMAmN8

A Period of Confession (taken from A Wee Worship Book (4) – Wild Goose Publications – 1999)

Holy God, Maker of all,
Have mercy on us.
Jesus Christ, Son of Mary,
Have mercy on us.
Holy Spirit, breath of life,
Have mercy on us.

Music – either listen to the tune or sing StF 371 – Breathe on Me, Spirit of Jesus - https://youtu.be/sgoMx3RS1fs

In the community of Christ’s Church
and in the presence of God’s people,
I confess to God that I have sinned
in thought, word and deed.
I have not loved God, cared for God’s world,
or respected God’s people as I should.
I own my responsibility and pray for God’s pardon.

May God forgive you,
Christ befriend you
and the Spirit renew and change your life. Amen.

Engaging with Scripture

Reading Matthew 16:13-20

13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’

14 They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’

15 ‘But what about you?’ he asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’

16 Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’

17 Jesus replied, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Reflection on Scripture

In toil and tribulation,
and tumult of her war,
she waits the consummation
of peace for evermore.

In its 2000 years of existence, the church has endured many times of toil, tribulation and tumult. Sometimes the church has stood firm within a troubled society offering a beacon of hope and stability and at other times the church has experienced its own storms and fallen to the temptation to become so preoccupied with internal quarrels that we have risked becoming irrelevant to the world around us.

Through plagues, wars, natural disasters and catastrophes of our own making, the church has continued to watch and wait, sometimes willingly, at others seemingly reluctantly, for that promised consummation of human history when the rule and reign of God is fully established and peace fills the earth for evermore.

In the various seasons and scenes of the Church’s history, and in the different places where people have gathered as Church, Christians have had to learn to adapt and reassess their expectations so that we can continue to be faithful to our call as disciples of Christ. And we are living through another such season.

Whatever happens in the next few months, we know that the way in which the Church gathers together and the worship we share is going to look very different for some time to come. We can be fairly sure that it will be extremely difficult for the whole church to come together in the immediate future as we have to protect the vulnerable and pay attention to our responsibility to contribute to the current public health crisis facing our society. None of us can say with any certainty that what we become in the future will look the same as things did before we entered lockdown.

For us, as part of the British Church, the idea that it may not be possible for us to freely and safely gather feels new. It hasn’t come about because of persecution or a legal ban on our faith and religion: unexpectedly it has come about because of a global pandemic. The cause may be different but the effects are the same. Over the next few weeks as some are able to gather again whilst others have to continue to shield and protect themselves we may feel the effect more vividly. Despite all of this, we are still church. Those who eventually meet under the chapel roof and those who continue to worship at home are part of the One Church built on the One Foundation.

In today’s Gospel passage, we listen in to the moment when Jesus asks his disciples the question, that seems to be pivotal in their walk with Jesus, “Who do you say I am?”

It comes as they approach Caesarea Philippi, a city built and named to glorify the Roman emperor and his puppet-king Philip (Son of Herod). We might imagine the disciples discussing the architecture and speculating about what this grandiose monument said about the emperor and his vassal. And we might further visualise Jesus cutting into this kind of gossipy conversation by asking them the question that really mattered.

It is clear from Jesus’ response, that Peter’s answer gets right to the heart of the matter, “You are the Messiah (Christ), the Son of the Living God” (v16) In Jesus’ response we get some insight into what it means to be church, and this might help us as we find our way through the coming months.

Jesus tells him that his answer is inspired, “This was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.” (v17)

The first point, then is that the Church is the community of people that have something to say about Jesus. The disciples’ conversation reveals that many people have many things to say about Jesus! However, the Church are those who have allowed God to show them what it means to call Jesus, “Messiah” and “the Son of the Living God.”

From early on Christians have made the bold claim that in Jesus, God had become human to dwell among us. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Cor 5:19 ESV)

The Christian belief, then is that Jesus is the Messiah or Christ, the Anointed One of God and that he is God the Son in human form who came into the world to call humans back into a right relationship with God. Paul tells us that the message or Good News about this has been trusted to the Church and that it is our task to make known what God has done.

Jesus says pretty much the same thing to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven …” (v19)

So, then, as well as having something to say about Jesus, the church is the community that has been given the task of opening up the things of heaven for the people of earth.

The Church was never given the task of deciding who could and could not become a member of the family of faith, and much of the conflict mentioned earlier has been because, over the centuries, we have stepped over the boundaries of what is ours to decide and what is God’s. Our task, is to make sure that the message is proclaimed and the door is held open so that those who wish to explore what God has done in Jesus can easily find their way into God’s presence.

One of the challenges facing us in the coming months is what it means to hold open the door of faith and the door to God’s kingdom when we are not necessarily able to fully open the doors of our buildings. For churches that have exercised their mission through hospitality that is a particular challenge, because we have learnt how to create a physical space that is warm and welcoming and that allows people to encounter God’s goodness and for now we cannot do mission that way as we did before.

Yet the early church did not have the luxury of buildings to call its own and maybe we will need to be creative in how we exercise hospitality in future. Finding ways in which we can remain open enough to invite people to encounter God for themselves is always a challenge, whether we are in our buildings or not. So, for example, where we have been used to inviting people to join us at the church coffee morning, it may be, for now, that we have to make use of the park benches near the coffee shops as places to meet and to talk about the things that matter to us, to our friends and to God. And I know that this is what some people in our churches have been doing! It could be that one affect of Covid is that it is prompting the church to become visible in the marketplace once more?

The other part of what Jesus says to Peter may seem a little strange, “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (v19)

The word bind here refers to the binding of bodies ready for burial in the 1^st century. Perhaps then, Jesus is telling Peter that the church will become a community that discerns the difference between those things which are alive and whose which are dead. Church, as we were doing it in 2020, would not have been recognisable to Peter, Paul and the churches they were talking to in the 1^st Century. It may even have been unrecognisable to the communities that inhabited our buildings in 1920! Those who have been around longest will probably recognise that what we do today has changed from what they knew when they were children or young adults. Church changes.

Of course the dry text of Church council meetings can never capture the full discussion and debate that takes place as successive generations of Church councils have wrestled with what it is best to do next. Each time we decide to stop doing an old thing or try something new, we undergo a process of discerning which things still have life and can set loose the work of God, and which things have now completed their task and can be bound up and left to rest with thanksgiving.

Throughout the centuries the life of God has inspired the people of God to seek new and fresh ways of opening up the things of heaven to the people of earth. Perhaps in this moment, the Spirit of God is challenging us to decide where we will put our energy – will it be spent trying to bring back to life something that had actually served its purpose and would now be better if it were bound up and laid to rest with thanksgiving, or will it be spent exploring those things that still have life and those which are new and creative ways to hold out the hope of the Good News of God in Christ reconciling the world?

The truth is it probably has to be a combination of both –and that is where we will need to be careful in praying together, listening together and planning together for what our mission in the second half of 2020 and in the new decade will be Where we decide that old things have now passed, we are not saying that God has lost interest in us, rather we can give thanks for the way those things helped us to experience God, but also rejoice that God is still at work in our world and in us inspiring us to find fresh and new ways of communicating the Good News.

So, for now, when we continue our preparations so that we can begin again to gather together for worship. It will be different as congregations sit apart from each other, and worship without singing, as we leave without the customary cuppa, and as we pay attention to those who have not been able to be with us because their vulnerability means it is safer for them to stay away. It has to be different but difference is not something to fear, it can be something to embrace as a new way for us to declare our faith in the living God. Let us move forward in hope, that in the weeks, months and even years to come, what is different for us, might become the way others encounter God and say for themselves, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”

The church of yesterday, the church of today and the church of the years to come share our universal declaration “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” And may we continue to be those communities who hold open the doors to welcome new disciples. May we continue to be those communities who are finding lively ways of communicating the Good news.

till with the vision glorious
her longing eyes are blest,
at last the Church victorious
shall be the Church at rest.

Hymn – Singing the Faith 297 – Christ is Alive! Let Christians Sing - https://youtu.be/bi67IOed0LE

Intercessions

Everlasting God, we thank you for the gift of your Son Jesus Christ and for revealing him as Messiah and Saviour of the World. Thank you that your son gave St Peter the keys to the kingdom as a reward for his lively and outspoken faith and so became the bedrock foundation of your church here on earth.

(Short Silence)