Worship at Home - 6th September 2020.

 

Introduction

This Sunday (6^th September) is the first Sunday of the new Connexional Year.  Rev^d Richard Teal (President of Conference) and Carolyn Lawrence (Vice President) have chosen as their 

theme The Best of All is God is With Us.

They wish to encourage the people called Methodists to make this a Year of Prayer.  To this end, we are invited to join with other Methodists in a weekly prayer meeting – details can be found here: https://www.methodist.org.uk/our-work/our-work-in-britain/evangelism-growth/year-of-prayer/ 

The Lectionary readings for this week remind us of the importance of our “continuing debt to love another.”  (Romans 13.8)  Holding each other in prayer is one way that we can demonstrate this love. 

Image:  (c) TMCP- 2020

Call to Worship

(Words from ‘Service of Holy Communion for use in a Home or Hospital’ – Methodist Worship Book – p 225)

With angels and archangels
and with all your people on earth and in heaven,
we proclaim your glorious name,
evermore praising you and saying:

Holy, holy, holy Lord,
God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessèd is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

 

Hymn – Singing the Faith 571 – As your family, Lord, see us here. – (tune Kum-ba-yah) - https://youtu.be/vC8Im0ERXKE

 

Opening Prayer (based on Ephesians 3.14-21)

 

Father,
from whom every family in heaven derives its name
according to your glorious riches
strengthen us with power through your Spirit
and in Christ, dwell in our hearts through faith.


Root and establish us in your love
that together in Christ
we might see the width and length, height and depth
of your great love for us and for all of your creation.


You are able to do immeasurably more than
we ask or imagine,
to you be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
in this as in all generations. For ever and ever! Amen

 

Engaging with Scripture

 

Reading: James 5:13-18

 

¹³ Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. ¹⁴ Is anyone among you ill? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵ And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. ¹⁶ Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

¹⁷ Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. ¹⁸ Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

 

 

Hymn – StF 501 Help Us, O Lord, to Learn - https://youtu.be/6pJJGnDivEo

 Reflection

 

Which words would you use to describe your experience of the last 6 months? What you would say has probably changed as time has gone on. How would you describe the most difficult things to deal with? What things have brought the most joy — would you have expected it to be this way?

And what about today?

September is associated with beginnings in lots of different ways — for Methodists it is the beginning of the Connexional year. Usually, it means that things are beginning to start up again after the quieter spell in August: it’s not unusual for September to begin with a slight improvement in the weather which is a bonus for those who wait for schools to return before they take their summer break! In a year that has been so different in so many ways, September is different too. It has become a period when we are exploring the ways in which we can safely reopen our buildings for public worship. This has brought with it a new set of questions for us as individuals and as church communities especially the various Church Councils.

Considering what the future might bring has resulted in a range of emotions. For some, there is the grief of realising that it is still not safe for them to be back among groups of people. For others, the question is more about the feelings that come from the thought of seeing people again after so long. For the Church, we need to ask ourselves (again) questions about our purpose and our mission.

The Methodist Church, in its official advice about reopening, has urged churches to put mission at the heart of our thinking. Central to this focus are questions about the plans and purposes of God for our church family and for our mission in the community and together we seek to discern the ways in which God may be calling us to be witnesses to Christ in what we might call our ‘emerging-from-Covid’ world. It may not be possible, just yet, for us to fully appreciate the affect that the pandemic has had on our communities. As Christ’s disciples, part of our mission will be to listen to the various voices around us and to work out, together, what is the Gospel message for our towns and villages in the latter part of 2020 and going into 2021. We can all be part of that kind of conversation, because we all have different perspectives of our common life together.

As we consider these questions (and our response to them) the President and Vice President’s call to pray reminds us that we need God’s help to hear the voices, see the needs and to respond to them as Christ’s people.

As we pray for our churches and our towns and villages we might do well to ask, in the words of our reading:
Who are they that are in trouble? Especially we might ask, which of those in trouble cannot, at this point in time, pray for themselves and so need us to intercede on their behalf. As ever, we may need to remain diligent to God’s voice calling us to act as the answer to those prayers. As we look out at our world, we cannot ignore the warnings that we may yet see a rapid increase in those experiencing economic difficulties.

The fear is that there will be a rapid increase in unemployment which will be accompanied by all of those consequences that come when a family’s income is under threat. Right here in our towns and villages we may be confronted with those who are living under the threat of homelessness and hunger. How are we, God’s people to respond?

On the other hand, who are those who are happy? How might we join them in their joy, even though the prevailing circumstances may make it difficult for us to sing songs of praise — both literally whilst singing in public worship is still prohibited and metaphorically when our world is still struggling with the effects of Covid. Over the past few weeks, we have shared in the joy, for example, of those who have welcomed the new-born; secured places at university or who are preparing to begin new jobs. How, in the face of potential hardship, can we be the people who “sing the Lord’s song?”

And what about the sick? We have been focussed on the illness that comes as a result of Covid, but we remain aware that members of our churches, our families and our neighbours and friends face other health challenges. Whilst visiting homes and hospitals is still difficult and laying on hands, anointing with oil and praying is not possible can we still find ways of standing alongside those who are unwell? Jesus sent his disciples to “heal the sick.” The expression he used could be understood to mean ‘serve those who are without strength.’ How might our acts of service be like anointing oil bringing relief and healing to the wounded and hurting in our communities?

And the sense of being under-the-weather goes beyond the physical as some people feel that they are struggling in their life of faith. As Methodists, we learn from Wesley, that Christianity is a social religion — that is to say, that we are not intended to live out or faith in isolation from other Christians. Whilst Wesley, wrote of the important ‘need daily to retire from the world … to converse with God,’ he went on to say that when such periods are prolonged there is a danger that they, ‘destroy, not advance, true religion.’ (Wesley’s Sermons – ‘Sermon on the Mount – 4’) For some, lockdown has been a period when their faith has been strengthened; others have felt their faith being sorely tested. How can we help one another to rediscover the peace that comes from knowing that Christ is our companion in life’s journey?

As some of us are able to regather in chapels for worship, it is important that we do not lose sight of those who are unable to join with us. Our personal joy at being able to return to the places we cherish to pray, worship God and listen to God’s word needs to be held in balance with a loving concern for those who cannot. For me, this makes the current phase, one of vulnerability equal to that we experienced at the beginning of lockdown, as we fact the new challenge of working out how to be a ‘hybrid’ congregation (made up of those who worship in chapel and those who worship at home.)

We have to be honest in saying that we don’t have all the answers, but we commit ourselves to keeping our hearts open to one another, so that together we can pool our creativity and imagination to ensure that Christ’s people remain a united body. May our love and care for each other be expressed in our prayers and in our actions and may our witness, like our prayers be ‘powerful and effective’ in giving glory to God, the Father from whom our Church family derives its name. Amen.

Spend a few moments in quiet.

Listen or read St Theres’s Prayer as preparation for a time of prayer. https://youtu.be/2SQtXzjC2pg (note the song is based on the prayer not an exact version)



Take our bodies, O Christ to do your work;
for here on earth you have no body now but ours.
Take our hands to be your hands, and our feet to walk in the ways of your feet.
Take our eyes to be the eyes of your own compassion, shining our in a troubled world;
for your own mercies sake. Amen.

 Prayers of Intercession:

(taken from John Pritchard – The Intercessions Handbook – (London: SPCK, 1997) page 157)

 

Many people find it helpful to pray using the Celtic image of encircling people and situations in God’s love.  This enfolding or embracing corresponds to a deeply felt desire to care for those people, as a parent wraps up a child.  The desire is therefore an authentic expression of prayer as a form of loving; but the enfolding here is actually God’s not ours; we leave the situation in God’s embrace. 

 Widening Circles:

(this prayer invites you to imagine various people being held the embrace of God’s loving care)

 We can start this prayer with our immediate family or friends, seeing the circle of God’s care and protection around these special people.

 We widen the circle to our church family, praying for particular people and situations that are on our minds.  We might pray specifically for the preparations for re-opening our buildings for public worship: for the stewards, property stewards, preachers and others

Wider still we pray for our neighbourhood as we hold the people who live around about us in God’s presence.  Even if we do not know the people who live in neighbouring houses, we may imagine the front doors of houses nearby and pray for those who live there.

 We pray for our towns and villages …

 For our nation …

For those parts of the world that need a special sense of God’s embracing love.

 As God’s love circles our world, so we pray that all of creation would be reconciled to God ‘whether things on earth of things in heaven.’  (Col 1.20)

The Lord’s Prayer

Hymn – StF 536 – He’s got the whole world in his hand. - https://youtu.be/C3r0CFKzILo - (the verses are not quite the same on the video as they are in the hymnbook)