Worship at Home – 18 October 2020 – Trinity Methodist Church 10:30am
Gathering:
Blessed be the Lord God heaven and earth, for he has visited and redeemed his people. He has raised up a mighty salvation for us in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Hymn – Stf 327 – Jesus is King and I will extol
Him - https://youtu.be/kQWP5LYtiZA
Prayer of Approach
That we may know
you as the risen Lord,
Hear us, risen Christ
That in you the downtrodden may find hope,
Hear us, risen Christ
That in you the darkened lives may find light
Hear us, risen Christ
That in you we may rejoice that life is eternal,
Hear us, risen Christ
We continue in prayers as we
bring our prayers of confession …
Reading 1- Matthew 22.15-22
15 Then
the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16 They sent their
disciples to him along with the Herodians. ‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘we know that
you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with
the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who
they are. 17 Tell
us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the poll-tax to Caesar
or not?’
18 But
Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, ‘You hypocrites, why are you trying
to trap me? 19 Show
me the coin used for paying the tax.’ They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked
them, ‘Whose image is this? And whose inscription?’
21 ‘Caesar’s,’
they replied.
Then he said to them, ‘So give back
to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’
22 When
they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.
Reading 2 – Psalm 96 (from Common Worship)
1 Sing to the Lord
a new song; ♦
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Sing to the Lord
and bless his name; ♦
tell out his salvation from day to day.
3 Declare his glory
among the nations ♦
and his wonders among all peoples.
4 For great is the
Lord and greatly to be praised; ♦
he is more to be feared than all gods.
5 For all the gods
of the nations are but idols; ♦
it is the Lord who made the heavens.
6 Honour and
majesty are before him; ♦
power and splendour are in his sanctuary.
7 Ascribe to the
Lord, you families of the peoples; ♦
ascribe to the Lord honour and strength.
8 Ascribe to the Lord
the honour due to his name; ♦
bring offerings and come into his courts.
9 O worship the
Lord in the beauty of holiness; ♦
let the whole earth tremble before him.
10 Tell it out among the
nations that the Lord is king. ♦
He has made the world so firm that it
cannot be moved;
he will judge the
peoples with equity.
11 Let the heavens rejoice and
let the earth be glad; ♦
let the sea thunder and all that is in it;
12 Let the fields be joyful and
all that is in them; ♦
let all the trees of the wood shout for
joy before the Lord.
13 For he comes, he comes to
judge the earth; ♦
with righteousness he will judge the world
and the peoples
with his truth.
Reflection -
It is all to
easy to get caught up with the pressing issues of ‘now.’ Or at least with those things we think are
the pressing issues of ‘now!’
Jesus’s
opponents had become fixated on removing him from the public eye. For some this meant that he needed to be permanently
removed, that is, he needed to be executed.
Their fixation would have been fuelled by a host of different
motivations and concerns. Yet the more
they obsessed about it, the more frantic they became about achieving their
aims. And as their vision becomes
restricted by their obsession, they get more and more agitated about fine
details (such as paying taxes) and lose all sense of perspective.
Jesus’ judgement
on his opponents is that they are choosing to get fixated in this way. The way he addresses them indicates that he
believes that they are entirely responsible for their behaviour and have it
within their power chose to refocus and take a different, wider and healthier
perspective. It is important to note,
that this is very very different to those whose behaviour is a symptom of
mental or emotional illness and who need professional support to be able to
break obsessive cycles of behaviour. We
live in a different time and have different understandings and if our attempts
at getting people to refocus are unsuccessful we should always consider
suggesting that they seek expert help.
So Jesus,
speaking to those who are generally healthy, is highlighting the importance making
wise choices about the things we focus on.
All of us can find ourselves in situations where we feel that the world
is closing in on us. When this happens,
it is easy for us to get so caught up in what is happening for us that we
imagine that everyone should be concerned about the things that we worry
about. Jesus is not saying that those
things are unimportant or that we can neglect or ignore them.
No! As responsible citizens, it is important that
we live in appropriate ways, so in this example, it is important that we pay our
taxes! So, the tax return needs to be
submitted on time, otherwise we will be liable to legal action – and that is
right, it is the price we pay for living in an orderly society with a
reasonable level of social care.
What Jesus IS
saying, is that we should not live every hour of every day worrying about our
tax-affairs! There are other, dare I say
it, more important things, that deserve our attention!
And our greatest
priority should be giving to God the things that belong to God and first and
foremost that means giving due time and attention to worshipping God. I am sure I won’t be the first person you
have heard say that God demands more than just an hour on a Sunday
morning!
The Psalm writes
‘Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all
gods.’ (Ps 96.4) The word fear is
probably unhelpful here, and we might prefer another translation that renders
this verse:
Psalms 96:4
For the LORD is great and certainly worthy of praise;
he is more awesome than all gods (New English Translation)
God is worthy of
worship, praise and adoration, because God is great and God is good. He does not want us to cower before him in
nervous fear. God does not want our
heads to be bowed low because we are worried that if we catch God’s gaze he
will smite us away. God invites us to
lift our heads and to see his full splendour and glory. And when we do, the only fitting response is
worship.
We may fall to
our knees, but not in fear of reprisals, but in awe of God’s wonder and glory.
Lifting our
heads to see the glory and splendour of God’s throne is important, because
otherwise we can become very limited in our vision. When we walk around with our eyes permanently
set on the ground, our attention can become fixed on the ‘nuts and bolts’ of
this life there is a danger that we lose sight of God’s greatness. What’s more there is a danger that we allow
the things that concern us to become like mini-gods. We then begin to allow them to dominate our
thinking and our acting and if we are not careful we can become overly anxious about
what happens if we don’t follow all the rules.
In this way, we give the things of this life regard, not because it is
the right to live within the boundaries of a civil society, but because we fear
the reprisals if we are caught doing the wrong thing.
This ‘fear of
the authorities’ sometimes translates over into the way people think about
God. They have this picture of a God who
is easily displeased and who is only too ready to send dreadful repercussions
on those who disobey God and God’s laws.
The Pharisees and the Herodians were playing on this ‘fear factor.’ In so doing, they completely misunderstood
Jesus’ core motivation. His life was not
shaped by the ‘fear of God’ but by the Word God had spoken to him right at the
beginning of his ministry, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well
pleased.’ (Matt 4.17)
The Psalmist
reminds us that God invites us to live before Him as daughters and sons, to
live before him as those who are loved and with whom God is well pleased. God invites us to worship him in the
splendour of his holiness, to rejoice in him and to be glad because of all that
he has done.
In all of our
lives there are moments when it is right and proper to pay due attention to what
the government and society require of us – to render unto Caesar what is Caesar,
but they ARE moments and they come and go – but the whole of our lives belong
to God and in the whole of our lives we are called to give to God what is God’s
as we worship him and love him with our whole heart, mind, soul and
strength.
And as we fix
our eyes on Jesus, may the things of earth, the things that distract us,
disturb us and deny us God’s peace, grow strangely dim in the light of his
glory and grace.
Hymn – StF 34 – O Worship the Lord in the Beauty
of Holiness - https://youtu.be/LBEmXFkwcOE
Prayers of Intercession
Hymn – StF 487 – You Shall Go Out with Joy - https://youtu.be/unWnWSgoSt0
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