Worship at Home Sheet
Sunday October 25th 2020 – 10:30am
Setting the Scene – Bible Sunday
This Sunday is set aside as Bible Week. This service combines the suggested reading for Bible Sunday, from Nehemiah and the Gospel reading set for this Sunday as it includes Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ question about the Greatest Commandment.
You may wish
to light a candle and pray for friends who are worshipping in other places.
Call to Worship
Hymn StF 155– Come
Holy Ghost Our Hearts Inspire - https://youtu.be/sUC8i-yZo2k
Prayers of Approach and Confession (taken
from MWB First Service for Morning, Afternoon or Evening)
Loving
God, we have come to worship you.
Help us to remember that you are
here with us.
May we pray to you in faith,
sing your praise with gratitude,
and listen to your word with
eagerness;
through
Christ our Lord. Amen.
Let
us confess our sins.
Silence
Loving
God,
we have sinned against you
in what we have thought, said and
done.
We have not loved you with our whole
heart;
we have not loved our neighbours as
ourselves.
We are truly sorry
and turn away from what is wrong.
Forgive us for the sake of your Son,
Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.
Silence
Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
This is his gracious word:
‘Your
sins are forgiven.’
Amen. Thanks be to God.
Reading 1 – Nehemiah 8:1-12
8 1 all the people came together as one in the
square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the teacher of the Law to bring
out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for
Israel.
2 So on the first day of the seventh month
Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men
and women and all who were able to understand. 3 He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he
faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and
others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the
Book of the Law.
4 Ezra the teacher of the Law stood on a high
wooden platform built for the occasion. Beside him on his right stood
Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah and Maaseiah; and on his left were
Pedaiah, Mishael, Malkijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah and Meshullam.
5 Ezra opened the book. All the people could
see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all
stood up. 6 Ezra
praised the Lord, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and
responded, ‘Amen! Amen!’ Then they bowed down and worshipped
the Lord with their faces to the ground.
7 The Levites – Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah,
Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan and
Pelaiah – instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing
there. 8 They
read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the
meaning so that the people understood what was being read.
9 Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest
and teacher of the Law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to
them all, ‘This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or
weep.’ For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the
Law.
10 Nehemiah said, ‘Go and enjoy choice food
and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is
holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your
strength.’
11 The Levites calmed all the people, saying,
‘Be still, for this is a holy day. Do not grieve.’
12 Then all the people went away to eat and
drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they
now understood the words that had been made known to them.
Reflection Part 1 – Rereading Scripture in
Returning, Repairing and Rebuilding.
Nehemiah is a book of returning, repairing
and rebuilding. In the opening chapter
we are invited to listen in to Nehemiah’s grief as he hears that ‘the wall of
Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.’ (Nehemiah
1.4) Through a combination of prayer and
diplomacy, Nehemiah secures permission of King Artaxerxes to return to
Jerusalem and begin the process of repairing the walls and rebuilding the city. He carries out this project in the face of
much opposition and the passage we have just read describes the people coming together
in worship to see Ezra bring out the book of the Law and to hear it being
read. (7.73-8.1)
The physical rebuilding of Jerusalem was
only phase one of the restoration plan.
There needed to be a spiritual rebuilding as well and this would centre
on the people being reminded of God’s promises and commands contained within
the Torah. (The Law) One of the themes of the history of Israel
and Judah is the up and down cycle of the faithfulness of God’s people to the
Covenant God has made with them and the consequences of their actions. In their seasons of faithfulness the people
of Israel enjoyed peace and prosperity whereas in times of rebellion they experienced
defeat and exile. The times of struggle
brought about a realisation that their national security and prosperity was
connected to living on obedience to God’s promises and commands. So as they return from exile, they experience
a renewed enthusiasm for hearing the words of Torah which is what is recorded in
our passage from Nehemiah.
They recognise that their desire to
discover and live in obedience to God’s commands needs to be expressed as a
community, and so we see that they make arrangements for the Torah to be brought
into the marketplace. As well as being limited
for space, the temple would have been restricted to the priests and the men of
the community, so bringing the Scriptures out into the square meant that they
could be read in a place where the whole community including the women and the
children could gather. (v2)
Furthermore, they made sure that the
reading would be visible and audible to the crowd. Their intention is that the Scriptures should
be heard by the whole community who in turn should respond in obedience: ‘Ezra
opened the book. All the people could see
him because he was standing above them.’ (v5)
Hearing alone was not enough for them, they
wanted to grasp what they heard so that they could translating their hearing
into action. As James would write to the
early church centuries later, they wanted to be not just hearers of the word
but doers. (James 1.22) So, the Scriptures were both read and explained
the crowd ‘so that the people understood what was being read.’ (v8) Their response to the reading and teaching
was sorrow, since it highlighted to them just how far they had removed themselves
from God’s will and purpose. Yet they
are urged to be joyful rather than to grieve, since whilst it was true that
they had fallen short of God’s commands, they were now choosing to hear God’s
word anew. Despite all of their rebellion
and defeat, God’s word had come to them afresh and offered them the opportunity
to renew their obedience and thus to be rebuild as the community of God’s
covenant people.
Hymn – StF 407 –
Hear the Call of the Kingdom - https://youtu.be/WL-UdwB0Qvc
Reading 2 – Matthew 22:34-40
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the
Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him
with this question: 36 ‘Teacher,
which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’
37 Jesus replied: ‘“Love the Lord your
God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” 38 This is the first
and greatest commandment. 39 And
the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” 40 All the Law and the
Prophets hang on these two commandments.’
Reflection Part 2 – Rereading to Rehear the
Command – Love God, Love Neighbour
In the first reading
we saw how careful attention to the Scriptures, and to the Law in particular,
was part of Israel’s renewal after return from Exile.
By the time we
get to the Gospel reading, we get an insight to the fact that even if the
Israelites had remained faithful to their renewed commitment (and there is
plenty of reason to suspect that in actual fact the same old cycle of obedience
and rebellion actually continued) there was not always a united approach among
the people to how they read the Scriptures.
One of the major differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees was
their approach to and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.
Biblical
scholars suggest that this difference in interpretation is reflected in the Old
Testament too. We find in some books an
emphasis on Israel’s need to re-establish their unique identity by placing
emphasis on the purity and holiness codes and the need to keep other nations at
arms-length. This perspective held that
Israel’s security could only be secured by careful attention to following the Law
and this included being strict about excluding foreigners from their social and
religious life. For example, in Ezra we
read some fairly uncomfortable passages about intermarriage with the demand to those
who have married foreigners that they should send their partners away.
On the other
hand, in other Scriptures we sense a widening understanding of who might be included
in God’s covenant. This possibly began
with a realisation that the basic humanity of the Israelites was no
substantially different to that of the rest of the world. All humans, regardless of their nationality,
race, gender etc. are capable of rebelliousness and have to face the
consequences of their actions. So there
is a broader approach that says, since we are no better than anyone else, then
it must be possible for anyone to be encompassed in God’s covenant if they are
willing to live according to God’s Commands and as a result be included in God’s
Covenant people. For example, in Isaiah
we read that all who are willing to honour the Sabbath would be considered to
be worthy Covenant partners (irrespective of former restrictions).
These different
approaches carry through to the time of Jesus.
For example, some, but by no means all, Pharisees held that only those
who observed strict holiness codes could be admitted as God’s people and that
meant either being a Jew by birth or by conversion. Whereas the Sadducees put more emphasis on observing
the rituals of the temple and whilst they protected the rights of the priestly
caste they were happy to give non-Jews some (albeit limited) access to Temple
worship.
Perhaps then,
this explains the question the Pharisees and Sadducees brought to Jesus. To some extent this question is less of a
tricky question than the one brought by the Pharisees and the Herodians earlier
in the chapter, not least because in that question Jesus was being tricked into
saying something that would be judged illegal. Yet faced by two different ‘parties,’ Jesus is
still faced with a potential trap since his answer has the potential to show
him taking sides with one group against the other.
As before, Jesus’
answer does not take sides. Instead of
getting involved in a complex argument about the interpretation of Scripture,
he reminds his questioners of the overarching principle that applies to people
on both sides of the debate: the Command of Love – love God and love neighbour. Two commands on which ‘all the law and the
prophets hang.’
Moving forward
to our time, Jesus’ reply may give us a clue about how we should read the Bible
today. It is right that we should be suspicious
of those who would seek to use the Bible as an excuse for division and
exclusion. Anything less than love for
God, neighbour and one another should cause us to wonder about how the
Scriptures are being read. Jesus doesn’t
get involved in selecting texts in order to choose one side or other of the
arguments in his day. The same should be
true for us, even though we may approach our faith in different ways and arrive
at different conlcusions we should ask serious questions if our faith is not
opening us up to a greater love for those around us.
God’s desire for
the world, communicated through Scripture is reflected in the story of
Nehemiah. God invites the whole world to
experience what it means to return to God and in so doing to experience the power
of God in repairing what is broken and rebuilding what has been destroyed, this
includes our relationships with God and with our neighbour. And so, all study and meditation on Scripture
that is inspired by God’s Spirit should point us in this direction and to obey
the word of Scripture should mean that we are obeying the greatest commandments
of all: the commandment to love God and love our neighbour. So then let us learn to love one another that
through us the love of God might be shown throughout the world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Prayers of Intercession (also from MWB
First Service)
God our Father,
grant us the help of your Spirit
in our prayers for the salvation of all people.
We pray for the Church throughout the world
for this church and all its members
for …
that in faith and unity
we may be constantly renewed by your Holy Spirit
for mission and service.
Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.
We pray for the peoples of the world
for the leaders of the nations
for …
that they may seek justice, freedom and peace for all.
Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.
We pray for our country
for those who have authority and influence
for …
that all may serve one another
in wisdom, honesty and compassion.
Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.
We pray for those among whom we live and work
for all our neighbours
for …
that we may so use your gifts
that together we may find joy in your creation.
Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.
We pray for all in sorrow, need, anxiety or sickness
for …
for …
that in their weakness they may know your strength,
and in despair find hope.
Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.
In you, Father,
we are one family on earth and in heaven.
We remember in your presence
those who have died . . .
giving thanks especially for those
who have revealed to us your grace in Christ.
Help us to follow the example of your saints in light
and bring us with them
to the fullness of your eternal joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer
Hymn – StF
703 – In an age of twisted values - https://youtu.be/Bjz1Zov-Hyo
(tune only)
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