Morning Service for Trinity 13 2022
God of love,
We thank you for the life of The Queen,
for her service to our nation, and for her faith in you.
Be close to all who mourn,
that they may find comfort and hope in your love,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Everlasting God, we pray for our new King.
Bless his reign and the life of our nation.
Help us to work together so that truth and justice,
harmony and fairness flourish among us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
HYMN Immortal, invisible God only wise NEH 377/AMR 372 – St Denis
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.
2 Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
Thy justice, like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.
3 To all life thou givest–to both great and small;
In all life thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree,
Then wither and perish—but naught changeth thee.
4 Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All praise we would render; O help us to see
‘Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee.
PRAYER OF PREPARATION
Almighty God,
to whom all hearts are open,
all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen
PRAYERS OF PENITENCE
We recall our Lord’s command to love and in a moment of silence we confess
the many ways we fail to keep his command:
Most merciful God,
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
we confess that we have sinned
in thought, word and deed.
We have not loved you with our whole heart.
We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves.
In your mercy forgive what we have been,
help us to amend what we are,
and direct what we shall be;
that we may do justly, love mercy,
and walk humbly with you, our God. Amen
May the God of love and power
forgive us and free us from our sins,
heal and strengthen us by his Spirit,
and raise us to new life in Christ our Lord. Amen.
THE COLLECT
Almighty God,
who called your Church to bear witness
that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself:
help us to proclaim the good news of your love,
that all who hear it may be drawn to you;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.
FIRST READING – Jeremiah 4.11-12,22-28
At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse— a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against them.
“For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.” I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the LORD, before his fierce anger.
For thus says the LORD: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black; for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.”
HYMN Jesu the very thought of thee NEH 385/AMR 189 – St Botolph
1 Jesus, the very thought of thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far thy face to see,
And in thy presence rest.
2 Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find,
A sweeter sound than thy blest name,
O Saviour of mankind!
3 O hope of every contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
To those who fall, how kind thou art!
How good to those who seek!
4 But what to those who find? Ah, this
Nor tongue nor pen can show;
The love of Jesus, what it is
None but his loved ones know.
5 Jesu, our only joy be thou,
As thou our prize wilt be;
Jesus, be thou our glory now,
And through eternity.
GOSPEL – Luke 15.1-10
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
SERMON
So we heard Jeremiah again this morning, being Jeremiah – utterly depressing and doom laden. He sees all creation unravelling before him because of the disobedience of Israel. YHWH has lost patience, creation is turned back and chaos is allowed to return. The world becomes unglued and it is all caused by Israel’s disobedience – it has all been for nothing. But amidst the doom and the destruction, even yet, Jeremiah hears ‘yet I will not make a full end’ – here is Jeremiah’s slight ground for hope, the door of doom is held, ajar, but only just.
It is as though the very poetry, the fearful but magnificent poetry of retribution, moves God to a new awareness of how precious Israel is in his eyes. It is as if God cannot fully accept his own poetic rendition of judgement… the yearning on God’s part persists, even in the face of the relentless devastation in this poetry – the hope, though, is a slight one.
But this beautiful and terror laden writing is poetry not prediction. It is not an act of theology that seeks to scare its hearer into repentance – Jeremiah is no telly evangelist. It is, rather, a rhetorical attempt to engage the unseeing, unaware community of Judea in an imaginative embrace of what is really happening. Their world is about to fall apart.
The poet has an awesome burden of helping his people sense that their world is in jeopardy, because God’s holy patience is finally ended. When that patience is exhausted, creation is not permitted to continue its disobedient course. The verdict of initial creation was, ‘It is very good”. Here the verdict is ‘It is very evil.’ Such evil finally must be answered for. Where, we ask, is the rainbow promise now?
Such was the experience, and the understanding of Jeremiah, what he could see was God’s rejection of his people and their mindless inability to repent and see things as they were. Such is the prophet’s lot. Jesus too had a problem with awareness. The awareness of a people steeped in the God of judgement, and the following of rules. Along the way they had missed the point – not surprisingly they had understood, and used the threat, of a God who judges before he loves.
Jesus didn’t attract many Pharisees, the committed religious didn’t have much time for him. He found his audience among the tax collectors and declared sinners – those who were not a part of polite society, those who were not found in the synagogues or the Temple. And he told them parables often about God taking the initiative. In our Gospel for today God goes searching for the lost, and he is compared to a shepherd and a woman.
In the search for the lost sheep the shepherd must take risks, he must leave the others and pay the cost of exhaustion, danger, whatever is required to bring home the lost – be it only a hundredth part of the whole flock, the value of the individual is so great that the other 99 are left in the wilderness to fend for themselves.
The woman with the lost coin doesn’t bear the same risks, but in terms of effort and resolve the message is the same – the value of the one is more than the sum of the value of the many. God is no actuary. The monetary value of what the woman was searching for is a matter of some contention, you can read of one drachma being a day’s wage for a labourer, or you can read of it being about 20 pence, which seems a bit light for any wage. 20p is my favourite, because it illustrates the point that it wasn’t the worth of the individual coin in the world’s eyes that mattered, what mattered was the ridiculous, obsessive even, value placed on the coin, as on the sheep, by the person searching for it. Anyone would turn the house upside down for a £50 note, but for 20p – that takes real commitment.
So, if you are tempted to think that in the billions of created beings you are of no account – remember that to the shepherd and the woman one was worth more than the sum of the rest – it is the paradox of God’s love that that is true for each one of us. Each of us is valued for ourselves alone.
But these parables do pose an important problem. The stories themselves don’t actually say what the narrative says they say. They are used here by Luke to support a summons to repentance – ‘there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than 99 etc.’ Which is all very well and is orthodox Christian doctrine. But the sheep does not repent, neither does the coin. They don’t present themselves to the shepherd or the woman and ask to be allowed back. They are lost and lost they would stay, were it not for their owners who go out of their way to find them and bring them back to safety. The effort is all on the part of the shepherd and the woman.
Of course, Luke is right in the subtleties of human freedom, God does not force people onto his shoulders. But it is also right that all we do is respond to the generous and remarkable love of the Creator. That love is out there always – searching, healing, forgiving, loving. The effort is all God’s.
Our repentance isn’t so much a work which me must perform in order to be acceptable to God rather it is an acknowledgement that we are acceptable, and forgiven, even in our lostness. Repentance brings into our lives an awareness of what is the truth of our situation – an awareness of our acceptance by God and the fact that we are precious in his sight. We need to repent because we need that awareness and God spared nothing to communicate it to us – even his own son.
From Jeremiah to Jesus is a leap of immense distance – it is a leap too far for many, including many of our illustrious church fathers – for them the outrageous mercy and love of God just had to have strings attached, God would demand his pound of flesh – the door of salvation cannot be more than just held ajar. It is very hard for us to conceive of a God who values us so greatly that for any one of us he would have come to find and draw us back to himself – at whatever the cost, whatever the risk.
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH
Let us declare our faith in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ:
Christ died for our sins
in accordance with the scriptures;
he was buried; he was raised to life on the third day
in accordance with the scriptures;
afterwards he appeared to his followers,
and to all the apostles: this we have received,
and this we believe. Amen. 1 Corinthians 15.3-7
HYMN -Breathe on me breath of God NEH 342/AMR236 – Carlisle
1 Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love what thou dost love,
And do what thou wouldst do.
2 Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with thee I will one will,
To do and to endure.
3 Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Till I am wholly thine,
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with the fire divine.
4 Breathe on me, Breath of God,
So shall I never die,
But live with thee the perfect life
Of thine eternity.
PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION – Jenny Walmsley
Lord, we pray for our troubled world, help us to seek the positives beyond the negatives.
We pray for those who live in Sindh Province of Pakistan where the vast flooding is apocalyptic, and rescue and aid workers are struggling to reach those in need. We remember those in Sichwan in China who were caught as an earthquake struck with no means of escape, while in Canada violence and death have brought great sorrow to the First Nation people. Here at home we pray for our new Prime Minister Liz Truss and her Cabinet. May all those with heavy responsibility of Government perform their duties with wisdom and humility.
Lord in your mercy: hear our prayer.
Lord, we pray for your church, bless and strengthen us in your service, as in the coming months our resources are stretched. Keep us faithful to your teaching. We pray for Her Majesty the Queen and give thanks for her life of dedication and service, and we pray for His Majesty King Charles III as he begins his reign as monarch. We pray for Justin our Archbishop and all Bishops and clergy. We give thanks for the ministry of William our Rector and all those both clergy and laity who assist him. In our benefice so many contribute to the life of our churches, help and guide us Lord as we move forward this Autumn.
Lord in your mercy: hear our prayer.
Lord, we pray for our local communities and give thanks for all the vital services on which we depend each day.
As our children begin the new school year we pray for our teaching staff and assistants. May they be supported in the exciting work expected of them. Lord, keep us mindful of those around us, the elderly, lonely and those struggling financially in these difficult times and support them.
Lord in your mercy: hear our prayer.
Lord, we commend to you all who are sick, elderly or frail, those who are anxious about what the future holds. We give thanks for all who are carers – the great multitude who are the backbone of our health and care services, and family members toiling away at home. Lord Jesus, be with all who are in special need.
Lord in your mercy: hear our prayer.
Lord, hear us as we remember all who have died, may they rest in peace. We pray for the soul of Her Majesty the Queen and remember the members of the Royal family who mourn her passing.
We remember too Daphne Bath and her family. We pray for all who mourn, may they find comfort in you Lord.
Merciful Father, accept these prayers, for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
As our Saviour taught us, so we pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.
BLESSING
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon and be gracious unto you.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
The Lord God almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
the holy and undivided Trinity,
guard you, save you, and bring you to that heavenly city,
where he lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen
HYMN He who would valiant be NEH 372/AMR 293 – Monks Gate
1 He who would valiant be
‘Gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.
2 Who so beset him round
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound–
His strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might,
Though he with giants fight:
He will make good his right
To be a pilgrim.
3 Since, Lord, thou dost defend
Us with thy Spirit,
We know we at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away!
I’ll fear not what men say,
I’ll labor night and day
To be a pilgrim.