Morning Service for Trinity 16 2024 YrB p19

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Service

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September 14, 2024

A radical following of the rule of God (which is what the translated phrase ‘the kingdom of God’ really means) will inevitable lead to risk a confrontation with human injustice and tyranny. In such a confrontation the disciple is inevitably going to suffer, examples can be seen in the news every day. You don’t need two pieces of wood to be crucified, and Jesus’ vision of humane government will not be won and kept without cost. Alexei Navalny is just one of many hundreds of crucified men and women of many religions and none who followed Jesus ‘on the way’.

Morning Service for Trinity 16 2024 YrB p19

HYMN – O worship the king NEH433/AMR 167 – Hanover

1 O WORSHIP the King

All glorious above;

O gratefully sing

His power and his love:

Our Shield and Defender,

The Ancient of days,

Pavilioned in splendour,

And girded with praise.

2 O tell of his might,

O sing of his grace,

Whose robe is the light,

Whose canopy space.

His chariots of wrath

The deep thunder-clouds form,

And dark is his path

On the wings of the storm.

3 This earth, with its store

Of wonders untold,

Almighty, thy power

Hath founded of old:

Hath stablished it fast

By a changeless decree,

And round it hath cast,

Like a mantle, the sea.

6 O measureless Might,

Ineffable Love,

While angels delight

To hymn thee above,

Thy humbler creation,

Though feeble their lays,

With true adoration

Shall sing to thy praise.

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

God, who in generous mercy sent the Holy Spirit

upon your Church in the burning fire of your love:

grant that your people may be fervent

in the fellowship of the gospel

that, always abiding in you,

they may be found steadfast in faith and active in service;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

FIRST READING – Proverbs 1.20-33

Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.

At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?

How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

Give heed to my reproof;

I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.

Because I have called and you refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded,

and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof,

I also will laugh at your calamity;I will mock when panic strikes you,

when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,

when distress and anguish come upon you.

Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but will not find me.

Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD,

would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof,

therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own devices.

For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them;

but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.”

HYMN Thy kingdom come on bended knee NEH 500 – Irish

1 Thy kingdom come on bended knee

The passing ages pray;

And faithful souls have yearned to see

On earth that kingdom’s day.

2 But the slow watches of the night

Not less to God belong;

And for the everlasting right

The silent stars are strong.

3 And lo, already on the hills

The flags of dawn appear;

Gird up your loins, ye prophet souls,

Proclaim the day is near:

4 The day in whose clear-shining light

All wrong shall stand revealed,

When justice shall be throned in might,

And every hurt be healed;

5 When knowledge, hand in hand with peace,

Shall walk the earth abroad:

The day of perfect righteousness,

The promised day of God.

GOSPEL – Mark 8.27-38

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

SERMON

Jesus led his disciples beyond Galilee, to the north of Palestine (Phillip’s tetrarchy). They reach a point on the road Mark locates at Caesarea Phillipi, a major Greek influenced city, named to distinguish it from Caesarea Maritina (Caesarea on the coast). It had previously been called Paneas, from a grotto dedicated to the god Pan, it had a temple Herod the Great had built to honour Caeasar Agustus, and it had a cave credited to be one of entrances to Hades. In short, it was a centre for pagan worship. It was a place that reflected the Herodian rapprochement with Rome, and the adoption of northern Mediterranean religion and culture.

Jesus interrogates the disciples, asking who do they think he is. It is a question we might all ask ourselves. Peter’s answer introduces the political term ‘Christos’ – Messiah, and the revolution that Peter anticipates. But Jesus silences him, repudiating Peter’s triumphant confession with the first of what will be three predictions of his death, which he says is ‘necessary’. But the conversation marks a new direction, a new stage in his ministry, a new direction ‘on the way’.

Jesus uses the title Son of Man, going back to the Book of Daniel and its prophecy of the apocalyptic coming of the ‘Human One’ or ‘Son of Man’. This is to follow the end of the rule of the beasts, the successive empires that have dominated the countries of the eastern Mediterranean.

Most scholars believe the Book of Daniel to have been written two centuries before Jesus as a manifesto of Jewish resistance to imperial oppression, at that point the context was the Maccabean revolt against the Greek Seleucid empire, that followed Alexander the Great’s invasions.

The term ‘Son of Man’, bar enash in Aramaic, huios anthropos in Greek, Son of Mankind, comes from Daniel 7, in a passage that prophesies the end of the tyrannical empires, it is the term Jesus uses for himself. But what it means has troubled scholars ever since. Does it mean merely a representative of humanity, or the essence of humanity, or a particular human being. In Daniel 7 all rule will pass to this ‘Son of Humanity’ whose authority will be eternal. The prophecy is not as important as what Jesus meant by adopting that title. Jesus’ prediction of his ‘necessary’ suffering and death would seem at odds with any sense of that prophecy taken at face value. Perhaps it means that the rule of tyranny will be replaced by a rule that is truly humane, truly the ‘Kingdom of God’.

But the shameful death and enormous suffering that Jesus deems to be ‘necessary’ is not Peter’s idea of royal triumph. Jesus dismisses Peter’s fantasies of messianic power by a clear-eyed realism. The path Jesus is on will bring him into conflict with those who rule Israel, his fate is a political inevitability and he knows it. And this fate would not be his alone.

To deny such inevitability was positively Satanic. The temptation in the wilderness started his journey ‘on the way’, temptation, ‘Satan’, now returns in the words of Peter.

The call to discipleship from verse 34 is addressed to the crowd as well as the disciples. It is simple, ‘deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me’. The cross can only mean one thing – an appallingly brutal and very public Roman method for the execution of dissidents, slaves, and violent criminals. Perhaps the writer, Mark, has seen himself that this is the inevitable end of many who have followed Jesus on the way.

Ched Myers put it this way, ’Mark is not goading the disciples [of his day] to military heroism; he is introducing the central paradox of the gospel. The threat to punish by death is the bottom line of the power of the state, fear of this kept the dominant order in tact. By resisting this fear and pursing kingdom [of God] practices even at the cost of death, the disciple contributes to shattering the powers’ reign of death in history. To concede the state’s sovereignty in death is to refuse its authority in life.’

This is all very well for those drawn to radical politics, but what of us in our small corner? I believe that a serious following of Jesus’’ command to act in the most loving way possible will eventually carry a cost. Ask any child who stands up against the bullying of another, or someone who speaks out against unethical practices at work, or a whistle blower in any organisation – doing the right thing carries a cost.

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 ‘Take up thy cross,’ the Saviour said NEH 76 – Breslau

1 Take up thy cross, the Saviour said,

If thou wouldst my disciple be;

Deny thyself, the world forsake,

And humbly follow after me.

2 Take up thy cross; let not its weight

Fill thy weak spirit with alarm;

His strength shall bear thy spirit up,

And brace thy heart, and nerve thine arm.

4 Take up thy cross then in his strength,

And calmly every danger brave;

‘Twill guide thee to a better home,

And lead to victory o’er the grave.

5 Take up thy cross, and follow Christ,

Nor think till death to lay it down;

For only he who bears the cross

May hope to wear the glorious crown.

6 To thee, great Lord, the One in Three,

All praise for evermore ascend;

O grant us in our home to see

The heavenly life that knows no end.

PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION – Sheila Forbes

As autumn moves in, a Vacancy looms and the media give us little for which to rejoice, let us pray with confidence, knowing that our prayers are being heard.

God our creator, the media are presenting us with stories that do not reflect your kingdom: the mothers, daughters and girls of Afghanistan are by new laws being silenced outside the home, covered up outside the home. We pray for this “winged” half of your creation which gives birth, gives life but is now being locked away, voiceless, powerless – invisible. Lord, we ask you to watch over them.