Advent 3: Sunday 12 December 2021

 BURTON JOYCE 

COMMUNITY CHURCH

In association with 

Sunday 12 December 2021

Advent 3
A service prepared by Phil Colbourn. Hymn numbers for Songs of Fellowship (SoF)

Lighting the Advent Candle

• The third candle symbolizes joy: the "Shepherd’s Candle."
• To the shepherd’s great joy, the angels announce that Jesus came for humble, unimportant people like them, too. 

CALL TO WORSHIP       Psalm 24, 1
¹ The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; ² he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.

PRAYERS

Adoration  

Father, great I Am, you met with Moses that day in a bush blazing with all the colours of fire so, we pray, meet with us today as we walk with you and as you walk with us in the way. In Jesus name. Amen

Confession

Father, great I Am, we abuse your gifts: dump waste in rivers, leave litter in the streets, fill air with pollutants, destroy peace with noise, chase shadows and avoid your light. Forgive us, Lord. Have mercy.

Thanksgiving

Father, great I Am, we bless you. You bring forth bread from the earth and fruit for us to enjoy. You call us through the wilderness to a place of plenty. For these blessings we thank you. Amen

Hymn SoF 821  Into the darkness of this world

Advent Calendar
Rowan Williams

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould, the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free. He will come like child.

Advent Litany

Father, great I Am, you created us in your image

Come to our longing, O God of our joy

Christ, great I Am, you are the image of God

Come to our longing, O God of our joy

Holy Spirit, giver of life, you are the joy of heaven

Come to our longing, O God of our joy

The Lord’s Prayer                                                                  

INTRODUCTION

It’s the third Sunday in Advent and I have planted sweet pea seeds as an act of faith: 1) That spring will follow winter (and summer, too).

2) That the life hidden in the seed will sprout, grow and bear fruit.

A month ago, in Glasgow at COP26, members of Christian Climate Action, alongside others, staged protests with Extinction Rebellion. They are so concerned about the state of the planet, worried about seedtime and harvest, that they feel they must act.

HYMN SoF 112         For the beauty of the earth

FIRST READING             Isaiah 12:2-6

SECOND READING         Romans 8, 19-23

REFLECTION

It is exactly three years since I delivered a version of this sermon at Burton Joyce. We then started out on the road to becoming an Eco Church but it is a long road and we haven’t got very far. However, one consequence of that sermon and a subsequent public meeting is that there is now a Climate Action and Biodiversity Group meeting regularly in the village, mostly by Zoom.

We need a new heaven and a new earth. This theme of a new heaven and a new earth runs all the way through scripture, from the very beginning to the very end. But hardly has creation been finished in Genesis, when things start to go wrong. I’ll skip all the intermediate stages but right at the end of the Bible, in Revelation 21, we see the new Jerusalem descending from heaven, the Bride of Christ, us, the church. At last, we think, surely, this *must* be it: Creation perfected.

But, no. Paul, writing to the young church in Rome about AD 50, is not convinced that the earth is yet working as it should. He is waiting for a new software release, Creation X. And here we are, two thousand years later, in 2021, after 26 COPs, in a crisis of epic proportions: both environmental and ecological. 

In his letter, Paul takes a hike through the contradictions of life, through the forest of experience, wondering how we can understand the way things are. How does God’s great plan of redemption make sense? It is all very confusing and he can’t see the wood for the trees. 

But then, in Romans 8, he struggles up the last steep slope and finds himself at the top of the mountain. There below him, the whole of salvation’s story is laid out, all the way from the Garden of Eden to Revelation and the allotments in Burton Joyce and, suddenly, he understands [Romans 8, 19]: “Creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed”. Let those words drill down into your soul: all Creation is waiting for us - to stand up and be counted.

These verses can be difficult to understand and we often skip over them and go straight from one good bit to the next but, if we skip this bit, we miss the whole point. All the way from Genesis to Revelation, the founding principles of Creation have stayed the same:

* Creation is good.  (It might not be perfect but it is good)

* It includes everything on earth (physical and biological)

* We are (in some way) responsible for the care of the earth

* We are answerable to God

And, first and finally

* God delights to walk with us in the joy of the garden

These principles, Jesus exemplifies in his role as the Servant King. As his followers, we are called to serve not just the human world but also the natural world: all of God’s creation. It is our responsibility. The earth is the Lord’s but the responsibility for its well-being is also ours. 

HYMN SoF 830                  I, the Lord of sea and sky 

INTERCESSIONS

For the Earth: the climate, the destruction of living things; that people do the right thing

For the people of the world: wars, drought, flood & wildfire; compassion for refugees

For ourselves, our family and friends: in a time of Covid, in the lead up to Christmas 

For the church of Christ in every place: Come, Lord Jesus, come.

For all your mercies, we give you thanks, O Lord. Amen

FINAL HYMN SoF 347     Lo, he come with clouds descending

Advent responses

With love and compassion:                   Come, Lord Jesus

In power and in glory:                           Come, Lord Jesus

He is coming, He is coming soon.         Amen. Come, Lord Jesus

BLESSING

Go out in joy, in company with the God of creation, of the spinning suns and of the running waters, who will bring us at last safe home.

And the blessing of God:  Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be with us and remain with us, and with all we love, now and for evermore. Amen