Sunday 2 January 2022

 

January 2nd 2022
A service of worship for use at home Prepared by Ian Wood

Call to Worship

Christmas Day is behind us, but the joy of the Incarnation resides with us always! The Old year is behind us and a New Year is begun

Let the whole earth shout for joy, and everything within, rejoice!
For Light has come into the world, and the darkness will never overwhelm it.

STF 330 Joy to the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiwrmYUXdS8

1Joy to the world, the Lord is come ! Let earth receive her King ;
let every heart prepare him room,

and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven, and heaven and nature sing.

2Joy to the world, the Saviour reigns !
Let all their songs employ ;
while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains

repeat the sounding joy,
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

3He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove
the glories of his righteousness

and wonders of his love,
and wonders of his love,
and wonders, wonders of his love.

A prayer based on the Lorica of Saint Patrick, circa 377

We are here today
through a belief in the Creator of everything, through a mighty strength:
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

We are here today
in the strength of Christ's birth and baptism,
in the strength of his crucifixion and burial,
in the strength of his resurrection and ascension.

T oday
we have God's might to uphold us, we have God's wisdom to guide us, we have God's eye to look out for us, we have God's ear to hear us,
we have God's word to speak to us, we have God's hand to guard us,
we have God's shield to protect us.

Isaac Watts (1674–1748)

Christ with us,
Christ before us, Christ behind us,
Christ in us, Christ beneath us, Christ above us, Christ on our right, Christ on our left,
Christ when we lie down, Christ when we sit down, Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of us, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of us, Christ in the eye that sees us,
Christ in the ear that hears us.

We are here today
through a belief in the Creator of everything, through a mighty strength:
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A prayer of praise and adoration

Wonderful God, we praise and adore you:
that you came as the living Word to be the voice of the voiceless;
that you came as the Word made flesh to clothe our nakedness;
that you came as the light in the darkness to illumine our hope;
that you came as the Lamb of God to transform our brutality;
that you came from eternity to the earth to heal all creation;
that you came in Jesus as the child of humility and the servant of love, to release Christmas within our hearts.
We praise and thank you.
Amen.

Call to Reconciliation

We know all that God has done for us,
We also know all we could have done for others. Let us now confess to God our failures and frailties.

Prayer of Confession

We could proclaim your name, God of this holy season,
but we spend too much time talking about celebrities.
We could tell others about all your gracious deeds,
but we are more interested in the exploits of our favourite sports personalities
We could let your Word guide our lives, but instead we are swayed by our friends and social media. Forgive us when we forget who we are called to be.

Silence is kept

Assurance of Pardon

In the silence, in the dreams, in the wonder, in the words, God comes to save us and have mercy on us.
We offer our thanks and praise to the One who forgives us. Thanks be to God!

STF 208 Let earth and heaven combine

https://youtu.be/IboTqyWNVoE

1Let earth and heaven combine, angels and all agree,
to praise in songs divine
the incarnate Deity,

our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man.

2He laid his glory by,
he wrapped him in our clay ; unmarked by human eye,
the latent Godhead lay ;
infant of days he here became,
and bore the mild Immanuel's name.

John 1 (New Revised Standard Version) The Word Became Flesh

3Unsearchable the love
that has the Saviour brought ;
the grace is far above
both earth’s and angels’ thought : suffice for us that God, we know, our God, is manifest below.

4He deigns in flesh to appear, widest extremes to join ;
and make us all divine :
and we the life of God shall know, for God is manifest below.

5Made perfect first in love,
and sanctified by grace,
we shall from earth remove,
and see his glorious face :
his love shall then be fully showed, and we shall all be lost in God.

Charles Wesley (1707–1788)

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.

11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received

him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”’) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace

and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

StF 504 May the mind of Christ my Saviour

1May the mind of Christ my Saviour live in me from day to day,
by his love and power controlling all I do or say.

2May the word of God dwell richly in my heart from hour to hour,
so that all may see I triumph
only through his power.

3May the peace of God my Father rule my life in everything,
that I may be calm to comfort
sick and sorrowing.

A reflection:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7nmPUNdfkM

4May the love of Jesus fill me, as the waters fill the sea ; Him exalting self-abasing
this is victory.

5May I run the race before me, strong and brave to face the foe, looking only unto Jesus
as I onward go.

Katie Barclay Wilkinson (1859–1928)

There are so many themes worth exploring in the Prologue to the Gospel of John it can be difficult to decide just where to focus. I suspect it to be an inexhaustible treasure house, with the potential to inspire hundreds, if not thousands of sermons. But time is limited, so I want to share with you today my thoughts on just two verses which stand out to me as relevant to this time and season.

The first is verse 5: “The light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

I love the confident note of hope in these words. Even in times of difficulty, when it may be hard to see the way ahead, there is hope. One the one hand, it is the declaration of a state of scientific fact: that light is stronger than darkness. At the same time, it is also a promise: even when it seems otherwise, when the newspaper headlines might cause us to despair, the light continues to shine and the darkness can neither overcome nor understood it.

There is a tension within this verse that seems to me to accurately capture the life of faith. We live confident of the promise that light is stronger than darkness, love stronger than hate, and life stronger than death. Yet this truth is not always apparent in what we experience around us, and even when we believe it most confidently, we can still experience difficulties, and at times it seems as if the light is struggling to overcome the darkness.

When friends and family struggle with infirmity or depression; When infections from Covid-19 have reached record levels, and every victory is followed by a new variant to give our doctors and scientists and immunologists fresh challenges, this verse proclaims encouragement.

In the last few days we have heard of the death of Desmond Tutu, a man of great faith, and great wisdom, who spent much of his life fighting against the evils of apartheid. There were times when it seemed that the battle would never be won, but he never gave up hope, and never gave up working. These are some words he wrote:

Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Life is stronger than death;
Victory is ours through Him who loves us.

The other words which cannot be ignored are in verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

The word “flesh” is a word which for Christians may often evoke negative connotations. In my early twenties, I belonged to a house fellowship group, and the lady that ran it seemed pre-occupied with the battle against “the sins of the flesh.” She was so worried about the sinful possibilities of the human body she had a very suspicious, even hostile attitude towards the human body,

towards human flesh. She used to quote from Galatians: “what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit.”

And so when John writes “And the Word became flesh and lived among us” what is he actually saying? The Word, who was with God in the beginning; the Word who is God; the Word became flesh. The Word took human form, with a real body of real flesh, and made himself at home as one of us, flesh and blood the same as us. It is important to stress that God came to earth, not just like one of us but as one of us.

And if we take that seriously, it should warn us against following any versions of Christian spirituality which hold the human body as detestable and make out that the goal of our spiritual journey is to be released from the flesh in order to find some sort of out-of-body spiritual experience.

The God we worship actually became flesh. God honoured the human body by making himself known to us in a human body. And as our gospel reading said, no one has seen God in any other way than in the body of Jesus the Son. When God set out to make himself known to us as fully as possible, God came to us in a human body.

Our image of God begins with a human life, lived with the same human limitations that we all face. When we talk about the power of God, it is not a power that is able to end all violence and hostility at the click of a finger, but a power that is able to keep on loving even when suffering the worst of that violence and hostility. We don’t see a power that somehow magically eliminates hatred and torture, but one which is able to absorb the evil and transform even the most horrendous suffering into the source of hope and salvation for all who suffer under the weight of the sin of the world.

God became one with us, so that we might become one with God. In Jesus, we have not only seen what God is, but what we can become. We have seen human life lived to the full. We have seen the destiny for which we were created: human life lived to the glory of God, full of grace and truth.

True Christian spirituality is about spirit becoming flesh, not about spirit being liberated from the flesh. Everything of consequence in our faith must become incarnate, must take flesh, and be lived out in the here and now in real life bodily ways.

This is well expressed in Howard Thurman’s poem “The Work of Christmas”:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.

Intercessions, with spaces for your own prayers

Circle us, Lord
Circle us with the light of your presence, bright within this dark world Enable us to overcome fear and temptation
Enable us to be victors over sin and despair
Enable us to become that which you would desire us to be.
(Silent prayer)
Lord of creation, Lord of Salvation
Circle us with the light of your presence

Circle us, Lord
Circle our family within the shelter of your outstretched arms Be with them in each moment of their daily lives
Be with them in the decisions that they face
Be with them in their homes and relationships
(Silent prayer)
Lord of creation, Lord of Salvation
Circle our families with the light of your presence

Circle us, Lord
Circle this nation with Incarnate love and hope
May all find within them a desire to listen to the Gospel message May all discover a willingness to understand and respond
May all realise a longing to reach out to the Christ Child
(Silent prayer)
Lord of creation, Lord of Salvation
Circle our nation with the light of your presence

Circle us, Lord
Circle this world with the joy of your Salvation Where there is sickness and disease bring healing Where there is hunger and despair bring hope Where there is torture and oppression bring release (Silent prayer)
Lord of creation, Lord of Salvation
Circle this world with the light of your presence

Amen

Our final hymn is fitting at the start of a New Year, assuring us that God is with us now and always will be.

STF 610 Best of all is God is with us

1Best of all is God is with us,
God will hold and never fail.
Keep that truth when storms are raging, God remains though faith is frail.

2Best of all is God is with us,
life goes on and needs are met, God is strongest in our weakness. Love renews, will not forget.

3Best of all is God is with us,
hearts are challenged, strangely warmed, faith is deepened, courage strengthened, grace received and hope reformed.

Blessing

And now may the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate love of the eternal God,
and the encircling fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
be with you forever more

Amen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig7qfNIeGuQ

4Best of all is God is with us,
in our joy and through our pain, till that final acclamation :
‘life is Christ, and death is gain.’

5Best of all is God is with us
as we scale eternal heights,
love grows stronger, undiminished ; earth grows dim by heaven's lights.

Andrew Pratt (b. 1948) Based on John Wesley's final words.