Sunday 9 January 2022

 BURTON JOYCE 

COMMUNITY CHURCH

COVENANT SERVICE – Sunday 9 January 2022

Prepared by Rev Richard Byass and adapted by Phil Colbourn

Hymns in Songs of Fellowship (SoF)

Welcome

SoF 879 - Let all the world in every corner sing

We pray

Glory to God the Father, the God of love, who created us, preserves and sustains us. Glory to Jesus our Saviour who, though he was rich, became poor for us. Glory to the Spirit, the Lord and giver of life

God of grace, through your Son you call us into a new covenant. Help us as we draw near in faith, in our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

Reading - Mark 14: 22-25

The Covenant 

God made a covenant with the people of Israel, renewed in Jesus our Lord, promising new life; such that everyone may be set free from sin and its power and united in love, no longer living for ourselves but for others. We seek forgiveness that we are slow to follow, impoverished in worship, neglectful stewards of creation and tolerant of injustice. 

Lord, have mercy. Lord, forgive

If we confess our sins, God, the faithful and just, forgives, restores and sets us free. Hear this gracious word: Your sins are forgiven. Amen. Thanks be to God

SoF 1205 – Come, now is the time to worship

Come, let us use the grace divine and all, with one accord, in a perpetual covenant, join ourselves to Christ the Lord. Amen

Sisters and brothers, let us again accept our place in this covenant and, with the help of the Spirit, accept God’s purpose for us in this call to love and service. Christ has many services to be done, some easy, others difficult; all requiring that we deny ourselves in Christ.

And so, we make this covenant our own:

I am no longer my own but yours

Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will,

Put me to doing, put me to suffering,

Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,

Exalted for you or brought low for you,

Let me be full, let me be empty,

Let me have all things, let me have nothing;

I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to you,

To serve you as and when you choose

Glory, honour, power and might be yours, O Lord most high!

Prayers of intercession

We pray for your church throughout the world. Pause

Lead all those in positions of authority or influence. Pause

Help anyone who is suffering sickness, grief or trouble. Pause

We hold before you all who have gone to be with you. Pause

Lord, you have helped us in the past, by your grace, grant that we may know you every day and, at last, come to you in your eternal home

We share in saying: Our Father in heaven

Take bread, take wine & in communion combine love, joy & peace with every word divine; and life be yours and life be mine. Amen

SoF 21 - And can it be that I should gain?

Faithful God, so feed, strengthen and guide us in the way of Christ, that we with all your faithful people may come to share in the banquet of your eternal kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

The blessing of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, be upon you and remain with you for ever. Amen

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord

In the name of Christ. Amen 

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.

Christmas 2021

 

Christmas 2021

Christmas services in church have been cancelled

I have added some photos to the Virtual Church page:

-------------------------------

Sadly, for the second year, we are not able to meet in church but here are some glimpses of what it would have been like

NNE Online Youtube worship

The Nottingham North East Circuit of the Methodist Church 

has a lot of material on it's Youtube channel ...

... from Sunday worship to hymns and songs 

and much, much more to explore and enjoy!

Find everything here:

NNE Youtube Channel

Advent 4: Sunday 19 December 2021

BURTON JOYCE 

COMMUNITY CHURCH

with Nottingham North East Circuit 

Advent 4 Sunday 19 December 2021

Prepared by Jan Davies, adapted for Burton Joyce by Phil Colbourn

Hymns from Songs of Fellowship (SoF)

Prayer of approach 

Lord and Father: We to live in a dark world today where evil seems to be in control. This year has been difficult. We join with your people throughout the ages who have cried out to you for deliverance. Give us patience as we wait for your final victory. Amen

Advent Candles: Today we light four candles 

Let’s sing SoF 1419 Light of the World (So here I am)

Prayer: Praise and worship (A Song of Christ’s Glory) 

Christ Jesus was in the form of God, but He did not cling to equality with God. He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and was born in our human likeness. Being found in human form, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even death on the cross. 

Therefore, God has highly exalted Him, & bestowed on Him the name above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth & under the earth; & every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen

Readings: Malachi 2:17- 3:4; Luke 3:1-6

Hymn SoF 150 Hail to the Lord’s anointed

Sermon: Prepare for Change

In Advent, we traditionally concentrate on the message of John the Baptist. There had been 400 years since there had been a prophet in Israel so, when John the Baptist came preaching in the desert just like an Old Testament prophet, the people knew that there was big change coming. The prophet Malachi was just such an example. 

The people of Judah and Jerusalem had been hauled off to Babylon as exiles. They had been there for approximately 60 years when Babylon was defeated by the Persian Empire and, in the upheaval, a Jewish patriot called Zerubbabel led a hundred families back to Jerusalem where they found everything in ruins. They set about rebuilding the Temple. However, everything was a mess and, to be honest, those who came back were still influenced by foreign gods. 

It was now that the prophets Malachi in Jerusalem and Ezekiel in Babylon preached about great changes to come. They both condemned those who tried to compromise their faith and Malachi warned about thinking that God didn’t care about sin – surely, they had learned that lesson when they were hauled off into exile! Malachi preaches that God is preparing to act in Israel. He has sent Malachi, to warn the people that it will be a time of judgement – they will be refined like gold or silver. Sorting things out will be painful. 

Not long after this, Ezra and Nehemiah lead more exiles to return. The corrupt practices are cleaned away. There is huge opposition and the returning Jews learn to rebuild with a shovel in one hand and a sword in the other. The reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah came as no great surprise, because the people had been warned by Malachi. 

But many Christian teachers see in these words a message for later generations – perhaps ours. Malachi talks about the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord. This is usually taken to mean the end of time when God will come in person and cleanse his people. But it is also seen as pointing to the coming of the Messiah who would be both saviour and judge. So, for us, these words look forward to the coming of Jesus as a vulnerable child and also forward to Christ’s second coming. 

We may want to ignore this but God has sent His prophets to prepare us – so we ignore it at our peril! If Christ were to return this week, it would be no good saying: ‘but we didn’t know that was coming’. 

For about 400 years, there were no more prophets, so it was quite a shock when suddenly a prophet, John, arose who said he was coming to prepare the way for the promised Messiah. Momentous changes were coming and people needed to be prepared. How? He preached repentance: only by completely changing our lives can we be ready for the coming of the Christ. They could never say ‘but we didn’t expect that – if we had known, we would have been ready’. 

Do we get any sense that God is moving again now? That He has a message for us? Or do we think that God has not spoken directly to us and so we carry on as though nothing will ever change and judgement is something that only the cranks talk about? 

This is Advent, the season of preparation. What are we preparing for? Each Advent I read an Advent book which takes me through the four weeks and then up to Twelfth Night. I find that this grounds me and it is good to just relax for half an hour and be reminded what all the fuss is about. But there is a second event which we are asked to prepare for – what the prophets called ‘the great and terrible Day of the Lord.’ 

Surely, we should prepare by doing the work God has called us to –Matthew 25: visit the sick, the prisoner, give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger. Simple to understand but hard to get on and do when there is so much call on our time and pockets. But when He comes, we can never say ‘we didn’t expect that – if we had known, we would have been prepared’. 

Meditation and confession: 

Here we are again Lord! It’s the middle of December and I still have a thousand things to do. I feel tired and harassed – I will never be ready. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like, Lord, to forget it all, opt out, hire a cottage somewhere and sit it out until it’s all over.
But would I miss something important? I should be celebrating: You coming into the world is the greatest event since the creation.

I wonder if it’s worth all the hassle. Every year I say ‘this year it will be different’ but every year it’s the same. I spend too much, eat too much and I’m exhausted by Christmas day. How should we prepare for your coming? What do you think Lord? Forgive us Lord.

Lord, this is a time to celebrate. We, of all people know how much there is to be joyful about. Help us to resist the excesses. To care for the lonely, the homeless and refugee. To find time to stop, be still and worship you the King of Kings and to look forward to your Advent promise to come again in glory and establish your Kingdom of justice and peace forever. Then, we will get the celebrations right. Amen 

Prayers of Intercession: 

Lord of peace; bring peace where there is violence. We bring to you Lord, the people of Yemen, of Afghanistan and of those gathered on the borders of Belarus and Poland both civilians and soldiers. 

In the Darkness 

Let your light shine 

Lord of Justice; bring justice where people live in fear, governments and soldiers impose their will; for the peoples of the Holy Land. May all the communities find ways to live together with justice and peace. 

In the Darkness 

Let your light shine 

Lord of the poor and marginalised; in poverty, hunger, homelessness or suffering, move our hearts to share fairly; for refugees living in terrible conditions in camps; mercy, compassion and practical help. 

In the Darkness 

Let your light shine 

Lord of creation; forgive us for misusing your created world. Give courage to all who work to save the environment; people suffering because of climate change, because of violent floods or wild fires. 

In the Darkness 

Let your light shine 

Lord of healing and wholeness; we bring to you those who are known to us personally who need your healing power............
In the Darkness 

Let your light shine 

Lord of the Kingdom of God, who came, not to condemn but to save, give us courage & wisdom as we bring the message of your love and forgiveness to a needy world. Send us out with your Holy Spirit.
In the Darkness
Let your light shine. Amen 

Hymn SoF 154 Hark the glad sound! The Saviour comes 

Sending out prayer
Lord our God, keep your servants alert and watchful as we await the return of Christ your Son, so that, when He comes and knocks at the door, He may find us vigilant and in prayer. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

 

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      

Gift Day giving

 Thank you!

Burton Joyce Community Church

At our gift day service ...

We raised a magnificent £115 in support of the homeless in Nottingham 

The money has been shared by The Friary and Framework