Welcome to our service - 16 January
This service sheet can be used individually or with households.
We would encourage you to say (or even sing) hymns and songs out loud.
Prayers, other liturgy or readings can be said out loud or silently, corporately or individually.
If you are able, we would also like invite you to join us for our main Sunday service, 10am, live on Zoom. Even if you have never been to St Gabriel’s before we would love you to join you. Please get in touch with the vicar Alistair (vicar@saintgs.co.uk) and he will send you the Zoom details.
Notices
Please don’t hesitate to ring Alistair (07769 213 581) if you have any questions or would like support.
SERVICE
Opening:
Alleluia, alleluia.
‘May all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,
may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me,’ says the Lord.
Alleluia.
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5VutCGsVXE
King of Kings, Majesty.
God of heaven living in me.
Gentle saviour, closest friend,
strong deliverer, beginning and end.
All within me falls at your throne.
Your Majesty, I can but bow,
I lay my all before you now.
In royal robes I don't deserve,
I live to serve your Majesty.
2. Earth and heaven worship you,
love eternal, faithful and true.
Who bought the nations, ransomed souls,
brought this sinner near to your throne.
All within me cries out in praise.
Your Majesty …………..
Jarrod Cooper © 1996 Sovereign Lifestyle Music
CONFESSION
By the mercies of God, let us confess our sins and present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to him, which is our spiritual worship.
God our Father,
we come to you in sorrow for our sins.
For turning away from you,
and ignoring your will for our lives;
Father, forgive us:
save us and help us.
For behaving just as we wish,
without thinking of you;
Father, forgive us:
save us and help us.
For failing you by what we do,
and think and say;
Father, forgive us:
save us and help us.
For letting ourselves be drawn away from you
by temptations in the world about us;
Father, forgive us:
save us and help us.
For living as if we were ashamed
to belong to your Son;
Father, forgive us:
save us and help us
ABSOLUTION
The almighty and merciful Lord
grant us pardon and forgiveness of all our sins,
time for amendment of life,
and the grace and strength of the Holy Spirit. Amen
COLLECT
Eternal Lord,
our beginning and our end:
bring us with the whole creation
to your glory, hidden through past ages
and made known
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPkZAjA610k
All heaven declares
the glory of the risen Lord.
Who can compare
with the beauty of the Lord?
Forever He will be
the Lamb upon the throne.
I gladly bow the knee
and worship Him alone.
2. I will proclaim
the glory of the risen Lord,
who once was slain
to reconcile man to God.
Forever You will be
the Lamb upon the throne.
I gladly bow the knee
and worship You alone.
Tricia Richards, (c) 1987 Thankyou Music
READINGS
Colossians 1:15-23 New International Version - UK
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of[a] your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation – if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
Luke 10:21-24 New International Version – UK
At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.
‘All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’
Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.’
This the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
TALK by Alistair Stevenson and Sam Chubb
A six-year-old girl was drawing a picture one day. Her teacher said, ‘What are you drawing?’ The little girl answered, ‘I am drawing a picture of God.’ The teacher was surprised and said, ‘But nobody knows what God looks like!’ The little girl carried on drawing and replied, ‘They will in a minute.’
As we come to our second week in Colossians, Paul is attempting to show us what God is like through pointing us to the person of Jesus. Having prayed for the church in Colossae, he wants to remind them and point them to the person of Jesus. “He knows that true and ultimate devotion to Jesus doesn’t come primarily from being commanded, but rather from being enraptured by the beauty and profound love of Jesus. It makes perfect sense why Paul moves into a poem that is all about the power and love of Jesus.”
In the NIV it’s 129 words. In the original Greeks it's 110 words. In just over 110 Paul summaries some of, if not the most important theological claims about who Jesus. 110 words that could make multiple sermons.
Like a symphony, the music of the poem and its main themes fall into two movements, depicting Jesus first in the work of creation and secondly Jesus in the work of redemption. God created all things through Christ and he is reconciling those same things to himself through Christ. The author and King of creation, who brings the new creation. Or to put it another way?
First - Jesus made it all.
Second - Jesus paid it all.
This morning I’m really excited to be preaching alongside Sam in a kind of tag team preach. So, he's going to help us explore that Jesus made it all and then I’m going to take us through what it means for Jesus to pay it all.
Sam says:
Verse 15 states that Jesus is the invisible image of God – the Greek work eikōn was the same word to describe the image of Caesar on a Roman coin distributed across the empire – if you wanted to see who Caesar was, you looked at the coin. Paul is saying if you want to know who God is, look to the person of Jesus.
The passage states that “…in him all things were created”. It’s easy to take a lot of what we have around us for granted. Nowadays, modern design has made things so simple for us that we sometimes don’t even have to think about using what we have. For example, when I’m making a cup of tea, I rarely think about all those who have made it possible for me to make the cup of tea, like those who were involved in tea producing and water filtering, but just enjoy the result, the hot drink.
Looking at and admiring the small things in life can help us see the bigger picture. If I thought about the process of making the cup of tea I was drinking, and all the people who were involved, would the cup of tea taste more satisfying?
Looking at the details in these 6 verses in Colossians gives us this great picture of all things being created through Jesus. And when we explore these details, we build this bigger picture of who he is uniquely to us, and as brothers and sisters together.
Verse 17 states that “He is before all things…”, but when we look at our own lives, do we put Him before everything else? In this modern world, how easy is it for our lives to be taken over by so many different distractions. Paul is making sure that we realise we need to ‘make the main thing, the main thing’. Since he is the firstborn of all creation, before all things, then we need to make sure that he is first in our lives.
Now I don’t know about you, but I’m terrible at making decisions. Recently I was in Superdrug, only going in for one thing, toothpaste. Now toothpaste is such a silly thing to have to buy, because there are about 20 versions of the same product that claim to do different things to your teeth. Did I want the minty sensation, did I want whiter teeth in just 10 days, or maybe 7 benefits in just 1 tube of toothpaste? As I stood there, I was overwhelmed and struggling to make a decision. Truth be told, I just bought the one that was half price. But what this tells us is that I was completely consumed by choice in this moment, with so many versions of the same thing. I’m sure you will have had similar experiences yourselves.
But when it comes to Jesus, the firstborn, in him all things were created. Not just some, but all.
And Jesus isn’t just a choice amongst other choices, He is the only choice we need to take.
The truth that Paul is echoing through these verses is that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life – there is only one truth, only one way to the father, and that’s through him.
Verse 19 states that God was “…pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him…”: not just some, but all.
If God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, wouldn’t he be pleased to see us put all of our fullness in him so we may dwell in peace, security, and hope, whilst journeying through life with him.
And if in him all things are held together, then surely our lives are most secure when we’re living for him, according to his word.
Alistair continues:
One commentator writes this:
“Paul has had us up on the heights. Now he takes us down to the depths. He has taken us out among the stars and back before the beginning of time and has set before us the deity of Christ. Now he sets before us the death of Christ. The contrast could hardly be greater. Paul has been reminding us that God has no plan, no program, and no purpose either for our planet or for all of the vast reaches of space that does not find its centre in the person of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. He confronts us now with the most amazing of all of the purposes of God - His purpose in redemption.”
Jesus made it all.
Jesus paid it all.
At the cross, the justice of God meets the mercy of God. Instead of God’s wrath being hurled out onto a guilty human race - through Jesus, God acts for reconciliation and peace.
Every single one of us has a sense that, when a crime has been committed, justice should be served. When someone has done wrong - someone has to pay the penalty and punishment. We are desperate in our culture to bring people to justice - to find someone to blame and to make sure they pay for what they have done. Again, and again our news cycles are full of stories of people desperate for justice.
Our eldest son has this sense of justice strongly embedded in his personality. So, when his four-year-old brother gets something wrong, in Ethan’s mind, he should immediately be punished. Justice should be served on his little brother and Ethan is perfectly willing to inform us, his parents, that this should be the case. Often, he will say, something along the lines of: ‘Mum, Dad - Benji just lied’ or ‘Benji just hit Izzy. Aren't you going to punish him?’ Or even, tell us what the punishment should be: ‘Dad – Benji has been bad – send him to his room’.
Often, we think that love and justice are opposed. We often struggle to understand God’s wrath and anger in light of his love. The cross demonstrates that sins deserve to be punished. But at the cross the justice of God meets the love and mercy of God - through the blood of Jesus on cross, Paul says, we are reconciled to God.
It is not like God on the cross punished some innocent third party, Jesus - that would be barbaric. We see in this passage that Paul tells us that God himself - his fullness - came to earth in his son Jesus. God was in Christ reconciling you and me to God.
God’s holiness and justice said “Punish them”. God’s love said, “Pardon them”. The solution was simply, but cost God everything - beyond anything that we can conceive. God passed a sentence against the human race, the maximum sentence equal with absolute holiness - the sentence was death. Then, in the person of Jesus, God paid the penalty himself. The demands of God’s holiness and the demands of His love meet on the cross.
The Psalmist caught a glimpse of it when he wrote in Psalm 85: “Mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other”.
The cross demonstrates how far humans could go in rebellion to God but it also demonstrates how far God was willing to go to reconcile us back to him. Like the father in Luke 15, who sees his prodigal son returning from a distance, God runs to us and brings us home. He wraps his arms of love around us, he kisses us. He puts the best robe on us, a ring of inheritance on our finger and sandals on our feet. He restores us, as we see in verse 22, to be holy in God’s sight, without blemish and free from accusation.
Did you also notice the holistic nature of God’s reconciliation? It’s not just for the human race - through Jesus, God reconciled to himself all things on earth and things in heaven. The scope of God’s reconciliation includes his creation. And so, as Paul writes in Romans 8: ‘creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed’. God’s reconciliation has implications for everyone and every aspect of our creation.
As his people, we are called to be agents of his reconciliation agenda. That means, extraordinarily, we play a role in God’s act of reconciliation in the world – we join with God in bring people back into relationship with God and in the process of re-creation and restoration of creation. When we are reconciled to Christ our response should be to bring reconciliation to all our other relationships and reconciliation to creation that is waiting, that is groaning.
Today – we invite you to consider again the implications that you have been reconciled to God through Christ. Once you were alienated, like the prodigal son living in a far-off land, but now you have been found, forgiven, restored, set-free. You are holy in God’s sight – without blemish and free from accusation. ‘Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence’ (v. 22 MSG).
Take some time to dwell on this extraordinary truth. Allow it to move from head understanding to your heart – transforming every aspect of your life. And then consider how God is calling you – YES YOU! He is calling YOU to play a role in his reconciliation agenda in our world. What will you do today, tomorrow, this week to bring this about? Amen
THE APOSTLES’ CREED
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth
I believe in Jesus Christ,
his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand
of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen
O LORD, HEAR MY PRAYER,
O Lord, hear my prayer:
When I call answer me.
O Lord, hear my prayer,
O Lord, hear my prayer:
Come and listen to me.
Jacques Berthier/Taizé.
Copyright © 1982 Ateliers et Presses de Taize (France).
PRAYERS - written by written by Liz Cannell
Heavenly Father, We give thanks for our fellowship here at St. Gabriels, for the ministry of Alistair and Catherine, and all who contribute to our worship. We pray for those who will attend the Alpha courses, may each come to know you better and share your love with others.
At the start of the week of prayer for Christian Unity we give thanks that we are part of a worldwide church, and we pray for all who share our faith and acknowledge Jesus as our Saviour. We pray for our Archbishops and all church leaders, and the gifts each has to offer in their leadership and outreach in their own communities. With many different cultures, backgrounds, and ways of worship, may we learn from and support each other. We pray for Gemma and Tom as they settle in and start their work in Uganda, and for others involved in making known your love through their service to others in many parts of the world.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
We pray about the situation in Afghanistan, for the suffering of people lacking food and jobs. We pray for justice, may the government acknowledge and have compassion on the present and future needs of the people in distress. We think too of areas of unrest, fear and suspicion between countries and within communities. We pray for your guidance on all governments in their decisions and responsibilities.
The effect of Covid is widespread, and we pray for those who are feeling the long-term effects of the virus. We remember too those who are missing operations and treatments due to the shortages of NHS workers, and the effect on many people's lives due to the lack of social care, leaving individuals and families struggling to cope; and the lack of teachers which is causing difficulties in schools, bringing more disruption for children and students.
Lord we ask you to look in love upon your people. May your Holy Spirit pour the healing oil of your compassion on our world. Amen.
LORD’S PRAYER
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
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajal5cQpjCs
Come and see, come and see,
come and see the King of love;
see the purple robe
and crown of thorns He wears.
Soldiers mock, rulers sneer
as He lifts the cruel cross;
lone and friendless now,
he climbs towards the hill.
We worship at Your feet,
where wrath and mercy meet,
and a guilty world is washed
by love's pure stream.
For us He was made sin -
oh, help me take it in.
Deep wounds of love cry out
`Father, forgive'.
I worship, I worship
the Lamb who was slain.
2. Come and weep, come and mourn
for your sin that pierced Him there;
so much deeper than the wounds
of thorn and nail.
All our pride, all our greed,
all our fallen-ness and shame;
and the Lord has laid the punishment
on Him.
We worship ....
3. Man of heaven, born to earth
to restore us to Your heaven;
here we bow in awe
beneath Your searching eyes.
From your tears comes our joy,
from Your death our life shall spring;
by Your resurrection power
we shall rise.
We worship ...
Words & Music Graham Kendrick (c)1989 Makeway Music
OFFERTORY - Take a moment to consider how you are going to continue to give to the life of the church and support other aid agencies and mission organisations.
Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power,
the glory, the splendour, and the majesty;
for everything in heaven and on earth is yours.
All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o469PRLdbHU
Will you come and follow me
If I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know
And never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown,
Will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be grown
In you and you in me?
2 Will you leave your self behind
If I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind
And never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare
Should your life attract or scare
Will you let me answer prayer
In you and you in me?
3 Will you let the blinded see
If I but call your name?
Will you set the prisoners free
And never be the same?
Will you kiss the leper clean,
And do such as this unseen,
And admit to what I mean
In you and you in me?
4 Will you love the `you' you hide
If I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside
And never be the same?
Will you use the faith you've found
To reshape the world around
Through my sight and touch and sound
In you and you in me?
5 Lord, your summons echoes true
When you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you
And never be the same.
In your company I'll go
Where your love and footsteps show,
Thus I'll move and live and grow
In you and you in me.
Iona
FINAL BLESSING:
Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, who was wounded for our sins,
that you may bear in your life the love and joy and peace
which are the marks of Jesus in his disciples;
and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
be upon you and remain with you always.
Amen