Welcome to our service - 27 June
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 and in the church. 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.
Please join us for public worship in the church building this Sunday at 10am or 11:30am.
OPENING
OPENING
Faithful One, whose word is life: come with saving power to free our praise, inspire our prayer and shape our lives. For the kingdom of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
HYMN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5D3LEjGF8A
Morning has broken
like the first morning;
blackbird has spoken
like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them, springing
fresh from the Word!
2. Sweet the rain's new fall
sunlit from heaven,
like the first dew fall
on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness
of the wet garden,
sprung in completeness
where His feet pass.
3 Mine is the sunlight!
Mine is the morning
born of the one light
Eden saw play!
Praise with elation,
praise every morning,
God's re-creation
of the new day!
Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)
(c) David Higham Associates Ltd
from The Children's Bells
published by Oxford University Press
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.
CONFESSION
Jesus says, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.’
So let us turn away from sin and turn to the Lord,
confessing our sins in penitence and faith.
A time of silence - for reflection
Father eternal, giver of light and grace,
we have sinned against you and against our neighbour,
in what we have thought,
in what we have said and done,
through ignorance, through weakness,
through our own deliberate fault.
We have wounded your love,
and marred your image in us.
We are sorry and ashamed,
and repent of all our sins.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
who died for us,
forgive us all that is past;
and lead us out from darkness
to walk as children of light.
Amen.
ABSOLUTION
May the Father of all mercies
cleanse us from our sins,
and restore us in his image
to the praise and glory of his name,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
COLLECT
O God, the protector of all who trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy:
increase and multiply upon us your mercy;
that with you as our ruler and guide
we may so pass through things temporal
that we lose not our hold on things eternal;
grant this, heavenly Father,
for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suTht0u2NiM
O LORD, GIVE ME AN UNDIVIDED HEART
To follow You.
O Lord, give me an undiminished love,
To see what You see, to do what You do,
O Lord, give me an undivided heart.
O Lord, give me an unrelenting mind
To seek Your face.
O Lord, give me an undefeated faith,
To see victory in all that I do,
To worship in spirit and truth.
To see less of me, and much more of You,
O Lord, give me an undivided heart.
O Lord, give me an undivided heart.
Chris Roe/Dave Markee.
Copyright � 1990 Thankyou Music.
READINGS
James 4:1-12 New International Version - UK
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
‘God opposes the proud
but shows favour to the humble.’
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you – who are you to judge your neighbour?
Matthew 6:24-27 New International Version - UK
‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
TALK written by Hannah Chester
My dad used to tell me that if I was going to do something, to do it 100%. If I was going to do anything, commit to it fully and follow it through. And for a while this was really good advice, and generally always having good intentions as a child, it meant that when I put my mind to things I would work hard and see it through to the finish. The idea was that I would become a responsible and reliable person who took commitments seriously, and with hobbies and small responsibilities when I was younger, it worked like this very well. But actually, as I grew a bit older, I could see how this wouldn’t always go well.
I used to dance and we did a yearly dance show. There was one dance where we kept rolling around on the floor in a seemingly graceful manner, and I suppose someone a little bit more petite than I might have done it with a glide and elegance, but I personally would carry such a move out with a little more heaviness to it let’s say. And the Saturday night show, the arguably most popular of the shows, I happened to miss one of the steps out and rolled way too early. And I was left with a choice; to simply fudge it a bit and pretend it didn’t happen, or to carry out the move with full commitment. I took my dad’s advice and carried on to the floor, staring at the ceiling for 30 very long seconds waiting for the 11 other dancers to eventually join me.
It was highly embarrassing as it also looked a little like I’d just decided to take a little nap on stage for a moment, but in the eyes of said advice, I suppose no-one could blame me for my commitment.
There are some things that need a grey area certainly, and when this advice doesn’t quite work, but in the case of our reading from James today, it follows quite strongly on those lines. Verse 4 says ‘You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.’
This reading talks about the difference between earthly good and earthly desires and heavenly and spiritual ones. The word ‘desires’ in Greek is translated into Hedons, a literal measure of happiness and in this case, the worldly desires James is critiquing is causing disputes and quarrels. And it’s not the right or wrong that James is annoyed at, it’s the motive behind the fights - selfishness, jealousy and rivalry. All of these things are worldly and come from looking at the world and how we can benefit without considering the heavenly impact.
When we go into relationship with God, we learn to look at things through a spiritual perspective and leave the worldly one behind, and James is urging people to step it up a gear. He says that by doing these things, by thinking too worldly in these ways, that we are ‘adulterous people’ and in essence cheating on God. We have made a commitment to live and think a certain way and to be God’s people, and by giving into selfish motives and jealous thoughts, we are flirting with the enemy. To James, there is no grey area, it’s all or nothing.
The adultery part of these verses is key to understanding. We have tied ourselves to God and so flirting with the world is not an option. A total, unreserved, unwavering allegiance to God is needed and to reject the attitudes and values of the world.
I wonder what sort of thing you’ve thought of when I’ve talked about living in the world. In Matthew, it talks directly about not being controlled by the desire for money. But James doesn’t, and it’s because it can be much broader than one thing. Popularity, achievement, status. All common idols and desires, motivations of the world. Whatever it is we might be slaves to, like it says in Matthew, you cannot have two masters. You can’t be in the middle of it, the grey area, flirting with both but never committed to either.
The whole of James is pretty challenging as we’ve seen but this, in particular, is brutal. He is not holding back on telling us exactly how it is and exactly how we’re going wrong and what needs to happen to get it right. It’s impossible then not to feel just a little bit daunted by this. It isn’t easy to live a spiritual life whilst immersed in this, often non-spiritual world and so how are we meant to keep up with this? And if we don’t, it looks like James says we’ll be an ‘enemy of God’!
But verse 6 says ‘he gives us more grace’. God doesn’t set boundaries for us that are impossible to reach. He forgives and he will continue to, but James is trying to get rid of the idea that just because God does forgive, it means that we can take full advantage and keep living for worldly things knowing that God will forgive us and it will be fine.
So what does James tell us to do? How do we do this?
One of the weird things he says in the next few verses is to grieve, mourn and wail. To change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. It’s not massively encouraging.
I was assured to read more into it that James isn’t trying to be a killjoy, he isn’t talking generally, he’s actually talking about your attitude to sinning.
I’m in a childcare bubble with the Stevensons and Ethan will occasionally do something to annoy his siblings and rather than sincerely apologise, he will sing, ‘teleporting you to the land of sorry’. It is probably the most hilarious way of saying sorry, but it feels like he doesn’t mean it. Of course, Ethan is 8 so he’s still learning, and I wish there was a way for us to apologise like that in complete sincerity.
But James is saying that actually if you are actively doing things wrong often, and laughing it off, not taking it seriously and asking for forgiveness insincerely, then you might as well not. If you’ve got the wrong motivation, if you’re simply going through the motions and saying the words without the meaning, then it’s just as bad as not at all.
“Submit yourselves, then, to God.”
Submit is not seen as a positive word at the moment. Our culture, our world is all about independence and building yourself tall and never needing anyone else, and submission is seen as a sign of weakness. Many of us will have at some point in our lives been told to be stronger, to suck it up or get a grip, to appear like we have it all together.
But submission means caving in, admitting you can’t do it on your own, admitting you get it wrong sometimes and admitting you need help. Submission is incredibly counter-cultural and maybe one of the biggest differences between our culture and following God.
Relationship with God means submission, but the outcome of this vulnerability to God means something different.
God promises more to us when we do this. When we have submitted ourselves to him, to say we know he is greater and he knows better, when we’re in our ultimate weakness and vulnerably bringing ourselves to him, there’s no judgement, there’s no mocking, God, full of grace, transforms us. When we are all in with God, when we decide to go 100%, God gives us life back.
We have to put down what seems so big in this world, BUT we get back something that blows it way out of the water and suddenly our perspective changes completely.
There’s a song lyric from a worship song I love that says,
“I touch the sky when my knees hit the ground. I found my life, when I laid it down.“
When we submit to him, we are raised to life. When we go all in, we get even more back.
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 Sue James
We begin our prayers this morning with words from James
Come near to God and he will come near to you
So we come before God with gratitude that as we come near to him we realise how close, how welcoming he is – a Father who delights in his children.
Gracious Father
We thank you that you draw us to yourself. We thank you that you care for us and that we can bring our concerns to you
We reflect on words from scripture:
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God
We bring before God some of the things which we are anxious about:
We live in a world where there are many military threats, where new technologies provide nations with weapons of mass destruction.
We think this week of the tension there has been at sea between Britain and Russia and the fragile peace between Israel and Gaza
God of peace we pray for those who have the responsibility for making and keeping peace, for the leaders of the nations and for all those involved in peace keeping negotiations. Bless them with wisdom both human and divine as they navigate the path of peace
Merciful Father we cast our cares on you.
Trusting in your care for us
We bring before God our concern for our planet
Creator God
We praise you for your creation and the beauty of nature.
Forgive us for the damage that we have done to your creation.
Grant us the wisdom to care for the earth and protect it.
Make us aware of the damage we are doing
Help us to act now for the good of future generations and for all your creatures.
Merciful Father we cast our cares on you.
Trusting in your care for us
We pray for those in our own locality who are anxious and we bring them before God
We pray:
For those who have financial worries – who have seen their businesses fail or have become unemployed
For people who are worried about their own or a loved one’s physical or mental health
For young people who are worried about getting the grades they need or worried about getting a job
For children who are anxious at school
We bring before God anyone we know personally who is particularly anxious at this time.
We hold them in the love of God. We take a moment now
Merciful Father we cast our cares on you.
Trusting in your care for us
Finally we pray for ourselves
O Lord set us free from restlessness and anxiety.
Bring us to a deeper trust in you
May the peace of God which transcends all understanding guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus and may we allow His peace to rule in our hearts
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=EQaOErUUjm8
Brother, sister let me serve you,
let me be as Christ to you;
pray that I may have the grace
to let you be my servant too.
2. We are pilgrims on a journey,
we are brothers on the road;
we are here to help each other
walk the mile and bear the load.
3. I will hold the Christ-light for you
in the night-time of your fear;
I will hold my hand out to you,
speak the peace you long to hear.
4. I will weep when you are weeping;
when you laugh I'll laugh with you.
I will share your joy and sorrow
`Til we've seen this journey through.
5. When we sing to God in heaven
we will find such harmony,
born of all we've known together
of Christ's love and agony.
6. Brother, sister let me serve you,
Let me be as Christ to you;
pray that I may have the grace
to let you be my servant too.
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.
SAY:
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=-Acn2YWfbZE
Amazing grace –
how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
was blind, but now I see.
'Twas grace that taught
my heart to fear,
and grace my fears relieved;
how precious did that grace appear
the hour I first believed.
Through many dangers,
toils and snares,
I have already come;
'tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
and grace will lead me home.
When we've been there
ten thousand years
bright shining as the sun,
we've no less days to sing God's praise
than when we've first begun.
John Newton (1725-1807)
BLESSING
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
The Lord God almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
the holy and undivided Trinity, guard you, save you, and bring you to that heavenly city, where he lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen.