Sunday Service 13th September
Personal Responsibility
13/9/26 10am Alva 11.30am Menstrie
Call to worship
Hymn 563: Jesus loves me
Time for all
Hymn 567: Focus my eyes
Reading: Luke 12: 35-48
Prayer (The Lord’s Prayer will be on the screen)
Hymn 124: Praise to the Lord, the almighty
Sermon
Dedication of Offering
Prayer
Hymn 127: O worship the King
Blessing Hymn
Benediction
Welcome to our meditation for 9 th of September.
Here is a thought. How much of our faith should be us responding to stuff, and how
much of our faith should we be actively looking to do stuff?
The latter seems to imply that we do a lot of stuff when we haven’t even been asked to
do it, surely its better just to wait to be asked?
Or is it?
We will look at that after our reading and prayers today.
Prayer of Dedication of Offering
Heavenly Father,
The life you have given us is a gift. May we respond to that gift with enthusiasm and joy.
May we have a heart of thanksgiving and generosity that seeks to replicate your heart
towards us.
Amen
Let us pray
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God of wisdom and grace,
we pray for a world longing for trustworthy leadership.
In this time of global uncertainty we pray for all of those entrusted with power;
political leaders, teachers, employers, church leaders, parents, and carers.
Grant them humility, compassion, and a willingness to listen to those under their care.
We remember those whose responsibilities feel overwhelming today:
emergency workers carrying difficult memories, exhausted medical staff,
people caring for ageing parents,
and those trying to hold families together while quietly struggling themselves.
We pray for people living under violence and oppression,
for communities where truth is manipulated and fear is used as a weapon.
Help us not to look away.
Teach us that faith is not simply about waiting for heaven, but about living with integrity
here and now.
Where people feel forgotten, bring companionship.
Where people feel ashamed, bring gentleness.
Where people feel trapped by past choices, bring courage for a new beginning.
And where we ourselves have become weary or cynical, renew our hearts with hope
and purpose..
Our Father,
Which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil;
For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever.
Amen.
Sermon
Sometimes we come across passages that are just uncomfortable to read.
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I think today is one of them.
We have a Master of the house who has various slaves that look after his household.
The Master is sometimes away...and sometimes away for a long time.
And if the Master returns and doesn’t like what he sees then he whips the slaves.
We feel uncomfortable with that...as we should be.
That is not the way we would expect one human to treat another human.
And because of that we sometimes will skip over passages like this one.
However that would be a mistake.
Jesus is trying to get over a very important point here.
And as usual, the parable he is using reflects the reality of the society that he lived in.
And their expectations and attitudes to things would be very different to ours.
Like in slavery.
In some parts of the Roman Empire 30-40% of the population were slaves.
At its very lowest 10-20% of the population were slaves. So their attitude to slavery was
very different to ours, and how a slave saw themselves might be very different as well.
You would have slave master who regarded their slaves as living tools; with as much
rights as a hammer or a pair of scissors, and once their use was done then they were
discarded like a piece of old junk.
Others had generations of slaves under their care and they were regarded like extended
family.
Some slaves were kept in terrible conditions and were badly mistreated.
Some slaves were very highly educated and would regard themselves more of a head
butler who had all their needs of food and clothing and sleeping quarters provided for
them.
Some folk would volunteer themselves into slavery for a set period of time because of
their circumstances and it gave them stability in their life until they could sort their
finances back in line.
In that environment slavery was just something that existed.
And there were good slaves and bad slaves, good masters and bad masters.
Jesus is not advocating slavery, nor condemning it at this point.
Jesus is just giving an example that everyone would understand.
And here is the scenario.
What do we do in our ordinary life?
As a follower of Jesus, what should our general attitude be?
Should we be actively looking to do stuff, or should we wait until we have had direct
guidance as to what we should do?
Look at ministers.
I have never heard of a minister accidentally falling into the ministry.
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In the olden days when there were women’s guilds in every congregation, every time a
new minister moved into the area every guild would grab that minister asking them to do
a talk on ‘How did you become a minister.’
And you never heard a talk where the minister says, ‘You know I really don’t know how
it happened. I was thinking I would be a microbiologist but that course was full and the
only place in university was ministry. And I really wanted a degree so I took that on, and
then I looked for jobs in microbiology after the degree but they said that the ministry
degree didn’t help. So the only job I could get was as a minister...so here I am.’
Equally you never got a talk that went like this.
‘I was a great public speaker. When I talked people listened. And I wondered where I
could get an audience to listen to me. And the local congregation had three hundred
people that went along to it. And I thought to myself, I would love to have an audience
that big to listen to me. So I became a minister and here I am.’
More than likely you would get a story where it as obvious that God was calling that
person into the ministry, there was plenty of signs pointing that way. Often the person
was reluctant, but the signs kept on pointing to ministry.
That’s the type of minister we want leading our congregations, people who have been
obviously directed to the task.
Is that the way our faith should be?
That we do as we are told, but until we do as we are told we do nothing?
That is the question being asked today.
So Jesus gives a parable, or a few parables, to explain what our attitude should be...
There is a Master who leaves the house to go to a wedding.
Now weddings could take days to finish.
And there were also the days to travel and the days to return.
Who knows when the Master may return?
So what do those left in charge do when the Master is gone?
In particular, what does the head slave do when the Master is gone?
Well they can do two things...
They can be diligent; they know how the master likes things and they know the masters
attitude towards things...
so they can keep the house tidy and clean,
keep up to date with the harvest collection,
make sure the other slaves are organised and well fed and looked after,
they can have a group that stay awake at night in case the master arrives late
and they have food and water ready for the master in case he is hungry.
Or they can be lazy, the master is away do they can do what they want,
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they can mistreat the other slaves,
they can abuse their power and steal stuff from the household and plank it somewhere,
they can just not care and let things fall apart around them.
So Jesus gives these scenarios and just points out the obvious...actions have
consequences.
How is the master going to react when he returns and finds everything in order...he is
going to be well pleased and trust that slave.
How is the master going to react when he returned and finds everything is in chaos...he
is going to be furious and react accordingly.
So when the disciples are asking what their general attitude to their faith should
be...Jesus uses this parable.
Sure, there will be times when God gives very direct instructions.
Maybe he stirs in our memory an old friend, and we realise that we haven’t heard from
them for a while, and we wonder if maybe we should phone them or visit them...and
sure enough, when we do, we find that friend is in a mini crisis and is so grateful that we
have arrived to help.
That happens; it happens a lot more than people would admit.
I could probably interview every person in this congregation and get a story where
something similar happened to them.
But what do we do in between those times?
What do we do when God seems distant, or not overly there, or we feel life is just
ordinary?
Well in those times we can decide not to really bother with our faith, because we are
waiting for instructions....we are not anti-faith, we are just faith indifferent.
We can even let our faith slip in those times and get into really bad habits, not really
praying, not seeking the council of other Christians, not seeking what we should be
doing, keeping under the radar.
Well Jesus tells us that actions have consequences.
Suffering takes place because we couldn’t be bothered.
Now in the story it’s the slave themselves that get whipped; that might not be the case,
but suffering still happens.
Let me give you a specific example that you are living through just now.
The deferred union between Menstrie and Alva.
Let me tell you how it normally happens.
Nothing happens.
We know it is going to happen in the future but nothing happens.
The minister or ministers in charge do nothing because
a) Is it really any of their business?
b) It is really hard work because no one wants to get involved?
c) It is really the responsibility of the presbytery.
So what happens is that nothing is done until the vacancy.
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Then when the congregations are at their most vulnerable, during the vacancy,
the presbytery says that the congregations can get a new minister if they unite under
the conditions set by the presbytery.
All the congregations involved...and in one case that was seven congregations uniting
at the same time, reluctantly agree because they don’t want to be stuck without a
minister for maybe a decade.
And then during the vacancy nothing happens...because no one wants to pre-empt what
the new minister would want to do.
So the first Kirk Session meeting with their new minister we have a new minister who
hasn’t a clue of the history of the church...and he is meeting with a brand new Kirk
Session which is basically divided into seven old Kirk Sessions, each of them desperate
not have their church be one of the ones that has to close, or not have a service on a
Sunday.
None of these seven factions knows anything about the other six congregations, cares
about any of the other congregations, because they are too scared of what might
happen to their own.
Can you imagine how stressful that is for everyone involved?
And that stress is continuously fed by the fear that everyone has.
Imagine when Mike came to Menstrie, he and I, sat down and looked at the churches
situation.
I decided that it wasn’t my problem and that I would leave it all to everyone who would
be in charge when I left.
Mike decided to put his head in the sand and pretend that it didn’t matter; it was a future
problem for a future time to deal with.
What would that be like now...
We knew that one day this would have to be sorted.
Important things, like can we have a union and keep the two faith communities
worshiping locally.
Simple things, like how you get the minister to be at two services when they meet at
roughly the same time.
Complex things, like how do you organise the Kirk Session so that it is efficient and can
quickly respond to problems that arise that are unexpected.
In the end our model is always Jesus.
There were times in Jesus’ life when he was getting direct instructions from his
heavenly Father, where the Holy Spirit prompted him towards something or doing
something;
Like going into the wilderness before his ministry started, like being on his own to pray
before he chose the disciples, like heading towards Jerusalem to face the wrath of the
religious leaders that last Easter. And it is right that we should always be waiting for
direct instructions from God.
But in-between those times, most of Jesus ministry was in the interruptions.
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Things would happen and Jesus was aware of how his Heavenly Father would want him
to act if he was directly in his ear.
If people needed help Jesus helped them, if people needed guidance Jesus taught
them.
It didn’t matter whatever else was happening, there was always alertness to the care of
others.
That is how we should be.
If God speaks then we obey.
But until then, love God with all our heart and soul and mind, and love our neighbour as
we would want to be loved.
Because if we don’t, the world, our neighbourhood, our families and friends, we...
suffer...
because we have deprived the world, our neighbourhood, our families and friends,
us...of the love of God that is needed.
Let us pray (first prayer for offerings)
Faithful God,
you call us to live as if what we did mattered. Not fearful. Not anxious.
Alert.
You invite us to pay attention to the world around us, to notice the neighbour in need,
the quiet pleas for justice,
the weary soul carrying more than they should
those that are sacred to admit that they are struggling and feel overwhelmed.
.
So often we are indifferent to them, we drift through our days distracted and
comfortable.
We convince ourselves that someone else will speak, someone else will act, someone
else will carry the responsibility.
Forgive us for the times we have known what was right and still chose silence.
Forgive us for the moments when faith became performance instead of practice.
Remind us that You do not ask us to be perfect, but to be honest, compassionate,
ready to love with integrity, ready to be the hand reaching out in care.
Wake us again to lives shaped by mercy, courage, and kindness.
Help us become people who live faithfully whether anyone is watching or not.
May each step we take bring us closer to being a better version of ourselves, reflecting
your love within us.
Amen.
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