Sunday Service 20th October

Faith

20/10/24

Call to worship

Hymn 166: Lord of all hopefulness

Time for all: Margaret

Hymn 142: A small thing like a hazelnut 

Reading:  Hebrews 11: 1-2, 8-18

Prayer

Hymn 162: The God of Abraham praise

Sermon

Prayer

Hymn 506: All I once held dear

Benediction

Welcome to our meditation for 20th of October

In today’s reading we have the author of the Book of Hebrews talking about faith.

But not our faith, the faith of others that has gotten us where we are today.

And he starts going through the heroes and antiheros of the Old Testament, and today we will reflect on that, looking at one of those heroes, Abraham.

But we will reflect on that after our reading and prayer

Prayer

Heavenly Father,

You are a God eternal promise,

a promise of relationship that has been fulfilled in generations past and is offered to us today

May we commit ourselves into that promise of relationship.

May we by inspired by the conviction that all does not have to remain as it is,

but life can be reshape.

We have seen this in all your witnesses; past and present who have followe3d your path for them,

and who still to come, acting together in your holy name.

God of past, present and future,

in whose story our own stories are lived and told,

we praise you for the unfathomable depth of your love and grace,

for the steadfastness of your companionship,

for the celebration of your promises fulfilled,

and for the example of your great cloud of witnesses.

We rejoice in the great stories that unfold over generations, with all their mixed realities:

sadness, grief, upset, jealousy, hope, happiness, restoration and reconciliation.

Their stories are not that much different from the stories we live out today,

full of ups and downs, mistakes and courageous choices,

and we bring all this to you in our worship today.

May we worship in this place by faith, in faith, with faith,

that we live in solidarity with all who journey by faith in this moment,

all those throughout the world who face their own difficulties and challenges,

knowing that with you a better future lies ahead.

Forgive us for the times when we have failed to live by faith,

losing hope amidst the messiness of life, making poor decisions centred on self and not others or you, God,

Help us to see that when we offer our regrets, seeking forgiveness,

we find reconciliation in our own souls and a strength to start anew our journey.

This we ask in Jesus name, and in his name say his words

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

Today is a wonderful passage.

We do not reflect on passages like this anywhere near enough.

Basically the writer of the book of Hebrews is trying to give inspiration to a group of believers who are going through tough struggles.

And he is telling them to have faith; not in themselves, but in the people that got them where they are.

Because none of us came to faith on our own.

Peter, our assistant, is very aware of this.

Maybe it is because he is sensitive to his past.

You see in Zambia one of the things the church struggles with is the culture of worshiping the past generations.

The feeling is that if bad things are happening to you then it is because , you, or your parents have offended one of your dead ancestors or clan chiefs. So yuou have to do something to placate them.

The result is that you need to make sure that you are in good relations with those who have died and gone before you because they can make your life messy now.

Now if that is in your culture, and you are brought up with that, it is very difficult to counteract that belief system.

Many protestant churches have deliverance services to try to dispel the spirits, Roman Catholics suggest that you pray to the saints and get them to sort out the ancestors.

Behind it all is a truth; we are greatly influenced by those who have gone before us, either for good or for bad.

That is what this writer is seeking to remind us of.

To counteract the troubles we are facing today with inspiration from the past.

This works in two ways.

The first is that if we can see that the heroes of the past struggled,

just as they got through their struggles with God’s help,

so we can get through our problems with God’s help.

And the huge example of this was Abraham.

Not Noah...the problem with Noah is that he could claim that he did all the hard work.

It was Noah’s own stubbornness that helped him believe when everyone else didn’t believe.

It was Noah that built the ark, Noah that persevered.

I have seen heroes like that, they don’t encourage us, most of the time they have the opposite effect...they discourage us.

When we are struggling we look at them and think to ourselves, ‘Why can’t we be like that?’

And it tempts us to give up because we are just not as good as them.

I remember going to Christian conferences with hundreds of ministers and church leaders attending, and there would be this guy standing up telling us that he started his church in the garage with three people.

And the struggles he had when the church got up to 300 and how he had to change the way he saw ministry,

and the struggles he had when the church got up to 800 and how he had to change how he did church,

and the struggles he had when the church reached over 5,000 and how he had to do church differently.

I looked at them as Noah leaders, because although they seemed to be talking and saying, ‘With God’s strength we could overcome these problems.’

It still kind of sounded like they, single- handedly, built the church with God doing a bit every now and again to point them in the right direction.

I felt most of the leaders left there discouraged because they were given a vision that if only they were faithful, then God would make their ministry a success and their church would explode...because that is what happened to these mega ministers.

And deep down they knew that wasn’t going to happen, deep down they knew they were never going to create a huge church.

It didn’t matter how much they worked,

It didn’t matter how faithful they were...if they working in a church like Muckart where the population of the community was 500 they were never going to build a church of 5,000.

The weird thing is, Noah went off the rails after his big success, and strangely enough most of the ministers who created mega churches tend to go off the rails as well.

Maybe they confused their vision for what the church should be like

for what God’s vision for them should be like.

So Noah isn’t given a lot of space in this hero list, but Abraham, he is given a huge amount of space...because Abraham’s story is more encouraging to us.

Abraham’s story is one we should reflect upon a lot.

Because Abraham is an idiot, and God makes huge promises to be with him, to help him out; and God never gives up on him.

Abraham gets himself into a mess through lying to protect his own ego, and God bails him out.

Abraham then doesn’t learn from his mistake and does the same thing again, and the same mess happens, and God bails him out again.

Abraham has weird ideas about his faith, his belief system is all over the place,

he is insecure at times, he is overconfident at other times,

he wants to sacrifice his son, he bails on fatherhood with another son...and every time, God sticks with him.

And that is encouraging, because I don’t know about you, but there are plenty of times I wonder if I am on the right path,

or if I have done the right thing,

and it kind of feels that if I have let God down too much,

that God should just give up on us, or maybe want to punish us,

and I am then tempted to give up on God....or hide from God.

In those times when I am full of shame, or guilt, or fear...I wonder why God would care about me, I don’t even care about me.

It is in those times it is good to remember heroes like Abraham...because he is even worse than I am...and if God can stick with a loser like him, then it is reassuring to know that God will stick with a loser like me.

So that is one way in which this passage is meant to work.

It reminds us that we are here because of these biblical heroes that went before us.

We see in their lives hope that God can be with us as he was with them.

But there is another way this works.

I think this passage is there to encourage us to keep the list going.

That there are individuals in our own journey that are directly responsible for us being here.

And when we are struggling it is good to remember them, because just as they inspired us in the past, so they can remind us that their spirit is still there to inspire us now.

I always believe that when I write a sermon the first person I am writing to is myself...but this sermon felt especially close to me, because as I wrote this I was remembering the people of the past that I am indebted to.

Like Clem and Margaret; Clem was a BB Captain that encouraged me to be an officer and take on responsibility, his wife Margaret was with myself and my sisters in our darkest months when my parents died.

Like Colin. Let me tell you about Colin.

I had gotten kicked out of the Sunday School for being too disruptive. Now that isn’t all that unusual, except that I was a Sunday School teacher at the time.

I know that is hard to believe, that if you were to come to Zones you would just see steely discipline being enacted all over the place and perfect behaviour in all the children because I hold so strictly to the rules.

But in those days I was trying to get the talks to be such that the children wanted to come back.

So I was using visual aids, role play, puppets...and the other teachers found that disturbing, disruptive...and got the minister to kick me out.

Then a new minister came and he brought in a teacher of autistic children, called Colin, who then asked me to come back...but also encouraged me to push those talents further.

I could go on and on about people in my parents church when I was young,

people in Castlemilk when I was a very inexperienced minister,

people that have been in my life while I worked here, that encouraged and inspired me to keep on the journey.

This is what this passage is about...remembering the people of the past that have walked with us, and helped us take the next steps of faith.

And I would encourage you to do that as well.

Just sit down one afternoon, or one night, with a piece of paper and a pencil and write down names of people who have helped you get here, and what they did specifically that helped you on your journey.

One last thing...

All those people encouraged me in my journey of faith, and that is a wonderful thing and I am so grateful for them.

But I think God wants more than thankfulness from us.

I think God wants us to reflect on all those people and what they have done for us, and then asks us to follow their example,

to be the type of person that inspires others to carry on their journey of faith,

the type of person that encourages and supports,

that helps others in such a way that when they are thinking of the people that have helped them, then one of the people that they think about, is us.

Let us pray

God of the struggle,

into whose hands we commit ourselves, and into whose future we offer our prayer

we turn our thoughts to our lives, to our community, to our world.

By faith we come to you, seeking your reassurance that even when days are difficult,

when challenges are many, when change seems unrelenting,

that you uphold us, giving us perseverance, endurance and enthusiasm,

helping us to meet whatever the day throws at us with grace and assurance.

May we never be glib in the face of what the world throws at us,

but rather bear witness to your work in our lives.

As you were in the lives of those who have gone before us,

people like Abraham stumbling through the first understandings of his faith, making mistakes and learning and growing from them, relying on the truth that no matter what he did, you persevered with him.

That faith in your relationship became the founding a new nation, a hope for generations to come.

Remind us always that...in you hope resounds.

By faith we bring to you our communities,

those places where we live, those people with which we interact, those places where our faith is nurtured.

As seasons change may we be prepared for what is to come,

seeking out that which builds up one another,

offering actions of kindness and

knowing that we are connected to one another may we grow into who we truly can be

through the strength of our relationships.

By faith may we yearn always for a future in which your Will is known,

and may we seek a world in which peace and support and opportunity are foundation stones.

By faith we commend to you

all who live in fear,

who know conflict,

who yearn for stability,

who yearn for a place to call home,

who seek a future that seems beyond reach.

May we all live by faith that we can finish our journey, because we do not depend on our own strength, but the strength that you give to us; either directly or through those you put in our lives.

May we rely on their friendships, and may they be able to rely on ours.

This we ask in Jesus name

Amen.