Sunday Service 28th June
- 4 hours ago
- 9 min read
The Importance of the Invisible?
28/6/26
Call to worship
Hymn 181: For the beauty of the earth
Time for all
Hymn 528: Make me a channel of your peace
Dedication of Offering
Presentation of worship certificates
Reading: Luke 6: 43-49
Prayer (The Lord’s Prayer will be on the screen)
Hymn 147: All creatures of our God and king
Sermon
Prayer
Hymn 465: Be thou my vision
Benediction
Welcome to our meditation for 28th June.
Today we will be reflecting on the importance of what is unseen.
I suppose it’s the difference between image and character.
Or maybe the opposite of fake it til you make it.
Either way, we will look at that after our reading from Luke 6: 43-49
Prayer of Dedication of Offering
Heavenly Father,
There are many reasons why we could be giving you this money. Maybe it is just habit, maybe it is to show off that we can. We pray that after reflection, we give this offering, as a thanksgiving discipline. That we have thought about all that you give us, and reasoned that if you can be generous to us, we in turn can be generous to others.
Amen
Let us pray
God of root and river, of fruit and foundation,
you meet us beneath the surface, where no one sees us, hidden behind the masks we cling onto.
You are the one who sees what grows in secret:
the tangled roots of mistaken ambitions, the thirsty places of desires,
the seeds of courage where we have made hard decisions,
the places where love has taken hold and we have allowed its sacrifices to grow,
and also the places where fear still clings.
You call us beyond appearances, beyond religious performance.
You cal us even when we feel our faith is like building on shifting sand that we don’t understand.
You call us to lives with depth, to create hearts made spacious by mercy,
to have hearts that carry justice to the world instead of turning a blind eye,
to have hearts of faith that are resilient when the waters of uncertainty rise.
We confess that sometimes we are more concerned with seeming than with being.
We have dressed ourselves in goodness while neglecting the hard work of love.
We have spoken faith without always living it.
Forgive us
for the fruit that wounds, for the foundations left shallow, for hearing your word and walking away unchanged.
Don’t give up on us.
Dig deep in us, O God.
Break open the hardened ground.
Plant truth where falsehood has flourished.
Plant courage where fear has ruled.
Plant compassion where judgment has grown wild.
Make us whole, make us rue to ourselves and You.
That Your love that grows within us is also Your love that flows out of us.
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
Image is important.
We do stupid things because of our image.
No matter how sensible and independent we think we are, we have an image of ourselves that we want to keep up, or we think others have an image of us that we want to maintain.
And for some stupid reason we get caught in a situation that we go against all common sense to maintain that image...and it never works out.
A couple of weeks ago Roseanna and I were invited by our daughter to the Gala day in Kincardine to watch our granddaughters race.
What I didn’t know was that they had a fathers and grandfathers race.
Now I regard myself as not so easily swayed by other people’s image of me...
except my granddaughters were saying I should go in for the race.
And I know that I play a lot of squash which makes me reasonably fit.
So like a lamb to the slaughter I was smiling on the starting line ready to show off my skills...and within 20 meters my leg hit a small dip and my thigh muscle decided to tear itself pretty badly.
Image.
This was a major problem in Jesus day.
Society was always judging you and rating you.
Image.
This is a serious problem in our day.
In our era of social media I have heard really angry people rant against other people with phrases like, ‘Who do they think they are? I have so many more likes than they have. They are nobody.’
As someone who hasn’t a clue about that stuff.
I was amazingly judgemental about them.
Until I was reminded that I had torn my thigh muscle because I wanted to show off how wonderful I was to my four year old granddaughter.
No matter how much we deny it, we are communal animals, and what others think of us matters more than we would like.
What is terrifying is that in the world of social media often people are acting in a way to get ‘likes’ from thousands, if not millions of people who they don’t even know.
Think on that; their status, their self worth, is based how many ‘likes’ they get.
Living to the expectations of others is a terrible way for us to live our lives.
Jesus said, ‘For the yoke I will give you is easy, and the load I will put on you is light. (Matt 11: 30)’
Living by the way of Jesus may seem hard, but it is a way of living a life based round the love of God...and no matter how difficult that may be,
no matter how hard that may be at times, in the end it is a far-sight easier way that living by the expectations of other people;
especially when all the other people’s expectations are grounded in motivations that may have nothing to do with our well-being.
You know who really struggles with this?
Charismatic, ministers of mega-churches.
I have listened to so many podcasts about how disappointed people are when one of these mega-church leaders fail.
And I have been fortunate to listen to some serious, thoughtful, interviews of those same ex-leaders.
And you know what?
The amazing, unexpected truth, that comes from all those interviews...is that they are as human we are.
Their sins are no worse than ours, their flaws are the same as our flaws,
the mistakes they make may be more public then ours, but they have the same causes, have the same results.
And they are perfect examples of what Jesus is talking about today; the difference between image and character.
You see the battle we face is always one that no one else can see.
It is the internal battle between who we are, and who others think we should be.
Put in a very simplistic way.
A mega church leader gives a sermon that moves a whole congregation, and he gives it because he truly believes that it is the message that God has given him. He gives it not caring if people praise him or hound him, because what matters is that God has given that message to him and he has been obedient in giving it.
A mega church leader gives a sermon that moves a whole congregation because he is in desperate need for affirmation. He needs the crowd to tell him how wonderful he is because he feels empty inside,
and he believes that if the congregation cheer his every word then he must be doing something right,
he must be a wonderful person because they can see it, even if he is struggling to believe it.
He knows the right words to say, he has enough experience to get the message across, and surely God has given that message to him.
The trouble is that he is so dead inside, he feels he needs something more to feel alive; and maybe it is that affair that someone loves him for who he is,
maybe it is the adrenaline rush of the shoplifting,
maybe it is deadening of the self critical voices by self-medicating on drugs or alcohol.
Our trouble is...that from the outside, listening to that sermon, you can’t tell what is going on inside.
Our soul is who we are; image is what we look like to others...when they don’t match it emotionally destroys us.
We may know how God wants us to be, but we don’t believe we can be like that, so we pretend to be, to others, maybe even to ourselves.
This is where Jesus comes in.
Our problem is that we try too hard to work on our image...instead of working on our character.
Our image is the fruit of the tree.
But if all we are doing is forcing the fruit then the fruit is rubbish.
Instead what a good farmer does is work on the invisible stuff...the roots of the tree.
Is the soil good, is the air round the tree free from pollution, are the roots taking up the nutrients well, is the tree healthy?
If all those things are right then the fruit will take care of itself.
Or a house.
No matter how wonderful the house looks on the outside, no matter how fancy the decoration is, if the work hasn’t been done on the foundations then the whole house is in danger.
I was talking to this guy who had built a few houses and talking about the situation in Coalsnaughton and giving him my less than expert opinion on how stupid it was building houses on mine workings.
And he told me that it is more than possible to build over mine workings. As long as you know they are there you can make sure the foundations can cope with it.
I don’t think that he sees himself as a theologian, but what he said was pretty theological.
It doesn’t matter what our background is, we can grow into amazing people, if we build our foundations right.
The problem is getting that right.
And the real problem is that we think we build our foundations by doing ritual;
if we go to church enough,
if we read enough scripture,
if we pray the right prayers,
then that will sort us out.
Our foundation is none of these things.
Our foundation is our relationship with a generous and forgiving and challenging God.
I know I have used this example before, but it is so relevant I have to use it again.
One mega church leader was interviewing a fallen mega church leader, someone he thought of as a dear friend. And he just asked the question, ‘How could you preach the love of God on a Sunday, and not feel the love of God yourself?’
And his friend said, ‘I would do this every Sunday,’ (Put hand on Bible then hand out to the world)
‘instead of doing this.’ (Put hand on Bible, then hand on heart, then hand out to the world)
Scripture works, if we use it to work on our relationship with God, seeking to understand him more and learning more of his love.
Prayer works, if we use it to be honest with God about who we are and what help we need and seeking what God wants us to do in our lives.
Going to church works, if we use it to build up our relationship with God and with others, to feel the love and support and challenges of God through interacting with others.
Using the gifts God gives us to help others works, if we see it as a way of giving thanks to God for all he has done for us, and showing that gratitude in helping others the way God has helped us.
But if we get lazy, or indifferent, or apathetic....
then scripture becomes just words on a page,
prayer is just talking to an empty room,
going to church is just a habit,
helping others is just a burden.
And all we have left is an image to live up to,
an image of who we think others want us to be,
maybe an image of who we think we want to be,
maybe an image of who we think God wants us to be.
But it’s not real, and deep down it is never satisfying, because it is not really us.
And no matter how hard we try, it will never be us.
Jesus said, ‘For the yoke I will give you is easy, and the load I will put on you is light. (Matt 11: 30)’
Imagine a God who knows us better than we know ourselves, who knows what we could become, and longs to give us whatever we need to achieve it.
If we need forgiveness he will die for us.
If we are struggling his Spirit will support us.
If we need to change he will challenge us.
What is more, for every step of that journey, through every fall, through every success, through every uncertainty, he will be with us.
Every moment of every day we are growing.
Wouldn’t that be a life worth living?
Well it starts, and continues, with a living relationship with a God who cares.
Let us pray
Heavenly Father,
Search the soil of our life.
Show us what is growing there.
When our words rush ahead of wisdom, draw us back to the heart of meaning.
When we cling to appearances, lead us toward truth.
Search the foundations of our faith.
When we build quickly, cheaply, carelessly, turn us again toward the deeper work of character building.
We bring you our unsettled places,
our fractured loyalties,
our hunger to be known and loved,
our fear that there may not be much beneath the words.
Meet us there, in our broken and shattered lives.
Not with rejection, but with truth strong enough to heal, and love strong enough to rebuild.
Let your message become more than sound in our ears.
Let your words of comfort become structure in our life,
let your words of hope root in our soul,
let your words of love become fruit in our living.
And when the floods come, as they always do,
may we find that we are held
not by my strength, not by my image,
but by the deep foundation of your love.
Amen.
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