Sunday Service 3rd August

Baptism of Aurelia Bowie

3/8/25

Call to worship

Hymn 631: A little child the Saviour came

Time for all : Kay

Baptism of Aurelia Bowie

Hymn 632: Our children Lord in faith and prayer

Reading:  2 Samuel 12: 1-12

Prayer

Hymn 166: Lord of all hopefulness

Sermon

Prayer

Hymn 315(MP): I will sing the wondrous story

Benediction

Welcome to our meditation for 3^rd of August.

Why is it that some of the greatest leaders of the world become so flawed?

In America it has become a bit of a running joke that so many of the leaders of mega churches end up disgraced, caught up in financial or sexual scandals. These are people that are meant to be so close to God, an example for us to follow, they preach every week on how we should look to God for guidance, and yet they fail, and often fail very badly.

We will be looking at why after our prayer and reading which is from 2 Samuel 12: 1-12. A reading that looks at the failings of a great king.

Let us pray

Everlasting God,

you who sent Nathan to tell a story to David so that it got past his arrogance and ego,

you are the one who has called us here today to hear our story in your Word,

to realise that we do not need to live life alone,

we do not need to try to be the masters of our own destiny,

we do not need to try to either run away from the rest of the world,

or try to force that world into being somewhere we are in complete control of.

All you ask of us, is to live the best story of ourselves that we can.

We give thanks for the myriads of stories told throughout time that have enriched our lives.

For writers and storytellers that craft messages of truth and love,

that transport us to different locations and times, that make us laugh and cry.

That have been an example of hope, or a warning to avoid the mistakes of others.

For the stories that challenge us and stretch us,

and those precious stories that focus our attention on the holy, that which makes our life precious.

We give you thanks for the story of creation, for the reassurance of order out of chaos.

We give thanks for the story of Jesus, the message of Good News, that reminded us that we have the chance of forgiveness, of another chance to create our life in your image of love and sacrifice.

Forgive us our lack of enthusiasm in trying to live your story within us.

For our temptation to live a life of sameness

and banal indifference to anyone else,

to escape into a world of perpetual entertainment.

Instead, open our eyes to opportunities to joyfully share our life in your presence and the presence of others, giving our life meaning and purpose.

Help us to live your story in our story...

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

Why is faith so important?

Sometimes there is the impression from those outside that ‘church folk’ are judgemental.

That church folk spend their time condemning those outside the church.

That church folk spend their time calling those outside churches ‘sinners’...and even though we may not know exactly what the definition of a sinner is, we know it isn’t a compliment.

The irony is that people of faith, regard faith as not something to condemn others, but as a mirror for us to examine ourselves.

You see there is a temptation to spend time seeking things that the world sees as important and yet in the end is really not important as all.

And to ignore the one thing that God wants us to concentrate on...character.

You see faith, or a relationship with God, is about becoming something,

becoming worthy of a relationship where we can be close to God,

and that means developing and growing certain characteristics;

a heart of love, compassion, forgiveness, patience, tolerance, self control.

Faith reminds us that contentment is found in relationship with God, not in anything that we can buy or own.

(I am not sure that if we had a survey of the congregation today and asked what gift we would give Aurelia that those would be the natural things we came up with.

Maybe wealth, enough money to be happy...but how much is that?

And would we want to be that shallow?

Brains, an academic brain so that she could get a good job,

that could give her enough money to buy a nice house,

make her attractive enough so that find a good partner.)

What we strive for in life isn’t often the source of true contentment.

We want a decent job so that we can earn a decent amount of money so that we can buy a decent house so that we can be secure.

None of that guarantees contentment.

We often want life to be easy for us.

We would seek a life without struggle.

But what world do we think we live in that we can avoid trouble?

We live in a part of the world where there is no war or famine, the environment isn’t being cataclysmically destroyed the way it is in some parts of the world.

But that doesn’t mean that any life out there is scot free from trouble.

There are redundancies and financial downturns,

there are political decisions that are made that influence all our lives, and they don’t even need to be decisions made by our own political leaders,

there are relational conflicts and uncertainties,

there are illnesses of all kinds...and the older you get the more chances of illness there are.

And the temptation is that we try to collect enough money or stuff to protect us from all those uncertainties, and none of it works.

The only thing that matters in the end, is our character,

character is what we need to endure whatever is ahead.

Let me tell you a story.

It was a terrible night in Castlemilk, a relatively poor area of Glasgow where I used to work. I was heading to a Guild night and it was chucking it down. The kind of night that if I parked across the road from the church then that short walk across the road would still have me soaked to the skin.

As I got out the car I noticed the police helicopter hovering above the houses.

Just another Tuesday night in Castlemilk.

As I got in the church the church telephone went off. Now this was in the days before mobiles so when it went off someone was in trouble.

So I answered it and it was a woman from Thornlibank, nowhere near Castlemilk. Saying that there was a blind man in her house and he needed to go home.

She had phoned the police and they were busy and she couldn’t have him stay in her house.

I didn’t see the connection with why I had to go all the way out to Thornlibank but she insisted that he was a parishioner in Castlemilk and wasn’t I supposed to help parishioners in Castlemilk.

As I thought about it I realised that if I helped her then I would get off having to do the Guild talk, and the Guild in Castlemilk were very scary women.

So I agreed...and off I went to the wilds of Thornliebank  on a miserable night.

But when I got there the blind man refused to come with me back home.

He refused to tell me his name,

he refused to tell me why he was in this woman’s house.

And the woman herself wasn’t helpful because when I asked her what was going on she would just say, ‘It’s not my story to tell.’

After half an hour of this I said that I was going home and there was nothing that I could do here.

The woman was aghast.

I couldn’t just leave.

When I pointed out that she obviously knew the guy, that she lived in a two bed roomed house and that he could just stay the night there and go home in the morning she said,

‘He can’t stay here, what would the women of the chapel say seeing a strange man leave my house in the morning.’

At which point I notice the crucifix on the wall and the picture of the Pope on the mantelpiece.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘But if you needed help why didn’t you phone the priest?’

And she said, ‘Ohh I wouldn’t ask the priest to come out on a terrible night like tonight.’

By now I had had enough and was ready to leave.

So the woman confessed that the blind man’s name was David. That she didn’t really know him that well but he was the husband of her best friend.

Her best friend, his first wife, had died of cancer about four years ago and she hadn’t seen him since then. But he had turned up that night claiming his second wife was trying to kill him.

Both were still refusing to give me his second name because if I had that then I could use the phone book to find his home and take him back to his wife, who was allegedly trying to kill him.

So now we have a stalemate.

Dave won’t go back home.

The woman won’t allow him to stay there.

Eventually we agreed to phone the homeless unit and they agreed to take him if I could drop him off at their short term hostel near the Barras; a completely other place in Glasgow nowhere near Castlemilk or Thornlibank.

And that is the end of the story.

Now here’s the thing.

It wasn’t money that solved that problem.

It wasn’t any stuff at all that solved that problem.

It wasn’t academic intellect that solved that problem, because we would never have enough knowledge to solve that problem.

What solved that problem was character.

The character of the warden at the homeless unit that stopped the blind man from trying to kill another of the homeless guys.

The character of the police that instead of just arrested him realised that something was seriously up and had him sectioned.

The character of the psychiatric nurses that saw hope in the guy and got him on the right medication.

The character of a wife that shows compassion and love.

How do I know all this?

Well, two months later I found all this out when David’s wife phoned to invite me to visit him in the psychiatric hospital.

It was then that I found out that that night David had a psychotic break and thought his wife was trying to kill him...so his solution was to kill her first.

He decided to do that by pouring rat poison on her dinner.

So when she comes out with mince and tatties he says, ‘I need salt.’

When she goes back into the kitchen to get the salt he pours the whole box of rat poison on her dinner. But being blind doesn’t realise that she can see this mass of grey powder on her dinner, and when she asks what it is he realises he has been caught and runs out the house.

He remembers where his first wives best friend stays and goes to her.

Meanwhile, his wife contacts the police and then send out a helicopter and all their men round Castlemilk trying to find him.

It’s not until the police get a report of a blind man trying to kill someone in a homeless unit that they put all the pieces together and have him sectioned so he can get treatment.

Here’s the thing.

When King David has his affair and kills the husband.

It isn’t lack of money that is the problem,

It isn’t lack of brains that is the problem; David was known to write moving poetry and was a great strategist in warfare.

The problem is lack of character.

A few weeks ago this photo was going round the world.

Rachel Reeves crying during question time.

Here was a woman in obvious distress.

And no one asked her how she was getting on.

No one put their arms rounds her to comfort her.

No one gently got her out of that situation and tried to support her.

The problem wasn’t a lack of intellect...some of the cleverest propel in Britain were in that room.

The problem wasn’t a lack of money...some of the richest people in Britain were in that room.

It was a lack of character, lack of compassion, lack of empathy.

Now I am sure that if any politician there that day heard this they would be horrified and try to justify themselves; telling us of all the good work they do for their constituents and all the charity work that they do.

But the truth is, that in the environment that they were in that day, it did not encourage their character to get involved.

That is why church, faith is so important, not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because it forces us to constantly look at how our character is developing and challenge that,

because we do not compare, or seek to compare ourselves with others, but we are challenged to compare and reach the standards of Christ himself.

(What I would want for Aurelia?)

What we all need,

for us to stop seeking to escape the struggles of life by getting more stuff,

or trying to avoid the struggles of life, because that just shuts us off from others...

and instead, to start to grow our character.

Growing closer to a God of love so that with his strength, and his example, we too may grow in love.

That takes a deliberate choice.

That takes a moving ever closer to seeking God’s path for us through reflection on what we do and why we do it,

seeking wisdom beyond ourselves through prayer and reading scripture and interacting with others; giving help and seeking help.

That takes an act of faith.

Let us pray

Heavenly Father

we come to speak to you today out of the fullness of our hearts.

   Our hearts should be filled with blessing and thanksgiving when we reflect on all the good moments in our lives.

   However more often than not our hearts are also heavy with the strife we regularly encounter in our communities and in the wider world.

The strife we often find in our own heart as we find ourselves in conflict with what we should do, and what we decide to do.

   This day, we decide not to close our eyes to those struggles, but instead, with your comfort and strength, face them.

Holy God,

we bring hurts that are often left unspoken,

we are upset over loss of life through war, selfishness, and feelings of worthlessness.

The needless deaths that we see on our TV every night caused by mankind’s inhumanity to other human beings; seeing death as reasonable collateral damage for a piece of land secured.

  We mourn loved ones that we have known; either those who have been long-lived, or those who have died in their prime. We miss their presence in our lives.

   Lord, you never provide simple solutions,

but we recognise and hold onto the knowledge of your presence,

especially in the darkest times and places

as well as the reminders of moments of joy.

   Help us to share those moments with others,

to share the stories

as it is in those stories that we find recognition,

in those stories that we find our humanity acknowledged.

   Remind us that we, as a church, are called to share the Good News, your word with all.

We pray for your church in this season throughout Scotland and the world,

for wise interpretation of stories

and for insightful application of your word in our daily lives.

Let us preserve our stories

and write new ones

to tell generations to come,

to inspire generations to come.

In Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen.