15 Epiphany 6
FEBRUARY 11-17
Sunday 6
Matthew 5: 21-37
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Deut. 30: 15-20
Psalm 119: 1-8
CALL TO WORSHIP
We would be perfectly happy if our path were faultless,
if we were always in step with God.
This is my
commandment:
That you love one another.
God, has give us commandments
that we may live as effectively as possible.
With our eyes fixed on doing the right thing,
we shall never be put to shame.
You are to love one
another
in the same way as I
have loved you.
O Lord, touch our lips with your saving grace,
that our live may
declare your praise!
Or
This is a good place for it; this is a good day,
here and now we come to re-set our sights on the love of God.
God is ready and
willing
to change our minds,
unscramble our motives,
and to focus again our purest longings.
This is a good place for it; this is a good time;
here and now we are in the presence of amazing grace;
God is ready and willing
to bring hope to the disconsolate,
refreshment to the worn and the weary,
and new delight to those who walk in the
way of the Lord.
PRAYER
God of Christ Jesus and our God, lift us above the mundane to the special, beyond empty platitudes to sincere praise, and awake in us that adoration which is the joy of loving hearts.
You are the God of grace and glory. We are yours, and by the
miracle o grace, you are ours. Blessed be your name in all the earth!
Amen!
CONFESSION AND FORGIVENESS
Let us seek God’s mercy, not cap-in-hand like servants ordered before a hard master, but as little children come to the knee of a loving parent.
Let us pray.
Loving God, we ask your forgiveness for everything that has been grubby in our lives, and for anything that has been less than the best.
If we have been so
caught up in our own affairs, that we have not noticed the worry lines on the
face of a friend or family member, please forgive us.
If we have harboured jealousy, or been resentful and bitter with those who have ignored us or patronised us, please forgive us.
If we wilfully gone back
on our word, or have broken our promises by becoming so busy on other matters
that we have forgotten what we pledged, please forgive us.
If we have withheld the truth, or been deceitful and dishonest, or conspired against someone for our own advantage, please forgive us.
If we have publicly
pledged loyalty to our Lord’s commandments, yet looked for devious loopholes in
order to dodge duties that go against our personal likes, please forgive us.
If we have lapsed back into self-justifications, rather than facing the ugly truth, repenting and trusting your salvation, please trip us up and bring us to our senses. For you a alone are the one who can see through all our subterfuge, confront and liberate, heal and restore us to fullness of life. Through Christ Jesus our Saviour.
Amen!
FORGIVENESS
Here is a word you can utterly trust: “God did not send his son to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved”
“If we confess our
sins, God is stays faithful and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all
ungodliness.”
Thanks be to God
!
PRAYER FOR
CHILDREN
When I Am Prickly
God our Saviour,
when I get bad-tempered
and prickly as a spiky echidna
and I won’t play happily with friends,
please send Jesus into my heart,
to get rid of the yucky stuff
and to change my mood,
so that I become more like
happy rainbow lorikeets
who seem to get such fun
out of being together.
Amen!
PSALM 119:1-8
If you have walked God’s road blamelessly,
full-on happiness is yours,
if you have followed Christ, never looking back,
you are among the choicest saints.
But if you have sincerely tried yet sometimes failed,
you are still numbered among the happy.
If you have sought God with your whole heart,
you can count your many blessings.
Commandments are given for our own good,
to be embraced diligently.
God help us to keep our focus and our love,
that we may stay steady under pressure.
We know that if we keep our eyes on the goal,
we will never live to regret it.
We will be able to praise God with a clear conscience,
and go on to learn more of our Lord’s ways.
B.D.Prewer 2006
POEM: ON KEEPING
THE VISION
BIRDS
I commence each day
watching the birds
which bountifully
visit and enrich
my neighbourhood.
Minors, magpies, mudlarks,
rosellas and red-rumped
parrots,
wood ducks and chestnut teal,
galahs, corellas, cockatoos,
wattlebirds and ravens,
little honey eaters and
swallows,
ibis, herons, spoonbills,
and on special mornings
pelicans and black swans.
They go about their business
as if we, land-bound,
cumbersome
humans did not exist.
Singing and nesting,
chasing each other;
In new-day enthusiasm
flying laps of the lake
like athletes enjoying
training,
then feeding on worms and
insects,
or teaching their young to
fly.
In my old age
I still have wonderful
dreams
in which I join the birds
in riding the wind.
I do not do it very well,
there is much puffing,
I cannot as yet soar high,
but I can do it.
By God
I can do it!
In my dreams
I cannot understand
why so many people
will not
even attempt it!
Oh you birds,
keep enticing me!
Oh Eagle of Heaven,
Mistress of the winds,
guide me up higher
towards the Sun!
B.D.Prewer
2004
COLLECT
God our dearest Friend, holy in all your ways,
you have chosen to stay faithful for ever
to those who by faith love you
and by your grace try to keep your commandments.
Help us to hang in when things become tough
and others falter, complain or give up,
that living for you and with you
we may achieve things beyond our reach
and bring glory to your wonderful name.
Through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen!
SERMON 1: RAISING THE
BAR
Matthew 5:21-37
You heard that is was said to the people of old..............but I say to you...............
“Moses said....... but I now tell you”.
If the teaching of Jesus is a new set of laws that disciples must fully obey, or lose their membership in the Christian club, then most of us have had on membership tickets cancelled.
If the “Sermon on the Mount” simply replaces the laws that
Moses brought down from the
Don’t let us fudge this issue. Jesus does push the law further than Moses. He pushed it right back beyond outward deeds to inward thoughts and feelings. Take 3 examples.
1/ Moses delivered the command: Thou shalt not kill. Jesus raises the bar: But I tell you this, if you get in a rage against a person, and let it fall mercilessly on their heads that is a brand of murder. If you belittle them with words of derision such as, fool, nerd, retard, bitch, pig, rathead, wog, abo, then you are akin to a murderer, and deserve to perish in the fires of Gehenna.
2/ Moses said, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I tell you this if your eyes lead you to lust for another’s husband or wife, you have already committed adultery in your heart.
3/ The law of Moses says, You shall not make a false oath. But I tell you this: Do not swear any oath at all. Be of such integrity that you “yes” always means and unequivocal means yes, and your “no” means no.
Now do you see why I started by saying
If the teaching of Jesus is a new set of laws that disciples must fully obey, or lose their membership in the Christian club, then most of us have had on membership tickets cancelled.
If the “Sermon on
the Mount” simply replaces the laws that Moses brought down from the
This is another possibility. If Jesus raise the bar, and takes us to the very spirit God’s laws. Where nothing is left disguised, no motive hidden, and no thought not weighed, then we begin to a give up our excuses, and admit to ourselves that we are fractured spirits who cannot possibly save ourselves. We are fractured beings whose only resort is to throw ourselves on the mercy of God our Creator and Redeemer. In our moral and spiritual bankruptcy we hit rock bottom and turn to God to receive forgiveness and renewal. At that low point, not only do we receive the mercy we seek, but a healing process begins. Our fractured spirits are under the therapy of a new physician whose healing hands can do wonders.
It takes some of us a long time to let go of our self justifications. Most of us are legalists at heart. We want to prove that we are nice and acceptable people. We want to pay our own way and prove our superiority to common sinners; those “lesser breeds without the law.”
Therefore when we encounter the Sermon on the Mount, we play delusional games. We construct our own virtual reality.
For example we pick and choose from the sermon on t he mount. We make a song and dance some of Jesus’ words and quietly ignore others.
For example, some of us make a very big deal about sexuality, marriage and divorce. We take the moral high ground and are loud in our condemnation of those who appear to us to transgress. Yet many conservative Christians set aside on a shelf what Jesus taught us about non-violence, the terrible dangers of money, or the canker of pride and self-righteousness.
Or conversely in some quarters, there are those who see themselves as radical believers who make much of the sins of wealth and possessions yet treat as trivial their laxity in affairs of sex and marriage.
In each case, folk become legalistic, and heatedly condemn others while zealously protecting their own hard-won self righteousness.
Friends that just will not do! Selective legalism is not goofed enough.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus affirms about 25 values. Affirms them without qualification. We should not dare to have the gall to judge a fellow Christian for transgressing any one of those values, unless we are ourselves prepared to equally judge ourselves on each of the other 24.
If we take to mind and heart the whole 25, without any sneaky proviso’s, then one result is certain: All our supposed superiority to others, every bit of our spiritual and moral arrogance, will crumble into dust.
We shall then know, along with other Christians, that we to have nothing at all to boast about. We too have fallen short of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We have no where to turn except to saving grace, to mercy and healing of the Friend of sinners.
At that point we are able to turn and look longingly at that man whose importance as Saviour was summed up in the words;
“Behold the lamb of God, who takes away
the sin of the world.”
Without pretext, without prevarication, we may actually sing and fully mean it:
Just as I am without one plea,
But that your blood was shed for me,
O lamb of God, I come.
Jesus raises the spiritual and moral bar to new heights. But along side it, he allows himself to be lifted up, high on a cross, that amazing grace is near and freely available for all and aim high yet fall short.
Without that cross up on the hill of Golgotha, the Sermon on the Mount would lead to nothing but despair.
I BELIEVE
Because of the epiphany of Jesus,
I believe in setting our goals higher
and extending our compassion further than ever.
I believe in the Christ who call us to be perfect,
“even as our heavenly Father is perfect.”
Who comes to us when we have stumbled and lifts us up,
who stands with us when we have triumphed
and shares our songs of celebration.
I believe in the Spirit who is greater than the universe,
who arrives each morning like the breath in our lungs,
who makes our hearts burn within us for mercy and justice,
who regenerates that which is worn and weary,
and who links us together in a community of love.
I believe in the God of perfect beauty,
who is dismayed by our crude and hurtful ways
but is not willing to cast us into the darkness
as long as there light and love to be shared
and one lost coin lies hidden in dusty isolation.
Because of the epiphany of Jesus,
I believe in setting our goals higher
and extending our compassion further than ever.
Amen!
PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION
* Let us pray for the church, at home and abroad.
God of surprises, continue to have mercy on your church.
Let your Spirit move among the ranks of its many denominations,
by your fire forge links of love,
by your wind impel it into service for your world.
Where it is in error, convert it.
Where it is indifferent, re-awaken it.
Where it is corrupt, cauterise it.
Where it is persecuted, fortify it.
Where it is insightful, faithful and loving,
bless it with your holy joy.
* Let us pray for those people, present among or around the world,
who are “doing it tough” against heavy odds.
God of high hopes and deep comfort, be with your world family
for whom this day brings hardship, tragedy, sickness, road accidents,
homelessness, or broken hearts.
With your light guide them.
With your hand uplift them.
With your Spirit comfort them.
With your grace save them.
With your love enfold them.
With your peace garrison their hearts and minds
against all evil.
God of surprises,
should any of us become switched-off to the sufferings of others,
should any of us retreat into selfish and safe pre-occupations,
confront us again with the Cross,
deliver us from either dithering, or from rash actions,
and tutor us how to best be your agents of justice and mercy.
Through Christ Jesus our hope and our joy.
Amen!
COMMISSIONING AND
BLESSING
That the world may know it is not hopeless,
and be assisted to raise the bar of its spiritual and ethical expectations,
We go in the Spirit of Christ Jesus
To see what needs to be done and to do it graciously,
to accept what cannot as yet be done, and to relax easily,
and to help others to take courage, without patronising them,
We go in the Spirit of Christ Jesus.
The limitless grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the indiscriminate providence of our loving God,
and the comforting yet disturbing friendship of the Holy Spirit,
will be with us today
and forever more.
Amen!