Virtual Service Sunday 29th March

PARTICIPATE – AT HOME – IN A ‘VIRTUAL CHURCH SERVICE’

Sunday 29th March 2020
Fifth in Lent

Suggestions for following the Order of Worship

    1. Ideally, practice your Worship on Sunday at 11am – That may help us to feel in our kirk amongst our fellow worshippers and friends.
    2. Say your prayers with your partner, family or friends. A prayerful unity. If you’re on your own, pray sitting opposite an empty chair and imagine Jesus sits there, with you.
    3. If you are online, the links in the Order of Worship will take you to a YouTube video of the hymns, with words and music.

Order of Worship

Opening Stillness

Call to Worship – (Say out loud). “Satisfy us at daybreak with your love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.” Ps 90, v14

Praise Christ triumphant (436) www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r3EogSdfPU

Prayers of Approach

(adoration, thanksgiving, supplication)

Almighty God our Father, out of love that cannot be measured you have created the heavens and the earth; out of grace that cannot be exhausted you sustain your created order; out of wisdom that cannot be plumbed, you direct the affairs of people; into light that cannot be extinguished you receive your own.

We worship you, the one who is the source if all love, grace, wisdom and light and we praise you that our worship is acceptable and pleasing to you, through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Lift our eyes to him, your son, the Christ of Calvary in all his stark loneliness that we might know
The sweetness of being forgiven
The fragrance of being accepted
The power of being set free for service
The joy of being strengthened in faith.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, as we all say together …

Lord’s Prayer

OUR FATHER, who 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, and the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen

Bible Lesson: Psalm 119, v 9-16

Praise: I stand amazed (MP 296) www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sgSowQ1rzY

Bible Lesson: St John 12, v 20-33

Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession

We give you thanks, our Heavenly Father, for the world you have made, for its wonder and beauty and wealth. We give thanks for the powers you have given us to enjoy its liveliness and to be nourished from its fruits. We praise you for Sabbath quiet and the company if those we love, for the wisdom if the wise, the courage of the brave and the goodness of your saints.

Lord, when are angry and dismayed at the cruelties of man to man, the blindness of governments, the follies if people’s: when we humbled by our own disobedience to the truth we know, then we remember that you are Father if all, we remember that Christ carries the sorrows of all, we believe that your Spirit strives in all men and women for truth and justice.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord to whom with you the Father and with the Ho,y Spirit, one God, Be Glory and dominion world without end. Amen

Praise; Here is love (MP 987) www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdDT6RXQwvE

A few words from Rev Gillon

As part of our Johannine Scripture lesson this morning, we have Jesus declaring that “the hour has come” for the Son of Man to be glorified.

On this Sunday, the 5th Sunday of Lent, becoming closer and closer to Easter Sunday, that glorious day of his Resurrection, we deal with a passage which concerns Jesus predicting his death, this dreadful death that would be on a painful Roman cross at Golgotha, outside the ancient walls of Jerusalem. His death was necessary, his death had also to be as one who is innocent of any crime, his death was sacrificial in obedience to God.

His “hour” had been hanging over him from the moment he was born at Bethlehem, over his childhood and early manhood at Nazareth (there’s a church there called the “church of the adolescent Jesus”!!), hanging over him as he was baptised in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, over him as he sorted out his Temptations in the desert, over him as he called his 12 men to be his team of assistants and students and eventual leaders of the Early Christian Church.

His “hour” continued to hang over him, maybe almost like a brooding vulture, as he developed his ministry, as he healed people of their ailments, as he raised !Lazarus from the dead, as he annoyed the leaders of his Jewish Faith, men such as Pharisees and Scribes, as he told stories with scriptural and moral meanings, Parables.

As his anticipated death drew closer and closer, he made mention of it more and more, partly to inform his team and other followers that it was a necessary part of his deal with God and perhaps also to confirm its reality…. for although he recognised himself to be the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the one who was to become, and be recognised to become, the Saviour of the world, YET his humanity and its frailness was also sitting on his shoulder. He began to experience doubt “Father if it be your will, take this cup from me” His “hour” was suddenly upon him.

In this sense, then, we can identify with Jesus…… in our lives we have moments when we dream happily that our “ hour” will be upon us, brilliantly happy or successful, or moments when we are fearful of something in the future, when we’d rather not have the ”hour” of our pain, or fear, or sadness, or whatever else may fill us with despair and darkness like vultures upon our shoulders. When we can identify with our Lord, naked on the Cross, nails in his palms or wrists and ankles, as he cried out “My God, my God, Why have you forsaken me?”

As we journey through Lent, as we are nearly at Easter, only Palm Sunday and Holy Week to come, are we not more and more aware that this story of the life of Jesus is not a Disney one, is not a cartoon projection, but a journey of increasing glory and praise, of God’s power and forgiveness and love?

His “hour”, his story, his life is something that we are asked to share. Let us endeavour to do so remembering further words Jesus as recorded by St John “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have lived you. Greater love has no man than this, That he lay down his life for his friends”.

Until we meet again, so to speak, during this difficult time of restraint, of disease, maybe of pain and fear, may God be with you.

Offering

Your offering is critical income for the church. If you can, please set it aside until you can bring it. Due to the latest travel restrictions, the church vestibule will NOT be open at any time to receive offerings.

Praise: And can it be (396) www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQeIGbKqiw8

Benediction.

Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of a God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, today and always. Amen