It has been a while since we have been able to share a sermon with you. We hope this will be well received.
Our Guest Preacher ~ Gwen Simmons
Hymn ~ Let us build a house
Call to Worship
O God you are our rock and our fortress
for the sake of your name lead us and guide us
Jesus, our Way, our Truth and our Life,
for the sake of your name lead us and guide us
Spirit of God, our inspiration and our comforter
lead us and guide us as we worship.
Prayer of Adoration
God of surprises,
you go on ahead to prepare a place for us.
What will it be like?
A place of dazzling splendour to reflect your glory.
A place of sumptuous richness to reflect your grandeur.
A place of awesome vastness to reflect your greatness.
God of surprises,
you go on ahead to prepare a place for us.
What will it be like?
A place of quiet gentleness to reflect your compassion.
A place of warm-hearted tenderness to reflect your love.
A place of graceful selflessness to reflect your humility.
God of surprises,
you go on ahead to prepare a place for us.
What will it be like?
A place where barriers are broken to reflect your justice.
A place where life is lived to reflect your righteousness.
A place where wholeness and well-being reflect your peace.
God of surprises,
you go on ahead to prepare a place for us.
We live in the here and now,
and as we wait with anticipation and hope,
we build your kingdom right here and right now.
As we reflect on our own wrong
God of hospitality and healing, forgive us
when as individuals, as a church and as a community,
we have not been welcoming;
when we have closed our doors to those
who are different from us, those whose needs frighten us.
Give us the grace to know how to meet others in your name,
and to serve others in your strength.
We pray in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
- What do you see in the Picture?
- Trees, drystone wall, sky, grass, fairly typical UK countryside picture- could almost be anywhere.
- What can you tell me about the blocks in the wall?
- All different shapes and sizes of blocks
- Every Block individual
- But they fit/work together to make a strong wall
- Have decent foundations
- How might it be representative of the church/Christianity?
- The foundations of the wall are in God are like God we can’t see it but we know it’s got to be there.
- The blocks to me felt a bit like the physical representation of Christ- visible and there.
- The air in between like the Holy spirit around playing it’s part in keeping us together but invisible.
- What is holding the wall together?
- Each block is holding each block together
- Stones aren’t cemented together but held with gaps of air.
- As a church how do we fit into the wall?
- As an individual we make up a block in the wall/ or our church does- but we’re not a church as one individual or individual church.
- How can we think of Unity with a wall analogy?
- Church made up of us as individuals
- Church is made up of churches and different denominations
- Each church person is different but together it works
- As a Christian what is our part in the wall?
- We could think of ourselves as an individual block- unique and different from any other block in the wall.
I’ve used this wall analogy and taken it to look at Christianity as a whole.
Our foundations are shared with those of other faiths, The Pentateuch, The Torah and The Koran all share the same writings they are the foundations of all our faiths and upon those foundations we can build a picture of how the church has grown and developed- as a wall, and whilst we have a representative wall here- It’s by no means exhaustive- I’m sure there is a similar wall we could build for Islam and Judaism.
The strength of being a Christian comes from our individuality as different factions and denominations of the church and yet can we describe whether we have the strength of Christian Unity that could make Christianity in the world as formidable force?
Readings:
1 Peter 2:4-10 John 14:1-14
Sermon
Down in the Church I believe Michael is sharing a similar theme to the service this morning as I am- he has different speakers talking about their view, experience and traditions of their Christian churches. I believe he has an Orthodox speaker? I perhaps think that Michael has a different agenda about this morning than I have.
His service centres around the idea that with sharing comes acceptance and with acceptance comes unity. I think you are probably realising whilst the foundations and thought process have stemmed from the same main reading of John, I’m taking this in a different direction- and that’s no bad thing in fact it adds another layer to my analogy of walls and stones and bricks and that we’re different but together we can combine to bring strength.
I come at this knowing that in the next few months in St David’s Uniting Church there is going to be significant changes- you have your farewell service to Pontypridd town centre as a base in a couple of weeks. (and it’s going to be sad to say goodbye to a building that many of us have known as a church home- my final farewell was a month back when there for Brian’s funeral), and soon you are going to be moving to castle square- again which will bring to others different emotions for those who in the congregation have ended up as part of St David’s as a result of the closure of castle square a few years ago.
But let’s think about the story of St David’s uniting Church. It was originally a URC church – or maybe a congregationalist church prior to that- way before I became involved it became two churches a successful LEP of Baptist and URC, similar church denominations and yet different finding ways to get along together and make it work and shortly after I left another amalgamation into the LEP of the Welsh Presbyterian church St David’s and yet another growing together, and an influx after that from people from other surrounding churches making it grow more.
Along the way along it’s vivid journey there have been people lost in the coming together and the natural decline in the congregation…but as a church at it’s core the fundamentals are still there- a church that throws its doors wide open and welcomes all regardless, or race, gender, religion, belief or a multitude of others differences.
Without that you as individuals the church wouldn’t be what it is. It’s the individuals, it’s us that make a church, with the multitude of skills, experiences and differing interpretations of the same thing that make the church- not the actual building we’re like those stones in that dry wall that make a section of the church- we wouldn’t have the strength without one another we’d be a discarded block, but the wall needs the strength and characteristics of us all.
However the section of wall that we make as a church is but a few tiny blocks in the massive wall of Christianity, as a single person in a single church in a single denomination (or in our case a few) it’s difficult to make a difference however when we work together we can have an impact we can in this day and age still spread the word of God.
We have to work together with other churches locally, denominationally, to gain any strength and even with traditions that are very different from ours but still would like to be classed under that umbrella of Christianity to raise the profile of the messages of Jesus and God.
From experience the different traditions can be perplexing- I think of my time at school and having a good friend who was Christadelphian, who didn’t celebrate birthdays and Christmas and was forbidden from having relationships outside of those of the similar faith- but you know what she had a really strong faith and wasn’t afraid to talk about it and during teacher training having a colleague who was Mormon and not drinking certain things and being open about he was, to working with Jehovah’s Witness and all that came from that, then also my experience of Coptic Christianity in Ethiopia where they celebrate festivals completely different from us. Timkat Ethiopian Epiphany Meskel – the finding of the true cross the different dates for Christmas and Easter etc.. but one thing that unified us all amongst those profound differences was a passion and understanding that there is God loving and looking out for each one of us.
The difference sometimes was that they were more willing to go out and share this love than perhaps I was. I’ve had other less welcoming viewpoints shared with me where the idea of Christian Unity is that everyone should become Catholic from a priest who I’m an acquaintance with- interesting his viewpoint in my opinion is less likely to lead to Christian Unity than other examples in my life- you guys have been one of them.. probably most progressive- but even you guys would struggle with the idea of being unified with temple I would suggest?
How does this all tie in with this morning’s readings well we hear in Peter of Peter’s exiled community of migrant workers who now have a story to tell, that contradicts the world’s estimate of them, through baptism they have been incorporated into God’s forgiven people. They may provide labour for building projects but their own lives are like migrant constructions a spiritual house held together by one who’s known rejections who is precious in God’s eyes.
The story represents God’s way of giving the highest possible honour to those who look for all the world like discarded building blocks and when we come to think about the Gospel reading. Is it something we can actually relate to? That feeling of being upended from a place of comfort and a place we’ve known as home, and a reminder to us that it’s not the place that makes a home it’s the people and the philosophies that lie within it.
And then in John the reminder that Jesus is our guide he’s the one we should follow and we should put our faith in him.
John 14 verse 1
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God[a]; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Whilst we understand this passage to be a foretelling of Jesus death, resurrection and eventual ascension into heaven – we can apply it to us here and now – we are a church to us moving and evolving as a church – we’ve a house that’s had many rooms and now a different room is being prepared for you.
At the end of the day God protects and strengthens his people in the face of difficulty, building them into a mutually supportive community through Jesus. Jesus is the way the truth and the life – No one comes to the father except through me. As we move forward hold onto the fact, we need to keep Jesus at the centre and we know his ministry was never tied to a building- our faith and journey needs to be tied to Christ.
In bringing us round to the idea of acceptance and unity, we understand that as Christians we are all unique individuals, we all have different viewpoints about what our faith means to us and there is no reason why we can’t hold onto that, but we must remember as we move forward that things are going to be different, the church as we know it is going to be different and accepting that will hopefully bring us closer to the idea of unity. A church isn’t a building, a church is us, we’re the stones that build the walls and we’re responsible for keeping us true to the ethos of a church- whether that be the building that we call home, whether that be the denomination of faith we adhere to whether that be the branch of non- conformist Christianity that we follow at the end of the day we gain our strength as a church in that idea of unity, from individual to church, to denomination, to branches, to greater organisations of churches to the umbrella that as Christians we fall under. You have a great history to draw from, and as individuals we can be the stones to building something new and wonderful and in doing so, we can play our individual part in the wall of unity that builds up to be what we understand to be Christianity.
I am sure that church will be fantastic and I look forward to coming to visit. Amen
Prayers of Intercession
We pray this day for the living stones in your world, O God:
living stones
who speak out, and face persecution;
who stand up and get beaten down;
who stay with the ones whom everyone ignores
with no thought to their own lives.
O God you are our refuge:
let us not be put to shame.
We pray this day for the living stones in your world, O God:
living stones
who work for peace,
whose lives have changed the world;
whose words inspire us all
whose judgement saves us from destruction.
O God you are our refuge:
let us not be put to shame.
We pray this day for the living stones in your world, O God:
living stones
who are in all sorts of need at this time:
who are hungry and homeless,
who are lost and alone or sick and bereaved;
living stones whom we love,
who come to us for help, and who help us.
O God you are our refuge:
let us not be put to shame.
Let us hold fast to your promises,
and know your call is true.
Let us be strong.
Let us be built up for you
that your kingdom will come.
Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer
Hymn – Christ is our cornerstone
The Grace