ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY**
For thousands of years, the Indigenous peoples have walked on this ancient land. These many lands were taken from the First Peoples without their consent, treaty or compensation. The Spirit of God has long dwelled with the First People of this ancient land. We honour the Dharawal People and pay our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging.
SAFE CHURCH STATEMENT**
The Uniting Church in Australia believes that all people are made in the image of God, and as such we accept every individual regardless of race, age, creed, sexuality and gender. As a Christian Community we believe that God reaches out to us in love and acceptance and that our relationships with each other should express love and respect and not be abused.
CHRIST CANDLE
We believe Christ Jesus is the Light of the world. We are drawn to his light lest we lose our way.
To his Name be honour, praise and glory. A candle is lit.
CALL TO WORSHIP
We believe the universe was born in the mind of God, that the earth was shaped from the work of God’s hand. We believe that we live in the presence of God. All around us and within us is the great mystery of creation. Let us Pray…Universe maker, earth creator, breath of life for all that lives;we come in wonder and in expectation. It is our prayer today that we will see you at work in the glories of the heavens and the wonders of creation. That we will see you at work in the stories of Jesus, in the work of your Church and in the faces and hands of each other and of those we meet. Amen
HYMN – TIS 163 vs 1, 3 & 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh29qEjlqKY
God, who stretched the spangled heavens, infinite in time and place
Flung the stars in burning radiance, through the silent fields of space
We your children, in your likeness, share inventive powers with you:
Great Creator, still creating, show us all we yet may do.
We have ventured worlds undreamed of, since the childhood of our race
Known the ecstasy of winging through untravelled realms of space
Probed the secrets of the atom, yielding unimagined power
Facing us with life’s destruction, or our most triumphant hour.
As each far horizon beckons, may it challenge us anew
Children of creative purpose, serving others, honouring you.
May our dreams prove rich with promise, each endeavour, well begun:
Great Creator, give us guidance, till our goals and yours are one.
Catherine Cameron 1927 – 2019 Words by permission Hope Publishing Co USA
OLD TESTAMENT READING
Psalm 8 (NRSV) O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Let us pray…Great God of the ever-spinning galaxies, you sustain all of creation with your love.
The energy of billions of stars and millions of galaxies is the energy of your love in action, a universe vast and deep, beyond human understanding. O how majestic is your Name, God of all creation. We live as good stewards of this creation in wonder, thankfulness and in awe at this responsibility; a responsibility made possible through your love and faith in us. We give thanks for creation’s diversity and beauty.
In Jesus’ name, the Word who was with you in the beginning, we pray. Hallelujah! Amen.
GOSPEL READING
Mark 10:2 – 12 (NIV) Some Pharisees came and tested Jesus by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” (Deut 24:1-4) “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
In this is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
On bended knee, like a penitent thief, we come tentative and unsure, before you Lord.
We have all used words to wound, to humiliate and dis-empower others. Forgive us & set us free.
We have used your Word too, to put others in their place, to remind them they have fallen short.
You came in Jesus to bind up and to restore, to delight in and to celebrate human life in relationships.
Forgive us when we place stumbling blocks in the way of others and then blame them when they fall.
We are all made in God’s image, we all seek the crumbs which fall from the Master’s table, so set us free to love as you love, to cherish what we have & to know your new beginnings when we stumble and fall.
These prayers and those of our hearts we bring before you, Jesus, God’s great lover of Life. Amen
TIS 776 (ii) ‘The Lord bless you and keep you’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcYzO8Y4PH0
MESSAGE Do you live by a law-filled life?
In the 1930’s, a minister and his family lived in the Methodist Parsonage in a small country town.
This man had already known tragedy when his 1st wife died in childbirth during WW1.
Tragedy hit this family again and their son Ray during the height of the Great Depression when Ray’s mum, his Dad’s 2nd wife, eloped with the local milkman. Scandal enveloped the man, his son and their local community, but worse was to come. Believing that he was to blame for what happened the church dismissed him from the ministry. “The church’s By-Laws are quite clear, you cannot remain in ministry if you are divorced” he was told. His son didn’t enter a Methodist Church ever again; reconciliation between Ray and the by then Uniting Church occurred in the 1990’s. Ray died the following year.
The passage of Scripture we’ve heard read today from Mark Ch 10 reminds me of that tragic story from the 1930’s of Ray and his Dad. “The law says…” as if somehow, it’s not the Church’s fault for casting this family adrift; and you’ll find no reference to Ray’s Dad in their Ministers Lists, just online on Trove, if you know where to look during the years before this tragedy. This man was like the wife who could be divorced just by the writing of a letter, because Moses’ Law allowed it, her identity and worth, her very life dis-empowered & dismissed because the law said it could.
This approach within the Methodist Church existed for three more decades until some understanding and compassion undergirded such By-Laws. By the time of Church Union it was possible depending on their particular circumstances for a divorced person to remain in ministry and for a divorced person to be able to enter the ministry. While from 1969 women were admitted to the ordained ministry.
Today’s story is set as a trap for Jesus by the lawyers and scribes in Jerusalem. For these religious lawyers, the hypothetically discarded wife was of no concern, she was a means to an end in their seeking to trap Jesus. Just as the Murugappan family’s ongoing exclusion from Biloela is a political decision. It cares little for these 4 people – Nades, Priya, Kopika & Tharnicca. Jesus stands in solidarity with this woman and with all whose lives are viewed through the lens of a selective de-personalised Scriptural or legal decree; when not seen through the lens of God ‘Immanuel’, or arms stretched out on a Cross, where personal circumstances & relationships are precious beyond measure – for God so loved! I’m sure Jesus would be horrified to know that his words are used to often to exclude and condemn.
Jesus uses a common rabbinical response of ‘extremes’ to cast the conversation in black & white overtones by talking about divorce & adultery by expanding its definition to include the person, who having written the letter of dismissal becomes ensnared, if he remarries, in his own schemes.
Jesus resets the focus back on human relationships that find their origin and inspiration in God.
We often focus in this story, on the words of adultery and perhaps too in the belief that Jesus is saying you can never remarry while your ex-spouse is alive, some within the Church adhere to that belief.
But Jesus’ focus on the sanctity of such personal relationships as in a marriage, is in effect saying, we are to take very seriously our responsibilities in marriage, and in all our personal relationships – never looking for loop holes to justify our actions, just because we can.
Jesus stands up for this woman and for all for whom ‘the fine print of life’ takes away their individual uniqueness, worth and identity. Or as John Falzon said recently, Jesus exercised a ‘surplus of caring’, an over-abundance. Just as Jesus did at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee when he turned 6 large stone jars of water into the equivalent of 600 bottles of the best red money couldn’t buy. This story is not just about marriage, but the sacredness of all human relationships, at their best, a reflection of God’s love.
While the Family Court of Australia is not perfect & is chronically under resourced, it is still far better than the adversarial system of blame, counter blame and ‘proof’ of infidelity that existed prior to 1974. What came to be called ‘no fault divorce’ had the chance to reduce the trauma of such tragic breakups.
One other change brought in in 1974 was that the notice you were required to give, to be married was lengthened from a week to a month and a day. That’s still the case today and you can’t be married if you are under 18 without a court order, not just with the permission of the person’s parent(s).
But there is still much that hasn’t yet been fully tackled. Systemic issues of institutional evil – around domestic violence, safe houses, adversarial court processes in relation to the reporting of sexual assault and women’s economic and financial independence. Many legal structures & processes need to change.
There are today many in our own society who still live under similar pieces of written legalese which often devalues and dis-empowers them; we’ve seen this in the ‘12 LGA’s of concern’ during our current Covid lockdown. Where some laws dis-proportionately affect others who often live in insecure and over-crowded housing and in casual jobs that can’t be worked from home or within 5km of home.
Our UC colleagues in the Georges River Presbytery north of the Georges River have been living a very different lockdown to you and to me, spending much of their time placing food on the table and shelter over the heads of the thousands adversely affected. I wonder what Jesus’ modern parable might be?
Jesus challenges & invites us to live lives that focus on the quality of human relationships & the hopes that every person has. In an age of individual victim blaming, do you mostly live a similar ‘law-filled’ way of life or a ‘grace-filled way of life?’
Do you just give thanks that you don’t live in an LGA of concern with no real heart connection to those that do, or does your heart, hip pocket and faith go out to them as well?
For the many millions of people who have become disciples of Jesus, it is this life-long personal relationship with Christ that transforms them because they are valued as never before – it truly is all about the relationship and the seven fruit of the Holy Spirt that defines and disciplines these relationships. May the stories of Jesus be that blessing, for you and for all people. Amen
All Together Whatever 475 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WuTef5dhUA
Come to the banquet there’s a place for you
Though you maybe have no money, though you maybe feel unworthy
In your strength or in your weakness you are welcome, come
Come to the banquet there’s a place for you
See, you are an honoured guest, from constant serving you may rest
So sit you down, be fed & blessed for you are welcome, come
Come to the banquet there’s a place for you
Woman, wise one, mother, maiden, see your plate with food is laden
And your place is set and waiting, you are welcome, come
Come to the banquet there’s a place for you
Worker, father, little boy, old man or youth without employ
Come rest your worry, here is joy and you are welcome, come.
Come to the banquet there’s a place for you
Whether you’ve been lost or faithful, whether you’ve been wise or wasteful
Here’s a place of rest and grace and you are welcome, come
Come to the banquet there’s a place for you
Here is one who runs to meet you loving arms stretched out to greet you
Do not let your fear defeat you, you are welcome, come
Come to the banquet there’s a place for you
Willing hands have made this bread with salt and yeast and labour shared
Let all the hungry ones be fed; it’s time for feasting, come
Come to the banquet there’s a place for you
Abundant wine, enough for all; our generous loving host has called
The cup of blessing now is poured for sweet communion, come
Come to the banquet there’s a place for you.
ANNOUNCEMENTS & OUR OFFERING TO GOD
HOLY COMMUNION
The Lord be with you
And also with you
Lift up your hearts
We lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
Who is this Jesus?
He was always the guest. In the homes of Peter & Jairus, Martha & Susanna
He was always the guest. At the meal tables of the wealthy, where he pled the case
Of the poor and the powerless, He was always the guest.
Upsetting polite company, befriending marginalised people
Welcoming the stranger and outcast, he was always the guest.
But here, at this table, he is Host. Those who wish to serve him, must first be served by him.
Those who want to follow him, must first be fed by him.
For this is the table where God intends us to be nourished; this is the time when God can make us new.
So come, you who are hungry and thirst for a deeper faith, for a better world, for a life of justice.
Jesus Christ, who sat at our tables, now invites us to be his guests.
Let us then respond to his invitation with the words of the eternal hymn:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might
Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!
WORDS OF INSTITUTION & DISTRIBUTION
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE**
O loving Lord: You are the source of life, sustaining us in every stage of life’s journey; You are the mother earth, ageing trees with time and nourishment, and embracing each fallen leaf back to its roots.
O loving Lord: Today we pray for our senior citizens, keep those living in isolation in your sight, enfold others in your safety. In this pandemic, we remember the frontline staff, protect these ordinary heroes as they leave home and care for the elderly. O loving Lord: We also lament for the Royal Commission into Aged Care findings. We hear stories of abuse and neglect; we hear of greed for profit at the expense of quality care; we hear of ill-fated policies shifting the duty from the government to consumers; we hear of a culture that keeps the aged away from their families.
Forgive us, Lord: Through the prophets, you have taught Israel – do not rebuke the elderly harshly, but exhort them as if they were our own parents. In Jesus, we have learned the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve; and God made the old to have hopes and dream dreams.
Lead us, Lord: Direct our energy about past regrets into blessings to the people near us; Turn our attention from fault finding, to seeing each person made in your divine image; Stop us from only using money to fix the problem, Build the capacity of our families and communities for care.
Guide us, Lord: since the ancient times, your grace rises in the presence of the aged, and your blessing is honoured among the elderly. Through ancient cultures, we have learned: Respect for the elderly is the foundation of all social goodness. Raise us in your grace, Lord, as we rebuild a culture of respect;
Send your blessings, as we honour life together with you. Amen
HYMN TIS 220 (ii)
This, this is the God we adore
Our faithful, unchangeable friend.
Whose love is as great as his power
And neither knows measure nor end.
‘Tis Jesus the first and the last
Whose Spirit shall guide us safe home.
We’ll praise him for all that is past
And trust him for all that’s to come. Joseph Hart 1712 – 1768 Public Domain
BLESSING & BENEDICTION
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