Sunday Service 6th October

Weep as we sow, rejoice as we harvest

6/10/24

Call to worship

Hymn 74(JP): He gave me eyes

Time for all

Hymn 94(JP): If I were a butterfly 

Reading:  Psalm 126

Prayer

Hymn 259: Beauty for brokenness

Sermon

Prayer

Hymn 263: God of freedom, God of justice (tune Rhuddlan)

Benediction

Welcome to our meditation for 6th of October

In the Psalm we are looking at today it has a very poignant phrase, ‘Let those who wept as they sowed their seed, gather the harvest with joy.’

It talks about how uncertain is the stuff that we do, but can we do it in faith that things will get better?

We will consider that after we read the Psalm itself and have a word of prayer.

Let us pray

Heavenly Father,

thank you for this day,

thank you an opportunity to express our gratitude for life and love,

for all those people in our lives that make it better, that support us and help us be

better versions of ourselves, and for the people whom we love,

who we are willing to make sacrifices for because we want them to have better lives

thank you for your presence in our every day, ordinary lives, making an extraordinary difference. For the possibility of sharing our lives with others, for the chance to reach out in love to friend and stranger.

We are grateful for the seasons of life, for cycles of planting and harvest

for the courses of days, weeks, months and years that demonstrate the detail, the patterns of care that are in the design of your creation. That within the creation are the times for work and the times for rest. That within creation there is time for growth and  there is time for healing

And we praise you for this day.

We come today to sing your praises. To reflect on what we have done and what we have failed to do.

To reflect on how you are seeking to guide us and influence us.

To see that you give us the opportunity to join in community

and as we join together, to hear Your word read and proclaimed.

To feel how it may change us for the better, challenge us to be better

.

We also come to reflect that sometimes we neglected your creation.

We have turned away at times from your will

and failed to treat others with the integrity expected from being your child, created in your image.

In the silence we bring before you our regrets and our disappointments, our laments and our remorse, recognising our dependence on you to find what we should do next...

Forgive us, we pray.

Let us continually hold your steadfast love before our eyes, let that love be our inspiration and hope as we move forward in faith, seeking to return us to your path.

This we ask in Jesus name, and in his name we say in faith

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

‘Let those who wept as they sowed their seed, gather the harvest with joy.’

I have a two year old granddaughter.

I don’t think you appreciate just how tough it is being two year old.

You believe that the world is out there to explore,

you have everything that you need to explore,

you have fast legs and great balance and unbounding energy...

but at the same time you are too small to reach any door handle.

Trust me, if we want to control Leah then we just close the door, because if we don’t she would be all over the place.

This leads to great frustration as her ambitions to explore the whole world are thwarted by adults that just want to keep her safe, or have a rest from running after her all day.

So it is not unusual to find Leah lying on her back staring up at the world saying, ‘I am having a bad day.’

Or for her to be standing facing you with her arms crossed and saying, ‘I am a grump.’

Sometimes life is not the way we want it to be.

And if that is the case for two year olds, it is certainly the case for adults.

There are millions of adults displaced round the world just now, scared of war, scared of people of violence trying to control their own destinies at the cost of others.

There are millions of people living in uncertain times,

because of climate change they find their homes on flood plains or in the paths of possible hurricanes or tornados that can change the course of their lives in moments.

There are millions of people in our own land who are uncertain about their future.

Life is really tight for many.

I am sure there are many dreading the next budget and the new range of taxes that they will face.

I am sure that there are many that will have support cut from them either directly or indirectly.

Often charities would have acted as a safety net, but these charities often were supported by local and regional government grants, and many of these grants will disappear. So as things get harder, the support mechanisms will get fewer.

This is a physical problem.

But at the heart of the answer is a spiritual dimension.

Let’s look at the scenario in our Psalm today.

It starts off really positive.

In fact two thirds of the Psalm seem brilliant.

The Babylonian Empire, that had taken the people into exile, had been defeated by the Persian Empire.

While the Babylonian Empire had a policy of invading lands, then deporting all the leaders to strange lands so that they couldn’t revolt,

the Persian Empire had a policy of returning the people to their own land,

letting them have quite a bit of self determination, making things good for the natives so that they saw it in their own best interest to keep the peace.

So after 70 years of exile, suddenly the people had a chance to go home.

This was amazing, this was a miracle.

And with great joy and hope and enthusiasm the people returned to Jerusalem.

It was so amazing that other nations looked on this and said that this had to be a     God-thing, God had been good to his people.

And they had to admit that God had been good.

And then it all turns...

 ‘Let those who wept as they sowed their seed, gather the harvest with joy.’

You see there is a reality that we all face, life is uncertain.

They had come back, expecting throughout the journey,

that they would be going back to a land filled with milk and honey,

that everything would be like the stories of their grandparents when they talked of the glory of Jerusalem at its height, of the Temple and the wonderful inspirational worship.

And when they got to Jerusalem it was a nightmare.

The Babylonians had destroyed the city seventy years before, and nothing had been done since.

There was no inspirational Temple to visit, there were no palaces to be in awe of, there were no homes for the people to live in and protect them from the winter storms or the summer heat.

There was little food.

So what were they to do?

I have a two year old granddaughter who is laying face up saying, ‘I am having a bad day.’

And before she knows it there is a grandfather looking down on her saying, ‘And what are you going to do about that? You can lie there all day if you like. But if you do the day isn’t going to get any better.’

One solution is to do what my granddaughter does, and that is just to give up.

Which is fine for a two year old, in fact sometimes granny is quite relieved when she just lies there and gives up because it means she has five minutes of peace;

which feels like a long time when you are running after a two year old.

And though I hate to admit it, too many adults do the same thing.

They just give up.

That’s what many of the Israelites did.

There is a prophet in the Bible, Nehemiah, who was a trusted servant in the court of Emperor Artaxerxes, and his book starts with him getting a letter from his brother in Jerusalem telling him that the people had just given up.

The people had returned to Jerusalem, seen the mess and thought, ‘This is too much,’ and given up.

That is a spiritual decision, to just give up.

It is a really bad spiritual decision, but it is a spiritual decision.

Because when we do that nothing changes, and that is not the way of God, or the way of his disciples.

You see the start of the Bible shows us the character of God.

There is chaos, nothing but chaos, and God says, ‘Let there be light.’

The character of God is to make things better.

The character of God is change the world.

The character of God is to move the universe to a better place.

And that is expected to be the character of God’s followers;

that we use God’s strength and God’s wisdom and God’s energy to move the parts of the world that we are involved with to a better place.

Now there will be some of God’s followers that do that in a huge way;

people like Mother Teresa who helped so many poor and inspired so many people, people like Nelson Mandela, who inspired a whole nation to move to a fairer democracy without violence.

But many of us who are God’s followers do that in lot smaller, but just as important, ways,

those that help in charity shops,

those that volunteer in support groups like the Alva Larder,

those that watch over a neighbour and get their shopping or take out their bins,

those that notice the checkout girl is looking a bit down and ask if they are all right,

those that stand over their granddaughter while they are struggling and suggest that maybe they can make their own world a wee bit better rather than just giving up.

That’s what this Psalm is trying to tell us.

That we don’t need to give up.

We don’t need to see the problems of the world as so big that it isn’t worth doing anything,

 ‘Let those who wept as they sowed their seed, gather the harvest with joy.’

That first winter would have been a hard year.

But they could still do something; they had been given reserves of seed.

They now had the choice of using it all up as food to get them over the winter, or they could sow for a harvest in the next year.

Will they concentrate on the present and just try to survive, or will they move forward in hope for the future?

Will they use the seed to make breads for today, or sow the seed to make bread for tomorrow?

It is with reluctance that they sow the seed.

It is with tears in their eyes at the sacrifice that they sow the seed.

It is so easy to just try and get through today.

But it is a spiritual choice to have faith in God, that we prepare for tomorrow, and seek to make it better.

When those first returning Israelites sowed their seed they didn’t know if it would work, they didn’t know if the seed would take,

they didn’t know if there would be a frost that might destroy to crops

or a flood that might wash the crops away,

or a drought that might blight the crops.

The future is an uncertain place with no guarantees.

That is why it is an act of faith; that we trust in God to look after us, that we trust in God to allow the harvest to grow.

And you know what...the harvest came.

And you know what...as I stood over my granddaughter she smiled and asked if we could play on the trampolines.

And you know what...I think when we trust in God that we have a future, then we can risk sowing seeds of hope today.

So that is what I am asking of us today.

I want us to sow seeds of fellowship.

I want us to sow seeds of generosity.

I want us to sow seeds of compassion.

I want us to sow seeds of love...because that is what God has done for us, and what he wants us to do for him.

‘Let those who wept as they sowed their seed, gather the harvest with joy.’

Let us pray

It scares us Lord, the thought of so much change.

Why can’t things just stay the same?

Why can’t we have some consistency and quiet?

The thought of how our world is changing sometimes terrifies us.

We feel like we are hunted creatures, cowering in the long grass, sacred to move or make a sound in case something terrible catches up with us.

Sometimes we try to be perfectly still, do nothing, and all we can feel is the pulse in our head throbbing, or the sound of our breath which seems to loud, too deep.

When we get a chance...we run for cover, hoping that no one has seen us, praying that change may just pass us by, leaving our life uninterrupted, undisturbed.

But then we hear the screams of change.

All those others who were unable to get out of the way of change.

Who are now without the food they need, or the shelter they crave for.

All those left alone in their plight, struggling to understand what happened, how they found themselves so vulnerable.

Help us to have faith.

Not in ourselves, not in our wisdom or our strength, for they desert us too quickly.

But in your ways for us.

Your way of trust.

That if we sow in faith that you will create a harvest that is bountiful.

That if we sow seeds of your love, then fellowship will grow.

That if we sow seeds of your generosity then provision will grow.

That if we sow seeds of your tolerance, then community will grow.

Help us to see that the world will always be changing; we have no choice in that.

But we do have a choice in how it changes.

We can abandon the world to itself, live only for ourselves, and let those with darker motives; more selfish hearts, change the world into their image.

Or we can join your community, have faith in your ways for us, trust that what we do in your name will be blessed by your provision and power, and find the world changing more into your image,

that your kingdom can finally be found and felt on this world, and in our lives.

This we ask in Jesus name.

Amen.