 The Lord be with you! Christmas greetings, Cheviot Churches and also to those elsewhere! You are all very welcome. This is Colin, and I hope everyone is staying well. Come, people of God, let us worship together on this 1st Sunday after Christmas
Notices:
Call to Worship In our looking into 2021 May the God of hope be with us. In our lamenting the losses of 2020 May the God of peace be with us In our celebrations of Christmas May the God of joy be with us In our caring for the world May the God of love be with us In our living of life in all its fullness May we know that God is with us Carol 313 - See in yonder manger low Prayers of Adoration and Confession God of grace and glory,we praise you from the heights and from the depths;in the heavens, on earth and from the seas;in the courts of power and from the sidewalks of our lives.Your splendour shines from a manger, where the Light of the world was born to pierce the darkness.In fragile of flesh, you are revealed to us face to face.And so we gather with all people in every placewho have glimpsed your salvation and graceto rejoice in your love born for us.Together we worship and praise you as Creator, Son and Spirit;Source of life,Glorious light,Wisdom of the ages. Source of all hope, you invite us to live in the light and discover the splendour of your glory. We confess we often choose to remain in the darkness instead.We allow our fears and hurts to hold us hostage. Our expectations of life prevent us from seeing new and real possibilities. You offer us unconditional love, but we expect others to earn our love. Forgive us. May the new life born in the manger awaken new life in us and allow hope to dawn in the year ahead. Here is the good news of the Gospel: Jesus Christ is our light and our salvation. In him we are made new. Let us give thanks to God, and be at peace with ourselves and with one another. Lord’s Prayer Readings – Isaiah 61:10- 62: 3 Luke 2:22-40 Carol 319 – Of the Father’s love begotten Weekly Prayer God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose years never fail and whose mercies are new each returning day: let the radiance of your Spirit renew our lives, warming our hearts and giving light to our minds; that we may pass the coming year in joyful obedience and firm faith; through him who is the beginning and the end, your Son, Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. Reflection The Sunday after Christmas is always a difficult one. We have been building up through Advent, lighting our candles each Sunday, opening the doors of our Advent calendars, in order to reach Christmas Day, when we rejoice at the birth of the Christ child. And afterwards, well there is a sense of let down. As a child there is the horror that it would be another 365 days before another Christmas! Also, the days after Christmas commemorate some gruesome events in the Christian Year. The 26th is the Feast of Stephen, which we sing about in the carol ‘Good King Wencelas’, and it marks the death of Stephen, the first martyr in the Church. The 28th is Holy Innocents Day, when we remember how Herod slaughtered the male children in Bethlehem, while the 29th will mark the 850th anniversary of Thomas a Becket’s death at Canterbury. It is therefore something of a relief that our Gospel reading focuses this year on the story of Simeon and Anna. If you go to Linton Kirk, you will find a stained-glass window near the communion table of an elderly bearded Simeon holding the baby Jesus in his arms, and there is something lovely about the old holding the young. Mary and Joseph had brought their child to the Temple in Jerusalem. They came for two reasons. After giving birth, a mother had to be purified, and so Mary came and offered two doves, a sign that they couldn’t afford a sheep. They also came to dedicate their first-born child to God. But in the Temple they encountered firstly Simeon and then Anna. Anna was 84 and had been widowed most of her adult life, and while we are not told Simeon’s age, we get the impression that he was an old man too. Both would have seen much in their lives. Perhaps they had even witnessed the coming of the Romans to occupy Palestine. Anna as a widow would have relied on the charity of others, and both seemed to frequent the temple, praying and hoping. They both were people of faith and believed that the Messiah would come to bring change and usher in the Kingdom of God. Both, in turn, held Jesus in their arms and recognised him as the One, as the Messiah. They just have a tiny cameo in the Gospel story, but Anna and Simeon represent the old and the wisdom that the elderly bring. There is a group called the ‘Elders’, made up of Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and others, who tried to bring their wisdom and experience to situations of conflict. Simeon and Anna brought their wisdom and their faithfulness. But they also recognised something new was about to happen, and they were letting go of the old to pass on the baton to the new, to the couple and their baby. We come to the end of another year, and I don’t think many of us will miss seeing the end of 2020. We lament the sense of isolation, the heart-break, the loss of livelihoods as individuals and as a nation. 2021 beckons. With the lockdown, we are starting the year quietly, but I think that with Anna and with Simeon we can look into the future with hope, with faithfulness and hopefully with a little wisdom, ready to face changes and make transitions in the knowledge that God journeys with us, the God who has been faithful in the past and beckons us on to a new tomorrow. Carol 314 – Child in a manger Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession Good and gracious God, your love overflows in the goodness we have met even in this challenging year. As one year closes and another begins, help us trust your goodness. Bless the gifts we bring to you so that they may provide others with the hope we know in Christ Jesus. God of love, as we celebrate the birth and life of Jesus, our Saviour, we are filled with thanks. Our gratitude overflows in prayers for our world, the world you love. We pray for all children. Guard their minds, protect their bodies, strengthen their characters, and give them joy. Help them look to the future with hope and trust. We pray for the most aged among us, those whom Simeon and Anna bring to mind. Protect them in the midst of the ongoing pandemic and reassure them of their value to you and to us, even when we cannot meet together. We pray for those whose hearts are filled with pain and fear. We pray for those for whom Christmas is linked with loss or grief. (Keep a time of silence) Surround each one with a strong sense of your comforting presence. We pray for those who do not have enough to eat, and for those who lack adequate shelter in our community and in desperate corners of the world… For those who eat alone, without the comfort of human contact… and for those whose hearts and lives have been broken by trauma and loss, and for those who struggle with the many costs of the pandemic. (Keep a time of silence) Surround each one with a strong sense of your comforting presence. We pray for family members and friends, those nearby and those we could not meet with this year. (Keep a time of silence) Remind them of our steadfast love, and to any who are struggling this season, O God, give your gift of peace. As the year draws to a close, we surrender to you, O God, the challenges it has held for us so that they will not remain as burdens. Remind us of the good things that have offered us encouragement in times of isolation. We give you thanks for the people who continue to care for us and care about us. Give us courage and wisdom for the year ahead. We pray that our leaders will have wisdom and generosity of spirit for the decisions they must make on our behalf. Guide scientists continuing to produce the vaccines against COVID-19 and support all those essential workers whose faithfulness to their responsibilities helps us all cope in these difficult days Amen Carol 295 – Who would think what was needed Benediction May we go, ready to see God at work in the world, open to hope for God’s ways in the world, and holding God’s love in our lives. And the blessing of God, loving Father, newborn Son, and living Spirit, go with us, and to all those we are given to love, this day, into 2021, and always, Amen
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