Call to Worship In deep gratitude we come to worship God. We recognize God as the source of all goodness. All good gifts come from the Spirit of God: love, peace, joy, patience, kindness are all of God. We come with grateful hearts. We gather to show our gratitude in song and prayer. Hymn 230 – Praise God for the harvest Opening Prayer Heavenly Father, As we gather here today in this harvest season, we come before you with hearts full of thanksgiving and joy. We recognize that this season is a testament to your providence and the abundance of your creation. We open this harvest celebration with hearts open to your presence. We are grateful for the rich blessings you have bestowed upon us, the fruits of the earth that grace our tables, and the fellowship of friends and family gathered here today. We thank you for the changing seasons, for the cycles of planting and harvesting, and for the lessons they teach us about patience, faith, and abundance. May we always be mindful of your presence in every aspect of our lives. Lord, as we commence this celebration of abundance, we ask for your guidance and blessings. May this event be a time of joy, gratitude, and reflection. Help us to remember the hard work of those who have laboured in the fields, the dedication of farmers and gardeners, and the miracle of growth that you have ordained. May this gathering be a time of unity and community, where we share not only the bounty of the land but also the warmth of friendship and the bonds of love. Bless our conversations, our laughter, and our shared moments. Forgive us for our ingratitude and complacency. Help us to be good stewards of the earth and mindful of those who do not have enough. May this season of plenty remind us to share with others and to always seek your guidance in all that we do. Lord’s Prayer All age talk Hymn – Monarch and Maker Readings – Philippians 4: 1 -9 (pg 1181) Matthew 22: 1-14 (pg 990) Hymn 227 – The earth is yours, O God Weekly Prayer Lord of the Harvest, bless the labours of our hands and hearts and bless the fruit of our co-operation and community. Awaken us to your longing for a different world, where all are welcomed, valued and appreciated. Give us grace to discern your presence in one another, that together we may come to the eternal harvest of your grace. Amen Reflection After our service today we are going to have lunch along the road at the Institute, and all are welcome. If you don’t know the way, just follow the choir. Those who have prepared it will be most disappointed if no-one turns up. But that’s what happened in our Gospel reading today. The King threw a party, but people all sent their apologies. Now, Jesus told this story. Like all good stories he probably told it in different occasions and with different emphases, with different twists according to the context of where he was, who he was addressing. We are perhaps more familiar with Luke’s telling of this story. The great and the good came out with all sorts of excuses why they couldn’t attend the party, all very plausible. So the host sent out servants to bring in the poor, the crippled, the marginalised. Everyone was included, everyone valued, everyone had their place at the table. I personally like Luke’s version of the parable. But Matthew’s take on the story is something else. The party is his son’s wedding. The highlight of the social calendar, one might have thought, but again the great and the good send their apologies. But this time, the king sends in the troops and flattens the city. The name of the game is vengeance and violence. Afterwards, whoever is left, be they good or bad, are invited to what I would imagine to be a more sombre gathering. But even then, there is a twist, because in the carnage of destruction one guest hasn’t had the ability to change, but is ejected for not wearing the proper clothes, for making the faux pas of not dressing for a wedding. It all makes for awkward reading. And yet it is maybe appropriate with world events in Israel and Gaza and Ukraine to dwell on violence and vengeance. Jesus was talking to the religious leaders and implying that they are the ones who have rejected God’s invitation, so others are chosen to attend the heavenly banquet instead. Well and good. But Matthew was addressing the early Christian communities, and they would be aware that Jerusalem had been conquered and flattened by the Romans in 70AD, which some of them no doubt interpreted as divine punishment. Matthew included this image of the destroyed town. Today in Gaza there are scenes of utter destruction, of killing and death, of hospitals with no power and rapidly running out of drugs. There are also the images of Israeli communities where Hamas fighters ransacked and slaughtered. Scenes of violence and vengeance, the continuation of the cycle of hatred. As you know I have visited Gaza a number of times and have visited some of the Israeli communities hit by Hamas. The Guild had a project in one of them several years ago. We have to break that cycle. As for the guest who was bound and thrown into the outer darkness for wearing the wrong clothes, it all seems very harsh. When you have a group photograph taken, you know to dress accordingly, but wouldn’t be thrown out for wearing the wrong clothes. Last week on the radio a woman priest recounted how as an assistant, she was told to wear a dark suit for a bereavement call, but she didn’t have and had to hunt around charity shops for something appropriate. These days, people come ‘as they are’ and are welcomed ‘as they are’. But I think what Matthew is getting at here is that the guest came to the feast but remained the same; he wasn’t changed, he wasn’t transformed by the presence of the host. In the New Testament we are told to clothe ourselves with patience and love and compassion. The guest failed to do so. In fact we can look at the reading from Philippians, which is about rejoicing but also, in one of my favourite passages, encourages the Christians in Philippi to focus on what is true and noble, whatever is excellent and praiseworthy, the best and not the worst, the beautiful and not the ugly. It can be depressing looking at the news, seeing so much suffering in the world through wars or disasters affected by our changing climate. We wonder what next and can often dread the next news bulletin. I certainly do with Gaza. However perhaps we need to focus on the good and noble around us and clothe ourselves with God’s compassion and love. God does invite us to a feast and all are welcome, the dress code is to be clothed in compassion and love. Choir Anthem Dedication of Offering Gracious God, You call us to let go of the things we cling to and step out in faith, trusting in Your love and provision. Give us courage to step out boldly, to plant our small seeds generously, and without fear. Use our gifts to accomplish more than we could possibly imagine, so that, through us, Your kingdom might come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen Affirmation We saw a stranger yesterday. We put food in the eating place, drink in the drinking place, music in the listening place. And in the sacred name of the triune God, she blessed us and our house, our cattle and our dear ones. As the lark says in her song: Often, often, often goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise. Hymn 165 – Praise to the Lord Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession Lord God, you created the world and you saw that it was good. Today, at harvest time, we lift our eyes from the pavement and the floor and look with fresh awareness at the world you gave us. Open our hearts, good Lord, to see the riches and the wonder that you give your children: food to sustain their bodies, marvellous sights and sounds to feed their minds, beauty and love to fill their souls. Open our hearts, good Lord, until they overflow with happiness and thanks for all the gifts you give us in your world; and sweep them clean of petty grumbles about the little things we would have liked but that you chose not to give us. Open our hearts to offer you a rich and fitting harvest not only of our praise, but of our lives, lived in the way that you intended human lives to be. We ask it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Lord God, at harvest time we pray for those whose lives are still endured in deserts, with no hope of harvest. We pray for those who live in barren places where the rains fail and the cattle starve. We pray for them, and we ask for grace to see the action that should follow from our prayer – to see what we can do, and then to do it. We pray for those who live in devastated and polluted places ruined by war and human stupidity. We especially pray for situation in Israel and Palestine and Gaza. We pray for those whose deserts are created by disease – whose bodies burn with pain or fever, whose arms are weak; and for those who dedicate their lives to caring for them. Especially when their caring means risking their own health. We pray for those trapped in the desert of a damaged mind, caught in the sand of fear, unable to tell the difference between reality and mirage, lost and fast losing hope of finding their way to an inhabited city. We pray for them, and we ask for grace to see the action that should follow from our prayer – to see what we can do, and then to do it. Lord God, you commanded long ago that part of every harvest should be set aside to feed the poor and the foreigner. Help us to bring the riches of harvest to your children who have nothing. We ask it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Finally, Lord, we pray for the work of harvest that you set your church. Teach us to see in every human spirit a shoot that you planted, with all the love that you put into your creation. Teach us to see in every shoot, reaching in its own way towards the light that you created on the first day, the image of the one who made it. Help us to understand the patient work of nurturing precious souls so that they flourish and shine and grow towards the perfection that you long for them to reach. Give us humility and patience, forgive us when we fail and guide our hands and our mouths to give good care to souls around us in this parish and in all the world, so that the harvest fills the granaries of heaven and not one is lost. We ask it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Hymn 229 – We plough the fields and scatter Benediction Go into the world showing a gentle attitude toward everyone. Be joyful and thankful! Fill your mind with those things that are good and deserve praise: things true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and honourable. And may God , Father Son and Holy Spirit, bless you and all whom you love this day and even forevermore. Amen
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