Sunday 13th June 2021

Welcome to our worship today, Sunday 13th June 2021. If I were to give our service of worship a title it would be “Appearance isn’t everything”. We consider David, a man of small stature, who slayed Goliath and became a great king, and the tiny mustard seed that splits open and grows into a huge tree.

Call to Worship (Psalm 20: 6,7)

Now I know that the Lord will help his anointed;
he will answer him from his holy heaven
with mighty victories by his right hand.
Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses,
but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God.

Hymn 465 Be thou my Vision.

Prayer of Approach

Living God, in our desire for the meaning and purpose in life,
You remind us that You are available to us in our hour of need.
As we reach out to you in our times of searching,
You listen and answer beyond our imaginings.
When we become judgemental and focus on outward appearance,
Call us back to Your holy place, to meet with You, and to rest in Your presence.

Forgive us for putting our trust in the things of the world.
When we measure success in human attributes and material possessions,
let us put our trust in Your ways.
When the world builds success on power and control,
let us believe in Your ways of building a kingdom of righteousness and love.
When we fall short of all You expect of us,
let us hold to Your promise that You will pick us up again,
and set our feet on Your path once more.

Help us to look beyond outward appearance,
Help us to turn from our judgemental ways,
And to seeing each other as you see us.
Turn us from human failure to the forgiveness of God,
from human weakness to the strength of God,
from human focus to the purpose of God our Lord.
We praise Your name,
and rejoice in the love and strength,
the purpose and the success, the triumphs and growth that come,
not from our hands, but from Yours alone.
We lift our heads and look ahead with courage.
We rise with confidence to serve you,
Let us move forward in our commitment to you.
For You are our answer in our time of need.
And hear us as together we share the words that Jesus taught us,

Our Father, who 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, 
and the power, and the glory, 
for ever and ever. Amen.

Scriptures

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.

Samuel Anoints David
The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.’ Samuel said, ‘How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.’ And the Lord said, ‘Take a heifer with you, and say, “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.” Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.’ Samuel did what the Lord commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, ‘Do you come peaceably?’ He said, ‘Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.’ And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.’ But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’ Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. He said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, ‘The Lord has not chosen any of these.’ Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are all your sons here?’ And he said, ‘There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.’ And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.’ He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.’ Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

Mark 4:26-34

The Parable of the Growing Seed
He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’

The Parable of the Mustard Seed
He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’

The Use of Parables
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Hymn 97 O God, you search me, and you know me.

Reflection

I can’t reach the top shelves in the supermarket but I’m grateful for the smile and kind words when I ask a tall person for help. We are all unique in our physical attributes, sometimes these will contribute to our daily lives but more often it is the unseen characteristics that make us the valued and valuable person.

In the reading from 1 Samuel today, we hear the story that Saul, King of Israel has disobeyed God by offering an unlawful sacrifice. Saul has proven himself to be unworthy, so Samuel is sent to remove him from his kingship and to anoint another king. Samuel is the Lord’s prophet—the one through whom the Lord carries out His agenda—and the Lord has work for Samuel to do. The overriding concern here is not Saul’s future, but that of Israel. We are introduced to Jesse, the Bethlehemite. This is the first mention of Jesse in the Bible, indicative of the fact that the Lord has not chosen the son of a famous man to be king but rather the son of an unknown man.

Samuel is sent to Bethlehem to find the new king among Jesse’s sons but has concerns for his safety if Saul finds out. Very often when the Lord asks us to do something risky, we are more likely to see the risk rather than the Lord’s protection. That is what happens here. God offers protection by sending Samuel under the pretext that he is going merely to make the sacrifice of a heifer.

The elders, Jesse and Jesse’s sons are invited to witness the sacrifice, although one of the sons is missing. Traditionally, the oldest son, in this case, Eliab, would be the anointed one. The Lord tells Samuel not to look on Eliab’s appearance or his height. People tend to see superficially. We put too much stock in physical appearances and are easily deceived by people who are not of good character. But there is nothing superficial in the way that the Lord sees us. The Lord sees our hearts—knows our intimate secrets—assesses accurately our character and faith.

Jesse introduces all his sons to Samuel, Abinadab the second, and Shimea the third, Nethanel the fourth, Raddai the fifth, Ozem the sixth, but none are chosen by God.

Then, it comes to light that there is another son, David, who is considered in his father’s mind to be such an unlikely candidate for king, that he did not bring him in from the field where he was tending the sheep. David is the youngest and smallest of the sons. Ironically, we are told that David is of ruddy complexion and has a handsome face. It must have been a significant moment for David’s brothers to see the revered prophet anoint their youngest brother. I wonder what their thoughts were. They could not fully appreciate the implications of this choice, because David would become a great king like nobody before or since in the history of Israel. The anointing leads to the spirit of the Lord empowering David. Later, in Chapter 17, we are told of the dramatic effects of that power, when little David—too small to wear a warrior’s armour—slays the giant, Goliath.

In the parable of the mustard seed, all of Jesus’ hearers would know that a grain of mustard seed stood – proverbially – for the smallest possible thing, but the seed bursts open, flourishes and grows into something akin to a tree. It could be taller than a man on a horse. Birds would roost in its branches. The parables tell us to value people for who they are, not what they possess or what they look like. In fact, the parables teach us to value what is insignificant, small, and forgotten, and we should not be surprised when the tiniest mustard seed grows into the largest of trees.

It is our children, our teenagers, our adults, our troubled, our aged, our infirm, our minorities and marginalised, our powerless, the financially strapped, our handicapped, who are people important to God.
When the Emperor Valerian was persecuting the Church, he demanded that it hand over its treasures. St Lawrence, the Deacon, had given away the church’s wealth to the poor. So, he brought the poor people of Rome, its old people, the lame and sick and widowed to the emperor. These, he said, were the treasures of the Church.

We live in a world that mostly believes what you see is what you get. We trust our eyes to reveal what is real and what is true. We tend to see what we want to see, what we have been taught or told to see, and what we expect to see. The parables teach us not just what to see but how to see.

Too often human-seeing is outwardly focused and appearance based. God-seeing, however, is inwardly focused and heart based. This does not mean that we should rejection outward and visible appearances. For each outward appearance, there is a deeper inner reality. Do not just look at what you see. Really look at what is there. Look again if you need to and then look more deeply.

We can change how we see. Behind every seed is the faithfulness, the hope, the promise, and the power of God to change lives. From even the tiniest seed planted, the Kingdom of God can grow so that the person who trusts in God is a source of nourishment and caring for others.
Amen

Prayer of Intercession

Loving God,

Remind us, now, that prayers, small and feeble though we may believe them to be, will always be enough, if they are offered in devotion
and a willingness to be close to You.
Remind us that You will unscramble our stumbled words,
our wayward thoughts, our random ideas, our scattered images,
and see in them growth and purpose.

We pray, now, for those closest to us –
those around us in the community of faith, in spirit and in fellowship, those we see face to face, those whose images appear on our screens, and those who are fixed in our mind’s eye.
For family and friends, for church and community,
for all who matter to us in the bonds of love, we pray today.

We pray for those who have influenced our lives and our faith,
who point us to the ways of Your Kingdom.
We pray for the teachers, on-line or in class,
for their diligence and commitment and
for all who are heroes and role models
that they might all be strengthened in the ways of righteousness.

We pray for people who serve in the community and the nation,
who walk in the corridors of responsibility and sit in the chambers of decision-making;
for those who stand tall for what is right;
for those who give of themselves for the benefit of others.

We pray for all who are imprisoned by ill health whether physically or emotionally. We pray for those who have recently gained a place at your heavenly table and for those who mourn the loss of these loved ones.

Help us to plant seeds, as small as a mustard seeds into the hearts of the unchurched, that they will develop into a green shoots, eventually flourishing and blossoming.
Strengthen us in our growth;
take us and use us for your purposes;
let us see past outward appearance into the hearts full of love and joy.  
For we are Yours, and Yours alone.
In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Hymn 606 Lord you sometimes speak in wonders.

Closing prayer

God is good.
God’s purposes are just.
God’s way is right.
God’s road is ours to follow.
Christ’s truth is our guide.

So, go now, in the goodness of God,
to walk God’s Way,
to follow God’s Truth,
and to be embraced by God’s love
now and always.
Amen.

Acknowledgement: Prayers based on Church of Scotland Weekly Worship for 13th June 2021.

Sunday 6th June 2021

Welcome to this online service of worship for Craigmillar Park and Reid Memorial churches. After the high emotion of Easter, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, we return to our reading of Mark’s Gospel. Today we give thanks to God for all our blessings and consider what it means to be ‘family’.

Call to Worship

We come before you, God,
to worship,
to praise,
to love.

We come before you, God,
to repent,
to forgive,
to love.

We come before you, God,
to grieve,
to rejoice,
to love.

We come before you, God,
in love.

Amen

Hymn 180: Give thanks with a grateful heart

Prayer

You are holy, Lord, the only God,
and your deeds are wonderful.

You are strong, you are great.
You are the Most High,
You are almighty.
You, Holy Father, are
King of heaven and earth.

You are Three and One,
Lord God, all good.
Lord God, living and true.

You are love, you are wisdom, you are justice
You are humility, you are endurance,
You are rest, you are peace.
You are joy and gladness.

You are beauty, you are gentleness.
You are our guardian and our defender.
You are courage.

You are our hope.
You are our faith,
Our great consolation,
Our eternal life.

Great and wonderful Lord,
we give you thanks.

Rejoicing in the Holy Spirit, we pray as our Saviour taught us:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever.

Amen

Scripture readings

Psalm 138

I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart;
before the ‘gods’ I will sing your praise.
I will bow down towards your holy temple
and will praise your name
for your unfailing love and your faithfulness,
for you have so exalted your solemn decree
that it surpasses your fame.
When I called, you answered me;
you greatly emboldened me.

May all the kings of the earth praise you, Lord,
when they hear what you have decreed.
May they sing of the ways of the Lord,
for the glory of the Lord is great.
Though the Lord is exalted, he looks kindly on the lowly;
though lofty, he sees them from afar.
Though I walk in the midst of trouble,
you preserve my life.

You stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes;
with your right hand you save me. The Lord will vindicate me;
your love, Lord, endures for ever –
do not abandon the works of your hands.


Mark 3: 20-35

 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’

And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.’
So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: ‘How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.’

He said this because they were saying, ‘He has an impure spirit.’
Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting round him, and they told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.’

‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he asked.
Then he looked at those seated in a circle round him and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.’
Amen

HYMN 624 In Christ there is no east or west

Reflection

Grant, O Lord, that in these words, we may behold the living Word, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Have you ever been involved in a family dispute? I suspect we all have, to some extent. Perhaps not a serious breach, if we’re lucky, but there can hardly be a family in the land which has not seen quarrels, misunderstandings, jealousy or grudges. Even the Royal Family, it appears, from recent news stories. If you’ve been unlucky there may have been a temporary estrangement or even a complete breakdown in family relationships – not always a bad thing if your family experience has been bad. It is undeniably hard to live and work together with our fellow human beings, even those closest to us. Our lives can sometimes seem to be full of divisions, at home or at work; and that’s before we even start to look at the differences of opinion in our nation and in the world. Some people seem to enjoy such discord – we sometimes find ourselves wondering if our family or our neighbours have indeed taken leave of their senses.

The story Mark tells here still seems strange to us though. Mark talks of Jesus’ family thinking that he, their beloved son and brother, had taken leave of his senses, setting out to restrain him and then finding themselves apparently disowned by him.

What is going on? Do you think that the family had good reasons for thinking that Jesus had taken leave of his senses? Remember that this episode comes at the start of his ministry. As far as we know, a precocious childhood episode in the temple notwithstanding, Jesus had led a quiet life in a quiet corner of Israel, presumably working in the family carpentry business and, as the oldest child, looking after his mother and siblings, a very real family responsibility in those pre-welfare state times. But now he had given up the family business and become a wandering preacher, with no place regularly to lay his head and presumably no income. To make matters worse, he was consorting with a rather unusual bunch of people – strangers, fishermen, tax collectors. Crowds of people were flocking around him. He was attracting enough attention that important people had travelled all the way from the capital to, what? Accuse him, trap him, even arrest him, perhaps? He had rejected society’s expectations, thrown away his security and was risking even his personal safety. No wonder that the family decided to try to ‘restrain him’. I think I might have done the same thing. What would you have done?

And what was Jesus’ reaction to his family’s stance? He asks who his mother and brothers are. Have you ever questioned your relationship to your nearest and dearest? My children, at least in their teenage years, occasionally wondered out loud if they really were related to their parents as we seemed to have quite different interests and priorities from their own. Luckily, that stage passed. But Mary, his mother, and his brothers, must have been infuriated by these comments of Jesus. He pointed to the people sitting around him and claimed them to be his nearest relatives.

What did he mean? Was he being as cruel to Mary and his family as it seems? Clearly not, since there is no record of a long-term break with his family; we know that Mary stood at the foot of his cross and that he arranged for the beloved disciple to take care of her. They must have realised that this message was not aimed at them so much as at his listeners. Maybe that means the message is also for us?

Jesus was redefining what family means. He was describing ‘true kinship’ as William Barclay says in his commentary on this passage. True kinship lies in common experiences and common interests. The disciples were all from different backgrounds and perhaps had very different interests and experiences. But they shared a deep interest in what was to become known as Christianity and they had decided, individually and as a group, to devote their lives to Jesus. They also had a common goal, to win people to faith in Jesus Christ. Those shared interests and goals should be what also define us as the people of God in this area. Do they?

Jesus was calling his followers and his family, was calling us, to a new way of being human. He invites us to think about what it means to recognise, to know and to do God’s will. He was not abandoning his own family or asking us to abandon ours but he did set out to shake our deep-seated beliefs, our cultural traditions. If this passage disturbs you and makes you think, that’s because Jesus meant it to. He was making it clear that Christians should let go of anything that gets in the way of complete devotion to God and should prepare to take risks, to be uncomfortable, to be accused, perhaps, of having taken leave of their senses. The prize for that is the fellowship we find in God’s family, the greater love that we are urged to show for our neighbours, the joy of rebalanced personal relationships with our own family and friends and, of course, the promise of eternal life.

In Christ shall true hearts everywhere
their high communion find,
his service is the golden cord
close-binding human kind.

Come, brothers, sisters of the faith,
whate’er your race may be:
whoever does my Father’s will
is surely kin to me.

Amen

Prayer

Lord, we approach you in prayer in thanksgiving for your unfailing love and your faithfulness. We thank you for the gift of your Son and for the promise that we are children of God, sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ and soulmates of the Holy Spirit. We commit anew today to doing our best to discern your will and to fulfil it.

We commend to your care all those who need your help.

You had to leave your home and family to fulfil your ministry and you travelled and died far from home. We bring before you now all those who have been driven from their homes through war, famine, natural disasters or fear. Especially we remember those in Palestine, the Rohingya from Myanmar and the Uighurs in China. Shelter the refugee in your arms.

We remember also economic migrants to our own country, from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and other places – help us to make them welcome in Scotland, in your name, extending the hand of Christian fellowship to those who need our understanding and sympathy.

You were mocked, humiliated and degraded, condemned to a shameful death on a rubbish heap. Extend your pity then to those victims of human trafficking, condemned, even in this beautiful city of ours, to slavery and degradation. Forgive us for permitting this to happen, show us how to end the evil in our midst and be with those unfortunates in their torment.

Lord Jesus, you lived on earth as one of us and you understand the challenges we face in life, and the fears and frailties that make us vulnerable. We ask also in our intercessions for those known to us who need your help:

We remember the key workers who have played such a heroic role in keeping us safe in the last year. Health and social care workers; food growers, suppliers and shop workers: water and energy suppliers; police, firefighters and other emergency responders; local authority workers, faithfully collecting our rubbish week by week and keeping our roads safe; teachers and all in education, throwing themselves into learning new skills in order to safeguard the future of our children and young people; politicians and leaders who have worked harder than ever to master a new brief and to make the right decisions. Be with them all as they cope with the stresses of an extraordinary year and help them to feel our love and our support.

We remember the sick and those who are unable to share our fellowship this morning. We remember the lonely, those who have no close family or friends and who do not know that you love them, and that we do too. We remember those who are dear to us, who need our prayers – our own families, friends with whom we have lost touch, people struggling with financial, work or relationship problems. Grant that they too may experience the comforting touch of your love.

In silence now, we name in our hearts the individuals who matter to us and who need to experience the reality of your love today.

(silence)

May all those we have named find in Your family, the family of faith, acceptance, support and courage to face another day.

We ask these things in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ

Amen

Hymn 685: For everyone born, a place at the table

Sending

Jesus came down that we might have love.

Jesus came down that we might have peace.

Jesus came down that we might have joy.

Let us go forward with hearts comforted by the promise of our faithful God.

Let us live knowing that we are beloved members of God’s family
and that love and peace and joy will be ours.

Amen

This service was prepared by Pauline Weibye, Session Clerk at Craigmillar Park

Acknowledgements:
Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Prayer of thanksgiving is based on a prayer of St Francis of Assisi
Reflection based on William Barclay’s Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Mark (Edinburgh, 1997)