Welcome to our joint service for this, the first Sunday of August. Today we will be reflecting on the goodness of God towards us all.

Call to Worship (from Psalm 51: 15-17)
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
For you have no delight in sacrifice;
if I were to give a burnt-offering, you would not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

HYMN 110 Glory be to God the Father

Prayer

O God You know each of us well, love us deeply
and are able to sustain us in an enormous variety of ways.
We are humbled by our awareness of Your profound concern
and involvement in our petty concerns and worries,
and your keen interest in our welfare.
Given so many gifts in our daily lives to enrich us
and opportunities for love and companionship,
we come anticipating a deeper appreciation of
and wider perspective of Your grace and power.

We know Your mercy for the penitent, O loving God.
Let us experience it once again
as we place the record of our past week before You.

We recall our lack of respect and care for others
and those set in authority over us.

We acknowledged our abuse and neglect of our particular talents and gifts.

We have lived as if the world and its wonders were under our control,
and needed no reference to You.

We have failed to measure up to the standard expected of Your disciples,
and our example has not influenced the world for good.

In certain ways we have lived as if this earth and life upon it
was the limit of our horizons
and have disregarded Your encouragement to strive forward
and live as mature human beings made in Your likeness.

Hear us, O God, as in silence we now confess our individual sin before You.

Listen to the word of promise :

If we confess our sin,
God is faithful and just and will forgive our sin,
so, I declare unto You, our sin is forgiven.

Thanks be to God.

Generous provider of every good gift,
prod us awake to the opportunities and invitations You lay before us.

Give us magnanimity in defeat and denial,
so that we may trust You rather than our own wisdom and wit.

Give to those who lead,
the loyalty and support they deserve,
and to those who follow,
willing spirits and a sense of purpose of their part in Your plan for this world,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Lord’s Prayer:
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.

Scriptures

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’

Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not.


Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, “Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.”’ And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked towards the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. The Lord spoke to Moses and said, ‘I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.”’

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.’

John 6:24-35
So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.’ Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’ So they said to him, ‘What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’

Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

HYMN 511 Thy hand, O. God has guided

Reflection

Is your God too small? In his book, ‘Your God is too small’, the late JB Phillips posed this question in the form of an accusation. Even at its time of writing, the 1960s, many could see that the people of faith had allowed their view of God to diminish. Instead of being the Creator, Saviour, and Sustainer of all that is, the Almighty had been reduced to being some form of fairy godmother like figure. In the last fifty years that hasn’t changed! So often society and the church no longer see God as He truly is, and this leads to us having an increasingly distorted understanding and vision of Him. In his conversation with the crowd in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus tackles two of these distortions of what faith in God should be.

What do we say or do when we pray? Is it a time of praise of God and reflection upon His grace? Is it a time to wait and seek to discern His call upon our life? Is it a time to be silent and be still? Or is our prayer life one that often descends into a list of requests? There are many whose life of prayer is like a shopping list of requests. This is the first distortion that Jesus addresses. It is to see God merely as the supplier of material needs. Yet this misses out on the truth of God as the giver of eternal life. We might feel safe from the temptation to take the Lord’s Prayer too literally, and regard Jesus merely as a provider of our daily bread. But what about the tendency for our prayer to lapse into lists of similarly mundane requests?

What happens when we feel our prayers are not answered? What happens when we feel that God is not hearing us, nor supplying our wants to order? How do we respond when God is not providing miracles upon demand? So often, when this happens, we are led to think that God doesn’t listen or, worse, that He doesn’t care. If people can feel this way over, perhaps, something small or trivial then imagine the response if the desired miracle is something major. Yet, this is to see God as the supplier of miracles to order. This is the second distortion dealt with by Jesus. The crowd demand a sign to enable them to believe. Yet they have already seen miracles and have not believed. ⁴⁶ Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. ⁴⁷ When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. ⁴⁸ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ ⁴⁹ The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ ⁵⁰ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way.  (John 4: 46-50). It seemed that these miracles were not enough. Still more ‘proofs’ will not help. Already the crowds had seen signs and miracles, yet they were not convinced

How, then, do we avoid or overcome these potential distortions to our faith? In contrast to the distortions countered by Jesus, true faith is not merely driven by response to outward signs. These signs can be important, but as things that encourage faith rather than be the basis for it. Rather, true faith is commitment to the person of Jesus. It is commitment to a person and a way of life. It is not about wish fulfilment. In our Gospel story the crowd still fail to see that the gift of God in Jesus is greater than any material gift could be. And it is this gift that brings a far greater miracle than they, or we, could imagine – the salvation of the world. Amen.

Prayers for the World:

Great and Loving God
We know we are tenants of this good earth,
entrusted through Your grace and love with its abundance and harvests.

Strengthen our resolve to be worthy of Your covenant with us,
and make us more willing to hear, to obey,
and to act in protection of the fruit of Your kingdom of love.

Fill the leaders of our nation, and all nations,
with a healthy respect for the dignity of human life,
the worth of the individual
and the need to consider the everyday issues
as well as the wider issues in politics and society.

Sustain those with special talents –
of laughter, healing, teaching, leadership, parenting,
production of food and necessities of life –
and encourage them to see You as the source of all their gifts.

Accept we pray, Your children with their particular hopes and promise;
inspire them to continue in their faithful way to work for the growth of love
and cooperation, mutual dependence and trust.

Startle the wavering and the tempted;
the unsure and the procrastinating
with a sharp sense of Your interest
and Your demands of care upon them.

Refresh the weary and the war-torn,
the oppressed and the suffering
with the sense of Your unlimited and unexpected mercies.

Motivate the hearts of compassionate men and women
to the cries of the hungry and the plight of the undernourished.

Shake the complacent out of their stupor of self-satisfaction,
and grab their attention and stimulate them to action
on behalf of those with no ‘clout’, or no political weight,
and no means of being heard for themselves.

Give patience to those who labour to alter the ideas of society
and challenge the patterns of the growing gap between rich and poor.

Direct and embolden those who grapple with the problems of insufficient shelter
and inadequate clothing,
the lack of ample resources in education,
and abuse of power, oppression and injustice.

Re-ignite the passion of those who have slumped into idle lethargy
and lukewarm apathy.

Give them a boldness to correct, eradicate and transform
the wrongs which reject and isolate those
who do not fit neatly within the norms of society.

Remind the Church to tread carefully in its eagerness to be popular,
or in hastily espousing doctrines that may be popular with the world.
Challenge us when we are silent on controversial issues,
when our silence condones the destruction and rejection of goodness, truth and life.

Stir up within the councils of the Church
a passion for the Gospel and the building of God’s kingdom.
Rid them of any ecclesiastical ghetto mentality
which would threaten to overwhelm the proclamation of Your love.

Guide them in the deep waters of social and political action
so that they hold tight to spiritual truth,
and reject any seemingly expedient solutions
which are alien to the teaching of Jesus,
in whose name we pray. Amen.

HYMN 715 Behold the mountain of the Lord

Benediction

Go out in the world
reflect God’s love on others,
be the love God is,
and let the light shine.

And as you go,
may the blessing of God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
go with you,
now and always.
Amen.

Acknowledgements:
Bible Quotations taken from: New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

English translations of The Lord’s Prayer, © 1998, English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC), and used by permission. www.englishtexts.org

Prayers by the Rev. Nigel Robb. Taken from the Church of Scotland, Weekly Worship, for 1^st August 2021.