Welcome & Intimations
Welcome to our service from Craigmillar Park and Reid Memorial Churches. As our journey towards Easter continues, our thoughts turn to the question of what we really want in life.
Call to Worship (from Psalm 63)
O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands and call on your name.
HYMN 18(2) The earth belongs to God alone (Tune: Abbey)
Prayer c/w Lord’s Prayer
God, we look for you,
only because of the promise that we will find.
God, we call upon You,
only because of the promise that we will be heard.
We meet, united wherever we may be
so that we may meet with You
God of love which is richer than life,
we look only because we were first sought out.
God, we tell You we are here
only because You first came to us.
God, help us, by Your Spirit, to seek you more,
even as we have been fully found.
God, everlasting, ever-gracious, ever-seeking and ever-calling,
Yours is the offer of life.
You call the universe into being and,
through the miracle of creation,
we find ourselves here, praising You.
God, we are in wonder at the grandeur of Creation.
God, we stand amazed at the miracle of incarnation.
In Jesus, the Christ,
You chose to be born as one of us.
You chose to live among us,
showing Your grace and telling Your love.
You allowed Yourself to be excluded from us,
shunned and hated, dying among us,
yet still showing grace and declaring love,
God, now you meet us risen,
inviting us to listen that we may live.
God of endless goodness, we praise You.
Neither our thoughts nor our ways are Yours, O God.
Hearing Your call on our lives, we fall short:
invited to come to You,
we ignore Your presence.
Encouraged to praise You,
we think we find better things to do.
Rather than trust in Your help,
we despair when facing violence, deceit and hate
and find ourselves powerless to respond well.
Rather than tend what may yet give life
we root out, rip up and discard
and in our consuming we find little peace.
Warned to take care in our living, we do our own thing,
seeking our own satisfaction, we trample on promises made earlier.
Tickled by trinkets, we hoard rather than give.
Our spirits thirst and faint –
pardon us as we return to You;
have mercy as we turn from thoughts and ways,
that are unworthy of You,
and lead us into life everlasting,
through Christ our Lord.
Let us pray together as Jesus taught his disciples to pray
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:
Isaiah 55: 1-9
Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labour for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.
Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Luke 13:1-9
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’
Then he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”’
HYMN 158 God moves in a mysterious way
Reflection:
“So tell me what you want, what you really, really want?” So opens what I think, lyrically speaking, to be one of the worst pop songs of all time. At face value it claims to be about relationships and acceptance. A closer look at the lyrics, though, give rise to an interpretation that is somewhat different from what may originally have been intended. That may simply be due to the vagaries of the English language, or it may be that I just don’t like it. Still, the song does ask an important question: what is it that we really want? What do we want from life? Friends? A nice house? Good health? Wealth? Power? Influence? These are all common enough answers and seem quite reasonable. But what about the bigger questions? What about love, peace, and the answer to that most difficult of questions, ‘why’?
Our reading from Isaiah, one of those set for this Sunday, declares that what we have been seeking is not really what we need. It is a bold claim. It is an assertion that we all have been going about things in the wrong manner, that we have been looking for the wrong things. It demands that we ask if we have got the point or meaning of life wrong. The prophet, though, has a point. How often do we seek comfort or meaning in that which is merely passing? How often do we put emphasis and give import to that which is transitory? How often do we seek answers to those questions that have no answers? We could spend our life attempting to answer even those questions. Isaiah would tell us that this was, itself, folly. Rather than allow us to waste our own time and effort seeking out these things, Isaiah points us towards another way. He shows us what we truly need, and what we should really want.
The prophet points us toward God as the answer to both our questions and our quest. It is God who is shown as providing what we need. That includes those things that are beyond our natural power to obtain. We are pointed away from that which is temporary and towards those things that are permanent. Isaiah, like the whole of the scriptures, would have us believe that it is only God who is permanent. In other words, he points us toward God as the source of all that we need.
Even when faced with the answer to the questions of ‘what’, we continue to often ask ‘why’? Yet this is the question we are rarely able to answer. In our Gospel reading reference is made to two disasters. One of these, the tower at Siloam, sounds like an accident; the other, the mingling of blood, sounds like a slaughter of locals by the Roman garrison. Popular thought of the time would seek to apportion these violent ends to being the result of sin. That is, as a result of the sin of those who had been killed. Jesus, though, challenges this. In effect he tells those around him that there is no way to know what reason, if any, existed as to why of those people died. He is almost telling his audience, and us, that the question is futile as so often it is.
Instead of futile reasoning Jesus points to a better way and tells a parable to illustrate this. The story of the fig tree is told to encourage us to see God as merciful, forever allowing more time for his people to ‘bear fruit’. In other words, God is not so mean as to arrange the violent death of people as a sign of displeasure. It seems, from this, that God allows for random acts of chance. At the same time the parable points us back towards God. Instead of a gardener tending to a fruit tree it is the Lord tending to us. Surely such a God as this should be the focus of our life and attention, just as Isaiah would encourage us.
When the song asks us to tell what we really, really, want perhaps we should review our usual answers, and turn to one that is provided by Scripture. As God is shown as the one who is permanent, as the one who is merciful, as the one who tends to us, should He not be the focus of our desires? As Isaiah may perhaps have answered the song’s question, paraphrasing the Torah, what we really want should be, ‘to love the Lord, our God, with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength’!
Amen.
HYMN 65 Jubilate everybody
Prayers:
Let us pray:
In a world of uncertainty we pray for those who deal with risk –
for aid agencies and their staff
working in the dangerous places of the world;
for those in our emergency services,
who routinely face danger as they seek to protect us;
for those concerned with issues of health and safety,
anticipating and addressing issues to protect from harm.
We pray for those working in healthcare settings,
treating and caring while the risk of infection remains.
We pray for those directing national life,
may they add integrity to insight in their decision making.
In a world of forced migration,
persecution and distress we pray for those who suffer –
over forty million people who are in immediate danger of starvation,
through conflict, Covid-19 and climate change.
Lord Jesus, may the fruit of faith
lead to greater sharing of the harvest of the Earth.
Where more than six in ten of the total human population
has received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine,
but only one in ten of those in poorest countries,
where infection results in unemployment, missed schooling,
poverty, risk of abuse and untreatable illness –
Lord Jesus, may the fruit of faith
bring the benefit of scientific progress to all.
We pray for a world, where almost countless millions
suffer from poverty, conflict, pandemic and drought,
and are unable to flee and find little support where they are.
While we pray for the peoples of Ukraine and Russia,
do not let us forget the peoples of Afghanistan and Yemen.
Lord Jesus, may the fruit of faith
bring food, warmth, shelter and work.
We pray for Your Church in Your world;
may Your people be enthused to proclaim the Good News of the kingdom;
may new believers be welcomed, taught, baptised and nurtured;
may loving service be our ready response to human need;
may Your people work to transform unjust structures of society,
to challenge violence of every kind, to pursue peace and reconciliation;
may we, as Your children, strive to safeguard the integrity of creation,
and sustain and renew the life of the earth which You have entrusted to us.
These things we pray in the name of Jesus, the Christ,
who gave His life to redeem all creation.
Amen.
HYMN 270 Put all your trust in God
Benediction:
Let us go from here as the people of God,
seeking to love Him,
with all that we are.
As we go, may the blessing of God,
Father, Son, and Spirit Holy,
be with us all,
evermore.
Sung 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 based upon The Church of Scotland, Weekly Worship, for 20th March 2022.
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