Dear All,
Something a little different this morning, a ‘Miniature Morning Prayer’ which I put together for a couple of folk who were struggling to find time for quiet worship and needed something they could use anytime and anywhere. Hoping that you can do the same. After this are the readings for Lent 3 and some thoughts on them.
Hoping to be back actually worshipping together in the not too distant future.
With love, every blessing
and prayers as always
Mary Tucker
A Miniature Morning Prayer
This is the day that the Lord has made,
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Let’s sing together,
O God our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
be Thou our guard while troubles last
and our eternal home.
Together we confess our sins and are forgiven
Have mercy on us and redeem us, O Lord
for our merits are your mercies
and in your judgement is our salvation
Happy the one whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered,
. . . You surround me with songs of deliverance.
Thank you.
Amen.
Let us pray in the words of St Benedict,
Gracious and Holy Father,
give us wisdom to perceive you,
diligence to seek you,
patience to wait for you,
eyes to behold you,
a heart to meditate on you
and a life to proclaim you,
through the power of the Spirit
of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
Psalm 121
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 He who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time on and forevermore.
A reassuring poem based on Psalm 121
I lift up mine eyes to the quiet hills,
And my heart to the Father’s Throne;
In all my ways, to the end of days,
The Lord will preserve his own.
And a few words from St Anselm
Jesus, like a mother you gather your people to you, you are gentle with us as a mother with her children. Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness, through your sweet goodness, through your gentleness we find comfort in fear. Your warmth gives life to the dead, your touch makes sinners righteous. Lord Jesus in your mercy heal us, in your love and tenderness remake us, in your compassion bring grace and forgiveness and for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.
Final words and a blessing
The Lord bless us and keep us,
the Lord make his face to shine upon us and be gracious to us,
the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon us and give us peace
And the blessing of God Almighty,
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
be with us this day,
with those we love and those we pray for.
Amen
Let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord,
in the name of Christ
Amen
Readings for the Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 20:1-17
Then God spoke all these words:
2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3 you shall have no other gods beforeme.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation[b] of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
8 Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labour and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.
12 Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
13 You shall not murder.
14 You shall not commit adultery.
15 You shall not steal.
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
17 You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Thoughts on the Readings
My advice to student teachers as they approach the classroom for the first time is don’t try and teach any reading, any writing or any ‘rithmatic until you’ve got the rules set.
Unless the children know what the expectations are, unless they’ve signed up to them, agreed to them, in fact if possible helped to draft them out, there’s no point in starting to try and teach them anything.
What children need, and what children in the end discover they like though they may not realise it at the time, is to know just where the boundaries are. Thus far and no further. This is OK, this is not. And then they need to know that it will be stuck to, stuck to consistently for everyone by everyone. Once you’ve got that then you can move on to 2 + 2 makes 4 and ‘a’ is for apple or, if you’re more ambitious, e = mc squared!
And if we’re honest this doesn’t just apply to children. We certainly haven’t been short of rules and regulations this last 12 months but, even in this ‘unprecedented’ year, with rules far stricter than any that have been in place since the second world war and some stricter than that, if we’re honest, despite everything and however uncomfortable and restrictive they’ve been, I think we have been glad that the rules have been made and we have (I hope) adhered to them.
So we find God in our Old Testament lesson today doing just the same sort of thing. Before moving on to greater things with his fledgling nation the Israelites, they sit down together and map out the boundaries.
Or rather, Moses goes up the mountain, gets the list of rules, brings them down and everybody nods in agreement. The covenant is set. This is how we’ll deal together. You do this and I’ll be able to lead you and love you, guide you and bring you to greatness and fulfilment, God tells them. And the Israelites nod sagely in agreement and all seems well.
And these rules are still here for us and though a lot is written in the New Testament about things that take us beyond this law, nowhere does it say that this list is to be abandoned. I love the King James Bible of Jesus’ words on the subject, “Not one jot or tittle shall be changed!”
So the Ten Commandments still stand and we too nod sagely in agreement and our covenant with God stands firm. Or does it?
Are our nods of assent motivated by a feeling that really we nowadays in this civilised world have very little to worry about? But perhaps we should examine this list of do’s and don’ts with particular reference to the ‘jots and tittles’, the implications for us here and now.
Lets take them in reverse. Are we quite sure they don’t apply to us?
Coveting. Well, though I live opposite a farm there are no oxen or donkeys and I enjoy looking at but don’t particularly wish I own the cattle and other livestock. However the old farmhouse – well that’s lovely! Why can’t I have a home like that?
And when we come to coveting our neighbour’s wife or husband come to that . . . (which links of course with commandment number 7 – the adultery one) we are sadly in the real world a world from which none of us are immune. Whether the adultery is in the heart or in reality this is the stuff of daily life I’m afraid and it is dangerous to take anything for granted.
Let’s move on. Lying. We do it, I’m sorry but we do. They just slip out, “It’s only a slight spin on the truth, I’m just not telling everything, it’s a white lie and it’s for the other person’s good” we protest to ourselves. We do it even though we are told quite specifically not to and we need to give this serious thought.
And stealing? We may not have the lead off the church roof but the pack of paper from work? The undeclared photocopying or printing on the office equipment? Perhaps we haven’t but have we been tempted?
Murder. Surely we’re safe in this one. Except . . . which of us is not capable if the situation arose? I don’t know. We may think we wouldn’t, couldn’t but are there circumstances . . .?
And what about the times we perhaps get away with it, driving above the speed or drink drive limit or just not caring enough to make the effort to support the charities that save lives or to buy the goods that sustain rather than destroy communities.
Maybe I push it too far but is withholding the stuff of life, fair sharing of food, clean water the equivalent of murder? It would be if it was a person in our direct care. Is it different just because these people are far away? And at the moment of course the business of breaking COVID restrictions! It all needs to be considered before we settle too comfortably into our self righteousness.
Next, keeping Sunday special. I’m not pretending this is easy especially at the moment when we can’t be in church, and I’m not pretending it doesn’t apply to me just as much as to you but how much more then do we need to make the effort. I hide my ‘to do’ list and try to take the rest God is offering – it’s different for each of us but somehow we all need to be even stricter with ourselves in a time when it’s often hard to remember what day it is as the sameness of lock-down imprisons us.
And swearing, taking the Lord’s name in vain, if we’re honest do we? Ever? And if we do what message does it give to the world about our commitment? Our covenant with our loving God?
Nearly there now. We’re up at Commandment number two and I doubt that many of us have constructed golden calf in the garden as a Corona Virus project. Neither have we fallen down regularly before some man made shrine we protest, except that I worship regularly at the alter of my bank balance, and I give high priority to the watching of my favourite TV show or listening to the cricket (the biggest idol of all for me). There are innumerable things which, if I am honest, I regularly put, or am tempted to put, before my commitment to God so that I hardly dare come to Commandment number one – ‘You shall have no other God than me’ – and as Jesus put it so succinctly, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength.”
If like me you are now feeling pretty depressed take heart for Paul in our New Testament reading, brings us the good news. God does not abandon us. True, not one jot of tittle of the law departs but the wisdom which it seems to represent is overtaken by the foolishness of love. By the apparently foolishness notion that an all-powerful God, looking down on those who like us have repeatedly failed to keep within the boundaries negotiated, the rules agreed, the covenant set; that this all powerful God would come himself and that his death and resurrection would bring us wisdom wiser than any we could aspire to, a strength beyond our strength to love us despite our inability to put him first; that he would support us as we strive to become more and more worthy of the foolish, all encompassing, forgiving love of the same God who set out the boundaries for Moses on Mount Sinai all those millennia ago.