God's Love 31/10/2021

Order of service

Welcome

Let us write God’s word onto our hearts

as we share in worship together.

Let us listen to Scripture with the child Jesus

and like him grow strong in wisdom.

HYMN

Prayers

God of love,

you call us to come before with love in our hearts.

We all have our own ideas and experiences of what love is.

From the human to the divine.

From the smallest flicker to the greatest flame.

We offer ourselves to you now, seeking to learn more

about the depth and breadth of your amazing love.

We need to know how to put that love into action,

share that great warmth with our neighbour,

every day of our lives.

Still, us before you now and enable us to receive.

Amen.

We can read in Mark 12.30-31. We can reflect as we pray

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Lord God, we confess that we struggle to love others.

Sometimes we don’t even recognise who our neighbour is,

never mind knowing how to love them.

Encourage us in your ways, O Lord.

We confess that we don’t always realise

that to show love to others,

first, we have to learn to love ourselves.

Sometimes we haven’t a clue how to do that.

We may have an ideal in our head of what love is,

then get cross with ourselves when we fall short.

Encourage us in your ways, O Lord.

We confess that we have the idea that love is

this great dramatic gesture or action,

when sometimes it can be as small as a touch of a fingertip.

Encourage us in your ways, O Lord.

Amen.

The God of all heaven and earth

looks upon us now with love.

He wraps us tightly in his arms.

His love pardons us, enfolds us,

emboldens us to accept that our sins are forgiven,

and we can go into the world to reveal his love.

Praise be to God.

Amen.

HYMN

Readings

Deuteronomy 6: 1-9 (member of Church)

Mark 12: 28-34 (member of Church)

HYMN

Sermon

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O’ Lord.

I recently paid a surprise visit to my brother who lives in Scotland, I had arranged this with my sister-in-law as due to the Covid restrictions we had not seen each other for over two years I know many people who have not been in this position unable to visit relatives during this time.

Dawn my sister-in-law had told John my brother that one of their son’s was coming for a couple of days and so she had an excuse as she prepared the house for visitors covering up the surprise visit of Karon and myself.

In fact, I rang him as I entered Dumfries to have a chat, and as usual he asked me when we were coming for a visit, I told him as soon as we could.

So, the look on my brother’s face was indescribable as I walked around the corner into the garden the immense joy on his face, was wonderful. I suppose a lot of this was due to the fact that it was so unexpected.

We had a great time together in fact his neighbours came to join us as we had a barbeque, played guitars, and talked to the early hours. We all really enjoyed our time together.

There are many things that can touch us in life like songs, stories, places and even favourite films. One of my favourites is Love Actually it may not be something many men would admit to, but I find the interweaving stories full of happiness and sadness covering all the human emotions. But in the end, it is all about hope it is all about love.

Love changes everything, according to a well-known Andrew Lloyd Webber song. But what sort of love? And love for what or whom?

How does our human emotions and what we describe as love compared to the love of God?

Prior to this morning’s Gospel reading we find a group Pharisees had tried to trap Jesus in several ways asking him about taxes and marriage which Jesus answered in such a way that they became more enraged.

Hearing the commotion, a scribe posed the question to Jesus “which commandment is first of all”

We can imagine the scene maybe a silence came across the crowd waiting to see how Jesus would answer.

Jesus said the first is “hear, O Israel: The Lord our god, The lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” the second is this” you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

The answer Jesus gave was the Shema prayer, we heard it in our reading from Deuteronomy, when he said, “love begins with God. It all starts with God’s love for creation”.

In the Jewish tradition, the Shema is an important foundational prayer taught to children and recited every day. In terms of practice, this is similar to the way that Christians are taught to use the Lord’s Prayer.

The simple truth is because God loved us first, it is now up to us how we choose to respond to his love.

We can ignore God’s love and walk away seeking to fulfil our lives with other things.

We are created by God and within us is the desire even if we are not aware of it is the need to be filled by him, there is a place in everyone that is there for God to fill. Unfortunately, today many people try to fill this place with our personal desires, it does not work.

Robbie Williams once said “I was in New York and bought thousands of pounds worth of new clothes, bought three top of the range cars, but in the end, I felt empty, I had lots of money I could buy anything I wanted but in the end I still felt empty” he wrote the song Real Love based on his experience.

We can have everything the world can offer but to quote a James Bond movie “The world is not enough” what the world offers is a temporary quick fix, there is no real depth to what it offers us.

If we decide to accept the love that God offers each and every one of us.

We do have to respond and if we do accept the perfect love of God the response demands from us the whole person, all that we are and do – as in the words of the final verse of a well-known hymn: Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.

And although this may seem as constricting, limiting our options in life many feel by giving themselves to God will spoil their fun. There is within this if we abandon ourselves to God’s we will find a freedom that far outstrips what the world can offer us.

But what does God’s love look like in practice?

Think back to seaside holidays and the traditional stick of rock. Wherever you cut the rock, it shows the name of the place you have been (and it’s fascinating to watch how it is made!). In the story we heard today, Jesus opens his heart, and it is full of love.

Imagine (if you can) a stick of rock from Jesus. It might say, ‘Love God, love others. This is the heart of the work and mission of Jesus. And wherever you break into his story, it will say the same.

Our task is to take some of this for ourselves, to love the taste so much that we can’t stop doing it: loving God, and loving others.

Or think of it like breathing. How often during the day do we say something like, ‘Oh, I must remember to take a breath’. We don’t. For most people, it just happens. We all breathe, all the time! And, though we can consciously hold our breath for a short while, it takes a lot to really distract us from doing it.

Loving should be like that. Loving God, loving one another, should be as natural and uncomplicated and inevitable and unstoppable as breathing. And if someone or something should stop is from breathing, we know what the consequences will be.

Of course, sadly, there are moments when people do struggle for breath – as we know only too well after a year and a half of the covid pandemic – we have seen the pictures on our TV screens, we may well have known someone who has suffered or even passed away due to this illness when that happens, we do all we can to help those in need. During this time, we have seen all types of people giving of their time, efforts, and expertise to aide in any way they can from retired medical people to people taking food to the needy.

The Nursing home were the staff isolated themselves with the elderly in their care, to protect them from Covid.

The compassion shown over this time has been amazing.

But what a difference it would make to the world if only we could be as proactive in helping people to love.

But we can, can’t we? We can be people who commit ourselves always and everywhere to loving God, ourselves, and others.

When we love God, we do also need to love ourselves, it may be a strange thing to say, but I don’t mean we should preen in front of mirrors or consider ourselves as above everyone else.

But understand the God deems us worthy of his love, no matter how bad or undeserving we feel about ourselves. As we take on the mantle of God’s love, we need to love ourselves as God loves us, it is only by doing this can we understand his love, otherwise we can never know how to truly love others as God loves us.

We see the ultimate love of God, as it reaches its fullest expression in the death and resurrection of Jesus himself.

We who believe in Christ are called to lead by example to show the love that God has given to us. That’s why we are here and that’s what each one of us are called to do today and every day.

HYMN

Ann will bring our prayers

Prayer of Thanksgiving and intersession (member of Church)

The Lord’s Prayer

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 trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us;

and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Offertory Prayer

HYMN

Blessing

May the word of God dwell in our hearts,

in our minds and in our actions,

every day of our lives.

And let us pray for one another, saying together:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

the love of God,

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,

be with us all, now, every day and evermore.

Amen.