Sermon Tone Analysis

Order of service

Welcome

Let us open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes

to see the generous gifts of God,

and respond with praise and thanksgiving.

HYMN

57 Let all the world in every corner sing

Prayers (led by me)

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

one in three and three in one, we adore you –

for you are light in our darkness

you are the calm in our turmoil

you are the wealth in our poverty

the meaning in our pointlessness

the hope in our despondency

the meaning in our being.

For all of this and so much more,

we worship you.

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ,

we come to you in sorrow for our selfishness,

in regret for our greed,

in despair over our blindness and deafness

to the needs of those around us.

With penitent hearts we seek your forgiveness,

and you’re blessing to make us more generous,

more giving, more able to see, and more willing to listen.

Amen.

Our God of generosity forgives those who truly repent.

Our God lifts the burdens from our hearts

and the blindness from our eyes

and sets us free to be the people we are called to be.

Amen.

HYMN

46 What shall I do my God of love

Readings

Hebrews 9: 24-28 (member of Church)

24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence.

25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own.

26 Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world.

But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.

27 Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

Mark 12: 38-44 (member of Church)

Warning Against the Teachers of the Law

38 As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law.

They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets.

40 They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers.

These men will be punished most severely.”

The Widow’s Offering

41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury.

Many rich people threw in large amounts.

42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.

44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

HYMN

138 Seek ye first the Kingdom of God

Sermon

May the words from my mouth and the thoughts from our hearts be acceptable to you, O LORD, our rock, and our defender.

Ask for three volunteers and give each a – returnable!

– £5 note.

Tell everyone that volunteer one is a millionaire; volunteer two earns about £30,000 per year (the UK average); and volunteer three has no regular income or job and receives on average about £300 a month.

If each person gives their £5 note to a good cause (collect in the £5 notes!) – who is the most generous and why?

Today’s worship is about what it means to live and give generously.

In many cases it doesn’t need to be about money.

Our millionaire may use his skill as a surgeon in Africa for 2 months a year to help the needy.

Can you think of one generous thing you have seen someone do, or heard about someone’s selfless action recently?

I think over the last two years we have seen such an outpouring of a generous caring spirit during this pandemic.

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.

These days we are told How to keep healthy:

Eat the right things, get enough sleep, exercise all these things will keep us healthy.

There is a great amount of information on how we can keep our heart healthy.

All this fuss is about keeping something that weights less than a pound, but when you consider the heart beats around 100,000 times a day that is in average lifetime 2.5 billion times.

But more than this it is the heart of human life.

Without it your body will cease to work.

Jesus had a lot to say about the heart, he uses it as a metaphor for our inner life.

Jesus tells us that it is the centre and the source of the whole inner life, our thinking, feeling, and what we do in life.

This is the main concern of God.

He wants each one of us to have a healthy spiritual heart.

In (1 Samuel 16:17) God tells him “The Lord does not look at the things people look at.

People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart”

So, God tells us that it’s more important to have a healthy spiritual heart over it being just healthy one.

God wants us to be aware of our situation and attitude in life and through the words of Jesus he warns us that we need to be aware of the risk we face if we become complacent.

I once had a job, and when I joined the company the MD chatted to me, and I always remember he said to me “I want to ensure there is always work for these people in the future”.

Very impressive.

The only problem was some years later the company became part of a bigger concern, and he was put on the board of executives, his concerns for the workforce diminished, were everyone became just a number.

He had lost his initial desire to provide for the workforce that would not only to benefit himself but those around him.

I did at one meeting with him remind him of our first conversation.

There is a great potential of hypocrisy this is always a danger in life, it is the temptation to be concerned about position, platforms, titles, and honours as we progress through life.

All these things can be a temptation leading us to think we are better than others

For us as Christians it is crucial that we need to be guarded and vigilant it is so very easy to slip into living a life where we end up praying to impress, rather than praying from the heart.

In our reading from Mark, Jesus criticises the leaders of his day because their hearts were not right, as we read, we see their concerns are all about the outward appearance rather than their spiritual health, it says, in the message translation verses 38-40.

“Watch out for the religion scholars.

They love to walk around in academic gowns, preening in the radiance of public flattery, basking in prominent positions, sitting at the head table at every church function.

And all the time they are exploiting the weak and helpless.

The longer their prayers, the worse they get.

But they’ll pay for it in the end.”

The things mentioned here point to their love of being held in high regard receiving honour from all the people as they make a great show of their position puffed up with pride.

Can we sometimes be like this? Do we meet people and feel we are in some way superior to them?