{"id":20001,"date":"2022-10-30T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-30T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/urc\/urc-daily-devotion-sunday-worship-30th-october-2022"},"modified":"2022-10-30T09:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-10-30T09:30:00","slug":"urc-daily-devotion-sunday-worship-30th-october-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/urc-daily-devotion-sunday-worship-30th-october-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"URC Daily Devotion Sunday Worship 30th October 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
Sunday Worship from the United Reformed Church<\/strong>
for Sunday 30th October 2022<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A Service of Jubilee<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 
Today\u2019s service is led by <\/em><\/span>The Revd Fiona Bennett, Moderator of General Assembly and Members of the Church Life Review Group, including The Revd Lindsey Sanderson and The Revd Phil Wall <\/p>\n

 
 
Introduction <\/strong>
 
Welcome to this Daily Devotions service from the United Reformed Church for Sunday 30th<\/sup> October.  My name is Lindsey Sanderson, I am minister of the East Kilbride and Hamilton Joint Pastorate of the URC in the National Synod of Scotland, and I am a member of the Church Life Review Group. 
And I\u2019m Phil Wall \u2013 minister at St. David\u2019s Uniting Church, Pontypridd and Castle Square URC Treforest and also a member of the Church Life Review Group. <\/em>
 
We are also joined in this service by Fiona Bennett, who is the Moderator of General Assembly and Fiona will introduce herself later. 
Today the theme of our service is Jubilee, and we reflect on the Biblical concept of Jubilee and what it might be saying to us as the United  <\/em>
 
You can send your responses by email to: 
churchlifereview@urc.org.uk<\/a>
 
or by post to:
Church Life Review
21 Crawfurd Gardens
Rutherglen
G73 4JP 
 
or use the online response form which can be accessed at: http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/URCJubilee<\/a>. 
 
Please respond by Monday 28th<\/sup> November<\/strong>.  
 
A Call to Worship <\/strong>
 
With song and silence, let us praise the Creator,
For now is the time of Jubilee!<\/strong>
With joy and dedication let us follow the Son,
For now is the time of Jubilee!<\/strong>
With hope and expectation, let\u2019s be open to the Spirit,
For now is the time of Jubilee!<\/strong>
With all our heart and soul, mind and strength, 
let us love God today in our worship,
For now is the time of Jubilee!<\/strong>
 
Hymn<\/strong>       Sing for God\u2019s Glory That Colours The Dawn of Creation<\/em>
Kathy Galloway (b. 1952) performed by the Cantus Firmus Trust 
and used with their kind permission
 <\/div>\n

Sing for God\u2019s glory 
Which patterns 
and colours creation,
makes all things new 
and roots change 
at the heart of salvation.
Both day and night,
Sound, silence, symbol and sight
offer earth\u2019s glad adoration.
 
2 Sing for God\u2019s power 
that shatters the chains 
that would bind us,
searing the darkness of fear 
and despair that could bind us,
touching our shame
with love that will not lay blame, 
reaching out gently to find us.
 
3  Sing for God\u2019s justice 
disturbing each easy illusion,
tearing down tyrants and 
putting our pride 
to confusion;
lifeblood of right,
resisting evil and slight,
offering freedom\u2019s transfusion.
 
4 Sing for God\u2019s saints 
who have travelled 
faith\u2019s journey before us,
who in our weariness 
give us their hope 
to restore us;
in them we see
the new creation to be,
spirit of love made flesh for us.
 <\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

Prayers of Approach, Confession and Declaration of Forgiveness<\/strong>
 
Holy One in Three, in whom we live and move and have our being. We gather to worship acknowledging that everything belongs to you, the land and all living things. We praise you that you bless us with abundance. 
 
We join our voices in praise for you have wonderfully made us in all our diversity, the shades of our skin and textures of our hair, the loops, whorls and arches of our fingerprints and the coils of our DNA.  Each one of us is known and cherished by you, who loves us with a fiercely protective love and wills us each to flourish in life. 
We praise you for there is nowhere we can go where we are out with the limits of your love.
 
We praise you for there is nothing we can discover which is beyond the limits of your knowledge. 
 
We praise you that humankind is just one strand in the web of creation. When we look at the planet which we call home, we see your creating power and intricacy in complex eco-systems adaptive to every climate and habitat upon our common home. 
 
Gracious God, we confess that there are times when we forget the earth is yours, we treat it as our own to use and abuse it as we want. We confess our complicity in all that our common home has lost. 
 
For species lost through disappearing habitats, for biodiversity lost through deforestation and agri-business, for precious resources lost through our single-use, throw away culture, for ozone lost through our continuing reliance on fossil fuels.
 
Forgive us for forgetting what is at the heart of Jubilee, that the land has opportunity to rest and only bring forth what comes from it naturally, not what we plant, so we thank you for re-wilding, and setting aside and fallow times that allows the land to be restored so it may flourish again. 
We ask your forgiveness, we claim your love and mercy, and we ask for courage to make a new beginning for the earth and all her people trusting in the words of Scripture:
 
\u2018So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Gods-self through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.\u2019<\/em>  
Thanks be to God. Amen. 
 
 
Prayer of Illumination<\/strong>
 
Holy Spirit, free us from all that commands our attention,
so that with hearts and minds open and attentive
we may hear God\u2019s word for us today.  
Amen. <\/p>\n

Reading<\/strong>: Luke 4.14-21<\/em><\/p>\n

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.  He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
 
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read,  and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
 
\u2018The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,<\/em>
    because he has anointed me<\/em>
        to bring good news to the poor.<\/em>
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives<\/em>
    and recovery of sight to the blind,<\/em>
        to let the oppressed go free,<\/em>
to proclaim the year of the Lord\u2019s favour.\u2019<\/em>
 
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, \u2018Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.\u2019<\/em>
 
Hymn:      <\/strong>The Earth Is Yours O Lord our God
\u00a9 The Rev\u2019d Dominic Grant, used with permission sung by the Rev\u2019d Adam, and Gillian Earle
 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The earth is yours, 
O Lord our God,
and everything that’s in it;
mere aliens and tenants we,
yet still we strive to win it.
So easily seduced and swayed
by Empire’s brash occlusion,
we overlook your leasehold-terms:
“enjoyment, not exclusion”.
 
2: And on this cusp of Jubilee
we’ve recognised temptation
to seek to ‘wow’ a fickle crowd,
sidestepping true vocation.
But we believe 
you’ve brought us here
to strengthen and re-wild us,
to hear afresh and trust anew
the call that once beguiled us.<\/p>\n

3: Therefore with thanks 
for all that’s past,
we hold firm in the present,
anticipating future hope
unceasing, incandescent –
a hope that shapes and changes us,
a free space that we enter,
a rule of hospitality
with Jesus at the centre.
 
4: And till that final Jubilee
of reset and redemption,
we’ll pledge to live in faithfulness
to your declared intention.
Refreshed and 
reconditioned here,
you send us now in mission:
to give the Church a mighty shake,
for such is our tradition!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

  <\/p>\n

 
Sermon<\/strong>
 
Hello! I am Fiona Bennett; minister at Augustine United URC in Edinburgh and currently the URC\u2019s General Assembly Moderator.
 
I happened to turn 50 during the second lockdown at the start of 2021. A party was not an option, so what to do? I live in Edinburgh which is known as the Rome of the north because it has 7 hills. Some very fit people, run the hills in a day. I considered that\u2026 for about 5 seconds… and then thought, not run but walk \u2013 I could walk the 7 hills in a day. On the day however, there was significant snow, so we managed the 7 hills but our photos look like we were in Alaska! How to mark a 50th<\/sup> in snowy Edinburgh in lockdown\u2026
This year the URC is 50 years old. How do we mark our 50th<\/sup> as a community of faith, a denomination, a people of God, emerging from lockdown?
 
Well the Bible offers some helpful about how to celebrate a 50th<\/sup> , and it is called Jubilee.
 
The reading we heard from Luke 4 is sometime described as Jesus\u2019 manifesto. This passage tells us what Jesus was about; what he believed God wanted to say and do in the world -Salvation!
 
Jesus is reading from what we identify as Isaiah 61:1-2. 
 
Isaiah was speaking to people who were returned or returning from being held in exile in Babylon. They were the poor, the captives, the broken hearted\u2026 To these broken people Isaiah was speaking words of comfort and hope that things were going to be different for them; that from being oppressed they were going to be liberated\u2026
 
Jesus, was also speaking to people who were oppressed under the occupation of the Roman Empire, with the Empire\u2019s culture of domination which shaped their world. Jesus was proclaiming that: the Kingdom of God is present on earth and is greater than the empire of Rome (or any other empire). Jesus invited people to awaken to God\u2019s Realm around them and to allow its culture of love to shape their lives, institutions, culture, world\u2026
 
The Spirit spoke these words through Isaiah to a community of faith, emerging from exile. 
 
The Spirit spoke these words through Jesus to a community of faith, inviting them to emerge from empire. 
 
How is the Spirit speaking through these words today, to us, a 50 years old URC, as we emerge from the Pandemic? 
Within the words of Luke and Isaiah, there is this line: to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord \/ to proclaim the year of the Lord\u2019s favour.
 
I believe, it\u2019s a bit unclear as to exactly what the Year of the Lord, or the Year of the Lord\u2019s favour means, as these are the only direct uses of these phrases in scripture, but they seem to be about the Year of Jubilee which we can read about principally around Lev 25. Here we find teaching for the community of faith on how to celebrate their king through re-setting their economy.
 
The first thing to notice from Leviticus is that it understands all land, all property, all life, belongs to God. Humans are guests, only guests, in God\u2019s land. God would like the land to be care for, as well as caring for the guests.
 
There was a law that every 7th<\/sup> year the land was not be farmed, but allowed to rest.
 
And after 7 cycles of 7 years, there was to be a special celebration year, a 50th<\/sup> Jubilee Celebration Year, in which not only would the land rest (ie not be farmed) but there would be a re-set of the economy in that people who had sold land, or sold themselves into slavery (and you would only sell land or sell yourselves if you were utterly desperate) would have their land returned and their liberty restored.
 
Now the idea for this came from ancient Mesopotamian kings, who had a tradition of marking celebrations of their kingly greatness, by releasing prisoners and gifting land – it demonstrated their abundance and generosity. The Jubilee tradition is based on this idea and the understanding that God is King; the land and people are God\u2019s to do what God likes with. The way God celebrates as King, is to rest the land, and restore tenancy & liberty to those who have lost it.
 
It meant every 50 years there was to be a re-sent button pressed on the economy and the culture. 
People who had made a lot of wealth from land did not lose the wealth, but they did lose the land which they had gained through other people\u2019s poverty. And those who had found themselves trapped in poverty have chance to begin again, because land was the basic key to survival.
What a generous King God is to shape laws so that the land could rest and none of their citizens are trapped in poverty forever!
 
Amazing! 
 
However, it is important to realize that the reality of the past is not as rosy or simple as we might want to think\u2026
 
When we think of slavery today, we often tend to think first of Trans Atlantic slavery, where people\u2019s skin colour defined them as slaves (ie Slaves were black) But in slavery throughout history, people of any colour or culture could find themselves as slaves in many parts of the world, if they or their family had been poor or had got into debt. 
 
Today, I feel repelled at the thought that any human being could be owned as property. I do not believe, however that many of the writers or editors of Scripture looked at things that way. Although some will have.
I was reminded recently that even within my own city, Edinburgh, (which benefited hugely from the transatlantic slave trad), there have always, always been people who opposed and spoke out against slavery, and in particular in the 17th<\/sup> C, people who opposed spoke out against the idea that those with black skin were any less human. God\u2019s Spirit has always been at work in our world!
 
However, in this Jubilee celebration where the children of Abraham and Sarah are released from slavery, the same generous liberation does not seem to have been applied to foreigners who found themselves in slavery in the same land. 
 
I wonder if Jesus who share the gospel with Syrophoenicians and honoured Samaritans, and whose church was built our of Gentiles and Jews, slave and free, would have intended the same limitations? I do not believe so.
 
The other rather sad challenge in looking at this idea of Jubilee, is that there is little evidence that it was actually ever fully implemented as is laid out in Leviticus, but it did shape thinking as we see in Isaiah, perhaps also Ezekiel, and in Luke. 
 
In Luke, using the image of Kingdom, Jesus is inviting humanity to awaken to the reality that the earth is God\u2019s Kingdom and that God is King; a King who is entitled to govern as they choose, and God chooses a way in which the earth is given regular rest and the poor, indebted and vulnerable are not trapped forever.
 
That is how God the King chooses to celebrate 50 years of reign; these are the heart of God\u2019s Jubilee celebrations; the Year of the Lord\u2019s favour.
So how might this Jubilee inform the URC\u2019s 50th<\/sup> year?
 
How could the Spirit be speaking through the idea of Jubilee to us a 50 years old URC, as we emerge from the Pandemic? 
 
Well it might remind us that all that we have, all that we are, is God\u2019s; who is the source and shaper and lover of everything which exists. Gifts to be used to God\u2019s glory.
 
It might point out to us that, Our God is abundant and generous and just, and asks us to be the same;
 
Our God asks us to good gardeners to tend the earth, which we are part of, encouraging growth and fruit, but also gifting rest and health for all.
Our generous and abundant God asks us to design and build justice and wholeness into the patterns and frameworks of the garden of the world, so that vulnerability is not exploited, so that no one is trapped in debt or poverty.
The year of Jubilee was a year both of celebration of the Holy One, and a re-set button on society.
 
This is Reformation Sunday, the day on which we remember the beginning of the Christian Reformation. It seems very appropriate on this day in this the URC\u2019s 50th<\/sup> year to be asking ourselves about reform in light of the Jubilee and asking:
 <\/p>\n