Year B
Sunday, 9.15am Holy Communion see also Readings
Regular Services
Lectionary
The full text of the readings for Sunday are available in our Sunday's Readings section.
Other Resources
Textweek The Text This Week - Revised Common Lectionary, Scripture Study and Worship Links
Online Revised Common Lectionary Vanderbilt Divinity Library
Earlier Thoughts Year B 0506 Year C 0607 Year A 0708
Sunday, 9.15am Holy Communion
LITURGICAL NOTE: From the start of Advent we follow the YEAR C readings in the three-year lectionary cycle. See the inside back cover for more about the liturgical year.
Before entering the sanctuary or the vestry…
Please allow the Choir to complete the ‘postlude’ and any additional songs that are part of our offering in worship – Our holding the sacred space is part of our common union - our being together in communion
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Knock, and the door will be opened for you
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How do we understand the ‘process’ of Intercessory prayer?
Many hold a common belief that understands prayer as a conversation with a supernatural and interventionist God. However, there are other understandings - rather than a supernatural God we might see god as an aspect of all occasions of experience, God as responsive to whatever is happening in the world. Thus a human prayer, as an occasion of experience in which God is present, changes God’s experience and therefore affects how God is able to affect the world.
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As Paul Custodio Bube explains,
The process view of God is that God is supremely affected by all that occurs in the world and is perpetually active in the world as a persuasive, directive agency who aims at ever-increasing richness of experience for all actualities. This view lends itself to affirming that intercessory prayer affects God’s actions and events in the external world. Intercessory prayer is a type of self-constitution by an individual. This self-constitution becomes a direct influence upon God’s self-constitution, on the one hand, and both a direct influence in the self-constitution of all other individuals in the future, and an indirect influence upon those same individuals through their experience of God whose self-constitution includes the original influence.
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"We hear the words of the readings from the Bible and feel personally addressed. I cannot have such an inflated view of my own importance as to imagine that God inspired the evangelists with me in mind...... That would be absurd. I do not say "here I am' to an invisible interlocutor as if my mobile phone had suddenly connected me with God. It is far more radical than that. In the story of God's love affair with humanity I discover who I am. They seem to be addressed to me personally because they touch my deepest sense of personhood. Here in the story of God's relationship with humanity, I find myself."
Timothy Radcliffe, Why go to Church: the drama of the Eucharist
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On Prayer...
“When you have a headache, you do not go on praying, “I want an aspirin” but you go and find the remedy. You pray for wealth and work hard to get it. You pray for relief from illness and you do not rest until you get rid of it.
Yet, you pray “Lord, free me from egoism, lust, anger and hatred” or “Lord, let me behold you,” but do nothing more about it….
When the prayer goes unanswered, the sincere man re-examines the whole position, knowing that either the effort is not strong or it is misdirected. He wonders, “Where does the prayer arise” What is the power that makes me think, speak and pray?” Only if that source is pure, is the prayer granted.”
Swami Venkatessananda
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In you, O Christ, we find that we are one,
whether east of west, whether parent of child,
whether human or creature.
Renew us in life’s unity.
Release in us again the mighty flow
of the one river.
And set us free, O Christ, to love.
Philip Newell - Celtic Treasure
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In the silence of the early morning
your Spirit hovers over the brink of the day
and new light pierces the darkness of the night.
In the silence of the morning
life begins to stir around me
and I listen for the day's first utterances.
In earth, sea and sky
and in the landscape of my own soul
I listen for utterances of your love, O God.
I listen for utterances of your love.
Philip Newell Celtic Benediction
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In the temple of my inner being,
in the temple of my body,
in the temple of earth, sea and sky,
in the great temple of the universe,
I look for the light that was in the beginning,
the mighty fire that blazes still from the heart of life,
gleaming in the whiteness of the moon,
glistening in night stars,
hidden in the black earth,
concealed in unknown depths of my soul.
In the darkness of the night
in the shadows of my being, O God,
let me glimpse the eternal.
In both the light and shadows of my being
let me glimpse the glow of the eternal.
Philip Newell - Sounds of the Eternal, a Celtic Psalter
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one.
The being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.
Life is no brief candle to me it’s a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw
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From last week’s sermon:
Mary and Martha give us another narrative to illustrate this counter-cultural force. The story asks us to look beyond the social norms, to look beyond the cultural expectations and to look beyond the confines of past traditions. In Martha we see the culturally accepted icon of ‘women’s work’, she fits the role and expectation that society encourages for her. In Mary we are given a counter-cultural image - a woman “who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying.” A woman in the unheard of position of disciple, a woman who sought and found understanding, a woman taking the position reserved for men.
The story echoes last week’s “Good Samaritan” that also leads us to look beyond the norms, to consider the inclusion of the marginalised and to participate in honouring our oneness.
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As we prepare for the next election, we should be aware that we are also being prepared by the media for the next election. The primary energy will be in creating division and differentiation, so we should hold on to the energy of the Scriptures, “Christ is the image of the invisible God..... “and in him all things hold together.” It is a paradigm shift for humanity to appreciate our oneness... our being “in Christ”...
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