Hugh
welcomed us all to the Service and invited the people to greet each other
briefly – he soon had to call a halt, saying with a smile; That’s good enough!”
Call to
Worship (Responsive reading from Psalm 95) Beginning: Come, let us praise the
LORD! Let us sing for joy to God, who
protects us! Let us come before him with
thanksgiving and sing joyful songs of praise.
For the LORD is a mighty God, a mighty king over all the gods. He rules
over the whole earth, from the deepest caves to the highest hills.
Hymn TiS 52 Let
us sing to the God of Salvation!
This hymn of Praise written by Richard
Bewes is a real celebration of Psalm 95 and Hugh encouraged us to sing with one
side of the church holding and harmonizing the word P-R-A-I-S-E in each line of
the chorus while the other side sang:
Praise our Maker, Praise
our Saviour, Praise the Lord our
everlasting King. Every throne must bow before him, God is Lord of everything! We were all amazed by the
beautiful sounds of Praise that we offered to our God and we could see that
Hugh, with his imaginary baton; Malcolm on the piano and Andrew on the organ
really enjoyed helping us to make such an harmonious and joyful “noise”.
Prayers of
Adoration & Confession
Our prayer
focused on the Grace and Love of God who is with us each day with compassion
and guidance and provides brightness for each moment. We prayed that God’s Spirit will fill our
hearts and minds with joy, thanksgiving and praise.
We
confessed our personal sins in silence and asked forgiveness for our sins against
God and our fellow people.
Declaration
of forgiveness:
“Christ died for us, the sinful. Christ lived again for us, the
righteous.
Offering /
Prayer Hugh invited us to express our gratitude to
God with our offering and Chris and Chrisanthi and a lovely group of children
waited on us and were blessed - along with our gifts.
Children’s
Address: After reminding
us we are indeed all God’s children and our Worship will go on to the end of
the world, Hugh had us all singing again; this time in a round in four
parts. “Row, Row, Row your boat” never
sounded like such fun before and the smallest of the children loved the feeling
of community and cooperation.
Hymn TiS 229 Jesus
loves me this I know
We
nostalgically sang this hymn which reminds us all how easy it is to believe -
if we don’t complicate and over-think things.
It somehow took us all back to simple child-like faith and belief in the
Bible as God’s word. The children went
happily off to “Sunday Kids”.
Bible Reading: John
4:5-26
Malcolm read the well known story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.
Reflection: “Jesus and the Samaritan Woman”
Hugh began
the reflection with an explanation of the 40 days of Lent as a time of
preparation for Easter by reflecting upon Jesus, his suffering and his
ministry, his life, death, burial and resurrection. He told us that the story about Jesus and the
Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel is also part of the journey to his death on
the cross.
Hugh
shared his fascination about the history of the town of ‘Sychar’ in Israel,
where around 300 people still calling themselves Samaritans live today and
where Jacob’s Well still marks the place where Jesus stood and had this
significant encounter. There is no
dispute about this spot and Samaritans, Muslims, Christians and Jews all agree
that this is the place where the story took place. I agree - it is fascinating to contemplate
standing where Jesus stood and it helps me to focus on the significance of this
encounter in which Hugh told us Jesus deliberately “crossed the line”. The line he crossed in speaking to the
Samaritan woman was both a racial and a gender line and it broke a very strict
taboo to every Jew at that time. This
was a line drawn by the society of the time and it involved the breaking of
common law and civil law.
The most
important thing in taking away the real message of this story is to ask
ourselves “WHY” so we can grasp the mindset of Jesus and understand the lessons
that he wanted to teach the people of his time.
The taboo had grown out of centuries of hostility and unfriendly and
worsening attitudes from Jews, who resented the way Samaratins, who were also
descendant of Israel, had opened themselves up to the wider world and were no
longer of pure Jewish blood. They were,
Hugh told us, receptive and adaptive to different cultures. Surely a trait that we try to follow today,
but in many cultures progress has been depressingly slow as we have
experienced, even in our own lifetimes.
Our 11 year old grandson was speechless recently when we talked about
Rosa Parks who challenged American society in 1955 and refused to sit at the
back of the bus.
No wonder
the woman was surprised when Jesus approached her and said; “Hello woman, could
you give me a drink?” No wonder the
disciples were “greatly surprised to see Jesus talking to her”, when they
returned to the well.
“Authentic
evangelism flows from a mindset that acknowledges the ultimate value of people
- forgotten people, lost people, wandering people, up-and-outers, down-and
outers - all people. The highest value is to love them, serve them, and reach
them.”
Hugh shared this quote from George G. Hunter, who one of the great modern
scholars in evangelism and mission. Hugh
went on to say that he believes Jesus crossed the line to show the people of
the time that; “Loving people, helping people and making others happy and
acknowledging their value was his mission and his biggest law.” As we approach Easter we should ponder on the
willingness of Jesus to do this even at the expense of his own life.
“Are we
able to take up this evangelical challenge at our church in Marsden Road,
Carlingford”, Hugh asked? Will we take it as our mission to reach
out to the people and love them, accept them, serve them and offer them our
genuine Christian friendship, and do whatever it takes to help them to
experience ‘God is love and He is real’.
Dear
friends in Christ. Do you still remember what Jesus said to Peter in their
first encounter? He said: “Peter. Follow me and I will teach you to catch
people.” Jesus is still calling you:
“Follow me. And I will teach you to catch people” Amen!
Hymn TiS 640
Kneels at the feet of His friends
The gentle swing of the folk tune from Ghana in this Hymn written by
Tomas Colvin, a Scottish Missionary, with its lesson about who are our
neighbours and how we should serve them, certainly cemented in our minds Hugh’s
call for us to reach out and “catch people” and learn to value all kinds of
people.
Prayers of
Intercession: Noelene prayed for the people who have been
lost in the plane that has vanished mysteriously and for their families and
friends. She prayed for those trapped in
war torn countries, for people without enough food, for people without work or
security and for all who are sick. She
brought the needs of the people mentioned by the congregation before God and
prayed for our leaders in our church and in Australia. We then said the Lord’s Prayer
together.
Hymn TiS 650 Brother Sister let me serve you
As I sang
this hymn written by Richard Gillard, I was struck by thoughts of the blessings
we sometimes deny others by being too independent and dismissive of their need
to serve us. This is probably a hard
lesson for many of us to learn. This
hymn, also called “The Servant Song” is gentle and prayer-like.
Brother, sister, let
me serve you, let me be as Christ to you; pray that I may have the grace to
let you be
my servant too.
We are pilgrims on a
journey, and companions on the road; we are here to help each other
walk the mile and
bear the load.
The Benediction & Blessing
The
Benediction advised us to “Go out and share with others” - and with a renewed
spirit of evangelism we sang the Blessing; May the feet of God walk with
you. Amen.
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