Koonung Heights Uniting Church
Service of Worship at Home
Easter 4 – 21 April 2024 – 10am or whenever possible
You may like to light a candle during your time of worship.
Feel free to text the Peace to other members of the congregation.
Introit: “Bless the Lord” – (TiS 706)
Bless the Lord, my soul, and bless God’s holy name.
Bless the Lord, my soul, who leads me into life.
Candle Lighting:
We light the Christ candle today and remember
that in Christ, the Risen One, the light who has come,
we meet the Good Shepherd.
We meet the One who has come to lead and guide us.
Acknowledgement of Country:
As we gather together to worship,
I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians
of these unceded lands and waters,
the Wurundjeri WoiWurrung People
of the Kulin nation.
I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present,
and to all future leaders and generations.
As First and Second Peoples walking together,
may we commit ourselves
to be people of the covenant,
listening, truth telling and seeking justice for all.
Call to Worship (Psalm 23):
In pastures green,
the Good Shepherd leads us.
Beside still waters,
the Good Shepherd leads us.
Through darkest valleys and turbulent times,
the Good Shepherd leads us.
Let us meet the Good Shepherd,
here in this moment together.
Let us worship God.
Opening Prayer:
Shepherding God,
you bring us into your presence
and shower us with your love.
You lead us beside the still waters
and restore our souls.
Touch our hearts and minds,
that we may live your love
and abide in your grace.
Amen.
We Sing: “Praise to the Lord” – (TiS 111)
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation;
O my soul, praising, for God is your health and salvation.
Come all who hear, brothers and sisters draw near,
praising in glad adoration.
Praise to the Lord who in all things is wondrously reigning
and, as on wings of an eagle, uplifting, sustaining;
have you not seen all that is needed has been
sent by God’s gracious ordaining.
Praise to the Lord! O let all that is in me adore him!
All that has life and breath, come now with praise and rejoicing.
Let the Amen sound from God’s people again:
gladly for ever adoring.
Prayer of Adoration and Confession:
God, who is the Risen Christ,
You are our cornerstone.
In you we live and breathe and have our being.
In becoming one with us,
you opened the way to learn more about you,
your magnificent creation,
ourselves,
and about the way you invite us to love one another,
taking part in the world with you.
In teaching new ways,
you inspire and encourage us
to care for those in the margins –
those who fall through the cracks in our society and systems.
Opening ourselves to loving without reservation,
even when that seems difficult, and
challenging our understandings,
in the same way Jesus challenged views of the day.
In dying and rising you created for us a new way.
A new chance to meet you afresh,
reminding us of the gift we have received
in and through you.
Yet sometimes we get so caught up in moment,
that we forget everything you came for.
We forget all you taught us about loving one another,
living in community,
the delights of your creation
and the gift of your eternal grace and divine love.
We lose sight of the life you call us into,
and the invitation to participate in your mission in the world.
God of the new promise,
the one who shepherds us,
open our eyes to see you afresh.
Expand our love for those around us.
Enable us by your grace
to live out your teachings
so all whom we encounter
may meet you
through our words and actions.
Amen.
Words of Assurance:
In the midst of everything that causes you to worry,
the God who loves you is always with you.
God will not abandon you. You are loved and forgiven.
This is good news … thanks be to God.
The Peace:
Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd,
the One who laid down his life
offers you hope and peace.
May the peace of Christ dwell with you
and also with you.
Responsive Psalm: Psalm 23
Lord God, divine shepherd;
in the days ahead, just as it has been all my life,
I shall not want for anything.
You will rest me in rich pasture
and lead me beside calm waters.
You will bring my inner being back where it belongs,
and lead me along the right paths,
for the sake of your name.
Even when things seem at their darkest,
sensing your presence, I fear nothing;
you are sure of the way ahead, and you protect me.
Indeed, in spite of the adversity surrounding me
you continue to provide abundantly for my well-being;
anointing me with your hospitality
and pouring out blessing upon blessing.
Surely good and lovingkindness will pursue me all my days,
I will return, and you, O LORD,
shall be my dwelling-place for days without end.
© Jeff Shrowder
A Time for All:
I wonder if anyone remembers Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog. They are two characters that formed part of the Looney Tunes cartoons and first appeared in 1953. Each episode in the series centres on these two characters, and is built around the idea that both Ralph and Sam are workers, simply doing their jobs. Ralph Wolf has the job of trying to steal the sheep, and Sam Sheepdog is tasked with protecting them, just like a shepherd.
At the beginning of the workday, they both arrive with their lunch pails at a sheep-grazing meadow, exchange pleasant chitchat, and punch into the same time clock. Work having officially begun with the morning whistle at 8:00am, Ralph repeatedly tries very hard to abduct the helpless sheep and invariably fails, either through his own ineptitude or the minimal but well-planned efforts of Sam (who is frequently seen sleeping), but always manages to stop Ralph from taking the sheep. When the end of the work day whistle sounds, Ralph and Sam punch out their time cards, again chat amiably, and leave, presumably only to come back the next day and do it all over again.
I used to love this cartoon (and I still find it funny). The sheep were lucky to have Sam look after them, but I always wondered what would happen to the sheep if Sam stayed asleep when Ralph was trying to take a sheep. I also used to wonder what might happen to the sheep if Ralph decided to come back to the meadow when Sam wasn’t there to protect them. Of course this never happened … but I did wonder about it.
We have just read together a modern version of Psalm 23. In this psalm we are told that God is like a shepherd, protecting us always. The shepherd described in the psalm is much better that Sam Sheepdog in the cartoon, because the shepherd never sleeps and doesn’t clock off at the end of the day either. The shepherd stands between the sheep and the things that are out to get them, protecting them always and never running away when danger comes. The shepherd is always there for the sheep. This is all because the shepherd loves the sheep. Aren’t we lucky to have a shepherd God who loves us.
Let us pray:
Loving God,
Thank you for looking after us like a good shepherd looks after the sheep.
Thank you that you love us so much, know our names and all the special things about us.
Thank you that you lead us into paths that are life-giving,
and always help us find our way back when we get a little lost.
Amen.
We Sing: “My Shepherd” – (TiS 659)
The Lord is my shepherd, and I want to follow
wherever he leads me, wherever he goes.
Over the mountains, the waters and by-ways,
the valleys and highways he’s waiting for me.
I want to go to meet him there, to lay myself down in his love.
The Lord is my shepherd and I want to follow
wherever he leads me, wherever he goes.
And while on this journey to where we are going
he promised to be there to help us along,
and over the mountains we’ll walk on together,
to know all the wonders he’s given to me.
I want to go to meet him there, to lay myself down in his love.
The Lord is my shepherd and I want to follow
wherever he leads me, wherever he goes.
Bible Reading: John 10:11-18
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”
Bible Reading: 1 John 3:16-24
16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. 17 How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
18 Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. 19 And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20 whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God, 22 and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
23 And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.
Reflection:
The Bible has a lot to say about love and depending on which translation you pick up, you will find the word love used between 310 times (King James Version) and 801 times (New Living Translation). In case you are interested, it appears 538 times in our pew bibles (New Revised Standard Version). Irrespective of how many times the word is used, love is a topic of central importance in the Bible – which some might call the greatest love story ever written. Within its pages there is comment on the full gamut of human love: love of family, love of friends and neighbours, romantic love, sexual love and even dysfunctional love. More than that though, the Bible tells the story of a God who loves us beyond our wildest imaginings, and it teaches us how we might invite that love into our lives and share it with others.
Today I’d like to reflect on this concept of love and how it is vital to our faith and our action as Christians. Of course love is not foreign to us, nor is it exclusively ours. We hear about love all the time, we speak about it often and we act with love too, but the authenticity of our love for God and our neighbours is what I’d like us to think about. Both of the passages we have read today invite us to do this. In the letter from 1 John, love and life are intertwined, but love, truth and faith are connected and the community is reminded that they are seen to live by the truth when love is seen in practical actions. In the gospel reading we see how the Good Shepherd lives out love in practical ways, even laying down his life for the sheep.
In the letter of 1 John, the community are called to be unified despite social, cultural and mainstream distinctions or challenges. They are also reminded that all who believe in Jesus Christ and love God must also love one another. The recipients of the letter are reminded that they know God’s love because ‘he laid down his life for us’ (1 John 3:16).
The only acceptable response to this generosity is that we should also be prepared to lay down our lives for one another, for how can we see another’s need and not respond if God’s love really lives in us. The kind of love that is emphasised here is not passive love, but love that is active. It is practical … not just about ‘word or speech’ but about ‘truth and action’ (1 John 3:18). It is the love that puts the other first. It is the love that is seen, shared and known by what we do. It is this practical love that witnesses to the truth of who we are, both to ourselves and others.
We often separate love and truth … but this text holds them together. We think that to be loving means that we need to be kind and not speak the truth. You only need to look at the damage that has sometimes been done by the church when we put loving ahead of speaking the truth and calling out bad behaviour. Similarly, we think that being truthful means we can say whatever we want simply because it is our subjective truth at that particular moment. Again this can be so damaging. The question of how we might live in communities where love and truth intersect is a question that needs to be worked through again and again, because it is who we are called to be and it is how others will see that we are different.
Love for God and love for our neighbours sums up how we are to live as people of faith. All that we do as Christians may amount to nothing if it is done without love – real practical love is not just a noun but a verb! For unless love is acted out, it remains a mere word which might sound good when we say it but is of little practical use to any of us when we are struggling.
Jesus’ life is the example of this practical love. Jesus came not just so we would hear the words he spoke about love, but so that we might witness his love and experience it. Jesus came to the world in love, lived in love, suffered in love, died in love for us, and was resurrected to give us the hope of eternal life. This self-sacrificial act of Jesus is the deepest meaning of love, and this what the church should be characterised by. Jesus’ reminded us that we should love him with all our heart, soul and mind; and then commanded us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves.
In the gospel reading we hear Jesus state ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’ (John 10:11) This ‘good shepherd’ discourse picks up the Hebrew traditions that shepherds are leaders and they can be either good or bad. The shepherd is also seen to be the one with a much higher investment than the ‘hired-help’. Rather, there is a relational intimacy between the shepherd and the sheep. Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t claim that he is just one good shepherd among many. Rather he emphatically states that he is the good shepherd alone.
Jesus also says that he is the shepherd of other sheep; his kingdom project has not concluded with the sheep that are already in the fold. There are more beyond this particular pen and Jesus is the good shepherd of them too. It is easy to think that we are the ones Jesus is speaking about being within the fold, but what about the others Jesus is also caring for? Are they those who are beyond the church, beyond our culture, or beyond our faith? Whoever these ones might be, it seems to me that Jesus has an eye that reaches far beyond the circles we have formulated for the church, and that Jesus’ words invite us to imagine way beyond what we currently have. Perhaps the invitation is for us to grow our experience of faith so that we can see beyond our own self-preservation.
I wonder if that is a truth we can believe in and live out? How might we show love in action that gets to the truth of what we profess? Loving our neighbours as ourselves is an overwhelming commandment, yet it’s extremely difficult to love others as our own selves, particularly if we do it in our own power as we are often consumed by attitudes of self-preservation and self-advancement. Author Jon Bloom suggests that ‘The most loving thing we can do for others is love God more than we love them. For if we love God most, we will love others best.’ It is, Jon suggests, why Jesus reminded us to love God with all our heart, mind and soul before he commanded us to love one another. It is only when we have encountered the love of God in Christ, that we can actually truly love our neighbour.
The world needs love and we are called to live into this truth. May we continue to thank God for the love that he has bestowed on us. May we live knowing that the love of God can change the world. May we all play our part in this, even in our own small corner of the world. Amen.
Amen.
We Sing: “Holy Spirit, go before us” – (TiS 420)
Holy Spirit, go before us, every heart and mind prepare
for good news of life in Jesus, for the joyful hope we share.
Gently lead the lost to safety, gently teach them Wisdom’s way,
till they come to seek you gladly, till we find the words to say.
Holy Spirit, come and help us, give us words to speak of Christ.
Teach us how to tell all people: deepest darkness can be light!
Help us tell how faithful God is, and how Jesus set us free;
take our words, and make them gospel, so that many may believe.
Holy Spirit, stay to show us how to serve as Christ served us.
May our words of love be grounded in love’s actions, first and last.
Your good news is news of justice, and the strong befriend the weak
in your service, till compassion builds the peace the nations seek.
Prayer for Others (prepared by Rob Fenton)
Dear Lord,
We thank you for hearing the prayers of your people. We pray for our congregation, and that it continues to grow in its understanding of your ways for us.
We pray for our wonderful minister Heather, and we give thanks for the care and spiritual leadership she provides to our congregation.
We pray for our country of Australia, and give thanks for the peaceful country we live in, where so many nationalities live together in harmony. We give thanks for things like the way friends who support different teams can go to the football together, and have a great time irrespective of whether your team wins or loses, and we give thanks that the fans of opposing teams can safely travel back on the train together with good humour, and that we don’t have the dangerous fighting between fans of opposing teams as happens in other countries. We pray with concern that there are those who are trying to drive a wedge between people in our community, such as the increase in antisemitism.
Unfortunately we do from time to time have needless tragedies occur, such as the horrific Bondi Junction Shopping Centre killing spree by the lone man with a knife. We pray for the families of the victims of the Bondi Junction Shopping Centre killer, who are suffering greatly for the loss of their loved ones in such a senseless way. We pray for the poor baby who was rescued but has lost her mother. We give thanks for the courageous female police officer, who singlehandedly confronted the killer and ended his killing spree, and in doing so, saved the lives of many others.
We also pray for the bishop and other stabbing victims at the Assyrian Orthodox church in Sydney. We pray for their speedy recovery.
We pray with concern about so much war and unrest in the world, with the world seemingly becoming an increasingly dangerous place. We pray for the poor people of Gaza, where so many lives have been lost and are continuing to be lost, with no end in sight to the bombings. We pray for the remaining Israeli hostages, who must be living in unimaginable fear, and for their families who are anxiously waiting for some news of their release.
We also continue to pray for the Ukrainian people, who might not now be centre of attention, but are still suffering from the ongoing Russian attacks, which have now been going on for over two years, and which they are continuing to bravely defend against.
We pray for our families and friends, and give thanks for the care and love which we receive from them. We pray for those who are lonely, and who don’t have families and good friends they can call upon for support. We pray for the church, community organizations, other support groups, and individuals, who reach out to those in our community who are doing it tough, and who try to ease their burden.
We continue to pray for all in our church community. We give thanks for the warm and caring fellowship which our church community provides to us, and the focus which it provides to our lives as Christians.
We now join with Christians across the centuries and pray as our Lord taught us:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name;
Your kingdom come, your will be done on
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the Kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours now and forever.
Amen.
We Sing: “Community of Christ” – (TiS 473)
Community of Christ, who make the Cross your own,
live out your creed and risk your life for God alone:
the God who wears your face, to whom all worlds belong,
whose children are of every race and every song.
Community of Christ, look past the Church’s door
and see the refugee, the hungry, and the poor.
Take hands with the oppressed, the jobless in your street,
take towel and water, that you wash your neighbour’s feet.
Community of Christ, through whom the word must sound –
cry out for justice and for peace the whole world round:
disarm the powers that war and all that can destroy,
turn bombs to bread, and tears of anguish into joy.
When menace melts away, so shall God’s will be done,
the climate of the world be peace and Christ it’s Sun;
our currency be love and kindliness our law,
our food and faith be shared as one for evermore.
Blessing:
As one of Jesus’ beloved flock,
let us go in peace
to love and to serve Jesus,
the good shepherd of us all.
Let us go to love our neighbour
with our words and actions,
and may the triune God,
Father, Son and Spirit,
the One who Mother’s us all,
be with us, each one.
Amen.
Thanks to all those who have assisted in preparation for this liturgy with encouragement, prayers and conversation. I have also utilised the following resources:
Spill the Beans (issue 38), By the Well, Ministry Matters and Fig Tree Worship.