Koonung Heights Uniting
Worship Liturgy
Sunday August 16, 2026
We sing our Introit: A Voice is Heard – (ATW 430)
Come, let us praise our God,
come let us sing for joy,
With a heart of thanks we give honour.
You are a mighty God, you are the source of life.
Creator God, we give praise.
From the deepest seas – a voice is heard.
From the highest hills – a voice is heard.
From the rich dark earth – a voice is heard.
All creation sings! God is heard!
Come, let us praise our God,
come let us sing for joy,
With a heart of thanks we give honour.
You are a mighty God, you are the source of life.
Creator God, we give praise.
Through the darkest night – a voice is heard.
Through the breaking dawn – a voice is heard.
Through the heart of life – a voice is heard.
All creation sings! God is heard!
Come, let us praise our God,
come let us sing for joy,
With a heart of thanks we give honour.
You are a mighty God, you are the source of life.
Creator God, we give praise.
Greeting
Lighting of Christ Candle
Acknowledgement of Traditional Custodians
Psalm 67:3-7
3 Let the peoples praise you,
O God; let all the peoples praise you.
4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth.
5 Let the peoples praise you,
O God; let all the peoples praise you.
6 The earth has yielded its increase;
God, our God, has blessed us.
7 May God continue to bless us;
let all the ends of the earth revere the Lord.
We Sing: In Christ there is no East or West – (459)
In Christ there is no east or west,
in God no south or north,
but one great fellowship of love
throughout the whole wide earth.
In Christ shall true hearts everywhere
their high communion find,
God’s service is the golden cord
close-binding humankind.
Join hands, then, people of the faith,
whate’er your race may be;
who serves my maker as his child
is surely kin to me.
In Christ now meet both east and west,
in God meet south and north,
all Christlike souls are one in him
throughout the whole wide earth.
Prayer of Praise and Confession, including Kyrie – (TIS 736)
Holy Dream-giver, sometimes our vision becomes focused on ourselves. God, return us to you in community.
Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison.
Sometimes we respond to new visions with fear and try to block them, even injuring those who share them. God, return us to you in community
Christe eleison, Christe eleison, Christe eleison.
Sometimes we keep dreams locked in our heads and focus on the grief for what is lost to us. God, return us to you in community
Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison.
Declaration of Forgiveness
Passing the Peace
Bible Reading
Genesis 45:1-15
Joseph Reveals Himself to His Brothers
Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. 2 And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. 3 Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.
4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. 5 And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither ploughing nor harvest. 7 God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. 9 Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me; do not delay. 10 You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. 11 I will provide for you there, since there are five more years of famine to come, so that you and your household and all that you have will not come to poverty.’ 12 And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. 13 You must tell my father how greatly I am honoured in Egypt and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” 14 Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. 15 And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them, and after that his brothers talked with him.
Matthew 15:21-28
The Canaanite Woman’s Faith
21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” 23 But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28 Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.
Early Word
Sermon
Genesis 45:1-15
Today concludes our series from the first book of the bible, Genesis. With the emergence of Joseph last week we have got to the fourth generation of this family that dominates Genesis – once you get past the creation and fall and flood stories. The family that half the human population on earth claim as their spiritual forebears.
And so for the last time we show our family tree slide – but we have during the course of our series discovered two issues. Keturah has been written out, and Rachel and Leah are the daughters, not the sisters of Laban.
The heroes of the faith throughout our series are depicted with all their flaws – it says something about the honesty of scripture. The story of this family chosen by God is not an idyllic family values one. On the contrary; we are appalled as the chosen family shows itself to be capable of the most chilling acts of deception and sustained acts of favouritism that set up throughout the generations ingrained conflict. We kind of feel like taking God aside and having a quiet word, “Um, did you get the right family here?”
But on the other side, and as I have been saying for many weeks, it is a bit reassuring to have the first family of the chosen people exposed warts and all cos many, oh lets be totally honest here, all our families are somewhat less than perfect too. And if God covenants, that is becomes welded on to them, well maybe we too, through God’s grace, have a chance of being found among the faithful.
And so today’s scene with the Big Reveal. Joseph confronts the brothers who so wronged him all those years ago. Joseph has a choice to wreak his revenge, and for a while we wonder if he is playing some weird mind games and he toys with his siblings, or to let go of anger, hurt, resentment about what his brothers did to him. Which way will it go. It is not a certainty. As it has been put, “ everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something or someone to forgive”.
It has taken a good many of the years since he last saw his brothers to get to the stage of being able to forgive. These are realities all people in one form of another must face during their lives. Anger, resentment, forgiveness, reconciliation. We are not talking about some strangely and narrowly religious thing here.
We had a leak in a downstairs ceiling during the week. Initially I thought it was a loose tile or overflowing gutter cos it happened the morning after it rained all night. I called a plumber and in the day or two before he came I discovered the leak was coming from the shower above the room. Tiles in the shower recess had failed and this was confirmed by the plumber and he explained the intricacies of a water leak in a bathroom and its consequences for any spaces underneath. And then later that day I was working on the Joseph sermon and especially the scene where Jospeh forgives his brothers and I was thinking how he must have dealt with a lot of his anger after being thrown in the pit and thinking he was going to be killed, and then sold into slavery by his own brothers. And bizarrely the words of the plumber kept coming back and spoke to me about anger and forgiveness. Listen to the wisdom of the plumber and think both water but more importantly anger and forgiveness.
Once water gets under your tiles it travels under the floor and you have no way of knowing where it will end up. It does not stay at the entry point but finds the lowest point and it pools there. It damages everything it comes in contact with. Water will make your plaster and timber musty. Sometimes that’s how people find out they have water in the system. The smell. and if it stays there long enough it will rot its way through and you will have to rip the lot up and replace it.
You will have heard that forgiving does mean forgetting as in “forgive and forget”. You cannot decide to forget, but it is within our power to decide not to hold on, not to repeat the story of the crimes committed against us at every opportunity, not to scheme ways of putting myself into the best light because of the wrong done to me. What I am doing in forgiving is voluntarily forfeiting my right to repeat it all over again but choosing instead to let it be finished. And there are three people I will not be rehashing it all over again with. First, to the person who wronged me: I choose not to indulge myself in the luxury of dredging it up once more in cutting reminders. Secondly, I choose not to talk about it to a third party in the form of gossip, regardless of how cleverly I cloak it as useful information. Thirdly, I choose not to repeat it even to myself. This can be the hardest. Sometimes we need some professional help with this one. But even if I cannot forget it, I can at least try not to remind myself of it. I will do my best not to dwell on it, secretly relishing my scars and bruises. I will not keep a list of grievances ready to be retrieved the next time I am hurt.
“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.” Frederick Beuchner
Or to put it another way. Holding onto anger like drinking posion and expecting it to hurt the other person
The word ‘forget’ itself means to let go, to release or send away. Forgiving is not primarily a statement of what we feel about the other person. It is first of all a choice to set aside the wrong that was done and not to bring it up again.
Forgiving someone can be a painful, difficult thing to do. And so it may well be that in certain situations the answer “I cannot forgive you yet – I’m trying, but I’m just not there” is more honest and to be preferred than the glib words “Never mind, it’s okay. Just forget about it.”
The Joseph saga raises the way God is present and active in human affairs. God is not front and centre in Joseph stories, not immediately evident. God is more hidden or submerged, but as today’s story reveals, present nevertheless, working, maybe subtly, maybe unnoticed at the time. Issue here is how and where does God show up?
We need to be careful about this. I think someone can only say the sort of stuff Joseph says about finding God in hardship and injustice and calamity about themselves, not others. It can only be said by an individual about their own lives. You cannot, you must not from both a theological and pastoral angle try and tell someone else in their brutal circumstances that God has really been present despite them not knowing it. It may or may not be true, you just cannot tell someone. It will never turn out well. Oh, you may reflect with someone about it all, if someone is ready and willing to do that
It is something about getting to that place in your life, and it will almost certainly involve distance in time from a grief or a wound, It looked like God was not present; only now I can see some pattern, some good that has come out of it. Joseph gets to that place today. What seemed like his abandonment by both brothers and God is in today’s reading declared by Joseph to be part of a bigger, wider pattern. It is an art only learned by the prayerful and the patient and the grace aware person to be able to take the disparate, confusing, sometimes painful parts of our lives and out of the many strands weave a single strong thread.
Or to change the analogy and image. God has been called, “Divine alchemist”… You know alchemists? They were people who were meant to be able (or at least were trying to work out how to) take the ordinary stuff of life/earth – lead and weave their dark art and turn it into the most valuable stuff – gold. This creative/imaginative God we worship is able to take the ordinary stuff of our lives, and even more stunning some of the absolute blunders, failures and losses and declare we are not forever condemned to live with the resentment of disappointment which is acid for our souls, but is able to bring something good out of it. I have never been able to buy into the notion that God actively brings on tragedy, and my heart recoils within me when I hear of some Christian talking about the most God forsaken calamity in their life, like the death of a child, as God’s will and how they accept even if they do not understand, God’s decision to do this. But I am firmly convinced that God is not limited by our human choices and stupendous blunders. And once made people are not consigned for the rest of their lives to be entrapped into the misery that may have been produced.
Now some people do not get to this position, and I think with some understandable justification. There are some events in people’s lives that are just so horrific that even looking back a person could be excused for saying “I cannot see that there has been any good that has come from that horrendous event”. I think we accept that and honour that. And one day they may find things have changed, or maybe they will not.
How about you? What’s your vision? Take a look at your scars: physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. How can they be openings or occasions for new visions? Joseph looked at the scar of his sale into slavery, and saw that God had a saving plan for his life. Perhaps some abuse you have suffered will enable you to serve people who have been abused; maybe some hurt you have endured will equip you to ease the pain of another; it could be that some loss you have experienced will put you in a powerful position to assist those who are grieving.
We can find meaning in our scars. Our worst experiences do not have to be our last experiences with the alchemist God. The scriptures are very honest and very clear that, “Life works us over before it is done”. Our lives to some extent, a large extent, are the living out of our response. How do we respond? The outcomes of our life has an awful lot to do with that.
There is a postscript to the Joseph story. The story doesn’t just end with Joseph and the youngest loved brother Benjamin embracing in an emotion scene of reconciliation.
Genesis 45 is the theological high water mark of the Old Testament, and is a peer of even the best the New Testament has to offer. Reconciliation should be the fixed point in all our thinking, imagination, labor, and prayers. James Howell
I don’t know if you noticed but the other brothers hadn’t said anything to that point. The story finishes by saying “and Joseph and his brothers talked”. An act of forgiveness and reconciliation is only ever one stage of a journey. The significant act had indeed happened, but now as for us, the implications and continuing story must be played out for the forgiveness to find meaning.
At the end of the story – the end of Genesis… when Jacob has died and Joseph’s brothers are worried that his heart is going to cool towards them, Joseph assures them again of the presence and healing of God. Joseph says, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (50:19-20).
God intends all things for good. It’s been his modus operandi from the beginning. In the beginning, God created the earth good… very good. And here – at the end of the story of Genesis we find the word ‘good’… The God of creation and the God of Israel has only ever been about this one thing… Making and remaking his creation good.
We Sing This is a Day of New Beginnings – (TiS 653)
This is a day of new beginnings,
time to remember, and move on,
time to believe what love is bringing,
laying to rest the pain that’s gone.
For by the life and death of Jesus,
God’s mighty Spirit, now as then,
can make for us a world of difference
as faith and hope are born again.
Then let us, with the Spirit’s daring,
step from the past, and leave behind
our disappointment, guilt and grieving,
seeking new paths, and sure to find.
Christ is alive, and goes before us
to show and share what love can do.
This is a day of new beginnings;
our God is making all things new.
Prayers for Others Paul Tonson
In our life together and in our homes and communities, may we astound others with our commitment to be forgiving and to reconcile those who are at odds.
May we become known as those who enable beauty to merge out of brokenness, hope from despair.
May this corner of Belmore Road become known as a shelter for fragile lives, and a place where the voiceless are heard;
May KHUC be known as friend of those who feel marginalised and overlooked and that they don’t belong.
Spirit of the Holy, Spirit of our Lord Jesus, blow your disturbing wind into our comfortable lives, breathe new life into the energies of all who are part of this congregation.
Come change our love from a spark to a flame.
We share the prayer of Jesus
Eternal Spirit of the Holy, source of all that is and ever shall be,
Loving Parent source of all that is holy,
May the sense of your presence inspire all peoples, and generate a commonwealth of peace and freedom on earth.
May all humanity heed the prophets’ call to justice and compassion.
May we find the bread that we need for today.
For the hurts we cause one another, may we be forgiven in the same measure that we forgive.
In times of trial and temptation, may our integrity win through.
When life seems overwhelming, may our courage enable us to endure;
May your Spirit empower our love to bring reconciliation in every place, as we follow in the Way of Jesus, day by day by day by day. Amen.
We Sing: Beauty for Brokenness – (TiS 690)
Beauty for brokenness, hope for despair,
Lord, in the suffering, this is our prayer.
Bread for the children, justice, joy, peace,
sunrise to sunset your kingdom increase.
Shelter for fragile lives, cures for their ills,
work for the craftsmen, trade for their skills;
land for the dispossessed, rights for the weak;
voices to plead the cause of those who can’t speak.
God of the poor, friend of the weak,
give us compassion we pray;
melt our cold hearts, let tears fall like rain.
Come change our love from a spark to a flame.
Refuge from cruel wars, havens from fear,
cities for sanctuary, freedoms to share,
peace to the killing-fields, scorched earth to green;
Christ for the bitterness, his cross for the pain.
Rest for the ravaged earth, oceans and streams,
plundered and poisoned, our future, our dreams.
Lord, end our madness, carelessness, greed;
make us content with the things that we need.
God of the poor…
Lighten our darkness, breathe on this flame
until your justice burns brightly again;
until the nations learn of your ways,
seek your salvation and bring you their praise.
God of the poor…
Words of Mission and Blessing
We Sing: Now Go in Peace
Now go in peace, now go in love,
from the Father above.
Jesus Christ, the Son,
stay with you till the day is done.
Holy Spirit encircle you
in all you think and do.
Once again, God’s blessing be with us. Amen.
