Koonung Heights Uniting Church
Service of Worship at Home
Pentecost 20 – 26 October 2025 – 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: “Halle, halle” – (TiS 720)
Halle, halle, hallelujah! Halle, halle, hallelujah!
Halle, halle, hallelujah! Hallelujah, hallelujah!
Candle Lighting:
We light this candle
to remind ourselves of the light of Christ
that is within and among us.
Praise be to God, who spoke Light into the world,
who sends Light to live among us,
who brings the Light of new dawns.
Amen!
Acknowledgement of Country:
This land is God’s land
and God’s Spirit dwells here.
As we gather this day,
I acknowledge the Wurundjeri WoiWurrung
People of the Kulin Nations,
traditional custodians of this land under God.
May we all commit ourselves again
to working for reconciliation of this land
and her peoples.
Call to Worship:
This is the day that the Lord has made:
a day for praise and prayer;
a day for gratitude and generosity.
This is the time God has given us:
a time for singing and silence;
a time for speaking and listening.
This is the life to which God calls us:
a life of humility and service;
a life of faith and trust.
Let us come and worship God together.
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 his 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 Praise, Thanksgiving and Confession:
Amazing God,
we praise you for who you are –
the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator,
the Holy One who is greater than we can imagine
and yet as close to us as the air we breathe.
We give you thanks that out of your generosity
you bless our lives in so many ways:
the beauty and abundance of nature,
the love of family and friends,
the joy of knowing you and hearing your Word.
We thank you for the gift of Jesus,
the One who shows us the way to life,
and whose life was broken for our sake.
We thank you for your Spirit that enables us
to dream your dreams
and see visions of the world as you created it to be.
O God of all creation,
we have heard your call to be followers of Jesus
and work out our lives in ways that honour you:
to live with kindness and compassion for one another,
yet, too easily, we get it wrong.
Forgive us, gracious God,
when we have limited our dreams and the dreams of others.
Forgive us, God of all wisdom,
when we have claimed to have a superior faith or way of life.
Forgive us, ever-present God,
when we have ignored the callings of the Spirit to be new every morning.
Forgive us, compassionate God,
when we fail to live lives of compassion and kindness to one another.
Help us to become more truly your people,
chosen and ready to make your love a living reality
at this time and in this place and in our community.
In Jesus’ name we pray,
Amen.
Words of Assurance:
The God of creation is a God of mercy.
God is quick to forgive and God’s promise of restoration is for all people.
Friends believe the Good News of the Gospel:
in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.
Thanks be to God!
Passing the Peace:
May the peace of God dwell with you:
and also with you.
Time for All:
In our gospel reading set down for today, we hear two about two men who are both praying in the same place, but in different ways. One is standing where everyone can see and speaking loudly, and the other has found a quiet place where he prayed, possibly with tears in his eyes. In light of this story, I thought it might be interesting to spend a couple of minutes talking about prayer.
To begin, I have a couple of questions. Firstly – have you prayed today? We have all joined in a prayer I led earlier in this service, but have you prayed today? Secondly – what do you find is the easiest thing about praying and what is the hardest? I invite you to share what you are thinking with the person next to you.
Sometimes prayer is easy and sometimes it’s hard, but basically it’s a conversation with God. It is a bit like talking to your best friend, and God always wants to hear from us. It is an important time when we can say thank you, please and sorry to God.
Remembering how to pray and who and what to pray for can be quite overwhelming. When I was a child I was taught to remember the how and who and what of prayer through the formula JOY. You’ve possibly heard it too – Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last!.
First we can focus on how amazing God is and say ‘thanks’ for all that God has done, for sending Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Second we can pray for other people, for the things that they need and for the things we hope will be part of their reality. Sometimes people ask us to pray for them which can be quite helpful. We pray for ourselves last as an act of humility, but still knowing that God wants to hear our prayers too.
In a moment we are going to sing together. As we do this, I invite you to come and light a candle as a way of saying thank you, please or sorry to God. Let us pray as we sing.
We Sing: “Thank you for giving me the morning” – (TiS 162)
Thank you for giving me the morning, thank you for ever day that’s new,
thank you that I know that my worries can be shared with you.
Thank you for all my friends and helpers, thank you for people everywhere,
thank you for showing me, Lord Jesus, how to help and care.
Thank you for times of working, playing, thank you for all that I can do,
thank you for all that’s bright and cheerful, and for music too.
Thank you for comfort in my sadness, thank you for all who understand,
thank you that your hand holds and leads me, everywhere I am.
Thank you for speaking to me Jesus, thank you for meeting with me here,
thank you, because you love all people, those both far and near.
Thank you that you’re so good and loving, thank you that I am filled with you,
thank you, you make me feel so glad and thankful as I do.
Bible Reading: Joel 2:21-32 (The Message)
– The Trees Are Bearing Fruit Again
21-24 Fear not, Earth! Be glad and celebrate!
God has done great things.
Fear not, wild animals!
The fields and meadows are greening up.
The trees are bearing fruit again:
a bumper crop of fig trees and vines!
Children of Zion, celebrate! Be glad in your God.
He’s giving you a teacher
to train you how to live right –
Teaching, like rain out of heaven, showers of words
to refresh and nourish your soul, just as he used to do.
And plenty of food for your body—silos full of grain,
casks of wine and barrels of olive oil.
25-27 “I’ll make up for the years of the locust, the great locust devastation –
Locusts savage, locusts deadly, fierce locusts, locusts of doom,
that great locust invasion I sent your way.
You’ll eat your fill of good food. You’ll be full of praises to your God,
the God who has set you back on your heels in wonder.
Never again will my people be despised.
You’ll know without question that I’m in the thick of life with Israel,
that I’m your God, yes, your God, the one and only real God.
Never again will my people be despised.
The Sun Turning Black and the Moon Blood-Red
28-32 “And that’s just the beginning: After that –
“I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters.
Your old men will dream, your young men will see visions.
I’ll even pour out my Spirit on the servants, men and women both.
I’ll set wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below:
Blood and fire and billowing smoke, the sun turning black and the moon blood-red,
Before the Judgment Day of God, the Day tremendous and awesome.
Whoever calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help.
On Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be a great rescue – just as God said.
Included in the survivors are those that God calls.”
Bible Reading: Luke 18:9-14
– The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Reflection:
Have you ever been involved in a massive catastrophe, or perhaps only looked in via TV or another media? The first time I was aware of a catastrophe was probably before I knew what the word meant. It was Christmas Day in 1974. I had just turned 7 and we were sitting on the lounge having breakfast before getting ready to go to Church. Dad turned the television on to ABC, but not long after he turned it off, because the pictures were too traumatic for little eyes. While I don’t remember what I saw, I still have a strong memory of my eyes being glued to the screen and feeling sadness for children who would not get any Christmas presents, as well as a little concern that I might be asked to give a Christmas gift of mine away before I got to open them! Cyclone Tracey had crossed Darwin at around 3.30am completely destroying the city.
Even if we are not personally part of a disaster, the impact is such that we can often remember where we were when a particular event happened … the Granville rail disaster and 9/11 are etched in my mind, and I’m sure memories of certain events are etched in yours. A dynamic common to all catastrophe is the way people come together in the aftermath. This might begin through necessity, but as people continue to work together and support one another new life emerges and community begins again. Restoration is possible. Both of our readings today touch on restoration – restoration of a community in the reading from Joel and restoration of individuals in the parable from the gospel of Luke.
The book of Joel is full of poetic and prophetic language. While the context is unknown, scholars believe it was written around 400 BCE after the rebuilding of the temple, and the return of those who have been in exile. In the reading for today we hear of an overwhelming calamity that has overtaken the people – a locust plague which has devastated the community. The locusts are described as an army that comes and cleans out everything in its path, and maybe it was a military conquest rather than an army of insects than destroyed the community.
At the time Joel was writing, just like today, people wanted explanations for why natural disasters happened. Prophets often made sense of natural disasters saying that they were punishments from God, punishments for things the community had done wrong. Prophets counted this by saying that God was also powerful enough to stop anything, so that any judgement could be overturned. Into this context we hear the prophet’s words of promise and hope; a promise which is about the renewal of the community but also of something more that will come in the future.
Today we look to science and weather patterns to explain why natural disasters happen, and while we don’t understand them to be punishments from God, we are coming to recognise that some of our own unfolding environmental disasters are due to climate change, of which we are the primary cause. The prophets of old called the people to repentance. We, too, need to take seriously those things from which we need to repent. The hope of repentance is that we might turn to a new path which will bring restoration and change things for us and our world.
Continuing with this theme of restoration, we hear the parable from Luke’s gospel This is a familiar story, yet it has some traps that we need to be wary of. We tend to think of tax collectors as people who are left out of society but included by Jesus, and while this is sometimes the case, it’s not really that simple, and there is good reason for this, for tax collectors had a tricky relationship with their own communities. Tax collectors were commonly those who make money out of people’s vulnerability – maybe a little like people smugglers do today. Similarly, we tend to assume that all Pharisees were against Jesus, but they were simply one group within Judaism who were quite like Jesus followers in many ways.
In this parable we need to understand that the religious leader is not a bad person. Yes, he is confident of his space in society, but he is faithful and observes the things that the scriptures demand of him. It seems that he genuinely wants a relationship with God and is working towards that. On the other hand, the tax collector is probably not a good person. Working for the Romans he is a traitor to his country and acquires wealth at the expense of his community. Not only is he not liked by the community, it seems that he doesn’t like himself, slipping as he does into the corner of the synagogue.
The reality is that both of these characters are dependent on God, but they engage in different ways. Jeff Shrowder names it will in his poem Them and Us.
Two men express in prayer their life and world and hope;
one quite smug, the other made right with God.
We hear these two pray, yet looking deeply inward,
see in each ourselves.
The text tells us that these two men travel home, and that one is justified, the tax collector, rather than the other, but Amy Jill Levine suggests a different interpretation of this text. In her Annotated New Testament, Levine notes that the word translated as ‘rather’ in this text, is translated as ‘alongside’. In fact, this is the only time in the gospel that it is translated this way. What would it mean if we read the end of this story as saying that these two men travel home, justified alongside each other? Could it be that as the two men travel home, rather than being alone as they were when they are praying, they are restored through finding community with one another?
They both travel home and probably continue with life much as they have before – the Pharisee continues to be a Pharisee and the Tax Collector continues to be a Tax Collector. The text doesn’t suggest anything else, yet as praying people, I sense that the good news of Christ is available for each of them. We are never excluded from the good news of Christ, even when we try to exclude ourselves.
We, too, will go home today and probably continue with life much as we have before. Yet, even though this is our reality, and we don’t want to step away from what is comfortable, Christ continues to offer us the hope of restoration. This is good news for each one of us.
Amen.
We Sing: “A Pharisee Was Praying” – (Tune TiS 457)
A Pharisee was praying; he proudly stood alone:
“God, thank you that I’m better than others I have known.”
He saw the faults of others, yet in that holy place,
he missed the joy and wonder of God’s amazing grace.
Far off in that same Temple, a tax collector stood.
He knew he was a sinner; he knew that God is good.
“Have mercy, God, upon me!” the tax collector cried.
He left that place of worship forgiven, justified.
O God of love, forgive us when we look all around
and think that, by our actions, we stand on solid ground:
we pray, “See how we serve you! We work and volunteer!
Aren’t we the ones whose giving builds up your kingdom here?”
May we, your church, be humble in serving you each day,
for pride will never help us to walk your kingdom-way.
May we know your forgiveness — our need for mercy, too –
that, loved and loving others, our life may be in you.
Prayer for Others (prepared by Bryan Long):
Note the prayer response this morning …
Lord, hear our prayers and make us instruments of your peace.
I invite you now into a moment of contemplative silence, knowing that we pray to the God who has each of our names written on the palms of his hands ….
Loving, healing God, we hear the stories of your love in the sufferings of the world – and also in the struggles of our own lives. Jesus’ stories make us think. Who do we identify with – the pharisee or the tax collector? How do we encounter grace and support from others? We come seeking your grace of healing in the hidden depths of our own souls — and in the brokenness all around us. We seek your touch, for it is in healing and compassion that we find you. Help us to open our hearts to everyone we meet, to reach out our hands with understanding, and offer love without condition.
Lord, hear our prayers and make us instruments of your peace.
God of justice and peace, we pray for the people of Israel and Palestine, of Russia and Ukraine, and those suffering from conflict in so many parts of your world. We shake our heads with disbelief when we see the bodies of children carrying the ravages of war. We pray for lives lost, families torn apart, homeless, hungry, afraid. We pray for rescuers finding survivors, courageous, undaunted and hopeful. We pray for wholehearted commitment to recovery in the years to come, for true restoration, for generosity, for healing,
Lord, hear our prayers and make us instruments of your peace.
God of grace, forgive us in our brokenness; when we have taken too much from the earth; when we have not spoken out against greed and destruction; when we have allowed our most vulnerable neighbours to be harmed. We pray for those people, communities and nations already suffering the devastating effects of climate change, and we pray for the diversity of life on earth, so much of it already threatened by our actions. We pray for a new harmony within us, and between us.
Lord, hear our prayers and make us instruments of your peace.
God of community, we pray for ourselves, for Heather, our soon to be new Church Council, our leaders and teachers, and all those who serve in our church. In a time of many trials for the church, stir us where we are complacent; give us an awakening where we have lulled ourselves into spiritual self-satisfaction.
Enable us to see that we ourselves are marginalized, and that you invite us into new shapes and structures for the church which are relevant to the present and the future.
Lord, hear our prayers and make us instruments of your peace.
God who loves us all, we pray for those who are dear to us and who carry pain, who face sickness, who grieve, who are weary and dispirited, who wonder where the church is leading them. We name them silently in our hearts before you now.
(time of silence)
Lord, hear our prayers and make us instruments of your peace.
Loving God, when it seems there is no hope in the world, we see your light in the eyes of a child. When it seems there is no joy, we hear you in the voice of a friend. When all seems emptiness, we touch your presence in the hand of a stranger. Thanks be to you O God, for your embodied love. Open our senses to your presence that we may always endeavour to love you in all of creation.
And now we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us –
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name;
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth 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: “Be thou my vision” – (TiS 547)
Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart,
naught be all else to me, save that thou art
thou my best thought by day or by night,
waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.
Be thou my wisdom, be thou my true word;
I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord;
thou my great Father, thy child let me be;
thou in me dwelling, and I one with thee.
Be thou my armour, my sword for the fight,
be thou my dignity, thou my delight;
thou my soul’s shelter and thou my high tower;
raise thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.
Riches I scorn and the world’s empty praise,
thou my inheritance, now and always:
Thou and thou only the first in my heart;
high King of heaven, my treasure thou art.
High King of heaven, after victory won,
may I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
still be my vision, O ruler of all.
Blessing and Sending:
Go into the world,
renewed in hope and restored by God’s vision.
Go into the world
to share God’s grace and mercy.
Go into the world
and proclaim the Good News
of what God has done for you.
To that end,
may the blessings of God be with you
this day and forevermore.
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: The Fig Tree Worship, MinistryMatters.com, Billabong Worship Resources, www.laughingbird.net and www.pilgrimwr.unitingchurch.org.au.
A Pharisee was Praying © Carolyn Winfrey Gillette.