Liturgy and Reflection for Lent 2, 28th February 2021

Koonung Heights Uniting Church – Service of Worship at Home
28 February 2021 – 10am or whenever possible

You may like to light a candle as you prepare for this service

Today’s service is led by Ray Michelle – member of Koonung Heights Church Council. Rev Heather is attending Synod.

Worship Preparation:

We listen and reflect: You got a friend (click on the link and skip the ads)

Let us Pray:

Lord Jesus we give thanks for this morning you have called us
Lord Jesus you have called us by name to be here this morning
Lord Jesus we call you name this morning also

Acknowledgement of Country:

As we meet to worship today,

   I acknowledge the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin nation,
   the first inhabitants and custodians of this place
   from time beyond remembering.
I pay my respects to their elders,
   past, present and emerging.
I also remember and pay my respects
   to those who have faithfully worshipped,
   and shared their gifts and lives with us at Koonung Heights.
I pray the God of love will continue to speak to us all.

Call to Worship:

We gather as the children of Abraham,
   descendants, part of the many nations God promised to him.
We gather to worship the Lord our God,
   the maker of the stars,
   the one who calls us to follow.
We gather united in our love for God
   and offer this time of worship.

We sing: God Of Many Names – TiS 180 (click on the link and skip the ads)

1 God of many names gathered into one,
in your glory come and meet us,
moving, endlessly becoming;
God of hovering wings, womb and birth of time,
joyfully we sing your praises, breath of life in every people –

Refrain: Hush, hush, hallelujah, hallelujah!
Shout, shout, hallelujah, hallelujah!
Sing, sing, hallelujah, hallelujah!
Sing, God is love, God is love!

2 God of Jewish faith, exodus and law,
in your glory come and meet us,
joy of Miriam and Moses;
God of Jesus Christ, rabbi of the poor,
joyfully we sing your praises, crucified, alive for ever – [Refrain]

3 God of wounded hands, web and loom of love,
in your glory come and meet us,
carpenter of new creation;
God of many names gathered into one,
joyfully we sing your praises, moving, endlessly becoming – [Refrain]

Prayer of Adoration and Confession:

Creator God, if we are lucky enough
   to be able to see the night sky through the glare
   of artificial light and the fog of pollution,
   we are as awed and amazed by it
   as human beings ever were.

We marvel at the possibility that we might
   nevertheless matter—and matter to you.
With Abraham, we try to count the stars,
   and, having failed, think of all the people
   who came before us, and those who will come after;
   our biological heirs and our spiritual ones;
   those who will remember us when we are gone,
   and keep our name alive, and write the next chapter
   of the never-ending story of your love.

With Peter, we rail at the injustice of good men
and good women dying before their time,
their dreams unrealised, their potential unfulfilled.

We crave the courage that Jesus had; the faith
that enabled him to accept your will;
but we are a long way from achieving it.

Gracious God, as we prepare once again to walk
   with Jesus on the road that has only one end,
   we pray that his spirit may be with us,
   enabling us to grieve—and keep on going;
   to hurt—and bear the pain;
   to question—and go on trusting in your goodness
   and the ultimate victory of love.

Remind us of your promises, O God,
   and of our calling to help you to fulfil them
   in the fleetingly brief time that we are here on earth.
May we play our part in the eternal struggle
   of light against darkness, goodness against evil,
   love against hatred, hope against despair,
   trusting you for all that we may not live to see.

We praise you, O God,
   for the deep mysteries of our faith, and ask you to keep us faithful
   to the one who has called us to leave everything
   to follow him through death into everlasting life.

Amen.

Words of Assurance:

In calling you by name
Jesus was saying,
“If you believe anything, believe you are called”.
Hear the call today, follow the call, and call back.

Thanks be to God.

Passing the Peace:

The peace of Christ has been given to us,
not as a gift of the world which will pass away
but as a gift from heaven which is eternal.
The peace of Christ be with you …

and also with you.

A Time for All:

Have you ever had a nickname? Nicknames are expressions of endearment. Fossil, Poppy, and Squirt tell us about unique qualities and relationships. In a way, when a person is given a nickname, it’s an honour.

It says that there is more to us than meets the eye. We have something very unique that sets us apart. In a world of passwords and PINs, our nicknames give us identity and single us out as gifted and loved.

Sometimes nicknames are used for harm rather than good, and fortunately this type of behaviour is being called out more and more each day, both personally and in the media.

Back to a more positive view point. What do people call you? Those names are rich with promise and tell a story about your relationship. Faye named my Dad “Grumps” which I was never comfortable about, until I met others like Jim Murray who are also Grumps.

It is no different with God. Our name is important to Him. The day your name was proclaimed at your baptism, all of heaven rejoiced. You almost hear the angels shout as the water is poured: “Here is Elizabeth Marie. She will be a doozie of a disciple!” Then, your name will be said again at your confirmation, your wedding or maybe even court appearances and finally as your body returns for your funeral. God revels in your name as a sacred thing.

Yet, I believe that God also enjoys a good nickname. You know of that Scripture passage that says God has written our names on the palm of God’s hand. Could it be that God loves to be with us and softly whispers that nickname in our ear: Joyful One, My Fixer, Steadfast Servant, Little One? It is that name that he writes on His hand. After a lifetime of discovering God’s nickname for each of us through prayer and presence with him, God greets us at the entrance to heaven with open arms to welcome us. There it is! On God’s hand is written our nickname. When we recognize it, God embraces us with all the love those words mean to both of us and our heaven begins as God says, “I have called you by name: you are mine…you are precious in my eyes”.

We sing: His Banner Over Me Is Love (click on the link and skip the ads)

Bible Reading: Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16 – The Covenant of Circumcision

¹ When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him. He said, “I am the Mighty God. Walk faithfully with me. Live in a way that pleases me. ²I will now act on my covenant between me and you. I will greatly increase the number of your children after you.”

³Abram fell with his face to the ground. God said to him, ⁴“This is my covenant with you. You will be the father of many nations. ⁵You will not be called Abram anymore. Your name will be Abraham, because I have made you a father of many nations. ⁶I will greatly increase the number of your children after you. Nations and kings will come from you. ⁷I will make my covenant with you last forever. It will be between me and you and your family after you for all time to come. I will be your God. And I will be the God of all your family after you.

¹⁵God also said to Abraham, “Do not continue to call your wife by the name Sarai. Her name will be Sarah. ¹⁶I will give her my blessing. You can be sure that I will give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations. Kings of nations will come from her.”

Bible Reading: Mark 8:31-38 – Jesus Tells About His Coming Death

³¹Jesus then began to teach his disciples. He taught them that the Son of Man must suffer many things. He taught them that the elders would not accept him. The chief priests and the teachers of the law would not accept him either. He must be killed and after three days rise again. ³²He spoke clearly about this. Peter took Jesus to one side and began to scold him.

³³Jesus turned and looked at his disciples. He scolded Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You are not thinking about the things God cares about. Instead, you are thinking only about the things humans care about.”

You Must Pick Up Your Cross

³⁴Jesus called the crowd to him along with his disciples. He said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must say no to themselves. They must pick up their cross and follow me. ³⁵Whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me and for the good news will save it. ³⁶What good is it if someone gains the whole world but loses their soul? ³⁷Or what can anyone trade for their soul? ³⁸Suppose anyone is ashamed of me and my words among these adulterous and sinful people. Then the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

Watch and listen to the reflection

Reflection: Called by name

How old are we when we first start responding to our name, our parents use this generally from the day we are born and the stimulus response occurs as a learned behaviour. You could say that happens with animals too, but I am still on my P plates with that one, although Murphy was Scrappy when I got him.

Our first name we are referred to, was almost always referred to as our Christian name. Interesting has this has slowly dropped from being the norm over time. The origins I have read is at the Christening, would be when the parent would announce the babies actual name. Naming is quite a process, and you hopefully will know the story, if there is one, of why you were named what you were.

Often of course tradition gets added in and often included in subsequent name. Added to this comes the confusion such as my Dad, and Phil Walter and Joy, who are / were all called by their second name. Some of us shorten our names also, Raymond to Ray. This is before we get into surname which is a whole other topic.

The other day Heather and I were doing a visit when were told that the person we were visiting had an Aunty Elizabeth. She was actually her third, and the two previous in the same family had passed, so the name had subsequently passed to the next child.

If you are a parent of either a human or an animal you will have gone through a process of deciding what you will call the off spring. If you become a grandparent etc you again may have the choice to be called something different also.

If you were to change your name, what would you change it to? Have you ever thought of it? Some people do by choice, some do when they confirm their gender, and as we spoke earlier in the year some take one when they are confirmed. What name would you want to have if you were in any of the mentioned situations? Perhaps share with those around you this morning.

In today’s reading from Genesis, we hear that God changes Abram name to Abraham, as he promises to give him more descendants than can be counted if he obeys him. He also later in the reading which we did not have today, changes his wife’s name to Sarah in instead of Sarai.

This week’s question is: “Why does God in Genesis 17:5 change Abram’s name to Abraham?” He was called to God by his name, why change it?

To answer this question well, a little context is first needed, which I have only had recently. As recounted in Genesis 12, Abram is called by God to leave his family’s land in Ur and travel to the land of Canaan, a land that God promises he will give to him and his offspring forever.

But there is a problem. Abram is childless and very old. This means he cannot fulfil the promise of God. If he does not have a child, his descendants will not be from his family line, but from another family line. In this anxiety and worry, Abram is met by God with another promises, a promise that rings through the rest of Scripture as the beginning of the faith — the beginning of the people of God.

God promises that despite Abram’s advanced age, he will father a son to be his rightful heir — a miracle in itself. After God revealed this to Abram, Moses records this: “[God] took [Abram] outside and said, ‘Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ And he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ Then he believed in the Lord; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.” (Gen 15:5-6)

Now, fast forward two chapters to today’s reading. In chapter 17, God gives Abram the covenant of circumcision, to be an outward sign of this promise. But God does a strange thing here: he renames Abram to Abraham. Why? The answer is in the meaning of the name! In the original Hebrew language of the Torah, which is the first five books of our Old Testament, the name Abram literally means “exalted father.” The name Abraham, however, contains another unused root word, which roughly means “multitude.” Abraham translated literally, then, means “father of a multitude.” Most modern Bibles that contain footnotes will annotate this literal meaning of the Hebrew in the margin.

This is helpful for my understanding and having the context helps this.

This is not exclusive to the Old Testament either; in the new Testament we have Saul becoming Paul and Simon to Peter.

The point I am trying to make is God knows you by name, if the name is in the earthly world changed, God still calls you by name.

In the Gospel reading today where Jesus speaks about this suffering and his death, and Peter calls him a side and says, please don’t speak like that. Jesus is not happy and then blames Satan.

You see Jesus knew he was going to be called by God by name his son, and yes he was going to suffer, yet for others around including disciples they really did not want to hear or consider this.

For some of us here will have been with people who are being called to God by name. They have terminal illness, they have maybe tried and are worn out, and many and not all can be great examples of knowing what is coming, yet those around us, seem to put our blinkers on, and this is for various reasons, like protecting ourselves, pretending it’s not going to occur and maybe this is just a bad dream. However like Jesus they are being called by name home. It can be a very moving time and an amazing example to us too.

Jesus calls us all by name, our name, even if we earthly change it, he knows our name.

He calls each one of us to follow him, he calls each one to love him, he offers each one his love and care, this he does by name, your name.

Amen.

We Sing: Old Abram Was Blest (to the tune “O Worship the King, All Glorious above)
(Tis 133)

Old Abram was blest and Sarai was, too,
When God called their names and said, “I choose you!”
I’ll give you descendants like stars up above —
Too many to count, and a sign of my love.”

That old couple laughed at what God might do.
Was what they had heard impossibly true?
For they had no children to carry their name —
Yet God promised nations would rise out of them.

God promised to them a life that was new:
A new set of names, a new future, too.
They faithfully trusted — that husband and wife;
Soon Sarah and Abraham found a new life.

O God, in your love, a whole nation grew;
You called them to be a blessing for you.
You sent them, you send us, to be this world’s light.
Your promise still shines like the stars in the night.

Prayers for others (Prepared by Peta Lowe)

Creating and sustaining God, we pray for your world, in all its beauty and diversity, and with all its problems and fears.

We remember communities around the world ravaged by CoVid19; those who are ill, those who are worried about loved ones, those who have been bereaved, and all the health care workers.

We pray for scientists and researchers working hard to develop vaccines, treatments and management strategies for CoVid19, and also those working to advance the treatment of other diseases that effect many people, such as cancers, heart disease, stroke, dementia and neurological diseases.

We pray for equitable distribution of vaccines and access to medical treatment.