Sunday's coming!

This week we celebrate the 236th anniversary of Keyston URC, and our harvest! I have split the 'sermon' into 2 talks on each reading   Psalm 145: 1-9   Talk 1: Giving thanks The Psalms are the hymn book of the Bible – they are words used to express what people want to say .. or sing.. about the God they believe in, and the way their lives are with God taking care of them.   This Psalm (145) was written in Hebrew as an acrostic – with each line starting with a different letter of the alphabet. In English it would be a line beginning with A, then B, then C and so on.   You have heard how many times that Psalm talks about praising God – or proclaiming how great God is, or thanking God. I think the idea of an acrostic is the writer’s way of amazing us with a great list of things God has done.   Let’s try it! Let’s see if we can think of things to thank God for starting with each letter of the alphabet (or at least the first 9 letters, as we had the first 9 verses of...

Psalm 103: 1-13; Matthew 18: 21-25 The shape of Psalm 103 can help us to shape our harvest celebrations today. It starts “Praise the Lord, O my soul… And forget not all his benefits” We have come to this chapel to celebrate harvest because we know that everything comes from God, and without God’s love there would be no world, no life, no harvest. There is so much to give thanks for. Be brave & shout out some of the things you are grateful for – it could be something you see here today, or something else… .. that’s a pretty impressive list of things for which to praise God. After praising God for all the good things with which he has blessed human lives, the Psalmist moves on to talk about what this generous God is like: “The Lord works righteousness and justice for the oppressed…he made known his ways.. he is compassionate and gracious, abounding in love.. “ God is not just a kind of divine vending machine for the stuff we need in our lives, God is love, patience, grace… The harves...

 Passover… why do we remember? You might wonder what the release of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt has to do with us – why should we read it and think about it? But the reading itself not only tells the story of what is about to happen, but tells the people of God that they should always remember it.  God declares what will happen, and tells his people what to do.  They have to act in absolute faith that God is about to help them and they are told how to remember this act of God for generations to come.  God will save his people. His people must never forget it. This is a living story, lived through, recounted, re-enacted, remembered, re-lived for thousands of years – remember the story of Jesus getting lost at the age of 12 and being found in the temple? – it was the feast of Passover that the family were celebrating in Jerusalem.  It is a vital story and for the Jewish people it is still alive to this day. And we, too, have stories which we repeat ...

This service was a church anniversary, reception of new members and a 'taster' for lego church... Exodus 1:8-14. This might seem a very gloomy reading with which to start our anniversary service, but we’re taking our Old Testament reading in three parts today to help us reflect on the way life can be; the help God sends us; and the way we see God in action. This first part helps us reflect on the way life is, sometimes… Joseph’s life certainly had its ups and downs (even if you just think of the events recounted in the musical version “Joseph and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat”). He was the favourite of the 12 sons, his brothers plotted against him which led to him being sold into slavery in Egypt, he was wrongly accused of attacking Potiphar’s wife and was imprisoned, he managed to gain respect as a prisoner because of his ability to interpret dreams, which led to him being summoned to the Pharoah, made an official in charge of food distribution in a time of famine, so tha...

Genesis 37: 1-4, 12-28   Matthew 14: 22-33 As the readings today teach us to wait for the help God gives us, so the sermon is in two parts – we will look at the Genesis reading first, and wait a little while in our service to hear the Gospel reading and reflect a little on that.   We might think we know the story of Joseph and his technicolour dreamcoat and of Jacob -  Jacob and sons   - thanks to Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice and their musical. But the way the book of Genesis actually tells the story is distinctly less perky and, at first, strangely less ‘religious’: God isn’t mentioned at all in this first part of the story.   Instead what we have is a complex family drama – which might be thousands of years old, but still resonates with us today. This is the same Jacob who tricked his brother Esau out of his birth-right, and then acquired a new name ‘Israel’ when he met and wrestled with God. Jacob’s 12 sons have 4 different mothers – sisters Rachel ...

Isaiah 55: 1-5; Matthew 14: 13-21   Our reading from Isaiah prompted one of my friends, Phil, who is a minister in Cambridge to say that, for him, this is a description of “the department store of God’s grace”. I love that phrase  - the department store of God’s grace.   Everything people need is offered to them by God – free of charge – come if you are thirsty or hungry or tired; come if you are dispirited, or feel unloved, or hopeless. Come  - listen and see – and God’s grace will provide everything you need.   The original message was given to the people of Israel when they were about to return to their land having been held in captivity in Babylon. It was a message of comfort, of assurance that God still cared for them, that the department store of God’s grace was open to them and that God would supply everything they needed. This is a message which is just as relevant for our society today. We were discussing this at the Zoom Bible Study on Tuesda...

Church anniversary     Matthew 13: 24-30   I read a few weeks ago about a theological tutor who used to ask his students “What is the biggest problem facing the churches today?”. They would talk about increasing secularism, growing crime rates, the apathy caused by materialism… and then he would tell them “the biggest problem for the churches today is coping with the overwhelming abundance of God”.   In the same way, as we look back over 165 years of witness in this chapel, I think our biggest problem is not an ageing population, or Christian disunity, or rival activities on Sunday morning – I think our biggest problem is trying to work out how on earth we can show people the overwhelming abundance of God – the ridiculously huge measure of grace and patience and love that Jesus shows us exists at the heart of God. And I think that reading this parable shows us just how amazing God is.   At first hearing, we might think this is a very straightforward parable from...