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Mothering
Sunday Notes 2020
2
Corinthians 1:3-7 (p1158)
Luke
2:21-40 (p1027)
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livestream to Bodle Street Green & Warbleton Facebook Pages
9:30am
Sunday 22nd March 2020
Common
Worship Morning Prayer on a Sunday
[Tell Out My Soul Music]
Good morning!
And welcome to our service for Mothering Sunday, 22nd March, The Fourth Sunday of Lent.
Welcome from all corners of the internet, and especially to those connected to Warbleton, Bodle Street Green and Dallington.
Although we’d much rather be together in the flesh, it is a wonderful blessing to able to be together virtually like this – and of course in Christ, untied by the Holy Spirit to all God’s people down the centuries and around the world.
When I started planning this service, I thought we’d be having all age family service fun of some kind.
You can find the order of service for that on my blog.
But I’m not going to subject you to that today.
And you’ll be pleased to hear I’m not going to sing to you!
If you want to include hymns and you’re watching the recording, you could just pause it wherever you like to sing or listen to songs.
The internet has everything you could possibly want and more!
We were going to do Tell Out My Soul, The Mighty Son of God, Love Divine and In Christ Alone, but you might have better ideas or other favourites.
If I can, I might play a little bit of Love Divine during the service and In Christ Alone at the end.
Until further notice, and unless there’s is an uproar to the contrary, I’m going to be using Common Worship Morning Prayer on a Sunday with the Lectionary readings, and you can find that easily on the Church of England website, if you want to read along and join in with the responses.
You could even Google that now while I do about a million other notices so that you’ll be ready when the service proper actually starts.
Do stay on for coffee afterwards if you can – you’ll have to provide your own - and hang out in the comments!
Discuss the sermon – nicely!
The Archbishops have asked us to observe today as a special day of prayer and action.
One specific action they’ve asked us to take is to light a candle in our windows at 7pm as a sign of the inextinguishable light of Jesus, who shines in the darkness which cannot overcome it.
Don’t set fire to your curtains, but it would be good to do that as a small act of public witness.
I do encourage you to avoid all unnecessary social contact as long as that’s the government advice, both for your own sake and as a very real way of loving your more vulnerable neighbours.
But do keep in touch.
Feel free to phone my landline or mobile or email or Facebook or Tweet.
Email Steve if you’d like the weekly notice sheet and sign up for our emails under CONTACT on the Warbleton church website.
Text me your name and number if you’d like to join our Warbleton church WhatsApp group.
Do let me know if you need, or can offer practical help.
We are hoping to meet every Wednesday for prayer, Bible study and fellowship from 7:30pm with a formal finish by 9pm using Zoom, so do download that and I’ll let you know how you can join our meeting.
I think it’s possible to join in even by landline if you’re not online.
I think that’s all so let’s just be quiet for a moment and then we’ll begin.
* * *
This first reading is one of the set readings for Mothering Sunday, but I confess that I chose it with the corona virus situation in mind:
2 Corinthians 1:3-7 (p1158)
That passage deserves a sermon.
And this is not the best way to read the Bible normally, but for today, I just want to pick out one boiled sweet from the box and encourage you to suck on it today and this week:
Notice that description of God at the beginning in v3:
THE FATHER OF COMPASSION AND THE GOD OF ALL COMFORT
God your loving heavenly father feels for you in all that you’re facing or fearing.
Our God is the God of all true, and ultimate, and lasting comfort.
We so easily look to other false gods for comfort in times of difficulty and distress, but we should lift our eyes and hearts and minds afresh to:
THE FATHER OF COMPASSION AND THE GOD OF ALL COMFORT
Why not dwell on that phrase?
THE FATHER OF COMPASSION AND THE GOD OF ALL COMFORT
And as Paul says, God comforts you so that you can comfort others with God-given comfort.
Others will need comfort in the months ahead.
So make sure you receive comfort from God so that you have some comfort to give out.
It’s no good trying to serve God and others on empty.
We can’t get through this well by our own unaided resources.
God first loved us, and that enables us to love others.
Our comfort comes from him in the gospel of Jesus Christ and he gives us more than enough, spare comfort to overflow to others.
Our hope is firm.
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.
We know we may suffer, but we know God himself, the Father of Compassion, will comfort us.
* * *
I’ve slightly extended our reading from the Lectionary because I wanted you to get Simeon and the blessing of peace through meeting Jesus.
Luke 2:21-40 (p1027)
The actual lectionary reading is that little snippet in vv33-35.
This mothering Sunday, I want to say 6 things about Mary, the mother of God.
Here they are in one sentence:
(1)
Although some make too much of Mary,
(2)
she is a wonderful example to us of
faith in Christ.
(3)
She lived with strangeness and
uncertainty.
(4)
She believed and obeyed the Word of
God.
(5)
She treasured up these things in her
heart.
(6)
She faced suffering for the sake of
Christ.
* * *
(1)
Although some make too much of Mary,
Some people pray to Mary.
And call who co-redeemer.
And Queen of Heaven.
And think she was miraculously preserved from the stain of original sin.
And that she didn’t die but was assumed bodily to heaven.
All those things are mistakes, I think.
The Bible tells us how to worship God and those things are without a Biblical basis if you ask me, which I accept you didn’t!
What would the Bible say, but that we and Mary alike are sinner saved by grace?
She calls God her Saviour.
Mary was a godly virgin, but that doesn’t mean she was sinlessly perfect.
Mary seems not always to have got it right.
Sometimes she must have had questions and doubts.
She found it hard to get her head around the teenage Jesus that day when he stayed behind in the temple, and who can blame her?
At one point, Jesus’ family come to take charge of him thinking he’s lost his mind!
But although not perfect,
(2)
Mary is a wonderful example to us of
faith in Christ – many would say the supreme example.
Just because some people have gone overboard on Mary, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have much to learn from her.
Even if some people wrongly drive at 100 miles an hour, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t drive at 70mph.
Maybe we could say Mary was the first New Testament believer.
She put her trust in her son and that’s what we should do.
That’s what she’d want!
She would have us focus on Jesus.
“It’s all about the boy” she’d say.
Jesus’ mum like Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, would say:
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
“He, Jesus, must become greater I must become less.”
Mary is confessed by the church as the Mother of God, the God bearer.
But can you see that’s really a title about Jesus, not about Mary?
What does it tell us about Mary?
She was a mother.
Well we knew that!
The great question is who was her baby:
He was God:
God incarnate:
God made flesh:
The eternal creator as an embryo:
God made small and weak so that Mary gave birth to God as a human being.
In Jesus, God came to be with us and for us, to save us!
And that’s good news for us if we face any kind of threat or crisis or fear.
This passage is somewhat about Mary but it’s really about Jesus.
Jesus will cause the falling and rising of many in Israel.
He is the child of our destiny.
All human history pivots on him.
It’s appropriate that his birth divides our calendar.
But every individual life turns on Jesus too.
Life and death and eternity depend on what you make of Jesus.
There is no more important question than this.
What do you make of Jesus?
And what would he say to you?
Have you come to terms with Jesus?
One day you will meet him as you judge.
Do you know him now as your Lord and Saviour and Friend and Brother?
He is the stone the builders rejected which has become the cornerstone.
You can either build your life on the sure foundation rock of Jesus Christ, or you can be dashed to pieces by him.
That is the stark alternative the Word of God lays before us.
He will cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, in the ostensible church.
Is that talking about two groups or one?
Perhaps it’s two groups:
Some will fall (group 1); others will rise (group 2).
Certainly that’s true.
Humanity is divided between those who reject Jesus, who will fall, and those who trust in Jesus, who will rise.
But maybe only one group is spoken of here:
We must fall and then rise if we are to come to Christ.
We must fall at Jesus’ feet in repentance and faith so that he will raise us up.
As Mary said in her famous song, humble yourself and God will lift you up.
God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
He brings down princes from their thrones and exalts the lowly and meek.
He feeds the hungry and the rich he sends empty away.
In the tops turvey kingdom of God, the way up is down.
God’s favourite shape is a tick:
Down a bit and then up a mile!
May that be the shape of the our lives and society in the wake of the Corona Virus outbreak too!
We may go down to the depths, but God can raise us to the skies.
Yes, death, maybe, but resurrection.
(3)
Mary lived with strangeness and
uncertainty.
There’s a cartoon which you might think is blasphemous, which I think is very funny, which I might have shown you if this was an all age service:
It shows Jesus as a toddler having a bath:
But of course he’s walking on the water!
Now I’m sure Jesus didn’t do that.
But it must have been rather weird having God as your firstborn.
Nothing can really prepare parents for the shock of a baby, but none of the books will have had a chapter on how to parent your Maker.
This wasn’t what Mary had asked for or expected.
The virgin will conceive and be with child.
How can this be?!
Unprecedented and unique are much over used words.
They certainly apply to the virgin birth.
And they probably apply to the Corona virus too.
Pope Innocent III excommunicated King John between 1209 and 1213 and imposed an interdict during which no church services took place.
And now again the churches are closed down.
Even during the second world war, schools managed to stay open.
We are living through very strange and uncertain times.
So did Mary.
And here’s how she coped with it and how we can too:
(4)
She believed and obeyed the Word of
God
Mary said to the angel: “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”
Like the disciples later, she could have said: “Nevertheless, according to your word.”
She takes God at his word.
What God says she will believe and do.
Mary shows us humble, quiet, patient trust in God.
I don’t need to have all the answers or know all the whys and wherefores.
I have the word of God and by his grace I’m going to live by that, depending on him.
Let’s be like Mary!
(5)
She treasured up these things in her
heart
What could you ponder from today’s service this week?
Maybe its that phrase from earlier:
THE FATHER OF COMPASSION AND THE GOD OF ALL COMFORT
Or something about Mary.
Ultimately it must be something about Jesus.
We should try to stock our hearts and minds well.
Treasure Jesus in your heart.
Ponder him and his word.
Maybe this week you could memorise a simple Bible verse so that you can think and pray about it.
(6)
Lastly, Mary faced suffering for the
sake of Christ
It’s not a very happy prospect, is it:
“A sword will pierce your own soul too.”
Mary would watch her eldest son cut off in his prime,
Something heart breaking for any parent.
It was terrible suffering.
But Mary could face it for Jesus’ sake.
Some of us may face terrible suffering in the months ahead.
But we too can face it with Jesus and for Jesus.
(1)
Although some make too much of Mary,
(2)
she is a wonderful example to us of
faith in Christ.
(3)
She lived with strangeness and
uncertainty.
(4)
She believed and obeyed the Word of
God.
(5)
She treasured up these things in her
heart.
(6)
She faced suffering for the sake of
Christ.
Like Mary, may we know THE FATHER OF COMPASSION AND THE GOD OF ALL COMFORT.
Amen.
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