Sundays at All Hallows (Sunday, February 19, 2023)

Welcome to Sundays at All Hallows. The best description of All Hallows Murray is an online gathering place for Christians and those exploring the Christian faith. The services of praise, proclamation, and prayer that are offered on this blogsite are not intended to replace those of a local church but are offered for the benefit of those who are unable to attend a local church for any reason, who may be traveling, or who wish to test the water before taking the plunge, or who otherwise may benefit from them.

The services are asynchronous. While two weekly services will be posted—one for Thursday evenings and the other for Sundays, they can be accessed at any time. The format of the services occasionally will be changed. The present format is the pattern of worship for Sundays and other occasions described in The United Methodist Book of Worship (1992).

When All Hallows Murray was initially launched, Zoom was used as the platform. Zoom, however, can present a number of problems for those who do not have the equipment or technical know-how to make use of that platform. Blogger, on the other hand, is fairly low-tech and enables those accessing the services to participate without feeling self-conscience.

Blogger also lends itself to small group participation as well as individual participation. A laptop can be hooked up to a multimedia projector and the parts of the service can be projected onto a portable screen. The members of the small group can divide among themselves who reads what. All can join in the hymns and songs.


Opening Hymn:

Sing amen.
Amen, we praise your name, O God!
Sing amen.
Amen, we praise your name, O God!
Sing amen.
Amen, amen, amen, amen,
Amen, we praise your name, O God!

[Repeat ad libitum]

Greeting:
The high and lofty one who lives in eternity,
the Holy One, says this:
“I live in the high and holy place
with those whose spirits are contrite and humble….”
Isaiah 57: 15

Anthem:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Dan Schute’s “Send Us Your Spirit, O Lord.” [WnS #3185]


1. Send us your spirit O Lord.
Evening enfolds us and holds us too near.
Wake the morning light.
Make our living bright.
Shine on our darkness O Lord.

*2. Hold us with mercy O Lord.
Sorrow has spoken, has broken our hearts.
Clothe us in your care.
Be the life we bear.
Feed us and fill us O Lord.

3. Teach us your wisdom O Lord.
Shadows have clouded, have crowded our sight.
Give us hearts that see.
Set our loving free.
Hear us and help us O Lord.

4. Send us good summer O Lord.
Winters have chilled us, and stilled us too long.
Give us love’s own fire.
Be our true desire.
Send us your spirit O Lord.

*Omitted on the video.

Hymn of Preparation:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Scott Wesley Brown’s “More Like You.” [TFWS #2167]

More like You Jesus
More like You
Fill my heart with Your desire
To make me more like You
More like You Jesus
More like You
Touch my lips with holy fire
And make me more like You

More like You Jesus
More like You
Fill my heart with Your desire
To make me more like You
More like You Jesus
More like You
Touch my lips with holy fire
And make me more like You

More like You Jesus
More like You
Fill my heart with Your desire
To make me more like You
More like You Jesus
More like You
Touch my lips with holy fire
And make me more like You

Lord You are my mercy
Lord You are my grace
All my deepest sins
Have forever been erased
Draw me in Your presence
Lead me in Your ways
I long to bring You glory
In righteousness and praise

More like You Jesus
More like You
Fill my heart with Your desire
To make me more like You
More like You Jesus
More like You
Touch my lips with holy fire
And make me more like You

Lord you are compassion
And never ending love
Lord, you have redeemed me
By your priceless blood
Create in a clean heart
A spirit that is pure
The joy of my salvation
Is only found in you

More like You Jesus
More like You
Fill my heart with Your desire
To make me more like You
More like You Jesus
More like You
Touch my lips with holy fire
And make me more like You

More like You Jesus
More like You
Fill my heart with Your desire
To make me more like You
More like You Jesus
More like You
Touch my lips with holy fire
And make me more like You
Touch my lips with holy fire
And make me more like You


Opening Prayer:
Let us bow our heads in prayer.

Silence

Gracious God, you call us on a journey
to grow in grace and holiness.
As we travel on that journey
give us an assurance of your loving presence,
that, filled with your Spirit,
we may work with you, and our fellow pilgrims,
in the transformation of our churches and our communities
so that they become signs
of your kingdom of justice and joy. Amen.
The Revd. Ian Howarth

Scripture Reading:
A reading from the New Testament (Luke 6: 37-42)

“Do not judge others, and God will not judge you; do not condemn others, and God will not condemn you; forgive others, and God will forgive you. Give to others, and God will give to you. Indeed, you will receive a full measure, a generous helping, poured into your hands—all that you can hold. The measure you use for others is the one that God will use for you.

And Jesus told them this parable: “One blind man cannot lead another one; if he does, both will fall into a ditch. No pupils are greater than their teacher; but all pupils, when they have completed their training, will be like their teacher.

“Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but pay no attention to the log in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Please, brother, let me take that speck out of your eye,’ yet cannot even see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

Silence

This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

Plain Talk: Judging Others

Is Jesus telling us in today’s New Testament reading that we should not form an opinion of others and pass judgement on them, saying whether we think they are good or bad? Rather we should reserve judgment or make no judgment at all. This is how the passage is sometimes interpreted. Too often this interpretation is then used as an excuse to speak and behave in ways that Jesus himself taught were unacceptable.

Jesus passed judgement on the Pharisees and the teachers of the religious law, taking issue with what they did and drawing attention to the discrepancies between what they said and how they acted. Was Jesus contradicting his words with his actions? What conclusions are we to draw?

So what did he exactly mean when he said, “Do not judge others…?”

To better understand what Jesus meant, we need to examine all of what he told his disciples and the crowd that was listening in on what he was teaching his followers. Key to understanding what Jesus is saying, I believe, is what he tells the disciples about forgiving others, not only in this passage but elsewhere in the Gospels. For example, he taught them that when they prayed, they should ask God to forgive them as they forgave others. In other words, to ask God to be forgiving toward them as they were forgiving toward others. Earlier in the Sermon on the Plain Jesus had instructed his disciples to be merciful just as God was merciful. When we show mercy toward someone else, we show them kindness and forgiveness when we are in a position to withhold kindness and forgiveness from them. As his disciples, they were to show mercy to others even though they might be in a position not to show them mercy. They were to imitate God’s mercifulness, one of several positive attributes that form God’s hesed, God’s lovingkindness.

In today’s reading Jesus is telling them that if they expect to avoid God’s condemnation, they should avoid condemning others. If they expect to receive God’s forgiveness, they should show forgiveness toward others. If they expect to benefit from God’s generosity, they should show generosity toward others. He goes on to say, “The measure you use for others is the one that God will use for you.” In other words, how we treat others is how God will treat us. He is tying God’s treatment of us to our treatment of others. Jesus not only teaches others the way we would have them treat us but also to treat others as we would have God treat us.

What Jesus is not telling us that we should not draw to someone attention that their words and actions are not acceptable, based on what Jesus teaches, or represent attitudes, ways of thinking, and behavior that Scripture considers wrong. Jesus refused to condemn the woman caught i adultery, but he did not condone what she had done. Rather he told her to go and sin no more.

Jesus certainly not implying that because he teaches his disciples not to condemn others, to forgive them, and to be generous to them, that we have license thereby to do as we please, to do, as the Bible puts it, what is right in our own sight. We are not the determiner of what is right or wrong. God is. This is the biblical view and Jesus upholds this view in his teaching. In an age and culture which elevates self as the final arbiter of what is right or wrong for us, this view may not sit well with us. However, it is the view that Jesus taught.

Jesus goes on to teach his disciples that before we offer to help someone else correct what we perceive to be their faults, we should first examine ourselves, identify what our own faults are, and attend to them. Jesus appears to have recognized in his followers and others the very human tendency to focus someone else’s faults while overlooking our own. We may even project our own faults onto that person, imaging that they feel a particular emotion or want something when in fact it is we who feel this way. Jesus also appears to have recognized the very human tendency to shift blame from ourselves to someone else when something goes wrong. Some people go through life, leaving behind them a string of broken or damaged relationships, never acknowledging their contribution to the rift between them and the other person and blaming the other person for what happened.

The Gospels tell us that Jesus was not only an astute observer of human behavior, but he could also see beyond outward appearances and see people’s innermost thoughts and feelings, an ability which the Bible attributes to God and one of the ways that Synoptic Gospel infer that Jesus was God. Other ways that the Synoptic Gospels infer that he is God is that he still the wind and waves, raises the dead, cleanses lepers, heals the blind and the lame, expels demons, and feeds a crowd with a boy’s lunch. As Jesus himself tell his disciples, “What is humanly impossible is possible for God.”

Among a number of very human tendencies Jesus appears to have recognized in his followers and the multitude was the proclivity to quickly form an opinion of people and situations based upon the scantiest of evidence; to give more attention to negative information about people and situations and to disregard any positive information; to see people in the worst possible light; to think about the worst possible things that could possibly happen in a situation or to consider the situation as much worse or much more serious than it really is; to make a mountain out of a molehill, to make a slight difficulty seem like a serious problem; to misconstrue someone else’s words and actions and to form a false understanding of the meaning or intention of something that they said or did; to think that we are always right; to not give someone else the benefit of the doubt and believe something good about them, rather than something bad, when we have the possibility of doing either; to say one thing and to do another, to not live by the standards that we expect others to live by or by which we claim to live; to make excuses for ourselves and let ourselves off easily while holding other people’s feet to the fire; to not communicate our boundaries and expectations to others and then act punitively toward them when they overstep our boundaries or fail to meet our expectations.

These are the kinds of things which I believe that Jesus had in mind when he talked about examining ourselves first and identifying our own faults. He was talking about more than our moral failings. He is talking about our attitudes and ways of thinking that may cause us to see wrongdoing in the words and actions of others where there may be nothing wrongful at all. We have formed an opinion about them, which is inaccurate or wrong. When we attend to our own faults, we may discover that other people do not need our help in correcting theirs. We were mistaken in our perceptions of them. We judged them wrongly.

Examining ourselves and identifying our own faults requires that we be totally honest with ourselves and not gloss over the weaknesses in our character and the distortions in our thinking and treat them as unimportant. We may not like what we find in ourselves. As we recognize our own imperfections and our need for grace, we are more likely to recognize that others need grace too, not just from God but also from us. They need compassion, forgiveness, generosity, kindness, and patience. Whether they deserve it, whether they are worthy of it, does not matter. God shows us compassion, forgiveness, generosity, kindness, and patience regardless of whether we deserve it, regardless of whether we are worthy of it. That’s why it is called grace. It unmerited and unearned.

What Jesus is telling his disciples and the multitude is that God expects us to relate to our fellow human beings with the same kind of grace with which God relates to us. In doing so as Jesus had already told them, they would be showing that they were indeed children of God. They are relating to others in the same way that their Father in heaven relates to them. They would be copying God’s own character as children copy the qualities of their parents. This is something that we need always to keep in mind: we show ourselves to God’s children when we act like God. God shows grace to us so that we may show grace to others.

Silence

Hymn of Response:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Eddie Esponsa’s “Change My Heart O God.” [TFWS #2152]

Change my heart, O God,
Make it ever true;
Change my heart, O God,
May I be like you.

Change my heart, O God,
Make it ever true;
Change my heart, O God,
May I be like you.

You are the Potter,
I am the clay;
Mold me and make me,
This is what I pray.

Change my heart, O God,
Make it ever true;
Change my heart O God,
may I be like you.

You are the Potter,
I am the clay;
Mold me and make me,
This is what I pray.

Change my heart, O God,
Make it ever true;
Change my heart O God,
May I be like you.

Concerns and Prayers
The following is prayed, during which any person may offer a brief prayer of intercession or petition.

After each prayer, the leader may conclude: Loving God and all may respond: Hear our prayer.

Pray for the Church throughout the world – that the Spirit will revive and refresh the Church in every part…

Pray for our local church and the churches in our area – that we may be waiting attentively for the ways God is speaking through the Spirit…

Pray for those who come to our church, and for those on the fringes - that they may have an assurance of God’s love and know that they are saved through Christ…

Pray for those who are in leadership in the Church - that they may be strengthened and upheld in their ministries…

Pray for those whom we know who do not know of God’s love – for friends or family, for neighbors or colleagues, that God’s Spirit may fill their hearts…

Pray for the Kingdom of God - that it may break through in us and among us, that the earth may be filled with the glory of God…

Pray for ourselves - that God’s Spirit will speak in our hearts, that we may be bold to proclaim the gospel in our words and actions…

Other biddings may be added here to reflect local circumstances.

We make our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, as we join in the words that he himself has taught us:

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.


Closing Hymn:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Bob Kilpatrick’s “In My Life, Lord, be glorified.” [TFWS #2150]

In my life, Lord,
Be glorified, be glorified.
In my life, Lord,
Be glorified today.

In your Church, Lord,
Be glorified, be glorified.
In your Church, Lord,
Be glorified today.

In my heart, Lord,
Be glorified, be glorified.
In my heart, Lord,
Be glorified today.

In my life, Lord,
Be glorified, be glorified.
In my life, Lord,
Be glorified today.

Benediction:
May the Lord bless us and keep us,
May the Lord make his face to shine on us and be gracious to us,
May the Lord look on us with kindness and give us peace. Amen.

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