Sunday Worship 19th April

The Methodist Church – Ministries and Vocations

Sunday 19th April 2020

This short act of worship has been prepared for you to use as you are unable to attend church. If you are well enough why not spend a few moments with God, knowing that other people are sharing this act of worship with you.

Opening Prayer

In places of darkness and in the fullness of light

Christ is risen

In times of doubt and in strength of faith

Christ is risen

In our pain and in our joy

Christ is risen

The Lord is risen

He is risen indeed! Hallelujah

Hymn: This joyful Eastertide (StF 314)

Sing/ Read /pray /proclaim the words or listen to it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tipsbcfuB4

This joyful Eastertide,

what need is there for grieving?

Cast all your cares aside

and be not unbelieving:

Come, share our Easter joy

that death could not imprison,

nor any power destroy,

our Christ, who is arisen!

No work for him is vain,

no faith in him mistaken,

for Easter makes it plain

his kingdom is not shaken:

Then put your trust in Christ,

in waking and in sleeping.

His grace on earth sufficed;

he'll never quit his keeping:

Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000)

Let us pray together

In the chaos before anything was, Lord, you spoke bringing life in abundance.

We praise and adore you, God of life

In the darkness of an early morning garden and the dank coldness of death and the tomb, Lord, you spoke bringing resurrection, defeating death and giving us abundant life

We praise and adore you, God of Life

In the dark places of our lives, Lord, you speak and bring recreation transformation and calling us to life in abundance

We praise and adore you, God of Life

God of abundant life,

you have called us to be your people and to walk in your way but there are times when we wander away, when we close our ears to your call and our eyes to your life. We remember those times before you.

Take all we have been and done and all we have left undone and transform it through your love and grace.

Open our ears to your words of forgiveness and our eyes to your glory.

May we hear the words

"Your sins are forgiven"

and know their truth.

Amen

Today's Reading from the Psalms: Psalm 16

Today's Gospel Reading: John 20: 19-31

Time to Reflect

What does resurrection mean?

Shut behind closed doors for the disciples it comes first in disbelief, confusion and fear. The inability to believe Mary's words, to take in the impossibility. The fear that they might follow to a terrorist's death. Confusion that it could all have come to this.

Into those shut doors and fearful hearts Jesus comes to bring resurrection and peace. It is a resurrection that does not turn back the clock, does not erase the horror of the Friday but bears its marks and is recognised by them. Without those marks, the pierced hands and side, the resurrection could not be real, the life it offered could not be full.

It is a resurrection that joins the disciples where they are shut behind the closed doors of the room and of their fear. That again seeks them and Thomas out behind closed doors a week later. It's a resurrection that will seek us out where we are and however we are feeling. It does not expect us to make a leap of faith and travel towards it but comes to us and meets us in our need.

It is a resurrection that offers life, calling forth peace and breathing the Spirit echoing God's breath at the dawn of creation or the breath of the Spirit in Ezekiel's Valley of bones. It comes to empower and to change and to lead us onwards into the Kingdom of abundant life.

But stop, notice the closed doors, not just at the first encounter but the second as well. It appears Thomas isn't the only one doubting. The disciples are still locked in. John's "Pentecost Moment" is not met with the throwing open of doors or the shouting of praises or the preaching of sermons. In John the giving of the Spirit is met with a gradual resurrection and empowerment of the disciples which crescendos with Thomas's declaration 'My Lord and my God!' It echoes Lazarus's first stumbling steps from his tomb before he is released from the grave clothes that bind him.

Take a time to sit quietly

A time of prayer

Into the closed doors of this world

come, Lord, and speak your word of peace and life

We pray for all those who are afraid at this time.

We pray for all those who are ill and for those who yearn for their health.

We pray for those who are homeless and for those who struggle to feed themselves and their families.

We pray for those who have lost their incomes or whose businesses are at risk.

We pray for all those who offer care during this crisis often putting their lives at risk to do so.

We pray for our government and all the governments of the world, for business leaders and all who hold any power.

We pray for those who feel voiceless and powerless.

We pray for those situations that no longer make the headlines for those suffering from conflicts, war and oppression, for those seeking refuge and those who have no place of safety.

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father ......

Hymn: Listen to Now the green blade rises (StF 306)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bwVEIxKp-0

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,

wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;

Love lives again, that with the dead has been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid him, Love who had been slain,

thinking that he never would awake again,

laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,

he that for the three days in the grave had lain,

quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen:

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,

then your touch can call us back to life again,

fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:

John Macleod Campbell Crum (1872-1958) (alt.)

or

Lord I lift your name on high (StF 332)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6I6orjM3NI

Lord, I lift your name on high,

Lord, I love to sing your praises;

I'm so glad you're in my life,

I'm so glad you came to save us.

You came from heaven to earth

to show the way,

from the earth to the cross

my debt to pay,

from the cross to the grave,

from the grave to the sky:

Lord, I lift your name on high.

Rick Founds

or sing a verse of a hymn that comes to mind

A prayer of blessing

May the light of the resurrection shine on your way

May the peace of the resurrection hold you fast

And may the abundant life of the resurrection fill you and empower you

And may the blessing of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be with you now and always.

Original Materials by R A Bending

Songs published under CCLI No 1144191