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Radio 4 Sunday Worship
A service from Farnham United Reformed Church
led by the Minister, the Revd Michael Hopkins with the Revd
Roberta Rominger, General Secretary of the URC
Director of Music Edwin Rolles
Organist John Mansfield
Producer Stephen Shipley
Broadcast:
2 May 2010 0810-0850
Radio 4 Opening Announcement: And now it’s time for Sunday Worship which
comes live from Farnham United Reformed Church in Surrey. It’s led by the
Minister, the Revd Michael Hopkins and the service begins with the choir singing a
short anthem by Samuel Sebastian Wesley: ‘Lead me Lord, lead me in thy
righteousness.’
Anthem: Lead me, Lord (S.S. Wesley)
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Michael Hopkins:
Good morning, and welcome to Farnham United Reformed Church.
We’re situated in the centre of this beautiful Georgian market town on
the border between Surrey and Hampshire. Our church choir has been
augmented this morning by singers from several local choirs and choral
societies. We’re delighted also to welcome the Revd Roberta Rominger,
the General Secretary of the United Reformed Church, who will be
preaching.
This year we’re celebrating our 350th anniversary at Farnham United
Reformed Church. During the English Civil Wars and Commonwealth,
many Anglican Ministers were ejected from parish churches and puritan
Ministers instituted in their place. In Farnham this happened in 1643.
Upon the restoration of Charles the second in 1660 Samuel Stileman,
the Presbyterian Minister, was ejected from the parish church, and a
separate Presbyterian congregation gathered.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century a group of evangelical
Independents left the parish church and built a meeting house. These
two groups soon merged, and in the nineteenth century joined the
Congregational Union of England and Wales, becoming the United
Reformed Church in 1972.
I’m very glad to say that today our relationships with other Christians are
much better!
Throughout the years, our purpose has always been the worship and
praise of God. We do that now as we sing a hymn written by United
Reformed Church Minister Brian Wren.
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Hymn: Christ is alive! (Truro)
Michael Hopkins:
We turn to God in prayer.
Father, we praise you that you have made us in your image, that we are
befriended by Christ, and empowered by your Spirit.
We praise you for your goodness, at the heart of humanity, planted more
deeply than all that is wrong. We praise you for the miracle and wonder
of life, and for your unfolding purposes, forever at work in us and your
world.
Gracious God, we confess to you our brokenness, and the brokenness
of the church and the world, in we which share. We are sorry for the
ways that we wound our lives, the lives of others, and the life of the
world.
God has forgiven you, Christ renews you, and the Spirit enables you to
grow in love.
Move among us, O God, and give us life. Make our hearts clean, and
renew us in mind and in spirit. Give us again the joy of your help, and
with your spirit of freedom sustain us.
And now we join in saying the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples:
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All:
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.
Michael Hopkins:
Our next hymn, which was written by the late George Caird, United
Reformed Church Minister and a former Professor of New Testament at
Oxford University. It contains no less than 17 distinct quotations from
scripture.
Hymn: Not far beyond the sea (Cornwall)
Michael Hopkins:
Our first reading is from the Acts of the Apostles Chapter 11. In
response to the challenge of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, Peter
testified about his participation in the Gentile mission. The issue of
circumcision before baptism was obviously very difficult for Jews who
had come to believe that Jesus was the true Messiah. The crucial
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moment for Peter came when the Holy Spirit fell on the assembled
household in the home of Cornelius, the Roman army officer in
Caesarea as already told in the previous chapter. Now we hear Peter’s
tell of a strange vision that he has.
Myles Harfield: (Reading 1)
Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the
Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to
Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, ‘Why did you
go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’ Then Peter began to
explain it to them, step by step, saying, ‘I was in the city of Joppa
praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large
sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and
it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals,
beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying
to me, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But I replied, “By no means, Lord; for
nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” But a second
time the voice answered from heaven, “What God has made clean, you
must not call profane.” This happened three times; then everything was
pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me
from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me
to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.
These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s
house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and
saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give
you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.”
And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had
upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how
he had said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the
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Holy Spirit.” If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when
we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder
God?’ When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God,
saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that
leads to life.’ (Acts 11:1-18)
Sung Verse - Lord to whom shall we go?
Michael Hopkins:
At the end of the Last Supper Jesus addressed the remaining disciples,
telling them about the importance of loving one another.
Jill Hannan: (Reading 2)
Jesus says, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will
look for me; and as I said to the Jewish authorities so now I say to you,
‘Where I am going, you cannot come’. I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should
love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.”
(John 13:33-35)
Sung Verse - Lord to whom shall we go?
Michael Hopkins:
For the Word of God in scripture, for the word of God among us, for the
Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.
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Our next hymn is from the world church, and elaborates God’s message
of love revealed in Jesus.
Hymn: The great love of God (Thailand)
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Roberta Rominger:
You would have thought that it should be clear sailing for the
Christian Church in that first generation. The leaders there in Jerusalem
had all known Jesus personally, so the authority for their movement was
clear. What would Jesus have said? What would he have done? Perfectly
straightforward.
But it seems that God had other ideas. The story we have just
heard from the book of Acts is crucial to everything that happened next
because it established that there was not going to be any “business as
usual” for the Christian Church. God is always ahead of us, always
calling to us from a deeper, broader, more expansive and inclusive
place, and always impatient for us to catch up. And while it’s only
human that we should try to establish a status quo, get our heads
around things and figure them out so as to know what to expect, what
will be expected of us, where the boundaries are, the minute we get
stuck there, it is not faithfulness. Faithfulness is readiness to listen to
the Still speaking God, readiness to respond.
Peter was as human as any of us, and as one of Jesus’ closest
friends, he had the right (if anybody did) to be confident that he
understood what the way of Jesus was about and how it worked. God
had to be very persistent to break through to him. The dream was
powerful but it didn’t work the first time. Or the second. Or the third, for
that matter. A big bedsheet coming down from heaven carrying an
assortment of all the animals an observant Jew knew you weren’t
supposed to eat. The law was clear. No shellfish. No birds of prey. No
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reptiles. There they all are, and a voice from heaven says, ‘Get up,
Peter, kill and eat.’ Three times Peter gives the right answer – ‘Of course
not, I wouldn’t think of it.’ Peter knew a test when he saw one. But
three times the voice comes back, ‘Who are you to call unclean what
God has called clean?’ It didn’t make sense. Clean and unclean were
clearly spelled out in the Bible. What was this?
(Maybe you too have had dreams that went around in circles. You wake
up more tired than when you started.)
Peter is rescued by a knock on the door. Three men asking if he’ll
come – they have questions about God. He’s tired -- and they’re Romans
– part of the foreign occupation. No reason why he should do anything
for them. But somehow God is prodding him, ‘Go with them!’ So Peter
goes. And finds himself telling the Jesus story to a group of non-Jews,
the first time since Jesus himself that anybody had done that. It was
against all expectations, and when they asked him to stay for a meal, it
was against his religious scruples as well, but by this time it was clear. If
God was in this, and it seemed God was, then God wasn’t a respecter of
Peter’s scruples. God had a different agenda. The bottom line, as Peter
would later convey to his friends, was that it was no business of his to
hinder what God was so clearly trying to do. God was taking a bunch of
outsiders and inviting them in. It was unthinkable and the controversy
nearly took the early Church down before it had had a chance to start.
The arguments might have made election week in 21st century Britain
look tame. Fortunately Peter won. With that the goalposts moved,
massively. Christianity embarked into the great wide world.
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It’s a challenging message for a 350-year-old church like this one
here in Farnham. With all that tradition and experience behind you, how
could you possibly remain open to a restless God who calls from the
future? I can just imagine the church meeting in a place like this if
someone like Peter were to come with his story. ‘Sorry, but you’re
seriously mistaken. We’re very clear who is inside and who is out. We
know clean from unclean. We can quote you the scripture to prove it.
Go away – you’re a heretic.’ We religious people are good at getting
stuck. It’s why there was a Reformation all those years ago, because
God wanted the church to move and the powers-that-be wanted it to
stay the way it was. Sometimes the stuck-ness among us it’s
stubbornness. But sometimes it’s just faithfulness getting it wrong. We
did hear God speak way back when. Goalposts were part of that and we
know where they’re supposed to be. It’s tricky when the Holy Spirit
wants to move them again.
But there’s a test you can use to judge whether some new
initiative is of the Spirit or not. “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus
said to his friends. “Love one another just as I have loved you. By this
everyone will know that you belong to me, if you love one another.”
Peter’s revolution was the discovery that love applied to Romans too.
Love was bigger than he’d every allowed himself to imagine. Love is
always bigger than we imagine.
It means that if a church is to be truly faithful, it has to keep
listening. Its doors have to be open wide. Whenever its first reaction is
to say no, it needs to dig deeper, just to make sure that the trouble-
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making voice isn’t God’s. It means that far from the stereotype we’ve
acquired for tired old prejudices and outmoded thinking, we Christians
should be on the cutting edge of pretty much everything. More
inclusive. More responsive. Committed to justice. Intellectually
adventurous. Morally courageous. People of the big picture, of the future
God wants to build as well as the present we know. If we are anything
other than that, God will get a new reformation going. It has happened
before. It has happened many, many times before.
An example. January a year ago, just after we’d all woken up to
just how disastrous the credit crunch was and the cliff edge we were
walking economically here and around the world, the social responsibility
officers from across the churches organised a day for Christian reflection
on the crisis. It began with analysis of what had gone wrong, as clear
and intelligent an exposition as I have heard or read anywhere, before
or since. And then a new vision. Not an economic recovery to bring us
back to the old familiar oil-guzzling lifestyle many of us had been
questioning anyway, but a new way forward that would deliver
economic vitality and jobs through developing those alternative energy
sources and sustainable technologies that we need if life on this planet
is going to survive at all. It was bracing, not least because it was
practical. I recognised God in it through that combination of a vision that
took my breath away and the utterly practical word that said, start by
doing this.
Make my church inclusive of everyone who hears and believes,
Peter. Start with this guy Cornelius.
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Expect the unexpected. Make love your number one, nonnegotiable criterion. And keep moving. Don’t get stuck. Respond to the
living God who always has more to say. Let obedience be to God first
and to tradition only as it continues to serve God’s ways. It’s a riskier life
but ultimately the only one that can be called faithful.
Anthem: If ye love me (Tallis)
Michael Hopkins:
We now bring to God our prayers of thanksgiving and for those things
that concern us.
David Pain:
Eternal God, we thank you for the witness of this church through the last
350 years, and for the courage and vision of our ancestors in the faith.
In our thanksgiving for the way that you have led us and our fellow
Christians, and are still leading us, we pray for your church. Keep us
always firm to the pattern and perfecter of our faith: Jesus Christ. As we
look back with gratitude, lead us forwards with hope and confidence.
Sung Response: Through our lives and by our prayers, your kingdom come.
Hannah Pilkington:
Eternal God, we pray for your world, seeking faith and hope to lift men
and women above despair; and profound love to prevent any human
being from being left alone. We remember the hungry and homeless,
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and all who are oppressed or persecuted, in this country all around the
world. For them we seek the concern, the gifts, and the service of their
fellow human beings.
Sung Response: Through our lives and by our prayers, your kingdom come.
David Pain:
Eternal God, we lift to you all who are suffer or are in pain, of body,
mind, or spirit; those who face death; those weighed down by their own
guilt; and those weary with the demands of every day and tired of life.
Spirit of the Living God, present with us now, heal them all of all that
harms them, in Jesus’ name.
Sung Response: Through our lives and by our prayers, your kingdom come.
Hannah Pilkington:
Eternal God, thank you for caring about how our country is run, and that
we have the right to vote for our politicians and government. We thank
you for the privileges and responsibilities of living in a democratic
society. Protect us from the sins of despair and cynicism, guard us
against the idols of false utopias and strengthen us to make politics a
noble calling that serves the common good.
Sung Response: Through our lives and by our prayers, your kingdom come.
David Pain:
Eternal God we offer you all our prayers in the name and power of your
risen son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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Michael Hopkins:
And so, we come to our final hymn, Charles Wesley’s much loved words:
Love divine, all loves excelling.
Hymn: Love divine (Blaenwern)
Michael Hopkins:
The Service has ended.
Go in peace and joy,
And the blessing of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Is upon you, and all God’s people, now and forever.
Amen (sung)
Organ Postlude
Radio 4 Closing Announcement: Sunday Worship came live from Farnham
United Reformed Church. It was led by the Revd Michael Hopkins with the Revd
Roberta Rominger. The choir was directed by Edwin Rolles and the organist was
John Mansfield. The producer was Stephen Shipley. Next week Sunday Worship
comes from Tewkesbury Abbey.
A week on Thursday is Ascension Day. To celebrate the festival, Radio 4 will go
live to St Martin-in-the-Fields in London's Trafalgar Square for a Eucharist which,
this year, will feature Vivaldi's vibrant 'Gloria'. The preacher will be the Dean of
Salisbury, the Very Revd June Osborne. If you'd like to be in the congregation at
St Martin's on the evening of May 13th, please be seated by half past seven. Or
you can enjoy the service here on BBC Radio 4, just after the 8 o’clock evening
news
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