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Please note: This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors that were corrected before the radio broadcast. It may contain gaps to be filled in at the time so that prayers may reflect the needs of the world, and changes may also be made at the last minute for timing reasons, or to reflect current events. 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) Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 1 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. Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 2 Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 3 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: Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 4 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 Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 5 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 Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 6 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. Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 7 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) Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 8 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 Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 9 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. Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 10 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- Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 11 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. Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 12 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, Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 13 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. Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 14 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 Sunday Worship, Farnham URC 02/05/10 15