The
Holly and the Ivy,
Are
dancing in a ring,
Round the berry-bright red candles,
and
the white and shining King.
And One is for God's people
In
every age and day.
We are watching for His coming.
We believe and we obey
Song: Hark the glad sound.
Prayers:
Father, let your hope arise in our hearts! Lift our eyes up to see that you alone are where our hope comes from. Help us to shake off the anxiety, discouragements, and distractions that have filled this year.
May we pause to remember that we have hope in you.
You know the end of our stories, and we give thanks because you have promised that it will be a victorious ending. Give us the grace we need to wrap up this year joyfully.
We invite your Spirit into this beautiful Advent season. Renew our sense of holy anticipation! Let us be those who are waiting eagerly for Jesus to come again.
More than anything, we ask that you be glorified in this season of expectation. Amen.
Dear Heavenly Father, it’s the first Sunday in Advent, a season of anticipation and celebration—a time to reflect on every good thing you’ve already done for us in Jesus, and the glorious things yet to be realized.
You’ve made promises you alone can keep; you give peace that can be found nowhere else; you’ve pledged a hope you alone can fulfil. We praise you; we bless you; we worship you. As Advent progresses, fill us to overflowing with gratitude, humility and joy.
Father, grant us intense longings—like the ones that filled the heart of the people before us. The promise of grace and the Spirit of Christ thrilled them, as they anticipated the era of the Messiah—the time when you would begin to make all things new through Jesus.
Lord Jesus, multiplied “glories” have already come to us, and many, many more will follow, all because of the sufferings you offered on our behalf—once and for all. Indeed, every promise God has made finds its “Yes!” in you. May this entire Advent season bring us back to your manger, back to your cross, back to your empty tomb; and moving forward with you into your new creation story.
Long expected Jesus, you have come and you are coming again. You are the desire of every nation; you are the joy of every longing heart. By your all sufficient merit, you have raised us and you will raise us yet. So we pray, with gratitude and anticipation, in your loving and triumphant name.
Amen
Reading: Book of Isaiah, chapter 51: verses 4 to 11
Song: An army of ordinary people
An Army of Ordinary People - YouTube
Reading: Luke’s gospel, chapter 3: verses 23b to 38
Reading: 1st letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 1: verses 1 to 10
Song: Thy hand O God has guided
Thy Hand, O God, has guided - Peterborough Cathedral - YouTube
Prayers:
In the light of Isaiah’s vision of all nations streaming to the mountain of God let us dare to pray for the peace and justice that we long for:
Living God, on this first Sunday of Advent, we bring our longings to you. We are waiting. We are yearning. For we, and our world, are in need of healing.
So we pray that you may suddenly return and never, never more thy temples leave.
Prince of peace, we pray that swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks in Ukraine and in places of conflict around the world. We pray for all who are working for justice and reconciliation and all who are suffering as a result of war both directly and indirectly across our global village with pressures on food, fuel and places of safety.
May our country be a place of safety and flourishing for those who come in need sanctuary.
Creator of this amazing world in which we live, we pray in the wake of COP27. We ask that all the commitments that have been made should be kept urgently. And that governments and peoples across the globe should continually see the need for more, and quicker, responses to global warming, until the tide of action flows around the world.
Righteous one, as the World Cup puts the spotlight on Qatar and Iran, we pray for the protection of migrant workers around the world and for the breaking down of barriers between people so that all may be valued for who they are, wherever they are, for we are each your child, made in your image.
Loving God, As the weather gets colder we pray for all for whom the cost of living is a crisis. We rejoice that during the pandemic everyone was offered a place to stay, but we are concerned that many do not now have adequate housing. We hold up to you the parents of Awaab, whose mouldy accommodation contributed to his death and all those whose housing is simply not good enough. We remember too all those who are sleeping on the streets or sofa surfing, unable to find good accommodation.
Jesus our healer, as we hear of the pressures on the NHS, we thank you for the staff who are doing an amazing job in difficult circumstances. As we pray for the health of our own health system, we are conscious of the many millions across the world without access to good health care and of the places where healthcare is only available to a fortunate few. We hold up to you now all those places and people and pray for a just and equal sharing of all the things that earth affords. To a life of love in action help us rise and pledge our word.
We pause before you now in silence to hold up to you those who are particularly on our hearts today….
Amen.
Song: I want to walk with Jesus Christ
I Want To Walk With Jesus Christ Song Lyrics Video - YouTube
“The People”
I never knew my grandpa. He died before I was born, but I heard the family stories about him, And feel that in a very real sense I did know him. He was very skilled with numbers. In the days of the old money in Britain, he could go down the three columns (pounds, shillings and pence), and arrive a total at the bottom, where most people would have to add up each column separately. I did not inherit this skill. It may have been due to this that he was a skilled dominoes player, it is said that he could infer what other players had in their hands because of what they played; then he would say what they ought to have played. I, on the other hand, built towers with dominoes. It was my ambition to build a tower with every domino in the set. Since I played with a “double 9” set that would have been a very high tower.
To build such a tower depends on the base. How well the early layers were placed. Not all the dominoes are the same, some are worn, sometimes the table is a bit wonky, But if the ambition is to be fulfilled, every domino must be used, even the damaged ones.
Some of you may be familiar with the “Harry Potter” books. In the first one, Harry, a boy wizard raised by non-magic people, has just met Ron, a member of a long established wizard family: “Are all your family wizards?” asked Harry, who found Ron just as interesting as Ron found him. “Er – yes, I think so,” said Ron. “I think Mum’s got a second cousin who’s an accountant, but we never talk about him.”
Many families have people that they do not talk about. Perhaps you have a relative that for some reason you don’t talk to. Perhaps you don’t even know why! I remember that when I was looking into our family tree, I asked Dad about a name I had encountered. “All I know is that she is called “X”, and she wasn’t talked about” was his reply. I never found out why.
Sometimes it is because of ill-health, or some disability, sometime because of behavioural difficulties, or sometimes because of a lifestyle choice, or mistake.
In Jesus’ genealogy, we don’t know much about most of the names mentioned. Some people are apparently given different names between Matthew and Luke! Those who we know things about are not all paragons of virtue!! Some would be people who were not talked about in family discussions.
But, they all played their part. They all have some responsibility for Jesus’ family.
They were all used by God in the fulfilment of his plan.
Round the edge of a standard U.K.£2-00 coin, there is an inscription, “Standing on the shoulders of giants”. According to Wikipedia, the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" is a metaphor which means "using the understanding gained by major thinkers who have gone before in order to make intellectual progress".It is a metaphor of dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants (Latin: nanos gigantum humeris insidentes) and expresses the meaning of "discovering truth by building on previous discoveries".
This concept has been dated to the 12th century and, according to John of Salisbury, is attributed to Bernard of Chartres. But its most familiar and popular expression occurs in a 1675 letter by Isaac Newton: "if I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Stephen Hawking stated: "Each generation stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before them, just as I did as a young PhD student in Cambridge, inspired by the work of Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein."
Writing about the Talmud in the 12th century.
Should Joshua the son of Nun endorse a mistaken position, I would reject it out of hand, I do not hesitate to express my opinion, regarding such matters in accordance with the modicum of intelligence allotted to me. I was never arrogant claiming "My Wisdom served me well". Instead I applied to myself the parable of the philosophers. For I heard the following from the philosophers, The wisest of the philosophers was asked: "We admit that our predecessors were wiser than we. At the same time we criticize their comments, often rejecting them and claiming that the truth rests with us. How is this possible?" The wise philosopher responded: "Who sees further a dwarf or a giant? Surely a giant for his eyes are situated at a higher level than those of the dwarf. But if the dwarf is placed on the shoulders of the giant who sees further? ... So too we are dwarfs astride the shoulders of giants. We master their wisdom and move beyond it. Due to their wisdom we grow wise and are able to say all that we say, but not because we are greater than they.
The visual image (from Bernard of Chartres) appears in the stained glass of the south transept of Chartres Cathedral. The tall windows under the rose window show the four major prophets of the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel) as gigantic figures, and the four New Testament evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) as ordinary-size people sitting on their shoulders. The evangelists, though smaller, "see more" than the huge prophets (since they saw the Messiah about whom the prophets spoke).
Some of you will remember the moon landings. This was the Apollo programme, culminating in the 6 landings between 1969 and 72.
Now we have the Artemis programme, land on moon, to build a base on the moon and in orbit around it.
Named Artemis because in mythology, she was the twin sister of Apollo!
How many people can currently say that they have landed on the moon? 12 walked, but Hundreds, or even thousands can say that they have landed!! They are all interdependent. Everyone of them played their part, from scientists, engineer and technicians, but also caterers and cleaners! They “Stood on each others’ shoulders."
Whose shoulders do we stand on? Who are responsible for us being here today?
We can all think of people who have made us the people that we are.
There is a story of God looking for a nation to be his people. He went round the different nations and asked them what they would do for him, if they were to be his chosen people. In their turn, the different nations said that they could; Write great literature; Build great monuments; Produce great works of art; Fight wars for him.
Eventually, he came upon a nomadic tribe in the middle east. They apologised that they were unable to do anything of this. They were a nomadic people, who had no use for great monuments, great literature, or great works of art. They had little ability to fight great battles, but they said that they would tell God’s stories to their children whilst they sat round their fires at night. “Its a deal” said God.
Today we celebrate the people of history, who told the stories. Who kept the faith. Who encouraged and inspired others (and us.) All of them. Not just the paragons. Not just the perfect. Not just the divine. All who played any part in God’s plan.
May we continue to follow in their footsteps.
Song: There’s a light upon the mountains
