All Age Eucharist – Sunday 31st July

This morning we considered the most important things in our lives using three symbols from today’s Gospel reading:

[Jesus]  told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:13-21)

Our symbols were a farmer, a barn and some money.

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In our prayers of confession we brought to God the times when we have loved the wrong thnings or been greedy or mean. After some silence we brought gold coins (not real ones!) and placed them near Jesus’ feet using our very special crucifix [ this crucifix was left outside the church doors a few years ago with a request that we look after it. At the time it had only one leg and one arm looked a real mess. We had it restored at Ormesbys of Scarisbrick and now we have a most beautiful crucifix. It was lovely to use it in our worship this morning.] I lit a candle afterwards and we talked about how God forgives us even when we keep on doing the same wrong thing over and over again .

In our sermon we thought about who Jesus might have told his story about today – maybe a wealthy banker, a celebrity or a business tycoon. But we also thought Jesus might have told his story about us – we are so wealthy in comparison to most people in the world and it’s easy for us to get confused about what we really need and what our wants.

What might the farmer have done instead of knocking down his barns and building bigger ones? He could have given some of his crops away to people who were poor and hungry. One of children thought a barn extension would have been better than wholesale demolition as it would have been less wasteful of resources: so we talked about the waste we create in God’s beautiful world.

We finished by talking about the things that matter – our families, friends, our faith, and God who is love – these are our true treasures.

Alison lead us in our prayers of intercession we spent some time thinking about the things that are truly valuable in our lives – faith, wisdom, family and so on. We then all placed a second gold coin near Jesus’ heart as we brought these most precious things to God.

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For the first time today we gave out percussion instruments for the children (and the young at heart) to use in the choruses of our final hymn. ‘Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord let the peoplerejoice was, therefore, full of fun and rejoicing. IMG_20160731_110321125

 

 

 

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It was good to hear afterwards that some of our newer members feel they are learning week by week about the Christian faith and Christian values. Someone asked me a question about different sorts of Christians – and I was delighted to have a chat to enable people to understand.

This is my last service for some time as I’m having a knee replacement on Wednedsday. I’ll be bask as soon as possible

 


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