You may wish to light a candle at the start of this time of worship.
May the grace, mercy and love of God be with us all. Amen.
Collect
God our saviour, look on this wounded world in pity and in power; hold us fast to your promises of peace won for us by your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Confession
Let us call to mind our sins, and make confession to our heavenly Father.
You were sent to heal the contrite: Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
You came to call sinners: Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
You plead for us at the Father’s right hand: Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
May the God of love bring us back to himself, forgive us our sins, and assure us of his eternal love, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
God’s Word - Romans, chapter 6, verses 12 to the end :-
Sin must no longer reign in your mortal body, exacting obedience to the body’s desires. You must no longer put any part of it at sin’s disposal, as an implement for doing wrong. Put yourselves instead at the disposal of God; think of yourselves as raised from death to life, and yield your bodies to God as implements for doing right. Sin shall no longer be your master, for you are no longer under law, but under grace.
What then? Are we to sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Of course not! You know well enough that if you bind yourselves to obey a master, you are slaves of the master you obey; and this is true whether the master is sin and the outcome death, or obedience and the outcome righteousness. Once you were slaves of sin, but now, thank God, you have yielded wholehearted obedience to that pattern of teaching to which you were made subject; emancipated from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness (to use language that suits your human weakness). As you once yielded your bodies to the service of impurity and lawlessness, making for moral anarchy, so now you must yield them to the service of righteousness, making for a holy life.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. And what gain did that bring you? Things that now make you ashamed, for their end is death. But now, freed from the commands of sin and bound to the service of God, you have gains that lead to holiness, and the end is eternal life. For sin pays a wage, and the wage is death, but God gives freely, and his gift is eternal life in union with Christ Jesus our Lord.
Matthew, chapter 10 verses 40 to the end :-
Jesus said, ‘To receive you is to receive me, and to receive me is to receive the One who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will be given a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a good man because he is a good man will be given a good man’s reward. Truly I tell you: anyone who gives so much as a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is a disciple of mine, will certainly not go unrewarded.’
Thanks be to God, for this his holy word. Amen.
A Reflection on the Reading
Slavery played a bigger part in the history of our land and in the process that formed our modern western society than we sometimes like to think. The National Trust is wrestling with that issue just now, having discovered just how many of the great houses it administers and opens to the public have a slavery connection. The mission agency I used to work for owned slaves on Barbados, and went on owning them after the slave trade ended, until the ownership and use of slaves became illegal some thirty years later.
The fact that slavery was a fact of life for people like Paul played its part in assuring otherwise faithful Christian people that it was all right, even divinely sanctioned. As of course did the sort of unthinking racism - or perhaps I should say racial stereotyping - that allowed a white man to say that because an African looked different from him he was actually inferior, and to deduce from that that God had placed the African peoples on this earth in order to provide labour for those superior peoples who happened to have white skin. We find such views so utterly offensive now that it can be hard to comprehend that for many people they were unquestioned, and just a fact of life, 250 years ago or less.
Now in Paul’s day slavery was not like that. It was not the enslavement of one race by another. Anyone could be a slave, and any slave might become a free person. A slave could rise to a high status in society, though of course many or most would not. You became a slave as the result perhaps of being on the losing side in a war, or finding yourself grossly in debt. Or you might even choose to be a slave. The Greek word is the same for slave as for servant; to be a slave might be a neat and effective career move, like the person today whose ambition is to be a butler.
And that’s why Paul can talk as freely as he does about slavery without causing offence. Society then saw nothing wrong in the idea of one person owning another. A slave was of course bound to obey his or her master; you would be bound to him. So choose whose slaves you are, says Paul. You were slaves to sin, but you’ve been emancipated, set free. So don’t go back there. Don’t put any part of yourself at sin’s disposal. Be instead a slave to righteousness.
Sin tends to be thought of in predominantly sexual terms these days. And as the list of things society believes it’s OK to do widens, so what gets classed as sin gets narrower. We could find ourselves honestly believing that sin has no hold on us, that really we’re doing all right, and certainly we’re no worse than the next person along. But Paul is asking us, reminding us, to take sin seriously.
The Greek word we translate as sin isn’t so much about doing things that are wrong as not getting it right. Sin is missing the mark, falling short, messing up. Our sins of commission (things we do that are bad) are well outnumbered by our sins of omission (the good stuff we somehow just don’t get round to doing). And unless we recognise that, and address it, we’re not taking sin seriously.
A slave is 100% owned, and therefore must be 100% alert, responsive and reliable. There is an old tradition that if someone saves your life you belong to them, and Paul I guess is thinking along those lines here. The wages of sin, after all, are death (everyone knows that saying, and most don’t know where it comes from, but you do - Paul to the Romans, chapter 6). So if we are free from sin, we are free also from death, and we owe our lives and our very selves to the one who saved us. Paul knew this as a personal truth. “I am no longer my own,” he said. “I belong to Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Amen.
Statement of faith -
We believe in God the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. We believe in God the Son, who lives in our hearts through faith, and fills us with his love. We believe in God the Holy Spirit, who strengthens us with power from on high. We believe in one God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Prayers
Pray for the world: for every place that is not peaceful; for every place where people are abused, enslaved, or denied human rights and access to justice. Continue to pray for the landless and refugee peoples of our world, often very vulnerable to illnesses, including Covid 19. Pray for wise leadership here and in every nation as we try to bring this disease under control, and for all who are working to find effective vaccines and treatments.
Pray that the Church everywhere may take seriously its call to faithful service, and that we may live as those who belong to Christ. Pray for Christians in India and for the United Church of North India. In our own Diocese, pray for Bishop Richard and for the churches and communities of the Abbeydore Deanery. Pray too for all Christian counsellors, spiritual directors and confessors.
Pray for all in need today: those who are grieving, lonely, worried or anxious, and all who are ill, including those infected by the Covid 19 virus. Pray for their care, treatment and recovery, and for the health and safety of all who care for them, and for all front line workers.
Pray for families and friends, and for the life of our communities. Continue to pray for our schools, shops and all places of work. As we re-open society may we do so safely and with care and thought for others. Pray for all who have lost jobs or businesses, and for those who remain vulnerable. May we all act with care, looking out for one another and keeping safe ourselves.
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.
Blessing
May the wounds of Christ, who bore our sins in his body on the cross, be for us healing and peace; and may the blessing of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, surround and sustain us now and always. Amen.
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