Transfiguration Sunday
Transfiguration Sunday
Welcome!
Welcome to excerpts from the worship held within the newly formed Westhills Church of Scotland Congregation. We know that not all members of the congregation are able to be in church on Sunday morning; offering these excerpts from the Sunday morning service might help you feel included. Where we can, we offer parts of the service in text and audio, whichever works best for you.
If this post helps you explore what happens within an act of worship then please read on…
Your Weekly Church Notices
Scripture
2 Peter 1: 16 – 21
Matthew 17: 1 – 9
Praise – Immortal Invisible
Prayers
Gracious Father in Heaven, we come to you from out of the ordinary to be confronted with the extra-ordinary. You call us from the physicality of our human existence to ponder that which is other, holy, spiritual, intangible. Just what are we meant to think when we are presented with mystery, the inexplicable. When our questioning of how and why and what and who finds no answer. We come to you acknowledging that You might leave us speechless, dumbfounded, awe struck by your Glory. And then what? Are we, in a fleeting moment, changed forever?
Gracious Father in Heaven, we might come to you to confess our wrongs; knowing in our hearts that we are simply flawed human beings. We seek forgiveness and, in your mercy, you never fail to restore us, love us, lift us up. Do we sin the more that grace may abound? Do we not come to you so that you might change us from glory to glory, making us new people, changed forever by your grace and mercy; leaving the darkness of sin behind us and walking ever into the light of Christ.
This day we enter the presence of a Holy God, a God of Glory and Majesty. We come to worship His son Jesus Christ who is the likeness of the Father, who full of grace and truth walked amongst us. Who came that we might see the Glory of God within Him and be changed ourselves, into the likeness of our Creator.
So, hear us now as we join in the words of the Lord’s Prayer saying…
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 debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory forever. Amen.
Address
At the bottom of a pool, deep in some cave in the middle of the jungles of Myanmar, lives a fish that has no eyes. I know this because David Attenborough told me so. It has no eyes because there is no light to see by, at the bottom of the pool, in the depths of the cave, in the middle of the jungle. And did it lose its eyes because they served no purpose at the bottom of the pool, in the depths of the cave, in the middle of the jungle? And would it grow some eyes if we brought it into the light? And it got me to thinking just how complex the physiology of vision must be. How is it that light entering our eye can be picked up on the retina and give us a picture of what the world looks like? Vision truly is a gift.
Of course, vision in the sense of eye-sight is not the only way in which we use that term “vision”. Vision can mean a plan or direction or hope for the future. We might go further and say that a vision is something we should feel passionate about, it should be something we feel excited about. Vision like this has nothing to do with the physiology of eye-sight yet both are about the creation of pictures and images in our minds.
And then there is another kind of vision; the kind we read of in Matthews Gospel in the story of the transfiguration, an event, or happening or something that Jesus described as a “vision” which the disciples Peter, James and John were instructed not to tell anyone about.
Vison like this has nothing to do with eye-sight, nor yet with creating future plans on sheets of paper. It is not in any way physical. It is spiritual. Peter, James and John are given a sense of the person and presence of Jesus in what can only be described as a powerful moment of enlightenment. They are given a completely new picture of who Jesus is, His face shining like the sun, His clothes dazzling white. It is a moment in which they are completely overwhelmed, a moment which though spiritual is completely real to them and they react to it in a pretty human and ordinary way – offering to build three tents!
It is impossible for us to know exactly what they experienced when they were up that high mountain. We can’t say how they felt, what emotions ran through them, what sense of elation or dread, excitement or guilt or confusion. But we do know it changed them; as encounters with God so often do. Something intangible becomes utterly real to us, we sense it, we see it, we believe it and cannot doubt it even if we cannot explain it.
But explain it is what we always want to do. Explaining it is what I’m meant to be doing for you. Telling you what it means, how to understand it, how to relate it to modern everyday life. But I don’t think I can and I’m not even going to try.
Peter James and John tried to comprehend that moment on the mountain top and found the moment to be beyond comprehension. Sometimes we just need to experience God, not analyse, comprehend or theorise just accept that our God can break into our lives in the most incomprehensible of ways and totally change us, recreate us; because He loves us and His heart’s desire is for us to know him in all the brilliance of His Glory.
Praise – O God you search me
Prayers for Others
Tumbler Ridge
Eight victims shot dead, 25 injured and an 18 year old boy who took his own life after taking the lives of his eight victims, two of them being members of his own family. Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia will never be the same place again.
We are not exempt Lord, and they are not alone. We can cast our minds back to Dunblane and recall so many school shootings in the States. And yes, we feel for those who only know pain and loss, who cry out for their loved ones and cry out for justice, though justice will be hard to find. We pray for their healing; and we cannot help but wonder, amidst the school shootings abroad and the stabbings in schools in the UK, why has the human heart, the soul, become so disfigured, filled with darkness rather than joy and light and love? Why hatred and not love? What has changed? And how do we change it back? Lord hear us in our prayers…
US Attorney General and the House or Representatives
Pam Bondi, US Attorney General, faces The House of Representatives in a fiery question time over the release of Epstein files. It was pantomime, it was farce, it was unbelievable and utterly shameful the way that victims were not acknowledged, given no voice. It is bewildering the way governments can treat their own people with such contempt; denying justice, denying compensation, denying government’s mistakes, protecting the powerful at the expense of the weak. But that is not new. Such things litter the pages of history. Yet we continue to have faith in a God of Justice who defends the widow, the orphan , the young and the poor. Give us the courage to speak on behalf of those who whose voice is silenced. Lord hear our prayers…
Inner assurance and peace
Heavenly Father, in a world where we try to achieve so much, where there is always something to do or be done, where we are judged by the standards of our work and our efficiency in the work place; help us to find a place where we can just be and not do. Lord, you made us for your pleasure, to have fellowship with you, to enjoy you. We thank you Lord that you see the purpose of life so differently to the way it is understood by the world. Give to us such a sense of inner assurance and peace that we can simply enjoy you and enjoy each other. Hear us as we pray seeking the calm assurance of just being…
Praise – Meekness and Majesty
The Grace
And now… May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you and all whom you love, now and for evermore. AMEN.
Thank you for allowing my wife and I to listen to your Service today .