Sunday 07 June 2026
2nd of Pentecost
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…
The Psalms
Psalm 46
Live recording
Your Weekly Church Notices
Scripture
Romans 4: 13 – 17
Live recording
Matthew 9: 9 – 13 & 18 – 26
Live recording
Praise – Be still for the presence of the Lord
Prayers
Live recording
God our Father, almighty and everlasting, God who has existed before time, God who brough all things into being; we delight to sing Your praise, because we see and know your glory and majesty. All the wonders of Your name are reflected in the intricacy of creation. We offer our prayers, sing Your praise and to listen for Your Word. Help us to do so in spirit and in truth.
In Christ we see ourselves as others should see us. The true nature of humanity displayed in Christ the Son. Help us to be ever grateful and to live for Your glory. Your Spirit is at work in us, guiding us into all truth. May what we share and learn today deepen our love for You and give us strength our desire to serve You more faithfully.
We give thanks and praise to Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Lord Jesus there are things we can only tell you through the silence of our thoughts. The regrets that we live with, the guilt that burdens us, the fears and anxieties that overwhelm us when we should be trusting in You. From the quietness of our hearts, we tell you of the unloving, unkind, unholy and unworthy that hides within – and seek your light, your healing and your forgiveness.
Help us to love you more, that your love might change our ways.
Give us grace to forgive those who have wronged us.
Give us the will to let go of any hatred or bitterness we carry.
Help us lay down the burden of past failures and rise afresh.
Cleanse us. Restore to us the joy of Your forgiveness and point us to the Grace that is greater than our guilt. Grant us the grace to hear your word and the strength of the Spirit to do what You command.
For all you seek from us is a loyal heart. A desire to serve Christ as we see Him in others; this is the only offering you need – a loving heart. Lord, we bring our gifts, the material things of life because we are material physical beings who find worth in the things we labour for. But greater than all this is the heart that rejoices in God’s love and willing tell of Christ’s love for all.
Hear us 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
Live recording
Sometimes I don’t know what these TV nature programmes are on about; especially the ones that feature urban wildlife. I cannot understand why it takes a whole film crew, with specialised equipment one whole year just to find an urban fox nesting under a garden shed; like this is something rare and so very unexpected. Why didn’t they come to East Kilbride instead of a London suburb? We could have offered them a million foxes to film on just about any street in the town!
And yet, I’m not totally blasé about the urban fox. They are actually rather beautiful creatures. On one of those sunny days, we had just recently mum and I sat out in the gardens at Canberra House to eat lunch in the sunshine to unexpectedly be join by a young fox. We watched him. And he watched us. An unexpected encounter that actually brought a smile to our faces and a little bit of joy to our hearts.
Funny how the unexpected can often be so pleasurable. When you know what’s going to happen there’s either a sense of dread at what’s coming, or the pleasure of anticipation. But the unexpected is simply that – unexpected. There’s no sense of dread, no anticipation or expectation. The unexpected can be full of risk, for you never know what might happen. For some, that element of risk can be quite threatening and dangerous.
Jesus was often at odds with the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day; because he interpreted God in a different and new way to them. He was unconventional in his religious practice, for he made it clear that what was in a person’s heart, was more important than rigorously obeying the letter of the law. And he often blatantly failed to obey the letter of the law, causing scandal and horror to the religious authorities. If Jesus was the Messiah, he was not the expected kind of Messiah.
Perhaps today’s stories in Matthew’s gospel have been grouped together because each of them brings the unexpected.
Jesus shares a meal with Matthew the Tax Collector. Now this is not unfamiliar to us. But then, that day that Jesus walked past Mathew’s office and called him to follow – that was unexpected, and going to Matthew’s home for a meal – well, need I say more – unexpected. Anyone who shared a meal with a tax collector would be considered ritually unclean, and therefore unable to associate with law-abiding religious people, and unable to take part in any religious service or gathering. Before the unclean could be re-admitted to normal society, they had to be cleansed by the priest.
And actually, to invite a tax collector to become a disciple was the height of madness. Tax collectors were scorned and hated by the Jews, for they were collaborators with the Roman invaders. Tax Collectors were not the people to lend credibility to the message Jesus preached.
Jesus was assembling a rag tag group disciples around him – poor people, uneducated people, including a guerrilla fighter, a traitor and collaborator, and a few fishermen – the religious authorities must have laughed in derision. Anyone wanting to make his mark on the world would surely seek out the intelligent and the educated, the powerful and the wealthy; people with some clout and proven ability to effect change.
But Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector, the lowest of the low, someone who would never even be considered by anyone with an ounce of sense. And that fact alone must have caused many would-be disciples to think twice. Few people would want to be associated with a group of disciples which contained a tax collector, they would themselves lose any credibility. No wonder there weren’t any Pharisees or Sadducees amongst Jesus’ close disciples.
While Jesus was justifying to the Pharisees his friendship with the tax collector, he suddenly, unexpectedly, had a chance to get the religious authorities on his side. The leader of the synagogue was distraught. His young daughter is seriously ill, and he was beginning to clutch at straw as what to do. He had nowhere else to turn, so approached Jesus and asked for his help.
Jesus willingly, perhaps unexpectedly, responded. But he no sooner set out on his way than he saw or felt a woman touch the fringe of his cloak. Apparently with no further thought for the dying child or the distraught father or the urgency of the situation, Jesus stopped. He stopped for a woman who was an outcast, who had been haemorrhaging for 12 years.
Not allowed in the synagogue and not allowed to take part in normal society, this poor woman had been unclean for such a long time that she was completely outside society. She would be homeless, living hand to mouth on the streets, , despised, rejected, ignored by society. In today’s terms, she’d be a bag-woman sitting in a doorway begging. She was breaking the law just by mingling with the crowd that had gathered.
This is the person for whom Jesus stopped. This is the person whose needs he put above the needs of the ruler of the synagogue. You can almost imagine the sharp intake of breath from the crowd as Jesus stopped to acknowledge and speak to this woman. A moment that was unexpected.
To his credit, the ruler of the synagogue takes no offence. He’s one of the few religious people in the gospels who turns out to be a truly good person. Despite the fact that his daughter is dying and that he’s beside himself with anxiety, he waits patiently for Jesus and makes no complaints at all; his humility and patience and faith are well placed, for Jesus is able to restore his daughter to life.
Perhaps one of the problems with the Church today is that it has almost become synonymous with the conventional, not the unexpected.
God is often unpredictable and Jesus often did the unexpected. The unexpected is full of risks, full of the unknown, yet also full of the pleasures and delights which God has in store for us. This is the nature of the God, Father, Son and Spirit whom we worship and adore.
Praise – O God you search me
Prayers for Others
Live recording
Praise – I the Lord of sea and sky
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.