Sunday 13 September 2026
16th after 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 105: 1 – 10
Live recording
Your Weekly Church Notices
Scripture
Romans 14: 5 – 12
Live recording
Matthew 18: 21 – 35
Live recording
Praise – Praise my soul
Prayers
Live recording
Gracious Heavenly Father, this is our time of thanksgiving. The table is set. Your life offered to us through bread and wine and we are grateful even if we do not have words to truly express our gratitude. We thank you Father, for the astonishing love you have shown in Christ your Son, who shared our humanity. We praise you that you dared to become flesh and blood like us, experiencing the same temptations we face, torn by the same fears, suffering the same pain, tasting the same joys and knowing our sorrows.
We are not ashamed to enter your presence with all the confusion and disarray of our very human lives. You love us as we are; you are one of us, one with us. And we are one with you; for the assurance this brings – the knowledge that you understand the worries, temptations, concerns, doubts and problems that confront us each day, we thank you. Gracious Heavenly Father lead us out of our determined self-sufficiency and into a quiet and humble dependence upon your never-ending grace.
Set before us is an offering so gracious we can barely begin to fathom its depths. Life in all its abundance, joy in all its fulness, is set before us by virtue of your sacrifice; loving us more than you love self. May we aspire Lord, to offer gifts as gracious as these. To offer of self, to love you and to love each other more than we love self, to find our true self by losing self. Just as you Lord Jesus, are in the image of the Father so may we come to be in the image of the Son.
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
Prisons are overcrowded. Does that mean more people are turning to serious crime more than ever before? Are we locking up a greater percentage of the population? Or does it mean successive governments have simply failed to build enough prisons? Or does it mean that quite simply the population of our country is growing and so by proportion more people end up in prison?
The trouble is, prison overcrowding has given rise to the possibility of early release schemes. Serious offenders may be released after serving just 1/3rd of their sentence. And that possibility has created backlash from campaigners and the public. Basically, the sentiment being expressed is that punishment should fit the crime. If someone is sentenced to 15 years in prison they should serve 15 years in prison, not 5.
Somewhere, embedded in our psyche, is that Old Testament passage I read for you last Sunday the kind of correlation between crime and punishment which is an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life. Okay, the punishment might fit the crime but where does forgiveness fit in? Indeed, forgiveness sometimes carries a sense of lack of punishment or an absence of justice, of being allowed to “get away with it”. Does forgiveness imply that the crime doesn’t matter? Does justice have to come before forgiveness?
Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?” “No, not seven times,” answered Jesus, but seventy times seven…”
And Jesus tells a story as to why we should go on forgiving each other.
A servant is brought before the King. The servant has a vast debt of millions of pounds; so vast is the debt that he cannot pay it back. The king is prepared to punish the servant because of his inability to pay that debt but because the servant asks for patience and time in which to pay the debt the King comes over all compassionate and generous and forgiving. The debt is cancelled and the servant walks free.
Now it might be lovely if the story ended there with debts forgiven and punishment evaded but somehow forgiveness opened up an opportunity for greed. Maybe the servant realised that the debts his fellow-servants owed him would have been swallowed up in repaying the King but with that massive debt out of the way anything he could squeeze from his fellow-servants was going to make him a wealthy man. So, on he goes acting like some kind of loan shark extorting money from his friends and colleagues. He is in other words an unchanged man. He has learned nothing from the King’s extraordinary kindness and forgiveness toward him. And that is the moment he discovers that far from having evaded punishment he is instead on a suspended sentence.
When the King learns that the servant failed to forgive others and so did not follow the King’s example, he had the worthless, greedy and ungrateful servant thrown into jail.
Maybe the wonderful thing about forgiveness is that it opens up the opportunity to be a changed person, to approach others in a spirit of generosity so that they too can approach others with generosity.
“How many times should I forgive my brother?” asked Peter. “Seven times?”
“No,” said Jesus. “Not seven times, but seventy times seven.”
How many opportunities should we give someone to change their ways?
It’s a difficult business, forgiveness. It’s much easier to blame somebody else than it is to accept that we might bear some responsibility. It is much easier to see someone else’s debts than to acknowledge our own, easier to see the speck in our brother’s eye than the log in our own. Easier to overlook the vast debt we owe to our Heavenly Father and to his son Jesus Christ.
Yet forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith, and without it Christianity is a pretty hollow faith. “Forgive us our debts,” we say to God, “as we forgive our debtors.” Forgive me Lord, in the same measure that I forgive other people. Jesus’ parable maybe asks us to consider that forgiveness is a community thing; it is to be shared, given and received in an endless cycle. Even the words of the Lord’s Prayer suggest that we cannot simply seek forgiveness and stop there. As we are forgiven so we must forgive others.
Should we really go on and on forgiving? Can forgiveness, does forgiveness, run out?
Jesus placed no limits on forgiveness. Again and again, he emphasised the importance of forgiveness in our relationship with God and with each other.
We cannot overestimate just how fortunate we are to gather at this table, to receive of his body broken for us, his blood poured out for us. The greatest act of forgiveness humanity has ever encountered. At this table we can lay the brokenness of our lives before him. At this table we can lay the brokenness of our world before him. At this table we lay life’s unanswered questions before him. At this table we seek to understand the magnitude of the debt we owe our Heavenly Father. At this table we are forgiven our debts so we can forgive our debtors.
Praise – O God you search me
Prayers for Others
Live recording
Thanksgiving
Lord God, give us grateful hearts that are ready to tell of the good things you have done for us. Help us to acknowledge the beauty of the world you have placed us within, to treasure the wonders of life and the beauty of love. We thank you for the everyday things we take for granted that we have friends and family who care for us. We thank you for disappointments and failures they too have taught us to depend on your love. Above all we thank you for your son Jesus Christ, for the truth of his Word, the example of his life and the privilege of bearing his Name. Lord God, hear us as quietly we come to you with our own thanksgivings…
For our broken world
Lord God we bring to you our broken world for your healing. Where there is pain and need and sorrow reveal to us again in those places, a depth of love so great that you willingly gave your all for us and all mankind.
We pray to you for the causes of so much suffering – humanity’s greed, denying others their share of the earth’s riches. Humanity’s wastefulness, squandering of resources with no thought for the future, for our children or children’s children. Our intolerance, which divides families and communities and nations. Humanity’s indifference, caring too little about anything to do anything for anyone.
Lord hear us in prayers for a broken world and use even us to bring a message of forgiveness, a slate wiped clean that humanity might be able to start over and find a new pathway that is Christ…
Communicating the Gospel
Lord Jesus Christ if we have prayed that you might use even us to carry a message out from this place then help us remember that you had a way of touching the hearts of people and placing a fire within their spirits by the way you spoke with them. Lord, let our hearts burn for you so we can do no other than share your message of hope and bring others to the saving knowledge of Christ as their Lord. Hear us in our prayers as we ask for conviction in our faith to communicate the gospel through our words, our actions, our living …
Praise – For everyone born
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.