Sunday 04 October 2026
Harvest Thanksgiving
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 19
Live recording
Your Weekly Church Notices
Scripture
Philippians 3: 1 – 12
Live recording
Matthew 21: 33 – 46
Live recording
Praise – Come ye thankful people come
Prayers
Live recording
Lord of life, we gather today to acknowledge you as Creator, the God who made heaven and earth, who brought order out of chaos, who fashioned a paradise where you could meet with us in the cool of the evening and walk together. We come to thank you for your faithful provision and to celebrate the constant cycle of the seasons, the rise and fall of the tide, of day and night, of seed-time and harvest.
How is it that we fail to see that which is in plain sight; the work of your hand; the beauty of your design in every facet of creation, and neglect to protect the gift we have been given. We might ponder the vast and awesome universe in which you have placed us, this world in which we live, and this country where we have made our home – so many reasons to count our blessings, so much to thank you for.
We thank you for the harvest that surrounds us today, for the many places around the world from which is has come, for the generosity of those who have brought gifts, recognising our abundance and the needs of others. Lord of life we recognise your goodness; we remember once more how fortunate we are and celebrate the bountiful provision of your creation.
Gladly we come with thankful hearts and joyful worship.
Today our offering reflects more than our monetary resources. Today we offer of ourselves to our neighbour through gifts of produce. Today we offer thanks to God for his goodness to us and seek to share God’s generosity with others for it is God who has provided, and it is our God who calls on us to participate in His generosity.
Then hear now Lord 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
For thirty years the Company Director had served faithfully from his large but not overly-plush office. Of course, it hadn’t always been a bed of roses but on balance he reckoned he’d done all right. The company had grown considerably during his time in office; he had seen it through down turns in trade and emerged stronger. Now though the whole climate was changing. Shareholders wanted greater profit margins, better returns on their shares; they wanted the whole thing shaken up. His time as Director had come to an end. The new boy, the high flyer, the 22 year old with an Honours Degree in Business Studies was taking charge of everything.
The new boy arrived as the old director was packing the last of his belongings. “What’s the secret of your success?” the new boy asked. “Good decisions” answered the old director. “And how did you make so many good decisions?” the new boy asked. “Experience” answered the director. “And how did you get experience?” asked the new boy. “Bad decisions” said the director as he left the office.
We often get things wrong before we get them right. It’s in making bad decisions that we learn what good decisions look like.
So, when I hear the story about the servants who were sent to the vineyard but beaten up by the tenants of the vineyard, I wondered what on earth possessed the owner of the vineyard to send a second group of servants, let alone his own son. It sounds like a series of bad decisions.
Why didn’t he go straight to the law? Why didn’t he have those tenant farmers thrown into jail? How could he risk the lives of yet more servants? And how, after goodness knows how many servants had been beaten or stoned or killed, could he possibly send his own son? Wasn’t it obvious what would happen to his son?
Reasonable people would have very quickly realised that disposing of the servants was not a sensible way of retaining their tenancy. And it was foolishness to imagine that murdering the owner’s son would enable those tenants to inherit the vineyard. The only way they could possibly have inherited the vineyard was if the owner was so remote and uncaring that he had no idea what was happening.
Perhaps because the owner was in a far country, the tenant farmers really believed he was remote and uninterested in what was going on at his property. But a moment’s consideration would have revealed that any owner who took the trouble to send two lots of servants and then his own son, was deeply interested indeed.
The parable is very much an allegory for the relationship between God and his Chosen people. The religious authorities were deeply hostile to Jesus, so he told this story where the owner of the vineyard is clearly God who repeatedly sent prophets, then his own son to collect the harvest. Through this story Jesus predicts his own death at the hands of the Jewish authorities.
It’s a story which offers a picture of a God who is deeply interested and concerned with humanity, but who is very mindful of the free-will he has given to humanity. A God who has given his people charge of the vineyard, and who will therefore not snatch back that authority even in order to prevent war and violence and all the other evils of our day.
For our God allows the weeds to grow up with the corn, sending his messengers again and again and again to offer humanity opportunities to change the way things are.
Our God is a God of grace. A God who showers his love on all and sundry. A God who opens his arms and welcomes every human being, no matter who they are or how they behave. A God who longs to give all people the wonderful and amazing gifts he has waiting for them, yet refuses to force anyone into accepting his gifts.
He continues to send his servants to the people. telling of his great love and revealing ways in which they might better experience that love. He makes no attempt to persuade them or cajole them into turning towards him. He has given his people free will, and no matter how bad they are or how much destruction they cause, God will not remove free will.
The tenant farmers of the vineyard, assumed that because God is not a heavy-handed tyrant who visits punishments upon his people, he either doesn’t exist or he’s so remote that he’s not worth worrying about. Maybe they’ll learn otherwise if the harvest is in terms of people who believe in God and in Jesus, the human face of God.
None of us know when harvest time is for God. His ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. But he will come, for the owner of the vineyard loves his people and wants the harvest.
We who follow Christ are the tenant farmers. It is for us to farm in such a way that the harvest is plentiful. We are the ones to whom the owner of the vineyard will look when he comes to collect the harvest. It is for us to show our world that there’s a better way than violence and hatred, racism, misogyny, religious intolerance; a better way that is Christ. It is for us to find a way of telling our world about the God of love and his Son Jesus Christ. And it’s up to us to deepen our own relationship with God so that the face of Christ can be seen in our faces.
And when the owner of the vineyard comes to collect his harvest, how good it will be to hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”
Praise – Great is thy faithfulness
Prayers for Others
Live recording
Harvest Prayers
Father in heaven, should we celebrate or should we feel guilty? Is it just by some peculiar quirk of fate that we should have all our needs for food and water and shelter supplied? Do we dare to feel self-reliant, self-sufficient; when truthfully we depend so much on those who seem to just scratch a living for themselves, those who live in poverty so we can have plenty. Help us to respond in love and in concern for those who face famine, their crops having failed through drought or flood, or civil war. Lord speak to our hearts this Harvest time so that we might be stirred into action, to share of our abundance until that day comes when all have enough. Lord hear us as we pray…
Gratitude
Father God, just as we reflect on our ability and need to share, help us also to live with a sense of gratitude. Help us to see in all things your great generosity toward us with many spiritual gifts of love and mercy, kindness and compassion as well as the physical gifts of food and water, rain and sun, light and dark. Afford us that little moment at the start of each day to say “Thank You”, thank you for the people who love us and that we are able to love them too. Thank you for a roof over our head, thank you for meaning and purpose in our living. Lord Jesus open our lives to you with a renewed sense of gratitude that lifts us up from out of the ordinary. Hear us as we pray…
Praise – O Lord my God
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.