Sunday 24 May 2026
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 51: 10 – 17
Live recording
Your Weekly Church Notices
Scripture
John 7: 37 – 44
Live recording
Acts 2: 1 – 8
Live recording
Praise – Come Holy Ghost
Prayers
Live recording
This is the day when the Spirit arrived. We shall rejoice and be glad in it!
Holy and wonderful God, we praise You for fulfilling your promise to dwell within us and make our hearts your home.
All over the world, Your people today bless You in a thousand languages, and we come to add our cries – and our whispers, – and the deep sigh of our souls; Your Spirit awakes in our hearts and we are new people.
You speak to us, in so many ways – in song and word and picture;
in cloud and wind and flame;
and in the person of Jesus Christ, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire. When we settle on the nice images we have of You, kind and gentle, forgiving compassionate and overlook the drama and the chaos that You can bring through your eternal light that chases the darkness and Your love that is Holy Fire. You are a God we cannot contain, or explain.
Your promise is to make a new world in which darkness has no place; and all rejoice in the light of your presence. Forgive us Lord when we choose the easy road, the quiet life, refusing to chase the darkness, closing our eyes to the pain of others, to the opportunities we have of showing love in action. Draw us in afresh to the fellowship of Christ and the power of his Spirit.
And now, Heavenly Father, by Your Spirit, dwell within our worship, that for a moment we might taste the life of heaven and be inspired to live this life a little more in the image of Christ.
In our desire to live the life that is Christ, to walk in his way, and live by the Spirit, we bring this offering, a sign of our devotion and faithfulness, a sign that our hearts seek the God of light and love. Receive Lord this offering; may our gifts help bring the Gospel of Christ and the freedom of the Spirit to every open heart.
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
Who doesn’t know the name Benito Mussolini??
Mussolini was the Italian politician, journalist and dictator who led Italy from 1922 to 1945. He founded the fascist movement in 1919 and after being appointed Prime Minister in 1922 went on to form a totalitarian dictatorship.
When Mussolini was in power in Italy his desire was to unite the Italian people and preserve the Italian language. Northern Italy where people often spoke German gave him a real problem. So he did as dictators do and imposed Italian as the only language to be spoken in schools and shops and in public. This was broadly acceptable as in the privacy of their homes those who spoke German could continue to do so. Gradually Mussolini introduced more and more laws, which pushed the German identity out of existence. Street names and the names of towns and villages had to be changed to be Italian, not German. Then people were required to change their German surnames to Italian family names. And then in the cemeteries German names on headstones had to be removed. Removing people’s heritage and identity is a dangerous thing to do and of course it eventually backfired on him. Well, you can only impose those kinds of laws for so long until people rebel. Mussolini was summarily executed in 1945. Today the Provinces of Northern Italy run as autonomous states where both German and Italian heritage can be embraced.
Of course Mussolini was not the first person in history to attempt to unify people by imposing a common language on them. Way back in the pages of the Old Testament, in the story of the Tower of Babel, the same process was going on. We tend to think on the story of the Tower of Babel as an explanation of how different languages came into existence. People spoke one language, they were united, they were attempting to build a tower to reach the heavens and could have succeeded other than that God mixed up their language. The flaw in that understanding is that earlier in Genesis 10, before the story of The Tower of Babel, it is recognised that there were many nations and many languages. At verse 5, “These are the descendants of Japheth, living in their different tribes and countries, each group speaking its own language.”
When the world spoke only one language it was not a natural state but one imposed by the Assyrian Empire, one of the earliest Empires ever to exist. The Assyrian’s imposed their language on all the peoples and nations they conquered, they required that all people speak in a “single voice”. The Tower of Babel is a way of describing the rise of this great empire, which was stopped in its tracks by God as he scattered people and mixed up their language. In fact, as the empire collapsed people returned to speaking their own native language. God is attributed with this state of diversity and is honoured through cultures and peoples and languages. Maybe another facet of that is the Jewish nation’s strong identity as God’s Chosen People. If you believe that you are special in the eyes of God then preserving your language, heritage, history and faith becomes critical to you. Being absorbed into this vast Empire with a common language is not the path God had chosen for them.
When we flick through the pages of the scriptures to arrive at Acts Chapter 2 we read of an event that is often paralleled with the Tower of Babel. All of those voices, all of those languages and peoples coming together and God being glorified in this great diversity. At Pentecost the message about Jesus Christ and God’s great love is made known to all peoples, it is a message for all people and one for them to hear in their own tongue. This diversity is a wonderful thing to acknowledge, but also a little shocking for the Jewish people because their God is now seeking to enter into a relationship with all people, all races, not just His Chosen Race. If God shattered the Assyrian Empire and restored the diversity of language in order to preserve the relationship with his Chosen People then at Pentecost God uses that same diversity to broaden and extend his relationship out to all people.
Apart from the ancient history of the rise and fall of empires, Pentecost is often branded as the Birthday of the Christian Church. I tend to look on that as a little glib. A birthday celebration lasts 24 hours. Today is your birthday and tomorrow it is all over. But in the church’s calendar Pentecost is a season that runs for 20 and more weeks. If Pentecost is the birthday of the Christian Church then we should be celebrating that for just about half the year. If Pentecost is the outpouring of God’s Spirit upon all people then it is a hugely significant part of the life and worship of the church, it is more than just a theme for the sermon one Sunday morning. Pentecost is foundational. The outpouring of God’s spirit is foundational.
On my bookshelf sits a copy of a book by Colin Urquhart “ The Forgotten Father” The author argues that the church has so emphasised the place and role of Jesus Christ that it has forgotten the nature of God our Heavenly Father, whom Jesus came to reveal. I might wish he would write another book called “The Forgotten Spirit” because we have sorely neglected the work of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father and the Son sent to us to be our strength and our guide. When we read the story of the spread of Christianity contained in the Book of Acts, we know that none of it would have happened if God’s Spirit had not been poured out upon his people. Not on the Priests or the Ministers or the Pharisees and Sadducees, but the people, the fishermen, the merchants, the tax collectors who went out with the story of Jesus Christ and endured persecutions, and beatings and imprisonment and rejection and would have endured none of that had it not been for the fact that God was so real to them, so alive to them, so certain of God’s promises and confident in the Gospel that they could do no other.
And if it occurs to you that that is exactly what the church needs today, then you and I are in agreement. We need, and always will need the driving force of God’s Spirit, the foundational presence of God in our lives that makes God so real and so alive to us that we can do no other than tell the story of Jesus Christ and His love for us and all people.
Praise – Spirit of God
Prayers for Others
Live recording
A Fresh Outpouring?
A fresh outpouring of your Spirit… is that what we pray for today? Are we not being just a little demeaning of our Lord and God when we ask for that? Do we think that our God has failed to do enough? withdrawn his spirit, stepped away from his desire to know us and love us and be with us always? Has our Lord and God forgotten his promises? Why then do we dare to ask for more and fresh outpourings?
You have never left us. By your spirit you dwell within us, we are yours and you are ours. May there be curiosity in our hearts and minds to explore your words of promise, to hold on to all that you have given us in Christ your Son and to believe that we are baptised into Christ and blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit sent from the Father and the Son to dwell in our hearts. You, Lord, have given us all we need; then help us to believe in your promises and live as followers of Christ, disciples and apostles each, filled with your Spirit and giving witness to Your unconditional love. Lord hear our prayers…
A Prayer for Peace
In the beginning your spirit moved across the face of the waters and brought order where once there was chaos. Father, we see the chaos that exists in our world, our world is not at peace, it does not know the calm order of a life given to Christ in service, it does not know, nor wish to hear, the gentle voice of your spirit speaking to the heart. Father, work through us that our ordered lives may reflect the peace that is beyond all understanding and reveal the Way that is Christ. Lord, we pray for our chaotic world and in that same prayer pray for ourselves for we are in the world to be the voice of peace that speaks to all people, of all nations and all languages. Hear us as we offer our prayer for peace…
The Church The Body of Christ
And this Your church Lord, this Your body; we your presence in this world human and flawed yet divine and holy. In this place and within our hearts there is a bridge between earth and heaven, a meeting place for God to be with his people. In the joy we share with others, in the everyday conversations and the humanity we share, may we not overlook the spiritual, the face of God in the face of another, the Spirit of God in the heart of another. So may we nurture faith within each other, nurture the fruits of the Spirit and rejoice in the gifts of the Spirit. Lord as we pray reveal to us the place of the spirit in each other and in our church. Hear our prayers….
Praise – O breath of life
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.