Mother’s Day “Virtual Worship Service” – May 10, 2020

Music as We Prepare for Worship

Words of Welcome

The Lighting of the Christ Candle

 

Litany for Mothers’ Day

Rev. Phil: Greetings sisters and brothers in the faith.

All: We come together in worship now, even though we are physically separated from one another, to celebrate God’s Presence on this Christian Family  Sunday, this Mothers’ Day.  

Rev. Phil: We gather to celebrate God’s love expressed in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

All: We gather to give thanks for Mothers who taught us the faith. Following their example, we gather as a pilgrim people, searching for ways to live out our commitment.

Rev. Phil: Inspired by our faithful mothers, and led by God’s Spirit;

All: We gather seeking to be empowered and enabled for our journey of faith, loving the world in Jesus’ name.

Rev. Phil: Giving thanks for the family of faith;

All: let us rejoice in God’s gifts to us! Let us worship God.

 

And So, We Sing: VU#236 vs. 1

Now thank we all our God, with heart, and hands, and voices, who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices; who from our mother’s arms has blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

 

Opening Prayer

Rev. Phil: Gracious & Loving God, known to us as Kind Creator, Compassionate Friend, Ever-Present Spirit,

All: as we worship this morning, we give thanks for the love we have known “from our mother’s arms”.

Rev. Phil: We give thanks for the nurturing care of loving parents.

All: As we worship today, encounter us in the singing, in the speaking, in the listening, in the silence – inspire us anew to live out the values we have received.

Rev. Phil: Give us the gifts of wisdom and strength that we might pass on to children and grandchildren, with love, the great heritage bequeathed to us.

All: So, may we join our hearts, and hands and voices with your faithful people of all generations, everywhere. Amen.

 

Opening Hymn VU#556 “Would You Bless Our Homes & Families”

1. Would you bless our homes and families, Source of life who calls us here; in our world of stress and tension teach us love that conquers fear. Help us learn to love each other with a love that constant stays; teach us when we face our troubles, love’s expressed in many ways.

2. When our way is undemanding, let us use the time that’s ours to delight in simple pleasures, sharing joys in gentle hours. When our way is anxious walking and a heavy path we plod, teach us trust in one another and in your, our gracious God.

3. From the homes in which we’re nurtured, with the love that shapes us there, teach us God to claim as family every one whose life we share. And through all that life may offer, may we in your love remain; may the love we share in families be alive to praise your name.

4. Let us reach beyond the boundaries of our daily thought and care till the family you have chosen spills its love out everywhere. Help us learn to love each other with a love than constant stays; teach us when we face our troubles love’s expressed in many ways.

 

Prayer for Reconciliation

Rev. Phil: God forgives and heals us.

All: We need your healing, merciful God: give us true repentance. Some sins are plain to us; some escape us, some we cannot face. Forgive us; set us free to hear your Word to us; set us free to serve you.

Rev. Phil: In the quietness of our worship space and in the silence of our own hearts and minds we offer to God our personal prayers.

Silence for Personal Reflection & Prayer

Kyrie Eleison VU#946

Assurance of God’s Unfailing Care

Rev. Phil: God loves us with a love like that of a mother. Jesus spoke of wanting to gather his people as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings to protect and shelter them. Be assured this morning that God has heard our prayers. God acts to love and accept us, to forgive and transform us – that we might be our best selves, reflecting God’s image within us.

All: Thanks be to God!

 

Hymn of Praise VU#341 “Fairest Lord Jesus”

1. Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature, O thou of God to earth come down: thee will I cherish, thee will I honour, thou my soul’s glory, joy and crown.

2. Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodland, robed in the blooming garb of spring; Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer, who makes the troubled heart to sing.

3. Fair is the sunshine, fairer still the moonlight, and fair the twinkling starry host; Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer, than all the angels heaven can boast.

4. All fairest beauty heavenly and earthly, wondrously Jesus is found in thee; none can be nearer, fairer or dearer than thou, my Saviour, art to me.

 

Bible Readings:

Bible Readings for Mothers’ Day – Sunday May 10, 2020

Introduction

This morning, on the Mothers’ Day, Rev. Phil has chosen to depart from the Bible Readings assigned for the Fifth Sunday in the Season of Easter, Year A, by the Revised Common Lectionary. Instead, he has chosen readings that relate to the day we are celebrating.

BSecond Timothy 1.1-7

The Letter of Second Timothy is one of the Pastoral Epistles in our New Testament. Although it claims to be written by St. Paul, scholars agree that the author chose to honour St. Paul by naming him as the author. It is generally agreed that the letter was written possibly as late as the year 140, in the second century of the Common Era, many decades after St. Paul’s martyrdom.

The two letters of Timothy are written by a senior minister to a junior colleague. This morning we are reading the first seven verses of the first chapter of Second Timothy. In each of our readings today, listen for the word of God:

• Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, 2 To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3 I am grateful to God – whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did – when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. 4 Recalling your tears, I long to see you that I may be filled with joy. 5 I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice, and now I am sure lives in you. 6 For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; 7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power, and of love, and of self-discipline.

 

Philippians 4.2-9

Biblical scholars agree that the Letter to the Church at Philippi is one of the authentic letters of St. Paul. The most likely date for this Letter is the year 62 in the First Century of the Common Era. Philippi was the first Christian Church in what is now Greece.

This Letter has sometimes been referred to as a letter of joy. Paul is very optimistic in his outlook. Today we read from Chapter Four, verses two through nine.

4.2 I urge each of you, Euoddia and Syntyche, to be of the same mind in the Lord. 3 Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.

4 Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, my beloved sisters and brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

 

Responsive Reading Psalm 92 VU#810

Refrain: It is good to sing your praises and to thank you, O Most High.

It is good to give you thanks, O God, to sing praises to your name, O Most High,

To tell of your love in the morning, and your faithfulness during the night,

With a ten-stringed lute and harp, with voice and mandolin together.

For you, O God, have made me glad by your work; I shout for joy at the works of your hands.

Refrain: It is good to sing your praises and to thank you, O Most High.

The just shall flourish like the date-palm and increase like the cedars of Lebanon.

Planted in God’s house, they will flourish in the courts of our God.

In old age they still produce fruit, thriving and full of vigour.

They will show that God is just; God, our rock, in whom there is no wrong.

Refrain: It is good to sing your praises, and to thank you, O Most High.

“A Mother’s Love’s a Blessing”

“A mother’s love’s a blessing! No matter where you roam; keep her while she’s living, you’ll miss her when she’s gone. Love her as in childhood, though feeble, old and grey; For you’ll never miss your mother’s love, till she’s buried beneath the clay.”

 

So goes the refrain of one of the Irish ballads that my Dad loved to sing. Though it is, like many Irish songs, very sentimental, it is also true. Those of us, who, on this Mothers’ Day, are celebrating our Mom’s of blessed memory, can attest to the validity of these words.

A mother’s love is a blessing.

I would like to introduce you to my own Mother. As I share these memories, I invite you each to call to mind the things that you value most about your own mother – to remember the ways you’ve been blessed by your Mom.

My Mother, Florence Averil Allen was a farm girl from near the village of Flesherton in Grey County, south of Owen Sound. She was the eldest girl in a family that included five brothers and two sisters. Her Dad farmed using horses that he (and the family) knew by name.

The farm was 100 acres of very stoney ground – but with a big family there was lots of help picking stones – and doing all the other chores that went with a mixed farm back there in the early decades of the 20^th century.

Florence loved the farm. She loved walking back the lane to pick peas for supper. Stooking grain before threshing – and care of the animals. Mother had many sayings that had come down to her from her parents and grandparents – among them the words: “You can take the girl off the farm but you can’t take the farm out of the girl.”

Her early life included an attempt, at 16, to attend Nursing School at Toronto’s Sick Children’s Hospital. Desperately homesick for the farm and her family – she was happy to comply when her Dad asked her to come home and help him.

Early schooling was in the one-room Spring Hill School – about five miles across the fields. High School was in nearby Flesherton, where Florence boarded with her grandmother during the week.

Although raised a Baptist, Florence had a profound religious experience at an evangelical tent meeting. In her late teens, she felt the call of God to preach the gospel. She enrolled in the Pilgrim Holiness Bible School in Proton Station – a tiny village a few miles west of the family farm.

After completing her Bible School studies, Florence was ordained to the Ministry in the 1930’s. My mother served congregations in Oshawa, and in Wiarton on the Bruce Peninsula.

While at Bible School she met my Dad – and a few years later they were married.

Although, in those days, marriage for women teachers and ministers meant that they were stripped of their credentials, Florence never gave up her sense of God’s call to ministry. She lived out that call in a variety of ways through the ministry of her husband – who had himself been ordained the year before their wedding.

Bearing in mind God’s instructions to Adam & Eve – “be fruitful and multiply”, Frank and Florence welcomed five children born from 1941 to 1948. During those years Dad served pastorates in Proton Station and in Toronto.

It became impossible to keep a family of seven on the meagre stipend offered by the small Pilgrim Holiness congregations.  Mother was disappointed that Dad had to give up his ministry and move the family back home to Massey, Ontario where he got work in the paper mill in Espanola.

There was no house waiting for the family in Massey. Florence, with her husband and five children, moved in with Frank’s parents in a tiny two-bedroom cottage. I think the visitors slept in the attic above the kitchen. It was about this time that Florence discovered that she was pregnant with her sixth child – and the same week her five little ones came down with chicken pox! When I think about that time in her life I’m amazed at her fortitude.

Yes, I was that sixth child. I have such rich memories of my Mother from early childhood on. I recall:

• At age four being sent out with a six quart basket to pick up wood chips and pine cones for kindling;

• About that same age being given a dust cloth and being instructed about dusting down the stairs – both of these tasks to the accompaniment of the saying: “Whatever you do, do with all of your might, ‘cause jobs done by half are never done right.” When I thought I had completed the job, it was inspected and very likely the rhyme repeated as she showed me the dust I’d left behind!

• I think I was only about 7 when she taught me how to make Johny Cake.

• I remember walks on Sunday afternoon with Mother and my sisters and brothers – looking for Trailing Arbutus in season – or trilliums of dog-toothed violets.

• I recall the great blueberry, and wild strawberry, rhubarb, raisin and apple pies and tarts; home made bread baked in the woodburning cook stove; and always two varieties of pie on Saturday night and again on Sunday at noon.

• On Sunday evening, those of us who were too young to attend church, were able to stay home with Mother – who spent special time with us reading and singing to us as she tucked us in:

“Jesus tender shepherd hear us, bless thy little lambs tonight. In the darkness be thou near us, guard us till the morning light.”

I remember the sound of the stove lids rattling in the dark morning as Mother made the fire and started the water boiling for oat meal porridge.

When I was ten the family moved from Massey to Toronto as my Dad was called to serve as Pastor of Oakwood Avenue Pilgrim Holiness Church. All eleven of us (another brother and two sisters came along after me) moved into a three bedroom apartment on the back of the church. So crowded! And not three feet away from one side of the building was the Kitchen Pride Pickle Factory! Not much air circulation and what did come through the small windows was perfumed by that day’s pickels.

• I remember Mother getting us younger ones up out of bed on a blisteringly hot and humid Toronto August evening, to take us for a walk around the block so we could get some air.

• I recall her leading Mission Band – and later Explorers.

When we moved to Hillsdale in 1962 I was so happy to be back in a village environment – It had been such a culture shock to move from Massey, on the edge of the northern wilderness – to the middle of what was then Little Italy in York Township, Toronto.

Mother sensed my joy at arriving in Hillsdale – Dad was studying fulltime at Emmanuel College and serving the congregations on a Four Point Charge on the weekend. Mother gave me the responsibility of keeping the kitchen wood box filled – which I did with pride and satisfaction.

So many memories.

I give thanks for Mother’s strong faith and for her encyclopaedic knowledge of the Bible. Even after I was ordained – and working on a sermon – if I couldn’t find a particular passage, I could always phone her and she would immediately tell me where it was.

In our early childhood, Mother made over many of our clothes from adult clothing sent north in “mission boxes”. She was a gifted seamstress. We were well dressed children even though the family’s resources were meagre at times. I honestly don’t know when she slept.

Mother had great compassion for any person or animal in any kind of distress. She taught us a love for poetry. We all were given opportunity to learn to play the piano. (Some excelled at that, me, not so much. I got as far as Grade Two before I gave up practicing!) We sang together as a family.

In Massey she worked to establish a public library.

Mother passed from this life into God’s eternal care on June 24, 2002 – well into her 91^st year. Up until a few days before she died, she was still reading the Toronto Star every day and keeping up with current events. I know she was joyfully welcomed into God’s spacious house, to the room that Jesus had prepared. I look forward to a reunion, by and by.

Over the past few years, I have been writing my memoirs. I have been writing down the stories that I remember from childhood – so that my children and grandchildren will come to know and value their heritage. The words of the author of Second Timothy resonate with me this morning on this Mothers’ Day.

 

“I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother, Lois, and in your mother, Eunice, and now I am sure lives in you also.”

 

We have indeed received a great heritage from our mothers – who passed on to us their faith – and their wisdom.

Not that we claim that our mothers were perfect. Not that we would want our daughters to be burdened with a sense that they have to be perfect. We are descended from warm blooded, real, human women, not from angels or plaster saints.

But as we look back, today, with gratitude for their gifts to us – we are wise to heed the advice of St. Paul to the church at Philippi. We are wise to focus on the gifts – on the positive contribution that our mothers have made to our life and wellbeing.

I conclude this sermon with the words of St. Paul:

 

“Finally, beloved sisters and brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

 

And then Paul goes on to say these words:

 

“Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

 

On this Mothers’ Day – we take to heart again the lessons learned from our mothers, with gratitude for the heritage we have received. God help us to live with courage and determination, following their example.

Happy Mothers

Hymn of Reflection VU#644 “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry”

1. I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old. I rejoiced the day you were baptized to see your life unfold.

2. I was there when you were but a child, with a faith to suit you well; in a blaze of light you wandered off to find where demons dwell.

3. When you heard the wonder of the word, I was there to cheer you on; you were raised to praise the living Lord, to whom you now belong.

4. If you find someone to share your time and you join your hearts as one, I’ll be there to make your verses rhyme from dusk to rising sun.

5. In the middle ages of your life, not too old, no longer young. I’ll be there to guide you through the night, complete what I’ve begun.

When the evening gently closes in and you shut your weary eyes, I’ll be there as I have always been with just one more surprise.

I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old. I rejoiced the day you were baptized, to see your life unfold.

 

 

Presentation of Gifts & Offerings

At this time in our Worship Service, we respond to the proclamation of God’s Love & Support, by offering our gifts. This is the 10^th week since we were last able to worship together in our Sanctuaries. During that time the Church has continued to offer ministry and mission. In order to do so we are dependant on your gifts. You can give your offering by mailing it to the Church Treasurer:

(South Bay United Church, c/o Dorothy Speirs-Vincent, PO Box 102, Milford, Ontario K0K 2P0);

(Picton United Church, 12 Chapel St. Picton, ON K0K 2T0 – or by visiting  Pictonunitedchurch.ca )

God bless you for your generosity. Without the prayerful gifts of people like you, your Community of Faith would not exist.

 

And so, we sing: VU#541 “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise God all creatures high and low. Give thanks to God in love made known. Creator, Word and Spirit, One.

 

Prayers of Gratitude & Concern

The Lord’s Prayer

 

Parting Hymn VU#270 “Dear Mother God” (tune Welwyn at 329)

1. Dear Mother God, your wings are warm around us, we are enfolded in your love and care; safe in the dark, your heartbeat’s pulse surrounds us, you call to us, for you are always there.

2. You call to us, for we are in your image. We wait on you, the nest is cold and bare; high overhead your wingbeats call us onward. Filled with your power, we ride the empty air.

3. Let not our freedom scorn the needs of others – we climb the clouds until our strong heart sings; may we enfold our sisters and our brothers, till all are strong, till all have eagles’ wings.

 

Commissioning & Blessing

Sung Response: MV#209 “Go, Make a Diff’rence”

(Refrain, Verse 2, Refrain, Verse 3, Refrain)

Refrain: Go make a diff’rence, we can make a diff’rence. Go make a diff’rence in the world. Go make a diff’rence. We can make a diff’rence. Go make a diff’rence in the world.

We are the hands of Christ reaching out to those in need, the face of God for all to see. We are the spirit of hope; we are the voice of peace. Go make a diff’rence in the world.

Refrain:

So let your light shine on, let it shine for all to see. Go make a diff’rence in the world. And the spirit of Christ will be with us as we go. Go make a diff’rence in the world.

Refrain:

 

Music as We Move into the World