Our services

Welcome ! We meet at 11:00 and have tea of coffee after the service.

Services

Sunday
January 13, 2019
Welcome to the Scots Kirk Paris today!
If you are visiting, know that you are welcome and please take the greetings of the Scots Kirk Paris back home. If you are settling in Paris, may you find a home here. Please sign the “visitor’s book” on the entrance table and join us for refreshments after the service. Mobile phone switched off…?

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Call to Worship

Hymn 500 Lord of creation, to you be all praise!

Children’s talk - Alisdair

Matthew 22
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:34-40 NIV

SILENCE
Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

Hymn 555 - “Amazing Grace”
Hymn 619 – “Spirit of the Living God”
Hymn 620 – “Spirit of the Living God”

Reading:
Luke 3: 15–17, 21–22

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Sermon
… waiting expentantly…

Offering

Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession

Welcome and Intimations

Hymn 519 – “Love Divine, All Love’s Excelling”

Benediction
Ubi caritas
Ubi caritas et amor
Ubi caritas Deus ibi est
où est l’amour - et charité
où est l’amour - Dieu lui-même est là
Where there is love, selfless love
where there is love, there is God our Lord
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Lectionary readings for today:
Isaiah 43:1–7; Psalm 29; Acts 8:14–17; Luke 3: 15–17, 21–22

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Like watermen, that row one way and look another.
Robert Burton (1577-1640)

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Drawing on my fine command of the language, I said nothing.
ROBERT BENCHLEY
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Jesus: Modeling an Evolving Faith

Everything Changes

“At the Centre for Contemplation and Action”, Richard Rohr writes, “we’re calling this year’s theme “Old and New: An Evolving Faith.” The term “evolution” may be challenging for some Christians who believe that science and the Bible contradict each other. We’ll look more closely at the Bible (and how Jesus interpreted it) next week, and later this year we’ll focus on Creation and science. For now, let’s simply consider how the inner process of change and growth is fundamental to everything, even our bodies. Having undergone several surgeries, cancer, and a heart attack, I’ve been consoled by the way my body takes care of itself over time. The miracle of healing comes from the inside—but with help from doctors and nurses!

In religion, however, many prefer magical, external, one-time transactions instead of the universal pattern of growth and healing—which is always through loss and renewal. This is the way that life perpetuates itself in ever-new forms: through various changes that can feel like death. The pattern disappoints and scares most of us, even many clergy who think death and resurrection is just a doctrinal statement about the lone Jesus.

There is not a single discipline today that does not recognize change, development, growth, and some kind of evolving phenomenon: psychology, cultural anthropology, history, physical sciences, philosophy, social studies, drama, music, on and on. But in theology’s search for the Real Absolute, it imagined a static “unmoved mover,” as Aristotelian philosophy called it, a solid substance sitting above somewhere. Theology has struggled to imagine that once God includes us in the narrative then God is for sure changing! Is that not what the Bible—at its core—is saying? We matter to God and God thus allows us to change the narrative of history . . . and the narrative of God.

Religion tends to prefer and protect the status quo or the supposedly wonderful past, yet what we now see is that religion often simply preserves its own power and privilege. God does not need our protecting. We often worship old things as substitutes for eternal things. Jesus strongly rejects this love of the past and one’s private perfection, and he cleverly quotes Isaiah (29:13) to do it: “In vain do they worship me, teaching merely human precepts as if they were doctrines” (Matthew 15:9). Many of us seem to think that God really is “back there,” in the good ol’ days of old-time religion when God was really God, and everybody was happy and pure. This leaves the present moment empty and hopeless—not to speak of the future.

God keeps creating things from the inside out, so they are forever yearning, developing, growing, and changing for the good. This is the generative force implanted in all living things, which grow both from within—because they are programmed for it—and from without—by taking in sun, food, and water. Picture YHWH breathing into the soil that became Adam (Genesis 2:7). That is the eternal pattern. God is still breathing into soil every moment!

Evolutionary thinking is actually contemplative thinking because it leaves the full field of the future in God’s hands and agrees to humbly hold the present with what it only tentatively knows for sure. Evolutionary thinking must agree to both knowing and not knowing, at the same time. This is hard for the egoically bound self. It wants to fully know—now—which is never true anyway.
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Intimations
The Church and hall are open on Wednesdays from 12.00 - 14.00 for time of reflection and coffee. Or just time to talk… you are welcome! On Tuesday 22 January (10am) we start with “Journey Time” – a Bible study, discussion time at the manse. You are welcome and welcome to bring a friend along too. Gifts for the homeless men: please see the list of items on the wall above the basket and bring what you can to help the homeless men in Paris through the work of the Missionnaires de la Charité. As a congregation part of the International Presbytery we are now in a time of preparation for the meeting here in Paris in March. Let us all prepare ourselves prayerfully for this meeting!
On Sale for Church Funds:
"The Tartan Pimpernel" by the Rev Donald Caskie
Scots Kirk tea towels & notelets
and the Scots Kirk Recipe Book.

Contact
17 rue Bayard, Paris 75006
Minister: Rev Jan Steyn
Tel. 01 48 78 47 94
Session clerk: Dorothy Mure
Pianist: Mr Paul Snelgrove
e-mail: scotskirkparis@orange.fr
Web-site: www.scotskirkparis.com
Facebook page: ScotsKirkParis
Amis: https://amisskp.wixsite.com/amisskp
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Announcements

A warm welcome to visitors worshipping with us today.

We will be pleased if you can join us upstairs for some tea or coffee after the Service. We ask you to take the greetings of the Scots Kirk back home with you to your own Church.

Each week we collect items for the Missionnaires de la Charité who work with homeless men in Paris. There is a list of items required throughout the year above the basket in the hallway.

FOR SALE for Church funds: “The Tartan Pimpernel” by the Rev Donald Caskie, former Minister of the Scots Kirk:
and Scots Kirk tea-towels, postcards, and notelets.

Contact: Tel: 0148784794 E-mail: scotskirkparis AT orange.fr