November 7, 2021
WELCOME TO ST ANDREW’S ON THE TERRACE
Write your welcome here
PRAYER
JESUS’ PRAYER Jim Cotter paraphrase
Eternal Spirit
Life-Giver, Pain-Bearer, Love-Maker,
source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
loving God, in whom is heaven:
the hallowing of your name
echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed
by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done
by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test,
strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory
of the power that is love, now and for ever.
Amen.
LIGHTING THE RAINBOW CANDLE
TIME WITH THE CHILDREN Rosemary Lawrence
BLESSING THE CHILDREN (All stand)
We send you to the Rainbow Room to hear stories, ask questions and have
fun together.
We bless you. Amen.
PASSING THE PEACE
Traditionally we shake hands to pass the peace and say “peace be with you.” Now that COVID-19 is
here we ask that you pass the peace without shaking hands.
HYMN AA106 ‘O God, We Bear the Imprint of Your Face’
Words: © 1987 Shirley Murray (Hope Publishing Company), Music: Orlando Gibbons
1. O God, we bear the imprint of your face:
the colours of our skin are your design,
and what we boast of beauty in our race
as man or woman, you alone define,
who stretched a living fabric on our frame
and gave to each a language and a name.
2. Where we are torn and pulled apart by hate
because our race, our skin is not the same,
while we are judged unequal by the state
and victims made because we own our name,
humanity reduced to little worth—
dishonoured is your living face on earth.
3.
O God, we share the image of your Son
whose flesh and blood are ours, whatever skin,
in his humanity we find our own,
and in his family our proper kin:
Christ is the brother we still crucify,
his love the language we must learn, or die.
THE WORD IN TEXTS Pat Booth
Introduction
Hebrew Bible Ruth: 1:1-18
Naomi and Ruth
Reflection 1
Hebrew Bible: Ruth: 3: 1-13
Ruth and Boaz
Reflection 2
Teaching: Life in post-exilic Israel
Hebrew Bible Ruth: 4: 13-17
The Genealogy of David
Reflection 3
RESPONSE
For the Word in scripture,
for the Word among us,
for the Word within us,
we give thanks.
HYMN ‘Who will bring our worlds together?’
Words: Shirley Erena Murray; Music: WOV 577 Austria
1. Who will bring our world together,
cross the span of ocean space?
What will speak to heart and spirit,
every culture, face to face?
Jesus Christ, the bridge between us,
one to one, and land to land,
Word that speaks beyond all language,
love that children understand.
5. Scattered islands, crowded cities,
many contexts are our home,
bounded by Pacific waters,
cast in shadow of the bomb.
Here we bring, around one table,
bread of daily life to share,
feeding, nourishing each other,
growing wiser and aware.
6. In our prayer and in our protest
let our sparks of hope take fire:
let our inner voices make us
soft as petals tough as wire,
sometimes bending, never broken,
challenging unrighteous powers
till all violence is ended,
till compassion seeds her flowers.
7. Working to the Spirit’s purpose,
celebrating what is just,
engineers of kindlier systems,
architects creating trust.
God in each of us is present,
we are given will and worth
fit for builders of new bridges,
great and small, to change the earth!
OFFERTORY MUSIC
OFFERING HYMN Tune: Duke Street WOV 24
Willing hands, to lead the blind,
heal the wounded, feed the poor.
Love embracing all our kind,
charity with liberal store. Amen
OFFERING PRAYER
For the gifts we receive and the gifts we share,
we give thanks.
For the abundant universe, with resources enough and to spare,
we give thanks.
May our offerings of money and food, compassion and goodwill,
be multiplied to those who receive them,
blessing them as we are blessed to give. Amen
We recognise and bless the gifts brought to the table, and those which wing
their way electronically from our banks to the church’s account.
LIFE IN THE COMMUNITY OF ST ANDREW’S
People share notices and visitors are welcomed. If you have a notice, please move to the front row, ready
to speak briefly from the lectern.
For the benefit of newcomers, please introduce yourself before you begin.
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE Catriona Cairns
CIRCLE OF PRAYER
We think today of the people of South Korea and the National Council of
Churches in Korea. We hold all refugees in our hearts. We pray in
particular for those detained for many years in Papua New Guinea &
Nauru. We give thanks for progress that has been made and pray that
their calls for justice might yet find a compassionate response. In New
Zealand, we remember those in Parliament, and today we name Teanau
Tuiono and Brooke van Velden, list MPs. Here in the Central Presbytery,
we pray for the leaders and people of St David's Presbyterian Church,
Carterton.
PRAYER FOR ST ANDREW’S
Renew your people, God,
and renew our life in this place.
Give us a new spirit of unity
with all who follow the Way of Jesus
and new bonds of love
with people of other faiths.
Bless the city in which we live
that it may be a place
where honest dealing,
good government,
the desire for beauty,
and the care for others flourish.
Bless this church
that what we know of your will
may become what we do,
and what we believe
the strong impulse
of our worship and work. Amen
INVITATION TO COMMUNION
St Andrew’s is an open community and all are invited to Christ’s table.
Wherever you are on your faith journey, wherever you have come from and
wherever you are going to, whatever you believe, whatever you do not believe,
you are welcome to participate in the communion. This is God’s meal for all
people.
WELCOME TO THE TABLE
At this Table we give thanks for justice, love, peace and freedom.
At this Table we give thanks for friends and strangers together
in community in this safe place.
For everyone born a place at the Table.
We are all invited.
COMMUNION HYMN AA 100 ‘Now to your table spread’
Words: Shirley Erena Murray
Music: “Love Unknown” John Ireland
1. Now to your table spread we come, each one, in faith
that you alone provide the words of life and death:
in wine and bread, in promised food
we find your loving heart, O God.
8. Hands of the world stretch out, your mystery to touch
in longing to believe a truth beyond our reach,
to sing in joy, to cry in grief,
to know your meaning in our life.
9. Here is our common wealth in sharing what is good,
as though all humankind around one table stood,
this bread to break, this wine to taste –
one people in the name of Christ.
THE STORY...
We remember the stories from our tradition....
How on many occasions Jesus would share a meal with friends.
Bread and wine, the very basics of life, shared in community.
How bread would be taken, a blessing offered, and then shared amongst
them. And all ate.
How some wine would be poured out, a blessing offered, and then passed
amongst them. All of them drank.
When they gathered in this way it was a time of concern,
conversation and celebration.
The bread and the wine symbolised
human lives interconnected
with other human lives,
and the power of giving and receiving.
We remember that on the night before his death
he shared the Passover Meal with his disciples
and gave the meal a new significance and purpose.
May the passion for life as seen in Jesus
and in the lives and struggles
of many other committed and faithful people then and now,
enable us to dream and to risk....
Together may we re-imagine the world.
Together may we work to make all things new.
Together may we celebrate the possibilities and hope
we each have and are called to share.
For everyone born, a place at the Table.
THE BREAD IS BROKEN
We break the bread for the broken Earth,
ravaged and plundered for greed.
May there be healing for our beautiful blue and green planet.
We break the bread for our broken humanity,
for the powerful and the powerless
trapped by exploitation and oppression.
May there be healing for humanity.
We break the bread for those who follow other paths;
who travel on a different road from us;
those who think and act differently;
those whose belief system is different to ours;
those who see our world through different eyes
of ethnicity and culture.
May there be healing where there is pain and woundedness.
We break this bread for the unhealed hurts and wounds
that lie within us all.
May we, too, be healed.
THE WINE IS POURED
This is the cup of peace and of new life for all.
A sign of love for the community of hope.
A reminder of the call
to live life fully,
to love wastefully,
and to be all that we can be.
Come then, life-giving Spirit of our God,
brood over these bodily things,
and make us one body with Christ;
that we may no longer be in bondage
to the principalities and powers that enslave creation,
but may know your liberating peace
such as the world cannot give.
THE BREAD AND THE WINE ARE SHARED
(The bread and wine will be served in the pews. During this “Covid Time” we celebrate
Communion using ONLY gluten free bread.
Wine is served in small glasses – the lighter colour is fermented wine –
the darker colour grape juice)
PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION
We give thanks, God,
that we have gathered together
in this sacred place,
that we have been refreshed at this meal.
We thank you for each person here.
We recommit to being your community
for each other, for our city, and our world. Amine
CALL TO SERVICE standing
You are sent in the daring of God,
to bless the world with JUSTICE.
You are sent in the intent of God,
to bless the world with PROMISE.
You are sent in the longing of God,
to bless the world with HOPE.
You are sent in the love of God,
to bless the world with GOOD NEWS.
You are sent in the reign of peace,
to bless the world with SHALOM.
HYMN ‘This love, this life, this enterprise’
Music: WOV 453 O Waly, Waly.
Words: Andrew Pratt
1. This love, this life, this enterprise
is that by which we will arise
affirmed, up-raised, to live again
when we have suffered death or pain.
1. Our practical adventure here
involves both urgency and care;
compelled by shared humanity
to offer love, set people free.
2. And if the task enlarges sight
to wider visions, greater height
than those which we can reach on earth,
then know that God has come to birth.
BLESSING
SUNG AMEN
POSTLUDE Fugue in D Major (BWV532)
by J.S. Bach (1685 – 1750)
THANK YOU
Write the Thank You here