Please note:

This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors that were corrected before the radio broadcast.

It may contain gaps to be filled in at the time so that prayers may reflect the needs of the world, and changes may also made be made at the last minute for timing reasons, or to reflect current events.

Sunday Worship
Radio 4 - Sunday 24 October 2004

from Highfields Free Church

Leader : Peter Baker

Good morning and welcome to Highfields. Our congregation is drawn from all over the city of Cardiff, and because we're within walking distance of the university, students from many different countries join the families who've made their spiritual home here. Together with our neighbours in this community of Cathays, we share a multi-purpose church building refurbished for an enormous range of activities - everything from after school clubs to art groups and self-defence classes.

We live and worship with the conviction that God's Word is powerful and relevant as it speaks to our need to make sense of life - and making sense of the puzzle of life is the theme we will explore in our service this morning.

So let's begin with a hymn, which declares that the God of Christian worship although beyond us is involved in the fragile experience of our world. He is just yet gracious, unseen yet present, the Immortal, Invisible God only wise:

HYMN:
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
in all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
we blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
and wither and perish, but nought changeth Thee.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of Light,
Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render; O help us to see
'tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee.

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.

PRAYER: Ashley Crowter

Lord God, there is none like you in power and authority. Giving life to all, you sustain our fragile lives, reigning over all, you command creation.

Although hidden from us by your dazzling purity, you have been revealed to us in Christ your Son, our Saviour and Lord. So we bow before your majestic glory and thank you for your tender mercy.

May we, who live and move and have our being in you, respond to your goodness and grace with hearts captured by your love, minds committed to your truth and wills determined to obey you.

Lord of life, breathe into us your Spirit
Lord of forgiveness, grant us the assurance of pardon for our sin
Lord of light, shine upon us the knowledge of your love

All this we pray through Jesus Christ, who taught us as the family of God to say

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 trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory. For ever and ever. Amen.
ASHLEY CROWTER

In Christ , God entered the darkness of our suffering world, died upon the Cross and rose again blazing a trail of hope for all who will follow Him, we sing about that staggering truth in the song Light of the World…

HYMN: Light of the World (repeat chorus and a verse possibly):

Light of the world, you stepped down into darkness,
opened my eyes, let me see.
Beauty that made this heart adore you,
hope of a life spent with you.
So here I am to worship, here I am to bow down,
here I am to say that you're my God:
you're altogether lovely, altogether worthy,
altogether wonderful to me.

King of all days, oh so highly exalted,
glorious in heaven above,
humbly you came to the earth you created,
all for love's sake became poor.
So here I am to worship, here I am to bow down,
here I am to say that you're my God: you're altogether lovely,
altogether worthy, altogether wonderful to me.

So here I am to worship, here I am to bow down,
here I am to say that you're my God: you're altogether lovely,
altogether worthy, altogether wonderful to me.

ASHLEIGH CROWTER

We read now from a passage in the curious Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes which tells us that life can sometimes be a frustrating experience.

READING: Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 (Sarah Pearce)

1 The words of the Preacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."
3 What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
11 There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.
(NIV)

SERMON (PART A): Peter Baker

"We'd been married three years, we were saving up to get our own place, everything was fine I thought, then he just left, cleared off with someone else - what's the point of it all?"

"I worked hard at school, went to college, got a degree - but look at me now, can't find a job - what's the point of it all?"

"So tell me, I go to work, come home, eat, sleep, get up, drive to the office, that's my life - but what's the point of it all?"

We've all heard comments like that, we may even have expressed some of them ourselves - what's the point of life?

There's a feeling that everything should add up and make sense at least some of the time, yet the experience of many people is that life is rather like an onion, you peel off layer after layer, only to find that there's nothing there - except tears perhaps.

That seems to be the initial observation of the person who wrote Ecclesiastes. Take God out of the picture, look at life under the sun as he says, imagine the world with the lid tightly shut and you'll end up with a meaningless existence. It's a story with no coherent purpose, a puzzle with important pieces missing. Life becomes a pointless exercise.

Those long hours, the demanding boss, the impossible targets - for what purpose? We can end up doing a job we don't like, to pay for a lifestyle we can't afford. We say that we need to work to live, but when we come home from work we don't want to live we want to sleep!

Routines which are designed to help, in the end may become our prison warders - get up, wash, shave, have breakfast, clean the teeth, feed the cat, kiss the wife, catch the train. Life is relentless.

And it's fragile "generations come and go." No sooner have we fallen in love, settled down, had children perhaps, climbed the career ladder, retired to a villa in Tuscany and it's all over. Like small blips on a radar screen we disappear without trace. It all feels so disposable, so vulnerable.

Furthermore says the preacher of Ecclesiastes our existence mirrors the monotony of nature. It's recycled.
"The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises
All the streams flow into the sea , yet the sea is never full."

Of course there is a beauty about the circle of life: the Bible says that creation rings with the praises of her creator, God has left his signature tune everywhere.

But the point being made here is that when God is removed from the equation, nature has no final purpose and living becomes a treadmill from which we try to escape by changing jobs, houses, relationships anything, in an attempt to outmanoeuvre boredom.

The problem is life is insatiable "the eye never has enough of seeing, the ear never has enough of hearing".

Those changes make no real difference. The treadmill keeps turning and we keep running. Clothes are never fashionable enough, relationships never romantic enough, life never full enough.

Mr Preacher makes one final observation about experience in the real world - it's predictable.
"There's nothing new under the sun. Nothing about which one can say, "Look! This is something new"

Then there's the wonderful capacity of human beings to invent and discover. But the reality is that even with the most amazing breakthroughs, like the unravelling of the genetic code, we are simply making sense of what is already there.
"Thinking God's thoughts after Him" as the scientist Johannes Keppler put it.

So is there more to existence than repetitive work, and restless searching? Are we chained to a wheel stoically submitting to the ultimate meaninglessness of our brief existence?

Many generations later another son of David, also a preacher, will comment on the enigma of life. But he'll do more than expose its emptiness. He will point to himself as the one around whom the human personality can find its essential point of integration. He'll take some bread and say "I am the bread of life - I can satisfy your hunger for meaning".

He'll stand before the crowds at the conclusion of a great festival in the Temple at Jerusalem and just as the huge lights are being extinguished, will say "I am the light of the world - follow me and you'll find your way out of that tunnel to nowhere". He will eventually hang upon a cross - offering forgiveness to his torturers and a place in the kingdom of God to the criminal next to him.

Extraordinary yes, yet Christians claim to have discovered in Jesus Christ the true source of meaning and purpose. In relationship to Him they find satisfying answers to the riddles of life. They discover the joy that like creation they have been made by Christ and for Christ.

Our next song captures this reality so well "My Jesus, My Saviour …. Nothing compares to the promise I have in you"

HYMN: My Jesus, my Saviour

Repeat verse (x1) and chorus (x2)

My Jesus, My Saviour
Lord, there is none like You.
All of my days I want to praise
The wonders of Your mighty love.
My comfort, my shelter,
Tower of refuge and strength,
Let every breath, all that I am,
Never cease to worship You.
Shout to the Lord all the earth, let us sing
Power and majesty, praise to the King.
Mountains bow down
And the seas will roar
At the sound of Your name.
I sing for joy at the work of Your hands.
Forever I'll love You, forever I'll stand.
Nothing compares to the
Promise I have in You.

Asheigh Crowter

The gospels are full of transforming encounters between Jesus and different kinds of people. We read about one now from John's perspective.

A Samaritan woman comes alone to the village well at midday to draw water. An unusual place to be during the hottest part of the day, but probably explained as we'll see, by the sense of failure the woman felt about herself.

Jesus arrives and as is so often the case, overturns convention and risks a conversation with her…

John 4:7- 26 (Jo Phillips and Dave Fielder)

Jesus: "Will you give me a drink?"

Woman: "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?"

Jesus: "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

Woman: "Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

Jesus: "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

Woman: "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

Jesus: "Go, call your husband and come back."

Woman: "I have no husband,"

Jesus: "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

Woman: "Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

Jesus: "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Woman: The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

Jesus: "I who speak to you am he."
(NIV)

SERMON (PART B): Peter Baker

I suppose we can take for granted our domestic water supply. It's available at the turn of a tap 24 hours a day. And if we are not satisfied with the quality on offer, well we can always pop down to the local supermarket and pick out one of the many bottled varieties.

How different from my recent experience of Tagpopoot, the remote exotically named village in the Mindanao region of the Philippines. Here water is scarce and the women of the village will walk two miles every day in the early morning avoiding the searing tropical heat, to a single water pump in the valley below, where they will fill large clay jars and carry them back on their heads. It's a noisy, cheerful procession as village gossip is exchanged on the journey to the well and back. For these people, the essentials of life are contained in those water pots and this daily communal ritual.

So it must have been a tragic loneliness that brought the woman of Samaria to this particular well at midday. Ostracised and alienated possibly, here she was alone again, every day the same solitary journey, the same routine. That empty jar which she had filled yesterday and would no doubt fill again tomorrow was like her, a symbol of her empty life , of a never ending thirst.

Mind you she had learned to hide that need. Her survival the product of the quick wittedness displayed in her encounter with Jesus.

But as he can do with us all, Jesus penetrates the hard shell, those barriers of self protection which we erect to prevent others getting too close. He is offering her an altogether different experience of life- a bubbling inner fountain which can satisfy a person's spiritual thirst not just once but permanently. Call it eternal life, soul -reality, the life of God- Jesus claims to have it, to be it and with it to fill our emptiness.

Of course this encounter didn't remove the need for the woman to face the painful mess of her brokenness and the wrong choices she had made over the years.

No less is that true for all those who want to have faith in Christ.

But as she returned to tell the villagers excitedly " Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did ", she was able to deal with her past in a new way, with a sense of forgiveness and security which she had discovered through this extraordinary person.

I remember well a rather clever advertising slogan which captured the imagination of a thirsty public. In it a lazy sun bather, a perspiring athlete and a weary office worker are desperate for a drink . But salvation is at hand in the form of a wonder drink which a group of smiling people gladly distribute while the caption jingle plays " Obey your thirst ".

I reckon the Samaritan woman was glad she did ! For to find Christ is an encounter calculated to fill our lives with the overflowing presence of God's truth and love.

And to that discovery there can only be one real response "then sings my soul, my Saviour God to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art"

HYMN: O Lord my God!

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
consider all the works Thy hand hath made,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
the power throughout the universe displayed;
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
how great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
how great Thou art, how great Thou art!

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
and hear the brook, and feel the gentle breeze;
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
how great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
how great Thou art, how great Thou art!

And when I think that God His Son not sparing,
sent Him to die - I scarce can take it in,
that on the cross my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin:
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
how great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
how great Thou art, how great Thou art!

When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation
and take me home - what joy shall fill my heart!
Then shall I bow in humble adoration and there proclaim,
my God, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
how great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
how great Thou art, how great Thou art!

PRAYER AND MEDITATION WITH MUSIC ( Phil and Sarah )

"There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven … a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot ... time to mourn and a time to dance"

Father, as we move towards heaven, we are aware of the strains of daily life. Therefore we pray for those for whom the time is hard, those who know the wrench of uprooting and the anguish of tearing down. We remember those who are refugees, (like the people of Sudan) who have lost their homes and possessions and have nowhere to live. We pray for those for whom this is a time to mourn and weep - victims of war and injustice.

We remember Iraq and ask for a restoration of personal security, social stability and national hope. We pray for those known to us, for whom this week has brought bad news, news which radically changes the landscape of their plans and dreams, news of an illness, a broken relationship, the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one. Father, may the light of your love comfort them today.

We also pray for those for whom the time is very enjoyable, those who know the happiness of a new birth, those who are enjoying the lightness of laughter in their lives. Thank you for the wonderful world which you have made, may we as your children not only enjoy your gifts but also worship you the Giver, seeing through the splendour of earthly blessings those gleams of glory from an eternal world and a new day which is coming.

MUSIC

"There is a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace"

Father, in the different seasons of life we ask that we might appreciate what time it is for us and for our world. Give us courage to speak out, give us patience to remain silent. Give us love to mend and to heal, give us determination to throw away and to change. Give us wisdom in the decisions we have to make so that we may seek the good of others and glory of your name.

MUSIC

"God has made everything beautiful in its time and He has set eternity in the hearts of men"

Thank you, Father, that in the sunshine and shadow of life we have the certainty of your promise that one day we will experience the glory of your presence forever.

You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. Not only have you created us but through faith in Christ you have recreated us so that our ears hear more steadily the distant music of that heavenly glory. . Accept our prayers, forgive our sins and give us your peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.

Intro to 'In Christ Alone': Peter Baker

We conclude our service with a hymn which is an anthem of faith, a declaration of intent and a statement of hope as it describes the life we can have in Christ which His death and resurrection makes secure - from life's first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny- In Christ Alone my hope is found.

HYMN: In Christ Alone my hope is found

In Christ Alone my hope is found
He is my light my strength my song
This cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My comforter, my all in all,
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ Alone! - who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones he came to save:
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground his body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain:
then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave he rose again!
And as he stands in victory
Sins curse has lost its grip on me,
For I am His, and he is mine -
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death,
This is the power of Christ in me;
From life's first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from his hand,
Till he returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand.

BENEDICTION:

Lord God, thank you that in Christ you call us to an abundant life and an invincible hope as our faith is fixed on Him.

May we hear the music of heaven even in the struggles of our fragile existence. Fill our emptiness with your love, joy and peace and may the presence of the Holy Spirit remain with us now and always.
Amen.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us now and always.
Amen

Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, Son and Spirit now and forever.
Amen

Strengthen our faith, deepen our love and increase our hope in you and your kingdom. Amen.