Sunday Service: 7 June 2026

A worship service was held at 10.30am in the church building on Sunday 7 June.  The service was simultaneously broadcast on the Church Facebook page.  For the next four weeks, you can catch up here.

The Bible passage are Psalm 33:1-9  and Matthew 9:9-13, and Bob Stradling led the service and preached.  The sermon begins at about 33:10 in on the video.

John writes: Bob spoke this morning about Matthew, the social outcast in the story who found himself welcomed, loved, invited by Jesus. In the course of his sermon, Bob spoke about our sorry tendency as humans to divide people into groups: those who are ‘in’ and those whom we regard as ‘out; those who are ‘us’ and those whom we regard as ‘them’. But, Bob reminded us, every human being has been made ‘in the image of God’, and is enormously loved by God.

Bob called us not to follow those who try to get us to ‘other’ certain groups of people, but rather to really get to know those we meet, and share with them God’s inclusive love for them.

Bob also pointed out that when Jesus said ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’ he was referring to a divine comment recorded in Hosea 6:6.  The Jewish leaders were punctilious about the minutiae of  religious observance, but they neglected something far more important in God’s eyes – cultivating love in their hearts towards God and towards others.

Bob quoted Micah 6:8:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

We may be very ‘religious’, but what God looks for in our lives is justice, mercy, and humility.

Challenging stuff!  Bob contrasted the partial ways we may ‘see’ others, with the  all-seeing insight of God into human hearts.

Bob sent us out into our week with the challenge of expressing the love of God for others in our words, our attitudes and our actions.

One thing Bob didn’t touch on was the importance of how we see ourselves.  It is one thing to be told that we are loved deeply by God, and important to God, but if we have a very negative view of ourselves that may block our ability to feel in our hearts God’s love for us.

Yet many of us, because of our upbringing, or things that have happened in our lives, or the kind of religious teaching we have had,  have come to view ourselves in a very negative light.  Some of us have come to believe a lie about ourselves – that we are failures, that we are rubbish, that we count for nothing.

There is often no quick cure for this. The love of other people for us, reflection on the Bible’s expressions of the love of God for us, time with a counsellor may help us. These are all means through which God’s love can reach us.

But the fundamental truth to remind ourselves of always is that ‘I am loved by God’.  What a wonderful picture at the start of our Bible passage today.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. (Matthew 9:9)

Can you picture Matthew, sitting there at his tax collector’s table, comparatively well-off perhaps, but a pariah, a social outcast. He’s seen Jesus about and heard about those who’ve been called to be his disciples.  Has he perhaps felt an aching longing to leave his compromised work and go with Jesus?

But no one likes him, he thinks. ‘I’m probably the very last person this Jesus would want to have anything to do with.’

But then a voice breaks into his reverie, strong, assured, gentle.

‘Follow me’.

And Matthew’s response is immediate in word and accompanying action. I could imagine him saying ‘Yes! I’m in’ and  scurrying after the man in the sandals.  (Though he would learn that ‘I’m in’ wasn’t quite the right expression, for this Jesus was the rabbi come to end division, the rabbi who was God’s son, the rabbi through whom ‘in’ and ‘out’ would eventually be abolished for ever).

May Jesus help us to take time see him better, to see one another better, and to see ourselves through his eyes of love.

Sometimes we agonise over negative stuff in our lives, and let that colour our thinking. Out in the garden recently I’ve been looking at the flowers, the robin, the tiny birds around the bird feeder.  God is delighted with them – simply because they are being all they were meant to be.

If we have the idea of God as a perpetual judge, a perpetual nit-picker we can forget that God doesn’t just love us, he likes us. When we are our authentic selves in the sense of being what God made us to, and choosing to live with love and light and justice and mercy, how delighted God is in us and with us!