Gathering

Here today there is love, freely available to all. Not our human loving, fragile and intermittent, but God’s supreme love.

Here today is love, higher than our loftiest hopes, deeper than the immensities of time and space, God’s inclusive love.

Here today we gather in the name of the God of love. Come let us worship.

Hymn

Confession & Words of Assurance

Almighty God,  you love us, but we have not loved You the way You asked us to; You call, but we have not listened. We walk away from neighbors in need, wrapped up in our own concerns. We have gone along with evil, with pride, quarrelling, and divisiveness. 

Holy God, help us to face up to ourselves, so that, as You move toward us in mercy, we may repent, turn to You, and receive mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Christ is the vine. We are simply branches. 
If we abide in Christ, Christ’s words will abide in us. 

Story Time

Scripture

Love one another

John 15 ⁹ “As the Father loved me, I too have loved you. Remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have said these things to you so that my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete. ¹² This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you. ¹³ No one has greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ I don’t call you servants any longer, because servants don’t know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because everything I heard from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit and so that your fruit could last. As a result, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. ¹⁷ I give you these commandments so that you can love each other.

Sermon

 Prayers

God our Saviour, may these prayers which we offer You be also a renewing of our contract to love one another even as Jesus has loved us.

We pray for the end of bitterness and violence in its many forms. Bless all peacemakers: those who negotiate between nations, or arbitrate within commerce and industry, adjudicate in family courts, defuse tensions in school grounds, and counsel conflicting parties within churches.

We pray for the effective, compassionate care of all who are diseased, maimed, or severely handicapped, including ailing members of this congregation. Bless all who work in clinics and hospitals: surgeons, physiotherapists, nurses, physicians, oncologists, psychiatrists, dieticians, social workers, dentists, pharmacists and the staff of hospices for the dying.

We pray for the feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the destitute, the housing of the homeless, the reformation of prisoners, and the rehabilitation of those who have been addicted to drugs. Bless every agency, church or government, which is dedicated to the care of the disadvantaged.

We pray for the church, for all denominations large and small, that we may love one another in practice as well as in prayer.  Bless all joint initiatives in worship, fellowship and service to the community. May the world know that there is a grace at work in us which is not our doing but a gift of love from You.

All of these prayers and so may more we pull together and pray the prayer tradition has taught us…

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.