Sunday 2nd August 2020: Worship online – A God of compassion

Photo by Youssef Naddam https://unsplash.com/photos/iJ2IG8ckCpA

Greeting friends!

Our hearts go out to you especially if you are watching this from a nursing home, or a situation where you are totally isolated perhaps because of your own vulnerabilities or perhaps because you are awaiting the outcome of testing for COVID-19 or perhaps because you are not at all well.

Today we are going to explore the significance for us of an event in the ministry of Jesus that is reported by all the Gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), so clearly it was important to the early church,: Jesus feeding a huge gathering of people.   (By the way, the importance of Jesus feeding many is further underlined by Matthew and Mark who both describe Jesus feeding crowds on two occasions.)

You can find today’s worship service here:

For listening, Paul especially wanted to highlight the recording we mentioned last week, “Shelter Me” by Michael Joncas, Recorded by Spiritu during the time of COVID-19:

And for singing along with, a lovely version of “Goodness is Stronger than Evil”:

Take care in these difficult days. And remember that God is the God of compassion.  As Jesus had compassion on the crowd, he has compassion of us!

Here the words of Desmond Tutu as words of real hope:

Go in peace, and remember:

goodness is stronger than evil;

love is stronger than hate;

light is stronger than darkness;

life is stronger than death;

victory is ours

through Christ who loved us.

Amen.

And the ancient words attributed to Aaron, brother of Moses:

May the Lord bless you and keep you;

may the Lord make his face to shine on upon you

and be gracious to you;

may the Lord lift up his countenance upon on you

and give you peace.

 

Amen.