The Pearl of Great Value

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 be made at the last minute for timing reasons, or to reflect current events

OPENING ANNO FROM R4
BBC Radio 4. We go live now to Neath Methodist Church in South Wales for Sunday Worship. The preacher on this the fifth Sunday in Lent is the Rev’d Dr. Stephen Wigley, Chair of the Wales Synod of the Methodist Church, who also introduces the service.

ITEM 1 INTRO REV DR. STEPHEN WIGLEY
Good morning and welcome to Neath. This is a part of south Wales rich in history, founded around a Roman fort and with a Cistercian Abbey still standing by the river. But the modern town was shaped by the Industrial revolution and the development of manufacturing industries of iron, steel and tinplate. This church, Neath Methodist, is known locally as the ‘Penny-brick’ Church. For when the local congregation first decided to build it, they launched what we might call today a ‘crowd funding’ scheme across the wider community, encouraging everyone who could to contribute – for a penny a brick. That was quite a commitment to make back in 1914 – but it led to the extensive premises now enjoyed at the heart of this community.
Throughout Lent the Sunday Worship services have been reflecting on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent book ‘Dethroning Mammon; making money serve grace’. The story of how this church was built gives a wonderful sense of the truth behind the saying, ‘We gain what we give’ - the focus of both our worship this morning and a chapter of Archbishop Justin’s book, from which we hear an extract now.

ITEM 2 INSERT Clip from ’Dethroning Mammon’

ITEM 3 LINK STEPHEN WIGLEY
The minister of this church Rev. Chris Gray will lead us in prayer shortly, but first we begin with one of the classic hymns of Charles Wesley and the Methodist tradition, ’Ye servants of God, your master proclaim’.

ITEM 4 MUSIC 1 CHOIR / ORGAN
Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim,

ITEM 5 OPENING PRAYERS REV. CHRIS GRAY
Let us pray.
Holy and generous God,
to you alone belong glory, honour and praise.

You are the maker of the universe;
and it is by your wisdom that we are created and sustained.
You are the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ;
it is by your love that we are redeemed and forgiven.
You are the source of all holiness;
it is by your Spirit that we are made whole
and brought to perfection.

Holy and generous God,
to you alone belong glory, honour and praise.

Living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
we confess that our lives do not reflect your extravagant love:
a love that is seen supremely in the passion of Christ and his death on the cross.
We resist your word in our hearts.
We turn from our neighbours in their need.
We allow greed and self-centredness to direct our lives.
We fail to follow your call to live generous and sacrificial lives in the service of others.

Lord, have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and keep us in life eternal.
We offer our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

We say together the prayer that Jesus taught us, as we pray.

ITEM 6 LORD’S PRAYER
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.

ITEM 7 LINK CHRIS GRAY
On this Passion Sunday, as we draw ever closer to Holy Week and meditate on the passion and suffering of Christ, we hear from the psalms, in the poignant and moving words of Psalm 130, ‘Out of the depths...’

ITEM 8 READING
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.
Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!

If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the LORD!
For with the LORD there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
It is he who will redeem Israel
from all its iniquities.

ITEM 9 MUSIC 2 CHOIR/ORGAN
Choir anthem ‘Crucifixus’

ITEM 10 LINK CHRIS GRAY
Lotti’s ‘Crucifixus’, sung by the Swansea Bach Choir, reminding us of the statement from the creed; ‘For our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.’
The first of our Gospel readings today is John’s account of the Burial of Jesus.

ITEM 11 GOSPEL READING 1
A reading from John chapter 19 verses 38 to 42
After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the authorities, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.

Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

ITEM 12 MUSIC 3 CHOIR / ORGAN
Arr: Bob Chilcott.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

ITEM 13 ADDRESS 1 STEPHEN WIGLEY
‘Were you there when they laid him in the Tomb?’ That’s the plaintive question asked in the old spiritual - and the truth is there were very few; that most of the followers of Jesus had long since run away.

But Joseph and Nicodemus were there. Indeed, not only there, but according to John’s account they were the two who at some significant cost and inconvenience made arrangements for Jesus to be buried at all.

Joseph provided the tomb, and Nicodemus provided the spices. Both were costly actions, in terms of risk for two men who were still only followers in secret, in terms of inconvenience at the height of the Passover festival, and in terms of money, for the provision of a new grave and the liberal accompaniment of spices.

Theirs was an act of real commitment and generosity. It has parallels with the story which John tells in chapter 12 of Mary, the sister of Lazarus, anointing Jesus feet with the most expensive of perfume and then wiping them dry with her hair.

They are acts of extravagance, evidence of a love which goes beyond financial calculation and doesn’t count the cost. They are the actions of friends who want simply to show their love and commitment in the most difficult and trying of times, when all seems lost.

There is a sense in which they echo the words of Jesus to his disciples after sharing in a last supper in the Upper room. Warning them of what is to come on the Cross, he says to them; “Greater love has no-one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

And Jesus continues “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” You are my friends. Joseph and Nicodemus are still too nervous to be open about their following of Jesus, but at this moment of utter desolation, gathered by the grave-side, they reveal themselves truly to be friends of Jesus.

Friendship was at the heart of the relationship between Jesus and his disciples, a relationship which grew deeper as they shared in travel and table fellowship in the course of Jesus’ ministry across Galilee.

That’s not to say it didn’t also involve a degree of financial commitment. The Gospels tell of various people, often women, who offer Jesus practical help and support; and here, in the story of Joseph and Nicodemus it probably involved significant financial expense.

But all this is much more than meeting the bills. It’s about love and support, about being willing to pay the price, about being there when it counts, in good times and in bad. For it’s this kind of friendship which allows people to grow and develop, which provides for a framework of love and trust in which people can fail – but know themselves forgiven.

‘What we give we gain’. Ultimately, friendship is a gift; and it’s the gift of this kind of friendship which allows us to become our true selves, the kind of people God would have us be; the kind of people whom Jesus called friends.

The American First Baptist Minister, Francis H. Rawley wrote a hymn in 1886 still popular today which tells of the Lord who laid down his life for his friends;
‘I will sing the wondrous story…’

ITEM 14 MUSIC 4 CHOIR / ORGAN
Hymn ‘I will sing the wondrous story’ [Tune: Hyfrydol]

ITEM 15 LINK CHRIS GRAY
In Luke’s Gospel, we hear about another sudden death and the way Jesus deals with a rich man and his possessions in a story that has become known as ‘the Parable of the Rich Fool’. 

ITEM 16 GOSPEL READING 2
A reading from Luke Chapter 12, verses 13 to 21
Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’
Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

ITEM 17 ADDRESS 2 STEPHEN WIGLEY
What happens to a rich man and his money? Many years ago, I worked for a time in an American bank in a specialist section dealing with shipping. One day we heard that the bank was to be visited by a rich, successful ship-owner. All of us young account officers were duly charged to look smart and keep out of the way and so I only managed to catch sight of this distinguished figure for a moment coming out of a boardroom.

After he’d left, I asked my boss why it was that such a successful man looked so unhappy? My boss looked at me, and then said that for a man from his background to be a rich ship-owner with no child to pass his fortune onto was a tragedy.

I was reminded of all this by Jesus’ story about the rich owner and his barns; a man with more wealth than he could use, no idea of how to share it and no happiness in keeping it all to himself. ‘So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves’, says Jesus ‘but are not rich towards God.’

There’s much in this story about the value of giving; indeed, Jesus would go on later to make the point specifically. ‘Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven… for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’

Archbishop Justin’s notion of ‘making money serve grace’ is not to ignore the role of money or importance of financial expertise; but it is to say that their value lies in the way they’re used, not in the service of Mammon, for the amassing of wealth for its own sake, but for building up treasure in heaven.

Looking back on my banking days, I can remember undertaking what was called the Account Officer Programme, and in the process becoming familiar with accounting, cash flow forecasting and financial modelling.

I sometimes think that this business training has been as well used by the Church as any of my theology degrees; for much of my ministry has involved the consideration of budgets and cashflows in various church and charity schemes.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised by this. After all, the Archbishop quite rightly points out that setting a budget can be as important as writing theology; that a budget is simply ‘applied theology expressed in numbers’.

More recently, I’ve found such experience being used in another related field, in chairing a committee monitoring the investment of Church funds. I’ve discovered that ‘ethical investment’ is not simply about excluding businesses we consider to be doing wrong; it’s also about engagement with and support of those companies which seek to do right, and investing in sectors which enable society to flourish.

For it may be, if we use what we have, to invest in what we believe, that we will start to build up treasure in heaven; and in the process, discover that heavenly treasure can still be found among the business of earth – that in the economy of heaven, we do indeed ‘gain what we give’.

ITEM 18 MUSIC 5 CHOIR / ORGAN
Choir anthem ‘God so loved the world’

ITEM 19 PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION
CHRIS:
John Stainer’s music, reflecting on those words from John’s Gospel, ‘God so loved the world…’, now leads us into prayer.
So, let us pray to God our Father,
aware of his boundless love and mercy.

CHOIR SUNG RESPONSE:
Here am I, Lord,
I’ve come to do your will;
here am I, Lord,
in your presence I am still.
(Northumbria Community) STF 552

(R1) We pray for the Christian Church;
that it may truly serve the world,
and proclaim God’s love not only by word
but also by costly, generous action.

CHOIR SUNG RESPONSE:
Here am I, Lord,
I’ve come to do your will;
here am I, Lord,
in your presence, I am still.

(R2) We pray for the world with its contrasts of luxury and deprivation.
For those in the grip of famine, desperately in need of food and water;
All suffering from the effects of terrorism, conflict and war around the world.
May those in seats of power use their resources of power and wealth
that peace and justice may prevail over all our earth.

CHOIR SUNG RESPONSE:
Here am I, Lord,
I’ve come to do your will;
here am I, Lord,
in your presence, I am still.

(R3) We pray for the very poor, the weak and oppressed,
Those sick and afflicted;
the abandoned, rejected and abused;
that all obstacles to their healing and wholeness may be removed,
and that all prejudice and greed may be transformed through Christ
into an outpouring of love and hope.

CHOIR SUNG RESPONSE:
Here am I, Lord,
I’ve come to do your will;
here am I, Lord,
in your presence, I am still.

CHRIS:
We pray for those whom we know and love;
our families, friends and neighbours;
that they may know God’s freely offered love and grace in their lives.
And we pray for ourselves,
that we may be more prepared to give our time, energy, talents and money
in serving those in need.
We ask all our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ,
who loved us and gave himself for us. Amen.

ITEM 20 MUSIC 6 CHOIR / ORGAN
Hymn ‘And can it be?’

ITEM 21 BLESSING STEPHEN WIGLEY
So, we pray to the Father,
1) that according to the riches of his glory,
we may be strengthened in our inner being
with power through his Spirit,
and that Christ may dwell in our hearths through faith…

2) that we may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints,
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.

3) And so may the blessing of God,
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
Be with us and with all those we love,
This day and for evermore, Amen.

ITEM 22 Organ Postlude GLENN CROOKS

Closing anno from R4:

A Chorale Variation on “Nun danket, alle Gott” by Siegfried Karg-Elert bringing our Sunday Worship from Neath Methodist Church to a close. The service was led by the Rev’d Chris Gray, and the Preacher was the Rev’d Dr. Stephen Wigley. The Swansea Bach Choir was directed by Greg Hallam and the organist was Glenn Crooks. The producer was Karen Walker. Next week Sunday Worship for Palm Sunday comes from All Souls, Langham Place in London.
A link to resources for individuals and small groups based on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book are available on the Sunday Worship web page.