Service Date: 14 June, 2009

Theme introduction given by Ruth Grayson, from SAVE (Sheffield Agencies for the Vulnerable and Excluded)
The parable of the Good Samaritan is well known, but we always tend to focus on the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan when reading it. We rarely talk about the victim, far less about the innkeeper. Yet the latter was surely as important to the (apparently satisfactory) outcome of the story as the Samaritan, which might not have been the case if the Samaritan, after tending the victim's wounds, had left him by the roadside, possibly to await another mugging or to die of exposure.

Service Date: 7 June, 2009

Isaiah 6:1-8
My name is Isaiah - you may have heard of me. I work in the great temple at Jerusalem, offering sacrifices for people who come to say thank you or sorry to God. I'm in the temple every day, just about - it's my second home. But once something very strange happened to me in the temple, something so strange that I still don't know if it was a dream, or if it really happened to me.
In my vision, I was in the temple as usual - but it wasn't at all as usual. Because instead of people praying, and priests burning incense, and animals being killed for sacrifice, God was there in the temple, on an enormous throne. It was just like being at the royal court. You can't imagine how huge God's presence was. It filled the whole temple, so I felt I could hardly breathe for holiness. You couldn't look anywhere else but at God, but somewhere I could hear voices calling to each other, holy, holy, holy is God.

Service Date: 31 May, 2009

This was a service held at Broomhill Methodist Church with that congregation and St Mark's Broomhill. It is the only joint morning service of Churches Together in Broomhill and Broomhall (CTBB). It was also the occasion of Sarah Hall's induction into the Moderatorship of CTBB, an annual rotating post.

Service Date: 17 May, 2009

Sharing in congregation: Who do we think we are? I
Family trees - how much do you know about yours?

Gospel reading: Matthew 1:1-17

Service Date: 10 May, 2009

Psalm 27:1-6

Service Date: 4 May, 2009

Acts 4:5-12
You know when something goes badly wrong in public life, there's a court of enquiry to find out the facts and decide who's to blame. What we've just heard is the opposite of that: the court of enquiry set up to find out how Peter and John, two men with no medical training at all, managed to heal a man who'd never been able to walk in his life. But the enquiry set up by the high priests gets turned on its head as Peter and John take over the proceedings with some very unwelcome news. You know this man Jesus you've just had put to death? The one who said he was God's leader? Well, guess what - we used his name, so it was really him who healed this man!

Service Date: 19 April, 2009

Hebrew Bible reading: Isaiah 45:1-8
It is a powerful passage that Nobi has chosen for us to read on the occasion of his baptism. God is revealed in this reading as the power behind the universe, the one who unseats kings, levels mountains, breaks the bars of iron supposed to protect a city from its enemies. God is the one who has chosen the people of Israel and will save them. Yet strangely, this saving knowledge comes to the people only when they are in dark places: defeated by their enemies and exiled from their land, now ruled by a power which does not recognise God.

Service Date: 12 April, 2009

Mark 16:1-8
Sarah: I hereby bring this editorial meeting of Jerusalem FM to order!
Mark: No need to be that formal. After all, it's only the two of us.
Sarah: First item of business, then. Your final report on Jesus of Nazareth. Is that really all you've got?
Mark: Well, that's what the women told me happened. You always say I should follow a story up - and for some reason, this story felt personal. I wanted to know what happened next - though I wasn't at all expecting what I did hear!
Sarah: But it's an impossible ending!
Mark: Well, I know not many people who die get raised from death.
Sarah: Not many? Have you heard of one, even?
Mark: Well, no, though I've not finished looking through our archives yet.
Sarah: Believe me, you won't find a case to match it anywhere there. But that's not what I meant.
Mark: What did you mean, then?

Service Date: 10 April, 2009

Opening responses

Leader: From Bethlehem to Nazareth,
from Jordan to Jericho,
from Bethany to Jerusalem,
from then to now,
All: Come, Lord Jesus.

Leader: To carry the cross,
to lead the way,
to shoulder the sin of the world
and take it away,
All: Come, Lord Jesus.

Leader: Today,
to this place,
to us,
All: Come, Lord Jesus.

(responses taken from Stages on the Way c 1998 WGRG)

Service Date: 9 April, 2009

What do we mean by ‘A Christian seder'? Seder is a Jewish word meaning ‘order', and it refers to the general pattern followed during a Passover meal, used for centuries by Jews across the world. There is no set wording for the meal; on the contrary, innovation and creativity have always been encouraged, but the general order stays the same, unchanging elements providing the key ingredients to the proceedings.
Today we are not going to follow the format of a complete Passover meal from start to finish. Partly because without Jews to host our meal, we could not consider this a real traditional seder. But also because within a traditional seder there are so many elements that it is worth our focusing separately on different aspects, building upon them in the context of our Christianity and applying them, in particular, to the Lord's Supper. So tonight we will be focusing on the Dayeinu response: a Hebrew word meaning ‘It would have been enough'.