Roots 7: Simplicity and service

Holy Trinity Church Huddersfield, Sunday 3 March 2019

I love my church.

Another long morning. I arrived early during the early service so that I could set up my percussion before the later service, there had bee a concert in church last night so things could not remain set up.

The building looked fairly full from my position at the front, and there was a good amount of noise coming back from the congregational singing to the extent that my stage monitor speakers could have done with being a little louder. But the musicians jo b in church is to facilitate the worship of the congregation, so no problems there. There has been a good buzz from the worship of the congregation over the last few weeks, the worship is often a reflection of where the congregation are with God, I think God may be doing something in this church, when I know what that is I’ll blog about it here. Or you can look up the church website at http://www.holytrinityhuddersfield.com

I love my church.

As for things happening, the events notices said that we will be having an event each day of the week we will be celebrating the church’s 200th anniversary in June this year. Again more to follow, if you can follow that sentence.

The sermon? Vicar Mike was preaching, the theme was the seventh on Roots: habits we can develop in order to bear fruit. Today was Simplicity and Service, which when I saw the title thought it omight be a lost Jane Austen novel rather than what it turned out to be about how we can let God confront what is in our hearts.

Poverty can be confused with simplicity, but we have to remember that the Bible does not see poverty as a god thing. Rich people have been used by God, Abraham was very rich and Barnabas owned land. Forced poverty is an evil. The Bible challenges every every economic value we have now,

wealth and possessions can have a godlike power over us. There is a danger that money can take the place of Jesus in our lives. Living simply and serving others are a way to help us learn not to rely on what we can do or earn; there is a real danger that money can take God’s place in our lives. It can control everything we do, whether we have plenty of spare cash or if we have little. For God to be king of our hearts God has to be number one in our lives.

We can help ourselves by developing inner attitudes:
That everything we receive, whether we worked for it or not, is a gift from God.
We need an inner confidence to trust God for all things and to trust stuff less.
We need confidence to share things with others.

Habits become part of what we are. God can change the way we live, change our complete lifestyle. God can set us free from slavery to money. We need to reject anything in our lives which breeds the oppression of others.

Generous giving is central to the life of simplicity. We are set free from service to godlike money and become under the service of Jesus the Servant King, becoming servants of one another. We need to learn to serve people secretly, not looking for praise for ourselves. Serving ourselves is not service to Jesus our King.

First and foremost our call is to prioritise Jesus and follow him in service and simplicity.

The best sermon illustration was not anything that Vicar Mike said. In the area at the back of church, Tina, who has a passion for international justice and fair trade had set if a stall of fairly traded goods. Serving people by supporting them in this way is a way in to a simpler more holy lifestyle.

I love my church.