Coverings and technology problems

Holy Trinity Church Huddersfield, Sunday 31 March 2019

40 Blogs of Lent: 23

A good day for walking to church. The sun was out and the initial morning chill was wearing off, the clocks went forward last night so it felt early, it looked like was going to be a great day. Going home was different, the sun which had shone through the windows had gone, the rest of the day was grey and overcast.

The picture on the right I used a few weeks ago when we wrote them on a piece of paper and pinned them on the cross.

During the sermon was an illustration that was unintended. Wine had been poured into a bowl and the microphone was disconnected from the transmitter in the preacher’s pocket. She struggled to reconnect the mic, still holding the empty bottle, then when that was done put the bottle down. It would have been easier to put the bottle down first. Sin is like that. We hold on to it, struggling to live our lives with our sin getting in the way of whatever we do rather than give them to God. That point was not made in the service, it was about something else altogether.
The sermon we did have contained several visual aids including a bunch of flowers. Today was Mothers’ Day, Mothering Sunday if you want to be pedantic, the flowers were an illustration of how we give to those we love. More of that later.

The sermon was based on a reading from the letter to the Hebrews chapter 10, which linked back to the Jewish law in the Old Testament. The details of the Old Testament sacrifices are grim ang yucky to say the least, and they are not effective and need to be repeated annually. They also are ineffective against behaviour. You can decide that once the annual sacrifice has been made it’s back to the old life of coveting and adultery, there will always be another sacrifice next year.

Society in Old Testament times was based on livestock, and the sacrifices were of animals kept. In a money based society it is about money, we buy stuff. How would a wife feel about flowers from an unfaithful husband? She would hate it and detest th gift. I said I would get back to flowers. That gives us an idea of how God is hurt when we turn up at church but ignore his ways in everyday life. God said, “I hate your sacrifices.” Tokenism to God was wrong then and is wrong today. We need an actual change of heart.

Jesus is the real lamb. The real sacrifice. It happened once and is effective for all time. The blood of the sacrifice of Jesus covers us, as an example the cross we pinned our names to earlier in the month was covered by a a red cloth, representing Jesus’ blood, to show how we are all covered.

The preacher was not the only one with technical issues on the day, I was taking notes on a smartphone and changed pages without saving. There is no autosave on You Version Bible app.