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Continuity: In a change to our published programme we go live now to Emmanuel Church in South Manchester for Sunday Worship where a congregation has gathered from across the city to express solidarity with all those affected by the tragedy in Paris. The preacher is the Bishop of Manchester and the service is introduced by the bishop鈥檚 interfaith advisor the Revd Steve Williams.

Byrd Kyrie 5 part or Jesus Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

REVD STEVE WILLIAMS:聽聽 The sun rises over a world numb with shock at the blood shed on the streets of Paris on Friday night.聽 129 people killed, over 300 injured - the largest number of people to lose their life on French soil in an act of aggression since the end of the Second World War.聽 The newspaper Liberation has published a special edition this morning with the simple headline, "Je Suis Paris".

Byrd Christe from the 5 part mass or Jesus Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Our hearts and minds this morning are with those who have suffered an unimaginable loss - and we pray alongside all who weep as together we cry out to God.聽聽
A sentence shared in the Quran and the Talmud can be owned by people beyond the Muslim and Jewish scriptures from which it comes:
"Whoever destroys a soul, it's as though they destroy the entire world;聽 whoever saves a life, it's as though they've saved the entire world."
In those words, we have our judgement and our hope.

Byrd: Last Kyrie from the 5 part mass or Jesus Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

We pray:聽
Almighty God, you have made us in your image and you know us each by name.
So look with mercy on your children in our loss.聽 We are each diminished by the deaths and injuries in Paris on Friday.聽 Help us to be instruments of your compassion - and to know what makes for peace:聽 the honouring of human life and respect for your creation.
In the name of the Word through whom the world was made, Jesus Christ our Lord.聽 Amen.聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽

HYMN 鈥� Dear Lord and Father of Mankind

STEVE: When I pray alongside someone who has just lost a person dear to them, I begin in my heart with the seven last words that Jesus spoke from the cross.聽 He was facing his own death.聽 I find in these words something that helps me face my own loss.聽 And the first cry is one of complete loneliness and abandonment.... "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

When I face the very worst the world can throw at me, I can feel entirely alone even though I'm in the company of others.聽 Someone on whom I'd rely is no longer there.聽 There's a gap that I can't get hold of.聽

When someone else has taken that life deliberately, the loneliness is even more acute.聽 And there's the agonising thought that God, as well, has taken leave of the situation.聽 The cry becomes, "What am I worth?"聽 "How can I make sense of a world that won't make sense of me and those for whom I care?"聽
This cry finds a voice in the first half of the Psalm whose first line Jesus cried out as he faced his own death - Psalm 22:

READER:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
聽聽聽 Why are you so far from saving me,
聽聽聽 so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
聽聽聽 by night, but I find no rest.[b]
3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
聽聽聽 you are the one Israel praises.[c]
4 In you our ancestors put their trust;
聽聽聽 they trusted and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried out and were saved;
聽聽聽 in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
6 But I am a worm and not a man,
聽聽聽 scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
聽聽聽 they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
8 鈥淗e trusts in the Lord,鈥� they say,
聽聽聽 鈥渓et the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
聽聽聽 since he delights in him.鈥�
9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
聽聽聽 you made me trust in you, even at my mother鈥檚 breast.
10 From birth I was cast on you;
聽聽聽 from my mother鈥檚 womb you have been my God.
11 Do not be far from me,
聽聽聽 for trouble is near
聽聽聽 and there is no one to help.

CHOIR: Faure鈥檚 Libera me Domine

Steve:聽 A setting of words from the Requiem Mass by Faur茅 Libera me Domine 鈥� deliver me O Lord (from eternal death) on that aweful day.
After the 7/7 bombings in London ten years ago, a Muslim friend of mine - the first person to welcome me in my new home - knocked on the door and said he wanted to say that he was ashamed at what had happened.聽 He wept as he said:聽 "This was not done in my name or of Islam as I understand it."聽 A Christian colleague in Oldham is encouraging leaders in the churches there this morning to give out flowers to Muslim neighbours as signs of our regard for them and to affirm that we stand together against this violence.聽 With me is a university and hospital chaplain for Manchester's Muslim community, and a member of the Manchester faiths forum, Assia Shah.聽

Assia :聽
In the name of God, the beneficent, the merciful.
As I switched on the television yesterday morning, I was upset and sickened when I heard the reports of the barbaric and violent killings of innocent people going about their lives. My heart sank. Not again. Who are these people? As a British Muslim I felt deeply saddened for the lives lost. I feel sorrow for the loss of grieving families. I feel pain at how randomly barbaric and viscous other human beings can be towards their fellow humans and the potential negative impact of such attacks on the wider communities. I don鈥檛 believe such attackers can claim to be of any faith as they have no conscience, they have no boundaries and no respect for anyone. We all need to be vigilant and stand together, united against such misguided reckless ideologies, working side by side and face to face.
Steve:聽 In dialogue with friends from other communities of faith, we share scriptures that give us hope.聽 I found myself recently sharing these words of St Paul as expressing a hope from which Christians draw strength - and was humbled to find that my friends found this unexpectedly moving.

READER:
Verses from Romans chapter 8
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God鈥檚 people in accordance with the will of God.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
鈥淔or your sake we face death all day long;
聽聽聽 we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.鈥漑a]
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[b] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

CHOIR: God so loved the world (Chilcott)

Steve The Bishop of Manchester David Walker is our preacher this morning.

Bishop David
The death of the innocent, at the whim of those for whom they have become pawns in a wider political game, takes us straight to the very heart of the Christian Faith. It takes us to the suffering of Jesus on the cross. Two thousand years ago, in the considered opinion of both the Roman Governor and the Chief Priest, it was expedient that Jesus should die. And so he hung there, nails through his hands and his feet, mocked by the soldiers and the crowd, whilst his friends, in their fear, deserted him.
Two nights ago in Paris, a group of terrorists reached the same conclusion, that it would serve their interests for the innocent to perish.
As I weep for Paris this morning, I know that my tears are for others victims of terrorism too. They are for Alan Henning, the taxi driver from my own home city of Salford, captured and brutally executed. A man whose passion was to carry humanitarian aid to Syrian children. My tears well up at the memory of his children, speaking so bravely of him, at the memorial service we held in his honour. Those tears are mingled with my tears for the congregation of Christchurch, Youhanabad, in the city of Lahore. I prayed and preached there on Easter Day this year, barely three weeks after they had been victims of a suicide bomb attack. In speaking and praying with those who have lost loved ones to terrorism I have been brought close to the worst of human experience, and yet I've also been brought close to the best of humanity.

Both Jesus and the victims of the Paris attacks share, as I said, in their deaths being politically motivated. Yet there is one vast difference between the motives of Pontius Pilate and those of ISIS. The Roman Governor condemned Jesus with the aim of calming a fraught and febrile atmosphere. He sought to quell a religious uprising by executing those he saw as its potential leaders. By contrast, today's terrorists are deliberately seeking to stir up violence and resentment, and to set the few they would see as "true believers" against everyone else. They want to provoke reactions and reprisals that will set communities against each other. Not for nothing do their press releases always refer to the European nations as the "crusaders". They seek to reignite a centuries old battle. My response to them can be found not just in the bible but also in the old sporting adage, that the best thing to do is the thing that your opponent least wants you to do.
So, in the face of those who would seek to make us suspicious, fearful, and intolerant of others, we are called to understand and trust each other better, to find common cause, and to respect and value our differences. That is the behaviour that will, in the famous words of St Paul, heap burning coals on the heads of our adversaries. I've been privileged to witness communities drawn closer together and seen faith and resolve strengthened in response to terror. Both in Salford and in Pakistan I have seen Christians and Muslims reject the animosity that the terrorists seek to lure us into, preferring instead to stand shoulder to shoulder in fighting our true common enemy. If we must take a look back at the era of the crusades, let our example be that of St Francis of Assisi, who, at the height of the conflict, crossed the battle lines and befriended the sultan in his tent. Francis proved, in that one event, that no division is too great for a person of faith to cross.
Part of the shock of what has happened in Paris is that it has occurred in a city so close to us. It's a place that many of us have visited and of which we carry fond and vivid memories. Yet the terrorism, that has spread in recent years so far beyond Syria, is still an ever present reality there too. Every day, scores of lives are lost to bombs and bullets in that tragic land. It is from such incessant terror that so many have fled, at peril to their lives, seeking to cross land and seas, to reach sanctuary in Europe. If I have an anxiety this morning, it is that the terrorists would succeed in so filling us with fear that we would harden our hearts to the plight of these, who are also the victims of their atrocities. If I have a hope this morning, it is that our horror at the events of Friday night will spur us on to a greater sense of our shared humanity with these other victims; especially at this time when the first chartered planes of refugees are beginning to arrive in Britain, bringing to our shores those assessed by the United Nations as being the most vulnerable.

Today, when the pain is so raw, is not the time for philosophical treatises on the nature of suffering. Rather, it's the time to share and reflect upon our own personal stories. I had survived quite some years into adult life without facing any huge challenge to my faith. When misfortune did come my way, I wondered how my faith would withstand it. What I discovered, as so many others have, is that it was precisely when I was facing the worst that God became closer to me. My faith grew, and even when times got better, it held its new strength. Not everybody is so blessed. There is always a minority for who, tragedy cuts at the roots of their religion. Those are ones whom we need especially to lift up before God at this time. We need to pray for those who are losing the heart or the will to pray for themselves.

When, six months ago, I stood in front of a congregation still reeling from the loss of loved ones to a terror attack, I knew that I was in the presence of the God who hung helpless on a Roman cross. We were in deepest, blackest, Good Friday. Yet there were also notes of hope to be heard in the songs that reverberated around the packed church building that morning. They reasserted, in the very teeth of death and destruction, that Good Friday is not the end of the story. Christians have gathered together, over two thousand years, to continue to express and share this hope. It's a hope that wasn't quenched in the catacombs of Nero's Rome, nor by natural or human made disasters down the centuries since. This morning in Paris, as on every Sunday and across the globe, Christians are gathering both to weep and to hope. Watered by tears, our prayers and our hopes, ascend with theirs, to the very throne of the crucified.

HYMN OR CHOIR: Christ鈥檚 is the world in which we move (A Touching Place)

STEVE WILLIAMS: And now we pray that, at the still point of the turning world, those whose lives have been forever changed by the attacks in Paris may know that they are not alone.聽聽聽

Sung: Be still and know that I am God (sung 3 times)

Prayer person1:聽 We remember the people in Paris whose lives were taken violently on Friday, their families, those dear to them; and for those who are critically ill and injured, those who are treating them聽 and聽 who stand by their side. We pray for strength, courage and life.

Sung:聽In thee O Lord, do I put my trust (sung 3 times)

Prayer person 2:聽 We remember those for whom this violence is a daily reality, all who are fleeing the conflict in Syria and Iraq, and all who seek to bring humanitarian and medical aid in these places of war and of refuge, especially where there are no resources or power.聽
Your love runs deeper than the deepest darkness.聽
Sustain all who are working for healing and the restoration of life.聽

Sung:聽 I am the Lord that healeth thee (3 times)

Prayer person 1:聽 We remember those whose decisions make the difference between life or death for another human being.聽
We pray for wisdom in the world of international diplomacy - for the G20 Summit meeting in Turkey today and tomorrow.

STEVE: We pray for peace in the words of the Prince of Peace, thinking this morning of all who suffer, all who are bereaved, all who are in any kind of distress and all who feel God is a long way from them:

ALL: 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,
and the power,
and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.

STEVE: Thank you for joining our service of Remembrance and prayer for the victims of the recent atrocities in Paris. Our final hymn is a favourite text of Charles Wesley which is a cry to one greater than ourselves who keeps us company in the darkest of times: Jesu lover of my Soul

BLESSING BISHOP:

Organ Voluntary: Louis Vierne: Symphonie II聽 (Allegro Risoluto)