大象传媒

This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast.

听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 Announcement

大象传媒 Radio 4. It鈥檚 time for Sunday Worship which tday coes from the Corrymeela Centre in Ballycastle in Northern Ireland.

Script

Alex: 听听 Welcome and overview

Welcome to the north coast of Ireland. My name is Alex Wimberly and I am the Leader of Corrymeela, an ecumenical Christian community committed to helping us all live well together. Since 1965 Corrymeela has provided a place of welcome to people whose lives have been torn apart by violence and kept apart by religious difference.

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The United Nations has set today and tomorrow as days to remember victims of violence; particularly those who are affected by terrorism and those who are targeted because of their religion or beliefs. Northern Ireland has been deeply scarred by such violence. And we are still affected by it. Our post-conflict society has some of the highest rates of domestic violence, suicide, and self-harm in Europe.

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Today in this service members of Corrymeela will be joined by Celtic Psalms, a group that has set the biblical psalms to Irish and Scottish melodies so that divided communities can share through song ancient words of faith, doubt, healing and hope. 听Together, we will acknowledge the lasting harm of violence in our society and lament its normalisation in our culture. As we prepare ourselves for worship, we remember that our God is a God who chose to identify with the victim, who relinquished power to empower us with love, and who shows us in the example of Jesus a different way to live.

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听 Yvonne/Iulia: Call to worship

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听 听Let us gather before God,

听 knowing that our God is the God of all.

听 The God of peace does not belong to one or the other.

听听听 In God we all find belonging.

听 In God we all find belonging.

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听 So come, let us find a new way to be together.

听 Without fear. Without threat.

听 With love and mercy. With justice and peace.

听 Let us worship our God together.

听 Let us worship our God together.

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听 Ellis:听听听听

Our worshipping space here at Corrymeela is called the Croi and Irish word for heart -there's a picture of it on the Sunday Worship web site. On the door are the words of St. Francis 听

of Assisi: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Our first hymn is the well- 听

known setting of those words.听

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MUSIC: Make me a channel of your peace

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Call and response prayer of confession

Declan:听听听听听听听听听听听

听 As we come before God, we acknowledge our brokenness and our need for God鈥檚

听 peace. For we have normalised violence. We have made it a part of our culture.

听 In our entertainment. In our children鈥檚 play. In our language. It is the way we have

听 learned to create order in this world: not through love, but through fear. Fear of the

听 other. And when we live in fear and without love, we turn away from what God has

听 taught us. So let us pray, confessing our part in this broken system and asking for

听 God鈥檚 peace to come.

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听 Denise:听听听听听听听听听听听

听听 God of peace, forgive us.

听听 You told us peacemakers would be blessed, yet we continue to bless the ways of

听听听 violence.

听听 听Too many in our communities and in our homes rely on violence as a coercive tool,

听听听 threatening harm to keep others in line.

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听听听 And so we enter a cycle of violence. We reward violent behaviour to establish a

听听听 sense of peace. We threaten more violence in order to keep that 鈥榩eace鈥�. 听We learn to

听counter aggression with even more aggression. And generations continue live in fear.

听And 听none of us live truly in peace.

听听听听 God of peace, forgive us.

听听听听 God of peace, forgive us.

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听听 Yvonne/Iulia:

听 听听 As your people, we should know better. For you taught us a different way.

听 听听 You taught us to love. To love our neighbour and our enemy.

To pray for those who persecute us. To welcome the stranger.

Instead of creating borders that protect the strong from the weak, you help us

establish boundaries that protect all of us in our vulnerability.

And time and time again, you identified with the outcast, the victim, the scapegoat.

You were even willing to die to show us the madness of our violent solutions.

You taught us that with you there is no us or them.

There is only the one people you call us to be.

The people you love.

The people you love with an undying love.

The people you have called to love one another.

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God of peace, give us hope.

God of peace, give us hope.

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听 听听 Ellis:

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And teach us to live as the one who taught us to pray, saying:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

They kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread

and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

听For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. 听听听听听Amen.

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Alex:听听听听听听听听

Violence is so ingrained in our culture we don鈥檛 always see it. Even in scripture,

the normalisation of violence can prevent us from being shocked by it.

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In the Gospel of John there is a story about a group of men who drag a woman before

Jesus. They accuse her of adultery, having caught her (and presumably a man, as

well) in the act. They tell Jesus that the law of Moses commands them to stone her.

But as horrific as her situation is, her fate is secondary in their thinking. They are

using her to try to trap him.

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Many of us refer to this passage as 鈥楾he woman caught in adultery.鈥� But is that really

the best way to frame this story? Isn鈥檛 the use of violence and the misuse of power a

more striking feature? At Corrymeela, we have begun to refer to this story as 鈥楾he

woman who was nearly stoned to death鈥�, and use it to talk about how Jesus de-

escalates the situation and rehumanises a woman who has been objectified and

marginalised.

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Declan:

A reading from John, chapter 8:

Early in the morning Jesus came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and, making her stand before all of them, they said to him, 鈥淭eacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?鈥� They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him.

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听听听 Yvonne/Iulia:

听听听 Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, 鈥淟et anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.鈥� And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, 鈥淲oman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?鈥� She said, 鈥淣o one, sir.鈥� And Jesus said, 鈥淣either do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.鈥�

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MUSIC:听 Come, Spirit, Come

听听听听听听听听听听听

听听听听听听听听听听听 Alex:听听听

You can feel the charged energy from the crowd. Men dragging a woman to stand before Jesus, calling her out as an adulterer, calling attention publicly to her sexuality. They may have already had stones in their hands, ready to make a further example of her, ready to channel their anger and hatred and frustration toward an object upon which they could justify violence.

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Jesus could have raised his voice and matched their bravado with similar ferocity.

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Instead, he makes himself small, taking up as little space as possible. He draws

听attention away from the woman. He lowers himself to the ground and lowers the

level of confrontation.

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鈥楾he woman who was nearly stoned to death鈥� is one of stories featured in

Corrymeela鈥檚 Seed of Sequoia resource. This series of bible studies helps

communities of faith address the reality of domestic and gender-based violence that

is widely experienced and rarely discussed.

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听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 The society we glimpse in John 8 is one that has normalised

Violence; it can happen in any culture. The people in this passage are subjects of the Roman Empire, an occupational force that used violence to subdue. The local religious leaders copy that misuse of power by pointing to the law of Moses to sanction lethal punishment for a woman accused of adultery. Leaders are choosing to use violence or its threat to maintain order, to ensure compliance, and to reinforce power structures. And when a society accepts that violence can be justified, then people will feel justified in using it to get what they want.

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Jesus provides a contrast to that. Changing the mood, changing the tone, he changes

the focus away from the woman and toward the accusers, and toward the madness of

using violence to solve problems. 鈥楲et the one without sin cast the first stone,鈥� he says.

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Slowly they leave. The elders first.

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And after they leave, Jesus rises to his full height and addresses the woman 鈥� not as

an object, not as an example to be used in a theoretical theological argument, but as a

fellow human being. He rises to address her on equal footing. And face to face, he

refuses to condemn her. Instead of adding to a cycle of violence and dehumanisation,

Jesus returns the focus to our common humanity 鈥� to a crowd that is not without sin,

and to a woman who is not beyond saving.

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听听听听听听听听听听听 Prayer

听听听听听听听听听听听 Yvonne/Iulia:

听听听听听听听听听听听 Here is a prayer reflecting on this story from John:

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听听听听听听听听听听听 DE-ESCALATING GOD,

as the heat rose in the day

you lowered yourself to the earth.

You withdrew from the noise

to write in the dirt.

In the midst of charged words,

you changed the atmosphere

to save a life.

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May we, as tensions rise

and charges fly

and heated words are exchanged

find ways to lower the temperature,

to ground ourselves in love,

and to put

down

the stone

we would raise.

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And then.

Standing before you,

may the release that we feel

as we hold ourselves high

bring a softness

to all we would carry.

Amen.

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听听听听听听听听听听听 The musicians from the group 鈥楥eltic Psalms鈥� lead us in a setting of Psalm 55

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MUSIC : Wings of the Dove

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听听听听听听听听听听听 Alex:

听听听听听听听听听听听 A quarter of a century ago, the scholars Joseph Liechty and Cecelia Clegg came to

Corrymeela to study sectarianism, the ethno-religious phenomenon we sometimes

call 鈥榖elonging gone bad.鈥� They were able to produce an invaluable resource: a book

called 鈥楳oving Beyond Sectarianism.鈥�

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Although their work centred on the divisions of Northern Ireland, their findings

continue to speak to the dangers we all face as we allow our fears of the other to

dehumanise those we don鈥檛 really know 鈥� to see everything through the lens of 鈥榰s

and them鈥�. Christians are not exempt from this danger; indeed our history is full of

examples of unjustifiable violence done in God鈥檚 name.

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The work before us is to humanise those we might otherwise demonise. 听We are so quick to categorise people as other: by race, by sex or gender or orientation, by ethnic background, by political party. How do we really get to know people not as part of a stereotyped group, but as fellow human beings who have fears and passions like our own?

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At Corrymeela, we believe that if we can turn our discomfort, our mistrust, our impulse to turn away or to turn against, into curiosity 鈥� into honest questions about why someone believes what they believe, what fear and what love motivates them 鈥� then we might be able to see them as God does. Our differences, as real as they may be, can stop feeling like threats and instead look like opportunities to learn more about the world, about ourselves, and about a God who already loves people we don鈥檛 yet know.

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If peace can come, it will not be because people were finally forced to see how Godly we are but because you and I will be among those who can see Christ already alive in others. 听听

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听听听听听听听听听听听 Denise:

听听听听听听听听听听听 John wrote: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear 鈥� for fear has to

do with punishment. Whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love

because he first loved us.

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MUSIC : Peace be with Jerusalem

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听听听听听听听听听听听 Prayers

听听听听听听听听听听听 Ellis: 听听听

听听听听听听听听听听听 Let us pray.

Holy and loving God,

On this day, we remember victims of violence: those who have known the horrors of terrorism and those who have been threatened because of their beliefs. May they find a divine peace, not one that we would impose, but one that you and your message of unconditional love can offer.

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We give you thanks that you have shown us a greater power than the power of brute force. You have shown us a power that is truly rooted in strength rather than in fear, the power of loving others as we would love ourselves. You have given us the freedom to escape our fears, and the tools to create a world that works not just for some, but for everyone.

Loving God, lead us in this way of freedom.

Lead us in this way of freedom.

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Declan:

We pray for those who are vulnerable to those who would misuse power, and for those who turn to violence as a rational response to a real threat, for all those who have little trust in a society that may not have been built for them, and who lack security for themselves and their loved ones. May we create spaces of safety and belonging 鈥� and not just isolated places of retreat and shelter 鈥� but whole societies where no one needs to be afraid, where everyone knows that they belong.

Loving God, lead us in this way of freedom.

Lead us in this way of freedom.

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Yvonne/Iulia:

We pray for ourselves, that we would transform our mistrust into curiosity. We pray that we would see the ways in which violence shapes our world and affects our lives 鈥� how we have tacitly allowed violence and its threat to bring order to our systems and to turn people you love into threats, into people who think should be feared or kept away. We pray for ourselves, that we are separated from people who can enrich our lives, who can help us create a better world, who can reveal more of who you are.

Loving God, lead us in this way of freedom.

Lead us in this way of freedom.

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Denise:

We pray that we might exchange a culture of violence and mistrust for a culture of love and peace. Break this fever. Cure our warring madness. Allow us to see in the life, death and resurrection of your Son a new life ready to be lived 听鈥� with and for one another. And without fear.

Loving God, lead us in this way of freedom.

Lead us in this way of freedom.

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MUSIC God of Grace and God of Glory

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Alex:
Recently, Corrymeela helped to host a service of Lament for all those affected by the conflict in and about Northern Ireland. We were honoured to have victims and survivors lead us in that service, and to have standing with them on the dais the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and the Irish Presbyterian Moderator 鈥� leaders of our two largest and historically separated denominations.

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The Moderator remarked afterwards on how rare it is to have public opportunities to

lament the trauma that has affected us all. And the Archbishop noted that in our divided society even our grieving has been done separately.

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Sadly, the normalisation of violence in our society affects us all and keeps us

separated from one another. But because it affects us all, it provides us the choice to

confront it together.

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As so, as we close this service, we invite you to join us in part of that service of lament

and committing ourselves to a new way of living well together.

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Declan:听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听

We are people who continue to lament the loss of life.

Denise:听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听

We are people whose stories have been shaped by violence.

Ellis:听听听听听 听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听

We are people who must learn to trust again and be worthy of that trust.

Yvonne/Iulia:听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听

And we are people whom God has gathered to bear the hope of Christ.

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Together, we commit to a society of peace and justice,

听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 showing the courage to reject violence

听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 by standing with and listening to victims and survivors,

听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 and calling the Church again

听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 to the power of love, grace and forgiveness

听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 which alone can break our cycle of violence.

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Alex:

And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and communion of

the Holy Spirit be with each one of us, all those we love, and all those we should love

鈥� both now and forevermore. Amen.

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