The love that God wants us to show towards all people is essentially practical (see 1 Jn 3:16-18). It involves practical help: offering food, clothing, and any other practical help that is needed. Loneliness is endemic in our country, even within the church, but God sets the lonely in families (Ps 68:6) and one of the ways we can show love is to open our homes and hearts to other people – something that our British culture often finds hard to do.

Practical love may mean a telephone call or a text to see how someone is… a visit to someone who is housebound… inviting someone to a meal… arranging a trip out. The early church worshipped together, prayed together and played together (Acts 2:42-47) and we need to be like that too. Rom 12:13 urges us to ‘share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practise hospitality.’ Peter urges us to offer hospitality without grumbling. (1 Pet 4:9) Xenophilia goes beyond this, however, for we need to love all people, not just those we like or who are like us!

Xenophilia means we are not satisfied with loving those who love us; we want to love the people God loves – and He loves everyone. That is not comfortable. It is not safe. There is risk involved in loving people who may not speak our language, who may not share our values and morals, who are not like us. It’s scary. We can’t predict the outcomes. Most of us prefer safety and comfort. We don’t really like risk in our lives.

But we owe our salvation to a God who took risks. God sent His only Son to seek and to save the lost. He faced rejection, insults, misunderstanding and betrayal in order to save us, and so we cannot hide behind our middle-class niceness and assume that that is enough. God is calling us to a radical love. To reach out to our community means reaching out to people who are not like us in many ways, but who need to see God’s love through us. How else will they know that God loves them unless we show them? Who else will go?

Jesus was known as the ‘friend of sinners’ (Luke 7:34). He was criticised because he ate and drank with prostitutes and tax collectors, the lowest of the low as far as the Pharisees were concerned. (Matt 11:19) The religious people had a real problem with Jesus because He didn’t conform to their stereotypes of what a religious teacher ought to be like. But the people, ordinary people, loved Him because they knew He cared for them. We have to be careful not to become religious and respectable. Our love needs to be practical and needs to reach out to all. We need to love all people with God’s love.

X is not the most popular letter in the English alphabet, and so in our series The A-Z of Christian Faith, looking at the essential ingredients needed in a life of faith, we had to borrow a word from Greek: xenophilia, derived from two words (xenos, a stranger or foreigner and philia, one of the Greek words for love.) Xenophilia means a love for strangers or foreigners and is also translated hospitality. We are far more used, alas, to its opposite, xenophobia, often showing a fear of or enmity towards strangers.

Throughout the Bible, we see God commanding His people to show love for the stranger as the visible outworking of our love for Him.(Matt 25:31-46; see also Ex 22:21 and Ex 23:9). On the one hand, we are all strangers and foreigners on earth (see Heb 11:13, 1 Pet 2:11, Phil 3:20), pilgrims travelling towards a heavenly destination (Heb 11:16). The Israelites knew first-hand what it was like to feel like an outsider following their persecution in Egypt and this experience seems to have shaped the laws they were later given to show regard for the foreigner. We are asked to love beyond our natural capacity because of God’s great love for us (Matt 5:43-48, Eph 4:32). Charity starts at home (and we are urged to show hospitality in the church – see Acts 2:42-47, Gal 6:10, 1 Jn 4:20-21), but it’s not enough to stay there. We are urged to love those who are different to us, to love and bless our enemies and to reflect God’s loving nature in all our relationships. The love that we show to strangers is a way they can experience God’s love for themselves; we serve God best when we serve other people and must not show partiality, but must welcome all. (Rom 15:7, Js 2:18-19)

Last week we celebrated Holy Communion at Cherry Tree Court for the first time and, as we usually do on the second Sunday evening of the month, at Market Street. We can become very familiar with this sacrament, but it’s good to look at why we do this and at the purpose this serves.

Dave spoke from Matt 26:17-30 at the evening service. The Passover celebration, during which Jesus ate the Last Supper with His disciples and inaugurated the first Communion service, was very familiar to Jews, commemorating God’s deliverance of His people from Egypt. During this familiar meal, Jesus began to speak. But Matthew does not record the normal words of the Seder, the traditional Jewish ceremony. Jesus changes the Passover into the Lord’s Supper.

First came the accusation: “One of you will betray Me.” Then the identification with the broken bread: “Take and eat, this is My body.”  And finally the third cup, the cup of redemption was identified as His blood: “Drink from it, all of you. This is My blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Self-examination is an important part of this ceremony. We may not have betrayed Jesus like Judas did, but we sin in thought and deed every day and need, as Bach expressed it in St Matthew’s Passion, to acknowledge this: “Ich bin’s, ich sollte bussen” (I’m the one, I should repent).Charles Hadley Spurgeon said that “our tendency is to decry the particular form of sin that we find in others. We hold up our hands as if we were quite shocked. Better to look in the mirror than look out the window. Looking out of the window, you see one for whom you are not responsible. But looking in the mirror, you see one for whom you must give account to God.” One of the most important responsibilities of the church is self-examination before Communion. For it is not a ceremony for the self-satisfied. The only thing which makes us worthy to come is in knowing our unworthiness.

We must receive Christ’s brokenness. The breaking of the bread is not just to share out the loaf, but shows us most clearly how God comes to us – broken. Christ’s brokenness for us, Christ’s suffering for us, is the means by which we are saved. Our main understanding of God should not be through majesty and glory, but through the Cross. In the broken bread we are confronted with a God who chose to be broken for us, rather than breaking us as we deserve.

During the Passover meal there were four cups of wine that were to be drunk. These four cups were meant to correspond to the fourfold promise of Exodus 6:6-7.

First Cup: I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

Second Cup: I will free you from being slaves to them.

Third Cup: I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.

The fourth Cup: “’you will be my own people and I will be your God.’”

It is the third cup, the cup of redemption, which explains why the bread is broken. The bread points us to the Cross; the cup points us to the benefits we receive from the Cross: the benefits of the forgiveness of sins, the benefits of God’s ongoing provision for us and the promise of that great marriage feast to come.

The weather in the UK has been somewhat unpredictable lately. An event that was cancelled in March because of the snow did finally take place on 7 April, when Gemma Hunt (a Christian TV presenter) visited Thurnscoe Pentecostal Church to share pirate fun and the good news of Jesus with children there:

Heavy rain over several days means that the Dinosaur Day at Phoenix Park (scheduled for tomorrow, 15 April) will not take place at the moment. We very much hope this will be rescheduled at a later date, as we are eager to dig for fossils and share our amazing dinosaur crafts with everyone.

The ‘Dearne Churches Together’ prayer meeting will be on Tuesday 17th April at 10.30 a.m. at GPCC and all are welcome to attend.

We are very pleased that Fredrick and Reeba will be with us the first weekend in May (Sunday 6th May) and are looking forward to seeing them and hearing all their news,.

Tonight’s Bible study concluded our whistle-stop tour of Psalm 119, the longest of all the psalms. This acrostic poem begins each stanza with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and whilst the skill of the writer can’t be fully appreciated in English, the sentiment of the psalm – extolling God’s word and reflecting how this is the only sure guide to life – certainly can.

There is a contrast throughout the psalm between those who love God’s word and follow it and those who don’t (see Ps 119:81-82, 113-115). Those who meditate on God’s word find in it delight and wonder (Ps 119:129), illumination (Ps 119:105, 130), insight and understanding (Ps 119:98-100) and are upheld and sustained through adversity through it (Ps 119:114-117). No matter what the difficulties (persecution, adversity, affliction and troubles), the psalmist remains confident of God’s help (Ps 119:140).

One of the things which gives confidence is the fact that God’s word is eternal, as is His righteousness (Ps 119:89, 142,160). In Hebrew, this word carries with it the idea of without limits or boundaries (see Ps 119:96). No matter what, we can always find something fresh in God’s word, for it is living and active (Heb 4:12) and will endure (Is 40:8). God’s statutes, commands and laws guide us in the right paths (Ps 119:101, 104) and allow us to wait for God’s salvation. (Ps 119:166) Whilst we wait, we follow His commands, living in the light as He is in the light.