Service Sunday July 20, 2025
HIGHLAND HILLS UNITED CHURCH
Minden, Ontario
SUNDAY, July 20th, 2025
All are Welcome!
Watch a video recording of the whole service below.
Worship Leader: Rev. Max Ward
Music Director: Melissa Stephens
(For a Printer Friendly PDF version click this link)
The Gathering
WELCOME & ANNOUNCEMENTS:
FOCUSING ON THE LIGHT OF CHRIST:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF TERRITORY:
We acknowledge that above all, this territory belongs to God ... Wakan ... Creator. It has been cared for by many generations of people before us; both Indigenous Peoples and settlers. May we, in true humility, be thankful to be on this territory today.
THE APPROACH
CALL TO WORSHIP:
One: Welcome to this service in the midst of summer warmth and colour.
ALL: We have come, excited to receive God’s word in scripture.
One: We are here to praise our Creator and give our thanks.
ALL: We have come to raise our spirits to the heavens in song.
One: We are here to offer prayers for a better world.
ALL: We gather here as one community to worship together and to be reminded to love one another.
One: We have come as one family of God, eager to be attentive to the ways of holy goodness and loving-kindness.
ALL: Come, let us worship God.
Written by Rosemary Godin, First U.C., Trenton, N.S..
Gathering, Pentecost 1 2025, p.36. Used with permission.
HYMN: “O Beautiful Gaia” MV #41
Refrain:
O beautiful Gaia, O Gaia, calling us home.
O beautiful Gaia, calling us on.
1. Soil yielding its harvest,
O Gaia, calling us home.
Soil yielding its harvest,
calling us on.
2. Waves crashing on granite,
O Gaia, calling us home.
Waves crashing on granite,
calling us on.
3. Pine bending in windstorm,
O Gaia, calling us home.
Pine bending in windstorm,
calling us on.
4. Loon nesting in marshland,
O Gaia, calling us home.
Loon nesting in marshland,
calling us on.
OPENING PRAYER: Read In Unison
O wondrous, listening God, you are the mysterious and holy one whom we call by many names and by no name. Gathered as we are in this sacred dwelling place, help us in the few moments that lie before us to receive what you want us to receive, to be what you want us to be, to share what you want us to share, and to sing what you want us to sing. Amen
Written by Wayne Hilliker, Chalmers U.C., Kingston, Ont.
Gathering, Pentecost 1 2025, p.40. Used with permission
MINISTRY OF MUSIC: LEARNING TOGETHER:
HYMN: “Jesus, Teacher, Brave and Bold” VU #605
1 Jesus, teacher, brave and bold,
let us serve you, young and old.
Let us faith-filled workers be,
all around, your wisdom see.
Let us play and dance and sing,
your goodness find in everything.
2 Jesus, friend, so strong and true,
show us good, brave work to do.
Show us those who need a friend,
all things broken help us mend.
Free our minds and stretch our care,
teach us to serve you everywhere.
THE WORD
Scripture: : Luke 10: 25-28
Leader: Hear and listen to what the Spirit is saying to the church.
ALL: Thanks be to God.
MESSAGE:
“Don’t Allow a Clobber Passage to Silence You and Your Love”
Listen to an audio recording of the Message below or read it at the bottom of this page.
OUR RESPONSE
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE and THE LORD’S PRAYER: (sung VU #960)
HYMN “Be Thou My Vision” VU #642
1 Be thou my vision, O joy of my heart;
naught be all else to me save that thou art,
thou my best thought, by day or by night,
waking or sleeping thy presence my light.
2 Be thou my wisdom, my calm in all strife;
I ever with thee, and thou in my life;
thou loving parent, thy child may I be,
thou in me dwelling, and I one with thee.
3 Be thou my battle shield, sword for the fight
be thou my dignity, thou my delight,
thou my soul's shelter, thou my high tower;
raise thou me heavenward, O power of my power.
4 Riches I heed not, nor vain empty praise,
thou mine inheritance, now and always;
thou and thou only, the first in my heart,
great God of heaven, my treasure thou art.
5 Great God of heaven, after victory won,
may I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
still be my vision, O ruler of all.
YOUR GENEROUSITY MATTERS:
PRESENTATION OF OUR OFFERINGS
OFFERTORY PRAYER:
Loving God, in our bid to serve you, we worship with our words and deeds. And now, we offer our gifts of time, prayers, and material goods. May they be used to ease the lives of others, wherever they go. Let your love shine in all we do, so it catches on and trickles beyond the spaces where we live and worship. In the light of your gracious love, we offer our gifts. Bless the givers and those receiving . Amen
Written by Diane Trollope, Sudbury, Ont.
Gathering, Pentecost 1 2025, p.47. Used with permission.
SUNG BLESSING MV #150 vs 4
4 Spirit God: be our breath, be our song.
Blow through us, bringing strength to move on.
Through change, through challenge, we’ll greet the new dawn…
Spirit God, be our song. ©
SENDING FORTH:
A Time of Fellowship
© Music Reproduced with permission under License number A-605748, Valid for: 26/10/2024 - 25/10/2025; One License - Copyright Cleared Music for Churches
Sermon 20 July 2025
“Don’t Allow a Clobber Passage to Silence You and Your Love”
Luke 10: 25-28
Gracious God, be with us today in this place, in the Scriptures and in our words.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts praise your Holy name. Amen.
You may be thinking to yourself,
“Didn’t we just read that passage last Sunday?”
Yes, we did and more with the story of the Good Samaritan.
I watched the Zoom recording after attending the Norland Summer Festival Community Worship Service.
I’m not sure how I should feel about Rev. Marybeth’s message or the person who suggested that I would be like the Priest that passed by on the other side!
I felt honored that you all think I am well known and respected BUT the part that I might avoid helping a stranger, I hope, was just to help illustrate the Message!
Rev. Marybeth’s message got me thinking about how I might approach a request that the Affirming Working Group asked of me at our last meeting a couple of weeks ago.
They asked if I would share my thoughts about those “Clobber” passages in the Bible.
As your resident expert on the Bible, I must confess that Bible has never been my strong suit, but I will do my best.
I didn’t want any of those Clobber passages to be read from the pulpit by our volunteer readers without offering some context first.
The verses we did read from Luke are what I would consider the summary of the teachings of Jesus.
More on that later.
So what are these Clobber passages?
I have a whole list of them, some of them not very nice so beware.
I’m going to list a few of them and then we’ll talk about the context of a couple of them.
Here we go…
Women should keep silent in church (1 Cor 14:34)
People who have sexual relations with others of the same sex deserve to die. (Rom 1:26-32)
Slaves, obey your masters. (Eph 6:5)
Don’t associate with sexually immoral people (1 Cor 5:9)
Wives, be subject to your husbands (Eph 5:22)
If a man lies with a male as with a woman they shall be put to death (Lev 20:13)
If a man claims the woman he married is not a virgin and her family can’t prove her virginity, she should be put to death (Deut 22:10-20)
Okay, I can see how upset you are getting so that is enough for now.
Let’s take one or two and examine the context.
Okay, let’s start with one of my favourites.
It’s only my favourite because I know it can really get a rise out of some people!
Women should keep silent in church (1 Cor 14:34)
1 Corinthians 14 as a whole, is the Apostle Paul’s extended treatment of spiritual gifts in the gathered assembly, with special emphasis on keeping worship intelligible and edifying.
He contrasts tongues (which build up the individual when interpreted) with prophecy (which builds up the whole church) and issues detailed instructions on how to conduct public worship in an orderly fashion.
Verses 34–35 fall immediately after Paul’s rules for prophets speaking “two or three at a time” and for the congregation to weigh each prophecy (vv. 29–33).
In that flow, he enjoins:
- “Let the women keep silent in the churches”
- “If they want to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home”
This command is tied directly to maintaining order in the assessment of prophecies, not to a blanket ban on women speaking or praying in worship.
Just three chapters earlier, Paul assumed women were praying and prophesying in the assembly, and he even gave them instructions on head coverings while they did so.
That shows he did not intend absolute silence but was addressing a specific disruptive chattering in chapter 14.
Corinthian house-church meetings had become chaotic—people talking over one another or interrupting the speaker.
- Roman civil law often required wives to defer to their husbands in public.
- Paul, though not placing believers back under Mosaic Law, sometimes accommodates civil regulations to preserve the church’s testimony (cf. Acts 25: 10–12).
Putting these verses beside that background suggests Paul was curbing disruptive chatter by certain women (or more precisely “wives,” given the mention of asking their own husbands) so the prophetic word could be heard clearly.
Understanding those nuances helps us see that Paul is forbidding disruptive interruptions—not prohibiting women from all vocal ministry in the church.
In sum, 1 Cor 14:34–35 arises within Paul’s larger argument for orderly, intelligible worship and addresses a specific disturbance—certain women (or wives) chatting or questioning prophets mid-service—not a universal prohibition against women speaking or teaching in the church.
Let’s look at another one…
If a man lies with a male as with a woman they shall be put to death (Lev 20:13)
Leviticus 20:13 falls within chapters 17–26 of Leviticus, often called the “Holiness Code,” which gives moral, ceremonial, and civil laws to set Israel apart as a holy nation.
These regulations were designed to maintain covenant purity and distinguish Israel’s practices—especially around worship and sexual ethics—from those of surrounding peoples.
Ancient Near Eastern worship often included ritualized sexual practices or cult prostitution linked to fertility deities.
Israel’s laws aimed to safeguard the community’s moral integrity and prevent infiltration of surrounding pagan customs.
Some modern Jewish scholars argue that the specific Hebrew phrasing—“ish (man) with zachar (male)”—may originally target Greek-style pederasty rather than consensual adult homosexuality.
They note that Greek legal texts distinguished “man” (adult citizen) from “male” (youth), suggesting the law condemned exploitative relations with minors.
These words, written in our sacred texts, nicknamed Clobber passages, have been used to hurt people.
People have misquoted the Bible, using these passages, as Biblical support, to restrict or harm others.
That is simply wrong.
Fortunately, we don’t follow all the verses in the Bible anymore.
Here are just a few that I think we can all agree we do not need to follow these days.
Don’t eat shrimp (Deut 14:9)
I love disobeying that verse!
We did so last night for supper!
Slaves, obey your masters. (Eph 6:5)
Glad we don’t have slaves to boss around anymore.
You shall not wear tattoos (Lev 19:26)
How many of you here today have a tattoo?
They are more common every day it seems and many are quite beautiful.
Wives, be subject to your husbands (Eph 5:22)
We have several wives here today.
What do you think of that verse?
Husbands, what do you think?
Be careful how you answer if you drove here in the same car or you might be walking home!
If a man claims the woman he married is not a virgin and her family can’t prove her virginity, she should be put to death (Deut 22:10-20)
Yesterday, I had a wedding.
I didn’t need to ask if the bride was a virgin because her kids were there too.
That seems to be the usual order these days.
I don’t think it is anyone’s business if a woman is a virgin or not and I’m not going to try to prove it!
How would I go about that exactly anyway!
Plus, I don’t think there is anything a person can do to be worth being put to death.
What about the other person?
It takes two people to lose one’s virginity, should that person deserve death too?
You shall not wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material. (Lev 19:19)
I’m not sure I have any clothing that isn’t a mix of at least two types of materials.
So, as I have made it abundantly clear, as Christians following Christ, we do select some verses from the Bible to set aside and not follow anymore.
We are all disciples of Jesus, we follow him, not the Bible, word for word.
This is why we heard Luke 10: 25-28 this Sunday too.
Those verses sum up what Jesus taught the people and the way he lived his own life.
Jesus commanded us to follow likewise by loving
God and loving others.
The New Testament and, I would argue, the majority of the Old Testament, are stories about and teachings about loving God and loving others.
This is our calling, to love God and to love one another.
Therefore, the Clobber verses I read earlier, do not fit with that overarching theme of the whole Bible and the life & actions of Jesus.
To be a disciple of Jesus is to avoid restricting others and hurting others with those Clobber passages taken out of context.
Let us love God and love others while following Jesus’ example.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
