Sunday in Church Year
Sunday, 02/08/2026
SENTENCE FROM SCRIPTURE:
Show me, O Lord, your loving kindness (Psalm 17)
HYMN-
GREETING
Grace and peace to you from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
COLLECT FOR PURITY
Almighty God,
to whom all hearts are open,
all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.
SUMMARY OF THE LAW
Our Lord Jesus Christ said: The first commandment is this:
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.”
The second is this: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these. Amen. Lord, have mercy.
CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION
God is love and we are God’s children. There is no room for fear in love. We love because God loved us first.
Let us confess our sins in penitence and faith.
SILENCE
God our Father,
we confess to you
and to our fellow members in the Body of Christ
that we have sinned in thought, word and deed,
and in what we have failed to do.
We are truly sorry.
Forgive us our sins,
and deliver us from the power of evil,
for the sake of your Son who died for us, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
ABSOLUTION
God, who is both power and love,
forgive you and free you from your sins,
heal and strengthen you by the Holy Spirit,
and raise you to new life in Christ our Lord. Amen.
GLORIA
sung by Dougie Byers
COLLECT
Grant to us, Lord,
the spirit to think on those things that are right,
and always to be ready to do them:
that we, who without you cannot be alive,
may have the strength to live according to your will;
through Jesus Christ, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, world without end. Amen
PROCLAIMING & RECEIVING GOD’S WORD
FIRST READING
Genesis 32.22–31,
read by Carolynne Sorrell
22 Jacob got up, took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.
24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ ✝ 27 So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’
28 Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’ 29 Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
SECOND READING
Romans 9.1–5
read by Mark Toner
1 I am speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit. 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh.
4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; 5 to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.
GRADUAL HYMN
GOSPEL
Matthew 14.13–21
read by Annette Beagrie
Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew, Chapter 14, beginning at verse 13
Glory to Christ our Saviour
13 When Jesus heard that Herod had beheaded John the Baptist, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ 16 Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ 17 They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ 18 And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’ 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.
20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Give thanks to the Lord for his glorious Gospel
Praise to Christ our Lord.
SERMON
Rev Steven Ballard
There is so much in today’s Old Testament story of the patriarch Jacob wrestling with his heavenly opponent through the night. Jacob persists in striving against him, holding on until he receives God’s blessing.
Some passages in scripture explain themselves readily, while others, like this one, remain mysterious no matter how often we read them. Jacob wrestles all night with a stranger, a figure we are never told precisely who he is. The text simply speaks of a man, yet by the end Jacob declares, ‘I have seen God face to face.’ Elsewhere, the tradition speaks of an angel. The ambiguity is intentional, and because of this the story resists being reduced to a simple explanation.
That mystery is one reason this passage has spoken to Christians for thousands of years. It isn’t merely about something that happened to Jacob; it is about the life of faith itself. Jacob arrives at this moment carrying the weight of his past. He has deceived his father, Isaac; he has stolen Esau’s blessing; he has fled from his family; he has spent years in exile; he has become prosperous, yet prosperity has not brought him peace. Now he must face the brother he wronged, the one who had sworn vengeance, and for the first time in many years Jacob cannot avoid the consequences of his actions. Notice what the text says. ‘Jacob was left alone.’ That’s a simple sentence, but how profound it is spiritually! You see, there are moments when all of us are left alone. There are times when neither friends nor family, neither work nor success, can protect us from the questions that matter most. We may be surrounded by people and yet remain inwardly alone. It’s often there, in that solitude, that we encounter God most deeply.
Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, once observed that God can never be an object we control. That’s precisely what an idol is. God is always someone who encounters us, often unexpectedly and on his own terms. That’s exactly what happens here. Jacob doesn’t seek out God. God comes to him, but not to comfort him immediately. God comes to wrestle with him. That may seem surprising. We often imagine that God enters our lives to remove struggle, yet throughout Scripture God’s presence frequently intensifies the struggle before it brings peace. Faith isn’t the absence of conflict. It is learning to remain within that conflict until God’s purpose becomes clear. Jacob’s experience reflects the need for persistence.
It was a long night of contest, and the struggle continued until dawn. While reading a commentary on this passage, I was reminded of my undergraduate days reading Biblical Studies when I first came across a scholar with the wonderful name of Hermann Gunkel. Gunkel suggested that this passage, which describes Jacob’s angelic opponent vanishing with the dawn, has its origins in a very old pre-Israelite belief that ghosts and spirits could appear and do battle with mortals only during the hours of the night.
Many of us know something of that long night. Some of us wrestle with illness that never quite goes away. Others wrestle with bereavement long after everyone else assumes the grief has ended. Some wrestle with depression or anxiety. Others carry disappointment with themselves or with the church. Some wrestle with prayer. We pray faithfully, yet heaven seems silent. One of the gifts of this story is that it tells us such struggles are not signs that we have failed in faith; they may instead be places where faith is being deepened.
Jacob refuses to let go until, through his heavenly adversary, God gives him a blessing. This is perhaps one of the finest lessons about prayer in the whole of the Bible – it shows us that prayer can simply mean that we refuse to let go of God even when God seems hard to understand.
It’s worth noting that Jacob doesn’t emerge from the struggle unchanged. The mysterious figure strikes his hip, and Jacob walks with a limp for the rest of his life. This is one of the most realistic moments in Scripture: God’s blessing doesn’t erase Jacob’s wounds. Instead, the wound becomes part of the blessing. How often we would prefer the opposite. We ask God to remove every scar, every weakness, every painful memory (it’s often referred to in the Christian healing ministry as the healing of the memories), yet sometimes God’s grace is revealed not by removing our vulnerability but by transforming it.
St Paul tells us that what he calls his “thorn in the flesh”, which he never specifies, caused him great anguish. He had prayed three times for it to be removed, but it wasn’t. Instead, as Saint Paul later discovered, God told him, ‘My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Many of the saints recognised this – they were not remarkable because God spared them suffering – they became holy because suffering became a place where they encountered God’s faithfulness.
Then comes the most important moment, when Jacob receives a new name. In the Ancient World, a name expressed identity. Jacob, the deceiver, becomes Israel, “the one who struggles with God” or “the one who perseveres with God”. God doesn’t simply forgive Jacob’s past; He gives him a new future.
As Christians, this story inevitably points towards Christ. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus also entered a long night of struggle. He prayed with tears. He wrestled with his Father’s will, yet unlike Jacob, Jesus bore not merely a limp but the wounds of the Cross. His resurrection didn’t erase those wounds; the risen Christ still bore them. Even in glory the marks of Jesus’s suffering remained signs of redeeming love. So, when we come to the Eucharist, we do not come because our struggles have finished; we come carrying them with us.
Some of us are wrestling with illness, some with uncertainty, some with family tensions, and some with questions about faith itself. Christ doesn’t ask us to pretend that everything is well; He invites us, like Jacob, simply to hold on.
This strange story tells us that faith is not always easy or serene. Sometimes faith limps. Sometimes faith wrestles through the darkness. Sometimes faith can only say, ‘Lord, I will not let you go’. Yet the promise of the Gospel is that the dawn does come.
We may not receive all the answers we seek, but we receive something greater. We receive the presence of the one who has struggled and suffered for us and now blesses us with a new identity as his beloved people.
May we have the courage to wrestle honestly, the humility to accept our wounds, and the perseverance never to let go of God, who, in Christ, never lets go of us.
THE CREED
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one substance with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven;
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father.
With the Father and the Son,
he is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
PRAYERS
Heavenly Father,
‘The kingdom of heaven is … righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.’
We thank you that you welcome us into your kingdom.
Lord, in your mercy, …hear our prayer
Dear Father, we pray for St John’s church family. Guide us in our quest for a new rector. Bless all who currently have leadership, teaching and safeguarding responsibilities.
May we be a church that is always seeking to follow Christ in spirit, in truth and in practical ways. May St John’s be truly a place of welcome and hope. We also ask Your blessing on all of the churches in this region.
Lord, in your mercy, …hear our prayer
Dear Father, we think of the many natural disasters throughout the world – earthquakes, floods, fires. We call them ‘natural’ yet much of the resulting suffering is due to lack of the application of intelligence, planning and due care for each other. Please forgive our ‘carelessness’, injustice, and grant us grace to act with love. Bless all who seek to provide rescue and relief. Be with those who are trying to rebuild their lives.
Lord, there are also so many ‘man-made’ disasters. Conflicts, wars, displacements, abuse, – cruelty of so many sorts. We have no excuse. You have given us consciences and choice. Yet, there is a deep ‘gone-wrongness’ in our world which only love and grace can address. May we all – from ruling leaders to individuals – repent and become part of Your kingdom coming on earth. Bless, we pray, all who work for reconciliation and peace.
Lord, in your mercy, …hear our prayer
Father, we remember children and young people. Bless them and their families as they move between school years or plan for leaving school. Grant them rest and encouragement for their futures. Please guide our government as it considers how to improve the employment opportunities for all children.
Lord, in your mercy, …hear our prayer
Dear Lord, we bring before you all who are suffering in body or mind. We thank you for healing and peace we have known in the past and ask that Your love, grace and power will be experienced now and in the weeks ahead. May we all do our part – strengthen us when caring is hard and grant us wisdom and joy in working together.
We name those we know to you …
We remember all who have recently died or whose anniversary is around this time. Comfort those who mourn their passing we pray.
Lord, in your mercy, …hear our prayer
Merciful Father accept these prayers for the sake of your Son,
our Saviour Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those
who sin against us.
Do not bring us
to the time of trial
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power
and the glory are yours,
now and forever. Amen.
BLESSING
Christ the Son of God gladden your hearts with the good news of his kingdom; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.
HYMN –
DISMISSAL
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord
In the name of Christ. Amen
