Worship
for the Lord’s Day
February
7, 2021
A Note before we begin
this day’s worship:
As we continue to monitor our area’s virus positivity rates,
which after several weeks of coming down have been rising again
unfortunately. For now our sessions have
chosen to remain on-line with the hopes of re-opening within the next month or
so. Our sessions meet again on Feb 23rd. We’ll know more at that time, so stayed
tuned.
Let’s begin:
Call to Worship
God of mercy and love,
be with us this day as we hear the stories of Jesus and his compassion. Remind us again that we also need to be
people of hope and compassion in this world which seems so dark. You, O God, open the doors of blessings. You reveal to us the many ways in which Jesus
reached out to others at their time of need.
Inspire our hearts and lift our spirits this day, for we offer this
prayer in Jesus’ Name. AMEN.
Hymn Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven
Prayer of Confession
How amazing it is for us, O God of love, that
You look in our hearts and forgive our wayward spirits. So many times we have succumbed to the
temptations of this world, seeking comfort in its fleeting enticements. We have turned deaf ears on the cries of
those in distress and walked away from opportunities to give aid and
comfort. Remind us again of how Jesus
reached out to the multitudes who brought their problems and ailments to him. His compassionate touch not only healed their
bodies but restored and renewed their spirits.
Forgive our stubbornness and our selfishness. Give us hearts of compassion and spirits
willing to serve You by serving others.
We offer this prayer of contrition in Jesus’ Name. AMEN
Words of Assurance
Those who wait for the
Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Know that God’s promise of strength, grace,
and forgiveness is yours. Thanks be to
God! AMEN
Affirmation of Faith – from A Brief Statement
of Faith.
We trust in Jesus
Christ, fully human, fully God.
Jesus proclaimed the
reign of God:
preaching good news to
the poor and release to the captives,
teaching by word and
deed and blessing children,
healing the sick and
binding up the brokenhearted,
eating with outcasts,
forgiving sinners,
and calling all to
repent and believe the gospel.
Unjustly condemned for
blasphemy and sedition,
Jesus was crucified,
suffering the depths of
human pain
and giving his life for
the sins of the world.
God raised this Jesus
from the dead,
vindicating his sinless
life,
breaking the power of
sin and evil,
delivering us from
death to life eternal.
With believers in every
time and place,
we rejoice that nothing
in life or in death
can separate us from
the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Alleluia. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer
Loving God, we hear the words of Your message and often
wonder how we can possibly do all that You ask of us. We used to gather in worship, sing songs of
praise, and pray together, building one another up as we hear one another’s
struggles. Holy God, it is SO difficult
to be isolated from one another. But, as
much as we miss it and yet know that one day we will be together again, we are
called to care for more than just our own body.
We have been called and indeed sent us out to proclaim good news to the
poor, the oppressed, the prisoner, the widow, the orphan, the lonely, and the
disenfranchised. You have called us to
sojourn with the desperate and uplift the downtrodden. You have called us to be a voice for the
voiceless and a healing balm to those who are sick. Empower us to find our way forward and to
truly become Your ambassadors of Your grace and forgiveness. No walls, no motes, no fences, no chasms can
block the movement of Your love through Christ.
We cannot stand by impotently, dreaming about what we might do. We are called to forge ahead. In our hearts today and with our voices we
offer up concerns for family, friends, neighbors, people in need who are
encountering disaster, illness, fear, and oppression. O Lord, we ask for Your blessings as we
emerge from this time into lives of service, as Jesus would have us do… In our prayers, we lift up the following
names….
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. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our
debtors. And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn My Faith Looks Up to Thee
Scripture Readings
Old Testament: Isaiah
40:21-31
21Have you not known? Have you
not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood
from the foundations of the earth? 22It is
he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like
grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them
like a tent to live in; 23who
brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. 24Scarcely
are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the
earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them
off like stubble. 25To whom then will you compare
me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. 26Lift up
your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and
numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty
in power, not one is missing.
27Why do you say, O Jacob, and
speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded
by my God”? 28Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his
understanding is unsearchable. 29He
gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30Even
youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31but
those who wait for the Lord shall
renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall
run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
New Testament: Mark 1:29-39
29As soon as they left the
synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and
John. 30Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told
him about her at once. 31He came
and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she
began to serve them.
32That evening, at sundown, they
brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. 33And the
whole city was gathered around the door. 34And he
cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and
he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. 35In the
morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted
place, and there he prayed. 36And
Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37When
they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 38He
answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the
message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” 39And he
went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and
casting out demons.
Sermon –
(based on Mark 1:29-39)
It
seems early on in Christ’s ministry, but he has been gathering and teaching his
disciples, casting out demons and healing people, even his own disciples’ mother-in-law
and now exhausted from this work he seeks out a quiet place to spend some time
in prayer. The text says that his
disciples noticed that he went missing and they “hunted him down” - lol. They finally found him and they said to him,
“You know, Jesus, there are people still asking for you and wanting you to heal
them, teach them, listen to them.
Everyone is looking for you.” And
he said to them, “Ok, let us go on to the neighboring towns because I’ve got a
message for them also, for that is the reason I came.”
Mark’s
gospel has some unique characteristics to it.
It is short, face-paced and moves quickly. Matthew, for example is 28 chapters long,
Luke’s gospel is 24 chapters long, and John’s has 21 chapters in it. But Mark’s is short – his gospel only has 16
short, almost staccato like, chapters.
Mark is sort of the Cliff Notes version of the gospel message. How many of you even know about Cliff
Notes? Do they even still print
them? Cliff Notes were meant to give you
the essence of the text/novel/writing so that you could go back and then more
fully engage in an understanding of what you had read. To be honest, some of us probably only read
the Cliff Notes version of that novel or that assigned reading that we had to
read for English and never did engage in the actual text. Mark’s gospel feels kind of like that, until
you dive deep into Mark and realize that there’s a reason why his gospel was
written the way it was written, until you realize that Mark’s style was short
and staccato like for a purpose. One of Mark’s
favorite words is euthus which in
Greek means “immediately”! In Mark’s
gospel people drop everything and immediately, go places, do things, say
things. The word immediately pops up in
Matthew 12 times, in Luke 13 times, in John 2 times, but in Mark, nearly half
the size of the other gospels – he uses it 42 times. There’s a sense of urgency and demanding to
Mark.
I have
an immediate need to go, Jesus says. It
is urgent and it is why he came. That
message and that urgency matter to Mark.
Unfortunately, we as a Church, with the capital C, have often found
ourselves over the course of history, waylaid by distractions, caught up in controversy
and things that have pulled us away from the message that Jesus came to share
so urgently in Mark.
But
that message was the key to the Reformation of the 16th Century, and
it is key to the message of our own time.
It may even be the key to the reformation of our own social
structures for now, to the transformation of the social order in our country
and maybe even around the world.
Bishop
Michael Bruce Curry, an Episcopalian priest, talked about the time when he was
urged by his staff about 15 years ago to join Facebook as he was told that it
would be a good way to reach more people for Christ. He eventually agreed and started to join,
filling out the form that you must do when you join Facebook, knowing that the
information he was about to share would be seen by everybody. He didn’t care about his name or date of
birth or city of residence. But, he said
that he hesitated for a moment when it came time for him to fill out the
question regarding religious affiliation – Christian. He hesitated not because he wasn’t a
Christian, or that he didn’t want people to know that he was a Christian. But, because he felt that the word Christian
had lately been highjacked by those who were anything but, Christian. The word Christian has often lately defined
people who have been judgmental and not loving or caring. To mean quite the opposite of what Jesus of
Nazareth had come here for. So, he says, he just put down Episcopalian
instead, cause he figured that nobody knew what that meant anyway.
We
might be able to say the same about Presbyterian. Today, nobody knows what that words means either. But the truth is our very faith has been
highjacked by self-serving others who have used that Christian word for their
own purposes and not for the purpose of sacrificial and self-less commitment to
serve the community. Where is the
Christianity who worries about immigrants, where is the Christianity for those
dreamers wanting a new life, where is the Christianity who speak up for
children, the poor, and the widow?
Today,
we need a brand of Christianity that looks something like Jesus of Nazareth who
said, Blessed are the poor, Blessed are you when you are merciful and
compassionate, Blessed are those who work for peace, love your enemies, bless
those who curse you, bless those who persecute you for the sake of the gospel,
do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You must love the Lord your God which is the
first and great command and the other one is equally important, you shall love
your neighbor as yourself. This was the
message of the gospel that Jesus taught.
Where are the Christians who believe these things? Jesus’ message matters! And that message is urgently, immediately
needed in our time.
Dr.
King once said, “We will either learn to live together as brothers and sisters
or we will perish together as fools, the choice is ours.” Jesus has shown us the way, among the
nightmare and the chaos of our current world’s affairs, to find our way into a
beloved community.
Now,
the next thing I’m about to say is not going to make me very popular with our
church treasurer’s or our church’s sessions but one of the lessons I think we’ve
learned is that the church, regardless of how beautiful it is, is not the
message. The building is not the
message. Yes, I’ve missed our Sunday
morning time in worship. Yes, I’ve missed
our Stained Glass windows and the how the light plays on the pews and on people’s
faces as the sun rises on Sunday morning.
Yes, I’ve missed the playing of the organ and the piano. But, what I’ve missed more is you. It’s the gathering of the people of God that
I’ve missed most. It’s the programs that
we’ve offered our communities. It’s the
sharing of joy and hope and love and grace.
The church building is just a tool for us to use. I hope during this time away you’ve realized
that, too. So, when this awful time is
over, I hope we keep our focus on our buildings as just a tool for our real
purpose; which is to share the message of the gospel, to gather together in
fellowship and love. To reach across the
aisle to those who might be different and embrace them in true Christian love.
Here’s
a quote from Mother Theresa that I have learned to embrace and love:
“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and
self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of
selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind
anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some
unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may
deceive you. Be honest and sincere
anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could
destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be
jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten.
Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be
enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and
God. It was never between you and them
anyway.
Let us
find inspiration and hope in that message and rediscover our purpose. To that end, I leave you with one more quote,
from Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose Driven Life.
“It’s not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than
your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your
career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on
this planet, you must begin with God. You
were born by His purpose and for His purpose.
Without God, life has no purpose, and without
purpose, life has no meaning. Without
meaning, life has no significance or hope.”
Friends,
we find our hope in Jesus Christ and our euthus, urgent, or immediate
purpose in sharing his message.
Thanks be to God. AMEN
Hymn What a Friend We Have in Jesus
Benediction
The God who planted the
stars in the heavens has planted you for a purpose. Remember that God is calling your name to
proclaim the Good News of the gospel and peace to the nations. Empowered by the Spirit, we go out to proclaim
the gospel of love. AMEN.
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