Worship
Service for September 26, 2021
There will not be a video for today's service due to some technical difficulties we've been experiencing. Hopefully, next Sunday those issues will be fixed and will include the worship video.
Prelude
Announcements:
After
worship there will be a congregational meeting held in the sanctuary.
Next Sunday
is World Communion Sunday and we will celebrate it the same way we’ve been
celebrating communion for a while now.
You’ll pick up the small containers of bread and juice as you enter the
sanctuary in preparation for the time of communion during the service.
Call to Worship
L: Come, all who are weary and burdened with
worry, struggle, heartache, pain, and sadness.
It is here that you will find rest.
P: We come, bringing our joys and sorrows,
hopes and dreams to God.
L: Come, all who are ill, have disease in
their bodies, are weak of heart, or sorrowful of spirit.
P: We come, bringing our joys and sorrows,
hopes and dreams to God.
L: Come, now is the time to give to God all
the brokenness you have experienced.
P: Healing and Restoring God, touch our lives
and bring us to wholeness with You.
Opening Hymn – Praise, My Soul, the King of
Heaven #478 in the Presbyterian Hymnal
Prayer of Confession
Merciful and
Gracious God, we have often strayed from Your ways. We have broken our covenant with You and have
hurt ourselves, those we love and have betrayed Your trust in us. With pain too deep for words, with emptiness
and loneliness too deep for vision, we come before You, O God, to ask for
forgiveness. We lay our hearts open
before You as we silently cry our anguish.
We wish to be redeemed to health and wholeness in You. Forgive our hurtful ways, our abandonment of
those who need our compassionate care.
Forgive us our resistance to rebuke, repentance, and redemption. We give thanks for the grace You offer and
the mercy You bestow upon us. (Silent
prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: The Lord will raise us up; and anyone who
has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore, with confession in our hearts and
on our lips, we pray for ourselves and for one another so that we might be
healed.
P: The Lord forgives all our iniquities and
heals all our diseases. Thanks be to
God! AMEN.
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Choral Anthem: We Have Come to Join in Worship
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
You have called each of
us, gracious God, into relationship with you.
As we grow and change, your words continue to challenge us, to confront
us, to judge us, to love us. Thank you
for the gift of your Holy Word to us in our lives.
You have called each of
us in your Word-Made-Flesh self, who was willing to bear the reproach of those
in authority in order to serve the least, the last, and the lost. He spoke your healing, redeeming, gracious
words into reality. Thank you for that
gift of Your Word in our lives.
You continue to call to
us in the needs of those around us; and so we offer our prayers for all who are
in any way burdened, disillusioned, or suffering. Hear our prayers of concern for the world,
for the establishment of peace, for the ease of suffering and pain from
drought, disease, political strife and conflict. Reach out now to our own country and its
leaders. Allow them to be wise in
decision making and compassionate to those in need.
Lord, hear our prayers
for those near at home and their relationship with you. Allow them to feel your presence and know
your amazing grace. We lift up in prayer
to you this day….
Also hear these
prayers, those quiet prayers of the heart, as we pray to you in silence….
Most Holy God, in
responding to your call in our lives, we stand now and ever, under your mercy
praying what your Son taught to us saying…
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 – There’s
a Wideness in God’s Mercy #298 in the Presbyterian Hymnal
Scripture Reading(s):
OT – Psalm 124
NT – Esther 7:1-6, 9-10,
9:20-22
Sermon – One Life
Today’s
sermon is a short one because we have a congregational meeting to attend to at
the end of today’s worship service. And
that meeting is extremely important as it is part of the work of the
church.
One of today’s scripture readings was from the
book of Esther. This book tells the story
of when Esther, a young foreign Jewish girl in the court of King Ahasuerus, who
ruled over a vast kingdom from India to Ethiopia, somehow finds herself as
Queen, having won a beauty contest. She
does not know or understand what purpose her life has, aside from being a
pretty face that the King found pleasing.
However, over the course of time in history, she found her purpose and
using her position and influence manages to save her entire people from being
annihilated in the region.
The
bible is full of stories of Biblical characters such as these that we’ve grown
to know and love so well. We tell the
story of Adam and Eve, the story of their sons, Cain and Abel, the ongoing
history of God’s chosen people through Abraham and Sarah, their son Isaac and
wife Rebekah, their son Jacob and his two wives Leah and Rachel, and then the
twelve sons of Jacob who will one day make up the twelve tribes of Israel, the
extraordinary tale of his one son Joseph, and then suddenly the Biblical
account goes quiet while the Israelites grow prosperous in the land of Egypt,
but then find themselves slaves, as a people to the Pharoah and a few hundred
years later we finally hear something new with the epic story of Moses and his
wife Zipporah, the story of the widow Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth who
marries Boaz, who then became the ancestor to King David, and the sorrowful
tale of Job. Not to mention all the rest
of the characters we encounter in the Old and New Testaments.
We
remember their stories. Some, like Ruth,
we know only snippets of their lives as they impacted the greater story. Some, like Moses, we know from birth to death
and the impact their entire lives had on the greater story.
Their
stories were chosen not because they were amazing individuals, but because they
did something that contributed to the story – the larger story of how God works
in the world. There isn’t just one life
that makes or breaks the story of the Bible, it is the contribution of all of
their lives that make up the extraordinary accounts we have written down for
us. Their lives made a difference
because they were used by God and did something that changed the course of
history.
The
great truth taught by the history of Esther and all the rest of the characters
within the Biblical record is that God has a plan for your life, too. When Esther was told by Mordecai, “perhaps
this is why you have come to such a time as this,” she realized her own fate
and it transformed her life from being just a beauty queen to being a woman who
had a purpose.
God
has a purpose for your life, also. Just
one life; yours. But just imagine of all
that God could do through you once you realize and accept the purpose of your
own life.
Thanks be to God.
AMEN.
Offertory -
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication
We come before you, all-giving
God, rich with the gifts you have given to us, rich with the love you have
lavished on us, rich with the blessings your Son has brought to us. The gifts we offer you here speak not only of
our gratitude for your love, but also of our commitment to seek anew and
continuously to grow in our discipleship.
Bless these gifts, and us as givers, to the work for which you have
called us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
AMEN
Closing Hymn – Lord, Make Us More Holy #536 in the Presbyterian Hymnal
Benediction
Friends, go from this place to reap the harvest of God’s
love. Go from this place to continue to
sow seeds of justice, peace, mercy, and love.
Go from this place to nourish and to be nourished, knowing that God is
always present and part of our lives.
AMEN.
Postlude
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