Worship
Service for October 3, 2021
Prelude
Announcements:
If we have solved our technical difficulties, you will be
able to click here (if this is highlighted) to be able to connect with the YouTube
video of today’s service.
Today is World Communion Sunday, if you are worshipping
from home, you can prepare for today’s worship by grabbing a piece of bread and
something to drink in order to celebrate Communion with us as hundreds of
thousands of Christians all around the world will do today.
Call to Worship
L: The days are surely coming, says the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant…it will not be like the old covenant:
P: Written on stone.
L: This will be a radically new covenant; my
laws will be within you
P: Written on hearts.
L: And God added these wonderful words -
P: I am your God and you are my people.
L: Imprint these words anew on our hearts, O
God, so that we know You as You love us, and worship You as You deserve.
Opening Hymn – Joyful, Joyful, We Adore
Thee #464/90
Prayer of Confession
Merciful
God, You bring our lives in harmony with Yours because of Your righteousness
and justice, Your steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness. These are the qualities of Your life which
were clearly imprinted on Jesus’ heart and which have been written on our hears
not in ink but with Your Spirit. We
confess that while we readily accept the joy of living Spirit-filled lives, we
all too often fail to live up to the challenges that it brings. When we alienate others by our judgmental and
hard-hearted attitudes: Living God, forgive us and renew our lives with Your
Spirit. When our witness fails to reveal
a heartfelt desire to spread the good news of peace, love, justice, and mercy
to a world sorely in need of such news: Living God, forgive us and renew our
lives with Your Spirit. Living God, we
come to You in penitence and faith, praying that Your love will be rewritten on
our hearts and revealed in our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new
creation: everything old has passed away, see, everything has become new! We have been reconciled to God through Christ
and all this is from God who does not count our trespasses against us – but
entrusts us with the message of reconciliation.
P: The good news therefore is this: In Jesus
Christ we are renewed, we are loved, and we are forgiven. Thanks be to God!
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: Come to the Table
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
God of all nations, you called your people to be a light to the world,
to draw to yourself all who seek peace.
Lord, we ask that you use us, your church, to be instruments of that
peace, so that justice and compassion might be known in every land.
We pray for your hurting and broken world. We pray that conflict, wherever it may be,
comes to an end, that wars might cease and the peace can truly be
realized. We pray for our enemies, as
much as we pray for our friends and allies.
Lord, give our nation’s leaders a spirit of wisdom and a heart of
reconciliation, that we might be guided to provide for the well-being of the
hungry and homeless. We especially think
of those refugees and migrants who have left their homes to find a place of
comfort and rest; away from the disasters and tragedies, conflicts and poverty
in their homelands.
We pray for your church and its leaders. Give us pastors and church leaders who are
eager to hear your voice and to follow your call. Make us as community models of righteousness
for all who seek to know your ways.
Teach us to rejoice in all things and to seek what is honorable, just,
pure, pleasing, commendable, and praiseworthy, that we might be good
ambassadors of your good news to those whose hearts are restless for you.
Lay your healing hand on those we have named this morning who struggle
with sickness of body, mind, or spirit.
We especially pray for…
Hear also our unspoken and silent prayers this morning.
Lord, by your healing and comforting, reveal your power and love, and
give us a taste of the feast to come as we pray together 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 – Let
Us Break Bread Together #513/460
Scripture Reading(s):
OT – Psalm 25
NT – Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Sermon – God Speaks
God Speaks
(based on Hebrews 1:1-5, 2:5-12)
The beginning
of the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament passage that we read this
morning pronounces tells us exactly who Jesus Christ is. He is the culmination of all that the Jewish
people had been waiting for, the long-awaited Messiah. The author says that God had spoken to their ancestors
through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but now God speaks to
them through a Son. In other words, God
spoke to them through the voices and the stories of countless generations of
messengers to try and get their attention, to teach them God’s ways, to show
them the way of truth, but they did not listen and so now, in the Last Days,
God speaks through the words and actions of a Son. And this Son is superior to all other
messengers, because this Son, Jesus Christ is the heir of all things, God created
the entire universe through him. He is
the concentration of God’s glory, who God is and what God does. He is the exact representation of God. He is the essence of God made in flesh for us,
made understandable to us. The author of
Hebrews says that Jesus is the Word of God, which not only creates but also holds
all things together. In Christ, we were
made pure from our sins, something that no one or nothing else could do, and
having done that, he now sits at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.
When I think of World Communion Sunday which we celebrate today,
I get excited about the fact that hundreds of thousands of Christian brothers
and sisters around the world are coming to the Lord's Table to remember our
Lord and to proclaim his final victory to the world. The Sacrament of Holy Communion is a taste of
the Kin-dom as well as the Kingdom of God.
Our sharing in this common meal as a beloved family of God, receiving
this means of grace in an unbroken line throughout this history of our
community of faith, is a way of lifting the veil on the heavenly banquet. Whenever we partake, we are sharing with
fellow believers around the world in unity and equality. World Communion Sunday is a reminder to
invoke that kinship with have with one another and to embrace the wholeness
that we share as Christ-followers.
World Communion invites us to lean into the beautiful reality of
the communal church at worship that is the global church. Every Lord’s Day in every time zone, there
are devoted Christians worshiping our Triune God. Whether in the shade of a tree, alongside a
rice paddy, under the canopy of a desert sun, by a creek bed, in a plain church
or grand cathedral, or in even in storefronts, our brothers and sisters in
Christ all over the planet are praying and singing in indigenous ways using
their languages. What a glorious picture
of worship in the kin-dom when we grasp the fullness of the body of Christ and
sing and pray with those brothers and sisters around the world. It doesn't
matter what part of the world we're hailing from, because from God's
perspective there are no political, ethnic, cultural or national boundaries. From God's perspective we are One people, the
People of God!
One of the things that excites me about church history is that
the first-century church believed that Christ’s church stood for a radical
inclusion of all of God's children. They
believed that all those barriers we as humans work so hard to build, God in
Christ broke through. In one of my commentaries
on the Epistles, I read that an anonymous letter survived from the early 2nd
century addressed to Diognetus, a Roman official, the author actually speaks
about Christianity as a "new race:" because these Christians were so
radically different in how they lived, worked, and responded to those around
them.
The Mystery of the New People
To His Excellency, Diognetus: I understand, sir, that you are interested in
learning about the religion of the Christians, and that you are making an
accurate and careful investigation of the subject....
... You would also like to know the source of the loving
affection that they have for each other. You wonder, too, why this new race or way of
life has appeared on earth now and not earlier. These three questions are dealt with in the
text, more or less in order, but with some overlapping. The reference to the "New Race"
calls attention to an issue of great importance for the life of the Early
Church, which concerned such varied questions as the Church's understanding of
its vocation in history and the Roman world's attitude toward the Church.
And that should be the message of the church worldwide, not just
from an outsider viewing the beginnings of the early Church, but for us as well
today. The message we should be giving
to the world is this: “You are loved and welcomed here - every single one of
you! God's grace is enough for all! God's love is poured out to all, and therefore
our love is poured out to you, as well.”
With the arrival of the church of Jesus Christ a new age had
dawned. Nobody ever needed to feel
excluded again; for, as the Apostle Paul wrote; “All of you who were baptized
into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor
Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all
one in Christ Jesus.”
Brothers and sisters, everyone is welcome and everyone is equal
in God’s eyes. We are all children of
God. We are to be one in Christ; we are
to be the new race made up of a multitude of diverse people.
We are one and in our oneness lies our strength; in our oneness
the world will see the difference in us—through our love the world will see the
love and grace of Jesus Christ. Let us love one another and love God’s
creation, so radically different from what the world offers that we are seen as
a completely new race.
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
Offertory -
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication
Lord,
in your faithfulness you provide our every need in ways that surpass our
understanding. We dedicate before you
today the large and the small work of every member of the church, and we ask
that you accomplish great things with our offerings of self and substance. We pray this in the blessed name of our
Savior, Jesus the Christ. AMEN
Communion
Invitation
to The Lord’s Table
L: The Lord be with you.
P: And also with you.
L: Lift up your hearts.
P: We lift them up to the Lord.
L: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
Prayer
of Thanksgiving
Words
of Institution
Breaking
of the Bread
Sharing
of the Cup
Closing
Prayer
Closing Hymn – The Church’s One Foundation
#442/401
Benediction
Having been healed
and made whole by God’s love, now go out into God’s world to be a healer and
one who brings peace and hope to others. Know always that God is with you. AMEN.
Postlude
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