Worship
Service for December 18, 2022
Prelude
Announcements:
Bright Beginnings Preschool Christmas Program
at Bethesda Tuesday, December 20 at 10am
Food Bank at Olivet – Tuesday, December 20 at
12:30pm
Christmas Eve Service at Bethesda on Saturday,
December 24 at 7pm
Christmas Day Service at Olivet on Sunday,
December 25 at 9:45am
Call to Worship
L: Let us rejoice in God our Savior, who has
done great things for us;
P: Who fills the hungry with good things!
L: Let us open ourselves to the Spirit of
life and new birth!
P: Let us worship God!
Lighting of the Advent
Wreath
Today we light the fourth
Advent candle, we’ll call it the Shepherds’ candle. This candle is offered in honor of the shepherds
whose love and care for their sheep become the example of God’s love for
us. We remember that the shepherds were
the first witnesses of our Savior’s birth.
In honor of all good shepherds and, especially, Jesus Christ, we light
this candle.
Prayer:
Dear God, our Good Shepherd, empower our
lives to be filled with love, that in loving others we might bear witness to
Your love for us. We give You thanks for
the shepherds, especially Jesus. AMEN.
Opening Hymn – Away in a Manger Hymn #25/261
Prayer of Confession
We sing, “O Come All Ye
Faithful,” God, but we confess that we are not always faithful. We could have shown love this past week, but
we kept ourselves busy with other things.
We spoke without thinking and hurt someone. We treated the gifts and greetings and meals
as chores, leaving out the most important ingredient – caring. We are sorry.
Please forgive us and accept our worship. Amid the bright colors that surround us this
season – the red, the green, the gold – send the light of Your Christ, that all
that is good may be revealed more clearly and all that is wrong may be exposed
and changed. We pray in the name of
Jesus who as born in Bethlehem, who now lives and reigns with You and the Holy
Spirit, now and forever. (Silent
prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: As Emmanuel descends to us, casting out
our sin and entering in, we are born again in Christ.
P: 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
Anthem - Is Your Heart Prepared for a King
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
All praise we lift up
to you, Emmanuel, God-promised, and God with us; all praise to you in the
silence and the singing of this most sacred season. Because of you, stars shine in our lives and
our poor manger places become holy straw.
May the good tidings of peace on earth and good will to the people of
the earth be on our lips, as it was with the shepherds and the angels. We give you thanks that a voice cried out in
the wilderness to shed light on the one who is coming. We give you thanks for becoming human – weak
and poor, cold and lonely. As we become
more human for knowing you – more able to lift our burdens and open our doors
to strangers; more willing to believe that you are near. That we are also the voices of one, crying
out in the wilderness, shedding light onto the one who has come! We give you thanks for the hope of this
season. For the love which you lavished
on us at Christmas. And for the Joy we
have knowing that you are indeed near.
This morning we give you thanks for choosing the low and the rejected
and the broken. Help us find mercy in
our struggles and courage in the rough places and crooked paths.
We also lift up to you
this day our words of both joys and concerns, knowing that you hear the victory
of our souls and the groaning of our hearts in those words. In the silence, hear us O Lord,
Holy God, we now unite
in one voice offering the prayer Your Son taught us to pray
…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 – The
First Noel Hymn #56/265
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm
80
Second Scripture Reading – Matthew
1:18-25
Sermon – The Man at the Manger
(Based on Matthew 1:18-25)
We know the Christmas Story well. It is one that we’ve told over and over again
each year. We’ve sung the hymns, heard
the carols, read the passages. But, of the
many stories, characters, and elements of the Christmas story, the one we are
most likely to overlook is Joseph. There
are songs about the angels coming down from heaven glorifying God with their
voices, there are songs about the shepherds keeping watch over the flocks in
the fields, there are songs about Mary wondering if she knew who her child
truly was, there are songs about the Wisemen that travel from distant lands in
the east bringing specific gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, there are
songs about the innkeeper who couldn’t find room in his inn for the couple, there
are songs about the bells ringing out on Christmas day, there’s even a song
about a non-existent drummer boy who visits the manger and brings the only gift
he has to the baby Jesus, but as far as I know there are no songs about Joseph.
Certainly, Mary and her special child are at the center of the
story, and we love to recall the shepherds in the fields and the wise men
bearing gifts. However, look at the
average nativity scene; Joseph is usually that guy standing in the back of the
scene, looking on while everyone else gathers around the manger.
As most of you know, I collect Nativity sets and I have quite a
few of them in which each year, I have to decide and assign the role of Joseph
to one of several possible candidates because I’m not exactly sure whether he’s
just one of the shepherds, the innkeeper or is the husband of Mary. In the end for many of the artists that created
the nativity scenes, he’s just a non-descript male standing by, adoring the
child.
One year, at one of the church’s I pastored, we were doing the
Christmas play with the kids. The author
of the play had decided to skip over this passage in Matthew in telling the
Christmas story.
In the play the angel came to Mary to tell her about her expected
child and Mary, full of joy, accepted her role as the mother of Jesus. Mary and Joseph then traveled to Bethlehem
where they found a grumpy innkeeper who only had a barn for the couple. Angels came down out of heaven to a startled
group of shepherds to proclaim the Lord’s birth, who then said to one another
that they must see this marvelous sight.
The wisemen spoke to one another about the star they had seen in the heavens
and decided to follow it bringing gifts to the newborn child. Each group gathered at the manger, adoring
the child whom Mary held out to each one.
In the play, even the sheep bleated and the cows mooed. But Joseph had no lines. The biggest role he had was to walk from one
end of the stage to the other with Mary on the donkey, who also brayed from the
long journey and the heavy load. At the
end of our dozen or more rehearsals – the young boy playing the role of Joseph comes
up and asks me, “What am I supposed to be doing? Am I supposed to just stand there the whole
time?”
And yet Matthew reminds us in our passage this morning that
Joseph was a central and essential character in the Christmas drama. In fact, the depth of character shown by
Joseph serves as a model for each one of us during this time of celebration.
Matthew tells us that Joseph was a "righteous man" in
verse 19, but I can't help thinking that this standalone description was an
understatement. I think God selected a very
special man to serve as the human father and model for Jesus, a man who would
demonstrate integrity, honor, and virtue as the boy Jesus grew into a man. A man who kept his promises and would teach
Jesus the ways of God.
The events described in this text offer one bit of evidence of
the kind of man Joseph was. What a
bitter blow it must have been to discover that young Mary, who was promised to
him in marriage, was bearing a child.
Can you imagine the thoughts and suspicions that would have gone through
your mind in his situation? How would
you have responded, especially in that culture, when you could certainly have
exacted a dramatic measure of punishment for what you thought was a betrayal? Mary could have been brought forward to the
community by Joseph and publicly executed for her faithlessness to Joseph.
Instead, Joseph's concern was for protecting Mary from public
ridicule and punishment. Even at a
moment in his life when he must have felt deeply hurt, he was anxious to
protect the one he thought had hurt him.
That is a depth of character not often found in his or any other day.
God knew that He could use Joseph because he had a compassionate
heart and was a man of honor. Do we seek
to demonstrate the kind of character in our lives that will enable God to more
effectively use us?
Imagine having the kind of dream Joseph had that night, and
learning that the basis for his predicament was actually the work of God, and
that the child your future wife is bearing is the Messiah, the "anointed
one" of God. What would have
thought? What would you have done? Think
about how Joseph must have felt. Didn’t
he have a right to be angry, to be hurt? The circumstances surrounding this birth were
irregular, to say the least. Wouldn’t he
be a laughing-stock, a source of gossip, among the villagers? Who would believe that it was the Holy Spirit
who conceived this child? What is truly
remarkable in Joseph is that he chose not to indulge himself in these feelings.
What is truly remarkable is that over
his own agenda–he chose God’s agenda. Joseph's response was
a simple one: "When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord
commanded him" (v. 24). God isn't
looking for the best and the brightest, the most handsome or beautiful, the
most polished or popular. God is looking
for men and women who will be responsive to his will; people who are willing to
hear and obey.
After
our passage in Matthew from this morning Joseph pretty much disappears. We know he was related to the illustrious King
David. We know he was a Carpenter–a
tradesperson which would have put him squarely in the Middle Class of his time
and local economy–and we know that he was chosen by God to be the human father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Beyond this,
we know practically nothing.
What are we to make of this strange scarcity of
information? What are the scriptures trying
to teach us about Joseph? We can be
certain that if Scripture mentions him at all he is crucial to God’s overall
message to us–as if there were something we could learn in particular about our
contemplation of Joseph. We know little
to nothing–after this passage and a couple of other references–Joseph fades
from view. It’s almost as if God calls
our attention to him only to make him disappear.
Consider your own life. Consider how often true greatness and true virtue
consists in self-restraint. What we do
not do is as important–and perhaps if we are to hear the Word of God in the
brief story of Joseph–it is even more important at times–then what we actually
do do.
How many times are we faced with a choice
between clinging to our own concerns and edifying a larger whole? How many times must we decide between
indulging ourselves in our own lesser qualities–and the larger task of learning
to live together peacefully and fruitfully. Perhaps the lesson to be learned in the story
of Joseph is that there is true strength and greatness in learning when to get
out of the way–when to be silent–when to sacrifice our lesser needs to God’s
greater plan of salvation and reconciliation.
One might go so far as to say that if Joseph is
important at all, from a Scriptural point of view–it is not so much because of
what he accomplished himself–but because of what he allowed others to
accomplish because of the man he was, because of his internal character. Perhaps the true greatness of Joseph, then, lies
not so much in the great things he, himself did, but in his ability to not be
an obstacle to great deeds–his talent for fading into the background so that
others might shine.
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
O Gracious God, bless our
offerings this day that it may reach and touch those who hunger, who hurt, who
seek new hope. We dedicate our lives and
all that we have to the work of life, of love, of peace. Receive these, our gifts in joy, and lead us
in wisdom and courage. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – I Cannot Tell Hymn
#354 Brown Hymnal
Benediction –
Postlude
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