We are continuing to use Facebook Live for our worship services for now. You can catch it at 11:15 Sunday morning or at anytime in the future on my personal Facebook page.
Worship
Service for January 29, 2023
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: May God be merciful to us and bless us!
P: Show us the light of Your countenance, O
Lord, and come to us. Let Your ways be
known upon earth, Your saving health among all nations.
L: Let the peoples praise You, O God.
P: Let all the peoples praise You.
L: Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for You judge the people with equity and guide all the nations upon the earth.
P: Let the people praise You, O God; let all the
peoples praise You.
L: May God bless us.
P: May all the ends of the earth stand in awe
of God.
Opening Hymn – O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing Hymn #466/21
Prayer of Confession
How often, Lord, have we
failed to listen for Your voice, or, having heard it, have chosen to ignore it
so that we might choose our wills over Your own. We repent that we so often fail to seek Your
holy will and have not come when You call us to follow. Strengthen us to prefer Your will always to
our own. Give us wise discernment that
we might recognize Your words when You speak to us. Keep us safe from deception and ever walking
in Your holy ways. (Silent
prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: God’s love is patient and kind, and will
not fail you. The Lord is with you to
deliver you. Through the mercy of Jesus
Christ, the Lord has heard you and is reaching out to save you. Sisters and Brothers in Christ, your sins are
forgiven; be at peace.
P: Alleluia!
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
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
It is a good thing to
come into your house, O Lord. O God, we
are grateful that there is a place for us to go where we are reminded that life
is more than externals, more than food and clothing, more than show and tell,
more than physical pleasures, more than passing fancies. You are eternal and our presence here with
the eternal reminds us that we are eternal also. Help us to live each day in the light of that
eternity and the love that you have for us.
Lord, today we pray for the Universal Church, manifested in
various denominations around the world.
We pray that your Church that you established so long ago is faithful to
your mission, hopeful in its message and reverent in its love for our fellow
sojourners. We pray that the world-wide
Church is filled with peace, mercy, kindness, humility, hope, and love.
And may this church manifest your grace in all that we do
and say to one another.
We also pray for …..
Listen also Lord for
the burdens of our hearts as we lift them up to you in this time of silence…
We offer up these
prayers in your Son’s name who taught us to prayer 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 – O
Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go Hymn #384/606
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Micah
6:1-8
Second Scripture Reading – Matthew
5:1-12
Sermon – A Case of Attitude
God has a complaint—what is
sometimes called a covenant lawsuit—with the people of Israel. Micah becomes the voice through which this
charge is brought. The specific nature
of the wrongs committed is not really mentioned here, except in an indirect
way: God demands to know and asks the people, through Micah, what God has done
wrong. In other words, God is asking
rhetorically, "What have I done to lead you to separate yourselves from
me?"
God's question is answered with
another question, this time the formulation of the prophet on the people's
behalf: "With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God
on high?" Then follows a list of possibilities,
options that had traditionally functioned either to please God in worship or to
appease God for sins committed: burnt offerings, calves, rams, oil, and then
perhaps in a dramatic gesture, a firstborn child.
So, here in Micah, we have two
questions—God's and ours. This dynamic
sets the scene for one or the other to answer in a declarative sentence,
something to be spoken definitively rather than asked as a question. Evidently, the people have no answer to God’s
original question, but in verse 8 God has an answer for His people. God says, This, and only this, is what I’ve
required of you. This, and only this, is
what you need to do. In simple and plain
speech, God says, All that is required is for the people to do justice, love
kindness, and walk humbly with (or live in communion with) God.
The word justice is intended to
mean more than merely "getting even" or "making others pay for
what they did." The Hebrew word for
justice, mishpat, has a far more comprehensive meaning: the restoration of balance,
the righting of relationships, the application of fairness to all things. It is the idea of treating all people with
equity, which is not the same is equal.
Mishpat or justice in the Hebrew sense is not merely a transaction, but
rather an atmosphere engendered within a community. And in that sense, it is closely related to
the word Shalom meaning peace. Again,
not simply a transaction made between people, but rather an atmosphere that is
cultivated within a community. What does
the Lord require? That we do justice.
Hesed in Hebrew or kindness, also
translated as compassion or mercy, is as about as plain and obvious as you can
get. Every single day we have
opportunities to show and exercise kindness in some way—big or small. The kindness of the owner of an auto repair
shop who waves some of the costs to allow a family to get their car back on the
road might spare them profound difficulties and misery; but the same kindness
can be brought by a simple smile to someone who’s had a rough day or a could be
brought in the form of a flower in a little child's hand across the street to
the widow on the porch swing. For Micah,
the size of the kindness is immaterial; what is essential, though, is that it
is cultivating in every act that we do throughout the day whenever it is
needed. And taking it a step further, and
this makes all the difference, that kindness be loved. Not merely the exercise of mercy, but the love
of mercy. Not merely the doing of a kind
act, but the appreciation of the deed. Not
merely saying the helpful word, but meaning what we say.
The rare Hebrew word for humble
in the phrase "to walk humbly with", “sana” (phonetically
pronounced tzaneya) is difficult to translate clearly as it only appears
twice in the Old Testament. But
something like "to live in communion with" gets the point across. To walk humbly with God means to get our minds
and hearts around the notion that God is also with us all the time. God, who creates us, gives us breath, and
receives us at our death, also walks with us through every step of life.
Humility, then, is not only about
learning to listen more than we speak, but it is also about learning to
recognize holy ground or holy moments when we see it until eventually we come
to understand that every situation, every encounter, every moment of life is
indeed, holy ground or a holy moment.
Why? Because God is right there
with us, at all times.
Moving to our New Testament
reading, we find that God also wants us to be happy. I once heard a saying that went something like
this, "Some people get enough religion to make them happy, while others
only get enough to make them miserable." Jesus wants us to be happy. "Blessed are you," Jesus says. Ultimately these blessings that Jesus says in
his Sermon on the Mount is that "You are blessed with the choice of
happiness because you are mine." This
is what we might say "family talk." Jesus gathered his disciples to teach them
while the crowd was allowed to overhear.
This is where a lot of preachers
try to put words in Jesus' mouth and fill the air with admonitions of
"ought" and "should." "You ought to be meek!" "You should be merciful!" But, that is not what Jesus is saying. Jesus is simply pronouncing a blessing. Jesus is saying to his closest disciples, but
also anyone else who might be listening, "You, who have responded to my
call with your faith are blessed. Because
you are mine, you have the ability to choose a certain kind of life." When you make this choice, wonderful results
can happen.
One commentator boiled it down to
a paragraph and explained it, less poetically, this way;
"Blessed is the one who
acknowledges the personal need of God, for God shall reign in the heart. Be happy when you feel deep sorrow over wrong,
for God's Spirit will be at your side. You
will know joy as the relinquishment of your life to God's guidance and
discipline molds you to receive what God has already promised. Blessed are you when the dissatisfaction in
your life drives you to search after God's nature, for you will be satisfied. Oh, the blissful joy of the one who gives
forgiving and healing love. You will
receive what you have given. The joyful
heart is yours because your singleness of purpose conditions you to see God. God's children are those who stand in the gap
between forces of opposition, making peace to be more than the absence of
hostility, but the presence of love."
In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer asks, "Is there any place on earth for such a community? Clearly there is one place, and only one, and
that is where the poorest, meekest and most sorely tried of all men is to be
found—on the cross at Golgotha. The
fellowship of the beatitudes is the fellowship of the crucified."
Even when you participate in the
fellowship of the crucified, even when you are persecuted, even when you are a
victim, you have the choice not to accept a victim mentality. Jesus has reversed the world's values. He blesses the so-called unblessed of society.
He blesses the poor, the brokenhearted,
the captives, the prisoners, and the grieving (Isa. 61:1-3; Luke 4:18-19). As God's child, you have the choice to accept
God's blessing and to bless others. You
can take initiative, choose beforehand how to respond in any situation. And here is where the work of Christmas begins
and where our work begins. It is through
us that the world can be blessed. It is
through our cultivating a society of justice, through our acts of kindness,
through our acknowledgment and understanding that every moment is a holy
moment, that every step we take is holy ground.
It is through this that we create
a blessed community where the poor are welcomed and helped, where the
brokenhearted are embraced and cared for, where the captives and prisoners are set
freed and made to believe they are worthy human beings, and where those who are
grieving have a shoulder to cry on and a tissue at the ready.
It is in these moments that we
answer God’s question and fulfill God’s request and in doing so are blessed beyond
blessed.
Thanks be to God. AMEN
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
O
God,
You bless us in so many areas of our lives—in
places we often fail to recognize as blessing.
Help us have eyes to see and hearts to understand
the depth of Your love and blessing. Today, we give out of that blessedness, dedicating
ourselves to lives of justice, mercy, and love,
giving all that we are and all that we have to
bring about Your beloved community. Amen.
Closing
Hymn – Lord, Dismiss Us with Thy Blessing Hymn #538 Blue Hymnal
Benediction –
Go
now into the world embracing kingdom values—
love, justice, and truth. Go now with God’s blessing,
to live those values through the challenging,
faithful, and loving presence of our everlasting God. Amen.
Postlude
No comments:
Post a Comment