Worship
Service for June 4, 2023
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Praise the Lord, O my soul!
P: I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
L: Do not put your trust in princes, in
mortals, in whom there is no hope.
P: When their breath departs, they return to
the earth;
L: Happy are those whose help is the God of
Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who keeps faith forever; who
executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry.
P: The Lord will reign forever. Praise the Lord!
Opening Hymn – Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
#11 Brown Hymnal
Prayer of Confession
God of all Creation, we
confess this day that we have not been faithful in our thoughts, words, or
deeds. You call us to show compassion to
those who need help, and we know that we can love because you first loved
us. Yet, because of our fear or
reluctance, we have failed to open our hands or our hearts to the poor. Inspire us with the example of Jesus. We confess our sin to you. O God, because within your heart is much
forgiveness, help us accept the forgiveness you offer us in Christ. Once again mold us and claim us as Your
people. We pray this prayer of pardon in
the powerful and holy name of Jesus Christ.
(Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting
to everlasting. In the name of Jesus
Christ, we are forgiven. May the God of
mercy, who forgives all of our sins, strengthen us in all goodness, and by the
power of the Holy Spirit keep us in eternal life.
P: The Lord be praised! 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
Good and gracious God, we adore you and praise your holy name. We are especially grateful for your steadfast
love, revealed to us in the words and deeds of Jesus, your Son. We give thanks for the disciples and all the
generations that have followed in their footsteps, faithfully carrying out the
mission entrusted to them by Christ. It
is our turn, Lord, to take that mission, to make it our own and spread your
name, your love, your mercy and grace to every corner of the world. Unite us in our commitment to Christ. Give us the courage to venture beyond familiar
places, to see the potential good in others the way your Son saw in us. Transform our hearts and minds so that we may
be instruments of healing, comfort, and peace every day and everywhere that you
may lead us.
We pray today for those people who are ill, who mourn, who
feel lost and alone. We especially pray
for…
Open our hearts today to ministries of peace with justice. Embolden us to become part of the great cloud
of witnesses who went before us, who were not afraid to be Your disciples. We think of so many in this church and in our
lives who have gone before us, braving the difficulties presented by life. We name them this morning in our hearts
before You, grateful for their example. (Silent
prayer.)
Lord, be with this church that it may be a true witness to
Jesus Christ in all that we do and now 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 – Glorious Things of Thee
Are Spoken Hymn #446/400
4 vs. Brown Hymnal
Scripture Reading(s):
Genesis
1:1-2:4a
Matthew
28:16-20
Sermon –
The Great Commission
(based on Matthew
28:16-20 and Matthew 5 – The Sermon on the Mount)
Our passage from Matthew this morning is
known as The Great Commission, where Jesus sends out his disciples. But notice that it comes sandwiched between two
other “great things”; the Great Affirmation, and the Great Promise.
The Great Affirmation is when Jesus
says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” It's a staggering claim. When
you think that Matthew is writing his Gospel perhaps one generation after the
crucifixion of Jesus, and here a man crucified as a state criminal by the Roman
authorities claims to be the one to whom Caesar himself will bow the knee; that
he is the Lord not just of the church, he is the Lord of history, he is the
Lord of governments, he is the Lord of nations, he is the Lord of the universe;
that is the statement, which is the affirmation that the early Christians made
when they confessed at their baptism Jesus Christ is Lord. It's more than just
a personal statement, it's more than just a political statement; it's a cosmic
statement of supreme and universal Lordship. And the Great Commission flows out of that
great affirmation. It is because Jesus
Christ, this crucified Jew is the Lord of the nations, that his followers, his
disciples have a mission to the nations. Notice that word "therefore" links
the great affirmation with the Great Commission.
Now our English translations mislead
us in the meaning of the Great Commission because they begin with the command
"go." In Greek, it's a present
participle, which strictly speaking should be translated, "Therefore, as
you're going, make disciples of all nations." So, the emphasis is not on the going, the
emphasis is on the making of disciples. The
followers to whom Jesus is speaking here were all Jews who had left their jobs,
everything that they owned, to attach themselves to this man, to become
apprentices to him. That's what a
disciple means, an apprentice or a student.
Now, says Jesus, just as you have become my student, my apprentice, and
learned from me, now you invite everyone else to do the same – everyone.
Jesus is saying that the entire world
is our mission field, invite all peoples of all cultures and all geographical
areas to become disciples, to learn about the message of the gospel. How do we do that? And Jesus explains, we do that by baptizing
and by teaching. Baptizing them into the
name of the triune God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – and here is
Matthew is the only reference of using these names of God, the triune God, the
three in one God, together.
In the ancient world,
to be baptized into the name of somebody meant to come under the allegiance of
that person, to surrender ownership to that person. You became in a sense that person's
property. To be baptized into the name
of the triune God means that now your supreme loyalty is no longer to your
biological family, culture, ethnic group, or your nation's state, it is to the
triune God. You belong to the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That is
where discipleship begins.
Baptism is also a
corporate event, not an individual event. You are baptized into the community of all
those who profess the name of the Triune God.
So, it is in the context of community that people learn what discipleship
means. Discipleship is not something we
can learn in solitude, we cannot learn it individualistically. It is in community, the community of the
baptized, that we learn what it is to be an apprentice to Jesus, and to grow
into the mission and the purposes of Christ.
Jesus was building a
new kingdom, commissioning his disciples to make disciples for that kingdom,
towards a new world order. Therefore,
the disciples were to teach what Christ has commanded them and those teachings began
with the Sermon on the Mount. And he began
by explaining what kind of characteristics people of the new order need to be
like.
First, they are poor
in spirit.
"Blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." To be poor in spirit is to be broken,
crushed, no longer in control of our lives, let alone in control of our
environment. Jesus says that it is to
such people that the kingdom of God belongs.
The nobodies of this age. When
you look at his own ministry, it was to people who were considered outcasts,
rejected by the religious people—the moral people, people like the tax
collectors—corrupt business people, Samaritans who were half-breeds, and
prostitutes. These are the people with
whom Jesus chose to have meals, demonstrating solidarity with them. They're the ones to whom the coming of the
kingdom of God is good news, not to the powerful, not to the rich, not to the
religious.
Second, they will
those “those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Disciples of Christ
are those who genuinely mourn over the state of the world, who long for a
better world. They mourn because they
live in a world that is desperately out of touch with God; broken, disfigured,
alienated from the Creator, and they long for the renewal and the healing of
the societies in which they live. Are we
known as a church that truly mourns for what is happening in the world and then
working towards the healing of it?
Third, they will be
those who are meek, for only the meek shall inherit the earth.
We often think of
meekness as being timid or cowardly.
It's not a very attractive quality.
But I want to suggest to you that meek people are those who don't assert
themselves in an off-putting way, but rather they are those who are subtle in
approach. They are not interested in
being number one all the time. They are
quite happy to stay in the shadows and let other people take all the
glory. They don't want to be in the
spotlight all the time, but would rather take someone aside to correct them, or
those who quietly from the shadows support great causes, who empower others
with their encouragement and compassion.
Fourth, they are those
who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, as it is translated in our English
bibles, but the Greek word here, dikaiosune (dee-kai-o-soon-e), is more
often translated as justice. So, the
real translation of this passage would be those who hunger and thirst after justice
rather than righteousness. Which harkens
back to the Old Testament command from Micah where we are to seek justice. And it is social justice that Jesus is referring
to here. For Christ, every true disciple
should be passionate about justice in their society, in their world. But people who hunger and thirst for
justice can also tend to be rather harsh people, rather aggressive, and even self-righteous,
and perhaps why he goes on to speak about mercy next.
Disciples are
characterized not only by a passion for justice, but also by being merciful,
because they seek not only the judgment on the oppressor, but the
reconciliation of the oppressor to the oppressed. They look beyond vengeance, they want
transformation in the lives of those who are the oppressors, those who
perpetrate injustice, and they are willing to forgive and to offer people a new
beginning, just as they themselves have been the recipients of mercy. Again, this harkens back to Micah, the
balancing scales of doing justice with kindness and humbleness.
Fifth, disciples are
to be pure in heart. I don't think Jesus
is referring to personal holiness here.
None of us will ever truly be pure in heart until the final kingdom of
God appears. Everything that we do from
Monday to Sunday should be focused on what God requires of us, what God wants of
us which is to love the Lord and to love one another. It is as simple as that. And in doing so, disciples are then pure in
heart.
And finally, disciples
are to be peacemakers. Not peace-lovers,
which we all tend to be, but rather peacemakers. Disciples are those who go into situations of
conflict, of violence, whether in families or in inner city neighborhoods. They go into those places that others don't
want to go, and they build bridges between people, enabling people to listen to
each other, to talk face-to-face. Jesus
expects that disciples should be in the forefront of all those peacemaking
initiatives within cities, between nations, on the international scene as well
as the local scene. He says they will be
called the children of God because God is in the business of making peace
between himself and his rebellious, alienated creation. So, whenever we are agents of peacemaking, of
reconciliation, we are imitating God.
When disciples behave
in such a way we become light and salt. Light,
in order to shine the way for others, to let good news outweigh the bad, to
bring joy to the receiver and less burden to those who carry a heavy load. And then salt to preserve it, rubbing our way
into society to arrest its spiritual decay.
If we do that, men and
women from all walks of life would see and witness not only what you say, but
also the works that you do. Christ expects
his disciples to proclaim and to be about the good news of the kingdom of
God. This is how the Great Commission is
to be accomplished.
And now we have the
Great Promise at the end, “For lo, I am with you always even unto the end of
the age." Jesus promises his
empowering Spirit, his presence, to us his church if we are willing to obey
him. This is not a promise that we can
take out of context and apply to any situation, that Jesus is with us wherever
we are. It is a promise that we can
claim, only if we are seeking to obey Christ, to be his disciples, who invite
others to be his disciples with us.
Therefore, my friends,
take up Christ’s Commission and make disciples.
AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Lord,
bless these gifts that they may be used for ministries of compassion. Bless these people gathered here, bringing
their gifts and their lives in service to You. For we offer ourselves and our gifts to You. AMEN
Closing Hymn – Blessed Assurance Hymn #341/572
Benediction –
Go forth with empowered joy to work for the making of
disciples and the reconciliation of the world.
Be the good stewards of the earth and its people that God has called you
to be. AMEN
Postlude
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