Worship
Service for February 18, 2024
Prelude
Announcements: Today we celebrate communion
Call to Worship
L: We trust in You, O God, for You are
faithful.
P: Show us Your ways and teach us Your paths
L: We wait for You.
P: Lead us in Your paths of truth.
L: Do not remember our failures.
P: Out of Your merciful grace, forgive us.
L: You are faithful, O God. Your love is steadfast and we lift up our
souls to You.
P: We will praise You always in the sanctuary
of Your house.
Opening Hymn – Near the Cross #319 in Brown Hymnal
Prayer of Confession
Great God of the universe, You
made a covenant with all creatures, promising life and hope. God of pathways, You show us how we should
walk. Yet we forget our connections with
one another and I think that we are the center of the universe. We wander from Your paths of truth into paths
of deceit and pride. Forgive us and lead
us back into the arms of Your love. (Silent
prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: God is merciful and full of steadfast love. God will not forget us.
P: God
washes away our sin, making us clean and leading us to new life. 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
Sacred Music – Joint Choir, Remember
Me
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Loving, Creating God, You
are in covenant with Your people. You
have pledged to be our God and ask us to be Your people, trusting in You in all
our ways. But we find many excuses to
prevent us from really trusting You. We
erect barriers before our faith journey even begins. Our time, obligations, energy, all become part
of the bricks and mortar which fashion this barrier. We can give lip service to the journey; we can
daydream about what it would be like to truly place our hands in Yours and
follow You. But when it comes to
actually making the journey, our time constraints and weak commitments loom
largely before us. Help us tear down
this barrier. Make us ready for the
journey by replacing the fear that is in our hearts with a sense of joy and
challenge of self-discovery and discipleship. Remind us that in service to You, helping
others, we will also find ourselves made more fully whole.
Merciful God, we have
spoken the names of our friends, and family members, and others situations in
which healing and comfort are needed; so, we especially prayer for:
Gracious Lord, let us
remember that we, too, stand in need of prayer and healing. So let us take this moment to offer our
heartfelt prayers in silence.
Holy God, make us ready
to receive Your good news and then to be witnesses to Your love to all Your
people by praying together.…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 – A
Mighty Fortress #151/260
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Genesis
9:8-17
Second Scripture Reading – Mark
1:9-15
Sermon – Keeping
Covenant
(based on Genesis
9:8-17)
As we begin our annual
Lenten journey to the cross of Christ and ultimately the empty tomb, our Old
Testament reading this morning takes us to the new journey of the human race
after The Flood. In words that almost
directly parallel the Genesis account of creation, the opening verses of
Genesis 9 lay out God’s mandates for Noah’s family and his descendants: fill
the earth, have dominion over the rest of creation, including animals who may
now be eaten (minus their blood), and defend the sanctity of human life.
In those verses, God basically tells
them to start over. But how can they do
that? Humanity had made a total mess of
everything. Now in the midst of the
drying mud and the rotting death, how is it possible for humanity to make a new
beginning and do better. Can they/we do
it by immense human effort? No, not by
that alone, we can only start over by the grace of God. That’s how it was for Noah as the journey of
humanity began again. That’s also how it
is for us as we begin our Lenten journey again this year.
The story of Noah and
the flood is one of those biblical narratives that we are so familiar with we
think we know the whole story.
In fact, what we tend
to think of as the story is one of two interpretations that are common in our
culture. The most common interpretation
is very much a children’s story of animals and rainbows. This is a story about God’s love for animals,
about remembering God’s love each time we see a rainbow, and through that
rainbow, even to see the bright side of every storm.
The second common interpretation is a
story that is most definitely not for children. In this interpretation, God is so angered by
human rebellion and sin that God floods the whole earth, wiping out nearly
everything in a fit of divine rage. This
is a story about a God whom you’d be crazy to want to have anything to do with,
a God of wrath who is ready and willing to strike down any and all sinners.
The good news for us is that neither
of these stories is the whole story, of course, and neither contains much
truth. A truer story is that God uses a
myriad of ways of calling us back to the harmony that God intended for us from
the very beginning. Our text for today,
in which God establishes a covenant with Noah and his descendants, tells us
that God is hanging up the bow (a sign of warfare) and putting aside forever
the option of destruction.
The entire flood narrative is the
culmination of a story of increasing human sinfulness that begins all the way
back in Genesis 3. I encourage you to
read the whole story again from chapter 6 through 9. It is a sad state of affairs to understand
that our degradation into sin and chaos happened so easily and quickly. There we first see that sin results in
disharmony — between humans and other creatures (3:15), between male and female
(3:16), and between humans and their earthly labors (3:17-18). Disharmony intensifies in chapter four, in
which the first murder, that of a brother no less, occurs. The genealogy of chapter five draws the link
from Adam’s generation to Noah’s in order to highlight the downward spiral of
humanity. Finally in Chapter 6 we see
that God’s harmonious world is utterly broken and humanity is so broken that
God regrets having even created it in the first place.
The language of this
divine regret in is breathtaking. In
verse five, chapter 6, God saw that “every inclination of the thoughts of human
hearts was only evil continually.” God’s
response to this realization is not one of anger or revenge. Rather, God was
“sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his
heart” (verse 6). God sorrows over the corruption of the beings that God made
with such care and love, and God’s heart, in striking contrast to the evil
inclination of the human heart, is grieved by their betrayal. God is pained by the brokenness of creation. God sends the flood, then, not as an act of
revenge, but rather out of grief over the rending of the relationship between humans
with God.
It's important to note
here that the destruction, of course, is not total. God doesn’t wipe away the creation entirely
and then walk away. In fact, the flood can
be viewed as a means of re-creation. God
washes the earth clean and both God and the earth begin again. The re-creative
nature of the flood is underscored by parallels between this narrative and the
creation narrative of Genesis 1:
·
That
which God had repeatedly pronounced good in chapter one, God now names as evil
(6:5 and 6:12).
·
The
separation and gathering of the waters (1:6-11) is first undone (6:11) and then
redone (8:3-14).
·
God’s
command to “be fruitful and multiply” (1:28) is repeated three times (8:17,
9:1, and 9:7) after the flood.
·
That
humans are created in the image of God is repeated (9:6b).
·
Therefore,
all of creation is given a new beginning, a new opportunity to live in the
harmony that God had originally intended.
Which brings us to the
covenant, the sealing of the newly-restored relationship between God and God’s
creatures. Note that this covenant is
entirely God’s doing. God enters into an
eternal covenant with all creation without requiring anything in return. God does so fully aware that “the inclination
of the human heart is evil from youth,” (8:21) still.
God knows that the
human heart has not been cleansed of sin just from the flooding waters, and yet
God enters into covenant with us anyway. Perhaps the divine heart that was so
aggrieved by human wickedness that God sent a flood is now moved by that same
grief to seek another way to get through to us. So, God promises to Noah and to his
descendants, and to every creature on the earth, never again to destroy all
creation with a flood. But that covenant
which cannot be broken and was created solely by God for humanity, disserves a
thoughtful response.
A Lutheran missionary told this story about
his time in the Andes among the small farming communities there.
A man, by the name of Felipe, stood and spoke
to the highest governing body of the small farming community: the community
assembly. “The time has come to do
the minka for our Champaccocha irrigation canal. We have to clean and repair three kilometers
of the canal, and we will begin it in two weeks,” he said.
The 95 men and women assembled were not
surprised. In fact, everyone knew that
August was the month to clean and repair this community necessity. Members of the community had been called on to
fulfill this traditional obligation for as long as they could remember. Not tending to the task would mean risking not
having maximum water flow capacity and, therefore, the danger that many
families wouldn’t have enough water to irrigate crops and livestock grazing
areas.
Minka is a Quechua word, meaning collective
work based on reciprocity. The practice
of this ancestral tradition, deeply rooted in the Andean population, dates to a
pre-Columbian era but continues today in Peru and other nearby countries. The minka was and
is a covenant or an agreement among farmers and communities to ensure the
collective service of a public good. Above
all, it ensures the life of the whole system.
Two weeks later, men, women and children
assembled to do their minka duty at
the canal. Their work would ensure more
water, and that would mean more food, as well as more products to take to the
closest town market, bringing in more cash income for the families.
Wishing alone would not bring more water. Without an agreement, or covenant, that makes
sure all parties contribute to actions supporting the collective — and without
everyone following its guidelines — this would not have been possible.
It is precisely this kind of covenant that
God proposed to Noah and, through Noah, to all of humanity and the earth. God’s promise invites us to reflect on the
need to be respectful and vigilant about the agreements and commitments we make
to one another, to God, and to our environment.
After the grace shown by God in the rainbow
(Genesis 9:13), Noah and his family assumed responsibility for making sure
humanity would live their lives differently, taking on not only individual
commitments but also collective ones. It
is the same kind of commitment we are called to make as a Christian community
to care for the resources God has given us.
Today, in a world where a word of honor, duty
to others and respect for agreements appear to be losing value, it is
especially important to witness examples like the minka in these Andean communities, as a way for
us, to remember how we are to respect one another, respect the creation that
God put into our hands to care for, and to respect our covenant to “do better”
in our relationships with one another and with God.
Based on this story from Genesis, knowing
what comes forth in our journey through Lent, I have a question for you. In what ways, can you (and the collective of
us) show God that we honor that covenant and are trying to do better?
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
God of
the covenant, You are ever faithful.
Continue to teach us Your ways.
May You bless the bounty of this offering and multiply it for Your use
in the world. AMEN.
Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
Invitation:
Friends, this is the joyful feast of the people of God!
They will come from east and west,
and from north and south,
and sit at table in the kingdom of God.
According to Luke,
when our risen Lord was at table with his disciples,
he took the bread, and blessed and broke it,
and gave it to them.
Then their eyes were opened
and they recognized him.
This is the Lord’s table.
Our Savior invites those who trust him
to share the feast which he has prepared.
The Great Thanksgiving
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
It is truly right and our greatest joy to give you thanks
and praise,
eternal God, our creator.
You have given us life and second birth in your Spirit.
Once we were no people, but now we are your people.
You claimed Israel as your chosen nation
and raised up the church as a witness to the resurrection,
breathing into it your life and power.
From worlds apart, you gathered us together.
When we go astray, you welcome us home.
Always, your love has been steadfast.
Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with the choirs
of heaven
and with all the faithful of every time and place
who forever sing to the glory of your name:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.
You are holy, O God of majesty,
and blessed is Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord.
In love with you and in compassion for all,
Jesus healed and taught, challenged and comforted, welcomed
and
saved.
He formed a community,
promising to be with his disciples wherever two or three
were gathered,
and sending them on his mission of hope and healing in the
world.
Jesus trusted his life to you, and went freely to his
death,
so the world might be set free from suffering and sin.
You raised him from death and raise us also to live a new
life with him.
In the power of the Holy Spirit,
you send us out to make disciples as he commanded.
Remembering all your mighty and merciful acts,
we take this bread and this wine from the gifts you have
given us
and celebrate with joy the redemption won for us in Jesus
Christ.
Accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving
as a living and holy offering of ourselves,
that our lives may proclaim the One crucified and risen.
Great is the mystery of faith.
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.
Gracious God, pour out your Holy Spirit upon us
and upon these your gifts of bread and wine,
that the bread we break and the cup we bless
may be the communion of the body and blood of Christ.
By your Spirit unite us with the living Christ
and with all who are baptized in his name,
that we may be one in ministry in every place.
As this bread is Christ’s body for us,
send us out to be the body of Christ in the world.
O God, today you have called us together to be the church.
Unite us now at your table, and in one loaf and a common
cup, make us one in Christ Jesus.
Let your Spirit empower the life we share and ignite our
witness in the
world. With all who
have gone before us, keep us faithful to the gospel teachings and fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Give us strength to serve you
until the promised day of the resurrection,
when with the redeemed of all the ages
we will feast with you at your table in glory.
Through Christ, all glory and honor are yours, almighty
God,
with the Holy Spirit in the holy church, now and forever.
Amen.
Breaking of the Bread
The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took bread,
and after giving thanks to God,
he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying:
Take, eat.
This is my body, given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way he took the cup, saying:
This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood,
shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
Whenever you drink it,
do this in remembrance of me.
Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup
you proclaim the saving death of the risen Lord,
until he comes.
Closing Prayer:
Gracious God,
may we who have received this sacrament
live in the unity of your Holy Spirit,
that we may show forth your gifts to all the world.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ.
Closing
Hymn – O Sacred Head Now Wounded
#98/316
Benediction –
Dear
Friends, walk in the paths of steadfast love and faithfulness. Dwell under the rainbow of God’s love. Proclaim the good news for the Kingdom of God
is near. Go in peace. AMEN.
Postlude
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