Worship
Service for February 25, 2024
Prelude
Announcements: Congregational Meeting following worship.
Call to Worship
L: Brothers and sisters, we are invited to
walk with God.
P: We are welcomed by God as people of the
covenant.
L: God not only speaks to us but also
listens.
P: God hears our cries and meets our every
need.
L: Let the ends of the earth remember and
turn to God.
P: We praise the God of all nations and all
peoples.
Opening Hymn – Christ of the Upward Way #344 Blue
Prayer of Confession
God of our ancestors, we come
to You, confessing that we have set our minds on human things. We have sought to gain the world – so many
things to buy, so many things to do. Yet
we are not satisfied. Life’s meaning
eludes us. Your ways seem out of date;
Your promises appear as the hopes and dreams of a past generation. But in our hearts we sense an eternal design
which is for all generations, a way of life more satisfying than we have
allowed ourselves to explore. O God, we
confess our need for You. (Silent
prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: God does not withhold love from us when we
go our own way. When we open our eyes to
see God’s works, when we open our ears to hear God’s word, when all our senses
are alert to God’s leading, we will realize how we have been blessed by an
unseen hand, forgiven and restored to wholeness.
P: We
are filled with hope! 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
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Holy God, with a sense
of awe we worship you this morning. With
a sense of gratitude we pray thanks.
With a sense of humility we bow before you asking for forgiveness of all
our iniquities, falsehoods and rebellious nature. With a sense of respect we pray for
opportunities to reach out in love to our own families, to our loved ones with
support, to our neighbors in need, and to the stranger down the way. While the Lenten season is always a time of
self-reflection and recommitment to our heavenly priorities, this season is
especially poignant. Give us wisdom,
grace, and fortitude to reflect on who we are and whose we are.
We give you thanks for
this day, especially for relatively mild weather in the middle of winter. However, let us be mindful of those who
suffer great inconveniences today, from things like murder in the streets, from
drug and alcohol addiction, from violence and war in other parts of the globe.
Lord, hear our prayers
this morning as we lift up to you, with one voice our supplications. We especially pray for…..
As you are attentive to
us, allow us to be attentive to You….hear now the prayers of our hearts and
allow us to hear Your rhythm in our daily lives in this moment of silence.
We pray all this as we
pray 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 – Beneath
the Cross of Jesus #92/320
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Genesis
17:1-8
Second Scripture Reading – Mark
8:31-38
Sermon
– A
Covenant and a Vision
(based on Genesis
17:1-8)
This morning’s message is going to be
relatively brief because both congregations will meet after worship for our
annual congregational meeting. But I
want you to listen to this morning’s message carefully.
From most people’s
comments at the end of last week’s Discernment Workshop, you all mostly found
it enlightening or interesting, but also confusing. When I asked a few people what they meant by
those terms, particularly the confusing part, the confusion seemed to stem from
the idea that a plan was going to be formulated from last week’s meeting or
that there would be a series of these meetings to create such a plan. Well, yes and no.
The purpose of
discernment is to obtain sharp perceptions in spiritual guidance and
understanding. The way Kate suggests
doing that is what we did last week – to take a look at
Who is God?
Who are We?
What Do We Want?
What does God
Want?
Discernment is the
process of taking those things that we uncovered about our perceptions and
begin seeing with new eyes where then God is leading us.
So, to put this in
other terms, last week we were given new lenses to see. Now, it’s our job to start looking with
clearer vision through those new lenses and start perceiving the context of
what we see with where God is leading us.
It’s not a magic wand. It’s not a
blueprint already created. It’s
something that we’ll create together with these new eyes and being open to
where God is leading us.
From some of my
discussions with people, several of you were already putting parameters around
that framework: that means we have to start new missions, that means we have to
go out and knock on people’s doors, that means we need to increase our giving, that
means we need to find more partnerships, that means we need to just close… There’s been a lot floating around. But, I think to rush to any of those things
right away would be to put ourselves in the driver seat without giving God an
opportunity to show us where God is leading.
Maybe it is to start a new mission, maybe it is to go out and knock on
people’s doors, maybe it is to increase our giving, maybe it does mean that we
find new partnerships, maybe it does mean that we’ll close.
Do you know for a fact
that God is leading us to one of those things?
Not because the numbers say so, not because logic concludes such, not
because that’s what happened somewhere else.
But is it because God personally or corporately showed us that, already?
There are some people
who are naturally pessimistic – the sky is falling, the sky is falling kind of
people. There are some people who are
naturally optimistic – it’s “always sunny” in West/Elizabeth kind of people. Both groups keep the other from being too
gloom and doom or too clouded by rose-covered glasses. The purpose of discernment is to allow God
some room to shape those views, to nurture a message for us, within our vision
that we crafted last week from answering those four questions.
To tie this in with
today’s scripture reading from the Old Testament – Abraham and his wife Sarah
were old. Abraham was 99 years old. They were beyond the age of child-bearing
years. They had settled into the
comfortable life of a duo. It never says
in our scriptures that Abraham and/or Sarah had prayed to God for a child, but
in those days, you were destined to create progeny that would continue your
ancestral line – it was paramount to your existence. So, I’m sure that both Abraham and Sarah had
prayed to God for such a child. Perhaps
they had given up on that prospect and were simply now waiting, just existing;
tending the fire, mending the worn-out socks, feeding the chickens, and waiting
out their remaining days until one or the other finally shut the door for the
last time.
But God had other
plans. God came to Abraham and said,
“walk with me. Today I make a covenant
with you. You shall be the father of a
multitude of nations – even kings shall come from you.”
If you remember the
story, did God fulfill His covenant with Abraham? Yes, he did.
In fact, Abraham became the ancestor to three major world religions –
Judaism directly through Abraham and his son Isaac, Islam through Hagar’s son
Ishmael – Hagar was Sarah’s Egyptian servant, and Christianity many years later
through Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph, whose ancestor included King David.
In the end did Abraham
die? Of course. All things do eventually come to an end. But death for Abraham would have to wait
another 75 years because God wasn’t finished with Abraham or Sarah quite yet. And the only way they learned that was
because God came and told them – gave them a covenant and a vision for the
future.
So, what is our
covenant with God and what is our vision for the future? What is God showing us and telling us?
My friends, we are in
a season of discernment. Let’s allow
space for God to show us and tell us.
Thanks be to God.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
We
lift our gifts to You this morning, multiply their usefulness and impact to do Your
will on earth. In Your Son’s name we
pray. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord
#441/405
Benediction –
We go from
this place ready for service and to spread God’s Good News. Go in peace.
AMEN.
Postlude
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