It is with some trepidation that I am going to say once again that I truly believe we will be livestreaming this morning on Facebook. The 60 day wait period is over, the updates of tech equipment completed, and yesterday a trial run was successful. So, here's hoping, with some degree of certain faith, that this morning's livestream actually happens. Tune in at 11:15am or watch it any time afterward on my Facebook page.
Worship
Service for December 22, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit
rejoices in God my Savior.
P: With Mary, our spirits rejoice, and we
sing God’s praise.
L: Let us honor God with our worship this
fourth Sunday of Advent.
Lighting of the Advent Candles
L: Children of God, we come, tired of
waiting, burdened by the weight of watching.
We surrender to God’s holy “not yet,” embracing the stillness. We come, and God-with-us is present in our longing. As we gather today, we remember the promised
gifts of the Messiah. In the lighting of
four candle, we set our gaze upon beacons that sustain us through sleepless
nights and restless days. We bear this
light together.
We call the first
candle – Hope.
We call the second
candle – Peace.
We call the third
candle – Joy.
We call the fourth
candle – Love.
(Light the candles.)
Let us pray:
Beloved Sustainer, in a
world where care is mocked by the powerful, we stand as those who know the life-giving
force of Your love – for You, for our neighbors, for ourselves. You call us to be fierce in love, bold in
tenderness. You enable us to be
protectors of compassion, guardians of mercy in a world in need. This we pray.
AMEN.
With the Holy Spirit as
our guide, we join Mary and Elizabeth in testifying to God’s timeless, unending
faithfulness in the shadowiest of days.
“In those days Mary set
out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered
the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit
and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the
fruit of your womb. And why has this
happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your
greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.
And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of
what was spoken to her by the Lord.’ And
Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my
Savior, for He has looked with favor on the lowly state of His servant. Surely from now on all generations will call
me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is His
name; indeed, His mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to
generation. He has shown strength with
His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their
thrones, and lifted up the lowly; He has filled the hungry with good things and
sent the rich away empty. He has come to
the aid of His child Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, according to the
promise He made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to His descendants forever.’”
We give thanks for God’s
great love. A love for God’s chosen
people which includes all of us, which includes every part of us. May God’s people join Mary in saying, “be it
unto me” when God calls, for God has and continues to do great and marvelous
things. When we lift our song of praise
and promise it is a testament of our faith in God’s redeeming grace and a
witness to God’s love in action – may it always be so.
Opening Hymn – Gentle Mary Laid Her Child #27
Blue
Prayer of Confession
Almighty God, soon we will
celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace, but we are not a people at
peace. We glorify violence and dismiss
the pacifist as weak. We dominate and demean,
turning dialogue into debate. We wage
war with enemies and invest in self-defense before giving non-violent
strategies a chance. Lord, forgive
us. Help us work towards Your peaceable kin-dom,
where swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: “And He will stand and feed His flock in
the strength of the Lord…And they shall live secure, for now He shall be great
to the ends of the earth; and He shall be the one of peace.”
P: In the name of Jesus Christ, we are
forgiven. 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 – Dona Nobis Pacem
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Come, O Come, Emmanuel…
come to bring peace to those at war with themselves, their families, their
enemies. May those who govern do so with
good will and justice, breaking down barriers, fostering understanding, and
drawing our communities and our nation together in peace and love for one
another.
Come, Holy Healer, to
bring comfort to those in pain, those who grieve, those in need of healing and
restoration. May those who suffer be
assured of Your extravagant grace, comforted by the hope that nothing shall
separate them from Your love.
Come, Strong Deliverer,
to bring compassion to those who are weak and weary, those who stumble through
their days unable to recognize the beauty and meaning of life. May those who are struggling financially,
those suffering under the crushing weight of debt, find Your way out of no
way. Grant them options, O God. Grant them hope.
Come, O Lord and Savior
who goes by many names – Key of David, Radiant Dawn, Root of Jesse, Emmanuel, come
to us again this Christmas. Fill the
world with Your grace and mercy; with Your hope, peace, joy, and love.
Come, Child of
Bethlehem, to those whose names we most adore, our loved ones, our friends and
family members struggling this day…We pray for…
Come, Gracious God,
hear our heart murmurs as we pray in silence for our deep needs and desires
that we cannot say aloud…
Finally, Lord, with one
voice raised to the heavens, we 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 – While
Shepherds Watched Hymn #59/272
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Micah
5:2-5a
Second Scripture Reading – Luke
1:39-55
Sermon – The Light of the World
In
the past few weeks, we’ve centered this year’s advent series around the idea of
a journey. Particularly reaching back
through the ages to Israel’s journey from slavery to the promised land, finding
correlations to our present journeys as well.
We talked about how some journeys are joyful, some difficult. Some fun, some sorrowful. This
morning, let’s talk for a moment about holiday journeys. The image of parents driving children to see
grandparents around Christmastime is one image that comes to mind for many of
us. For others, we might think of the
longing for home in songs like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Films like the 1987 Muppet Family Christmas
and the 1990 Home Alone put comedic twists on this tradition of traveling and
gathering to see loved ones at Christmas.
Most
of our journeys are not as frantic as those in the movies nor are they as difficult
in trying times as that of Mary and Joseph toward Bethlehem or order to
register for taxation and population control for the first time by a foreign
power that had seized their country, nor that of the Israelites fleeing
Pharaoh, then crossing the hot and dusty desert of Sinai for 40 years. On both of those journeys they headed toward a
future of promise, Mary and Joseph expecting the birth of their promised child
and the Israelites finding a new homeland.
Mary and Joseph were guided by the strength of their faith and God’s
messengers who promised them to not fear, while the Israelites were guided by a
bright pillar of cloud by day, and a burning pillar of fire by night, which
illuminated the desert so that their way was made clear.
These
days we have map apps on our phones or GPS programs installed in our cars, but
the Israelites relied only upon God to show them the way. Until they didn’t, of course. The books of Exodus and Deuteronomy tell us
that despite God’s presence, the Israelites often lost sight of God, and were
delayed by a number of maladies. Instead
of a direct walk from Egypt to the ancient Canaan lands that may have taken
something like 40 days even with the thousands of people in their group, it
turned out to be 40 years before the Israelites reached their promised land.
At
one of their stops along the way, the cloud pillar hovered over Mount Sinai. It was in this luminous cloud, that Moses met
God after being given the law and Moses’ face became so radiant for having seen
God that it shined in such a way as to bring about the fear of the Lord in all
who may have seen him. So much so that Moses
began to veil his face when he spoke to the people so that they would not be
terrified of the light of God. That
light radiated to others who glimpsed the glory of God and followed God’s
commands. Over the centuries that passed
between Moses and Christ, that light diminished, as fewer and fewer people believed
in God and followed God’s commands.
Now
Paul in his writings sees the journey of the Israelites in general as a
forerunner and preview of Christian life, he sees Moses’ radiant face as a
shadow of what is to come for Christians. In 2 Corinthians 3:16, 18a, he writes:
“When
one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the
glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of
glory to another.”
According
to Paul, the intimacy that was once reserved for Moses is now available to all
of us—we may all turn to the Lord with unveiled faces and behold this glory,
and in so doing, we are transformed, and made radiant. As Paul continues,
“For
God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our
hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the
face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
Christ
himself says in the Gospel of John, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness,
but will have the light of life” Like the pillar of fire, Jesus is a light in
the darkness, making our steps sure and safe. If we follow him, he says, we will have the
light of life.
As
Jesus says this, he draws not only upon the tradition of the pillar of fire,
but also the holiday that commemorates the Israelites’ sheltering in the desert
under its guidance. Sukkoth, the
Festival of Booths, was celebrated through the construction of booths, but also
the lighting of lamps on the Temple grounds. The lamps, it was said, were bright enough to
make the whole of Jerusalem bright—a shining city on a hill. But Jesus goes further: He isn’t only the
light of the city, but he is the light of the world.
We
do the same today with our Christmas lights, lighting the way for the Christ
Child through the Advent Wreath, through the lights we put up on our own
Christmas trees, through the decorations on houses to shine brightly in the
winter night skies, and luminaries that line our sidewalks. These are all just pale comparison’s to the Light
given to us by Christ.
Indeed,
he says to his followers in the Book of Matthew, just after he calls them the
salt of the earth, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14a). With our focus so directed to Christ’s light,
his followers shine with the blessedness of his Beatitudes, much like Moses did
on Mount Sinai. The disciples, receiving
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, become like Jerusalem, a shining city on a hill. Put another way, if we are the light of the
world, as Christ says his disciples are, it is because we reflect the glory of
God, shining in our hearts from the face of Christ. With our eyes fixed on Christ, we walk in his
ways, and others “see good words and give glory to God in heaven”.
God’s
radiant light also fell upon a young girl who met an angel’s greeting with
poise and dignity who didn’t really question God’s motives, didn’t ask why she
alone was chosen to become the mother of God’s son. She simply obeyed, pondered the past,
present, and future in her heart. And as
the child within her grew, so did God’s light grow in her, when she went to visit
her cousin Elizabeth. There she entered
the house and upon hearing her greeting, the child within Elizabeth’s womb
leaped with joy – recognizing the light of Christ in the light of Mary. Even Elizabeth, radiating now that same light
was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed how Mary was blessed among all women. And Mary in return, spoke of the ancient promise,
now fulfilled in the coming of the Christ Child.
Thus,
it feels appropriate to pray and meditate on Christ, our light and our guide,
our cloud and our pillar.
Advent
is a time of preparation and of hope, and because it falls at the beginning of
the Christian year and the end of the calendar year, it is also a time in which
we take stock of ourselves. In the
northern hemisphere, it’s also a time when we begin to keenly feel the impact
of the year’s darkest days. The
darkness, paradoxically, gives rise to one of the fondest Christmas memories of
many childhoods, which are the lights. For
many, driving around and looking at Christmas lights from the backseat of their
parents’ or grandparents’ car is a treasured childhood memory, and the haze of
holiday lights in winter incites nostalgia in many folks as they remember
Christmas seasons long past.
As
we learned last week, the past can be a guide to the future. Last week, we heard from the Book of Isaiah:
“Look to the rock from which you were hewn” (Isaiah 51:1). But this was no mere call to nostalgia. The lights of Christmas should serve to remind
us of Christ’s light that has come to disperse the darkness of sin by his
birth. Christmas lights should remind us
that just as they light up our homes and towns at night, we are to be the light
of the world.
But
we cannot do this alone; all our efforts and good works rely on the grace of
Christ, our Kindly Light.
O
come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer Our
spirits by thine advent here.
Disperse
the gloomy clouds of night, and death's dark shadows put to flight. Rejoice, rejoice,
Emmanuel
Shall
come to thee, O Israel.
Yes,
rejoice, my friends. Emmanuel, God With
Us, is coming.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Dear God,
You blessed Mary by making her the mother of Your only Son, Jesus Christ. You bless us, as well, with the gift of Your
Son, and indeed, with the gift of life itself.
Out of all these blessings, we give You back these offerings today. Knowing that Your promises will be fulfilled,
we pledge our lives to You in anticipation of the coming of the One who brings
us peace. AMEN
Closing
Hymn – Infant Holy, Infant Lowly Hymn #37/279
Benediction –
Go with the
love of God, who extends grace and mercy to us all. Go with the light and joy of the Holy Spirit,
who prepares us for the coming of our Lord.
Go with the peace of the Christ Child, who comes to partner with us to
bring about the kin-dom that will never end.
And go with the hope of all the generations before us that sought the
promises of God. Go in service to the
Lord. AMEN.
Postlude
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