Unfortunately, I came down with a bug and can't worship in person or do a live stream this morning at my churches, but here is the rough draft of this week's worship service. I was not able to work any more on it by the end of the week. We'll be back in worship next Sunday for a joint worship Service at Bethesda United Presbyterian Church at 11:15am with Communion.
Worship
Service for January 26, 2025
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. Show us how to be merciful
to others, as You have shown mercy to us.
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 peoples 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 – Holy, Holy, Holy #138/3
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 seek Your holy
will but do 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. Show us how to love
others, act with justice, and be merciful. In Jesus' Name, we pray. (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
Sacrament of Baptism
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Precious and Holy Lord,
allow us to recognize Christ present in this place. Let us recognize Christ in one another. And more importantly, let us recognize Christ
in the face of strangers we meet each day.
We are members of your body and you have called us to do your work in
the world. You have called us to show
your love, your mercy, and your graciousness to a world in pain, to a world
full of anger, and to those who are lost and alone. Let that work begin in us today. Enable us to carry out your work in our
communities, in our neighborhoods, in our places of work, school, homes, and
among our friends and acquaintances.
Lord, open our eyes of
faith to see you in all the peoples of the earth. By the power of your Holy Spirit, enable us
to be your instruments of peace, of grace, and of redemption.
Be with the leaders of
our churches, our communities, our states, our nation, and the countries of the
world. Light a fire of compassion and
care within them for the people they govern, a fire of passion for the needs of
their own communities and peoples. Lord,
bring peace to the corners of the world that have not known peace in a long
time. Bring harmony to those who have
fought, disagreed with one another, have said hurtful things against one
another, and have held hatred in their hearts.
Dear God, we also pray
for people in our church, our own family members and friends – those who have
undergone surgeries, procedures, rounds of curative medicine. We pray for those who have broken bones,
broken hearts, and broken spirits. We
pray for those who have lost loved ones.
Show your presence in times of need and heal us of our afflictions.
We especially pray
for….
And now in this time of
silence, we lift up to you, the burden of our own hearts….
Most excellent Lord, we
give you thanks for hearing us this morning.
Continue to watch over us as pray 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 Will Not Let Me Go #384/606
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Nehemiah
8:1-10
Second Scripture Reading – Luke 2:41-52
Sermon – “Searching for Jesus”
Today’s gospel reading from
Luke reminds me of the movie: Home Alone.
The movie Home Alone takes place when a frantic family jets off to Paris
for Christmas only to discover too late that they had left their youngest child
behind. The plot is a bit farfetched
don’t you think? How could a family
leave their house, ride all the way to the airport, board a plane, and only
THEN, midway over the Atlantic Ocean, realize a child has gone missing? “How in the world could something like this
ever happen?” you may want to ask. Of
course, if I asked that question in the presence of Joseph and Mary, they’d
soon start looking down at their feet and shifting their weight side to side in
discomfort. They did, after all, take
off from Jerusalem, and it took them an entire day to realize they had left
their son behind. Worse, they took off
without God’s son. The left the Son of
God in a city that was a large and potentially dangerous place, full of dark
alleys and strange people. This was not
a place where one would be happy to leave one’s son for a few days. Does it get any worse than to be entrusted
with the Son of God and then you lose him?
The agony of Mary and Joseph, searching for three days,
contrasts sharply with the calm response of Jesus when they found him. Jesus asks, “Why were you searching for
me? Did you not know that I must be
about my Father’s business?” These same
questions face us as peace and goodwill fade and Christmas leaves so many of us
wanting. The text invites us to wonder
why Mary and Joseph looked for Jesus in all the wrong places.
The text presents us with the situation: Passover was
finished. Mary and Joseph packed up
their things and headed home with their travelling companions. When night came after the first day’s journey
home, Mary and Joseph went to look for Jesus, but he was nowhere to be
found. Mary and Joseph took the only
course open to responsible parents. They
returned to Jerusalem to look for the boy, Jesus.
They retraced their steps.
They asked questions of people.
They returned to all the places they’d been to during the festival. Can you hear them? “Where can he be? Are we not searching hard enough? Are we looking in the right places?” When they find Jesus in the Temple after
three days, Mary blurts out an accusation, perhaps tinged with that mixture of
guilt and relief that most parents will recognize. She says, ‘How could you do this to us?’ But Jesus issues a gentle rebuke, “Why were
you searching for me?” He expected more
from his mother and father. Mary and
Joseph searched everywhere, except the Temple.
They searched for three days that is until they finally came to the
Temple, the place where the Word of God was taught and the place where the Son
of God would obviously be.
Had things become so ordinary for such a long time that
they forgot about who Jesus was? Long
gone are the choirs of angels, adoring shepherds, and magi. Maybe the mystery surrounding their son’s
birth had begun to fade like a dream? Or
maybe Mary and Joseph were aware of what their son would do and become but
figured that was years away. One thing is
for certain, they have not yet truly grasped who their Son is. The boy Jesus says that his relationship with
the God of heaven is the relationship between a Father and a Son. Again and again in his ministry, Jesus had to
keep repeating this same idea. He is the
Son, and God is his Father. In the
temple at 12 years old, Jesus asserts his unique relationship with his heavenly
Father and he must be about God’s business.
That’s the point which Mary and Joseph failed to
grasp. Where do you find the Son of
God? Doing the things of God, about his
Father’s business. Mary and Joseph
searched three days for Jesus. But they didn’t find him in the expected places
— the safe confines of his extended family or the familiar pilgrim spots. After three days, Mary and Joseph found Jesus
alive and well in the Temple, around the scholars. Jesus answers them, “Why were you searching
for me?” Why did it take them three days
to figure out that Jesus must be about his Father’s business?
To the point of this passage for us, have we been looking
for Jesus in all the wrong places? Why
does it take us so long to find him?
Like Mary and Joseph we can spend not only three days but our entire
lives trying to find Christ in all the wrong places. If we fail to understand who Jesus is and
what His mission was, we can end up like Mary and Joseph searching in all the
wrong places. We can attempt to find
Jesus trying to earn enough brownie points to go to heaven. We can attempt to find Jesus in infinitely
flawed human relationships. We can
attempt to find Jesus in other religions.
We can attempt to find Jesus in the popular spiritual fads of the day. We can attempt to find Jesus on a lake while
fishing. We can attempt to find Jesus
without the Church. The list can most
certainly go on and on and on. But if
Jesus has promised to be there, why are we looking for him where he has not
promised to be?
The good news for us is that, like Mary and Joseph, our
search has ended. We know where Jesus
is. The scary part, perhaps, is that our
search doesn’t end where we might expect.
We should know that Jesus must be about his Father’s business. This is his life’s mission: he must be doing
and concerned about the things of God his Father. The Temple was the place where the Divine
Service of his Father was supposed to be most perfect, where the Word God was
taught. The Temple was called God’s
sanctuary and even God’s House, since there he, through his Word, showed his
presence and was heard. So, Christ is
about His Father’s business when he comes among us, when he speaks to us
through the scriptures. Through the
scriptures that we read and learn about together, while we worship the God of
Heaven, is exactly where we end up finding him.
Jesus is right where we should expect to find Him. This Jesus, who brings Deity and humanity
together in one person, can be found wherever we find God’s Word. Jesus can be found wherever two or three are
gathered to worship in his name. He is
in the waters of your baptism. Your Lord
can be found whispering to you through the pages of Holy Scripture. He can be found addressing you through the
preached sermon. He can be found truly
present with the Bread and the Wine for you to eat and drink. He can be found in the voice of our
collective worship when we are assured of our salvation, “We are
forgiven.” He can be found in the love
and fellowship you experience with your fellow Christians. He can be found in your neighbor for you to
love and serve.
Our now post-pandemic time period can make us question
everything. It can challenge us to be
steadfast and earnest for the living out of God’s Word. Do not embark on a wild goose chase seeking
for Jesus where He has not promised to be.
The Lord has promised to neither leave us nor forsake us;
He will be with us to the end of the world; as we gather as the church, in our
baptisms, with the bread and cup in Holy Communion, and in the Word, preached,
prayers offered, and hymns sung. This is
our faith journey. Know that you have
not only found Christ, but more importantly, Christ has found you.
Rejoice! Give
Thanks! And Sing!
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
These
gifts, Lord, represent our lives, our possessions, all that we are and
have. We offer them now to you as
symbols of ourselves, so that you may take us and bless us and, through the
power of your Spirit, shape us into the true body of your Son. Amen
Closing
Hymn – Lord, Dismiss Us with Thy Blessing
#538 Blue (3 verses)
Benediction –
Friends, as the disciples
walked with Christ so long ago, may you go from this place and walk with Christ
as well. Feel the power of the Holy
Spirit guiding your path. Know that the
love of God is poured out for you and rejoice.
Go in peace. AMEN.
Postlude
