Worship
Service for February 9, 2025
Prelude
Announcements:
Next Sunday, February 16, 2025 we will have a guest pastor, Rev. Dr. Charissa Howe.
Sunday, February 23, 2025 we will have a joint service at Bethesda (11:15am) for a service of "We Sing the Faith" - basically a Hymn Sing.
No Livestreaming on Feb. 16, or 23
Sunday, March 2, 2025 we will have a joint service with Communion at Olivet (9:45am) followed by our Congregational Meetings after worship.
Sign up for our Lenten Bible Study to be held in person or via Zoom on Tuesdays at 10-11:30am, or 6:30-8pm or Thursdays 10-11:30am, or 6:30-8pm. We'll go with whichever time slot and in-person vs. Zoom gets the most votes.
Sign up for our Pancake Dinner on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025 at 6:00pm. Short Service and Imposition of Ashes included.
Call to Worship
L: Great is the grace and glory of God.
P: We give thanks with hearts of joy.
L: Great is the strength and mercy of our
Creator.
P: We give thanks with hearts of hope.
L: Great is the courage and hope of our Lord.
P: We give thanks with hearts of faith.
L: Great is the mercy and compassion of the
Holy One.
P: We give thanks with hearts of love.
Opening Hymn – Near to the Heart of God #527/617
Prayer of Confession
Loving God, You call us into
community, teach us Your ways, and bless us with abundant life. Yet we turn aside to follow other paths: we
take the easy way out, listening to the worlds’ call rather than Your call to
commitment; we quarrel with one another, letting differences divide us; we
cherish our resentments, shutting off our hearts from forgiveness and reconciliation;
we cling to petty jealousies, feeling we deserve more than we have. Forgive us when we wander from Your
love. Draw us into community with each
other, and feed us with Your astounding grace, that we may grow in faithfulness
and work together in peace. (Silent
prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: God is at work, nurturing our growth and
showing us the ways that lead to life.
God is at work, reconciling us to one another and teaching us the paths
of love. God is at work, hearing our
confessions, forgiving our disobedience, and blessing us in love.
P: In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. 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
Lord, we give you
thanks for giving us the opportunity to worship You this morning. May this time of prayer refresh our spirits
and help us to regain perspective in our lives.
Lord, you know that we keep falling short of our good intentions. Even though we have heard over and over that
love is the answer, we keep falling back into ruts of selfishness. And yes, even though we know it is best to
live one day at a time, we keep worrying about tomorrow and what it may bring.
We pray that you will
come among us and minister to our needs.
Through our worship, teach us again how to forgive and to be forgiven;
teach us again how to love and how to be loved; teach us again how to need and
how to be needed; teach us again how to help and how to be helped.
There are so many needs
in the world, Lord. So many people that
hunger for something, yet find life bland and pointless. So many people searching for kindness,
gentleness, compassion and all they find is frustration and harshness. Allow us to be your ministers of peace on
earth. Allow us to be your hands and
feet – where there is hatred, let us prove that there is love. Where there is doubt, let us show great
faith. Where there is despair, let us
provide hope. Where there is darkness,
let us shine brightly to light someone’s way.
Where there is bitterness, let us provide pardon, solace and the true
taste of life.
We pray for our loved
ones, especially we pray for….
In this time of silence
we also ask that you look deep in to our souls and hear our inner prayers.
We pray all these
things through your Son who taught us to 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 – A
Mighty Fortress Is Our God #151/260
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Isaiah
6:1-13
Second Scripture Reading – Luke 5:1-11
Sermon – “Called as Disciples”
Calling
(based on Isaiah
6:1-13, Luke 5:1-11)
Luke tells us that Jesus was being pressed by
yet another crowd of people. They didn't
yet know exactly who he was but they had heard of his miracles and teaching and
they were crowding around him to hear the word of God.
Up to this point, the story of Jesus'
ministry has him preaching and teaching in the synagogues. This is the first account of Jesus going out
among the people, into the streets, meeting them where they were and entering
into their everyday lives. And so
today’s reading tells us that Jesus got into Peter's boat, summons him and asks
him to put out a ways from shore so the people could gather on the shore and
listen to him.
After speaking to the crowd, he told Peter to
go out to the deep water and let down his nets for a catch. Now, Peter and his partners in their fishing
business had already finished a hard day's work and they had come up empty. They had already washed their nets, while they
listen to Jesus preach, all in preparation for the next day’s work and quite
frankly they were probably exhausted, disappointed and ready to be done for the
day. But Peter, in an act of early obedience to his new teacher says, OK, if you
want me to, I'll do it.
I’m sure there have been times when you are totally
worn out, you’ve worked or have been busy all day, and at the end of those days
there is always something like a plumbing emergency or a heating issue awaiting
for you at home. And then the phone
rings and you hope that the ringing phone isn't another emergency that you need
to handle right away. But this time it’s
not just any old emergency. It’s a
God-need. Someone you love is in
trouble. They need you to visit them or
to just spend a few moments talking to them.
These kinds of emergencies are so very different from the leaking pipe
or the broken down dishwasher or the office call. When these calls come, and you are required to
stretch just a bit more before the end of the day, God always seems to bless
those efforts.
Sometimes it’s the blessing of holding the
hand of a very sick person. Sometimes it’s
the blessing of entering into another's sadness and grief. Sometimes it’s the blessing of finding some
emergency food for those who need it desperately. I believe the blessings that come from those
acts of obedience to God’s calling are as great as a fisherman's boat
overflowing with fish.
I must admit however, that personally, I only
recognize some of those blessings in hindsight and not in the middle of my
exhaustion. But, I have also found that in
the times when I have given myself over too much for dealing with worldly
problems and done everything I can to control the order of my life, that’s when
God steps in to press me even more into the work of living out the Gospel
message. How about you?
Acting on Jesus' command, Peter raised the
nets he had just cast out and low and behold, they were filled with fish. So many that another boat had to be summoned
to help them. Peter's response to the
miracle of abundance was to proclaim that he is unworthy of such a blessing because
he is a sinful man. Much like today's
Old Testament reading, Isaiah is in the presence of God and is also being
called by God to take a message to God's people. Isaiah protests and says "Woe is me! I am
lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean
lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!". Both Isaiah and Peter feel the magnitude of
their unworthiness. A seraph cleanses
Isaiah lips with a burning coal and Jesus has a cleansing word for Peter. Whatever troubled their hearts about who they
were, was let go as God set them on a new course and empowered them for new
work in the kingdom of God.
Peter, James, and John dropped everything
they were doing and everything they had and followed Jesus. Just like Luke’s gospel, Matthew and Mark also
recall the event of them following Christ, but they leave out the miracle of
the fish catch. The disciple's response
of following Christ is probably easier for us to accept if we include the
miracle of the great fish catch, because it makes more sense. They witness a miracle from their teacher and
wanted to see more, experience more with him, but their action is nonetheless
an act made in faith and obedience to Jesus.
Agnes Bojaxhiu was born in Macedonia in 1910.
At the tender age of 12 she strongly felt the call of God and knew she was
called to spread the love of Jesus Christ. At age 18 she entered a convent and
joined the sisters of Loreto. While teaching at a high school in Calcutta she
was so moved by the extreme poverty she saw from her window that she sought and
received permission to work among the poorest of poor in the slums. The story
of her work became well known to all because this woman we know as Mother Theresa
continued to obediently answer God's call to serve God's people until her
death. What’s even more surprising about
her call and her life’s work is that she experienced great doubt about God,
about God’s even existence, about God answering prayer. And yet, she felt God’s pull, God’s constant
calling to her to be more vigilant, to serve more people, to love and to care
for the least of these.
I know there are thousands of stories about
people who have received calls to radical Christian vocation. But the fact is, God calls each of us to
follow him day-to-day just as certainly as Jesus called Peter, James and John,
Sister Agnes who became known as Mother Theresa. I am not suggesting you drop everything and run
away to a join a monastery or to enroll in seminary or immediately fly down to
Honduras and work among the poor there.
The important thing to recognize is that
God's work of calling did not stop with the Gospel stories and that God's
calling to us continues to this day and requires us to answer that call right
here. God's call to us is not really an RSVP
type of invitation! It is not "hey,
if you have nothing better to do today, do you want to come over here and do
this with me?" God's call has
always been one of command; sometimes subtle and gentle and sometimes not-so-much.
God has already arranged everything so
the "call" is just one more piece in God's puzzle. When Jesus commanded people to follow him, the
events surrounding their lives had already been perfectly ordered to support
their obedient response, they just needed to recognize it and to follow.
Just as Jesus involved himself in Peter's
everyday concerns about fishing, God calls to each of us in our ordinary
everyday lives and asks that we follow Him. The same skills that Peter learned to be a
fisherman were used to deliver sermons, to tell the gospel story, to mend
hearts, to fill nets, to organize a team, and to care for people. Sometimes that call is to radically change
our lives and go places that we never thought of going, but more often it is a
call to look after and care for God's people right where we are, in our
families, at our work, in our church and in our communities.
Jesus' behavior and actions provide the
perfect model for us. He went out among
the people, into the street, where they lived, worked, experienced joy and
sorrow --- all of the messiness of their lives.
As for us, how do we respond to that command?
Did a person in need appear before you
this week as a reminder? Following God's
call is not a single event, it is a life-long process filled with a lot of
falling short of what we think God expects of us, but punctuated with
occasional bright points of feeling like we’re doing exactly what God has
called us to do.
I am convinced that we are called to continue
Jesus' ministry to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the
captives and to let the oppressed go free – in our time, in our circumstances,
in our scope of the people around us. The
message in Luke's Gospel is not so much one of acceptance of, or recognition of
a professional call to ministry or missionary work, it is rather simply one of
obedience to what God is calling us to do every day. It’s a call to discipleship and is something
that God has both commanded and enabled.
As the story of Jesus' ministry unfolds we
see that his work and ministry have grown to require the recruitment of
disciples. After his death, the growth
of his church required many workers in the vineyards, some far away, but many
close to home, as well. And the gathering
of people continues in our day, in our time, in order to further the Kingdom of
God which has not yet come, but is now, and is being built every day.
Will you be obedient to that call?
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Loving
God, Deliverer of compassion, You call us to share our treasures and talents,
and the work of our hands. With hearts
filled with hope, we praise You for our bounty.
Thanks be unto You. Amen
Closing
Hymn – Precious Lord, Take My Hand #404/684
Benediction –
Go from this place, recognizing God’s grace on
your journey, discerning the Spirit’s call in your life, identifying Christ as
your guide. As you go, experience the
steadfast love of God and be at peace. AMEN.
Postlude
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