We are at both churches today - Olivet Presbyterian Church at 9:45am and Bethesda United Presbyterian Church - 11:15 am. Next Sunday, January 18, is Youth Sunday at Olivet where we will jointly worship at 9:45am.
Worship
Service for January 11, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Your love, O God, reaches to the heavens,
Your faithfulness to the skies.
P: Your righteousness is like the mighty
mountains, Your justice like the great deep.
L: Earth’s children, high and low, take
refuge in the shadow of Your wings.
P: We feast on the abundance of Your house;
You give us drink from Your river of delights.
L: For with You is the fountain of life; in
Your light we see light.
Opening Hymn – For the Beauty of the Earth #473/793
Prayer of Confession
Lord, we cannot help but
wonder why we want to keep the good news of the gospel a secret. We profess that Christianity is for
everybody, but neglect to pass on Your good news to those we see every
day. We have become reservoirs of Your
goodness and grace, and not channels through which others can experience what
we have heard. We like to spread gossip,
but seldom tell anyone else about the gospel.
We want to be better witnesses.
Give us the strength, courage, and motivation to do better. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: This is the good news in Jesus
Christ: God loves us more than we love
ourselves. God forgives us, encourages
us, and frees us to love others.
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
Emmanuel, God with us,
You are our help and home. Like Mary and
Joseph circumstances beyond our imagining, beyond our control take us far from
home. Like King Herod our desires for
security, pleasure, and power lead us down destructive paths and take us far
from home. Jesus, you are with us. You are our help and home. Like the Magi, quests for wisdom and
direction, a truth we can trust, sometimes take us far from home. Holy Child of Bethlehem, you are with us. You are our help and home. No matter where we find ourselves there is a
future, with hope. Shelter us in the
wings of Your love. Gather us in the
strength of Your compassion. Free us
from the bonds of evil when we find ourselves far from home. Because Jesus, you are with us. You are our help and home. When we find ourselves alone and frightened,
in a landscape that is unfamiliar, keep us safe.
We pray this day
fervently for the needs of world, especially those living in Venezuela and the
unrest that is there. We pray for those living
under corrupt rulers that they may find peace and a new way forward. We pray for the people of Ukraine, besieged
by bombs now going on for years from foreign invaders. We continually pray for those in war-torn
areas of the world who find themselves displaced and far from home.
Our hearts are heavy
this morning, Lord, with constant news of war and devastation, but we also pray
for loved ones here at home. We pray
for…
In this time of silence
hear the groanings of our hearts…
Hear us O Lord, as we
pray with one voice 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 – Now
Thank We All Our God #555/788
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm
36:5-9
Second Scripture Reading – Matthew
2:13-23
Sermon – “Angels and Repeated Visits”
Angels
and Repeated Visits
(based
on Matthew 2:13-23)
As we’ve discovered during our
retelling of the entire Christmas story this year through both Matthew and
Luke, there were a large number of angel visits; more so than in any other part
of Scripture. Why, do you think? Well, it was an extraordinary event, was it
not? Both heaven and earth were full of
God’s glory at this event. It needed an anticipatory
preparation by a faithful priest and his wife, as an angel came to visit
Zechariah in the temple, allowing his wife – even in her advanced years – to
conceive and bear a child whose name would be John, who would prepare the
nation for the Messiah. It needed to be
experienced by a humble couple from David’s lineage, as an angel came to both Mary
and Joseph, in different ways to engage them in God’s plan. The event needed to be witnessed by shepherds
and wisemen, again who encountered angels in different ways – the shepherds who
witnessed perhaps the full regalia of the heavenly hosts praising God and
saying together, “Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace to all.” And to the wisemen, whose scientific research,
led them to a star, and angels who came in dreams to protect God’s plan for the
birth of the Christ Child. And lastly, this
extraordinary event needed a protagonist in King Herod who was not visited by
angels nor found angels in his nightmarish schemes, but instead devised a plan to
be rid of the hateful infant usurper.
So many pieces needed to be put into
place, so many characters needed to be drawn into the story that it took angels
to herald the news and share messages to those involved. Each character in the story received the
angels in a way that made sense to them.
Zechariah in the temple, Mary in her garden, Joseph in his sleep, the
shepherds out in the field, and the Wisemen through dreams and a star.
As we come near to the end of telling
the story, we have two more visitations to the one character whose story is often
peripheral and least known, Joseph. And
yet, within the story itself, he’s the one in whom the angels visit the most. They come to him in dreams. First, when he was contemplating setting Mary
aside and divorcing her. In today’s
reading we learn that Joseph was warned in his dreams by an angel to flee Bethlehem
and take the child and his mother to Egypt for Herod sought to end Jesus’ life. And finally, Joseph’s last dream-angel-visit came
to tell him that their time in Egypt was over and he could take them all back
to Israel.
Last
year, I spent some time talking about that flight and what their time in Egypt
may have been like. I’m not going to
spend a lot of time on this today, but these passages in scripture are an important
part of the Christmas story. Jesus and
his family became refugees who must flee for their lives from a political
tyrant. As mentioned in Scripture, Herod
was so angry that the Wisemen had deceived him, that he sent his army into the
neighboring towns of Bethlehem and had all the baby/infant boys killed.
Although I’m aware that everything gets
politicized today, it’s important to be aware that the association between God’s
Son and displaced persons is so strong that when the United Nations launched a
yearlong world-wide campaign back in 1959 to raise awareness of the plight of
refugees, several countries commemorated the event with postage stamps
depicting Joseph leading a donkey on which Mary and the baby Jesus ride.
Three
years ago, author Susan Robb, writing about this very story in Matthew says, “As
I write about Joseph and Mary fleeing from Herod, snow is gently falling
outside. The boughs of the spruce and
fir trees that surround the house our family loves to visit hang heavy with two
days of fresh frosting. Although it is
March, the scene through my window is how we all like to imagine the perfect
Christmas. While the world outside looks
peaceful and perfect in this Currier and Ives snapshot of the moment, in reality
it is not. Currently, more than 5
million people have fled Ukraine, becoming refugees overnight because of their
very existence is being threatened by Russia’s Putin, who, like Herod, is
hungry for power, afraid that the growth of others’ freedom and governments
threaten his own “kingdom”.”
During World War II there were a fair
number of German priests and pastors who were imprisoned for speaking out
against Hitler. One of them was Alfred
Delp. From his cell, Delp wrote of how
he experienced the Advent of 1944 with more intensity and anticipation than
ever before. He described an angel figurine
that was given to him that bore the inscription upon it, “Rejoice, the Lord is
near.” But how do you rejoice when you
are in prison for the crime of speaking out against evil, against policy,
against governmental controls and overreach?
The figurine reminded him of the importance of remembering the promises
of God, regardless of the current situation.
He wrote encouraging words to his congregations, smuggled out from the
prison, imploring them to “walk through these gray days as an announcing
messenger,” for “so many need their courage strengthened, so many are in
despair and in need of consolation.” Amis
so much darkness in the world, Delp clung to the promise of what he described
as “the radiant fulfillment to come,” saying, “It is…only just announced and
foretold. But it is happening. This is today. And tomorrow the angels will tell what has
happened with loud rejoicing voices, and we shall know it and be glad, if we
have believed and trusted in Advent.”
In our first week discussing angels, I
mentioned that angels can also come in the form of human beings as they did to
Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament.
I don’t speak about this much, very rarely in fact as it is an extremely
personal story, but let me tell you about a time when I was visited by an angel
years ago.
I was 19 years old. My world, as I knew it, was unravelling rather
quickly. I’d faced adversity and hardship
before, but this was something on a completely different level for me. For background information, I’d grown up with
a silver spoon in my mouth. My family was
well-off financially. We belonged to the
country club, went out to dinner most evenings, went on vacations multiple
times a year travelling throughout most of the United States and Canada. We installed in an inground pool when we
moved to our new house when I was six, having been outvoted by my sister and mom. I’d wanted a barn to raise a horse and my dad
had wanted a boat. My sister and I grew
up with a nanny. And over the years we
took in various relatives that lived with us for months at a time, who were down
on their luck, providing them safe harbor, and helping them get back on their
feet. All that changed when my father decided
to quit his job when I was in junior high school. During those years, to continue the ruse that
we were still well-off financially, we often went without food during the week
so that my parents could hold their fancy weekend party for friends and
neighbors. In the winter we’d huddle in
our family room around the fireplace and sleep there, as the rest of the house
had no heat. My only hot shower was on
gym days when I could get one at school.
At sixteen years old I went to work to help pay for the ever growing
past due bills. My mom also went back to
work, whose excuse to family and friends was because she was bored being home
all the time. And my dad started his own
business. Although he'd been a great
manager and boss for the owners of an electrical supply company, he wasn’t so
great on his own, installing fire and burglar alarms. While trying to attend high school, getting an
outside job after school, I then also stepped in to help dad build and run his
own company; calling on customers, keeping the books, paying the company bills,
and keeping my dad on schedule for each job.
At graduation, I thought I could
finally escape, running off to college.
After a month at school, mom called and pleaded for me to come back and help
dad just a few hours each week. So,
during my freshman year, I went home several hours two or three days a week to
do what I’d been doing.
I’d
grown up with the dream of being a music teacher. It was my one and only goal in life. And thankfully, I’d received a four-year
fully paid scholarship for music education to West Chester State College, now
West Chester University. I was 19 years old. And that’s when everything unraveled for
me. I hated school, not college itself,
I loved that part. But, the one thing
that had always brought me comfort, an escape from the world’s problems and my
own, had been music. And now, for the
first time in my life, it was my enemy. I
hated the long hours of practice it required.
I’d been a natural, but now I needed to work, and I just couldn’t. I was always able to pick up nearly any
instrument and learn it within days, but I struggled at piano. As a music education major at West Chester
you needed to have a high proficiency at the piano. I learned to play the saxophone, clarinet, bass
clarinet, flute, oboe, trumpet, trombone, violin and even drums. But I just couldn’t get my two hands to coordinate
together to play the piano.
I
had no clue what I was going to do with my life if being a music teacher wasn’t
in my future. And to change majors meant
giving up my scholarship and figuring out how to pay for college. Then mom and dad told me they were getting a
divorce, mom moved out and got an apartment, dad began drinking again and I
tried to protect my sister as best I could making sure she got what she needed,
taking her places, spending time with her in long drives in the car, attending
all her functions, like a parent would since neither of them were doing any of
that, all while trying to bang out notes on an instrument that I couldn’t
master and failing miserably. I thought
about dropping out of school. On top of
all that, I was struggling with my own identity. Even as a late teenager, that’s a lot of
angst to be dealing with all at once.
And
that was when she came – my own visitation by an angel. I was sitting alone in the cafeteria, it was
late morning, all of my friends had already eaten and gone off to classes. I was at my lowest of lows, but I’d learned
well from my parents to bottle things up and not let anything show on the
outside (I’ve overcome that – maybe a bit too much), but my friends knew none
of what was going on with me.
A
woman came and asked if she could sit down at my table. There were dozens of empty tables nearby, but
I said, “Sure.” She seemed too old to be
a student in one of the dorms, but maybe she was one of the older commuters
that West Chester had lots of. She introduced
herself, but frankly I wasn’t paying much attention. I told her my name and her response was
strange. It wasn’t, “nice to me you” or anything
like that. It was just a simple, “yes”,
as if I was confirming my name to someone who already knew me. We sat in silence for a few moments. Then she said, “You seem sad, what’s going on?” My response was quick. I put on a smile that
I didn’t feel and said, “No, everything’s great. How about you?” She put down her spoon and looked directly into
my eyes. “You know, one of the things I’ve
learned is that God is always there in all of our struggles, no matter what. Everything will be okay. It will all work out, just let Him guide you.” I said thanks and before I could burst into
tears, I got up and walked to the juice bar that was right behind our table to
get another drink.
West
Chester isn’t a Christian College. Nor
is it known for being a place where a bunch of Christians hang out and talk
about God. It was definitely a strange
encounter already in that space from a stranger who’d I’d never met. But it gets stranger. When I turned around, she was gone. There was no trace of her. No bowl at the table. No spoon where she’d placed it. No cup, no napkin. The chair was neatly tucked in. I looked around. No trace of her at all, not at another table,
not at the racks for dirty dishes, not at the exit. She was just gone.
I
will never know who she was, where she came from, or what other purpose she
came to serve, but to reassure me of God’s presence in my life. She was my angel that brought me a message I’ve
kept my entire life. That no matter
what I might be struggling with, no matter how bad things might get, God is
there and will always guide us.
Someone
you know, like those living in Delp’s day or in our own, someone facing a dark
time in his or her life, or simply struggling against the darkness in our
world, may be waiting on you to be a living reminder that the Lord is near, that
God is always with us. Someone may be depending
on you to provide the presence of God’s angels.
For someone, you may be a sustaining light.
Delp’s works, and particularly those in
Matthew’s gospel, want us to see that, long after the Herods of the world are
dead, God will still be present, speaking, guiding, providing assurance and
protection through the Son and through his messengers, celestial or human.
Thanks
be to God. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
With
these gifts, O God, we offer up our sacrifices of time, talent, and material
tithes. Bless them for use in Your Holy
Kingdom. In Christ’s Name we pray. Amen
Closing
Hymn – Have Thine Own Way, Lord #591
Brown Hymnal
Benediction –
As Mary and Joseph set out for
safety in a new land to find hope, may we too set out on a journey of discovery
for God’s light, truth, hope, and love.
Go from this place of refuge and bring God’s light of illumination with
you. Go and serve the Lord. AMEN.
Postlude
