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Worship
Service for December 15, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Prepare the way of the Lord!
P: Lift every valley, lift every voice.
L: Prepare the way of the Lord!
P: And all flesh shall see the salvation of
our God.
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 three 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.
(Light the candles.)
Let us pray:
Giver of Life, we
inhabit a world that often seeks to steal our joy. Rejoicing is a courageous embodiment, a
tender defiance. Reveling in Your holy
goodness against the current; a quiet rebellion against forces that thrive on
fear. To find beauty amid complexity is
a bold act, and gratitude is a balm that brings healing to our souls. You, O God, are our hope, our peace and our
joy, the quiet strength in our deepest longing.
AMEN.
With the Holy Spirit as
our guide, we join the apostle Paul in testifying to Your timeless, unending
faithfulness in the shadowiest of days.
“Let your gentleness be
known to everyone. The Lord is
near. Do not be anxious about anything,
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving allow your
requests be made known to God. And the
peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus.”
We delight in the joy
found in God’s presence, a fullness of joy that the world cannot give nor take
away. This joy is a blessed assurance
sealed with God’s love by the foretold birth of God’s son.
Opening Hymn – What Child Is This? #53/281
Prayer of Confession
Great God, as we prepare to
behold the birth of Jesus again, we are mindful of how we have failed to
receive the fullness of that gift. The
story points us to Your glory, yet we struggle to join in the song of praise
and thanksgiving. We are distracted and
confused, so focused on things of little significance we overlook the good news
of great joy that You have prepared.
Tell us again that the Savior is born.
Tell us again that we are forgiven.
Tell us again that our lives can be abundant in faith, hope, and love
because of what You have given us in Jesus Christ. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: The angel tells Joseph that the child
forming in Mary’s womb is to be named Jesus.
“Call him Jesus,” the angel says, “For He will save the people from
their sins.” From his birth through his
resurrection, from age to age, Jesus is about salvation. This is good news.
P: In 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
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Come, Lord Jesus. Bring
your presence; bring your peace; bring your
light. Comfort the sick, soothe the sorrowful, bind
up the wounded.
Calm our spirits. Ease
our burdens. Mend our hearts. Come, Lord Jesus.
Come, Lord Jesus. Bring
your justice; bring your righteousness; bring
your goodness. Reorder our priorities. Direct our efforts.
Strengthen our resolve. Break down
walls. Dismantle oppression. Overthrow tyrants.
Come, Lord
Jesus.
Come, Lord Jesus. Bring your love; bring your compassion; bring
your mercy. Heal our divisions. Seek out
the lost. Restore the guilt-ridden.
Widen our embrace.
Teach us generosity. Show us how to forgive.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Come, Lord Jesus. Bring
your passions; bring your fire; bring your steadfastness. Inspire our witness. Motivate our mission.
Energize your church. Open our minds. Extend our hands. Overcome our lethargy. Come, Lord Jesus.
Come, Lord Jesus. Bring
your hope; your tenderness; your promise.
Build up our common
life. Hold us in our frustrations. Brighten our darkness. Release us. Renew us. Redeem us. Come, Lord
Jesus.
Come, Lord Jesus, hear
our cries; hear our whispers; hear our prayers.
Today we pray for…. Come, Lord
Jesus.
Come, Lord Jesus, into
our hearts, into our souls, into our minds to hear the prayers that we cannot
say aloud in this time of silence.
Come, Lord Jesus, who taught
us, 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 – Away
in a Manger Hymn #25/262
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Isaiah
51:1-6
Second Scripture Reading – Matthew
7:24-27
Sermon – The Rock of Ages
Rock
of Ages
(Isaiah
51:1-6, Matthew 7:24-27)
I love to go on a journey. I love planning out places to see, things to
do, people to meet. I love the
anticipation of connecting with things I’ve never experienced before or
revisiting favorite places that touched some part of me when last I’d been
there. And getting there is half the
fun. No two journeys are alike.
But
not every journey is an easy one. In
fact, our histories are full of extreme examples of journeys taken under
duress—deportations, flights from religious and political persecution,
abductions or escapes from the violence of war. Depending on our own background, we may think
back to times when our own people were persecuted, or perhaps when they were
doing the persecuting. However, not all
difficult journeys are tragic in this way. There are also tales of difficult journeys
that ended more happily—journeys of exploration, for example.
In
this, our journey of Advent, we’ve been continually reminded of the journey of
the Israelites—a difficult journey that began when they left their chains
behind in Egypt from liberation of slavery and ended at the promised land after
40 years of testing and suffering in the desert wilderness between Egypt and
Canaan. If you remember from the
beginning of Advent, in telling this story, Jesus recalled God’s provision of
manna in the desert as the Israelites began to despair that they may die of
starvation. Our reading from Leviticus
last week recollected the guidance God provided the Israelites to make
appropriate sacrifices under his covenant. Paul also recounted this journey in writing to
the Christians of Corinth, retelling the journey of the Israelites as a
forerunner to the journey of the Christian life. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:1-4 “…our
ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all
were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same
spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that
followed them, and the rock was Christ.”
Paul
sees, in this story, the precursors of our own spiritual lives. The Israelites come through the waters of the
Red Sea like we come through the waters of baptism. They are fed by manna in the desert, as we are
fed at the Lord’s Supper. And they drink
the same spiritual drink. Paul
identifies the rock that Moses strikes, which pours forth water that is good to
drink, as Christ, who offers us living water still.
As
he tells the story, however, he also underscores the mistakes that Israel has
made. There is wisdom in not only taking
inspiration from our ancestors, but in critically examining and learning from
their failings as well. Keeping this in
mind, let us look back to the words of the book of the prophet Isaiah.
This
section of Isaiah is dealing with deep feelings of loss. The Israelites are reeling from mass exile,
and the loss of Zion, and they interpret this as punishment for their idolatry,
among other sins. An ancient Christian
carol summarizes the mood:
O
come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive
Israel
That
mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God
appear.
It’s
hard for the exiled people of God to bear: up to this point in their history,
their worship of their God has been tied to place and to space. They feel distant from the presence of God,
but even in their exile, God inspires the prophet to bring a message of comfort
to the people: “Listen to me…look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to
the quarry from which you were dug” (Isaiah 51:1). The exiles are told to look back to Abraham
and Sarah, to whom God made his promise so long ago.
Biblical
scholar Ingrid Lilly writes that Abraham and Sarah represent two different faces
of the disorientation that the exiles are dealing with. Abraham’s call represents “the confidence to
follow God even in the midst of this disorientation,” and Sarah’s story is
about the experience of barrenness, of desolation, and miraculous consolation. The rock from which we are hewn refers to
these two strong characters, but also to the sure and steady promise God has
made to them. Whether we identify with
Abraham and his stalwart, rock solid confidence or with Sarah and her empty,
chasmic sized sorrow, we find in the end a promise from God.
The
quarry, or pit of absence, is like the barren desert of Sarah’s womb that
symbolizes what Israel must be feeling. But
the exiles are reassured: “The Lord comforts Zion; he… makes her wilderness
like Eden” (Isaiah 51:3). From out of
the barren silence, out of the pit, the desert miraculously blooms. There will
be joy again. By invoking Eden, the
prophet points even further back—to our ultimate origins, and our original
friendship with God, and names that as our destiny. Medieval theologians loved this concept, and
called it “Exitus Reditus.” What comes
from God returns to God. “Exitus Reditus” – what comes from God returns to God.
So, like the carol says:
Rejoice!
Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O
Israel.
The
Israelites mourn in lonely exile but are encouraged to rejoice! Today’s candle represents joy. It is out of this amazing journey, regardless
of how deep and dark the days might be, there is joy at the end. Our God who made water flow from a rock, who
poured forth a people from a barren womb, can make a desert bloom, and will
abide with us in the fullness of time. Having
heard this message, how do we find ourselves, right now, as we approach Jesus’
words from the end of the Sermon on the Mount? What is on our hearts? We are invited, I believe, to think of our own
trials and tribulations, our own mistakes, our own desolations. Sitting at Jesus’ feet, we are both challenged
and comforted.
After
preaching to his gathered disciples, Jesus concludes by saying:
“Everyone
then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who
built his house on the rock. And the
rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but
it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and
does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against
that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:24-27).
These
moral and spiritual teachings are a firm foundation, he is saying. Those who are meek, pure of heart, poor of
spirit, who hunger and thirst for justice, and who practice mercy are on solid
ground. Those who love their enemies,
and turn the other cheek, and forgive others are building on rock. Those who fast and give alms without hope of
recognition, and those who seek after God have a firm foundation. It is by the
grace of God that we are saved, but these works of mercy are given to us by
Christ as sturdy stone, a sure base, and a picture of what a life in Christ
looks like.
And
indeed, it was these verses from the seventh chapter of Matthew that came to
the mind of the hymnwriter Edward Mote almost 200 years ago when he was
thinking about the grace-filled experience of a Christian. In “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less,” he
wrote movingly about clinging to Christ even in times when God seems silent:
When
darkness veils his lovely face, I rest on his
unchanging grace; In every high and
stormy gale, My anchor holds within
the veil. On
Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand.
The
very week Mote wrote these words, they gave comfort to a dying woman, which led
Mote to publish them to share them more widely. Two centuries later, they still cut straight
to the heart of the Advent message of this Matthew 7:24-27 passage: In journeys
that we find ourselves in disruption or desolation, we can rest secure knowing
that God blesses and comforts those who mourn, and who are persecuted. We can rest in peace knowing that God forgives
us as we forgive those who trespass against us. Because we have faith, we have hope. And ultimately, we have joy. Advent, among other things, is a season of
hope.
So
let us rejoice in our hope: The Word of God was the Rock for the Israelites. He gave them water in the desert and can make
even the most sun-parched sand bloom. By
his birth in Bethlehem, in a stable that scholars often claim was hallowed out
from stone, he has given us a firm foundation on which to build a life of joy.
On
Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand; All other ground is
sinking sand.
Thanks
be to God. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
O God,
with faith and hope, we offer these gifts in joy. Use them, even as You use us, to accomplish
Your purposes in Jesus Christ, our coming Lord.
AMEN
Closing
Hymn – Hark! The Herald Angels Sing Hymn #31/277
Benediction –
Let us go
trusting in Jesus Christ, the one who is surely coming. May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of
God, and the companionship of the Holy Spirit be with you and abide with you
today and always. AMEN.
Postlude
