20151025 Order of Worship
* indicates to stand as you are able
Prelude
Welcome/Announcements
* Call to Worship
Who is like the Lord our God, high
above the heavens in glory?
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Who raises the poor from the dust and
lifts up the needy from the ashes?
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Who makes light shine in darkness,
gives joy in sorrow, and brings life out of death?
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
* Hymn of Praise – UMH #139 Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the
King of creation!
O my soul, praise him, for he is thy
health and salvation!
All ye who hear, now to his temple
draw near;
join me in glad adoration!
Praise to the Lord, who o’re all
things so wondrously reigning
bears thee on eagle’s wings, e’er in
his keeping maintaining.
God’s care enfolds all, whose true
good he upholds.
Hast thou not known his sustaining?
Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper
thy work and defend thee;
surely his goodness and mercy here
daily attend thee.
Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,
who with his love doth befriend thee.
Please pass
the Peace of Christ
Praise to the Lord, who doth nourish
thy life and restore thee,
fitting thee well for the tasks that
are ever before thee.
Then to thy need God as a mother doth
speed,
spreading the wings of grace o’er
thee.
Praise to the Lord! O let all that is
in me adore him!
All that hath life and breath, come
now with praises before him!
Let the amen sound from his people
again;
gladly forever adore him.
A Time with Young Disciples –
Halloween Candy
Choral Anthem – I Will Give Thanks to the Lord
First Reading – Psalm 113
Praise the Lord!
Praise, O servants of the Lord;
praise the name of the Lord.
Praise, O servants of the Lord;
praise the name of the Lord.
Blessed be the name
of the Lord
from this time on and forevermore.
From the rising of the sun to its setting
the name of the Lord is to be praised.
The Lord is high above all nations,
and his glory above the heavens.
from this time on and forevermore.
From the rising of the sun to its setting
the name of the Lord is to be praised.
The Lord is high above all nations,
and his glory above the heavens.
Who is like the
LORD our God?
Who is like the Lord our God,
seated on high, who looks far down
on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust,
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes,
with the princes of his people.
He gives the barren woman a home,
making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord!
Who is like the Lord our God,
seated on high, who looks far down
on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust,
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes,
with the princes of his people.
He gives the barren woman a home,
making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord!
Response
This is the Word of God for the
people of God to which God's people respond:
Thanks be to God!
Hymn – UMH #382 Have Thine Own Way, Lord
Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine
own way!
Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after thy will,
while I am waiting, yielded and still.
Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after thy will,
while I am waiting, yielded and still.
Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine
own way!
Search me and try me, Savior today!
Wash me just now, Lord, wash me just now,
as in thy presence humbly I bow.
Search me and try me, Savior today!
Wash me just now, Lord, wash me just now,
as in thy presence humbly I bow.
Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine
own way!
Wounded and weary, help me I pray!
Power, all power, surely is thine!
Touch me and heal me, Savior divine!
Wounded and weary, help me I pray!
Power, all power, surely is thine!
Touch me and heal me, Savior divine!
Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine
own way!
Hold o'er my being absolute sway.
Fill with thy Spirit till all shall see
Christ only, always, living in me!
Hold o'er my being absolute sway.
Fill with thy Spirit till all shall see
Christ only, always, living in me!
Sharing Joys and Concerns
Pastoral Prayer
Loving and gracious God, source of
all that we have and all that we are, we have gathered here today in your house
to worship your mighty name. We have
gathered to be remolded and remade in your image. We have gathered, we have stilled ourselves,
and we are waiting. Some of us come
weary, some come wounded, some come seeking cleansing, some healing. But we come to meet you here in this place,
knowing that when we gather you are here.
We bring with us our concerns for
the world in which we live and families and friends and communities we call
home. Today we pray especially for
___________________. For these things
and the things that we lift silently now to you we pray… (pause)
We give you thanks for the mysterious ways you work. We give you thanks that you are bigger than
our fears and our failures. We give you
thanks that you are already working and active in ways we may never know.
We also bring our joys. Places where we have seen you at work in our
lives and in the world around us. In
this moment we especially lift to you __________. For these things and the things we share
silently now we pray… (pause). God you
are mighty and holy and loving and generous and you have chosen us to be your
people. How can we ever praise you
enough?
We come with praise and
thanksgiving, joys and concerns and ask you to have your way with us. We have been created in your image, but
sometimes that image gets buried under all the other stuff we lug around. Sometimes, over the course of our busy and well-intentioned
lives, we forget what we were made for.
We get dusty and rusty. We get a
little moldy and moth-eaten and need a good airing out. So we ask you to breathe into us again. Fill us with your generous Spirit until we
can do nothing but overflow, exhaling your life-giving words, walking as Jesus
your incarnate Word.
And help us to remember as we walk
we witness to the psalmist’s question, “Who is like the Lord our God?” We follow in the example of Jesus, who called
imperfect disciples, who asked only that those disciples be willing to go where
he led. And as disciples called to do
likewise, we pray the prayer Jesus teaches us, saying, “Our Father…”
Lord’s Prayer
Second Reading – Matthew 6:19-21
Jesus said to them, “Some people store up treasures in their homes here on earth. This
is a shortsighted practice—don’t undertake it. Moths and rust will eat up
any treasure you may store here. Thieves may break into your homes and
steal your precious trinkets. Instead, put up your treasures in heaven
where moths do not attack, where rust does not corrode, and where thieves are
barred at the door. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Response
This is the Word of God for the
people of God to which God's people respond:
Thanks be to God!
Sermon – Give.
This
week concludes our three-week series on stewardship. We’ve been following Wesley’s three maxims in
his sermon “The Use of Money”, so before we talk about his final point, let’s
do a quick recap. Two weeks ago we
talked about Earning. Wesley directs his
followers to “Earn all we can.” We
talked about the fact that this isn’t an endorsement of free-market capitalism
because Wesley puts limits on our earnings, stating our earnings should not
damage our bodies, our souls, or our fellow human beings.
Last
week we talked about Saving. Wesley
directs his followers to “Save all we can.”
We looked at the foolish farmer who, though he had succeeded in earning
all he could and in saving all he could he still failed. And he failed for two reasons: 1) he
mistakenly believed he had achieved his success on his own, and 2) he failed to
move from saving to giving. He allowed
his bumper crop to rot in his bigger barns instead of sharing his good fortune
with others.
This
week we’re going to be looking at giving.
Like his prior two teachings, Wesley directs his followers to “Give all
we can,” saying that the prior two, earning and saving, are nothing for God’s
kingdom if we don’t go on to giving.
Like our Halloween candy, we can gain it and we can save it, but if we keep
it to ourselves it will either get stale (how disappointing is it to open gray,
chalky chocolate?) or make us sick. Maybe
I’m the only person in the room who has woken up on November 1st with
a candy hangover, and if that’s the case, let me assure you that it isn’t a
good feeling. And so it shouldn’t be a
surprise to us that when we meet generosity with self-centeredness it makes us
ill (physically and spiritually) – it ought to.
That’s what our gospel reading today is about.
Jesus
is in the business of giving. Of giving
beyond what appears to be possible. Fish
multiplied with baskets to spare.
Forgiveness to the unforgiveable.
Blessings to those who don’t deserve it.
And even killing death, giving life to the lifeless. Matthew chapter 6 finds Jesus on a hillside
in Galilee giving a series of teachings on what it means to live wisely and fully. This is the Sermon on the Mount, and we are
familiar with a lot of it for good reason.
It contains the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer, not serving two
masters, and my favorite passage from this gospel—that we are not to worry
because the God who provides for sparrows and lilies will provide more
generously for us.
So
when Jesus tells us to watch where we store our treasures—heavenly or earthy
barns—it’s a part of this teaching, a part of what it means to live like
Jesus. And it’s good advice with a lot
of practicality to it. Practically
speaking, unused treasures collect dust and rust. It attracts moths and worms and ants and
thieves. In contrast to the farsighted
prudence we talked about last week, Jesus calls this kind of living
“shortsighted.” And what good is it to
gain in the moment, but lose our souls in the end?
And
that’s really what stewardship is about—gaining our soul. Stewardship is not about a church budget. Stewardship is based in our need to give. And I think it’s important here to make a
distinction between charity and stewardship.
Charity is about giving to a specific cause at a specific moment in
time. Charity is measured by the
difference it makes to the one who receives it; stewardship by the difference
it makes in the one who gives. Whether
we are able to give much or little, stewardship reminds us that we are not the
center of everything. Stewardship is about
orienting our existence, including our finances, around God.[1]
Sometimes this requires a continual re-orienting, a continual conversion—that’s
why the German reformer Martin Luther talked about three conversions: one of our
heart, one of our mind, and one of our wallet.
As people who are built
in the image of God, we are designed for giving. Science now supports what the church has known
all along—giving is good for us. A study
last year found that giving activates the same parts of our brain, our pleasure
receptors, that eating chocolate does.[2] Other studies have found that giving itself
produces of well-being as well as helping us make social connections.[3] Studies have also found a connection between
giving and lowering blood pressure. These
are things that, practically speaking, benefit us.
Elizabeth Dunn, a psychology professor at the
University of British Columbia says, "Money doesn't seem to buy quite as
much happiness as many people assume," adding that in experiments where
people were given money and told to spend it on either themselves or others,
givers were happiest afterwards. “Similar
results were reached in Canada and Uganda, two hugely different countries in
terms of income and culture, suggesting this may be something intrinsic to
humans,” she said.[4]
To all of this I simply say,
“Duh.” Of course giving makes us happier
than keeping our wealth to ourselves. Wesley
puts it a bit more eloquently, “In seeking happiness from riches, you are only
striving to drink out of empty cups.”[5] And, practically speaking, people who drink
from empty cups go thirsty.
_____________
Up
until this point we’ve been talking a lot about the practicalities of stewardship,
but for a moment I want us to consider that stewardship might be a wondrousness
act of thanksgiving. When we stop and
consider the source of all that we have, the very being we seek to order our
life around, our response of wonder and thanksgiving should be no
surprise. The psalmist asks us another
question, and it’s a question that has stuck with me all week. The psalmist asks, “Who is like the Lord our
God?” Who is like our God?
It’s a good
question. The psalmist describes God as
seated high in the heavens, seemingly far from us, and yet, reaching down to
lift us up. Better yet, coming to us in
the flesh, making equal princes and “the least of these”. God takes an empty, lifeless
existence—barrenness, a shameful and fear-filled life for women in the ancient
world—and turns it into a home filled with noise and busyness and laughter and
tears and love and possibilities.
Who
is like the Lord our God? Who sends
therapists into homes to keep the fabric of families from coming apart at the
seams. Who sends a friend with an
encouraging word when we are at the end of what we can handle, people to love
us when we feel unloveable. Who delivers
what we need when we don’t know what to ask for. Who gives hot meals, medicine that reverses
drug overdoses, coats in the dead of winter, smiles to strangers, the coo of
babies, children dressed in homemade costumes ringing doorbells, rain in dry
weather, an encouraging diagnosis, people to knock us down a peg when we need
it, and people to remind us that despite the fact we’ve just been knocked down
we need to get back up. Who fills our
empty cups until they ‘runneth over’. Who
reminds us that no matter what we’ve done or who we’ve been that we are
entirely and completely forgiven and that there is always a place set for us at
God’s supper table. Praise the Lord!
Who
is like the Lord our God? The psalmist
is clearly of the opinion that no one, no one is like our God. And while that is entirely right, it’s sort
of a trick question. Because while
nothing compares to our God, we are
to be like the Lord our God. We are to
allow God to have his way and to remake us in the divine image. We call ourselves followers of the Word made
flesh, God who dwelt among us, and the Word tells us that we are to live
impossibly generous lives. We are to
make a way in the messiness of barren, wilderness lives. We are to forgive and bless and love...and but
can’t do it if we’re too busy protecting our stuff from thieves instead of
giving our stuff away.
So
instead of focusing on ourselves, maybe we should focus on God. We have so much to be thankful for. How can we not want to be like the one who
deals so generously with us? Sure, it’s
sometimes scary to let go of the security and control we think we have in our
money and our stuff, but in comparison to what God has planned for us, has to
give us? Look at God? Don’t you want to be like that? I do.
I want that life, and God has given it to me, to us. But we have to choose to live it.
Possessions,
like candy, won’t make us happy, and just like the empty calories in our
favorite treats, “Happiness based on possessions causes us to pursue a receding
goal [that one more thing to buy, that one more upgrade to have], leaving us dissatisfied,
wanting more, and never able to satiate our desires.”[6] But giving as God gives, expending ourselves
as God does, that will fill us and
satisfy us, give us our souls, and store our treasures and our hearts in heavenly
business.
Practically speaking, we
do have a building to pay for and maintain.
Practically speaking, we do have ministries to fund. But these practicalities aren’t why we
give. We give because we are the living
embodiment of the risen Christ, filled with the Spirit of God. We give because we are built to.
Thanks
be to God! Thanks be that we are built
for more than we can imagine. Thanks be
that we have been given treasure to use now.
Thanks be that there is no one like the Lord our God. Thanks be that we are called to try, to try
to be a bit more like God every day. Thanks
be that we are called to growth and change.
Giving is a discipline that we develop over time and our lives are a
process of conversion—hearts, minds, and money.
Thanks be that we have a loving and generous God to show us (through
scripture and each other) how it’s done.
LOGISTICS
As you walked in this morning the ushers handed you a giving pledge
card for 2016. In a few moments we’re
going to sing a few verses of a hymn and then we’ll have some time to fill out
our cards and bring them with your regular offering up to the altar. After everything has been offered to God we’ll
sing a final verse of the hymn and then together pray our offering prayer. The ushers will be available to help anyone
who needs it.
Hymn of Response – TFWS #2130 The Summons (verses 1-4)
Will you come and follow me if I but
call your name?
Will you go where you don’t know and
never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown,
Will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be grown in you
and you in me?
Will you leave yourself behind if I
but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind and
never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare
Should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer prayer in you
and you in me?
Will you let the blinded see if I but
call your name?
Will you set the prisoners free and
never be the same?
Will you kiss the leper clean,
And do such as this unseen,
And admit to what I mean in you and
you in me?
Will you love the “you” you hide if I
but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside and
never be the same?
Will you use the faith you’ve found
To reshape the world around,
Through sight and touch and sound in
you and you in me.
We Bring Our Gifts
Please bring your offering and your 2016 pledge card forward as you’re
able. Ushers will be available to assist
you as needed.
* Sung Response – TFWS #2130 The Summons (verse 5)
Lord, your summons echoes true when
you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you and never
be the same.
In your company I’ll go
Where your love and footsteps show.
Thus I’ll move and live and grow in
you and you in me.
* Offering Prayer
Who is like you, O Lord our God?
You are the source of all our gifts.
You look with mercy upon the earth.
You lift up the poor from the dust
and give them a place at your
table.
Give us grace to live and grow in
generosity
and teach us to show your love to those in need.
In the name of Jesus Christ our
Savior. Amen.
* Hymn of Sending – UMH #97 For
the Fruits of This Creation
For the fruits of his creation,
thanks be to God;
for good gifts to every nation,
thanks be to God;
for the plowing, sowing, reaping,
silent growth while we are sleeping,
future needs in earth's safekeeping,
thanks be to God.
thanks be to God;
for good gifts to every nation,
thanks be to God;
for the plowing, sowing, reaping,
silent growth while we are sleeping,
future needs in earth's safekeeping,
thanks be to God.
In the just reward of labor,
God's will be done;
in the help we give our neighbor,
God's will is done;
in our world-wide task of caring
for the hungry and despairing,
in the harvests we are sharing,
God's will is done.
God's will be done;
in the help we give our neighbor,
God's will is done;
in our world-wide task of caring
for the hungry and despairing,
in the harvests we are sharing,
God's will is done.
For the harvests of the Spirit,
thanks be to God;
for the good we all inherit,
thanks be to God;
for the wonders that astound us,
for the truths that still confound us,
most of all, that love has found us,
thanks be to God.
thanks be to God;
for the good we all inherit,
thanks be to God;
for the wonders that astound us,
for the truths that still confound us,
most of all, that love has found us,
thanks be to God.
* Benediction
So go:
Go with thanksgiving.
Go in the name of the Triune God.
Go seeking to give as you have received.
And may your lives be a witness,
answering the question, “Who is like the Lord our God?”
Amen.
Postlude
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